Tag Archives: Content Marketing

5 Totally Legit Reasons You Should Join Our Patreon Page!

Patreon is described in Wikipedia as “a membership platform that provides business tools for creators to run a subscription content service, as well as ways for artists to build relationships and provide exclusive experiences to their subscribers, or “patrons.”  We have our own Patreon, we are working really hard on it and we believe in it.  We hope you will join us and here are 5 totally legit reasons why you should.

Patreon

5 Totally Legit Reasons Why You Should Join Our Patreon Page

 

First of all, Patreon itself is really cool.

Let’s just talk about Patreon for a second if you aren’t familiar with it.  It’s a great website as well as mobile app that is growing and adding features and opportunities constantly.  You can find creators of all sorts to connect with there and subscribe to their page for anywhere from one dollar to $15 per month (and sometimes more for really big rewards) just for various levels of fun basic content.  Artists, musicians, comedians, business gurus, podcasters, vloggers – you name it.  And the creators who rely on this platform to make a living at what they do are generally really thankful for their communities who subscribe for their content.

As an end user you can go on the desktop version and even better download the mobile app.  The creators you subscribe to can upload video, audio, photos, livestreams, links, polls, stories, or just text  right to the app.  So you can listen, watch, comment, and interact with other fans & followers all from your smartphone.  You can access all of these things on demand as you like – a great way to support the people you enjoy on the go.  You’ll love it. 

Keep in mind that the best creators on Patreon typically have YouTube channels, blogs, Instagram and Snapchat, and a whole variety of profiles online where they’re sharing free content, but the ones who do it right are giving extra rewards and exclusive content to their patrons because the patrons are paying for it – they definitely appreciate your support.

As for OUR Patreon page, we’ve already posted a TON of stuff there…and we’re adding more.

We aren’t messing around.  We are off to a solid start with a handful of subscribers and we are working really hard to create content exclusively for Patreon.  Heck, part of the impetus for starting Patreon was the fact that people were asking us on our Periscope 📷Doug&Ally📷Morning Show!🎙☕ to do a podcast.  While we thought that would be fun we figured at some point it has to be sustainable for us to keep adding content that isn’t exactly our core business of photography.  Yes our content highlights our brand and is great for promotion but certain content in and of itself has value if we do it right and there are only so many hours in the day – as I said it has to be sustainable.  We felt a podcast along with some other things would fit the bill… so The📷Doug&Ally📷Morning Show!🎙☕………Podcast!  was born…

Patreon

We are having a blast with the podcast, and a shout out goes to the amazing Olivia Thai who supplied the little impromptu beatbox intro that you hear at the beginning of each one which we literally pulled from when she called into our morning show one day!

Meanwhile, we have SO much else to offer, and so we’ve been pouring ourselves into creating content for Patreon much like the courses we have taught here at our studio such as Doug’s teachings in his “2 Hour Social Media Class” and Ally’s “Photography 101” class.  People who follow us outside of the Metro Detroit area had been asking for a way to learn from us or get online courses and now Patreon gives us a way to do that with in-depth tutorials that we upload there.  The feedback on these has been solid (more on that in a bit) and we’ll even take requests on topics that our Patrons want covered specifically.  We do some of these with recordings of our computer screens while we’re walking you through how to create social media content or how to edit a photo in Photoshop.  These are great because you can access them on demand, at your own pace and you can watch them repeatedly.

We’ve added a few other exclusive series there too such as “Entrepreneur Life” where we talk about the highs and lows, thrills and challenges of having your own business – things that we’ve learned and sometimes the hard way…  We even include the occasional blooper!  As of this first writing we are at over 40 pieces of content total, available at the various levels.

You may find if you browse around Patreon overall that there are some who use their page simply as a donation mechanism – a way for their followers to contribute money to support what they are already doing elsewhere.  Not calling anyone out specifically or saying that’s bad per se…  But that’s not our strategy.  If you’re paying for our Patreon, you’re getting your money’s worth ON Patreon.  We’ll even send you a 📷Doug&Ally📷Morning Show!🎙☕ bookmark at the $5 level and up!

