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10 Things You Never Want To Do With Your Online Photography Portfolio

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As a photographer, your most important marketing tool is your online photography portfolio. On your website or your blog, this is what’s going to showcase your work, and get you hired. Yet I see mistakes all the time. And I have a ton of questions like, “Why isn’t my site getting any traffic?” and “Why aren’t people contacting me online?” Here are 10 mistakes I see frequently – do you see yourself here?

1. Enter Page
Do you really need to divide up your site, and dedicate one whole page to making your visitors choose? If they type in your URL, they want to see your site. They want to start learning about you immediately, not have to decide if they want to visit your Flash site, Mobile site, Fast site, Slow site, Blog, Flickr portfolio, etc. Yes, you can weave things into your site, and have things on the side of your content that allows them to navigate elsewhere. But don’t make your first impression just a choice.

2. Photo Size
Have you ever gone to a photographer’s site, only to wait 30 seconds for it to load a huge file thousands of pixels in size? Boring. This is the web. You don’t need large files – the smaller the better for loading, and to protect you from clients downloading them to manipulate them. Stick to an image that is between 500-1000 pixels on the long edge, depending on how you are grouping them together. [Read more…]

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Where A New Photographer Should Put Their Photographs Online

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I had a great email sent to me the other day. I started out giving her a quick response to her question, and quickly decided this would also make a great post.

“I’m just starting out as a photographer. I want to start showcasing some of my work, but just don’t have the money yet for a site. Is it okay if I put my work on Flickr and Facebook and build my business that way?”

One of the great things about the Internet is you can access a ton of different tools – and most of them are free. But in the end, you really do get what you paid for.

I love Flickr and have a Flickr account. I love Facebook and am very active there as well. And along with many other social sites, I’m spread out all over the Internet, and love how well I can market my business with these free tools. But when it comes down to it, I use all of my free tools to drive traffic back to the one thing I can control – my own site.

With your own site, you can control your:

  • Content
  • Photographs
  • Sales messages
  • Contact information
  • Lead generation
  • List building

And your site is what gives you your professional image. It shows your stability – if you’re willing to spend a little time and money developing your own marketing image, you must be willing to grow your business here and into the future. [Read more…]

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What Are A Photographer’s Most Important Keywords?

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“I want to be number one under photography.”

Have you ever stated those words? I meet people all the time that say that or something similar.

Now let me ask you the next question. Why?

What will that do for you?

Let’s think about what a person is thinking when they head over to Google and type in “photography”. They may be looking for photography to hand on the walls of their new apartment. They may be in high school, thinking about a career in photography and looking for a college or art school. They may have just purchased a new camera, and are looking for tips on how to take better pictures.

Are any of these your clients?

Nope.

So why would you want to waste your time being number one under the keyword “photography”?

Now let’s think about what your client might truly be typing into Google.

Let’s say you are a portrait photographer in Omaha. And a potential client is trying to find you for a family portrait. They head over to Google and type:

“family portrait photographer in Omaha”

That’s where you want to be. Because that’s the place where if you are high in the rankings, you have the biggest potential of being found by this prospect.

What Are A Photographer’s Most Important Keywords

Now its time to use your online tools to get into that keyword and stay there. [Read more…]

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How To Use Google To Promote Your Photography Business

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Google is the number one site for traffic online today. Around 13 years old, Google has built up the company through a simple concept: give people what they want in the best way possible.

If you’ve ever really looked at Google, you know there are many ways to use it to help you build your business. And those ways keep growing as Google is trying harder to penetrate the local market. Whether you can help clients anywhere in the world, or need to build up a local market share, Google has a solution for you.

google-logo

Google AdWords
The quickest way to take advantage of what Google has to offer is by using Google AdWords. When you do a search, have you ever noticed the sponsored ads along the left side of the screen? Google AdWords allows you to be at the top of this list in a matter of minutes. The key here isn’t to think big; its about thinking small. If you choose to advertise under large words such as “wedding photography”, it will cost you a bundle of money. But if you choose words more discriminately, such as “Vail wedding photography” you can save money, and still come up under relevant terms people are actually searching for.
[Read more…]

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How To Use YouTube To Promote Your Photography Business

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When you see a site come on board that quickly makes its way to the top of the pack, has simply amazing statistics, and offers huge potential to find a few new clients, its hard to ignore. Chances are you’ve been over to YouTube at least once this week, and probably more if you’re anything like me. It’s a great place to learn something new, or to take a break and laugh for a minute of two. So the next natural question is, “How do you use YouTube to promote your photography business?”

Let’s start by considering these numbers:

  • Over 20 hours of video is uploaded every single minute to YouTube
  • Over 10.5 million hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every year (that’s 1,200 years worth of video)
  • More video was uploaded to YouTube in the last 2 months than if ABC, NBC and CBS had been airing new content 24/7/365 since 1948
  • ABC, NBC and CBS get 10 million unique visitors every month. MySpace, YouTube and Facebook get 250 million unique visitors every month

That’s a lot of video! And hopefully you’re also seeing it as a lot of opportunity.

The great thing about YouTube videos is you don’t have to be a professional videographer to get a great video. I keep my Flip Video and Sony Bloggie close by to always have access to a video camera. Or use a program like Camtasia to capture your screen, including your web cam.

