5 Reasons Why Photographers Need a Blog

Photographers can gain an advantage by establishing a blog.

1. Search Engines LOVE them

Google is a big fan of blogs along with all other major search engines. The main reason is the constantly updated content. (That is if you update your blog) Blogs make it easy to keep your clients and potential clients informed on what you are up to.

You can carefully craft your blog to ensure that search engines are in tune to exactly what you are posting exactly when you do it. You can also make minor modifications to your blog to take complete advantage of how a search engine views your website and indexes your information. Pretty soon, after you have made some posts to your blog, you will begin to get visitors that are coming from internet searches.

I will write a follow up blog post that will show you a great free service that will allow you to analyze your web traffic and find out how people are getting to your site, where they are coming from, what they look at and how long they stay.

By the way that you write your content and format your blog, you can gain tons of valuable, localized and targeted search traffic. ALL FOR FREE!

2. It’s Not ALL About the Pictures

Potential clients want to get to know you. Many consumers do research online before ever making a phone call when purchasing or inquiring about products or services. The more information you can offer to these visitors, the better.

With a blog, you can inform visitors of what you are up to, offer up some great advice and give detailed information about photo shoots. By doing this you open the door to a conversation by allowing visitors to comment on your blog posts. This allows the potential client to gain further trust in you and your services. People LOVE to read testimonials and praise.

3. Create a Following

Once your blog is established you can begin to create a following in a variety of ways. One great way is to inform all of your past and current clients of your new blog. You can utilize great email/newsletter software to keep people updated on new blog posts.

With a blog you can allow people to subscribe to your RSS feed. With RSS, clients can follow you by getting your blog posts instantly in their feed readers. I will explain email and RSS in much more detail in a follow up post.

Another IMPORTANT step is to establish accounts at various social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter and have them connected to your blog. Again, more detailed information will be coming soon in a future post.

4. Inform Your Following

I’ve seen some great examples of photographers keeping their followers up-to-date on what is happening with the studio.

a.h.p., wedding photographers out of Denver, CO does a great job at keeping their following engaged and interested in what they are doing.

isaac alongi studios out of Fairway, KS offers insight into what’s happening at his studio in addition to offering great tips and advice for budding photographers. (Offering up free advice is a great idea on your blog. )

5. It’s ALL About the Details

When potential clients find your site from a referral or search they are hoping to learn a little bit more about you. They will be pleased to see the details you have included on each blog post about client shoots, equipment you use, or advice that you offer.

It’s ok to “give” information. Don’t worry about the competition coming by and snatching up your ideas. Your main concern should be potential clients passing you by when they come to your site and there is no information.

People want information and want to connect as much as they want to see your great work!

Stay tuned for more posts on this subject as I’ll teach you how to carefully craft a blog that will make you a cinch for the next client hoping to build a relationship with you.

Please comment and be sure to subscribe to receive future posts on how to have a more impactful web presence.

Photo credit: Joakim_kna

Is Your Website Worthless / Part 1

The web is littered with millions of web pages with many more thousands being added daily. So my question for you today is:

Is your website worthless?

How do we define worthless?

In Part 1 of  a series let’s answer that question by determining why people decide to create websites in the first place.

Most commonly, business owners decide to put up a website to give a little background and information about their company.

The business owner is typically highly motivated and wants to publish information as soon as possible.  In most cases, the business owner does no research about his competition and doesn’t truly consider what types of information his consumers would be searching for.

This is the most important part of the process when establishing a web presence. If you don’t do research and develop content that will #1:  please your visitors and prompt them to take action or plan to revisit your site and #2:  get indexed by search engines so consumers that search for your products will be able to find it.

Why are most websites worthless? They have crap content will never draw in the right visitors or once the visitors arrive, the content is not engaging and doesn’t hook the visitors.

This is Part 1 in a series that will help you reevaluate your web strategy and help you decide what steps you need to take to get the right people to your website using the right content. Here is a list of future posts that will enable you to turn your worthless website around!

• Is your website properly search engine optimized?
• What purpose does your website serve? Is it an information repository?
• Do you have clients that visit your website to gain value information or insight?
• Has your website sat there untouched for many years with the same old content?
• What is your website’s purpose?
• Are you actively keeping your website up-to-date with new and interesting content?
• What is your goal with your website?
• Do you have marketing objectives?
• Do you have a mechanism to allow people to subscribe to your content?
• Do you have a way to notify interested parties of new content or products on your site?
• Is your website easy to navigate? When your visitors get there can they find the information they need easily?

Is your website worthless? I’d love to hear your thoughts and answer any questions you may have about your own website! Please comment below and be sure to subscribe to receive future posts.

Will You Sit By Me at Lunch?

Photo courtesy of McQuinn via Flickr

Remember elementary school trying to decide who you would sit by or wondering, wishing, hoping certain people would sit by you?

As we got older we began settling into certain groups or clicks. We formed friendships and relationships that usually had something to do with common interests. There were jocks, goth kids, dorks, smart kids, popular kids, unpopular kids, the special ed kids.

Isn’t it interesting how Twitter could be considered one big lunch room and how our conversations are similar to elementary or high school lunch chatter?

What is your goal with social media? Are you trying to sit at the wrong lunch tables or are you sitting where your voice and your opinions will have the most impact?

Think about it. It could impact your business in a good way when you sit with the right crowd.

One proven method for getting someone’s attention

Some of you may have seen my recent rants on butt kissing in social media.

I’ve been experimenting with social interaction online and in real life over the past week.
I have found one thing to be certain. People like to hear how great they are. Most main stream marketing gurus tell you that pain is the greatest motivator.

Have you ever tried to just be nice?

Have you ever tried to use your expertise to help someone?

Compliment someone on how nice they look in a photo. Tell your friend on Twitter that their background is appealing or their website is useful and informative.

I tried my social experiment at the gym with a Twitter “be nice” state of mind.

I helped someone rearrange weights. I told a regular that they are looking good and to keep it up.

It’s amazing how receptive people actually are when you speak kindly to them or simply ask them a question.

People love to hear about themselves.
People love to feel helpful.

I’ve realized that social media is about spreading the love.

Watch what the more popular and influential people on Twitter do.
You’ll probably find that they are helpful and complimentary.

Go and try it yourself. Retweet someone’s article. Compliment someone on their avatar.

Just be nice. You can start here.

I’d love to hear your comments on how being nice is helping you gain followers and increasing your business!