Our Patrons Are Happy – they are validating what we are doing there – so take their word for it!

We are getting great feedback so far and there are subscription levels for everybody – from just $2 per month to be included in our private Periscope group – this is a great thing by the way.  Sometimes we just go on Periscope live in a private broadcast just for our Patrons to get feedback, chat or we’ll even livestream there under our own personal profiles @dougcohen10 or @AllyCohen_1 if we feel like waxing poetic on our own passions like music, history, football, parenting – whatever, and the patrons are really enjoying this.  We are getting great feedback so far at all of the various reward levels.  Take a look at some of the comments from the page…

Podcast

Patreon

Tutorial on Twitter Lists

Patreon

Tutorial on Canva

Patreon

Random Blooper

Patreon

Participation and Community is at the heart of what we do – Patreon is a shining example

We’ve always said we are all the Frameable Faces – sure it’s Doug & Ally – we own the business.  But we’re part of the community just like everyone else, and it’s our peeps that make our studio and it will be our peeps that make the Patreon page too.  Our friend Gareth from the UK is “Pliny The Round” and he’s already been posting in the “Community” tab on the Patreon which is awesome.  The people do and will continue to shape the community there.  We’ve had Patrons make suggestions for things to include in the Podcast and we frequently reach out for feedback.  At this point we are toying with adding Discord to our page (an app much like Slack that gamers have traditionally used for group chat and voice to text around certain topics) which can be integrated with Patreon.  Just another way to bring the community closer together – so we’ll see how Discord plays out.  Regardless, with Patreon since people are subscribing everyone has a vested interest in making it great!

When we share tips we don’t hold back – we pour out our knowledge…

We don’t really horde our secrets.  We subscribe to the idea that sharing helps the community, it helps the industry whether that be social media or photography, and we never have just one main magic sauce really anyway.  Once we’ve shared the sauce we’ve already concocted the next one.  We’re always concocting a new sauce and improving the current sauce, and just because someone took our sauce and tried to make it doesn’t mean they’ll make it exactly how we made it.  If by chance they made it better than us?  Well than that will just give us something to shoot for won’t it?

If you like the way we do things and you think you could learn from us, you will at our Patreon page.  We promise.  Thanks for reading and we hope to you see you there!  We won’t let you down!

 
BECOME A PATRON!  Subscribe at our Patreon page for tips, tutorials, podcasts and even individual coaching on your photography or social media!  
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Frameable Faces Photography
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Frameable Faces Photography is a small biz retail mom & pop shop of Doug&Ally Cohen located in the Orchard Mall in West Bloomfield, Michigan, United States Of America!
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Ally & Doug can be reached at the studio at tel:248-790-7317 or emailed at mailto:info@frameablefaces.com
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Being “Frameable” is an attitude, a community, a way of life – a life you would want to celebrate and display on your walls for all to see!  Tell us… ARE YOU FRAMEABLE?
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Join the Frameable Faces Community – sign up for our email newsletter for the best of the week in the Frameable Faces World!  Click here!

 

 

Is Organic Reach Dead On Facebook? Is This A Legit Question?

Organic Reach

Is organic reach dead on Facebook?  Do you have to spend advertising dollars to reach anyone on Facebook now?  I hear people say this more and more….  As I’ve written here before I participate weekly in a live Twitter chat and broadcast on Periscope called #LetsLivestream.  It’s always a good discussion with many great guests and nice production value hosted by Jonathan Tripp, and once in a while a topic or a take in the conversation gets me thinking about a blog post.  This week the topic was promotion of your live streams – best practices for promoting, various tools etc.  Question 4 is the one that got me going:

Organic Reach

Here was my answer:

Organic Reach

A bit of a contrarian view perhaps (Wait – MOI?  A contrarian view?), and even though I referenced Periscope in my tweet (keep in mind the livestream takes place ON Periscope), I continued on to include Facebook Live in my point in the chat.  At that point my esteemed friend Jenn Nelson of @JennsLIVE & @WineAntics who helps produce the show chimed in with the comment “ORGANIC REACH IS DEAD ON FACEBOOK!!!”  And then this happened:

Organic ReachOrganic ReachOrganic ReachOrganic Reach

This was going nowhere.  We agreed to continue the discussion offline after the show which we did.

