8 Simple Ways To Get People To Read What You Have To Say On Your Blog

Blogging. Nothing online can make you more successful than the words you write on your blog.

But if you’ve ever slaved away over a post, spent tons of time carefully crafting your post, and had NO ONE read it, it can be a bit disheartening.

Or you may have experienced the opposite. Instead of writing, you post a dozen photos or so from your latest shoot and release them to the world. Yet if you factor out your client and her family, ZERO have seen it.

What’s a photographer to do?

Should you really keep writing? Should you keep placing your images in posts? Or maybe you should tweet instead.

Writing can be difficult. And many photographers are visual by nature – they like to photograph, not write. And while your blog is the perfect place to include a variety of images, photographs alone will not bring you success.

The key is in the writing.

Yet the key might not be in writing more; the key may be in writing less.

The problem with many photographers is they don’t spend enough time thinking about the way they write their content.

Dig Deeper: It’s the Greatest, Easiest, Most Profitable Way To Talk About Your Photography … So Why Aren’t You Doing It?

Think for a moment about how you approach search. When you search for new information, you use keywords in Google and head to the first relevant link.

Then you head over and scan the information. If you find something relevant immediately, you scan a bit more. The more you find, the more you read.

Words matter. But so do graphics. You use it all to quickly determine what your next step is.

Ultimately, it comes down to interest. And there are 8 ways you can structure your posts to capture even more interest with every post you create.

1. Use short, compelling paragraphs

Your English teach from high school may not approve, but in the blogging world, keep it short. Every paragraph should be short and too the point with equally short sentences. Two or three lines per paragraph is a good thing in the blogging world, and will leave you with plenty of white space.

2. Plan your subheadings first

When you start your blog post, your title should direct your content. Subheadings should help you divide it into thoughts. I’m a fan of making them bolder and stand out as well – something you see here with these 8 subheadings. They also help direct your content and help you stay on track. [Read more…]

7 Things To Think About Before You Host Your Site

It’s time for a new website. And if you’re thinking of doing some of the work yourself, you’ll have to invest in a great hosting company. Before you make your selection, remember all hosting companies ARE NOT created equally. Yes they pull you in with those low, low prices and those great sounding guarantees. But if you get with the wrong company, you may wind up paying the price down the road.

Before you make your selection, keep these things in mind.

What are the contract terms?

A hosting company may wave great prices in front of you. Yet in some cases it may come with the condition of hosting with them for a set amount of years. Do you really want to be tied in with a company for an extended period of time? Especially if you are new to this company and have no idea how reliable they are and if you will truly be getting quality hosting?

Do they provide you with backup?

Yep, stuff happens all the time. Networks can be hacked, power failures can wipe out data, a fire could start, or someone may press a wrong button. Uh oh. There goes all of your work and data. A great hosting company thinks about those things too. They make sure your data is backed up at on and offsite locations. (That doesn’t mean you still shouldn’t do your own backups on a regular basis.)

Are they a reliable company?

Before you go with a hosting company, make sure they will be there for you. Do a Google search and look at ratings. A site that is planning for the future will be out there and have reviews not just on their site, but will be on other sites as well. While you will always be able to find some type of negativity about almost all companies, it is important to find one that has a positive future.

What details do they offer?

Every hosting plan comes with a variety of details. Make sure you look at the 3 big ones – bandwidth, memory and disk space. You may also want to check on other features for future growth, such as programming language support, email accounts, server operating systems, etc. If you will be working with WordPress, we have found cPanel is one of the easiest ways to get your site online – its highly worth it as its “push a button” technology. Also consider if you will be integrating other features in the future, such as shopping carts, credit card transactions, and other secure data. [Read more…]

It’s the Greatest, Easiest, Most Profitable Way To Talk About Your Photography … So Why Aren’t You Doing It?

You’re standing in the checkout line, with several people in front of you. You glance over and start reading the titles of the magazines in front of you. And for some reason they just pull you in.

