Friday Happy Hour: LinkedIn 277% Better for Generating Leads & More

This week we found ourselves most attracted to news on social media, camera releases (and shutdowns), and one particular photo series from a self-titled German photo “hobbyist” – who we think deserves to give himself a little more credit. It might not be articles posted just this past week, but it’s what we shared among the PhotoShelter team over the last few days, and now we want to share it with you.

Study finds LinkedIn to be 277% more effective in generating leads

Lead generation is critical to any business – it accounts for people who visit your website or hear about your service, and elect to learn more (via a newsletter or by subscribing to your blog, for example) but haven’t bought your products or hired you yet. These days, internet savvy businesses utilize social media to drive leads, among other tactics.

Recently, HubSpot conducted a study of over 5,000 businesses to get a better idea of which social media platform is most efficient in generating leads. Last week they posted the results: the study found LinkedIn generated the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate at 2.74%, compared to Facebook at 0.77% and Twitter at 0.69%.

The study is intriguing because LinkedIn sometimes gets a bad rap. But HubSpot proposed that LinkedIn may be the most efficient social channel for lead generation because its users are more likely to be looking for content and information to improve their careers. So if you’re a photographer who blogs about business tips and best practices, then you’re doing yourself a favor by promoting it on LinkedIn because its target market is on the lookout for this type of content.

Keep in mind that this data does not mean that LinkedIn is the right marketing tool for everyone. It’s important to figure out where your time is best invested, and work to grow that specific channel. For more information on the business of social media, check out the free Social Media for Photographers Handbook.

Facebook tries to woo photographers with new features

If you’re still in the process of determining which social media platform is right for you, Facebook just released some new features that they hope will convince you to choose them. The “lightbox photo viewer” is said to offer a bigger, crisper view of your photos. In addition to viewing photos in a separate pop-up, the feature now dims the whole Facebook page and moves comments to the right side so that viewers can focus on the image.

The feature has been slowly released to users this past week, and should be available to everyone by the weekend, said a source via VentureBeat, who also interviewed Thomas Hawk to get his feedback. Hawk said that photographers are looking for something on par with Google+’s image display, and wrote his own opinion in a blog post on Facebook’s new lightbox feature here.

We’ve seen the new lightbox, and are only mildly impressed. What do you think? Does this make it any more motivating to share your photos on Facebook? How would you design the lightbox?

First camera company produces its last

This week Kodak announced that it will be shutting down its camera production, including digital cameras, pocket video cameras, and digital picture frames. The decision comes after the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month, and expects to save the business more than $100 million per year.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Kodak is betting its future on consumer inkjet printers, as well as the planned sale of 1,100 digital patents. The company has also sued big-timers like Samsung and LG Electronics in the past for alleged patent infringement, which resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements.

Kodak executives hope to reemerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy as a smaller business focused on photo kiosks, consumer and commercial printers, and camera accessories.

Nikon drops the D800

3+ years after its predecessor, the D700, Nikon has announced the release of its latest DSLR – the Nikon D800. dpreview.com describes it as “one of the most keenly anticipated DSLRs in a long time” and gives a full 6-page preview here. The most talked-about feature so far appears to be its pixel count of 36.3MP, and the fact that it’s highly geared toward video.

The D800 goes on sale in March for a mere $3,000.

Miami photo exhibition brings together 25 global photojournalists & artists

On March 10, photojournalist Carl Juste and gallerist Bernice Steinbaum present I Witness, a photography exhibit that will showcase 25 global contemporary photojournalists/artists. The vision of the exhibition is to explore conflict as depicted by the artists’ personal, psychosocial, military, cultural, and religious experiences. The exhibition also seeks to support the value of freedom of the press.

Included in the show is PhotoShelter member and Miami-based fine art photographer Andrew Kaufman. To find out more, please visit bernicesteinbaumgallery.com.

Capturing worlds in a drop of water

Live Science posted a really neat article on German photography enthusiast Markus Reugels, featuring his high-speed photos of falling water droplets. Reugels says that he only started experimenting with photography about three years ago when he came across a forum thread on water-drop photography.

Reugels explains how he places a picture behind the falling droplet, and then adjusts the timing for the perfect shape and position of the picture. He’s also worked with what he calls “Drop on Drop” shots where he lets one drop fall into a tray of water, which forms a crater, then a crown, and then a pillar – then he releases a second drop to create a mushroom top. “Shoot ‘Em Up” is another series that requires Reugels to shoot pellets through droplets of water.

Check more of Markus Reugels’s “Liquid Art” here.