Facebook for creative pros - Facebook Tutorial

- Hi, my name is Richard Harrington. And today we're going to explore how to use Facebook as a marketing business tool, for those of you who work as photographers, video professionals or graphic designers, essentially a creative professional. Now you might be thinking, "Well I've been using Facebook for a while. It's not that hard." And you're absolutely correct. Facebook of course is one of the easiest to use and most popular websites on the planet. But there is a lot of hidden power in there and a lot of great things to take advantage of. So in this course, I'm going to really help you unlock its potential by both sharing technical secrets as well as some business strategy. We're going to take a look at Facebook for its evolution. How it transitioned from being about the individual, to truly being a business tool and some of the different things that can help you better engage with your customers or potential customers. We'll also talk about connecting with both colleagues and clients and how you can use this as a networking tool. Obviously you're probably relying upon LinkedIn is a great tool for keeping in touch with your network, but Facebook is another tool that you can use to reach different types of clients, particularly people that you haven't yet established a business relationship with. We'll also talk about creating a company page, even if you're an individual or a sole proprietor. Having a company page is a really good idea. There are certain tools, particularly with advertising and monetization that you're going to need if you want to have a business presence. So I'll walk you through how to do that. We'll also talk about sharing work samples. Whether that's photographs, videos, graphic design samples, I'll share with you some strategies to optimize the content as well as why you might consider using some additional outside services to host it. We'll also talk about strategy for sharing content including scheduling posts, as well as relying upon outside helper services that give you additional functionality on the Facebook platform. I'll then show you how you can set up a project on Facebook using Project Management Principles and creating a group, so you can actually invite colleagues, coworkers or clients in for business collaboration. We'll also discuss at a high level some of the advertising tools on Facebook that you could use to target potential customers and market or promote your business with paid ads. Then we'll take a look at some of the things that are unique to the Mobile Facebook platform, giving you a few strategies for posting content on the go, so you can take your smartphone or tablet with you on location as you're working and share behind the scenes moments or other great options that let people really get a glimpse of all the cool things you're doing in your business. Now, before we jump in, I just want to tell you a little bit about my own background and relationship with using Facebook. I've been working for many years as a creative professional, particularly where photography and video intersect. This includes things like time-lapse animation and the ability to do motion graphics. I own a visual communications company that regularly produces professional video projects and photography projects for a wide range of corporate and enterprise customers but I'm also a husband and a father. And that's part of what makes Facebook great. The ability to share your personality and connect with your friends and colleagues on a more personal level. To give you a little bit of additional background, I've written about 40 books through the years on topics like photography and video. Helping other creatives be more professional and extend the success of their business. I've also recorded and released more than 200 video classes to pass knowledge on. And I'm a big believer in sharing knowledge. Every day I publish to a website. And we routinely rely upon Facebook to reach our customers and to get that information out to more eyeballs. I also own more than one business at this point, a production company as well as an education company and a studio space. And this allows me to use Facebook to raise awareness for those businesses. Facebook, after all is all about the discovery process. Letting people find out more about what you do and become genuinely connected. I'm both a photographer and a video director and I want to keep in touch with friends and colleagues, as well as share the work that I'm creating. And Facebook is very well suited for that. But I do have a business background and particularly as a project management professional. As such, I tend to think about things a little bit differently than the average creative person. I love to create content and work with other creative pros but I'm also very strategic about my social media. So when I publish, I want to make sure that I'm getting maximum results. But doesn't necessarily mean the most likes or eyeballs, but it does mean that I'm reaching the people that I need to. Now, speaking of reaching out, I invite you to connect on LinkedIn. I'm happy to connect with other creative professionals, through the LinkedIn network. But you'll discover if you reach out on Facebook, I'm not going to connect with you. And that's part of the process. We're going to talk about using a curated approach to how many connections you have, so you can use Facebook to be more effective with the business relationships and the personal relationships that you want to maintain. Now that might seem a little counterintuitive but as you start to look at me on Facebook, you're going to see a different approach and that I connect with people that I'm already doing business with or strategically that I want to do more business with, as well as of course friends and colleagues that are part of my bigger support network. As such, I use Facebook as a very personal tool for engagement. And I'm going to share this strategy with you. I do occasionally use it for some mass publishing so that our website photo focus reaches as many people as possible. So I'll be able to show you that approach as well, if you need to reach a big audience. So I use Facebook multiple ways. And instead of just staring at the page, wondering what to post, let's give you some ideas on how you could really understand how to use Facebook as a platform to connect with your current customers and so you can use it to help you find new customers.