AP Businesses: Three Social Media Platforms You Can’t Afford To Ignore

[KopterVision]

My latest blog looks at the role and importance of social media for small UAS service providers like those of us who aerial photography.

http://droneanalyst.com/2014/04/18/drones-business-and-social-media/


Colin

 

[FerdinandK]

I cannot disagree more ...

There was a time, were beeing on lkdin, tw has been an advantage (fb never was an advantage), but these times are (almost) gone. Since everybody does the same, the "presence" on "social" media in not really an advantage any more. Especially if you are a small company do not waste your time on "social media" focus on technical advantage, focus on ideas, focus on creativity. The absence of a "social media" presence will mystify the results and people will be proud of "finding" something in the "real world", but of course only if you made your homework, only if you are really good. For all the (average) rest "social media" will possibly help for a while.

The internet does not forget, every post, every entry, every question, every answer, possible customers, people who might be interested in you will read it and judge you by what they read, some do really not recognize how they "disqualify" themselves when the post/ask/answer in discussion groups (especially on lkdin).

best regards
Ferdinand

 

[digitalmaster]

I wasted a lot of time trying to "increase my social media status" and it has brought me no business, this industry is to unique and new. My best results have come from cold emailing and calling potential clients from different industries in which I feel my services can help. All I focus on now is my rigs, always capturing new unique footage even if I don't have a client shoot, and constantly trying to spread the word of my company and educate other businesses as to why my services can benefit their company. My website is http://cinemaflight.com/

any comments or criticism is welcome!

 

[Av8Chuck]

I cannot disagree more ...

There was a time, were beeing on lkdin, tw has been an advantage (fb never was an advantage), but these times are (almost) gone. Since everybody does the same, the "presence" on "social" media in not really an advantage any more. Especially if you are a small company do not waste your time on "social media" focus on technical advantage, focus on ideas, focus on creativity. The absence of a "social media" presence will mystify the results and people will be proud of "finding" something in the "real world", but of course only if you made your homework, only if you are really good. For all the (average) rest "social media" will possibly help for a while.

The internet does not forget, every post, every entry, every question, every answer, possible customers, people who might be interested in you will read it and judge you by what they read, some do really not recognize how they "disqualify" themselves when the post/ask/answer in discussion groups (especially on lkdin).

best regards
Ferdinand

Not sure I understand your point? There's a lot of hyperbole in the original article, a lot of "statistics" and statistics can be interpreted anyway someone likes, but we live in an ever increasing connected world and its a bit naive to think that social media is not having an impact on marketing. The problem might be that people rely exclusively on social media to drive sales. Social media can drive viewers to websites but its effectiveness is based upon how well its integrated into an overall marketing strategy. In order to focus on technical advantage, ideas or creativity you have to connect with like minded people and social media can certainly play a role with that. Another issue with social media is that the generation that embraced it early on is narcissistic, they turned it into popularity contest. When I was in my 20's the expression "social butterfly" was a derogatory term, butterflies don't live very long, today people are almost proud to be thought of as a social butterfly as though popularity is what's important.

I wasted a lot of time trying to "increase my social media status" and it has brought me no business, this industry is to unique and new. My best results have come from cold emailing and calling potential clients from different industries in which I feel my services can help. All I focus on now is my rigs, always capturing new unique footage even if I don't have a client shoot, and constantly trying to spread the word of my company and educate other businesses as to why my services can benefit their company. My website is http://cinemaflight.com/

any comments or criticism is welcome!

AP is not a unique business and its really not that new, people have been doing commercial AP for decades. You have a nice looking website but its not clear what you sell. If your trying to sell your services to realtors, you have a couple of nice stills but you need a lot more diversity in your shots, additionally if realtors are your target customer then you need to offer full service photography and videography, not just aerial. If your target customer is architectural photographers/videographers then again you need to show them great samples of your work that is directly relevant to the videos they are producing. Also most photographers don't use GoPro's to produce those videos or stills so your at a competitive disadvantage offering aerial from a GoPro.

I'm not sure how you measure your social media status, but you might have been more successful than you think at driving customers to your site but once they went there they didn't find what they were looking for.

My point is that you need to have a reason to drive customers to your site and once you've done that you need to make it very easy and obvious how they do business with you. Having a ton of "likes" means nothing.

 

[Stacky]

There are many different levels of work available, from direct low end clients, direct high end clients, design companies, ad agencies, small or large film companies, video production houses, tv and film etc etc that discounting any single method of making contact with potential customers misses the many different levels of work out there. For some sections social media will be very effective and for other sections it will be of no use at all.

 

[zinkracer]

Just getting mine going here in NC. Really like your work. Though I don't have AP business experience behind me yet, I tend to agree with your thoughts. Great website! Continued success.