If you have been following my blog so far you will have seen I have been posting about how to improve your SEO rating and promote your Photoshelter account using Social networking sites.  In my last post I covered all about You Tube and how posting a video of my images to You Tube improved my rating.  If you haven’t read it already I suggest you go back and read it!

In this post I am going to tell you about how using twitter can help boost your hits on your account.

Briefly, for people who have never used twitter fully, twitter is a micro blogging site where you can post ‘tweets’ or extracts of short text.

You can find my twitter account at http://www.twitter.com/nomadtj if you already have an account please do follow me. If not sign up and follow me!

So content, what do I post about?

When it comes down to it you have to be quite careful about what you post.  You cannot just post a series of links to your site and be done and hope people will have a look for a couple of reasons.

1. No one will be interested in your page! Fact: Its the cyber equivalent of sitting in a pub and only talking about yourself! Unless you are a mini celebrity or a celebrity like Stephen Fry no-one is going to look at your page for very long and will not follow any links.

2. Crawlers like what Google uses to find out how popular your website is will recognize that the content on your page is poor and see that you have loads of pointless links to your website and mark you down for it.

This doesn’t mean we cannot put our own links on our page but we have to lace it up with some interesting content.

My Twitter I describe as Tweets about SEO for photography, links to inspirational photographers and photoshop techniques.  All of my followers then know that I have got lots of interesting content to look at.

Tweeting types:

1.  Tweeting: Plain simple, find something interesting make a mini link to it and post it with an opinion for example

nomadtj “loving the photos on FungiPhoto.com Mushroom Photo Catalog http://su.pr/AHVVVi”

or

nomadtj “SEO Basic … have you submitted to http://www.dmoz.org/The open Directorys Project, not just google?”

to shorten my links I use http://bit.ly where you copy and paste the link you want into it and press go and it gives you a shortened version.

2.  Re Tweeting:  This is where you can take what a friend that you are following is tweeting and repost it so all your followers can see it.  In several instances it is a great way to get content onto your page but too much will mean that you are just reposting other peoples opinions which if we were back down the pub noone is going to find interesting.

3.  Self Tweeting:  Telling people about your site.  From Photoshelter this is simple, you can go to a gallery or a specific and click the tweet this and up it pops on your profile.  I tend to post a photo of the day on my twitter and whenever I add a new gallery post it as well.  Having a blog I also have updates for this also.

Let me break down my Tweeting as follows:

New Content searched for by me  (Tweeting)  ……….    70%

Re Tweets    …………………………………………………    15%

Links to my site & blog updates  (Self Tweeting)  …..    15%

Don’t just be self centered about twitter, often spending the time reading other peoples tweets can help.  For Example:

I read and followed a link from Chase Jarvis a well known, very popular photographer where he had snapped the view from his window with his iphone and posted it and invited everyone else to do the same.  I took a panoramic view off my balcony of Val D’isere where I am currently living at and posted it with reference to Chase’s post. As result it is now the most viewed picture in my Photoshelter galleries!

Finding Followers for your twitter account:

The only way to get followers is to follow people and hope they return the favour if they find your page interesting.  To find interesting people to follow sign up to people through a list from a website like

http://listorious.com/

You could also have a look at who I am following and add some of them that are relevant to you and look at who they are following and so on.

I am sorry but that is all from me today have a look at my other posts and sign up to twitter!

View my images at Thomas Jupe Galleries

Find me on twitter as Nomadtj

Go back and look at my Blog Photoshelter SEO – Social Networking Sites – YOUTUBE

Thank you for reading.

In my previous Blog I outlined the first step on the road to SEO for Photoshelter Accounts. That post was going to have all the information in but unfortunately it looks like I have got a long job ahead of me so I am going to continue in a series of posts so if you wish to follow me please add a book mark or follow my RSS Feed.

The following is a list of sites I have signed up to for my photo business.

You Tube:    

Twitter:  

Linked In:

Facebook:

There are some other sites but these are the main ones.  I will cover the rest in another post as-well as going into more in-depth details about how I use each site.

Lets start today with YOU TUBE.

It may seem strange for you to try and image why you tube is top of my list but it has directed a lot of traffic to my site and I’ll explain why.  The reason I came across this as an idea was from browsing SEO ideas for shops.  One post I came across suggested posting you tube videos showing how products are used as so many people use you tube as a search engine.

I took this idea and decided to make the following video.

Thomas Jupe – Photographs of Ennerdale Valley – Lake District

As a result I had a couple of people included this video in their blogs with links to my website.  In my google analytics it shows up how many referals from youtube to my site I received and it was significant!  I have made a resolution to make one of these videos for each of my galleries … watch this space!

To make these sort of videos it is very simple, I took the images in my gallery and batch resized them so they were quite low in resolution and inserted them into the movie maker on my mac.  You can use windows media maker or any similar free software to make it.  I added some music and some titles at the start, the whole process doesn’t take long at all.  Once I uploaded the photos to my You Tube account it was just a case of copy pasting some of the text off my gallery on photoshelter and adding a few tags.  Easy!

Thats all for now folks but keep following for more information of how to promote your Photoshelter Account using Social Media Sites including twitter, linked in and facebook.

If you wish please visit my site and view the Stock Images By Thomas Jupe on Photoshelter.

