Some photographers and artists use a blog to show their work and life with the world. Other companies may show their latest projects or let their customers in on the personal side of their business. However if you are looking for a smart way to increase your client’s interaction, invite more new clients to your website, or boost your SEO, a blog is the perfect tool. Look at each blank page as a marketing opportunity, or a way to clear up some common issues your clients may be experiencing. In this blog entry I’ll explore a few tips on how to increase visitor interest in your blog.

Step 1: What to Blog About

The first step is to decide what your blog post should be about! It’s possibly the most time consuming step in this process. Luckily I have a few tips to help you make and keep a list of topics you want to blog about. 

First, think about what your clients want to know. Google can be a great tool, simply look up forums on your industry, industry related blogs, or think about questions your clients ask you often and use those to generate topics. Above all find forums, or other areas where potential clients, and other experts are active and let the industry generate its questions. Each question is a potential blog entry for you to show off your knowledge and prove why you are in the industry, and how you will solve your client’s questions. Even comments from your own blog entries can inspire new blog posts.

Lastly, be confident and share your biggest success and your biggest failures with your readers. You can share with people how you were successful, or your biggest challenges and what you learned from them. Clients and potential consumers enjoy hearing from someone who is willing to share details and aspects about their business. It lets them know what sort of business you are, and how you will treat new customers. 

Step 2: Create a Headline

The next step is to create a headline that works well, and entices a click to read more. You want to make sure with each post you are addressing your client’s questions, piquing their curiosity, or helping to direct your customers line of thinking about you or your brand. Some examples of this may be “What do I wear for a Fall portrait session?” or “What questions do you need to ask your next wedding photographer?” These types of headlines entice new users to click and read the blog article you’ve just wrote, as they can hear first hand your expertise and it answers questions they may have about hiring their next photographer. 

Step 3: Keep Your Readers Engaged

The third step involves writing the post and keeping your clients interested, engaged, and to make them take the next step toward interacting with your blog, website, or even better, contact you for a sale! This can include many factors that you will want to work into your posts for maximum effect.

Utilize great keywords in your post that are naturally phrased. A good example of this is a wedding photographer from Miami, Florida may write an article about a great location they recently shot at for a wedding. He may address this as one of his top 5 picks for the South Beach area because the Miami Beaches are great around sunset for bridal portraits. This is instant fodder for SEO. Content that updates frequently containing information that your website is already about. 

The next step is to get your clients interested in your website. Using the same example, the photographer may post one or two teaser photos of the wedding he shot, then link those photos to a gallery in his website of more wedding shots. This gets clients interested in the website, and possibly gets them a step closer to clicking “Contact Us” to request a consultation. Each post should try to link somewhere in your website that contains more information, or to your social media.  At the end of the post you can even ask a question. This photographer might say, “Leave a comment below and tell me about your experiences here, or if you have any questions about my services. I’d love to hear from you. Alternatively, you can contact me on my website.”  With a PhotoBiz Blog, you can easily link text to any page of your website. 

Step 4: Share Your Post

Then it is all about sharing your information. The more in depth posts you make, the more popular your blog will be. However starting fresh means you have to attract an audience and let your customer know you are there.

With our PhotoBiz Blog, we make this very easy and efficient. You can use our share icons in the settings area for each blog post and let people share on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and even email. The more helpful and informative your articles are, the more likely they will be shared. 

When it comes to sharing the post across your Facebook business page, or your Twitter account, a personal recommendation of mine is not to use services that automatically share your blog post, but to write a brief synopsis for each social media platform that fits the formula.  An example is that Twitter has a character limit and isn’t as interactive, meaning besides retweets, comments are harder to track as other people won’t see them. For Twitter, just share the link and headline or teaser tag. On Facebook, share your blog link, the headline and then ask your fans to leave a comment based on what the article is about. For example if your article is about that great location for a South Beach wedding, ask your Facebook fans where their favorite wedding location would be, and have they had a wedding there? This increases user interaction on your Facebook page, starts conversation, and may even lead to sales. 

What’s Next?

