How to promote your wedding photography business using a blog is a common question that I’ve received from my friends. I knew that so many people confuse about starting their wedding photography blog cause one simple condition which is, they never think their blog is an asset.
Hi dear my photographer friends this is Bima and today I wanna share to you about promoting wedding photography business using a super simple wordpress blog. I develop my wedding photography blog in 2010 and the main reason is to post all my photography works and show it all to my future clients before they hiring me as a wedding photographer.
By they way I used to spend $2000 on wedding expo and back home with zero sales even I have a friend who spend $3500 magazine ads for a year and still got no clients at all. What I think here is you definitely can use an expo or magazine ads if you have an massive income on your pocket, but how about if you just starting your business and got no money on your bank account?
Are you gonna shutting down your photography business? NO, YOU DON’T!
1 thing that you must do is finding another way and always searching about wedding photography marketing that you can start with a smaller investment and the answer is, the Blog!
Steps to Promote Your Wedding Photography Business By Using a Blog
There are 5 steps that you can do if you willing to promote your wedding photography business by using a blog:
- Create your own blog
- Choosing the right wordpress theme
- Write a good post about your photography works and other useful information for the bride and groom
- Use SEO technique to optimize your post (FREE)
- Follow up your clients once they asking you an enquiry
- Do the best photo shoot and send them your final products with high quality standard
Down here I’m gonna share to deeper about what I’m telling you above:
1 – Create your own blog
Before you have your own blog than you have to choose your domain name and hosting. Domain is simply your company name and it comes with the .com, .net. or any other options. Than the next one is hosting which is belong to the ‘house’ of your domain name and it got space or capacity where you can put your articles and photos.
Domain and hosting used buy in different company but are you want to know where you can buy it in one simple offer? let me share about it!
Since the first time I creating my blog than I use Bluehost where you also can use it to provide domain and hosting in one package, it’s pretty simple and brilliant because you just coming to one company and you got all it done for you!
To guide you how to create your blog using it than I’m gonna share to you steps by steps below:
Steps #1 – Sign up on it
Now you can click the the picture below or simply go to Bluehost official website where you can sign up your name
Steps #2 – Choose the plan or package
Now you can choose the plan or package that you concern about, even bluehost recommend you to use the higher plan but my suggestion is start with the lowest price first (cause it way more enough) and upgrade it once you need more space or feature on it.
Now take a look for the picture below, with just $3.95/month than you can have your own blow (including domain and hosting) for less than $50 per year, amazing right than it’s time for you to try it!
Steps #3 – Choose your domain name
My wedding photography blog domain is bimaadhitya.com so here I’m using my personal name as a brand, you could do the same thing as I did or using your studio brand for sure.
Steps #4 – Fill in your details
You will see the details form like this, so fill it carefully and simply follow the steps
Steps #5 – Installing your wordpress
Once you creating your password than you can log in to your Bluehost dashboard where you can start to install your wordpress. Here you will see the wordpress logo with a word of ‘install wordpress’ or similar
Step #6 – Install the domain
Once you click install wordpress than they will asking you what domain that you wanna install with, choose your domain name and click check domain.
Step #7 – Creating your wordpress login information
Once you are done with the installation procedure than you will redirect to a page where you will get your wordpress login information.
On this step you will see your URL and admin URL (special link that you use to login), this code is really important so don’t ever share it to anyone and I suggest you to make a note about your own URL, admin URL, username, and password.
Steps 8 – Installation complete
Now you can rock and roll using your blog, this is your first milestone and you just make a great starting of promoting your own wedding photography services using a blog.
2 – Choosing the right wordpress theme
When you got your first blog than you will see default theme from wordpress, basically they have thousand theme that you can use for free. Generally they are not specifically for wedding photography and takes time to find the right one for you.
My suggestion is find your own wedding photography theme on Creative Market, they have unique theme that specialize for photography business and it comes with various price for sure. Down here I will give you some recommendation of beautiful theme that you can purchase.
Don’t let too much time for choosing your theme cause I know they are beautiful, just limit your time and buy the theme which is clean, mobile friendly, and represent your style.
Powered by Creative Market
LT Wedding WordPress Theme
Powered by Creative Market
Falero – Wedding Portfolio
Powered by Creative Market
3 – Write a good post about your photography works and other useful information for the bride and groom
With a blog you definitely need to write and describe more about your services so your future couple will know you better. If you wanna talk about your recent photography works than you make a post using my guidance below:
- Tell about your couple history
- Write about location where the wedding or engagement session belong to
- Share about how you prepare your photo session
- Surely post your photos, and
- Let your future couple know how to contact you in more further
4 – Use SEO technique to optimize your post (FREE)
SEO also called as Search Engine Optimization, with this technique you can research the keyword that commonly use by bride and groom to find their wedding photographer.
If you see the picture above I optimize my blog post to sell my services in Halong Bay, Vietnam so when some bride and groom to be search about ‘Halong Bay Wedding Photographer’ than I will be in the 1st page of google, sometimes I am in the first line or sometimes I will be in 3rd or 4th but the most important thing is I still in the 1st page.
This system is provided by Google and it’s 100% FREE so all you need to do is go to Google Keyword Planner. To use this keyword research than you have to own your gmail account and use it to sign in. Let me guide you to do this method:
- Sign up on keyword planner using your Gmail
- Type any kind of keyword that you can think on your mind
- Set the location target where you want bride and groom find your post
- Set the language that commonly use by your couple
- Check the average monthly search and competition (I suggest you to use the low competition first to start your first blog post)
5 – Follow up your clients once they asking you an enquiry
If you write blogpost regularly than it will help your blog to be found by bride and groom to be. Your blog will indexed to Google and when somebody open it than they will see your information.
It could be your photography works or other useful information about venues, decoration or something else and once the bride groom interesting with your services than they will sending you an email.
The key of sending a follow up email is:
- Don’t simply give your pricing
- Talk and discuss with them personally, I used skype and whatsapp to organize my photo session
- Once they provide you enough information about date, venue, or other things to note than you can delivery your rate and pricing
6 – Do the best photo shoot and send them your final products with high quality standard
The picture above is taken by my wife, Nina, who belong to my personal assistant and make up artist when we travel to Bali and documenting destination wedding session for my Singaporean couple. I just met them during the lunch time around Raffles Place back on December and I shooting their wedding on June.
Once you’re done with all the photo session you can back to your studio and do the post production method, today I use a great Lightroom presets that really boost my works and once I’m done with it so the album layout is begin, print it in a high quality photo paper and deliver it to my couple.
Last words from me
I was so happy for sharing with you today about how to promote your wedding photography business using a blog, trust me blog is amazing and it is worth it to optimize your business at the beginning or even you serve destination wedding photo session just like me.
I really want to hear for what you think about this article so if you have some question than you can write on the comment below. I will keep writing about another story about my photo session, technique, or even nice experience that I got with my client on this blog so I’ll see you soon!