Blogging has changed a LOT in the past 9 years. When we first started shooting Weddings and building our business it was a non-negotiable to have a blog. Blogs were the JAM. Everyone was blogging, and I also had a blogroll about a mile long that I was reading daily (anyone remember those?!).

Now… it’s a little different. I usually start my workdays in my inbox or on social media. I don’t have a blogroll anymore (and rarely find myself reading blogs at all).  It’s no longer a requirement to blog – it’s a choice that you get to make.

If you’re going to blog, make the most of it. The best way to do this is to be consistent about blogging. If you can’t be consistent or don’t want to be consistent, then don’t blog. It’s ok to make that choice, and a lot of people use social media to share stories and new work without blogging. Nothing kills your potential clients’ perception of you like going to a blog and seeing that the last thing you posted was 3, 6 or 12 months ago. Even if the reason you’re blogging is that you’re insanely busy and you have no time to blog, your potential clients assume that you’re not busy enough, you have nothing to show, or that you’re out of business. These are not messages that we want to be sending.

If you’re going to make blogging a part of your marketing strategy, here are our 5 top tips for making the most of it:

1. SEO Optimize: One of the amazing things about blogging is that blogs are the holy grail of SEO (way more so than portfolio sites) because of the ability to update content consistently, tag things well, and house old content. SEO optimizing posts can be really confusing (and the rules change pretty often). We try to make things easy for ourselves by using an SEO plugin for our blog (like YOAST SEO). These plugins can guide you as you’re writing blogpost to let you know in real time how SEO optimized your posts are. These plugins also give you specific to-do’s to help boost your SEO. It’s magic (and easy).
2.  Link Vendors: When you blog, include all of the amazing vendors who were a part of your event in your blogpost, and make sure to link to their websites. This is a good idea for a couple of different reasons: it builds vendor relationships and gives credit to the amazing artists who gave you beautiful things to photograph, and it puts relevant external links in your posts (which is great for SEO).
3. Stick to a Schedule: Using a blogging calendar to keep up with your blogging schedule is so helpful. It will make it easier for you to be consistent with your timing as well as see a wholistic view of the content you plan on creating. We use our iCal for our blogging calendar because I love having the ability to drag and drop my scheduled posts when something changes, but if printing off a calendar and hanging it on your wall is more your speed that totally works, too! The important thing is to have your blogging schedule where you can see it!
4. Write Helpful Posts: Helpful blog posts are things that give valuable education to your target market from the perspective of a helpful friend – posts like “Creating a stress free wedding timeline” or “10 tips for planning a destination wedding” are so helpful to your potential brides, and also incredible anchor posts for SEO. Pick topics that reflect your values and your expertise (we truly can’t say enough how much these will set you apart). Work 3-5 helpful blog posts into your blogging calendar each month, these help your clients to see you as the expert, provide useful information to your clients, and, again, they help increase your SEO. If you can think of 5 questions that you hear from your clients over and over again, you’ll have your first 5 Helpful Posts (What should we wear for an engagement shoot? Should we do a First Look? What’s the best time of day for portraits?).
5. Time Your Posts: One of the most effective ways to get the most leverage out of each shoot as possible is how you time your posts. Clients are most excited about a shoot RIGHT AFTER it happens. As time goes on, excitement wears off, so consider posting a sneak peek blogpost with 3-5 images a few days after a shoot, then the full blogpost a week after, and then try to repurpose a few of their images for a Helpful Blogpost.

 

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