Two weeks ago, we covered the 4 Reasons Your Photography Business Needs A Blog. In this post, we will be detailing how to set up your professional photography business’s blog and the type of content you should be sharing.
Start with a strong title.
Whether choosing a book from a library shelf or an article from a page of search engine results, a title is an important factor in capturing one’s attention. There are tried-and-true templates for creating eye-catching titles–a few commonly-used ones are:
- How to ____________
- The Ultimate Guide to ____________
- What You Need to Know About ____________
- [#] Tips for ____________
The title should suggest to the reader that they will learn some essential information or be entertained if they choose to open the link and read. While using keywords in the title can help to attract viewers, resist the urge to cram unnecessary keywords into the title; contrary to common belief, this will not help more with search engine optimization (SEO) than using fewer, relevant keywords and it will make the title look cluttered and unappealing.
For an infographic with dozens of blog title templates, click here.
Cultivate valuable content.
As we repeated throughout the Social Media for Photographers Series, the key to creating shareable content and building audience loyalty is providing value to your readers. “Value” is subjective and will depend on your target audience, but as a photographer you can narrow that target to those in your area who might hire you. Consider what general topics they would be interested in and brainstorm from there!
You may want to highlight local vendors or events, feature recent shoots, or answer common questions your potential clients have. Guides on what to wear for photo shoots or lists of what questions to ask a photographer when interviewing will be valuable to your target client–one interested in booking a photo shoot!
Most blog readers do not take the time to read every word of a post; make it easy for your readers to scan and find the key points in your posts. Divide posts into major sections and separate the text into short paragraphs for easy reading.
Schedule your posts well in advance.
Determine how often you will post content to the blog. Try to be consistent; it is better to have one post per week for a long period than a post every day for a week followed by weeks of silence. Once per week is a great starting goal–if you can work more articles into your workflow, feel free!
Once you have decided your goal number of posts per week, mark on your calendar what topics you’ll be covering each week and schedule reminders to work on the content in advance. By writing these on your calendar, you’ll be able to appropriately time your topics with your promotions and with holidays and other big events.
If you have a slow season in your photography business, consider using this time to write as many blog posts as you can and schedule them to post at your selected times. Having posts written weeks before you need them will help if you find yourself unexpectedly busy and unable to write some weeks.
Utilize tools for SEO and analytics.
Blogging has been a popular format for quite some time, so there are plenty of tools available for SEO and 
analytics. If you are using WordPress for your blog, the All in One SEO Pack plugin is a good option. A quick Google search will bring up options for whatever blog platform you are using. Using keywords throughout your blog post and in SEO plugins will make your posts more searchable and increase traffic to your blog.
Google Analytics is an absolute necessity for any business blogger. Installing will allow you to track trends and make adjustments to your strategies as you grow your blog. Kissmetrics has compiled a great list of resources on using Google Analytics–click here to view.
We hope our top tips for blogging for professional photographers have been helpful! For additional guidance, check out Photography Concentrate’s post here. As always, we’d love to discuss the tips on social media–hop on over to our Facebook page to provide feedback!