Do you really care who had an alien baby, or how you can create 365 looks that will make you look more sexy? Maybe … Maybe not.

Yet there is just something about those titles that make you want to pick up the magazine and start reading.

It isn’t a coincidence that the titles are that tantalizing. In fact I’m willing to bet more time is spent on creating those titles and cover layouts then they do writing the stories theselves.

What sells is the title – the sizzle – not the meat of the story. Yes, the story itself has to be good and give you exactly what the title promises. Yet the story satisfies your hunger for whatever information you were promised. You won’t move forward and take action once you’ve read the story.

Because editors know the only way they will stay in business is to get you to buy the magazine, they spend their time on what matters most. The titles.

Now lets convert that over into what you potentially do every week. If you blog, every week you sit down and come up with topics to write about. Yet how much time do you spend coming up with your titles? I know for a lot of you, the answer is “just a few seconds” – and that may even be pushing it.

I see post titles every day that are worded something like this:

Randy and Laurel’s Engagement

Elizabeth’s First Birthday

Jason and Kim’s Wedding Day

Yet what does this do for your business?

When your clients come over and visit your blog, they are a captive audience. They love what you do and chances are they are looking for their own images. I’m sure in the above example Randy and Laurel are thrilled to see their engagement images online, and are passing around the URL to all of their friends and family.

Yet how many people will ultimately see that page? Randy and Laurel – that’s two. Family and friends – we’ll add in another 20. And other clients that may come to the site and decide to look through their images – we’ll add another 50 for long term exposure. That’s 72 in total.

Yet what do these 72 people have in common? Not one of them found any excitement and desire to click on the title from any other method outside of the fact they knew Randy and Laurel. Or had a vested interest in looking at the images.

If you saw Randy and Laurel’s Engagement in Google, would you really click on it?

And more importantly, would you ever look in Google for Randy and Laurel’s Engagement in the first place?

Which means if you are trying to attract new clients, people that have never heard of you yet might want to find you, you have to start thinking like a magazine in the checkout lane. You have to pay attention to your titles and give people the things they are looking for.

How do you know what they are looking for?

The easiest way is head over to Google and use their keyword tool to do a little research.

Let’s get started by typing in the word “photography” just to see what comes up.

When you type in photography, you’ll get many different results. This will show you what people typed directly into Google last month using the keyword you’ve selected. It isn’t a comprehensive list, but should be a great starting point. It will show you search terms as well as worldwide and local results.

From there, you can further refine what keywords you wish to look at. For this example, lets choose the term “wedding photography”.

When you add those words to the search function, your results will come up based on the key phrase instead of one word. In this case everything will be centered around the phrase “wedding photography”. At this point, we’ll further refine our search and look up the term “beach wedding photography”.

After letting the results come up using this phrase, you can see a wide variety of options.

If you are in California, or have the desire to photograph weddings in California, you’ll notice 720 searches were made for “long beach wedding photography” and 390 searches were made for “newport beach wedding photography”.

So if you were showcasing “Jason and Kim’s Wedding” as a blog post title, you may attract a few dozen family and friends to the blog post.

But if you created a blog post title “How Jason and Kim Had Fun With Their Newport Beach Wedding Photography”, do you think you could attract more attention from a variety of sources … including Google?

If you write hundreds of posts every year, you don’t have to (and shouldn’t) use the same titles over and over again just to attract Google’s attention. But if you think about it first and find a way to make it attractive to both Google and your readers, your posts could quickly help you build up the traffic to your site – and the profits to your business.

Why You Should Not Be SEOing Your Website

If you have an active blog for your photography business, chances are you’ve read all you can about SEO. If you’re going to write day after day to try and attract new clientele, you might as well make sure the search engines love it, right?

And while I agree SEO may still have a place in your overall business marketing model, if you’re doing it the “old school” way, you’re probably not having much success. Here’s why.

