My issues with the social media outlet is the conflict between my personal and public life. I believe with Twitter that I can have two accounts, but from what I understand, not with Facebook. Not sure if that is accurate.

I'm a long-time political nut. It was my college major. I'm also highly opinionated... and can be very sarcastic, most often in a jovial way. This can be off-putting to many. I try to keep my clients separate on my fan page, but I do occasionally get the friend request. It's happening with greater frequency. I'm not sure how to approach that.

I notice that a lot of photographers keep their pages fairly client-centric. Are you all storing secret FB pages for you and your buddies? Do you utilize the list and privacy options?

Regarding Twitter... I don't know a lot of people who use Twitter. I'm fairly new to it, myself. Just this evening I had a friend tell me (after I told her how much I enjoy following Roger Ebert... he's great to follow if you don't already) that she would use Twitter if she knew how. She doesn't understand how Twitter works. I'm still learning myself.

Ok, so that's all I got. Great subject!

OK Jeff, so I cheated a bit and copied and pasted the issues that I would love to hear your input on :)

~blogs, what is the next generation blog like?
~ Are you running twitter contest with your clients?
~ Are you speaking to clients on twitter?
~ Should you have clients as facebook friends?
~ Is there potential for Google buzz? ( I just recently signed on to this and I felt like it was cool but possibly just a time sucker?? But if it has potential, I am all ears because it is a very streamlined way of having conversations with contacts)
~ How can photogs use the iPad to grow their business?
~ facebook fan page?

I think each of these is of huge relevance to us in the new "digital age".

Ashley :)

Facebook and Twitter (more so Facebook for me) is another way to stay connected with my clients. I think we need to really understand how our clients like to stay updated either from their friends, family, and businesses they frequent. Do they rely on email still, are they texters, Facebookers, and/or Twitter-folk. If they aren't on the social media band wagon, we encourage them to do so and let them know the benefits or being able to receive the most up-to-date info from our studio via these mediums. I have clients that are not on Facebook but their kids are.

I've heard of several "Facebook Friday" type of events - mini sessions to get nice pro profile pics, but couldn't that type of event also be targeted to our clients that aren't Facebook users or are users but don't know that much about it and bookend the event with a Facebook Class showing them how easy it is to set up and maintain? And throw in a little social media etiquette at the same time.

Just thinkin out loud.

Does it sound like I'm echoing here? Sorry for the double post.

I am also very interested in maintaining personal life separate from professional life. Most confused with how to achieve this on FB. Not sure if it matters on twitter, though I do have more than one account, just do not have time to check both.

If I'm wrong about this someone please let me know... When we started our facebook group page some time ago we didn't really understand the difference between a fan page and a group page and frankly didn't think there was much of a difference. Then when we saw Rod Evans speak at Imaging USA in Nashville I took note that he discussed how he has both a fan page and a group page but he's not happy he does partly because it's a pain to maintain both of them. If he had to choose which one he said he would stick with the fan page not the group but I don't think he said why. Now I know why. Here is the part where I hope I'm wrong - apparently you cannot get a facebook user name (a specific URL with facebook.com/yourbusiness in it for example) for a group - only for a fan page. On the pro side for a group you can message all the members of the group with one click whereas with the fan page you have to manually check each and every fan if you want to send out a mass message. I'd rather have the minor inconvenience of selecting everyone than not being able to get the username associated with my group.

Jeff depending on how deep you want to dig into these details on facebook in your webinar, these tips might be good to share for anyone who hasn't created a page yet or doesn't have too many fans or members to make a switch without too much pain...

I also think photogs shouldn't underestimate the power of YouTube. Creating a custom YouTube channel for your studio is a piece of cake. Ours is www.youtube.com/frameablefaces :-)

Hope this helps and we really enjoyed Allison and your presentation in Nashville. Extremely valuable information! Changed our way of thinking on some things. Finally got around to registering for lbobi...

Seems like keeping FB fairly private is an issue. Jeff, one way to go about this is to create "lists" and put your friends into them. You can go in and change your privacy settings so that that "list" doesn't see your wall or your photos or whatever else you don't want them to see. Does this make sense? If you don't know how to do this, I'm more than happy to type out more instructions on how to do it.

Also it seems like a lot of people just getting into twitter don't understand all the hashtags (what they mean, why do you use them) or what RT means, etc. Maybe that's something you can talk about.