So Is Organic Reach Indeed Dead On Facebook?

I sent her these screen shots of recent analytics for our Facebook page with the organic reach numbers – these represent all the posts we made on the Frameable Faces page from 10/3/17 to 11/14/17:

Organic Reach

Note that as of this writing we have a TOTAL of 1792 followers of our page.  You too can be a follower!  Give us a “Like”!!!  Okay sorry that was very shameless and spammy.  I digress.  But the point is you’ll note in the numbers above that virtually ALL of our reach has been non-paid.  There is one sliver of darker orange that represents a bit of boosted / paid reach when we spent a couple dollars to get one post going a little.  In this snapshot of time the reach on our posts range anywhere from 188 at the lowest to 2.6k at the highest and roughly half of these were Livestreams.  The livestreams didn’t have the peaks and valleys that the other posts did, generally ranging between a more consistent 500-1000.  Meanwhile, YES – we still get plenty of organic reach and a handful of posts still go beyond the followers of our page without paying on Facebook!

Is This Even A Legit Question?

Now here is where the debate gets interesting.  Jenn’s point which is shared by many is that Facebook doesn’t just automatically dole out free reach for your business page anymore.  And she’s right to a point.  Little by little Facebook has pulled back on how much they’ll push your content out to your followers, and many feel like it’s become closer and closer to a full on pay-to-play model to get any reach.  Each time the announcement / rumor comes out that they’ve tweaked the algorithm again my response is the very same every time:  Crappy content continues to get less organic reach on #Facebook. Good content still gets plenty. frameablefaces.com/2017-11-16-organic-reach-dead-facebook/ Share on X

So my question is what IS organic reach?  See the following conversation between Jenn and me:

Organic ReachOrganic Reach

How great is Jenn?  Give her a like / follow!  But here’s the question (to her point), a typical post of hers might only reach 40 people on Facebook on its own.  That’s what Facebook is just handing her out of the gate.  I would still argue that that is still not purely an automatic just because she posted – those 40 people on some level have to be 1) followers that have 2) likely shown some affinity towards her page through their Facebook behavior.  Now once someone shares it it may bump right up to 200 and so on.  Isn’t that STILL “organic”?  In other words, good content that compels people to share will still gain reach organically.  If that’s not still considered organic then what’s the point of even talking about “organic reach”?  As I said to Jenn what’s the point of even creating content in the first place if no one is going to share it?  If a post falls in the Facebook Forest and no one sees it did it really happen?  Shares, likes, comments – engagement – is part of the deal with organic.  That’s the reason we do this in the first place.

Which brings us back to the same old tried and true principle of Facebook and ALL social media in general.  Make sure you are entertaining, teaching, engaging – providing value with good content and you will still get that organic reach!!!!  I created this meme a while back as kind of my favorite quote for small businesses – kind of my little calling card….  follow this and yes – there is still organic reach to be had everywhere on social media.  Even on Facebook.

Organic Reach

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Frameable Faces Photography
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Frameable Faces Photography is a small biz retail mom & pop shop of Doug&Ally Cohen located in the Orchard Mall in West Bloomfield, Michigan, United States Of America!
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Ally & Doug can be reached at the studio at tel:248-790-7317 or emailed at mailto:info@frameablefaces.com
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Being “Frameable” is an attitude, a community, a way of life – a life you would want to celebrate and display on your walls for all to see!  Tell us… ARE YOU FRAMEABLE?
**********************************************
Join the Frameable Faces Community – sign up for our email newsletter for the best of the week in the Frameable Faces World!  Click here!

