Marketing Tips for Photographers
The second in a blog series full of digital marketing tips for creative industry professionals
Two weeks ago we kicked off our digital marketing series for creative industry professionals with tips for Interior Designers. In our second post in this series we come armed with digital marketing ideas and tools that photographers can use to win new clients and improve their overall online presence.
This blog post was originally posted on the Digitise This blog here >
Your website
Do you have a slick website that showcases your best work beautifully? If not – make this a priority. Potential clients will want to see examples of your work before they hire you and if they can’t, they’ll go elsewhere. A beautiful website doesn’t have to mean big money either. There are lots of excellent platforms that are perfect for photographers in need of an online portfolio or website. Many of them are free. Try:
Behance
Dunked
Photoshelter
Zenfolio
Portfoliobox
Wix
Moonfruit
Nail your niche
It’s much easier to find new projects if you build a reputation for expertise in a particular area; be it weddings, food or cars. While you probably know what your niche is, you may not be making it work to your advantage. Are you writing about topics specifically related to your photography specialism? Do you monitor your search presence for related key phrases? If you serve up relevant, quality content, the search engines will send relevant, quality traffic your way.
Top tip: Blog once a week about something dear to the hearts of your target audience. Perhaps you are a wedding photographer and a new venue has opened up in your area. Get a showround and feature images of it on your website to draw people in.
There has been a lot of buzz on the internet over the last few months about how content with imagery drives significantly more engagement. This is obviously excellent news for photographers. While most business owners are faced with trawling the internet for free, generic and sometimes downright naff photography, you have a rich catalogue to choose from.
Social media
Photographers are blessed with a wealth of great visual content to enrich their chosen social media channels. Google+, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are all excellent options to promote your work and all that great blog content you are creating!
Try to focus on one or two channels at first and invest time and effort in building your follower base on those. Setting up shop on every social channel you can think of will be counter-productive if you don’t have the time to make every single one work. And who does?
Share your skills
Consider running free, informal workshops to demonstrate your expertise. By building your profile as a thought leader, you are much more likely to be approached by journalists and PR folk.
One way to demonstrate your expertise and industry knowledge is to run photography workshops for beginners, either in the form of an online webinar or in person. This may seem counter intuitive as you are sharing some of your knowledge with others but short taster sessions are far less likely to create competitors than they are to build your contact base and earn you lucrative referrals as a result.
Use a third party like Eventbrite for free professional online ticketing and event promotion on social media.
These are just some of the easy ways you can promote your work online and build your brand profile. If you need any help with any of the above suggestions or would like more information on how to grow your photography business, get in touch with us to find out how we can help!