Social Media

Social Media is such a vital tool for the modern Photographer/Filmer/Writer etc that if your not on it, your either just flat out amazing, or probably arnt doing to well...

There are a whole host of sites out there for you to use, all do slightly different things, and i know when it came round to starting using them all i was like " whats the point, FB seems to do 90% of what the others do ? " but its not quite that simple once you get in to it.

I will go through the list of the main places that I'm both active and social on the interweb, I have linked my profiles so you can see how I use them and what I use them for...

My Blog: I will spare you the link, as I'm pretty sure if your reading this you know how to get to it/here.

But this is the hub, this is where I try to get people to come to. The all social media for me is to get people to come to my blog or site and to see more of my work.



Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jacob-Gibbins-Photography/125095350896134?v=info

First up is the big one, Facebook, hundreds of Millions of active members, and in this day and age the go to way of contacting most people outside of professional conversations...

I use my FB fan page to tell all the people who follow me about all new blog posts, new videos I find that I like, news on up and coming work etc its main strength is its number of users, simple!


Twitter: @jacobgibbins

http://twitter.com/#!/JacobGibbins

Twitter is a "micro Blogging site" which means in use full terms its like Fb but you only get the status updates...but its so much more than that!...

Its much more professionally minded than FB, full of networking, sharing videos,photos,inside info much more. for eg I post up a lot of sneak peaks of what I'm working on twitter...





The way its users interact is also much more social in that every time you comment on anything you have to link back to where you got the info from...once you get a half decent number of followers ( I'm no where near yet ha ) its a very use full tool...

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/people/jacobgibbins/

Flickr is the home of a more specific community on the web based around photography.

A vast number of photographers from pros to amateurs use it, post photos daily most of the time, comment on others, it has groups like most other formats of social media etc



Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/millki

Youtube, the home of Danny macs 20 odd Million hit video. There is only one place on the the Internet where that can happen to a video...YT.

With pretty much the whole Internet savvy world using it to watch people falling in to ponds and hurting themselves its the perfect place for bikes...It have a very active user base though, you get comments, lots of views etc all very fast. Its also rather neutral in terms of other bike industry sites so they wont mind linking to it. ( for eg if you ask vital to post up a video that's only online via pinkbike, they probably wont )

Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/channels/jacobgibbins and my channel here http://vimeo.com/jacobgibbins

Vimeo is much the same as YT but more professional, full of the kind of people who make the TV shows you watch, the adverts you see on TV, the films in the cinema. so it has a smaller user count than youtube, but the videos are better quality, its a nicer interface, and you get more use full comments and criticism. rather than a vid shouting YEEEEY! you get someone telling you that your colours are a bit out and how to fix them, or that they like it and the music choice works with the mood of the footage really well...you get the idea!

Now Bike sites...There are 3 main ones that are much more social than others...

Pinkbike: http://jacobgibbins.pinkbike.com/

Mpora: http://mpora.com/millki/

Vital: http://www.vitalmtb.com/community/jacobgibbins,5917/all

I have listed them in order of which I personally consider the most active and social. Pinkbike is the largest ( by some way I believe ) bike site in the world, and therefore its of little surprise that its the most used and active site of the 3.

But the users tend to be younger, less well educated, and give feedback of very little real world worth POD! doesn't tell you much about your work other than they liked it which is still good to know....

Mpora and Vital are better on that front but still not anywhere close to Flickr and Vimeo...

You then have the whole list of other sites for news etc which I touched on in a post on sites I visit a few weeks back: http://jacobgibbinsdotcodotuk.blogspot.com/2011/01/sites-i-visit.html

So to recap...lots of sites, all doing very similar things just with slight differences, and rather annoyingly as I'm sure you can gather by how I have profiles on them all, you should use them all and update them all regularly...

The more places your video is, the more likely it is to get a lot of views, and views = money ( that's another post all together )

So for me it goes something like this...post of a sneak peak while working on something on twitter, which gets auto fed in to my FB news feed.

then a few weeks later when I can upload the work to Flickr, my Blog,Pinkbike,Youtube,Vimeo,Mpora,vital etc then link it all about via twitter and Facebook. That's it put simply.

Anyway that sums up this post, hopefully you should have a better idea of what its about, what it can do for you and how to use it...its a bit of hastle, but its marketing for very little cost or time, and when you think of it like that it seems to make a bit more sense...