[If you’re just getting started with SEO, here’s a great place to start: Best SEO Practices and Tips For Your Photography Business.]

Traditional SEO

People that follow the “old school” method of SEO love to use keywords. They fill up their titles, meta tags, descriptions and content with as many keywords as they possibly can.

If you look at the title of their blog posts, they look something like this:

Wedding Photography California: Jim and Kelley – Engagement Photos at Laguna Beach

Or something along this line of thinking. Then if you hover over the photographs they’ve included in the post to see the meta tags, you’ll find something like this:

Jim and Kelley Engagement Photos in Laguna Beach California Wedding Photography Wedding Photographer John Smith with Smith Photography Inc Image 1

And of course as you read through the post, you’ll find those same keywords listed again and again. And again.

Its enough to make you back out as fast as you can. And its enough to make Google back away as well.

While this “old school” method of SEOing may have worked in the past, Google has been watching these sites for years. And they’ve decided that they have less value than a site that speaks directly to their audience. So they weight them differently, don’t give them top value, and throw the ranking down below those that are concentrating on quality rather than keyword stuffing.

What To Do Instead

Whether you’ve been doing this type of SEOing for months, or have recently read about it and were thinking of adopting this strategy this year, think again.

Instead, focus in on what you can do to make your content that much richer; that much more valuable to the people that want to read it.

Start with your domain name. If the word “photography” is already in your domain name, it will be a part of every page you create. And while you can use it as a keyword, its not necessary to over use it.

Create motivating titles. People like stories. So start the story with a great title.

A Fun Day At Laguna Beach Celebrating The Engagement of Jim and Kelley

Regulars to your blog will be instantly attracted to a title like that because it concentrates on what it is “engagement” and where “Laguna Beach”.

From there, you can really play it up.

How To Get Romantic: Jason and Crystal Showed Us How Its Done

and

Fun In The Sand: Did You Ever Think An Engagement Shoot Could Be Like This?

That’s where the interaction comes in. That’s where people come back to your blog again and again because they love what you have to say AND what you produce.

Tag your photos the right way. Then tag your photographs with an appropriate tag for the post. You don’t have to tag the photo with your name, the business name, unless it’s a photo of you. Instead, focus in on what it’s a photo of: [Read more…]

10 WordPress Themes Perfect For Today’s Photographer

Do your New Year’s goals include building a new website? If so, WordPress is the perfect option for you.

Dig Deeper: The 10 Advantages of WordPress For Designing Your Photography Site

And while WordPress offers a ton of options to help you customize and create content to reach out to your clientele, it’s also great at “plug and play” technology. Because WordPress is so popular, with 1 in 5 sites now being built on a WordPress platform, there are many themes you can purchase that give you instant access to a professional look and feel. And the best thing about it is all of these themes are priced under $100, so they are perfect no matter if you are a start up, or a seasoned professional. Check out these 10 WordPress themes perfect for photographers.

Photopassion

Photopassion is a WordPress gallery theme that offers  unique photo viewers, sliders and sidebar managers, a horizontal gallery slider, and 5 color variations.

Karma

Karma is a beautiful WordPress template that provides a ton of opportunity. It features a 3D slider that makes your photography pop, and comes with a ton of options for page layouts, color options and more.

[Read more…]

5 Tips To Make You Better At Blogging

I was talking with a friend this week who started asking me about my blogging habits. She was wondering how I create new content almost every day, and how I can stay with it month after month. Do I really have that much to say, or am I just filling up my site with content?

I’ve been to a lot of sites that simply fill up their blog with content, and really don’t care what they put in each post. They focus in on keywords, and add the content just to have something there.

I take a different approach. If I don’t have something to say, I skip a day.

Yep, there are always days when I wake up, search the ‘net, and can’t think of a thing to write about. Or I’m out of the office, traveling, or focusing on something else, and I simply don’t get to my writing for the day. That leads me to my first tip.

