Aside from social media, blogging is one of the most powerful (and free) marketing tools a photographer has at their disposal, but it is often a form of communication with your audience that can sometimes be neglected.
Blogging is a way to communicate your recent work to your potential clients, not just as a portfolio item, but as a way to tell the entire story of a particular shoot. This visual story telling informs your potential clients of the types of imagery they can expect from a photography session (whether that’s a wedding day, a bump-birth-newborn shoot or simply a family shoot) from start to finish. Your visual story telling ability highlights the value of your client’s investment and the promotes the quality of your images.
Not only does it help to shine a light on your (obvious) talent, but it also assists with your search engine optimisation (or SEO). Combined with some smart copy writing, your blog posts can gradually assist you to climb the ranks of Google in your local area and beyond!
As photographers, you already have a head start that most other bloggers don’t have….an abundance of content! You have a clear topic of conversation (simply what the session is), you have images all set to go….now you just have to figure out what to say. This can be the tricky part. As visual creators, words might not come naturally, but to make your blog posts work for your SEO, words matter.
Here’s a few tips to help you create a blog post for your photography business;
1. Your blog post title.
Try to be as consistent as you can when creating titles for your blog posts. Choose a format that works for you visually and easily informs your readers what your blog post is about. Use your client’s names to add some personalisation to your posts (and to help tell them apart), use the location of the shoot to assist with local area search and describe the type of session that it is. Some suggestions for this format might be;
- Lillie + Nathan | Brisbane Wedding Photography
- Clark Family – Sunshine Coast Family Photography
- Asher {Brisbane Newborn Shoot}
2. What to write in the actual post.
Ok, here’s the tricky part – writing some content that resonates with your readers and shows that you care and connect with your clients. Jasmine Star once suggested using what she referred to as 3 and 3 blogging method, and I think it’s a great place to start.
- Write about three things that were unique to the day, and craft a sentence around each idea. (Ex: It was a cloudy day and just before the wedding ceremony, it began to pour.)
- Write about three things unique to your clients, and craft a sentence around each idea. (Ex: John is the only person who can make Kate smile so wide her nose scrunches.)
Where possible and ensuring it is in context with what you are writing, try to again talk about the location of the shoot – if you don’t want to give away the location, keep it high level and just refer to the suburb or area. If you are shooting at a wedding location, try to add the name of the venues as much as you can. Also, be descriptive about the type of session it is – go into as much detail as you can – Ie. “Lillie and Nathan’s sunset engagement photography session at Cabarita Beach on the Tweed Coast was absolute perfection”. No need to be that cheesy, but you get the idea.
These days, Google favours articles that are written with the end reader in mind, so always try to authentically write about your sessions as if you were telling a story about your previous photography shoots to your next client.
3. Credit other vendors.
Not only is this just a nice thing to do to share the love with your fellow vendors, but it also assists your SEO. Create a list of these business names (or work them into your paragraphs) and add a hyperlink to their websites (ensuring that they open in a new window as you don’t want them to leave your website).
As your clients will typically book their locations and celebrants first, credit these vendors as a priority. The idea for this, is if your potential clients are searching for these venues or celebrants, your website may start to appear in these searches too. Bonus!
4. Prepare your images.
Image Size: As photographers this is hard – on one hand you want your images to be optimised to be as small a file size as possible so that you don’t slow down your website. On the other hand, as photographers you don’t want to risk the quality of the display of your images. You can experiment with this to come to a quality that you are happy with, but as a general guide: 1500 pixels on the longest side and 72dpi should do the job – try to reducing the quality output to be as little as you can get away with – perhaps 50-60% or 5-6 on a scale of 1-10? Here’s some (pretty dry if I’m being honest) information on image optimisation curtesy of Google – if that floats your boat: Click here.
Image Names: When exporting your images from Lightroom (or other app that you use to collate your images), give them a name that describes the type of shoot. Perhaps even the same name as the title of the post? Feel free to mix this up with synonyms of the session type too. For example if it’s a Newborn Shoot in Brisbane – call It Baby Photography Brisbane.
Alt Descriptions: After importing your images to your blogging platform or website – give each image an alt description. Try to mix this up on an image by image basis, but keep it similar to the image name and try to describe other elements of the photo. For example, if it’s a newborn shoot and a blue colour as been used try something like: Brisbane newborn photography blue colour theme.
TIP: Don’t overshare your images. Try to ensure your images each have something unique about the frame, moving from wide angles, to close ups, details, and back again. If you have a sequence of images, keep it short and sweet. The last thing you want to do is bore your reader by the time they get to the end of the post.
5. Add your Tags.
Just like social media hashtags, add some tags that relate to various elements of your shoot. Some examples might be: Beach, Brisbane, Wedding Photogapher, Wedding Photography, Australia. etc. This can help with search functions throughout your website.
6. Share your Blog Posts!
Now that you have gone to the effort of curating your blog posts – be sure to share! Sharing your blog post is a great way to talk about something new with your social media following and get them away from their apps on onto your website! Hello traffic!
Share them via a link in your Instagram stories, share it in your Instagram feed and add a link to that blog post in your bio (temporarily), share the featured image in your Facebook feed and add a link to the post in the first comment (this is so Facebook doesn’t penalise you and restrict your reach). Share it on every social media account you have…while it’s fresh and relevant.
