Last year I traveled the country sharing the idea that current social media platforms are the training wheels for how we will do business in the future. Collaboration is our future. Social media will eventually affect us all — like it or not.
It didn’t take long. Halfway through the year, Google came out with Wave, which is a real-time collaboration tool.
Social media has actively worked its way into our lives with up-to-date information, networking opportunities and amazing smart-phone applications.
Those who still don’t get social media may think it’s about posting what they ate for breakfast, or participating in Farmville on Facebook, or looking for the direct return on investment (ROI), or are still afraid people will steal their images and know too much about them.
Are you going to be left behind in 2010?
Unless you live in a cave, by the end of 2010 social media will touch everyone’s life. We will see more real- time applications. Search engines will become more dependent on relevant updates supplied by the social media. More companies will demand collaboration using these tools.
Smart phones will become the standard phone of choice. Smart applications within these phones will help their owners find what they are looking for virtually and in real life. Social media will offer the facts and opinions to support people’s final decisions.
Tools such a Foursquare will help people become more connected, develop better relationships and become more social.
We’ve had hints of what is to come with Tweetups, unconferences and BarCamps. These activities are going to move beyond the geek world. More people will be untethered from their office computer screens. The opportunity to connect with more people in new ways will amaze us.
In 2010, more of your clients and prospects will be available to you. Editors, marketing directors and creative directors want to meet you — if you are respectful. People would like to refer you — if only they knew a little more about you. Your current clients might refer more work if they had the opportunity to know more about your abilities.
Over the last few years, businesses have discovered and enlisted social media as a word-of-mouth form of marketing. Many of these companies have been Internet-based or depend on their Web site to drive new business.
As we approach 2010, standard business practice demands at least a basic Web site. But, many business owners still consider the addition of a social media plan a waste of time.
Social media plans have been suggested and even hyped by many marketing professionals. Many businesses — especially brick- and-mortar retail along Main Street – have ignored the call.
Whether you ignore it or not, social media is coming to Main Street.
As I mentioned in my Dec. 9 post, Google announced real-time searches, which will combine traditional and social media results on one page. This action alone makes it mandatory for businesses to consider tweeting and offering status updates to take advantage of the opportunity for a new audience.
Imagine this: You are in a new city and you’re hungry. You pull out your smart phone, open your Yelp application and take a picture of a street full of restaurants. Using GPS, Yelp identifies each restaurant along with customer ratings and reviews.
Customer opinions now carry more weight than a newspaper’s restaurant critic. Everyone is a VIP if a business wants to attract future customers. This is just the beginning; everything will be under social scrutiny and review.
On Dec. 7, Google announced the release of the Google Goggles visual search tool. Like Yelp, Goggles allows you to take a picture of an object or location and Google displays information about it.
If you are interested in a car you see on the street, snap an image of it. Need more information about a book? Take a photo of it. Research the history of a landmark while traveling.
While this technology was originally used for tracking automotive parts, the day-to-day opportunities will be amazing for smart phone users who use this application.
Google is mailing bar code stickers to 100,000 retail stores. Once these bar codes are attached to store windows, information about that retail location will be available to anyone with the Goggles application.
The bar codes are easy to make; make your own here.
I’m considering placing a bar code on my photo cards to offer more information to smart-phone users. What information would I offer? Maybe I’ll link to a special offer or to a unique portfolio on the Web. Eventually this application will be standard equipment on smart phones.
If your brain isn’t running on overload with ideas for your photography business, you are not thinking. Opportunity is around the corner. Those with the creative ideas will earn the new business.
Blogging is a great way to share your images. Unfortunately, many photographers do not like to write. Images alone are not enough. Google needs words to help define your page and the work displayed.
The goal is to attract people to your blog pages using key words. Names, locations and subject matter are very powerful ways to attract viewers.
Use the simple template outline below, which features bullet points to help you tell the story behind your pictures. All you have to do is fill in the blanks and the search engines will do the rest.
Photographer:
Client:
Subject:
Location:
Art Director:
Agency:
Stylist:
Assistant:
Production Support:
Unique elements of the image:
Use this as a starting point. Each photographer will have his own bullet points. All you need to do is cut and paste this template below each image or group of images you post to your blog.
