Why You Need To Be Blogging For Your Photography Biz

This post is part of the series, The Ultimate Guide To Being A Wedding Photographer — advice for running a successful wedding photography biz. Click here to view a list of all the posts in this series.

I’ve talked a bit before about various marketing strategies for your photography business. (Also in this post, with 19 unique marketing ideas!). But I honestly believe that one of the absolute best things you can be doing for your business is blogging. And Blogging regularly.

It’s free marketing.

It only costs your time. But I think that’s an investment every creative business owner needs to make. And here’s why:

You Don’t Own Your Social Media Followers

Nope. The social media platform does.

Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t use social media as a part of your overall marketing strategy. But you definitely shouldn’t be putting all of your marketing “eggs” in that one “basket.”

Just imagine you spend time… like lots of time, and maybe even money, growing a big following on your favorite social media platform (yay!). And you’re getting a bunch of inquiries and bookings from that platform (yay, yay, yay!!!).

But, then things start to change… your posts are seen by less and less people. Comments, likes, and inquiries drop off. And you find out that your favorite social media platform has changed their algorithm, and now you need to pay for your huge following (which you worked so hard to build) to even see your posts!

Oh, wait… that’s already happened, hasn’t it? Facebook did this several years ago (and as far as I’m concerned Facebook business pages are now basically worthless). And more recently, Instagram (which is owned by Facebook) is doing the same thing.

More than than that, a social media platform could just disappear overnight. They’re businesses, and they could go out of business. That platform that you’ve used to build your business on, doesn’t owe you anything. 

Your Blog = Your Brand

All that time and energy spent on social media, would be much better spent on creating content for your own blog.

You own your blog and your website. So it should be flawlessly designed to communicate your brand.

Unlike social media, if someone lands on your blog, they are only going to see YOUR brand. There aren’t the distractions of other brands or ads, like on Facebook or Instagram.

They are there to see you.

And this is a magical thing. With their uninterrupted attention, you can start to foster know/like/trust with your website and blog visitors.

What scares me, is that I know of photographers, like crazy talented photographers, who don’t even have their own website or blog! They rely entirely on one social media platform, for not only social media, but also all client interaction.

It’s dangerous. And not a sustainable business model.

They’ve built their brand on someone else’s brand (the social media platform’s)… and it can all disappear in an instant.

Thanks to the “algorithms” it has.

Search Engine Optimization

I’ve already talked about how blogging and SEO go hand-in-hand, in this post about marketing for your photography biz. But it’s so important that I definitely think it’s worth touching on again.

SEO is Search Engine Optimization — or how high (if at all) your website shows up in search engines like Google.

Search engines “crawl” the web looking for the best websites in response to a user’s search.

So if I’m a bride I might type in “wedding photographers in Colorado Springs.” Google is going to provide me a (long) list of websites that best match those search terms — in order from most relevant to least.

If you’re blogging regularly about wedding photography and mentioning Colorado Springs and other relevant terms in your posts, your website/blog will rank better. And I, your potential bride, am more likely to see it.

Having a blog, that you post relevant content to, on a regular basis, can dramatically boost your SEO.

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Okay, so now you’re starting to see why having a blog is so important for your photography or creative biz. But how do you successfully use it as a marketing tool for your biz?? I’m going to tell you all about that tomorrow! So check back.

And I’d love to know, do you already have a blog for your business? Do you blog regularly? Tell me about your experience with blogging, in a comment below!