III. Research and Surveys
Congrats on making it to Part III of the Introduction to Twitter for Photographers series! We’re halfway through! By now you should have found some interesting people to follow, and crafted your own Twitter profile so interesting people can find you.

In this post, we will cover 3 ways Photographers can use Twitter to help them with research, and even find new clients!

1. PollDaddy
PollDaddy, is a free online tool that allows you to create surveys and polls for your Twitter followers. This can be helpful for you to determine future blog post topics, what photography conventions to attend, etc… When you create a survey or poll with PollDaddy, they will provide you with a Direct URL to the poll. To help distribute this poll to your Twitter followers, copy that Direct URL and then visit TinyURL to create a short version of the URL.

TinyURL is not only great to use when conducting these type of surveys and polls, but is great to use in any situation when you would like to share a link that has a long URL.

2. Ask Questions
Sometimes instead of creating a formal survey or poll, it is easier to simply ask a question. For example, if you are in the market for a new camera, you might create a tweet that says “How many of you shoot with a Nikon D300?”. Twitter users can then reply to your tweet and a conversation can get started on the Nikon D300. This conversation may help you make a logical decision to purchase the camera or not.

3. Research
Ok, I have to let you in on a little secret… I saved the best for last. I realize that some people may have gotten bored with the beginning of this post and quit reading, but if you are reading this now – What I am about to share with you will blow your mind… Hahaha.

There is an Advanced Twitter Search option, and there are numerous ways that you can use this Search option to help you and your business. If you clicked on the link above, you’ll notice that there is an “All of these words” form field in the “Words” box, and “Near this place” and “Within this distance” form fields in the “Places” box. Depending on how you fill these out, you could potentially uncover new client opportunities.

For example, lets say I am a photographer in Las Vegas… I just typed in “photographer” in the “All of these words” form field, and typed “Las Vegas” and “25 miles” in the “Near this Place” and “Within this distance” form fields. I just scanned the first page of the results, and there were two people that tweeted how they needed a photographer… It would then make sense for me to write a tweet to them introducing myself.

The best part of this is that you can save the RSS Feed of the Search. So anytime in the future when someone “within 25 miles of Las Vegas” mentions “photographer” in a tweet, you will automatically be notified.

Here are some other searches that you might want to create and save: “Wedding Photographer”, “Wedding Photography”, “Just Got Engaged”, “Fiancee”, “Fiance”, “Photo Shoot”, and “Photography Shoot”.

Granted, I am not saying to use this as your only means of prospecting for new clients – But it doesn’t hurt to have potential leads sent right to your RSS Feed Reader.

Alright, congrats on making it though the post! Hopefully you found it helpful. In the next part of Introduction to Twitter for Photographers, we will be discussing how to use Twitter to Showcase Your Portfolio.

Until next time, feel free to share this blog post with your friends and add me on Twitter: @darkroomRYAN

Filed under: Marketing, branding, Marketing, photographer, Photography, twitter