I was at a photography seminar yesterday watching two of the most amazing photographers alive today tell stories, teach, and do demonstrations and I came away having learned something kind of photo related but more-or-less related to media and information in general. What I leaned came from David Hobby – new media world shaper extraordinaire.

We’ve all been told that newspapers, magazines, and other such printed media are going away and that a brave new world awaits us. It seems to me that much of that change has occurred at the top and middle but what comes out in the end – what the consumer gets is not and will not change much if at all. Sure there will be changes to how they consume, (on phones, computers, and digital paper), but not WHAT they consume.

Personally I think most of it is hype driven by the people who have the most to loose which is why the average consumer has been all by totally silent throughout the past decade as circulations have swirled around the drain.

David Hobby

David Hobby, (aka Strobist), is not listening to the old rules. David has built his Strobist blog into a hugely successful enterprise, (keep in mind that success doesn’t equal money). In the photography community the Strobist brand is as well known and well respected as Nikon or Canon.

While blogging didn’t make him rich it did provide him with a platform that has allowed him to see the world of media from a different viewpoint. No longer confined by the chains of advertising supported, high-overhead, generalistic news world of old media David has started a quiet revolution in the suburbs of greater-Baltimore. Working away David has managed to shift the future of media into what he wants it to be.

How has he shifted the entire world of media? There are already others who are doing similar or slightly different projects, projects that are compatible and comparable. What is it then that he is doing? David has shifted the world of media by making incremental changes, small changes, to the way media is gathered and shared and it looks like this: hoco360.blogspot.com

HOCO360

David is providing a visual documentation of his community with very little overhead, no editorial bias, and a visual focus on his community. Free from the bonds of the old world. He is now working on what he wants to do in a way that can be made profitable. Has he started to monetize it yet? No, but that will come.

The beauty of his method is it’s simplicity. Everyone is talking about the new world of media being so different. Whereas David Hobby, former staff photographer from the Baltimore Sun has walked over, unplugged this part, hot-wired that part and cut off all the parts he doesn’t need. No longer is David working as part of a tank or 18-wheeler. He’s broken off a chunk of that old machine and fashioned himself a bicycle that is nimble, light-weight, and able to do just what he needs it to do.

What is David Hobby Doing?

What is he doing that is so very slightly different?

David is visually recording his very local community of Howard County, MD – just like a newspaper would or at-least just like the non-hard news parts of a paper would. He is talking about arts and culture and business, and uncovering things that are of interest to the locals. He is delivering content to his readers purely online at hoco360.blogspot.com. The content he is sharing is visual. It’s not weighty and wordy, he doesn’t tackle the local school budget, or the council’s plan to allow solid waste dumping on playgrounds – he has loosened the chains.

There still are restrictions sure but they are less and they are different. One big difference in breaking the machine into smaller parts is that the market can now dictate what the consumers can consume. The gatekeeper has been removed.

Free Market Content

I recently read a post, I think if was by Seth Godin (http://sethgodin.typepad.com), where he talks about the free market and how those that benefit from the free market the most are the ones that want to prevent it from being free most often (through patents, monopolies, and so on). The reason that you can’t choose every article that you get in the paper (or at least every subject) is because the generalism of the paper maintains the ideals of it’s owner. While many readers might not care about a particular subject covered by the paper they still get articles written on that subject because the editor likes to read about it or they like to read about it with the slant that the writer they hired puts on it.

With what David and others are doing they are ultimately creating a pure and free market for news content. If his photos of his community are worth the cost to make them then he will succeed. If there are enough consumers to support someone writing about the flowers and garden clubs and such in and around Howard County then a writer writing about them will succeed (assuming they understand the business end enough).

This is all revolutionary in it’s simplicity. Everyone keeps talking about the new face of media and what a vastly different media world we are driving headlong into but David Hobby has shown that through small tweaks the new world won’t be so new to most people – it will simply be a world free of middle-men.