Yesterday I mentioned in my article on using Flickr that “The secret lies in thinking of Flickr as an extension of your business.” The same holds true with YouTube. When setting up your YouTube channel, brand it just like your business. Create your profile based on your company information, and use your photo or your company logo to help with the branding.

Then use your YouTube channel to help build your business – again without being salesy or 100 percent advertising. Think instead of how to attract your clients, not how to give them a sales pitch.

Marketing
From my own experience, I know clients usually book for one of two reasons. They’ve either seen your work, your photography, and love what you do. Or they’ve seen you in action and love the way you work with your clients. So these are the best 2 areas to focus on with your videos.
[Read more…]

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How To Use Flickr To Promote Your Photography Business

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[So you’re wondering how to use the many online tools to market your business. This week I’ve decided to start a new How To series that does exactly that. We’ll take a look at many of the different online social sites –things you can do for little to no cost – and show you different ways to put them into your marketing mix.]

Flickr is one of the hottest online social tools that allows you to share your photographs. Flickr was started back in the beginning of 2004 by two game designers who wanted an easy way to share photos that featured their gaming project, and quickly blossomed into something much more. Yahoo purchased Flickr for $35 million in 2005, and the rest as they say is history.

How To Use Flickr To Promote Your Photography Business

So if you are a photographer, chances are you have used Flickr in some manner. You may have an account. You may have uploaded a few images. You may be active. But in the land of “free”, how can you use Flickr to attract clients to your photography business?

The secret lies in thinking of Flickr as an extension of your business. Its not just a casual site where you can put up a few images of your clients, share it with them, and allow them to send their images all over to friends and family – before they’ve paid you for your services. Instead, you have to look at Flickr as another sales tool – without treating it like a sales tool. After all, the worst thing you can do is get to salesy on any social networking platform.

Start With Your Flickr Account
How is your Flickr account set up? Is it based on a cute nickname (i.e. photogirl123)? Or is it based on your company name?

When you think of Flickr as an extension of your business, it’s easy to see how you should set up your account. Title it by your business, personal or website name – which ever makes the most sense depending on the way you market your business. Once your name is established, build your profile and your groups to support your branding and your business.
[Read more…]

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Why Landing Pages Are Important For Your Potential Customers

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I was on a deal of the day site today, seeing what the current offer was. I check out a bunch of them every week, and have found some really good deals.

Anyway, on one of the sites was a deal from a photographer. He was advertising a Trash The Dress session at a reduced rate – almost 70 percent off his normal session fee. Great deal – and with the coming wedding season, I would have assumed he would have had a number of takers. Yet when I entered the site, not one person had taken him up on his offer.

landing pages for photographers
image source

So I continued to read. And realized that he made one fatal error that potentially caused him a ton of sessions.

He doesn’t understand the importance of landing pages.
[Read more…]

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Create A Photo App for Your Studio

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In today’s world, its not enough to have the standard, boring marketing materials. You have to be on top of it all, find something new, and find a way to make your customers say WOW!

How about with your own Photo App?

ProPhotoApps will help you build your own custom branded app for iPhones and smartphone technology, and will help you be recognized as a leader within your current market.

ProPhotoApps

Right now ProPhotoApps is offering to build your own custom iPhone app for an introductory price of $249. Your app will feature:

  • MyDailyPic technology that allows you to share one new image every day with your app users
  • Your studio news
  • Let your app users book sessions right from their iPhone
  • An automatic integration with Facebook and Twitter

And all of it will be custom branded for your studio – your name, your logo, your colors.

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Building A Photography Blog: It’s More Than Just Pictures

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When someone mentions the word “photography blog” what do you think of?

Blogging has morphed over the past few years into an easy way to get content out to your prospects, and to have an easy way to connect up with people from anywhere in the world. But the one underlying problem I’m seeing with blogs is the lack of understanding. And usually it starts with the purpose. If you don’t understand its ultimate effect, it’s hard to use it properly.

1. Start with a purpose
Why are you online? Why are you even considering a photography blog? Hopefully you’ve said, “To market my business and bring in more clients”. If your goal is to reach out to new prospects and clients, you have to post in a way that attracts them. I was recently out on a site in which the owner blogged about many different things – but nothing directly related to attracting new business. If you’re a commercial photographer, you have to write about things of interest to your commercial clients. Same with weddings. Or portraits. You have to know why you are doing it, and carry it out every single day.

2. It’s not about you
Traditional marketing methods concentrate on selling what you do. Online marketing methods focus on giving a potential customer more information on what they are searching for, and put you as the expert to rely on based on that information. Marketing doesn’t work the same way it did even just a year ago. Times are changing, and so are the tools. A person doesn’t want to be sold to. Yet they love buying something they’ve fallen in love with. Customers are in control. They are educated, and they want the best value they can find. Value doesn’t equal cost – it equals getting what they desire. The key is using your blog to showcase the value, and making them fall in love with you over and over again until they take that step to use you as their photographer.

3. Share what you do with everyone
I worked with a photographer a while back who had a simple 4 page website, with very little on the site. [Read more…]

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SEO – A Primer For Photographers

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SEO (search engine optimization) has been the most talked about strategy throughout the last decade. But what is SEO? And how can you as a photographer use it to get top placement in the search engines?
SEO for photographers
To answer that question, let’s first look at what SEO is. According to Wikipedia, SEO is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via natural or un-pain search results. Typically, the higher a site appears in the search results, the more traffic it will receive from people searching through the search engines.

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”?
[Read more…]

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