Well I signed up to photoshelter a few months back and threw myself into collecting and following as much advice as possible.  Here I am going to share my knowledge and tell you all what I have done to SEO optimize my photoshelter account.

First things first! Have a look at the SEO grader in your account.  You will find it under the “My Website” heading in the photographer area.  Answer the five questions and then get your grade.  If you then scroll down it will tell you the good things you have done, the things that you could do better and also what needs to be fixed.  The good news is it has links to where you can sort any problems and descriptions for how to do it.

The biggest struggle for me was thinking of Keywords to add to my site.  I used Google’s Adwords Keywording Tool.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool

It makes keywording incredibly easy and also allows you to download the words you collect into .txt documents which I keep filed on my computer in catagories so I can apply them to any new galleries I make.

This process takes a while but with not much effort you can get your grade up to ’96′ like me!

From now on its a waiting game for your results to appear in the likes of Google, Bing and Yahoo.

To help these search engines place your site you will need to work on links to your site and your connections.  The stronger they are the better.

Please read my soon to come Blog about Social Media sites for the next step.

In the mean time feel free to browse my photoshelter site and Images by Thomas Jupe

Opportunism

n.

[Cf. F. opportunisme.]
The art or practice of taking advantage of opportunities or circumstances, or of seeking immediate advantage with little regard for ultimate consequences.

I always keep my camera or any camera I can close to hand.  You never know when you may need it! This evening while playing around with the HDR automator in Photoshop I heard some fireworks go off. I grabbed my camera and ran outside to see if I could catch them on my new canon 5d.  It was a good job I did the fireworks lasted for several minutes allowing me to catch them perfectly.

Living in Val D’isere in the French Alps is a perfect place for me to expand my portfolio with a selection of images that not many photographers can catch. Its a perfect way of showing how my lifestyle helps me with my creativity. Many photographers have studios and a base from which they work where as I travel around and capture as much as I can in several places.

For one of the photos I used the HDR in photoshop.  I will write a tutorial of how it works soon but in this instance I don’t think the final image is as good as the one I merged myself in photoshop!

HDR IMAGE

PHOTOSHOPPED IMAGE

When I do photoshop work I have to be quick to keep my productivity high.  I like to use big brushes with plenty of feathering to achieve my results.  It is easy to become trapped trying to edit one photo to perfection, precisely with pixel to pixel accuracy but often the results are no better, even when zoomed in on that a quick edit! Having a camera which has a larger output is also a great help!

Follow this link to see all my images taken of theVal D’isere Fireworks

Val D’isere Fireworks – Images by Thomas Jupe
.

Funny animals at the Zoo – Images by Thomas Jupe

These photos, shot at a wild animal sanctuary & conservation park were a bonus for my catalogue.

It was a day trip planned for my girlfriend earlier last year but I couldn’t resist taking the camera to capture some of the animals characteristics and personalities.

The park is South Lakes animal park in Cumbria it houses many animals from many parts of the world!

The park was an idea created and developed solely by David Gill. At the time of the construction back in 1993/4, he was an animal nutritionist with no connections to zoos, but a desire to see education and conservation brought into the public awareness by the reality of a close, wild experience, an experience for all to react to assist worldwide conservation issues. The then 32-year-old father of two, built the park with his own hands and to this day, still designs and builds all the facilities around the zoo now with the help and assistance of the large staff.

I was touched by the conservation work done by the park and would recommend visiting the park

http://www.wildanimalpark.co.uk/

Wild An

To see my photographs please visit

http://www.photoshelter.com/c/thomasjupe/gallery/Funny-animals-at-the-Zoo/G0000irT9dUnv5vI/

I have uploaded my photos for this album in colour and black and white because I think they look awesome in black and white!

In order to improve my SEO I have relented finally to getting a flickr account and linking my photos back to where they can be purchased.

Here is a useful video from you tube about Flickr SEO

I update my Flickr directly from my Photoshelter account easily. To look at my Flickr Account go to:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomasjupe/

In the interests of giving my customers the best I decided the other day to get my kit bag up to modern specifications! I had, up to this point been shooting with my trusted companion the Canon 20D but it arrived in the post today.  Shipped out to me in Val D’isere my NEW CANON 5D.

Needless to say I was so excited to take it out for a test drive I only had the chance to snap a few un-planned shots! You can see the results below and by visiting my Photoshelter site.

In December of 2008 I left on a whim to go to Val D’isere for a ski season.  Stopping for a short while on a friends floor, soon I had myself a job and a flat shared with two Spanish guys, an Aussie, a Scot, a vain lad and two lasses.  The stories that followed could fill a blog on their own.

Unfortunately this blog is just about the photos I took.  Some are panoramas taken during the day and night of Val d’isere high street, La Rue Principale showing shop fronts and bars such as The Pacific Bar and Moris Pub.  I have also got a couple of the view from my balcony looking out across Val to the Espace Killy.

Val D’Isere

Host to world cup

I return to Val D’isere, packing my Canon gear and meaning business, this winter for the 2009/10 season.  I am aiming to shoot as much as possible concentrating on the park scene and the nightlife.

This blog will give me a chance to update you on my photographs that I have shot over the up and comming weeks and tell you in more detail where and why they were shot.

Prior to this I will be uploading my back catalogue of images for you to view.  My blog is fully integrated with my photoshelter account which holds all my galleries and makes them available for you should you wish to purchase them or download them for your own personal use.