4 Types Of Posts You Should Be Writing For Your Photography Blog

“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.

4 Types Of Posts You Should Be Writing For Your Photography Blog

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?

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…]

How You Can Grow Your Pinterest Following By Writing

Pinterest – isn’t that all about images? How can you grow it with writing?

In every presence you have online, its always about the copy. Words play an integral part of how well you do within the site, how much traction you gain through your followers, and how well you rank in the search engines.

With Pinterest, its easy to forget that. After all, you probably spend the majority of your time looking at photographs. Copy – really? There’s copy there?

Yes. Each board has its own name and description. And by using descriptive works from your industry for both the names and descriptions, it will help people find you when they perform searches both on Pinterest and on Google. And because both Twitter and Facebook have a built-in share feature, your keywords matter in those sites as well.

Keywords on Pinterest

Keywords are extremely important when building up your Pinterest profile. You can use words to categorize your boards and to create your posts.

When a viewer heads to Pinterest and decides to look for something, they use the search function in a similar manner to search engines.

When they receive their results, Pinterest pulls based on keywords and relevancy. It pays to know what your prospects are thinking and what to post to make sure they find it.

Test Your Stuff

While building your boards, nothing says you can only post an item once. If you have multiple photographs on your blog showcasing a recent boudoir shoot for a bride to be, use several of the images – and change up the boards and the keywords you use to describe them.

Just like with every other marketing tool and campaign you’ve created, things change. What works today may not work tomorrow. Headlines may attract attention written in certain ways, while other copy may have zero impact. Remember, Pinterest is one big test market. Find what works and try it again.

Work Your Comments

Comments are almost as important as pin descriptions.

Even if you don’t repin and add your own content, adding descriptive words in the comment sections can bring in traffic, increase followers and add more likes and shares to your count. In the social world, interaction is everything.

The Length Of The Post

With Pinterest, its easy to add a word or two and send it on its way. Yet if you take the time to write up a long and meaningful post, it can get noticed. The eye instantly moves to something that stands out from the ordinary. We have to read it.

And when you read it, you’re more than likely to pass it along.

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.

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…]

How Much Power Your Words Really Have

Pictures or Images?

Proofs or Originals?

Come in for your shoot. or Come in for an experience.

The way you communicate can have a major impact on the way you do business. In fact, it can mean the difference between an average business and one of the top businesses in the world.

Have any doubts? Watch this video.

Just by changing a few simple words, you can say the same thing in a much more appealing way.

Start by looking at your current marketing materials. Your brochures. Your sales presentation. Even your voice mail message. What do you say to your potential clients?

Now start analyzing each item. How can you change what you say and make it more appealing?

Lets look at an example.

Maybe you leave a quick note on your voice mail, telling people to visit your website to take a look at the pictures in your gallery.

The average consumer takes pictures. Pictures imply a pile of quickie images that you take on a point and shoot, develop at the local big box store, and throw into the drawer when you are finished.

What could you say instead?

Instead of talking about pictures, why not talk about your images? Instead of talking about your proofs, what about the originals?

By changing one word here and there, your message can be taken up to a whole new level. Yes, you may still be shooting, but by creating an experience for your clients, your customers will see you in a whole new way.

A little more elegant. A little more of a “wow” for the caller. And a little more value in what you do.