“I know I should be writing, but I just don’t have the time.”
“It can take me all day to write even the simplest of ideas.”
“I post the images from my shoots, but I have no idea what else I should be including in my posts.”
When it comes to questions about blogging, I’ve heard them all.
Blogging has become and will continue to be in the future one of the top buzzwords of the industry. Why? Because blogging = content. And content drives the marketing of today.
The reason content is huge is because everything we do involves content. We are a question frenzied, instant gratification society. No matter what you want to know – right now – you can quickly find the answer on your iPhone/Android/iPad. You don’t even need to type it in – just use Google Now or Siri and ask your question instead.
And where there are questions, there needs to be answers. Which is where you come in … and your blog.
Every blog post you create is designed to answer someone’s question.
How To
How To blog posts are, in my opinion, one of the best forms of content you can create. Think of it as your FAQ section on steroids. By creating how to posts over and over again, you can create unlimited content answering very specific questions from all types of clientele. You can solve problems, you can entertain, and you can provide step by step instruction to help people take one step closer to becoming a client … and adding profits to your bottom line.
Yes, you can start with the obvious:
- How To Hire The Best Wedding Photographer
- How To Find The Perfect Portrait Photographer For Your Family
From there, you can take it as far as you can go:
- How To Design Beautiful Pages For Your Wedding Album
- How To Choose The Perfect Outfit For Your Fall Portrait
Again, the opportunities are endless when you think specifically.
Infographic
If you’ve ever visited Facebook or Pinterest for even a moment, you can’t have missed the latest content style circulating in a big way … the infographic. Infographics are built perfectly for viral distribution, and thus are perfect for you to include within your posts.
Want an example? According to Visual.ly, one of their most popular how to infographics ever was the manual photography cheat sheet.
Manual Photography Cheat Sheet infographic
When you create your own infographic, think from your visitors perspective. Not only do they want to view it, they want to share it. So make it easy to share by providing them with the embed code to copy and paste. You can create easy infographics by trying infogr.am, or try these resources as well.
Dig Deeper: 8 Inspiring Infographics For The Photography Industry
Dig Deeper: Easy Ways To Make Infographics For Your Social Sites
Education
Slightly different than the how to, education posts are meant to move your existing clientele into bigger and better packages. They are meant to turn their experiences from average to WOW.
Education posts help them understand you as a person … and as a business … a little bit better. You’re helping them develop a stronger relationship with you. And therefore love their experiences with you that much more.
You can educate them on:
- You studio’s policies
- Why you’re a photographer
- What makes you special – unique
- Why you are a great photographer
- What separates you from your competition
- New things happening in the industry
Again, there are many, many things to write about. If you are teaching your clients to be better clients, prospects to be better prospects, and followers to be better referral sources, you’re accomplishing all you can.
Different Modalities
Content is king. It fills up your web presences and it gains traction everywhere in the online world.
But it’s not the only thing that exists. You know photographs are important. How about audio? How about video? What about starting your own podcast? Or how about your own YouTube channel?
Things today are easy to create, easy to produce, and accessibly in many different ways. Your goal isn’t to get people to come to you, it’s to get your content in front of the right people. That means you have to find them in their favorite sites and apps. You have to make everything you do is to generate in their preferred method.
Phew, that’s a lot of work!
And if you’re thinking “I can’t do all of that”, you’re part of a huge club of business owners thinking the same thing. Which is why this vast majority of business owners will never find success online. If you don’t do it, you won’t reap the results.
There is no secret. Just a lot of hard work.
So are you up for the challenge?
Comments or No Comments – What Should You Do With Your Blog?
“What do comments really do for you? I have a blog but I’ve never allowed comments before. Should I let them go through so others can read them? Should I try and get people to write comments? Or should I forget it all together?”
Today’s websites are build on blogging platforms – 1 in 4 is now built on WordPress – simply because of the ease of creation and modification. Anyone can easily login to the backend at any time, and make changes, additions or deletions as long as you have Internet connection. That’s the one thing that people were craving for so long – the ability to handle their own content. And that’s what has brought on the popularity of WordPress.
Yet while WordPress does allow you to build a site and control it too, it also gives you one more thing: the base of your social media platform.
A blog gives you your online presence. But it also allows you to connect to all of your other social accounts in a variety of ways. Blogs are powerful because they give you an easy way to create and control your own content, and connect and share ideas with your readers as well.
When you blog regularly, you share your ideas with others. [Read more…]