A few years ago, photography sites were often built in Flash and were complicated to update. Now, thanks to technology (and WordPress), you can create an awesome website without being a ‘techy’ person. That also means you can update your blog by yourself, without having to pay a designer and wait for them to do the job. But creating content means understanding how to create blog posts that appeal to your ideal client.
Why blog, anyway?
Your blog keeps you in continual conversation with past clients, future clients and professional partners. It showcases your latest work and your unique style. Blog visitors want to see the latest, newest, freshest thing. If they get hooked, they may check past blog posts to find a specific location or shoot. Regardless, blog visitors instinctively go to the most recent post.
It’s easy to put together a wedding gallery with “best of” images, but blog visitors are curious – they want to see more! So cater to their desire. They want to see a story unfold. This means sharing multiple images, with accompanying words that tell a story. I consider each of my blog posts a little art piece, like a song for a musician or an article for a journalist.
For me, blog posts have four purposes:
- A unique way of presenting your favorite images of the day – blog posts serve as a preview, before clients get all of their images. In fact, a blog post gets them excited about the final product. And when they’re excited, they’ll share the blog post with friends, family and vendors involved in the wedding. That means traffic driven to your site!
- Curating your favorite images of each wedding – so you won’t be overwhelmed when you need to gather your best images of the past year to design a studio book, create a promo piece, or send images to a magazine or wedding planner.
- Self-Promotion – you can use your blog post selection to submit weddings to sites like Style Me Pretty, JetFete, Junebug, etc.
- Getting Exposure – keeping in touch with your audience and potential clients, like a newsletter, but better!
The Do’s & Don’ts of Blogging:
- Do carefully choose images. Your blog post should tell the story of the day, so showcase only your best photos. Include photos of the location, details, portraits of the bride & groom and candid moments.
- Do keep your selection short and varied. Share 100 images or less. Too many images can cause confusion, and your best images might get lost in the crowd. In general, less is more.
- Do use combinations. For example, pair two vertical shots together. For example, I love to combine a detail with a portrait. I find it very aesthetically powerful. That’s why I take time to shoot details of what’s surrounding me – plants, floors, walls, staircases, basically anything with a unique color and/or texture. Those images alone might not be very interesting, but they add value to my story/blog post.
- Do include your logo and allow your audience to easily share your images via social channels like Facebook and Pinterest. Free publicity is a win-win.
- Don’t blog family portraits. If you’re a Pictage user (like us) you try to get great family portraits and images of guests, hoping they’ll buy prints. So, avoid blogging family portraits. Of course, you want people to share your images (with your logo or branding), but you don’t want to offer the digital version of a family portrait for free when they might buy it from you later.
- Don’t blog every wedding you shoot. Your blog is a window into your world. As wedding/portrait photographers, we value relationships with clients and the best shoots are always the ones with the best clients. By blogging only your best work, beautiful locations, and favorite couples, you will attract and book your ideal clients in the future.
Why Words Play a Key Role
Even though you are a photographer, you should always have text in your blog post for a few key reasons:
- It’s good for SEO – having keywords about wedding photography, your name and location of the wedding improves your ranking.
- It creates a relationship with your audience – your text doesn’t have to be long, but it should describe your experience, your clients and what you loved about this shoot. It makes your story personal and demonstrates there is a soul behind that body (camera).
- Crediting vendors – list vendors who worked with you on the wedding. Link to their websites. They may promote your blog post since it showcases their work. Once again, that’s free publicity!
When & How to Share Your Blog Post
Here’s how we create our blog posts.
- Select our favorite images in Adobe Lightroom 4
- Put images in order, especially vertical images that will be paired
- Export vertical images, assemble them in Photoshop AND add logo
- Export horizontal images and add logo in Photoshop
- Rearrange the order of our images in a folder
- Upload images to our blog
- Write text
- Preview blog post to make sure it flows well
- Email clients link to the blog post and tell them that all their images will be ready soon on Pictage, but meanwhile they should share this link with friends and family
- Post link on our Facebook page and tag everyone involved in the wedding (vendors, planners, bride, groom) to build a broad audience
- In our experience, the best time to post on Facebook is during weekday mornings
- Share the post again later in the day on your personal page to achieve better coverage
- Post the same images you used on your blog post to your Facebook fan page a few weeks later (most people will see the original blog post but they won’t actually click on the link to see your images.)
- By posting those images on your Facebook page you not only keep in contact with fans by adding content, but you also reach new people who might have missed your first link
We would love to hear how you build your blog strategy and create blog posts that appeal to your ideal client. Please share your comments and questions below. We’d love to hear your thoughts!
About Ana & Jerome
We’re a photography team based in Cabo San Lucas. Ana is originally from Tepic, Mexico and lived in Los Angeles for 10 years before moving back to her home country. With influence from both countries, she developed a passion for travel, people, foreign films and fashion. She even taught English before getting into the photography business! Jerome grew up in Paris, France where he also acquired the travel bug and began developing his own artistic talent through photography and gaining inspiration from museums and landscapes around the world. He too developed an appreciation for high fashion as a photographer for fashion shows in both Paris and Milan. Together we bring vast cultural perspectives that offer a unique vantage point of universally beautiful events. Our love for quality time with friends and family, exploring the world and surrounding ourselves with art plays a vital role in how we capture weddings.