After this your blog should be a big hit! However there are a few things that you can do, especially through PhotoBiz to increase the ease of use for you and your clients. First, I recommend coming up with a brief list of tags for your posts. These can be tags like “Frequent Questions,” “Wedding Locations,” and “Expert Tips.” In each of these tags you will want to organize what you write about frequently to assist your clients with finding your blog entries. Remember that even for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) a site that is easy to navigate is more likely to do well, and clients will enjoy the experience more. 

A common frustration I hear with clients who write a blog, but don’t do it often is that it takes a lot of time. This is true, great content is a big part of your online marketing and should be considered a part of the job. Even if writing is not your forte, you are going to have a fresh outlook on your business. Who knows what better to tell your clients than a professional in the field? So once we understand that writing takes some time, schedule a chunk of time to write a few blog articles and then schedule them to release later through the week. With our PhotoBiz Blog you can simply type in the date you want the post to publish. Let’s say you spend Sunday evening writing three blog posts. Schedule one for Monday, the next one for Wednesday, and another for Friday. This way your blog is constantly churning out fresh information, while you are busy managing your business and doing what you do best!

Last, But Not Least

You’re done! You have a frequently updating blog, guests are interacting with your social media and with your website, you’ve even made a few friends in the industry by producing great articles. You are getting the hang of blogging. Why not take these skills elsewhere? Remember in step 1 where I said that a great source for blog articles was in industry forums and blogs? Well now you can offer to write articles for them, and link back to your website or your own blog in doing so. Please remember when doing guest writing for a forum or industry blog, that it should pertain to subject matter you deal with yourself. This provides relevant links to your website, attracts professionals and possible clients to your site, and your business can reap those benefits. Otherwise, search engines will tend to rank your website lower and clients who navigate to your site will leave quickly, which won’t boost your SEO or help you obtain new business. 

In closing, a PhotoBiz Blog is a great marketing tool and a content producer for your website. With the right direction, your blog will attract new clients, keep return visitors, help people to share your links and boost your search engine power! It’s an opportunity for marketing that you can’t afford to pass up. 

It has been said that there is only one place in the world where you can shop, work out, and visit a clown museum, and that’s at the Shops of Grand Avenue, the only major indoor shopping facility in the city of Milwaukee proper. The versatility of the shops inspired the bold new direction of PhotoBiz’s latest BizSite, Store, and Blog design. 

The “architecture” of the design blends strength with beauty, especially when vibrant colors are used. The menu bar is at the top of the design, with the page title (or in the Store design, page links) in a broad bar underneath it. If a navigation item has a drop down menu you will notice that each title has its own color-coordinated box. The social media icons are located in the lower left corner.

The prettiest part of Grand Avenue is the layered boxes surrounding the content boxes. We recommend using dark colors for these boxes with light colored backgrounds, and light colors in the boxes with dark backgrounds.

To continue the beautiful layered look you can see that each of the item boxes have a drop shadow of its own. Grand Avenue, as do all of our BizSite, Store, and Blog designs has a powerful text editor that is shown off in the typography on the homepage.

There are a couple of items that are specific to the Store design. First, all product prices are displayed in a box, which provides nice emphasis. Next the “View Cart” and “My Account” buttons are shown in a single box at the very top of the design as opposed to individual tabs as in other designs.

The design elements are carried over to the Blog design as well, with the layered blocks very nicely framing your posts.

Special thanks to Heather Evans Smith for sharing her images for the BizSite sample, to Monica Burby of Photoumbra for her images used for the Store sample, and to Walter Van Dusen for his images used in the Blog sample.

There are apps for so many different things, and now there is a free app to manage your PhotoBiz Store and Blog.

Once you download the app from the iTunes App Store or Android App Store, you can login and “update on the go.” The PhotoBiz ToGo app will allow you to check and edit your Store or Blog very similarly to how you use their respective Control Panels.

PhotoBiz ToGo Store Features

Nearly everything that has to do with Store orders is available to monitor and edit through the app. Check order statuses, review new orders, and update payments received. You can even send and receive email through the app so that you can always stay in touch with your customer.

That’s not all.

Search. Look up information on the go searching by order number, date, or customer name.

Review order details. Another really handy feature is the ability to review order details, including viewing full size images.

Saved to cart. You can review customer information and products.

Edit events. The Events section allows you to edit names, expiration dates, and access codes.

Coupons and campaigns. Review and edit discount codes and expiration dates for coupons. Monitor and edit campaigns.

