So how can you incorporate video into your business? Take a look at these 6 ways to get you started.

1. Start with an introduction. Use a video presentation to introduce yourself and your business to first time visitors. If you are a long time reader, you know I don’t recommend having a long video introduction as people enter your site. If you have a long time client returning, they’ve seen your presentation, and don’t want to sit through it again and again. Instead, place it on your site and give people the option to click over and watch.

2. Video testimonials. Why not grab a quick testimonial from a client while you’re shooting? It doesn’t have to be long and drawn out – 30 seconds is fine. You can include this on the post you do from the event, and make it a true recommendation to others on why they should use your services.

3. Use the online tools for promotion. You already know the benefits of having a site and a blog. And you probably use sites like Flickr to promote your photographs. Use video in the same manner. YouTube, Google Video, Viddler, and the many social sites like Facebook all have video capabilities, and let you showcase short videos in any manner you see fit. Video is becoming mandatory for any business owner that wants to take their business successfully into the future. Have fun with it, and let your clients find you from many different angles.

4.Start your own tip show. If you are a wedding photographer, start up a video show to give tips to potential brides. They are new at planning, and looking for all the tips they can find. Put the emphasis on giving quality information – not showcasing your work. You can even work together with others in the industry, and have wider exposure for potential clients. Not a wedding photographer? The options are endless; just find a way to connect up with your prospects. Traveling tips for a nature and stock photographer would keep you busy for years. Business and design tips for a commercial photographer could pull you into some of the top corporations. The important thing is to get started, and just keep doing it.

5. Create video posts. Sometimes it’s hard to spend the time writing for your blog. Shoot video instead. You can accomplish in a couple of minutes what might take you 30-60 minutes to write out. While there are two reasons to blog – connect with your clients, and become findable in the search engines – the most important is to connect with your clients. Video will help them build the relationship with you, even before they’ve met you. Don’t worry about perfectionism – just shoot and post. The key to today’s marketing is to be honest and real.

6. Create a following. People will follow you on different sites for different reasons. On YouTube, they may love your quirkiness, or the tips you provide. [Ever seen You Suck At Photoshop on YouTube? They’ve built a Webby Award winning “drama” around teaching you Photoshop skills.] With today’s media, anything is possible. You don’t have to have an agent and a ton of experience to be “found”. Just a simple camera and a great message can easily get you millions of views using YouTube. Come up with your edge – your style – and have fun with it. Reach out to your specific clientele, and see where it takes you.

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1. Wedding photography is not dead.
2. It’s not about the output; it’s about the experience.

With the economy down, and many, many photographers hitting the streets trying to make a quick buck by shooting a few weddings on the side, its easy to find a photographer that thinks wedding photography is a dying industry. After all, why would any bride pay a few thousand dollars to have her wedding photographed – and not receive the digital files in the process – when she can find a ton of photographers willing to give her exactly what she wants?

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As a professional photographer, you have to think beyond this line of reasoning.

A bride only knows what to ask for because of what her friends have received. And what the industry has trained and conditioned for. She’s actually looking for someone who can provide more – give her a better product and more service. But if she can’t find it, she plods along asking what she’s been trained to do.

A friend of mine uses a great tagline in her business – “Don’t let your babies grow up to be jpg’s.” I love it! How many people receive a Flash drive, CD, DVD, containing all of their photographs, and do nothing with it? I talked about this in my post Photographers – The History Killers.

As a wedding photographer, you need to move forward by doing 3 things.

1. Be the best you can be. If you’re committed to being a wedding photographer, build up your skills to be the best in the industry.

2. Build up your marketing strategy to educate your clients on why a digital file isn’t the best way to go. Will we get to the point where photographs are loaded into digital frames, and you use your iPad (or something like it) to look at your wedding album? Of course – that’s the direction we’re heading. But even with that, its more than loading a few hundred photos onto a DVD. Why can’t you supply the frame? Or the iPad with software made to view an incredible album? Dedicate what you do to the entire user experience – and go beyond what the average photographer does.

3. Create an experience. Your experience should last from the minute they contact you, until you had over the final product – and beyond. Your best referral is your current client. Deliver 110% the entire way through, and keep them in the loop for potential referrals. Your best customer will come from someone who is already happy and sold on you, and can express what you do in his or her own voice.