Tip #1 Make Your Content Valuable

I’ve been listening to a variety of training seminars over the past few weeks. And one of the teleseminars I listened to talked about a new approach to getting content in the system. Instead of choosing one niche and focusing on creating valuable content, his approach was to blast it out. Find dozens of niches, with hundreds of keywords. Create a little bit of content on each and throw it out there to see what sticks. Then choose those that have the most potential to focus in and create more valuable content.

It sounds like a great strategy. But what I can’t agree with is the cluttering up of sites with content that basically “sucks”. If something has my name on it, it has to be quality. Otherwise its not worth writing at all.

I suggest you take that same philosophy with what you do. With everything you write, everything you create, is it strong enough that you will be proud to have your name on it? If not, rethink it. If you don’t think you’ll be proud of the same content five years from now, don’t do it at all. [Read more…]

5 Blogging Mistakes That Could Cost You Your Business

Everyone is a blogger nowadays and with good reason. Because small business owners know the importance of being online, many look for the least expensive route to get there. And that often leads them into the blogging realm. It’s easy. It’s affordable. Why not?

Yet just because something is easy and affordable isn’t a reason to jump in headfirst and go full force unless you understand what you are doing and have a plan in place. Blogging, like any other marketing tool, has certain characteristics that make it a great tool. But if you don’t use it in the proper way, it can do more harm then good.

Here are the top blogging mistakes I see photographers make, and how you can avoid them.

Bad Writing

Some of us are writers. And some aren’t. While a blog needs to be personal in nature, and express your business style, you do need to be careful about what your message conveys. Are you writing complete thoughts? Do you have spelling and grammar errors? Are your posts interesting? Customers won’t come back if they can’t see beyond glaring errors that occur on a regular basis. Concentrate on writing great posts. And if you need help, hire a ghost blogger. [Read more…]

Who Really Owns Your Photos On Social Sites?

Like most people, you probably don’t think twice about it.

You head over to the newest social site, sign up for an account, check the “terms of service” box without really reading it, and begin posting. Content, photo videos – it all goes up without much thought as to the true impact.

But what rights do you have to your content, photos and videos after you put them on a social site? What rights do you have to it after the fact? And more importantly, what rights do they have?

Almost every photo-sharing site has some type of license agreement to your content. While the agreements change from site to site, what you are agreeing to can change significantly. Here’s an overview of 12 major photo-sharing sites:

But even after you sign up with an account and start using it, things can change. For instance, on June 1st, Twitter announced the company was partnering with Photobucket to make sharing photos easier. Which means if you have a Twitter account and post photographs using the new API, you’ll also be subscribing to Photobucket’s terms of services by default.

Therein lies the problem.

It’s fun to use social sites, and most of us don’t think twice about signing up for an account. In fact, in many cases the benefits far outweigh the detriments.  Who wouldn’t want the possibility of reaching out to millions of people that spend hours on a site every single month?

Yet problems do exist, and will continue to grow as we spend even more time online. Whether you are trying to avoid your high school senior using a photo posted on Facebook for other uses, or you are trying to gain compensation to a photo you tweeted on a monumental event, its important to think before you post.

3 Rules Of Advice For Photographers

Think Before You Post
I often tell people to think before they write up a quick post and place it into their newsfeed. Would you want your mom reading it? Your grandmother? Just a few seconds of contemplation can save you years of embarrassment – as Senator Weiner can now tell you.

The same applies to your photos. You may love the image you just captured. But before you tweet it and share it, what are the implications? What are your goals for the photograph? In some cases, putting the image on hold for a few hours or even days can save you in the future.

Where Will Your Compensation Come From?
Instead of thinking about it on the fly, sit down and come up with your own policies on posting photographs.

If you hope to be compensated for your work now or in the future, make sure you are fully covered before you post. Include it in a package price for your clients. Take the necessary steps to copyright it. Or use a watermark to protect the integrity of the image.