Why Local Brands Should Be Killing It On Facebook Live – Periscope not so much…

Recently I wrote an article here on the blog comparing and contrasting live streaming platforms to help people make some informed choices on which platform to consider between Facebook Live and Periscope for different types of strategies.  It’s a solid piece if I do say so myself and I enlisted 4 people in the social media / entrepreneurial game I respect to include their take.  That article is still on point and relevant, but this is basically a part 2 digging into a main advantage Facebook Live has for local brands.

Facebook Live

I’m seeing more and more jarring evidence lately that points to Facebook Live as the best opportunity for small businesses and especially brick and mortars that operate mostly on a local level like us.  Now to be clear, here at Frameable Faces we are NOT planning on “switching” to Facebook Live from Periscope overall.  Periscope is still our first love for live streaming and our favorite especially for our Doug & Ally Morning Show that we start most of our days with.  We don’t have plans to change that.  But something happened this past Saturday that cannot be ignored as an obvious example of why Facebook Live is starting to pull ahead for our strategy as a photography studio as opposed to morning show hosts.

We broadcasted parts of an amazing photo session with twin babies…

Saturday we did a photo session here in the studio for twin one month old babies.  The article with sneak peeks from that session will be available here on the blog soon.  We did a bit of live streaming of the session and it was just cuteness overload!  We’ve had plenty of babies in the studio and plenty of twins, but never twin babies!  We started with Periscope and we even mentioned to our Periscope community earlier in the morning that we might go live in the afternoon with twin babies.

Periscope Results:

We Periscoped for 13 minutes and 13 seconds.  68 people watched it live.  Everyone was genuinely enjoying it.  People were commenting.  Since the broadcast ended 39 people have watched the replay (7 more since the screen shot below) – most replay views on Periscope happen within 24 hours of a broadcast on the app.  This is all fine – it was a fun scope and over 100 people got to enjoy it – nothing wrong with that at all!  Here are the analytics provided by Periscope:

Facebook Live

One more sidenote – as you can see above the thumbnail (the representative image from the broadcast) is me with a relatively silly face.  NOT the amazingly cute twin babies from the broadcast.  I have pointed out how important it is to be able to choose a custom thumbnail to the Periscope team but they haven’t made this a priority.

Facebook Live Results:

We then went live on Facebook Live right after the Periscope broadcast for 8 minutes and 29 seconds.  There were maybe 5 – 10 people who tuned in to watch live.  There weren’t many live comments if any…  Granted we don’t broadcast on Facebook Live often or at regular times which can contribute to a small live audience, plus there are delays on the comments and it’s not as fun of an experience on Facebook.  BUT…..  I tagged Carlos (the dad) in the post who then shared the post and tagged me and his wife Gina in the post (he only tagged me and not Ally and me him and not Gina because he and I did the FB friending exchange) and then I went back and tagged Ally in the post, and then all his friends started to see the post in their feed, and a few of them shared the post, and then more people saw the post, and more and more people liked the post, which Facebook likes, so Facebook showed it to more people, and then a few more of those people shared the post, and so more people saw the post and they liked (and loved, and haha’d, and wow’d) the post and commented on the post and Facebook liked that even more so Facebook showed it to even more people and pretty soon the video had reached 3648 people and 2129 people watched it.  Oh and there’s definitely a chance some people watched it because I chose an image of Harrison and Henry surrounded by Ally and their parents to represent the broadcast as you can see below (as opposed to just my face with a weird expression which I didn’t choose).

Facebook Live

When a Periscope broadcast ends it just sort of fades into the distance of the feed of ended broadcasts…  When a Facebook broadcast ends that’s when it starts to get going if it’s worthy of watching.  In the case of Harrison and Henry boy did it get going….   let’s look at a few more stats which Facebook provides in about 200 different ways, sliced and diced – more information than you would know what to do with about the demographics of who watched – age, gender and a lot more.  With Periscope you have to use third party apps like Fullscope or Eggdrp (both great by the way) to get any analytics worth a darn.