Related posts:

1. The Fate Of Wedding Photography
2. Wedding Album Design – Is It Up To You Or Your Customer?
3. Too Many Digital Photographers at the Wedding

If you are attending WPPI, or plan on attending any other tradeshow or seminar this year, what can you do to make sure you take back to your studio the most important nuggets? What can you do to make sure you get your money’s worth out of your training? Take a look at these suggestions.

1. Attend everything you can. If you’ve paid the attendance fees, and especially if you’ve traveled and have airfare/hotel/car expenses, it’s important to take in as much as you can. Sit down with the schedule and plan out every day.

2. Work through the expo as early as possible. Visit every booth, or at least the booths that have interest and relevance to your business. Collect literature, business cards and any deals or show specials that they are offering. Then sort through the content back in your hotel room. If you have no interest, throw it away at the hotel – no need bringing it home. If you have an interest in purchasing as a show special, make a special pile and spend a day or so thinking about it. Reserve the last day for revisiting booths you want to take advantage of offers. Also tuck a flat rate shipping box into your luggage already pre-stamped. Fill it with your literature, and drop it off at the front desk. They’ll be happy to put it into the mail, and you won’t have to tote it through the airport.

3. Bring plenty of business cards and a pen everywhere you go. A good rule of thumb is to bring 3 times as many cards as you feel you will need. Then trade cards with anyone who may be a good contact for the future. Write a quick note to yourself on the back of their card so you remember a detail or two about your conversation. Then tuck them into a safe place until you get back to your office.

4. Stay until the last event. So many people book flights out the night before the program ends, or the morning of the last event. And in the process they miss out on some of the best training of the entire show. Always stay through the last event, and beyond if possible.

5. Book strategizing time. After the tradeshow ends, plan on spending the afternoon by the pool or in a local coffee shop. Reread your notes from the training, and start strategizing for future business.  What were you biggest a-ha moments? What do you want to implement immediately when you get back to the studio?

6. Make an impression. Yes, you are there to learn. You’ve paid for the conference, and you should be comfortable – especially in Las Vegas where you’ll be putting miles on every day. But you also want to stay professional. You never know whom you’ll meet, and how it will impact your business in the future. You may meet a future partner for your business, or an expert willing to bring you in to speak at his or her next tradeshow.

7. Follow up. I once attended a seminar early in my career. The speaker spent hours going over exactly how his business was set up. He stated he had no fear revealing all of his secrets, because he knew less than 5 percent would ever take any action on what they learned. I found that figure frightening, memorable – and true. You get busy when you get back to your routine, and the new things simply get tossed aside. Unless you make a commitment to putting some of your new knowledge to work, it will simply disappear.

Write down the five things you want to implement, then do it. Commit to getting it done, putting it into action, and having it work for you.

image source

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1. Get Active!
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3. Using Professional Photographic Products – What It Takes To Look Like A Professional

That’s the business of taking quick, class photographs. But it’s not the business of taking a business portrait.

By the time we grow up and become a professional, we want more than just a quick “say cheese” portrait to put on our websites, business cards, brochures and social networking sites. We want something that’s a little classier. Something that showcases us in our best light. Here are a few ways you can bump up the quality of your professional business portraits – and charge more for them in the process:

1. Step away from the backdrop. Don’t do the standard images. Head out to the great outdoors and find variety in your portraits. From a city street, to an overgrown walkway, an environmental portrait will give your client more variety, and make him or her less stressed with the entire process.

2. Use high key lighting. With today’s technology, sometimes a backdrop isn’t the first choice. People today like to use cutaways for their websites and brochures, and have the ability to make their brochures and other marketing materials pop. Start by asking what they hope to accomplish with their business portraits. Then give them a wide array of options.

3. Build up their business. What does your client do for a living? Why not incorporate that into their business portraits? Be creative with all of your executive images, and give them a selection to use for different reasons. While the average client may be looking for one good image to use on a business card, once you present more options, they may end up buying more to have more uses. An image of a baker surrounded by her high-end wedding cakes may be just what she needs for an article in a trade magazine. Or a framed wall print in her bakery.

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It’s one of the most difficult forms of photography there is. You have to know how to shoot in all conditions, at all times, and with many expectations.

This video shows why its so important to know what you’re doing if you are a photographer, and to hire the best if you are a bride. When even the judge knows more about photography than the photographer, you know you have a problem.

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So how can you capture great photographs of a baby that the parent will want to buy?

What starts out sounding like a negative actually can be worked into a BIG positive from selling your photography.

A baby won’t pose, but they will only be little for a very short time. They won’t sit up, but they have the tiniest hands and feet.