If you’re using it as promotion, post it to showcase what you do. Always make sure the image leads back to you, and you keep up to date on your profile. Also realize that as much protection as you use, there is always the possibility of your photos being reused without your permission and without your credit. It’s a new fact of the social atmosphere.

What Is Your Ultimate Goal?
What is your ultimate goal for posting a photograph? Are you using it to capture a new audience to your work? Are you using it to try and gain sales? Are you using it for marketing and exposure?

Know your goals ahead of time. It’s possible to use social successfully in a variety of ways. But your first task is to know how it will benefit you. Only then can you take the necessary steps to make sure you are protected.

Why Every Small Business Owner Must Now Be a Content Provider

This post is Day 14 of 30 Ways In 30 Days To Redesign Your Life With Photography. This series seeks to provide you with practical steps to get you from wherever you are today, to exactly where you want to be – this year! If your goal has always been to take your photography to a whole new level, hang on and start enjoying a new lifestyle you’ve always dreamed of.

I’m a huge fan of learning from the biggest names in the business. From celebrities, to business owners, to politicians, I’ve always felt if they had what it takes to make it to the top, they must have a tidbit or two of insight on how to get there. Even if you only pick up one important fact from each person, together it can add up to incredible advice.

So you’ll find a lot of biographies on my nightstand. And I love watching interviews on television and online. But something amazing has happened over the past few years.

If you watch or read about anyone from the early baby boomer generation and older, they usually provide a comment along the lines of “if I had to start again today, I’d never be who I am today. The competition is just too intense these days.”

I’ve thought a lot about that, because I have read or heard that from more than one person. Is there really that much more competition? Or is it just that times have changed, and the way we do business has changed?

Its still possible to make it to the top, you just have to do it in a different way.

Let’s take a look at someone like Elvis Presley. When he first started out, he created a record, and him and his agent took it to every radio station around trying to get airtime. They networked on a personal basis, drove from place to place trying to connect, and eventually it all paid off.

Now let’s look at someone like Justin Bieber. Instead of cutting a record, he records a video and places it on YouTube. Then he networks in much the same manner. He makes connections online, and communicates with everyone from a preteen fan to a Hollywood agent.

[Read more…]

I Have A Blog But No Photography Clients – Now What?

As a small business owner, you try everything to get the clients in. And if you’ve been around a while now, that probably means you’ve started using social media. So you blog, you tweet, you like, and you share. You spend more time doing that every day, and yet nothing is helping. How much more can you do?

It might not be what you’re doing. It might be what you are sharing. Just because you write doesn’t mean its considered valuable by your viewers. If it’s not new, funny, functional, or in some way makes us say “wow”, it won’t be shared, retweeted or viewed. You can’t create traditional 1.0 digital content in a 2.0 conversational world.

We are no longer passive consumers that sit around watching commercials and making decisions based on what a company tells us. We are well informed, and make decisions only after we do a significant amount of research.

Think about your last purchase. Did you jump in quickly, or did you do your research. Did you buy blindly, or did you rely on a friend for more information. Buying is much easier when you share the same beliefs as someone else, and you know others are buying what you are. Even though we like to be independent, we really want to be independent while gaining acceptance from our friends. It’s much easier to be happy about a new item when others value it too.

Because society is changing, so is the way we market to this society. We don’t watch television – we TiVo it to avoid the commercials. We may see ads a hundred times a day on everything from billboards to buses, yet when was the last time one influenced you?

We get our information online because that’s where we spend our time. And we don’t go searching for ads, we search for informative information that helps us make our decisions. We don’t just rely on friends we hand out with on Friday nights. We also rely on friends that we’ve never met, even if they are half way across the world.

Which means the content we put online is more important than ever. You can’t promote yourself, you have to inform people. Try putting up a pure sales pitch without providing anything that provides quality content and you are sure to fail.

So what makes us laugh and smile, and want to follow you? What should you blog, tweet and write about on all of your social sites?

[Read more…]