You’ve heard that you should be blogging if you’re a photographer. You’ve seen more and more shooters with blogs. Heck, you’ve probably even started one yourself! But do you know why that blog is so critical, and the most important things you need to do to make sure it’s worth the time?
Well, let’s figure it out!
Before we dive in, a quick shout out to our awesome reader Erin, who suggested this topic. Thanks Erin, hope this is helpful!
So, you might already have a blog, or you might be considering one. Either way, let’s start off by talking about the reasons why blogging is so important for photographers.
The Reasons Why Blogging Is So Important For Photographers
Photography is a service, and a personal one at that. Your clients are letting you into their lives, and trusting you with some pretty big moments. The more you can give them reason to feel comfortable with hiring you, the better.
A blog is a perfect tool for doing just that. It gives you the opportunity to show who you are, why you are a photographer, and what value you can provide to a prospective client. It gives them a look into your motivations and how you treat your clients—info that will be important to their decision.
And, of course, it lets them see your latest and greatest work! When you are just getting started (as in, during you first 5 – 10 years as a shooter) you are probably going to be improving your work at a very rapid rate. Portfolio sites have a tendency to get stagnant, and many photographers neglect to update them regularly. A blog ensures that prospective clients are seeing your newest (and likely best) images. That ensures that they are familiar with your current shooting style, which also has a tendency to evolve!
Blogs are also better for SEO than portfolio sites, since they have frequent updates and lots of tasty content (Google loooooooves tasty content). A well-maintained and frequently updated blog can absolutely shoot up the search rankings!
Another benefit is that blogs are a really great way for your clients to share the images you took of them! People love seeing their own photos on their photographer’s blog, and will share the link with all their family and friends. Um….hello awesome word-of-mouth marketing!! Your clients might even ask you if they’ll make the blog, they’re so excited to be featured. Take the time to make great posts for your clients, share why you enjoyed working with them, and they’ll love the experience, and spread the word about you. Win-win!!
At the core, a blog is going to let you start establishing your personal brand. You can get your unique voice across thanks to the narrative style of a blog. This is different than a portfolio, photo-sharing sites like Flickr, or social networking sites like Facebook. Your personal brand is what will make you unique. It’s super valuable.
Best of all? A blog is easy to start, easy to maintain, often cheaper than a dedicated website, and more effective in getting sales!
Now, before you starting racing off, we’ll share a few mistakes we’ve made on our blogging journey.
A Few Mistakes We’ve Made On Our Blogging Journey
We met on blogs, and between the two of us have had about 10 in the past 5 years. We blog a LOT. And we’ve made some mistakes that we don’t want you to make.
One of those was having too many blogs. We’re always guilty of that, but are constantly trying to trim it down. See, when you have too many blogs, you don’t have enough energy to put into each one, and they all end up being so-so. It’s better to have one amazing blog, than three so-so blogs. Only take on as much as you can make awesome.
We’ve also been terrible about starting a blog, getting it going, and then neglecting to keep up with posting. That’s an easy way to disappoint readers, as they get all excited about what you are doing, and then you leave them. We feel really bad about this mistake.
We’ve created blogs without really knowing the reason for it. When we do that, we end up having only a murky idea of who we’re posting for, and wind up with incohesive content, and getting a totally different audience than we expected. This makes it confusing for the author, and the readers, and just difficult all around. Go into your blog with a clear purpose and outcome!
And finally, we’ve forgotten the importantance of creating value in our blogs. We’ve just posted to show off what we’re doing, instead of really trying to make it a valuable experience for our readers. It takes people time to read your blog, so you want to make sure that is time well spent for them. Try to give them value of some sort, whether it’s through entertainment, education, or inspiration. You don’t need to make all your posts like this, as likely a good portion of a photography blog is sharing your latest work, portfolio style, but make sure you’re still taking care of your readers with useful content!
So now that you know which mistakes to avoid, let’s discuss some super important things to keep in mind on your photography blogging journey.
Super Important Things To Keep In Mind On Your Photography Blogging Journey
KNOW YOUR WHY
Why are you starting a blog? What’s the purpose? What’s the outcome you’re hoping to achieve? Without knowing this, you will be directionless and all the time you spend blogging can really amount to nothing.
Deciding on your purpose right off the bat will give you an incredible sense of control. Any time you need to make a decision about your blog, you’ll simply think of your purpose and desired outcome, and you’ll know what to do.
CHOOSE YOUR AUDIENCE
Once you’ve decided on your outcome, you need to determine who you are blogging for. This is a step that many photographers miss. It’s easy to forget who you are writing for, and start blogging for other shooters, your friends and family, or wedding blogs.
So who are you really blogging for? Is it for your friends and family, to keep them updated with how your photography is going? Or is it for your clients, to keep them in the know with your business?
This matters a LOT, so do it now, even if you already have started a blog. If you’re blogging for clients (which is generally the case if you are a professional business), then you will always need to keep that in mind, every single time you post anything on your blog.
MAKE IT EASY TO CONVERT
As a professional photographer, you’re essentially blogging to get new clients. That’s what will mean more money, and make the blog worth your precious time. So you have to make sure you have all the information on your blog that will convert readers into clients.
This is things like what city you are located in, details of what type of photography services you offer, prices or price ranges, clear contact information, testimonials of why you rock and a call to action (ie. Book Your Session) are super important to making this a worthwhile endeavour.
BE CONSISTENT
If you’re going to start a blog, make su
re you can commit to the time it will take. It is critical that you are consistent with your posts, but also one of the hardest things to do (we definitely have our share of difficulty with this one!).
Consistency shows readers that you are an active business/shooter. The worst thing you could do is start a blog, and have your most recent post be from months (or years!) ago. But it happens allllllll the time. That sends a very bad message to any prospective client that finds your blog!
Decide how often each week you are going to post. If you are a full time shooter, twice a week is a good amount. If you are part-time or a hobbyist shooter wanting to blog, one a week is probably very doable.
You can even decide which days of the week you’ll post on, as that can really help keep you on track!
TIE IN SOCIAL MEDIA
A blog is different than a Twitter account or Facebook page. They all play different roles in your social media system for your business. But they can definitely support each other!
When you post a new blog post, make sure to Tweet about it. And on your Facebook page, set it up so your blog posts are automatically imported.
SHOW YOUR BEST, NOT YOUR ALL
Your blog is not a place to show every single photo you’ve ever taken. Instead, it’s a place to show your very best images from each session, or the very best of your portfolio.
If you just blast your blog with bazillions of images, your audience will get overwhelmed and bored. The exact number of images is completely up to you, and what type of photography you do.
Go for quality over quantity. Remember, this is basically like a constantly updated portfolio, so treat it that way! Clients will be scrutinizing each of those images when they are deciding to book you or not!
BE PERSONAL, BUT NOT TOO PERSONAL
It’s a fine line between what is personal, and what is too personal. It’s great to be yourself, and share who you are as a person, but if you start over-sharing it can make your readers uncomfortable.
If this is a business blog, you’ll have to think hard about how much of your personal life you want to share with your readers.
This is completely up to you, and definitely a grey area, but keep it in mind.
BE POSITIVE
No one wants to hear someone complaining on a business blog. It’s a huge turn-off, and will straight up lose you clients.
Be positive, and you’ll attract people to you. That’s why you’re blogging after all!
This all sounds great, and I know you’re getting pumped, but you might be wondering, “Hey Rob & Lauren, can you share some things for photographers to blog about?”
Sure can, friend!
I hope you like my article and promote it. :)