I’ve ran special offers on my Facebook page for some time and I’ve received very good response to them from my Facebook fans but I wanted to make sure that anyone who comes to the website is aware that they can find those specials and take advantage of them by becoming fans of WDO Photography on Facebook. I won’t tell you what those deals are here – you’ve got to become a fan on Facebook to take advantage of them anyhow but recently we’ve offered deals for everything from portrait packages to special event photography discounts that can be applied to wedding packages as well as corporate events or even family reunions. Check out what we have posted now and check back regularly for new offers.

Click here to become a fan and to take advantage of the Facebook only special offers.

http://ihobbycorner.com/professional-photography/

Which will almost certainly need to be removed from that website. If it is before you get a chance to read it let me tell you what it is. It’s an advertisement for the Art Institute of Pittsburgh (AIP) disguised as a blog post on a hobby blog. The reason that I know if will be removed soon is because it’s illegal. Laws were past last year that made it illegal for bloggers and twitterers to endorse things without reveling their relationship or any compensation they are getting for doing so. This wasn’t even that well disguised – it looked like copy taken right from their website or from print material.

AIP is where I graduated from in 2001 and I really do value what I learned there but most of the people I graduated with are not doing what they went to school there for and we were told a ton of mis-truths and on occasion outright lies by the representatives of  the school. Things have only gotten worse as these days they are owned by Goldman Sachs who have pushed even harder for ever higher profits.

Upon reading this blog post advertisement I couldn’t pass up the chance to share with potential readers the lies and misrepresentations that abound with these folks. Being that my comment needed to be moderated and the fact that the post should be taken down I’ve decided to share my comments here with you dear reader so enjoy:

WDOphoto Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
February 2nd, 2010 at 3:17 pm

This poster is almost certainly a sales person – a paid sales person and their post may be in violation of recent laws that require a blogger to identify anyone who might be paying them to blog about a particular subject or any relationship that they might have with the subject that they are blogging about.

What the author also fails to tell you is that many graduates also are crushed by the huge expense of the tuition that the Art Institute charges.

I graduated from AIP in 2001, out of the folks that graduated with me and before and after me by a few quarters I am one of maybe 10 people that are working as a photographer.

Forget getting a job as a photojournalist right out of AIP – the newspaper industry has been shedding jobs, not adding them, and the vast majority of the students they pass through are not focused or driven enough to work in such a competitive field.

Nor are they set to work in commercial photography which is just as competitive. The majority of the students who are herded through their programs like cattle are meek and mild and set-up to fail.

This poster fails to tell you dear reader that you can learn just as much at a state school, more even, than what you will at AIP for far less money.

They’ve also failed to tell you that since Goldman Sachs bought EDMC (the company which owns AIP that the poster almost certainly works for in a sprawling cubical filled warehouse in Pittsburgh’s Strip District) the focus has become far more financially driven and profit motivated and far less about education.

Don’t get me wrong – the school was always profit driven. It’s just that now they are even more ruthless in their pursuit of financial gains at the expense of the general public.

EDMC employs hundreds, if not thousands, of sales people. They are not “councilors” they are sales people, their backgrounds are in sales, they don’t care if you are mentally deficient – if you have the money they’ll tell you how wonderful your future is going to be. After all the schools they are pushing have a 100% acceptance rate.

I strongly encourage everyone to read about the high costs of these schools and how these schools have a higher percentage of students who default on their loans as was my case because the cost of AIP was so high that I was forced into taking out private loans. They at one time set up (and still might have) a private loan just for them through Sallie Mae that I was told was the only private loan I was allowed to apply to my bill there. When I took out this loan the interest rate was 23% (compound that).

Something else to keep in mind – these schools target lower income high-school students and working adults that more than likely come from a family or background where they in no way can understand the complex financial problems that are being thrust upon them.

