5 Reasons Why Photographers Need a Blog

[sitedesigner]

Well,

Here's part two in my "free advice" series.

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. (http://www.ahpphotos.com/blog/), 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 (http://isaacalongi.com/) 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.

[tomd]

Matthew,
thanks for the imformative post about blogs. I look forward to your next post on this.
Tom

[sitedesigner]

No problem, Tom. I plan to post many more unless I get run off! :)

[photoguy6405]

Interesting. Subscribing.

[kgoings]

Subscribing

[sitedesigner]

Thanks for the interest!

When you guys say Subscribing, are you subscribing to the feed of my blog or subscribing to what I do on this forum?

[photoguy6405]

In my case, this thread.

[sitedesigner]

Cool! When I put up a new blog post I'll paste it here as well.

[superstes]

I'm in.

Just starting a blog and been looking for some advice so this is great, thank you.

Got a link for part 1.

Steve

[cgatto]

No problem, Tom. I plan to post many more unless I get run off! :)

Some people on here are old school and just don't like being given advice when they've been in the industry for years and years. You won't get run off the forum, just don't take anything anyone says too personally :)

[DRBair]

Subscribing

[Metalstrm]

Subscribing.

[WaltA]

Its seems like you're somewhat think-skinned and haven't blown your lid when people on this forum don't get it. Thats a good thing. I understand where your coming from and
because I'm an IT "geek" I'm terrible at marketing my "soft skills" and I'm looking forward to your insight to see how I can apply your philosophy to my business.

[professorman]

Pretty coll tread.

[sitedesigner]

Thanks for the kind words. In case you missed it, here's the thread for part 1.
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=695597

[sitedesigner]

Do you own a photography studio and thrive on local business to come walking through your door? What methods do you use to advertise your local services?
Newspaper? Fliers? Mailers?

You’re probably thinking that the only way you can get business from people in your area is if you advertise specifically and directly to the people in your area.

Did you know that by writing frequent free blog posts you can increase your exposure on a local level with more effectiveness than a lame mailer that COSTS MONEY?

I’ve said it before that search engines LOVE blogs. If you don’t have a blog, get one right away. If you do, start including information about your local business. Be sure to include keywords and key phrases in your blog posts that refer to your local business.

For instance, if you own a photography studio in Kansas City that specializes in black and white portraits, you could say this in a blog post, “We are a Photography Studio in Kansas City that specializes in Black and White Portraits.”

Be sure to repeat the information at a normal level throughout your postings. Also be sure to take advantage of the Tags and Categories in your blogging platform to insert keywords as well.

[captainkimo]

Nice read. Thanks for sharing. In the age of Web 2.0, blogs are indeed another useful (and in one way, inevitable)tool for photogs, especially for the pro ones, to expose, share, and market their works.

Cheers!

Captain Kimo

[Dean Humphrey]

Well,

Here's part two in my "free advice" series.

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. (http://www.ahpphotos.com/blog/), 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 (http://isaacalongi.com/) 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.

Good stuff, One question for you though. Do you have a Blog that has right click protect to keep people for downloading your photo, or do you use a watermark. What's your advise there? I'm in between websites right now and have considered a Blog, so your timing is great.
Thanks

[superstes]

Good stuff, One question for you though. Do you have a Blog that has right click protect to keep people for downloading your photo, or do you use a watermark. What's your advise there? I'm in between websites right now and have considered a Blog, so your timing is great.
Thanks

Any photo on the net is not safe and can be got, quite easily.

If you want to protect your images online you have to watermark them, period.

Edit: Dean, your site link only goes to the smug mug home page.

[sitedesigner]

5 reasons why you should create a blog using Wordpress

Wordpress is an incredible blogging platform that allows you to get your thoughts out for the world to see very quickly and painlessly. Wordpress offers two flavors to choose from. You can set up a completely free blog at Wordpress.com. The disadvantage to this is you cannot use plugins or alter themes which can completely transform the user experience on your site.

The other version of Wordpress you can download from Wordpress.org. This allows you to create or modify themes and use plugins that I will tell you about in a minute. Many hosts allow you to set up Wordpress in a few clicks through automatic software. I’ll tell you more about that in #1 below. This saves you time by automatically creating the database and establishing the file structure for you.

This is the only way I create Wordpress blogs or websites. Let me explain why.

