Blogging for Photographers can make a WORLD of difference!

I talk a lot about having to wear a ton of hats in your photography business, because… it’s just a fact. Unless you’re in a place where you can do a ton of outsourcing, and bring in team members to help you manage all of the admin, and the social posting, and the EXTRA stuff you have to do in the business-y realm, it’s gotta be you. And that’s HARD.

So it can be even harder to decide where you should be putting your time when it comes to tasks that aren’t pointing your camera at clients. Social media? Your website? Search Engine Optimization? In an ideal world, all of those things would be happening, obviously. And they’d be happening on a schedule, that was consistent, so that they could all grow. But we don’t live in an ideal world, we live in one where we’ve gotta balance what’s going to make the most difference in our businesses, with the limited time we’ve got!

Do what moves the needle!

At the end of the day, you have to do what moves the needle. And one of the things that moves the needle in my business? That I highly recommend you spend some time on? Blogging.

I’m sure you’ve heard this a million times, and I can literally see you already rolling your eyes a little bit and sighing. And I get that!! Blogging is time consuming, it’s not always straightforward, and it feels like a massive time-suck that shows super slow results. And those are fair critiques! I mean, I get it. Like I said, limited time. So why put that limited time into something that feels like it’s not doing anything??

Here’s the thing. If you’ve tried blogging, and it’s not helped you grow your business, there’s probably a super good reason that it didn’t help. And those kinds of problems are totally diagnosable! We’re going to get into even more depth about all of the best practices you can follow in your own blog posts another time, but first… we have to get a little baseline for what your blogs should be DOING, and how they do them. Consider this a crash course on the purpose of blogging – blogging 101, basically!

Blogging is Search Engine Optimization Gold

I already mentioned this, but blogging is great for SEO. There are obviously steps you can take on your primary webpages to make sure that they’re optimized, but that work can really only take you so far. And once you’ve gotten there… the next step is writing more content, and creating a magical web of information on your website for Google (and other search engines) to crawl.

The more search engines know about your business and what you’re AMAZING at, the more they’re going to show your pages in the results of searches. Now, that being said… that doesn’t mean writing a couple of sentences and then sharing a client gallery and calling it a day. (I can HEAR you rolling your eyes again, but hear me out!!)

When I say that blogging will help with your SEO, I mean actually sitting down and writing a REAL blog post, between 800 and 1200 words. One that you can actually put keywords into naturally because it’s long enough that they won’t feel stuffed in every two words. Obviously you’ll also want to post images on your blog, because you’re a photographer. That’s how this works. But your blog posts can’t be isolated to images with a couple of sentences in there, because that’s not going to give Google enough information about the post for it to do real work for you.

If writing 800 words for a post sounds like a lot… I understand. But I want you to think about all of the things you know about what you do, and all of the questions you get from clients. Because you know how to answer those questions, and you know a TON about photography as an art. So if it feels like 800 words is too many, give yourself the goal of 500, pick a question you get asked by clients (like “Do I need to bring props to my newborn session?” or “When should I book Maternity photography?”) and give yourself a couple of sub-points. Then… fill them in with paragraphs, in your own voice.

I’d bet before you even realize you’ve passed the 500 word mark, you’ll have 800 or more!! Because you DO know things. And your future clients want to KNOW those things. (P.S. We’re actually at about the 800 word mark in this post right now! And I bet it didn’t even feel long to read.)

Your clients get to see more of your work

You should be blogging for more than just your SEO though, because it definitely does other things for your business along the way. (Which is one of the reasons it’s a task you should be adding into your list – it’s a two-birds-one-stone situation, and those are the BEST!) We both know that you can only put so many images in the scroll-through galleries on your portfolio pages. Or rather, you SHOULD only put so many images there.

They should be the creme-de-la-creme, the best most favorite pictures you have of clients from your archives. But on your blog? You can share WAY MORE. As many as you want! If you want to do some of those posts where you’re sharing an entire client gallery, as long as you’re pairing it with enough text, go right ahead! If you want to mix and match different client sessions into a post about a topic related to that session type… do it!

No matter HOW you put images into blog posts, as long as you ARE putting them in there, your future clients are going to get even more exposure to your work, and that’s a great thing.

Your clients get to know more about YOU

I could talk about the benefits of blogging for your photography business for ages, but the last thing we’re going to discuss today is your personality. If you’ve created a website for your business, it’s the digital storefront for your brand. It’s where your clients can go to learn more about what to expect from working with you. That’s why mine is chaotic and fun – because… so am I!

And your blog content ALSO helps to make sure that your clients know what to expect from you. They can get to know more about your process, you can answer their questions… and they can get to know your tone. You don’t have to make every post about your business, either! If you want to, as long as the content is related to what you stand for… you can include content about your life, too. For example, I’m a Mom, and I talk about that here, because it’s important to me, and also important to how (and why!) I became a photographer. And BEING a Mom helps me choose how I do certain things in sessions.

(P.S. If you’re also looking to change the game for your client guides, check out my Etsy shop!) 

So… Why should you blog as a photographer?

Lots of reasons!! Not only is your blog an opportunity that helps clients find you via SEO, and see more of your pictures because they’re included in the posts, but it helps them get to know the real you, too. And at the end of the day, when clients are hiring a photographer, they’re purchasing pictures, yeah. But they’re also buying an experience. They’re investing in something that’s going to be on their walls for years, and a memory they’ll have forever. It makes sense that they’d want to get to know you a little bit first! And your blog is a great place to make that happen.

P.S. Wanna learn more about my mentorship options?