I was a wide-eyed teenager herded into a tight hallway full of 6×6 rooms with a waiting line an hour to two long. My mother and I had little to no time to read anything that was shoveled at us. We were told to sign here and sign there – it was as if the devil himself, with all of his slickness, was on the other side of that desk. We got taken. And so did nearly everyone I waited in line with that day. As I said only a few of us made it out doing what we went in there for.

They told my mother that for me to get additional aid she’d need to apply and be turned down for parent plus loans. The problem was that she wasn’t turned down and there was no way, according to them, that she could NOT take the loan out. She was forced into taking on debt that she could in no way afford.

A popular misconception is that this is an “art school”. It’s not – it’s a trade school. They crank out students every 3 months with the same degree, many with no chance of doing what they have been, for-the-most-part, poorly trained to do.

I don’t mean to come down hard on the instructors because for the most part they are quality folks and I really do respect the vast majority of them but at the same time they are trapped in a hard spot.

It has become obvious to me from what I saw when I was there, when I’ve gone back to speak with portfolio students, and when I interact with graduates, (usually when they are serving me at a coffee shop), that the teachers are encouraged to do as much as they can to NOT fail students. How can one teach people when they are not allowed to weed out the poorly performing students?

Don’t waste your money on these people or believe anything their sales people tell you. If you don’t believe me I encourage you to look at the statistics or even read what is happening in the news right now where these for-profit school owners are fighting the dept of education to keep from being held accountable.

The Obama admin wants to tie their ability to get fin. aid (which is where most of their money comes from) to the ability of their students to pay that money back. Meaning that their higher level of defaults could put them at risk of loosing their source of income. They are fighting this as hard as they can because they don’t want to be held accountable for their failure to actually educate and train students.

Shame on you cstein for posting misleading advertisements in such a manipulative manner.

That’s the end of the post but for more info on how they are fighting the dept. of education see the following articles:

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9DGTFCO0.htm

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100128-715543.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines

I received both a phone call and an email today from such a company. When I googled them I found this page which is a complaint board for questionable businesses. In the event that you don’t want to click on it I’ve posted my comments that I left on the page at the bottom of this post.

They were not the worst that I’ve dealt with – by far. This summer I received a call from a dude that told me his company would fill the first results page of Google with my website and only my listings whenever anyone searched for photography and Pittsburgh. He had me search for a tanning salon in California that he said they did so for. So basically I pay them an arm and a leg and they eliminate any competition in the photography field from the first few pages of Google.

I explained to him that the photo community is fraternal. We may compete for customers and there may be a plethora of shooters in Pittsburgh but I could call up about 200 of my fellow photographers here in Pittsburgh and ask them to borrow a lens or a flash and they’d gladly let me borrow it even if I had beat that person out for the job.

After realizing that I was not going to go for his pitch he began to threaten me. If I wasn’t going to pay for it he’d find someone else who will and that means that I’ll never find another job to shoot ever again (never mind the fact that less than 10% of my leads, and maybe 2% of my clients come from people finding me via a search engine). Could I do better SEO? Probably. Should I? Maybe. Am I going to pay someone else to do it? NO. I know enough that I can do so myself. The fact that I’ve written Pittsburgh and photography so many times in this post alone may lead to me jumping up a few pegs in the search results. In the end though – I find most of my work via word-of-mouth and that’s something that few people can do FOR you, if you’re not going to do it yourself as well.

As far as generating leads for me – these companies also don’t seem to do much “active lead generating” they set up a website and use what? That’s right SEO to get to the top of results and list a ton of companies. They then charge you when someone clicks on you.

The last time I checked Google Adwords start at $0.01 per click. These other companies want to charge you $10 for a service that is not anywhere near as good because they only list you on their own site(s) – and not on all the pages that Google can list you on.

This isn’t even my biggest complaint about them. I’m about to tell you what my biggest complaint is about them.

My biggest complaint is that they are offering a service that YOU DON’T NEED! If you can’t find leads yourself you’re not going to stay in business. This is fundamental to your business – if you can’t find people to pay for what you’re selling your not going to last long so don’t trust finding leads to just anyone.

