Most business people believe social media is a waste of time. They thought the same thing about the web back in 1994 when I started building interactive marketing programs.

Well, the statistics tell the story and social media is becoming a vital plank in any marketing plan.

The problem is… you can’t  just pick up the phone and order a social media campaign. But you can make a decision and invest in your future by learning. Here’s a great resource perfect for that:

PhotoShelter is a site for commercial photographers. Their tag line is “Get seen. Sell your work.” They seem to be doing a good job of delivering on that promise.

They recently created a substantial 55 page guide for photographers to help them learn how to use social media to build business. It seemed to me that you might find this information useful as a film maker.

Social Media for Photographers is packed with actionable strategies. I made notes on my first quick read and am putting them into action today. It’s that kind of a guide.

So, even if you’ve got thousands of FaceBook friends and Twitter followers, you might get something out of it. If you aren’t at that level you definitely need to get this and start working on your social media marketing plan.

Social Media for Photographers | PhotoShelter

I just released another DVD project at work. The minute that master left for duplication I turned my attention to the online versions. Every project we release has at least two different online versions. If we release the subtitled versions that number can climb to around 15.

In the old days, no one expected one person to know everything about the video production work flow, much less be an expert at every part of it. Now we’re expected to handle everything top to bottom.

I spent a lot of time trying different formulas and had things pretty well under control then everything changed. Funny how the web does that. Just when you think you’ve got it figured out someone goes and improves everything.

Here’s a link to a valuable resource that saved me hours (days maybe) and insured a reliable standard of high quality for every video released. Even for youtube.com!

Here’s what the guy who wrote this little ebook had to say:

These Recipes do not pretend to teach you about compression and encoding.

Instead they are easy recipes that will get you great results with minimal effort, whether you use Apple Compressor, Telestream Episode Pro or Sorenson Squeeze; whether your source is 4:3, Letterboxed or true 16:9, in PAL or NTSC.

Completely rewritten for 2009: updated recipes and more tips.

Includes links to web pages so you can compare the results next to each other, and a bonus section on encoding for YouTube!

I’m telling you, this will likely be the best $5 you’ve spent on improving your video quality –  Instant Expert! Simple Encoding Recipes for the Web. This is not an affiliate link, I have nothing to gain by recommending it. It’s just that good.

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