It was about 30 years ago the personal computer was introduced to the average home. They were very cool for the few that cared. I recall writing a funny little quiz program on our shiny new AppleIIe to entertain my parents. I also remember clearly that many people weren’t sure what to do with this promising new home appliance.
I remember one family member suggesting we put our recipes on the computer, but wasn’t quite sure what else we could do with it.
About 12 years later the World Wide Web came along and people asked: Why bother? They said we can read a books, check the Yellow Pages or make a phone call for the same information. It’s just a fad. When Twitter debuted in 2006, people thought it was just as stupid.
This month many of us are scratching our heads once again with Google Wave. Is it for chatting? Is it an over-the-top wiki?Or, is it a powerful, e-mail-killing, collaborative tool?
Can we actually do without e-mail? Ask a teenager for the answer.
Google Wave is a real-time application using many of the skills we learned in social media. On Wave you can chat, collaborate, create polls, share photos and play games in real time. It’s nice that you can compile your project information in a single wave (think of a wave as a collaborative or interactive document). Participants may be added at a later time. They then can catch up by looking back in time and even responding to past blips (comments).
For photographers, Google Wave will be many things. Thanks to Twitter and Internet advertising we’ve learned how to develop information and media streams without having to read every word, line or post.
Photographers already are developing informative waves focusing on various topics. I have to give credit to David Sanger for the first successful public photography wave. Some waves are purely for sharing images. The New Media Photographer wave is about photography, social media and Google Wave. It’s a public wave for photographers to test and receive feedback.
Unfortunately, once a wave hits about 300 blips it really slows down. Wave is only released in preview or beta format; the bugs are being worked out. I would assume that a majority of waves will be private, designed for smaller groups and rather short. But, if waves are to become popular public entities, speed will have to be addressed.
Here are a few helpful things I’ve discovered in my early days of exploration that are worth sharing. First, watch the available videos. (I’ve also posted below a good features video from Google.) Remember, we are all trying to figure out Google Wave; it’s not running perfectly at this point, not all features are engaged and much more is to come.
You must have an invite from Google to join a wave. Many people have been sending me their gmail address to join our wave, but a majority don’t have an account yet.
If you wish to make your wave public, you need to add public@a.gwave.com to your contacts and add that public@a.gwave.com to your wave. Your wave will then be searchable by other users within Google Wave and may join your wave without being added by you.
How do you search for waves? You need to type with:public in the search box and all the public waves will be displayed. Without it, it will only search your waves. You can then refine your search with:public photography or with:public Nikonfor example.
Wave has a chat client, too. It’s called pinging and works just like a large wave, but in a traditionally smaller window designed for fewer people.
If you wish to upload your photographs to a wave, you must have gears installed, unless you are using Chrome. You can’t use gears on Safari or Internet explorer. Currently, we’ve only used Firefox and Chrome browsers with success. Chrome seems to be the least troublesome.
So far, I see people using waves like forums, wikis and chat clients. Others are taking advantage of the extensions, conducting polls or playing games of Sudoku.
Every time you click on a wave you automatically become a member. Plus, if you are in someone’s contacts, they can automatically add you. The number of waves added over a week for active users can be overwhelming. Make sure you take advantage of the folders to organize your waves.
Better organization methods will have to be developed in the future.
Being from Detroit, the word Edsel does pop into my head once in a while. I still have questions and discoveries to make about this. We all do. Even the developers of Wave haven’t thought of all the uses. Very smart people will start adapting this technology and developing applications that will amaze us. I have confidence.
As a photographer, I can easily see how I could use this technology to manage jobs, collaborate with clients and associates.
My biggest criticism is of the reviewers talking about how Google and supporters have over-hyped this service. My answer to that: It’s the technology, stupid.
We are applying applications and practices to a technology we don’t fully understand.
This is the same mindset that thought Twitter was stupid while trying to use it for chat among their closest friends. This is the mindset that thought blogging was just about telling the world what you had for lunch, multi-level marketers thinking social media was the answer to their prayers, and early personal computer owners looking at their electronic boxes as $1,000 appliances designed to store cookie recipes
We don’t know what we don’t know. The best applications and interface for this technology are still to come. It may not even come from Google.
For now test, explore and discover new ways to adapt a powerful technology. If that is not for you, just wait for Oprah. She will let you know when it’s safe to get on board.
Rosh
Thank you to Harjit Dhaliwal (@Hoorge) and Adam Phillips for their help writing this article.
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