Rob Haggart has another interesting post on his blog today. He interviewed Ryan Schick, a photo editor at Portfolio.com (Condé Nast) who shared lots of helpful information. You should read the whole post, but I did want to highlight a couple of things.
First, blogs are gaining traction for photographer marketing.
Second, when he talks about print portfolios, remember he is talking about for editorial only. They are still quite important for advertising marketing.
And third, if you are calling/emailing more than once a day (without getting a response and thus replying), you are stalking your target. Stop it. It’s incredibly bad form. Quote from Mr. Schick:
What started as a recommendation and an appointment to view his body of work turned into a multiple-times-per-day phalanx of phone calls and emails [from the photographer]. By the time the actual appointment to meet came around I had frankly grown exasperated by his persistence and for better or worse was uninterested in the actual meeting.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that these people are very busy and your call or email is not a priority for them. That’s not them being rude, that’s them taking care of what they need to first. I bet when you are busy you don’t immediately call back or reply to an email from an assistant who contacts you about a possible gig. You’ve got other fish to fry and you’ll get to it when you have the time. Same for these people. So no more than one attempt at contact per day at the absolute maximum. No more than twice a week is probably better.
I once asked a busy prospect who encouraged me to “stay in touch” how he would like me to do that. He suggested that I be “politely persistent.” I’ve used that strategy ever since with all prospects and think it sums up the perfect approach for dealing with busy people. I define polite as no more than once per week, sometimes once/month (or less) if there is no defined project. With a real job in the hopper, I step it up, but not to the point of “stalking.”
That’s good advice, KC. I once took a job as a designer. On the day I took that job, the mail, e-mail and phone calls began. And currently there is a printer in my area who e-mails me 3 to 5 times a day. I’ve created a special filter for her (which is something I don’t want to happen to me and my efforts).
My contact rate for prospective clients is once every three weeks. Unless we have an ongoing conversation, I don’t think there is much more that can be added to what’s already been said (by more frequent contact).
The last place I want to be is in the “Spamalot” folder.