Uhm. Stupid sounding question I know. Do you just go friend senior aged teenagers in your local area? I don't want to seem weird or pushy. I still have not shot a single darn senior, so it's not like I can really do word of mouth thou I have sure tried.

How are you networking with facebook?

I am considering paying for some FB ads, they seem to work for people.

Most likely, they will not add you as a friend unless they know you. Most of the teens that have added me as a friend I volunteer with at a local youth organization.

Your best bet may be to send out a little advert until you get some WOM help.

I'd go in first with the foremost goal of making friends, and set aside a few minutes each day to randomly comment on pages or send flair buttons and the like.

Make a mental or paper note on those teens that come across as viral marketers or networking hubs and pay special attention to them- maybe asking if they would be an ambassador (but call it something cooler like 'be in my Entourage' or something)

the way i got such a huge teen base of facebook is i contact a couple teen girls I know - didn't matter that they weren't seniors. I did some free sessions with them then emailed them avatar sized stuff... They then added me and it's snowballed from there.
they see you and like your work they add you. Also don't feel to shy to add them as a friend. If you have some sort of tie to them - such as a friend of a friend. and when you click 'add friend' be sure to type a message, introduce yourself "Hi, i took so and so's sr. pics - thought you would like to see our upcoming stuff . . blah blah'

I was thinking of that, just doing a teenager who isn't necessarily a senior yet. I have a friend who has a daughter who will be a senior next year.. I was thinking of asking her, she lives close by.

if she is a junior this year then that is perfect! She'll have two years to work her friends over for you.

I started with the seniors I photographed. I added a spot on my paper work that asks if they have a facebook. Then, I make sure I upload some of their senior images, and tag them. I have them watermarked with my logo, and I let them know if is ok to swipe these for facebook. I just started my facebook a month or month and a half ago, and I am getting friend requests from the friends of seniors I photographed! It is working well.

Pretty much the same think happened with us. Just get a couple and let it snowball. The tagging feature of facebook is killer!! Now we have more seniors than we have time to shoot. We just started in earnest using facebook for business last spring. So if you start now, next year should be gang busters.


We also played with Facebook ads with some modest success. We tied that in with a free senior shoot contest. The idea was to get seniors from schools that we didn't have a tie with. While we added fans from other schools, it really hasn't paid off yet. To see how we are doing our contest (but not the ads as they are targeted), here is our fan page:

http://www.new.facebook.com/pages/Georgeto...19628388?ref=ts

What is troubling to me is that a significant portion of the seniors we shoot (25% or so) do not have facebook pages but only have myspace pages. In fact, I think that 50% or more tell me that they "don't get facebook" and love MySpace. Which is the exact opposite for me. So over the winter I suspect I will spend more time on MySpace and figure out how to use it effectively for business.

I agree. Tagging has proven to be a very powerful way for friends of clients to see your work and reach out to you. I never thought it would be as beneficial as it is!