Maintaining and operating a successful photography blog has easily become one of the most important, integral components of any wedding and portrait photography business these days. Here are a few tips on how to gain a large and enduring blog following audience which, in turn, will lead to increased client inquiries, more traffic, more blog and magazine publications and an enhanced social network.
Content is King
This is both true and not true. To be sure, the most important component of your blog is the CONTENT. If you do not provide your viewing audience with consistent, appealing and compelling content, then the visitors you do receive will visit once and never return. Your blog and/or website is the only first impression youll have with most of your eventual client base and viewing audience. If you cant win them over in the first 30 seconds upon them landing at your site, then you risk losing them forever.
Consistency
To be a serious blogger and acquire a serious blog following, you must commit to updating and posting new content to your blog frequently. Once a week would be the bare minimum and, depending on the time of year, 2 4 posts a week should be the goal.
Think about it. If you blog only intermittently, then your audience will check your blog only intermittently. And while its great when a follower subscribes to your RSS feed, most blog followers do it the old fashioned way. Further, infrequent blogging sends a message to your audience that blogging isnt a consistent, quality effort but rather a haphazard, occasional effort. Infrequent blogging seems lazy and can even make the potential follower or client feel that you have no new work to post and wonder why.
Look and Feel
In the photography world, it pays to have an eye-catching, beautiful and smartly designed blog. If you seek to further distinguish yourself from the pack, a fully custom blog may be just what youre looking for. Be sure to find a blog design that displays large images, allows users to easily leave comments, integrates Facebook and Twitter components and is optimized for maximum search optimization. One of the top custom photo blog developers out there is Flosites.com. They do industry leading work at a reasonable price. If youre serious about your brand, definitely spend the money to get yourself a beautiful custom blog.
Traffic
So youve got the content together, your blogging consistently and you have an exceptionally good looking blog. Site traffic not there? And why would it be? If you havent been blogging long or even if you have, how do you drive people out to your blog in the first place?
The answer is search engine optimization and social networking. SEO involves the optimization of your blogs content to better facilitate the likelihood of Google finding, indexing and ranking your blog for appropriate search phrases. If you dont have the time or wherewithal to do your own SEO, find a reputable white hat
SEO company to help you. Trust me, its worth it.
Social networking is now an essential part of a photo studios marketing mix. Create a Facebook icon on your blog and website to encourage people to join your network. Be sure to share your blog post on your Facebook and Twitter account. This will drive a lot of traffic to your blog (depending on how large your network is) and will create new fans and widen your blog audience.
Final Thoughts
At the end of the day, however, blogging should be fun. You must care about what your blogging about and sharing with the world. Blogging only to increase traffic or client inquiries will make for mediocre content, a limited following and fewer new customers. Your
photo blog is a place where you can share everything about YOU that you wish! Be passionate. Be opinionated. Be personal. Be what you want to be on your blog. Share what you wish. People love to live vicariously through others. People love to hear the stories of others lives. If you share your photos and your heart, it will be compelling and it will enhance your business. It will also enhance your life!
