How would you handle having an online business you need to advertise ?
How would you handle having an online business you need to advertise ?
Hi !
I'm a privacy enthousiast. I have pihole running at home, I use it as my DNS resolver, and I use wireguard on my phone to connect home and use pihole on it. Never been happier. No Facebook, no Instagram, no social media at all.
Thing is, I'm making big changes in my life. I'm moving from Paris to the countryside and I need, I badly need to advertise my services as a freelancer (sound engineer and wedding photographer).
Of course, I'm in the process of building my website (almost there), but I am nothing if I don't post on Instagram and Facebook (in particular for my photo work). I've seen what other successful wedding photographers do with social media, and I need to do something alike.
I deeply despise meta, but I'll have to make a sacrifice at some point.
I've already found something like hootsuite to schedule my posts without having to login into fb or insta, but I'll have to login at some point for the interactions. So I'll install some secure OS on an old phone I'll use only for that purpose, but damn, I already feel dirty.
How would you feel about this ? What would be your approach ? For those of you that are in a similar situation, what's your method ?
Hi! I’m a wedding florist and educator in the US. I also have PiHole running at home (thanks to my partner) and feel the same way about social media - absolutely hate it, no personal accounts, and it’s only for the business.
Edited to add: I draw a hard line in my business with paying Meta or Google to advertise. I have never paid Zuck a dime. I also refuse to use TikTok because it’s a privacy nightmare.
Here’s how I handle different marketing channels:
SEO - my bread and butter - allows me to blog useful things and not feel slimy. Try to blog about things “upstream” from your services that couples would hire first - venues, planners, caterers maybe.
Instagram - I’m a florist, it’s a must. I used to use a separate device but after forgetting it at a wedding for behind-the-scenes shots, and the having to transfer everything over, I just gave up. I have Instagram on my main phone and it annoys me. I have mic/photo permissions turned off unless I post a story/reel. I use Tailwind for IG and Pinterest static posts.
Facebook - I don’t use the app, just desktop. have a FB page but I rarely log in. Tailwind allows me to post my IG post to FB without logging in.
Pinterest - I don’t use the app, just desktop. And I use Tailwind to schedule. To be honest I do not get any leads from Pinterest, so I stopped caring about it.
Networking - This is another key source of leads for me. We have several local wedding vendor groups here, and I belong to all of them. And I go to meetings regularly. I highly encourage you to go out and meet the people who will eventually refer you! (But never ask for a referral/preferred vendor until you’ve worked together at least once.)
The Knot/WW - Worth having a free listing. Only worth having a paid listing if your service is low cost and you’re interested in volume. Are there French sites like those you could be listed on, some kind of directory?
Wedding shows - I’ve never done a wedding show but some people have lots of success. Whatever you do, make sure you make them book a consultation with you right there at the booth. Otherwise you will lose them. It’s not enough to gather emails (although, do that too) because they will be getting a billion emails after the show from vendors. Be the first in their inbox. Have an incentive for scheduling their consult that’s not a discount (e.g. bigger photo book if they end up booking with you or something).
Hope that helps! Never keep doing a marketing method that isn’t bringing you the right people. It’s a waste of your time and you can’t do all these things, you’ll go mad! Please DM me if you have questions or wanna chat more, I’m happy to help. Je parle français aussi, mais seulement après café :)
Thank you for this very elaborated answer.
You might hear from me in the next months, where we've actually moved. I lack people in my surrounding having the same kind of professional activity :)
And I join my fellow lemmings into thinking your answer is very thoughtful and benevolent. The world need more people like you ♥
Absolutely! My pleasure and I’d welcome it!
Thanks for the business perspective here. I really wish we had more folks like you who can give us that side/insight and still be engaged with the overall spirit of the community(s).
Me too! Unfortunately, most people have traded convenience for privacy at this point. Which means both your potential clients and fellow wedding pros will be in all the places you don’t want to engage with.
But I will say, the nice thing about owning your own business is that you make the rules! You don’t have to do things that don’t align with your values. You can still market your business ethically, you just might need a longer timeline for profitability.
This is a question the community should give a little bit of attention to. Its easy to basically say "burn it all down" or even the slow-burn equivalent we have going currently but there needs to be a long-term roadmap to help deal with the objections of the dominant landscape and its major players to help further advance the cause and get everyone who's "update-able" up to speed
I totally agree. I remember when being in the phone book was enough for people to run a B2C business! The current marketing landscape for small biz owners is a nightmare, both in terms of privacy and the number of places online we are expected to “be active.” A lot of people get really burnt out on it because they also don’t realize that marketing and sales is like 80% of the work, and the fun thing you love to do is like 20%.
I feel like word of mouth is always gonna Trump all that bullshit. I wanna see more of that kinda advertising cuz there's personal stakes for the bullshit recommenders
As weird as it sounds I use Edge for things like that. It keeps me from accidentally using the same browser for other tasks. Because I instantly know I’m in the wrong browser if I’m doing other work.
That’s enough separation for me.
As weird as it sounds I use Edge for things like that. It keeps me from accidentally using the same browser for other tasks. Because I instantly know I’m in the wrong browser if I’m doing other work.
Okay the approach is interesting the "instantly know I'm in the wrong browser bit" is just gold, however I've some concerns about privacy, since you're logging in on Facebook and whatnot with any windows (assuming)) desktop application that uses the Edge webview component will be doing web requests with the same fingerprint. Facebook might able to track you in some way.
My parents run a wedding venue in the USA. Usually wedding vendors (FOOD, VENUE, DJ, photography, etc.) have local conventions. I would find the local wedding venues and talk to one of them, find out where and how they advertise and do the same. Go to the stupid conventions or events.
Assuming the wedding business in France is similar, doing this should get you most of the information you need.
Thank you for the tips :)
Yep good luck
I use a PortableApps installation to keep my work separated. You could run it in a virtual machine too.
As far as the social media platforms go though, I just use the first party sites for scheduling posts. I have to give them a minimum amount of information to have accounts on them, so I don't see the point in giving that information to someone else too.
I've got a browser, email client, and FTP client, and they're all completely separate from everything else on my computer.
Sorry for my ignorance, but can you tell me more about PortableApps ? Is it this https://portableapps.com/ ?
I f I understand, this is some kind of platform that allows me to use, well, portable apps ?
That's the one. I mostly use it to keep websites that I'm managing separate from everything else, so I use the software I mentioned earlier.
I've got a profile for myself too, and that has a few browsers, some small games, an antivirus, and my email client. I back it up to a portable drive, so that it's an extra backup, and can be taken with me if I know I'm going to be away from my computer for a while.
I share your pain, using those online advertising platforms kinda goes against your principles. But it is what it is. On a phone using Facebook / Google through a browser takes care of a lot of privacy related issues as the browser is sandboxed and can't touch your system in any way unlike their apps.
Maybe run a virtual machine and only do your work within that. On iOS you can virtualize almost every OS with UTM. I’m not familiar with it on android but guarantee it’s a possibility. Or create a Linux live usb… get a cloud pc. Seems like there’s tons of options.
You're right. I might just actually spin a firefox in docker :)