Thoughts for Today by Joe Farace
“When the history of this era is written, the smartphone and specifically social media will be revealed as the most destructive force to society since the invention of nuclear weapons”—Joe Farace
Just the other day, I told my doctor what I wrote (above) and she totally agreed with me. A few minutes later she was showing me her Android phone with a list of podcasts she thought I should look into. We’re all doomed it seems…
The question remains: Is Social Media Helping Your Photography Business or Is it Just a Waste of Time? These days that’s what more than a few photographers are asking themselves. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg published a 5,700 word manifesto where he stated that Facebook represents one of history’s “great leaps.”This is the same Zuckerberg, who, not long after he had launched Facebook from the comfort of his own dorm room, said this about Facebook users: “They trust me. Dumb fu***.”.
Yet many photographers are not seeing the benefits that social media should/might/could provide for them. On the f/stoppers website, photographer Dusty Wooddell wrote, “my Facebook page currently has around 6,500 followers. My Instagram account has just over 2,000. With over 8,000 followers, it kind of feels like I should be booking more than the 35(ish) shoots per year that I book.”
One of the many things I’ve learned from working with computers since the 1960′ sand later writing about them is that some things can’t be changed: One of Farace’s Laws of the Computing Universe is that the first people into a new media are ultimately the most successful. To put it in perspective: According to the ARS Technica tech blog, “more than 500 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube per minute.” Think about that—per minute. As the digital marketplace gets saturated with more data, more websites, more social media posts and their use by photographers—and anyone else for that matter—people (and Google too, I suspect) tend to pay the most attention to those who were there first. Or to quote Ricky Bobbie, “If you ain’t first, you’re last.”
The late Rohn Engh once wrote a post for our old blog where he offered this advice: “Facebook, Google, and others are the ‘Classified Ads’ of the Digital Age. Here’s a system you can use to determine if you should get involved in advertising your photography on social media. In the last century, entrepreneurs would observe classified ads in the major newspapers of the day. They would scan the classifieds for ‘”repeats.” If the entrepreneur placed an ad that read, ‘How to Rid Your Yard of Moles -$1’ and they noticed it was in there every day or every week, it was a winner.”
And then there’s this…
“People who used social media for more than two hours per day were more likely to report symptoms of depression, poorer sleep, and increased anxiety.”—report by UK’s Royal Society for Mental Health
Do any of those symptoms seem like characteristics you want in a new client? The Royal Society for Public Health’s report contained something you probably already knew about social media: It ain’t good for you. Their report, titled “StatusOfMind: Social Media and Young People’s Mental Health and Well Being” detailed the effects of social media on young people from 14 to 24 years of age. The results show a negative effect on the emotional well-being among social media users. After using Facebook, compared to non-users,, women ranging from teenagers to adults reported concerns about their body image .
Based on its survey of over 1,400 individuals, the study ranked the most popular social media platforms and found Instagram to be the worst offender among Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and YouTube.
Is Social Media Helping Your Photography Business or Is it Just a Waste of Time? Only you know the answer to that question but I hope that I’ve given you something to think about.