PhotoBiz ToGo Blog Features

The second major area of the app is to manage your Blog. You can view a list of posts and update information. Plus, with the tap of a finger you can “view your blog” and it will open in Safari.

There is even more.

Edit blog posts. Change titles or authors.

Moderate comments. Update settings, choose to display or not display comments with a simple yes/no button.

Edit tags. Make changes on the go, and add more tags as inspiration hits.

This is just the beginning for the PhotoBiz ToGo mobile app. It will be expanded with additional capabilities over the coming year. We hope you enjoy PhotoBiz ToGo and that it adds to the convenience of managing your Stores and Blogs. As we continue to be the innovative leader in web solutions for the photography industry, we strive to provide you with the best solutions. 

Download the PhotoBiz ToGo App today from the iTunes App Store or Android App Store!

This year marks my second return to the BlogWorld/New Media Expo show in New York City! Held in the Jacob K. Javits Center, BlogWorld is a digital playground for social networking and blogging fans. The three day event left me with plenty of ideas to take back and share with my colleagues, as well as with you.

Blogging was emphasized throughout the event as an important, but over looked topic! As a photographer, you can really enhance your business and your “client experience” with a Blog. As we know, this experience starts with the first conversation with your client, all the way to the ordering process and friendship you build. Blogging is a key step you can add to this process, and if you already are blogging, hopefully I can share some new ideas!

• Competitive edge. Be different than the other photographers in your area who aren’t blogging, and let it be something special you offer your clients.
• Preview your work. Blogging sneak-peeks or full write ups of your clients session is a great way to build excitement. I think we can all agree, a more enthusiastic, passionate client is going to purchase more than one who is just satisfied with their experience with you.
• Creative outlet. Share fun projects you are working on, your thoughts, experiences, and feelings. It’s a great way for your potential clients to learn more about you.
• Enhance your SEO. A blog attached to your domain name (e.g., yourdomain.com/blog or blog.yourdomain.com) can provide great search engine optimization because it contains tons of keywords such as the market you are targeting (e.g., seniors, weddings, boudoir) and the location (e.g., city name, state, town).
• Content marketing. Blogging is content marketing tool and can help draw in clients that you know are looking for a photographer like yourself! A couple of examples. Are you a senior photographer? Write about the hottest clothing trends that are popular with in your area. Wedding photographer? Give five tips to brides so they can have the perfect wedding. Fun, informative articles like this really help draw traffic to your blog, which can ultimately lead to booking clients.
• Feature your clients. Look at your blog as a place to make your clients feel like a rock star featured on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine.

There are many Blog options out there, where do I start?

I may be biased, but I think the PhotoBiz Blog Sites are a great solution. It can be integrated with your PhotoBiz account, and as with all of our products is backed by our Passionate Support team. It is easy-to-use and customizable, simply put it’s a great way to Blog!

These are just a few of the fun things I took away from BlogWorld this year. If you are interested in social media and blogging, I would definitely recommend checking out this show! Now get out there and blog!

The Marquee Plus page provides you with a variety of options for customization.

In most cases a Marquee Plus page will be the first page of your site a visitor will see. Therefore, this page helps you establish a clear path for your visitors to take. Check out the following three ways you can use Marquee plus pages, and for more ideas watch Vance M.’s webinar “5 Ways to use Marquee Plus pages”

Banner Item
Create an eye-catching opening for your site with either a single image, or a slide show of rotating graphics. Banner items are a great way to set the tone for your store. Plus, by using our adjustable Focal Point tool, you can crop and adjust the center of your image on our control panel.

Text Content
In addition to welcoming people to your site with vibrant graphics, it is also important to describe who you are and what you do using text. Use the Text Content of the Marquee Plus page to include instructions to your clients or highlight what makes your brand different to a new customer. Your text content can also provide SEO benefits so make sure to pay close attention  to this section of your site!

List Items
A great way to direct traffic is by utilizing the List Items on your Marquee Plus page. No matter which layout you choose the List Items are great way to channel visitors to specific pages such as your products or an event. The faster a visitor can find the section of your site they are looking for the happier that visitor will be with their experience.

There are so many ways to use Marquee Plus pages, use the comments below to tell us how you have used them, and include a link to show us what it looks like.