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 ?

  •  cleanandsunny   ( @cleanandsunny@literature.cafe ) 
    23•8 months ago

    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 :)

    •  Zoop   ( @Zoop@beehaw.org ) 
      10•8 months ago

      What a wonderful, helpful, thoughtful, and kind comment! I love it! People like you help me keep a little faith in humanity and websites like this. I appreciate you so much!

      •  cleanandsunny   ( @cleanandsunny@literature.cafe ) 
        6•8 months ago

        Aw thanks! I mostly lurked on the other site but I’d love to make this a good place for good people :) and when you can’t sleep after taking the dog out, and someone asks about the exact tightrope you’ve been walking for years, what else do you do but write a long, sleep deprived answer? Lol

    •  Tiritibambix   ( @Tiritibambix@lemmy.ml ) OPEnglish
      4•8 months ago

      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 ♥

  •  Tippon   ( @Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English
    4•8 months ago

    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.

      •  ReversalHatchery   ( @ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org ) 
        2•8 months ago

        In case they mean it for the web browser, it can be done in a safer way. Firefox supports having multiple browser profiles, which means different settings, addons, history, everything.

        One way to create profiles and to open them is through the about:profiles page.

        An other is to create separate desktop icons for these profiles, where the profile selection happens in parameters, and you refer to them by their name. The desktop icon would look like this: “…/firefox.exe” -no-remote -P “insert profile name here”.
        You can also have a desktop icon that just opens a small profile manager window, where you can select one from the list: “…/firefox.exe -no-remote -P”, but be aware that unless you untick the box, this one automatically changes the default profile to the one you started with it.
        The -no-remote is so that you can run them at the same time as other profiles, like your main one. You shouldn’t have this for your main firefox profile. Details, because it has some consequences (nothing major, though).

        Both ways should work on windows and linux.

        If you need help with the desktop icons, let me know!

      •  Tippon   ( @Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English
        2•8 months ago

        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.