Image via Wikipedia

Get Personal – Blog

It just seems that with the invention of social media, the market now calls for us to adapt in order to compete in the new environment. Of course, if you’re already a well established studio, your reputation already is doing the work for you. However, I believe that even the well established can build their business’ esteem by adapting to the new social media market. To those of us starting the uphill struggle of growing our audience, success necessitates the establishment of an active and sincere effort in the blogosphere, I believe.

Yes, in order to obtain some measure of success at marketing yourself you must engage the outside world more than you may be used to, or are comfortable with. This is a rule; independent of whether you eventually even use social media tools to advertise. Any entrepreneur must first get comfortable with the idea of networking, seeking mentorship, or guerilla marketing before social media is even adopted.

Once you’ve established your traditional marketing plan, I recommend also starting a self-hosted wordpress blog, like this one- or you can start one at wordpress.com.

A self-hosted wordpress blog differs from a “wordpress.com” blog in the amount of control you’re given in the look and function of your blogs’ elements. With self-hosted giving you not only the most control, but also the most responsibility for keeping your site secure and running smoothly.  Today, you can afford to have your entire web presence be hosetd by a FREE wordpress blog. Until just a few years ago, it was standard practice to have a website front page AND a separate blog where the more personal discussion could take place. It’s now common to have a photogs’ entire web presence substantiated by a WordPress powered blog.

I recommend WordPress for a few reasons:

1. Ease of setup – free templates are found all over the web, but you can also find very well-designed templates for your photography blog at a reasonable cost. ($60- $100) Considering what it used to cost to get a web designer to craft your site, this is peanuts.

2. Customizability – with the aid of plugins you can customize your themes colors, navigation,  and deliver useful content very easily.

3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)- Each post and each page takes advantage of unique seo capability. For instance, if you post about a wedding you shot at Jericho Terrace in Long Island and incorporate the name of the venue in the title of your post, people searching for wedding reception halls in that locality will encounter YOUR wedding shoot from that hall in google/yahoo/bing search results. This is a powerful strategy to pull in new clients at the same time they’re searching for a venue. In the traditional order of events, they’ll be looking for a photographer at the next stage of their wedding planning.

4. People will get to know as much, or as little about YOU, the photographer, by visiting your blog.  Opt to share more of who you are through the blog- as it stands to reason that due to the competition today,one of the only means you have to truly differentiate yourself from the hundreds of thousands of other photographers available in any given area, is to showcase yourself as a unique individual. This is a boon because so many wedding photographers emulate one another in the style, and in the look of their photographs that to your average clients’ eyes, your photography probably doesn’t appear any worse or better than jack and jill photography. However, where you can succeed is in your ability to sell a unique wedding experience for the client just by presenting more of  YOU before you’ve even met a client.

If you’re interested in starting a self-hosted blog you’ve got to consider with whom you’re going to purchase your web domain (www.yourbiz.com) from. I recommend Bluehost, where you can purchase your domain and hosting for $6.95 a month for unlimited storage hosting space, unlimited bandwidth, $75 Google Advertising credit and a host of other free tools you have access to, including free WordPress blog installation.

I used to host my site at Godaddy.com but I do NOT recommend going there if you want to have a wordpress blog. TOO slow.

Related articles on the web

• WordPress Blogs Make A Great Business Site (marketersdaily.com)