The other thing that really bothers me – besides the fact that these are worthless companies is that they offer very low wage jobs to people who just need a paycheck. These people don’t care about your business – they care about making enough to buy another pack of smokes, put gas in their car, and pay their cell phone bill. If you go out of business they won’t care one bit. Are those the people you want working to generate sales for you?

That’s enough bitching – I’ve got to go out and find people that want what I’m selling which I happen to be fairly good at.

Here was my comment:

We, as a species, rely on vision as our primary sense. The fact that you are reading this right now is evidence of just how visual we are. Further evidence is the fact that audio browsers and technologies that make the Internet easier to use for blind persons are often ignored and occasionally despised by designers.

Need more proof?

Try this test – think about the following brands:  McDonalds | NBC | Chevrolet

Now what did your mind do?

If you are like most people your brain flashed visual cues about those brands. You thought of the Golden Arches, The Rainbow Peacock, and what is refereed to as the “Bowtie” but looks more like a squished little cross of some sort. Either way you probably didn’t think of a smell (well maybe when it comes to McDonalds) and hopefully you didn’t have a very strong emotional reaction that trumped the visual thoughts that flood most peoples brains.

When these giants of commerce work on their brand they want you to be able to picture things about them and from there for your thoughts to cascade down to good emotional feels – happiness, contentment, etc.

So how do you as a small business owner make sure that your taking advantage of and maximize your visual marketing?

The first thing you have to think about is establishing your brand – what do you want the world to see, to think about, and to associate you with? Once you have an idea of what you want for your brand you need to find a way to establish a visualization of those principals – if you can use a professional graphic designer to help you come up with things like a logo, letterhead, business cards, and so on. If you have a, or plan to open, a physical location it might be well worth hiring a visual merchandizer or at least an interior designer that understands how to translate your branding into a great looking space.

Remember the important thing is to keep consistent and never loose sight of your brand.

So what if you can’t afford a professional graphic designer and a visual merchandizer for your store?

You can do these things on your own but you must understand that it will be easier (and more successful) for some people while others will struggle. If you think that it might be too difficult for you ask around, see if there are any family members who can help or if there is an art school that has students who can help you.

What you don’t want to do is try to go it alone and fail. Nobody wants to look unprofessional. Aside from the loss of self confidence you loose the confidence of your customers and that’s not something that you can afford. If you think that you cannot, on your own, create an effective and all encompassing visual marketing plan then you need to start saving so that you can pay for help.

Here are some key components to your visual marketing strategy:

Your logo - Clearly if there is one thing that defines your business it is your logo. Make sure that the message that you want conveyed to your clients is evident through your typeface, type-thickness, letter spacing, your colors, all aspects of the design. Don’t neglect thinking about how that logo will look small and large, as a 4 color print, a small black and white piece of your letterhead, and as a web graphic.

Your website – Your website is your 24 hours sales person. Even if you don’t do e-commerce you still offer vital information about your business and no client should see a disconnection between what they see on your website and when they experience your brand off-line.

Your signage - Don’t forget about things like awnings or sales signage in your window, signage on your vehicles, and billboards when you think about your signage. Speaking of on vehicle signage – makes sure that you are the most polite driver on the road. All it takes is a little aggressive driving to upset the branding that you’re working so hard on and spending so much money on. Keep that in mind when you are evaluating putting signage on your vehicle(s).

Print and Broadcast advertising – I’d also add radio which we don’t think of as being visual but it really is. When you pay for a radio ad your paying for someone to help your customers form a picture of your business. I’m not a huge fan of buying advertising until you can afford to have a really well and slickly produced ad put together – this is something that reaches a lot of people so you don’t want to be one of the many small businesses that produce really poor advertisements. If you do choose to pay for broadcast advertising make sure that you keep to the principals of your brand.

Remember that the eyes of the world are watching.