1. Ease of implementation
I host my Wordpress websites and buy my domain names at Godaddy.com. Setting up Wordpress on a GoDaddy.com account is very inexpensive and easy to do. Once you have purchased a domain name and a hosting package you can implement Wordpress in a few short clicks. You can literally have your blog up and ready to go within a few minutes!

Being a Wordpress developer after coming from many years of hand-coding websites in Notepad really helps me appreciate the ease of implementation. The feeling is probably similar to that of a photographer going from traditional film and dark room techniques to going completely digital.

I love being able to instantiate a blog site in minutes and to be able to start generating content immediately. Sites take time to get indexed by search engines, so the faster you get it up with content, the quicker it will be indexed.

I now want to tell you about some of the useful plugins that I use for my Wordpress sites.

2. Powerful plugin selection
http://www.wordpress.org/extend/plugins

Share-This
You have probably seen the Share-This link on other blog sites if you are familiar with blogs. Share-This allows you to include social bookmarketing and Social networking links at the bottom of each of your posts. This gives your users the ability to post your links on these sites to let other people view them. The great part about this is if one of your articles get popular on a bookmarking or networking site, it can go viral and drive thousands of visitors to your site in a very short amount of time.

This is a great way to drive instant traffic to your blog before it even gets indexed on search engines.

Google Sitemap Generator
This plug-in notifies Google, MSN and Yahoo instantly when you post on your blog. I wrote about the importance of having a site map for Google to find in an earlier post. This plug-in automatically builds a brand new site map once you publish a new post in addition to instantly notifying the big three search engine sites.

This plug-in is a critical addition to ANY Wordpress blog if you want people to actually visit your site!

All In One SEO Pack
The All In One SEO Pack allows you to choose your own titles, description and meta tags for your posts. This is incredibly valuable and highly recommended. If you do not have this plug-in, Wordpress chooses whatever you use for the blog post title and tags that you chose for that post.

Modifying this information will help you with organic seo.

3. Get your thoughts out there fast!
Wordpress allows you to get your thoughts out on the web very quickly. Writing blog posts using Wordpress is as easy as writing an email. You pick a title, create your body using a WYSIWYG editor or HTML, choose some tags and categories and you are done.

One key to getting a huge following to your blog is by creating many relevant posts on a regular basis. Wordpress makes it as simple as possible to do this. Wordpress also allows you to publish your articles at a later date. Wordpress will auto publish your post on any date that you wish. You can also save drafts of your posts and manually publish them when you are ready.

4. Create a following
The beauty of blogging is in RSS technology. RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication is exactly what it says. People click RSS icons on your blog site and are able to be notified anytime you post something new on your blog.

People can also set their RSS Readers to pull blog posts based on certain content. Wordpress is programmed to make syndication of your website using RSS easy. Just about all themes that you find come with a RSS button of some kind to allow people to easily subscribe to your blog.

Once your blog is established, you’ll be able to check the stats and realized that you get many repeat visits because of RSS. Imagine the days before RSS… You would get a one-time shot at selling your product or service on your site. Now, you can engage readers over and over by allowing them to sign up for a continual feed to your site. It’s essentially like having a newspaper delivered every morning. Think of the paper boy as the RSS technology behind it. Because of him, the content from the newspaper is getting to you from their presses. Pretty sweet, eh?

I also wanted to talk to you about quite possibly the most amazing thing I have found out about since entering the blogosphere myself. Using AWeber, I am creating a following similar to the way I am through RSS, except people sign up using their email address and name. AWeber allows me to send emails to my list of subscribers in addition to newsletters. I can also create a blog broadcast function that will broadcast my blog posts to whomever signs up for my service.

AWeber allows me to send different types of marketing messages versus simply notifying users that a new blog post is up as RSS does. I will be writing a follow-up post about AWeber and share some of my methods for increasing sign ups and how to utilize my lists. I have AWeber implemented on multiple blog sites and have created multiple lists.

5. Amazing selection of free themes
Maybe you want to use a pre-existing theme. Maybe you want to create your own or modify a theme. I started out modifying existing themes. It doesn’t take much to transform the look and feel by changing a few things in the css and xhtml code is written for the themes.

Wordpress users have created many themes and you have free access to all of them here: http://www.wordpress.org/extend/themes

In posts to come I will go over in more detail how to modify your theme/blog to make it more personal and less like everyone else’s blog.