This is a once in a lifetime moment. Wait a month and it will change. Put it off for a few months, and you lose the opportunity forever.

Now that’s a sales technique. But before you start selling, you have to take the photographs.

Choose Natural Light
Babies are sensitive to loud noises, sudden movements, and bright lights. A large flash may send them into a fit of tears – the last thing you want. So whenever possible, control your use of flash as much as possible. If you’re in your dark studio, use a softbox. Or bring the baby up to an area where natural light comes pouring through the window.

Get The Details
Tell the story of this new little life. Capture the hands, the feet, a fist wrapped around mom’s finger, or the dad’s wedding ring slipped around the toe. Size is everything. For some infants, we photograph at their home instead of bringing them into a studio location. This is a great way to bring out the props. A blanket knitted by great-grandma makes a wonderful backdrop (and of course a must-have portrait). We were in one home a few years ago where the baby was the first grandchild on both sides of the family. Every member of the family had painted a character or saying onto the wall of her bedroom. We photographed each of these items, and used it to build an album. The clients couldn’t refuse – and ended up ordering more than one album for different family members.

Bring In Mom and Dad
It’s all about size. And the love and bond between the newest member of the family. Just like the details, mom and dad will love intimate images showcasing their tiny baby.

The No Rush Studio
Do you know what separates you from the discount chains? Your client’s happiness. Give each client plenty of time. If they need to change the baby, not a problem. If she gets hungry, you’ll wait until she’s fed. Remember your clients are new parents, and may be a little stressed about the baby’s routine. Being calm and patient is going to help build your reputation.

Build An Album
Don’t just take the images and wait for the sale. Take the images with an album in mind. Predesign several samples, and offer them in package plans. A 20-page album in your lowest, a 40- page in your highest (for example). Then shoot to fill the pages in a way you know your client could never refuse.

Start A Baby Club
Because babies change so fast, they are the perfect target for more than one sale. Don’t bring in a client for one shoot as a brand new baby, offer a baby club where you take four images throughout the first year. You’ll get the family in for a sitting 4 times per year, and get the opportunity for multiple sales all year long.

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1. 7 Easy Ways To Bring More Money To Your Bottom Line
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When I picked up this book, those were the first questions that ran through my mind.

I checked the publishing date of Richard Weisgrau’s Selling Your Photography book – published in 2009. Okay, another good sign the information might be relevant to where we stand today. So I sat down and started reading.

“The market for publishable photographs is growing faster than ever before. With that growth, the demand for photographs of all types of subjects has increased.”

“Whether you are an amateur or professional photographer, the opportunities to publish your photographs are growing every day.”

Those are Weisgrau’s opening remarks. And it only gets better from there.

Selling Your Photography covers everything from beginning to end. It starts by giving you a market overview – how the current market looks for today’s photographer, and what you can expect if you start out as an advertising, media or corporate photographer. He moves through setting up your business model. And talks at great length about finding your market segments and how to reach out to your target client. He has a great chapter on licensing and pricing, and even provides samples of letters, estimates and licensing agreements for you to follow and use. And ends it by providing online resources that should keep you busy for weeks.

And in between, you’ll gain a ton of useful ideas that make this book a definite for your library if you’re serious about selling your photography.

Selling Your Photography: How to Make Money in New and Traditional Markets
By Richard Weisgrau
215 pages
Published 2009

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If you haven’t thought about safety of your digital files yet, its time.

Size
In today’s marketplace, you can get a small 2 GB compact flash card for under $15, all the way up to a current release of a 64GB compact flash card.  And the amount of storage space is only half of the equation; current compact flash cards also are super fast to allow you to quickly transfer from your camera to computer during your small amounts of downtime.

But with the increased size capacity also comes the desire to have few cards to control during your shoot. A 65GB flash card can store thousands of images in JPEG format.

Which brings me back to my original question.

What happens if you’re finishing up a wedding, leave your camera on a table in the reception site, come back and find it missing? Your one 64GB card was inside the camera, with the entire days’ worth of images on it. What are you going to do?

1. Okay, number one has to be “never leave your camera unattended, even for a moment”. That’s easy to say, but it happens to everyone. You forget a bag in one room, leave your equipment for a couple of seconds to retrieve it, and come back to find the camera missing.

2. Divide your risk. The best way to divide your risk is to use more than one card. If you have more than one camera body, you obviously have at least one card per body. But beyond that, having multiple cards can also help control your risk throughout the day.