Now check THIS out.  Here’s a visual representation of the viral nature of a really good Facebook Live video that I described in my run on sentence above (which was done purposely for emphasis haha).  

Facebook Live

This broadcast was the only one in the time frame of this graph.  Note how the views climbed on the third and fourth days…  the broadcast was on Saturday May 20th, but on Tuesday May 23rd 653 people watched it!  You can see it spreading and the buzz growing!  But wait there’s more….

Remember the emphasis in the title of this article is on local brands right?

Facebook Live

This graphic shows me that 70.3% of the total minutes viewed of this video were viewed in MICHIGAN.  Our studio is IN Michigan.  This is the core of our target market for studio portraits from a practical standpoint.  That’s who we’re reaching on Facebook – lots of potential clients who are friends of Carlos & Gina and friends of friends of Carlos & Gina.  We have a physical storefront where we take pictures and it’s in West Bloomfield, MICHIGAN.  On Periscope our audiences are 10% from Michigan at best and that’s probably very generous, not that there’s any data anywhere that tells me this conclusively.  Now once again – that’s fine – we love our international community and the friends we’ve made around the world on Periscope – that’s part of what’s amazing about Periscope.  We’ve traveled to photograph people we’ve met on Periscope which has been amazing and we’re even expanding our photo restoration business to clients on Periscope which isn’t bound by geography.

But if I’m advising a new local brick and mortar store on where to start broadcasting live and build community to get more people showing up at their door and becoming clients, I’m recommending Facebook first.  I’m not saying don’t do Periscope per se, but if I’m picking one it’s Facebook.  If I’m recommending a platform primarily to see the world, and have an amazing time for entertainment purposes and making new friends from everywhere, I’m still recommending Periscope.

Since we started broadcasting on Facebook (which we made a part of our strategy well after Periscope) we have more people saying “Hey I saw you guys doing one of your live uh…video things – like online!  Looks like fun!”  And I always would ask “Oh cool!  On Periscope?”  and they would say “On what?” and then I would say “Oh wait maybe you saw us on Facebook (remembering that yes we go live on Facebook now too)” and then they would say “RIGHT! Yeah I saw you on Facebook!”  You know why they say that?  Because EVERYONE IS ON FACEBOOK.  Some are on Twitter where you can also catch Periscope broadcasts but not nearly as many and fewer still are actually on the Periscope app.  When we started broadcasting on Periscope on March 31st, 2015 it wasn’t long before we were sure that within a year or two everyone would be on Periscope because it’s that amazing.  Well we still think it’s amazing – we were right about that.  But shockingly to us most people walking around on the street – the people we want to walk into our mall and into our store – yeah those people – still don’t know what it is.

These two broadcasts of the twins were done back to back, one right after the other with the same subject.  Vastly different results.  Results that favor Facebook Live for small local brick and mortar businesses.  It’s the most obvious example I have, and while one example doesn’t necessarily prove anything, I can tell you that the conclusions I’m drawing here are not just based on this example alone…

Food for thought.  For you live streamers – what do you think?  There are more layers to this topic to be sure but I’d love to hear your thoughts…

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Frameable Faces Photography
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Doug Cohen provides social media training and services and can be reached at the following:
Mobile: 248-346-4121
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Frameable Faces Photography is a small biz retail mom & pop shop of Doug&Ally Cohen located in the Orchard Mall in West Bloomfield, Michigan, United States Of America!
************************************************
Ally & Doug can be reached at the studio at tel:248-790-7317 or emailed at mailto:info@frameablefaces.com
************************************************
***************************************­*******
Being “Frameable” is an attitude, a community, a way of life – a life you would want to celebrate and display on your walls for all to see!  Tell us… ARE YOU FRAMEABLE?
**********************************************
Join the Frameable Faces Community – sign up for our email newsletter for the best of the week in the Frameable Faces World!  Click here!