WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE PLATFORM?

January 19, 2020

Social media with purpose

With so many choices for social media platforms, it can be daunting to a photographer to figure out which one is best to use.

For those that use this online technology, we all have a favorite platform that we spend the most time on. Each serve a different purpose. Some keep you connected to family and friends, and some help you interact with strangers worldwide without barriers. There are dating sites, or ones where you keep up with business contacts. Maybe you like getting your daily news updates, local current events, or political posts.

Then there are some are just pure fun! For me those are ones that are just pictures, and little else!

While I am on most of them for marketing purposes to reach the masses, it’s just business for me. I do my best to keep new material on them all so that my followers can participate using their favorite sites. I occasionally surf these sites if I have extra time, some sites have features I like better than others. I’m sure you feel the same. And most of us are on more that one.

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Utilization of media

If you ever wonder why I barely post images on Facebook, it’s because it really isn’t user friendly for photographer’s images.

First: they have ZERO image protection. Anyone can easily save/steal your pics. Plus, for the last two years they no longer work with my online store. When they did, it was great! You could upload to the main site and then it automatically shared it to other popular sites like Twitter, FB, and Pinterest which saved me tons of time not having to repeat the effort on all the platforms. But for whatever reason, they stopped, and then so did I for the most part.

But the main reason is: due to Facebook’s ANNOYING algorithms where they choose what you get see…. and it turns out no one ever sees my stuff here anymore. You all know what I’m talking about. It’s a real pain, isn’t it?

So I rarely post images as it clearly is a huge waste of time. Though I do use FB to post my blogs as it is compatible with automatic posting feature of my website that ties everything together. Simplicity is best, and I am striving to make it that way, but the reality is anything but. Overall… I’m trying to make a name for myself, and it takes a major effort! So everywhere I can save time, I utilize it.

While I may be on a plethora of others sites for outreach, some like Instagram are not desktop friendly! This makes it a real headache and aggravation to have to backdoor it using developer options to get my full size images to the site for viewing as they were designed for mobile uploads. Then you also have to do extra clicks to like pics, and back out of it to get to the next one on desktop. Since this is my main source of perusing, I find it tedious. But they have the hashtag feature #jenniferrobingallery that is a really useful keyword feature and gets your images seen far and wide, so that is a plus. But that is also very time consuming, so I don’t make effort here often. While they are currently making changes to get desktop friendly, they still have a long way to go. Since they have been bought by FB, I have feeling they too will stop being useful in the future, but for now… I’ll keep doing as I am.

The site I ALWAYS upload to is my online store. ‘Every single image’ in my entire collection can be found here.

While it’s not my favorite site to play on, it’s a great business platform as it carries the most products for my images. I currently have over 1350 images there with dozens of products to put them: FACE MASKS, PUZZLES, SPIRAL NOTEBOOKS, COFFEE MUGS, FLEECE BLANKETS, SHOWER CURTAINS, YOGA MATS, TOWELS, PILLOWS, TOTE &WEEKEND BAGS, ZIP POUCHES, APPAREL, PHONE CASES, GREETING CARDS, DUVET COVERS, TAPESTRIES, PRINTS, FRAMED PRINTS, METAL PRINTS, CANVAS PRINTS, WOOD PRINTS, ACRYLIC PRINTS, POSTERS.

Yes, I’m guilty of a shameless plug. Don’t hate me 🙂

But this is just my stuff, and while I love my work and spend most of my time doing it happily, I also need downtime. And when I need a break from the real world, I love looking at other people’s images too. There is so much inspiring talent out there. So for that, I need a favorite platform for myself that’s just fun without the drama, and without the stress like so many others have.

My favorite place, may be yours too

So if you want to follow me on a fun site that is geared to photographers of all kinds, ‘Flickr’ is the one I spend most of my ‘pleasure’ time on. If you’ve never used it before…. it is by far the easiest, and most enjoyable site for uploading images, overall design, scrolling, and sharing ease both mobile and desktop. They have multiple ways to view images with newest upload, or camera roll that goes by date and even a fullscreen slideshow.

Currently they only have ability to purchase your own images on prints, but I have a feeling that will change in time. Plus they have great image protections, even for the free site that lets you upload 1000 pics. The current plan of $50 a year is pretty steep in my opinion. But I still have years before I reach the threshold. That’s a lot of incentive. I’ve only been on less than a year with only 350 of my best images uploads so far, but this is where I can be found when I’m just passing time. It’s definitely my favorite!

Stop by and see me. I think you’ll like it too!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jenniferrobingallery/

Be sure to check all your profile settings before uploading, as like any business in today’s world, they’ll take advantage of the situation if you let them. Here is a great link with info you should read so that doesn’t happen to you. Absolutely set your settings to ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, and ONLY YOU for downloads right away. Safety is key to protecting yourself!

In just verifying my settings on Flickr again, it seems now they have a new FB sharing setting. It wasn’t there last time I looked. Before was only for paid accounts like twitter and tumblr, but it just let me hook up to FB only (maybe a glitch) so I may start utilizing it for pictures once again. Flickr shares images as webfile, so it has less ability to be stolen. That’s great news if it sends it to FB automatically when I upload it. I’ll be testing this ability soon. Stay tuned to see!