Every photographer needs a blog to promote their photography business, interact with clients, get more clients and build a reputation. Learn how…

A few years back  every photographer was encouraged to have a website and showcase their work to get more clients, but as time passed we learned that technology advances and marketing practices have changed. As a result, every photographer should have a website, but more important than that, every photographer should have a blog. Why? well let me start by giving you guys a little online marketing lesson.

Google doesn’t like static websites. Static Photo websites are websites that do not change. This means that your website has 10 of your favorite photos and a contact page but it doesn’t change at all, there is no new information posted often. Your photography website might be very nice, photo slide shows created in flash, yes its very nice, but you probably won’t get a lot of organic visitors. Why? well,  Google likes new and fresh content and will put all those websites and blogs that have that continuous content before your static website on their search results.

Commit to Starting a Photography Blog

So committing to create a photography blog is the first thing you should do. Don’t be afraid, setting it up is the easy part… finding photography content is the hardest part of all. There are two ways you can go when creating your blog, you can get a free blog through word-press, blogger or any other free blog site. Or, you can host your own blog.  My preference is to host your own blog, with your own domain because the look of the photography blog will be branded with your business. The second option is not free but is the best way. Why? for two reasons, the first: Google likes hosted blogs better than free ones therefore giving you higher rank  which is a greater possibility to get found by your future clients or prospects as they are called. The second: it makes you look more professional in front of your photography clients as you have your own brand and with all the information and tips you are giving them on your blog you seem very knowledgeable giving them confidence and trusting you.

Don’t worry if you don’t know html or php code or how to actually craete the site, that’s why they invented web designers. You can try to do it yourself but is always good to have a web designer to help you when you get stuck!
What do I write about?

Once your blog is created you have to start thinking what you want to write about. For this, you have to put your business hat on. You want to give Google fresh photography content and you want to give your clients a reason to come back often for more photography tips and information. Photo tutorials, how-to’s and any advice blogs are all very good ideas to start.
You can also create contests or even you can teach them how to pose for better portrait photography; basically anything that is related to the photography industry is okay to write about.

Industry news are also a good way to add content. You can take some pictures and talk about it, how did you take the picture? why did you choose that shutter speed? where did you take it? all  that stuff that you know, share it with the world and clients will come.

I don’t see a lot of visitors, now what?

At the beginning you might get frustrated because you don’t have 45,000 visitors a day and 1 million subscribers a day. You have to be patient. At the beginning the only thing that you have to be worried about is creating content, lots and lots of content. Google will find you and visitors will start showing up, eventually some will stay if what they find is interesting to them.

A word of advice, don’t get frustrated if you don’t see a lot of comments, usually that takes a while too. there are other ways you can help your blog get more traffic. You can read about those tips in my SEO section.
Network and promotion are keys to success.

Once you have your photography blog created and created lots of content, then you are ready to start promoting it. Your new photo blog is your new portfolio, is your business card, so promote promote promote everywhere you go, clients will be able to see your work and get to know you better and give you their business because they can see what you are capable of doing.

What are you waiting for?Get on the internet boat and start a Photography blog to promote your photographs and get book more photography jobs!

How it works

The most common service that creates this is   Tinyurl.com Basically you copy and paste (or type) the URL you want shorten and it automatically creates a shorter URL which is basically a shortcut URL. (I could go into more technical detal on how this works but I don’t think we really need to or care how it gets done, as long as it gets done..right?) Have you created a shortcut on your desktop for a folder on your computer? well, basically this tiny URLs are the same thing. So what you do is you take that shortcut URL or tinyURL that was created and copy and paste it to your twitter.

Twitter is a relatively new web 2.0 site that is starting to gain a lot of
popularity. That means that a lot of people have heard of it but it is

also quite common to run into people who haven’t heard of it.. yet.
Twitter.com is this social site that encourages users to post often
about what they are currently doing.

A lot of people are using it to improve their marketing reach, by being
an active twitterer they gain followers who are interested in what they
got going on. This means people being exposed to their updates on a
regular basis. For example, if you have hundreds of followers in
Twitter and you decide to post an affiliate link, that means that
hundreds of people have instantly been exposed to your offer. In this
article I will discuss ways to maximize Twitter for your marketing, and
also a big mistake to be aware of.

In order to have a fan base per say of followers in Twitter you must be
able to keep their interest in you and what you are doing now. “What
are you doing?” is the whole foundation of what Twitter is about in the
first place. Make sure to post daily if not several times throughout
the day updates about what you are doing. The magical thing behind this
is that many of your contacts will be able to feel like they know you
so much better, will trust you more, and feel much more comfortable
about working with you. On the other hand, when you follow others you
can learn about them and their possible needs.

The big mistake to watch out for is only posting affiliate links or
offers on your Twitter page. This looks like Spam and many people will
see you as just abusing Twitter for your own personal gain. Think of it
this way, if you would not want to invite your friends or family to
keep up with you via Twitter then you are going about it all wrong. As
with anything you send out or provide, ninety percent should be content
and ten percent (at most) advertising. So this concept is quite
simple… constantly post throughout the day what you are doing.. it is
usually very simple and only takes a few seconds to post! Secondly, if
you write articles or provide content online,
provide a link for those in your Twitter posts. You may post many
things within one day, but the last thing you post for the day is
usually the most important because it will be there the longest. This
means that your last post for the day should very well contain a link
that you want your followers to see before your start Twittering again
the next day!

Another part of Twitter is contributing. As with any social site it
should be a give and take relationship. Notice that give comes first…
the more you give the more people will want to work with you and the
more attention you will receive. Make sure to read and follow other
users in Twitter. If you read something interesting or helpful then
make sure to reply and say so, or even put a link for it on your
Twitter so that you are directing others to more quality content. This
can also be as simple as connecting with other users, if they know you
are reading their Twitter page they will be much more likely to check
out what you have going on too.

To get started in Twitter you should first invite contacts who aren’t
using Twitter and also find contacts who are already using Twitter so
that you can start following them and also start getting people to
follow you. Twitter has a nice invite and find feature that makes this
incredibly easy. To grow your reach even more you can start following
people who follow or are followed by the people who follow you.. or
that you follow. You might need to read that sentence again.. but
basically you can find other users to connect with that are already
connected to other users.

Now for a big tip. If you really want to maximize the potential with
Twitter, you should make sure to take advantage of any plug-ins or
sites that support Twitter. Here are three, but I’m sure there will be
many more in the future if not already. Squidoo allows you to input
your Twitter account info into your Squidoo account and then it can
automatically post updates to your Twitter account when you create or
update Squidoo lenses. Facebook has an application
called Twitter, it automatically updates your Facebook status when you
make a Twitter post. The other tool is a free WordPress plug-in called
TweetMyBlog that allows you to create a two-way connection from your blogs to Twitter. TweetMyBlog allows you to use a weidget
on your WordPress blogs that will display your current Twitter feed..
that way all visitors to your blog can look at the widget and see a
running feed of your latest Twitter posts. If they click on that they
will be brought to your Twitter page. In addition, when you make a new
post to your blog, TweetMyBlog will automatically make a post to your
Twitter page with a link to your latest blog post. Imagine the extra
exposure you can receive by using these tools that help people see more
of what you are doing.

Lastly, have fun! Twitter is a social site… so interact and enjoy!