Maximize your photography business with Zenfolio’s blogging tool.
December 13th, 2022
As a photographer, you are usually trying to tell a story or share a moment in time through your images. You can also tell the stories behind your images through blogging, increasing your brand awareness and connecting with clients. Pairing photos with content is a powerful strategy to help grow your business and your digital footprint.
We’re thrilled to deliver our new blog feature to Zenfolio members (available with ProSuite and PortfolioPlus plans). Whether you’re a veteran blogger or you just started thinking you need one for your photography business, our block system makes it easy to build each post in a familiar and customizable way.
What is a blog and why do you need one?
With so many resources available online you have likely read a lot of blog posts. For photographers and other creative professionals, a blog is most often a kind of personal online journal. Visitors to a blog landing page will usually find a collection of posts, typically displayed in reverse chronological order so the most recent post appears first. The Zenfolio blog builder also allows you to choose a featured post to appear at the top of the page, which is especially important for high-value content you want visitors to read.
Blogs are an excellent advertising and marketing tool, often used to showcase images from recent shoots, educate your customers about your business, engage with them in an organic way, and keep past and prospective clients informed of your activities. A typical blog combines text, photos, and sometimes links to other pages on your website or external blogs and websites as part of a post.
Components of a successful blog.
Before you dive into creating your blog, there are a few things to keep in mind. Whether you specialize in portrait photography, fine art landscapes, or any other shoot type, blogging on a regular basis can benefit your business – if you do it correctly. We’ve gathered a few tips that will help you make the most of your blogs.
Present a clear concept.
You might be writing about a spectacular part of your last trip as a travel photographer, sharing favorite images from a recent wedding, or posting an update on a nest of baby birds you’ve been photographing for weeks. Whatever the subject, your readers – existing and potential clients – should know exactly what they will be reading about within the first few sentences. Share relevant details about your images that make sense for your shoot type and you as a photographer, but don’t go overboard.
Format your text for better readability.
Your writing might be equally as amazing as your photographs, but without the correct use of headers, paragraphs, and the occasional use of bolded text, readers might not make it past the first few lines. When writing a blog more than a couple paragraphs long, consider how you could break the text and images up into sections using header text.
For example, many photographers will write a blog in late December or early January sharing some of their best images made throughout the year. A blog like this could be broken up with headers and a little bit of text matching the photographs for each month, by location, by project, or even by shoot type – whatever works best for your images.
There are plenty of online tools that can help you refine your writing for better readability, such as Yoast or Readable.
Include a “call to action.”
A potential client reads your blog and you’ve successfully grabbed their interest – but what do they do next? This is where a call to action, or CTA, can help. The CTA can encourage readers to contact you, see more of your work, get a quote, or sign up for your email newsletter, to name a few. You can get really creative with how you want blogs to support your marketing strategy.
In a short blog post, the CTA could go at the end; in a longer post, you may want to have more than one CTA throughout the blog to help readers make an action even if they don’t make it to the end of your blog. This gives more of your visitors a chance to connect with you in your preferred way. Zenfolio blogs include button blocks both with and without text, giving you a clear and simple way to direct potential clients to contact you, learn more about a service you offer, or book a session.
Photography blog ideas.
Starting your first post can feel daunting but remember, there are times when “done is better than perfect.” Be yourself, make your information helpful to potential clients, and hit publish on that first post – but always spell check first! In case you’re suffering from writer’s block, here are some thought starters for creating your next blog:
- Your favorite equipment and gear for a certain type of shoot.
- The making of your latest amazing image.
- Year-end wrap-up of your favorite images.
- Answering client FAQs.
- Photography location ideas, or your favorite places to shoot.
- Photography tips.
- “Day in the life” or behind the scenes at a shoot.
- Dream photography sessions.
- Sneak peek after a recent shoot or client session.
If you’ve blogged before, you can also review your previous content to see if it could be refreshed and published with some updates. Start by assigning them to one of these categories, then include them in your monthly content planner:
- Relevant and needs a quick update.
- Relevant and should be rewritten or trimmed.
- Doesn’t make sense to update.
If you need a little extra help building your first blog and blog landing page so you can get started growing your audiences, you can find our support guide here, or watch our quick video tutorial.