One of the ways we protected ourselves was to have a flash card case per camera. We would start the day with the flash cards in the case, label side up. Each flash card had a number (#1, #2, #3, #4) written on the back in permanent marker. When we used the flash card and replaced it in the camera, the card would be returned to the case, label side down so the # would show. At any point our cards were quickly accountable. And the case is small enough to keep comfortably in your pocket, so its safely on you at all times.

3. Download periodically. Technology is easy to come by pretty much anywhere, and its usually very fast. When you have a break between the wedding and reception, or at the reception while everyone is eating, load your images from the flash card to your computer. If you have online backup and storage, and if you have a fast Internet connection, you can even backup your data at the same time, further guaranteeing its safety.

Remember, your camera and equipment is replaceable, your data isn’t. Do whatever is necessary to ensure the safety of your digital files, and protect the one thing that has the most value of all – your reputation.

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To play it safe, I would always ask for a model release, especially when displaying photographs online for the whole world to see.

The general rule on model releases is:

If you will be using a photograph in an editorial format – for newspapers, educational books, trade magazines, you generally do not need a model release. They are considered to be educational or informational in nature, and you don’t need a release for that.

If you will be using a photograph in any type of commercial aspect – advertising, brochures, catalogs, websites, etc – you will need a release from your subject to get approval for its use.

So in order to cover yourself, get one any time you’ll be using a photograph for your business.

In any contract, a model release can be a simple line or clause (check with your lawyer for exact wording and to make sure you are covered):

The parties agree that ABC Photography may reproduce, publish or exhibit a judicious selection of such photographs as samples of photographic work to be shown to prospective clients, and for instructional or institutional purposes consistent with the highest standards of taste and judgment.

image source

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Now let me ask you another question. What key term would you like to rank high on?

If you’ve never thought about it before, its time to start.

Google has around 31 billion searches every single month. If you hope to capture even a tiny fraction of that search, you have to understand what is important to rank high on.

Long Tail
Would you want to rank #1 under the key term “photographer”?

Hopefully you answered no. Photographer is a very broad term, and at this level, we don’t know what the searcher is actually thinking. They could be looking for a wedding photographer, or for a college to help them become a photographer. It’s just too broad.

The average person will search 5 times in Google before they narrow down their search phrase enough to truly find what they are looking for.

So in the case of “photographer”, they may continue on and search:

• Wedding photographer
• Wedding photographer California
• Wedding photographer California beach portraits
• Wedding photographer San Diego California beach portraits

As a searcher, you know what you want and keep looking until you find it.

Once a searcher has a page of results, they will quickly click in and out of sites until they find something interesting, and relevant to what they are looking for.

More Content, More Love
Now that you understand how a person searches, how does your website match that search process?

Let’s imagine a website with five pages. It has one page dedicated to services, and has a laundry list of everything they provide. So if this photographer offers weddings, the services page has a little content about their wedding services, perhaps a price list, and maybe a little information about their wedding philosophy.

Nowhere on that page does it go into detail on individual keywords. [I have seen a lump paragraph with dozens of keywords at the bottom of the page – but this doesn’t capture the attention of the search engines anymore, and may actually hurt your ranking more than help it.]

The new SEO is all about content. Google loves content, and because it’s the biggest search engine, if you make Google happy, all other search engines will pretty much be happy as well.

Instead of having one page for services on a site with five pages, why not blog about what you do and create dozens – even hundreds of pages of content that is very specific about its target keyword.  [I wrote an article on Blog Title concepts this week – it may help you come up with ideas for titling your blog posts.]

If someone types into the search engines “Wedding photographer San Diego California beach portraits” you pretty much know what they are thinking. They are definitely looking for a wedding photographer in the San Diego area, and they are probably getting married on or near the beach and want some fantastic beach portraits.

What if you had a blog post titled, “Beach Portraits In The San Diego Sun – Sarah and Justin’s Dream Wedding”. If your blog had authority and ranked highly in the search engines, that title would definitely pop up close to the top when the searcher typed in, “Wedding photographer San Diego California beach portraits”. And if the post had dozens of photographs showcasing this beach wedding, the searcher would probably stay on that page for a long time. And probably connect with you. And maybe even hire you as their wedding photographer.

That’s the goal of SEO. It takes time. It takes effort. But even just a little every day can have astounding results a short time from now. I have a client who’s been blogging for four months, and we’re already seeing significantly more traffic to his site because of ranking well under long tail phrases.

So are you ready to use SEO techniques to grow your business? What are you waiting for?

image source

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