I’m so excited to share this post about blogging for wedding photographers with you!
The key to blogging is to think about blogging as part of your workflow, the same as delivering photos to your clients is.
So for years, what I would do is I would have a season full of weddings or a season full of a lot of shoots or engagement sessions and then in the off season, I would think about blogging and updating my portfolio, which would mean a lot of the time I’d have to go back into Lightroom catalogs, back into editing, back into exporting, and all of that. It was always a mountain that kept getting bigger for off season and it was never a part of my workflow… until I made it part of my workflow.
So I really think the key to blogging and keeping your blog healthy in a way and up to date, is really in making it part of your fluid workflow in the same way that you that delivering photos to your clients is a must have in your work.
So this is my Excel or Google sheet that I use to stay organized.
So after each, or after each wedding, everything is populated into this sheet. This is a live running thing of what’s going on in my business.
So I just wanted to show you: backing up, culling the photos, sending them to the editor, editing them, uploading them, delivering them and I have blogging as part of that to-do list for each couple.
So it’s not something that piles up later. It’s something that this wedding or engagement session is not complete wit complete until I have reached the end, which is delivered the photos to vendors and the blog post has been scheduled. So if you do it like this, nothing piles up for off season and there isn’t really ever an off season where you’re doing this catch up work. Instead, there’s an off season where you’re relaxing, you’re on the couch and watching TV.
One thing to also note is that especially with blogging, it takes time to catch up to the SEO traffic.
How to Determine WHAT To Blog
Blogging for photographers is a little bit different than bogging in general and especially for wedding photographers. There is so much to think about when it comes to your website and getting your work in front of your potential clients, and I have put together three questions I ask myself to try to simplify the process of deciding what to blog.
So I think a lot of what stops us from blogging so much is not that we don’t know how to blog but what we don’t know what to blog.
I battled with this kind of concept throughout growing my photography business, and it’s really the question of: what do you showcase in your business?
And if you dive into the education field, a lot of people will say, “only showcase what you want to shoot” or “don’t share everything that you photograph” or things like that. And it’s really an important concept to understand and to decide for yourself and your business. There are three questions I found in my business that I ask myself to have helped me:
- Is this something I would like to photograph in five years?
If you got an inquiry for this wedding in 5 years, would it be something you would like to shoot?
If you don’t know the answer to that question, you probably need to have a long-term plan for your business and a long-term goal.
And if you are stuck on creating long term goals and/or crafting a vision for the kinds of weddings you want to photograph, you probably need to second shoot a little bit more and figure out where it is do you wanna go with your business. You don’t get anywhere without a map to get there, right?
What kind of weddings have you shot that you really enjoy shooting? What kind of clientele? What kind of details, you know, what, what does that look like? Creating Pinterest boards, vision boards, and other things help too.
In previous years in my business, I was being very selective about what I was blogging and showcasing. Whereas now most of my work is in a place where most of it is what I wanna be shooting, which is something that happens when you start being selective.
2. Is it better than my last wedding from a technical standpoint?
And what I mean by that is as photographers, we are always growing our skillsets. Every single wedding, we’re trying to do something a little bit better than the last wedding. Ask yourself this question: is this wedding technically an advancement from other weddings or at the same level?
As photographers, we’re always growing, we’re always trying things. Um, try and, you know, make sure that everything you share is on a technical standpoint and uplevel from the previous weddings that you shared.
3. Is it a complete showcase of a wedding?
I like to think of a blog as the place you’re sending a new clients, they found you on Google, they don’t know anything about you. They’re going to their blog. They’re likely found your website through your blog post. So what you’re showing all those photos, does it show start to finish what you do? Example: does it have details, bridal party photos, reception photos? Or was there a big part of the wedding coverage that is missing?
If they are not full and cohesive weddings, use them on Instagram in pieces, not in your blog.
Watch the video version of this post here:
If you enjoyed this blog post or Youtube video, you might also enjoy my email templates for wedding photographers, you can get here:
as well as other freebies here on the site.
And if no one had told you lately, I believe in you and your business.
