In this episode, the guys talk about some reasons to avoid stock photography and some alternatives to using it. Stock photography is great and can fill in gaps for category pages, service pages, and landing pages but often it is over used and not the best choice for most companies. Mr. Photography Mat gives some tips and suggests some ways to take your own photos so that you can own your own content and leverage the photos across every channel. From owning your own photos, to having brand consistency, to showing who the people behind the business are, and to avoiding lawsuits there are many reasons to take your own photos. Lastly the guys tell about a recent story (link below) of a photographer that went against a company that was using his photos on their social channels without paying or permission – just another reason to take your own photos whenever you can.

Here are some examples of where you can find some (Unsplash and more), when Hollywood gets involved (Vince Vaughn), and the article that spurred the idea for this episode.

In October Mat is not only giving a keynote but is the opener for Swivel Marketing Conference #SwivelNow. Oh, and Dave will be doing a training too so look for them both. This episode will give you a quick version of the great story of a project that Mat and his son made on a 3d printer for a conference – all in 3 or 4 days.

Mat being a photographer of course started to take photos and document the whole process. While documenting Mat took a wide range of Boomerang videos, slow motion videos, tons of photos, GoPro time lapse and many more. Suddenly Mat became a documenter! The guys then jump into other ideas and examples of how a business could look to also documenting something they do and thus creating a ton of content for their site and social media.

Here is a quick link to where you can see the full keynote and Mat’s recent post about taking everyday life and turning it into content (i.e. documenting content!).

A simple and fair question that rarely ever has an easy answer. No matter if you have a store front, an offline services business (plumbing, HVAC, etc.), online store, or any other type of online or offline business there will be a time when you explore working with some type of agency and consultant. Besides just the fees that these people and companies require there are many questions you need to ask yourself FIRST and other costs that you need to factor in.

So, if you are thinking of hiring someone to help with Pay Per Click (PPC), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media, or even if you are thinking of building a new site – give a listen to this episode!

Living by just one traffic source is asking for trouble no matter your business. Even if you can’t get to be #1 in Google/Bing for a certain keyword there are other ways to succeed with digital marketing. No matter if it is TV ads, SEO, PPC, Myspace, Vine, Digg, Magazine Ads, Referrals, etc. The goal should be to build up multiple channels and campaigns that drive traffic and leads to your site. Mat and Dave give a number of examples and even break down a number of examples and even talk a bit about what they do for their own agencies (well Mat does!).

What is a social network you were on at some point that has since gone away? Leave your answer in the comments here on the site!

Do you have sales and specials for days like Black Friday, Xmas, Halloween, New Years Eve, Valentines Day, etc.? How far in advance do you plan? The guys dig into how planning for seasonal events should happen not days or weeks but in some cases many months in advance. From landing pages to promo codes to legal approval there are always a ton of things to do! No matter if you are a small or large etailer or a small local business planning ahead is something that you should consider and this episode will help you do just that!