8 reasons why every photographer should have a blog

One of the best things about being a photographer in 2015 is the ease with which you can share images, and also share your experiences and insights. Setting up a blog is a great way to do this, and it’s never been easier.

More and more photographers are making sites with WordPress, which is essentially a blog-based website builder, but there are lots of other cheap and easy blog-creation tools to try like Tumblr. Here are eight reasons to set up a blog today, and how you can benefit…

1) Distributing your images

While anyone can set up a photo gallery on their site, the images are often more interesting if there is also a story behind them.

Sure, you can write a caption, but a blog of a few hundred words is much more engaging – it gives you a chance to talk about how you get the shot, any funny stories, people you met, what you learned and so on.

Fresh, engaging content is what keeps people coming back to your site, which also gets you better search engine rankings. Think about your favourite websites and how often they are updated. You need to update yours, too.

SEE MORE: Photography websites: the secret to making a photo blog everyone will read 

2) Showing off new skills and gear

You can also use a blog to demonstrate a particular technique you have mastered, or talk about how you are using a new piece of equipment.

Maybe a new tripod, or a lighting gadget – it shows your audience that you are on top of technique and technology and are trying new things. This can give you a useful competitive edge if you are a commercial photographer.

If you do a particularly good blog about a new gadget, it’s worth contacting the makers. They might republish it and send you more gear for free!

Or, use your blog to write some tips for your target audience. You might be able to compile these into a free download one day. Do this in exchange for people’s email address and you have soon built up an email database, which you can then market to.

3) It keeps customers happy

If you are lucky enough to get a commission to do some photography (an achievement in itself at the moment) you can show your clients some love by blogging about it on your site – just make sure you have the rights to reuse the images.

Or if you are doing an exhibition, blogging about it is a nice way to say thanks to the venue and attract visitors. Include hyperlinks back to clients in your blog and they will be happy for the extra traffic.

This can lead to more lucrative work in future if it’s a wedding venue, as they may recommend you to new customers who enquire about photography.

A blog can work like an instant press release too – if you have blogged about a forthcoming exhibition, simply send the link to the press and half of their work is done already.

4) You’ll get better at writing

Being able to sell words and pictures as a package will make it much easier to get your images published, and writing a weekly blog or week will soon sharpen your writing skills.

If you aren’t very confident about your writing, setting up as a blogger is a good excuse to do a short course or evening class, and is well worth the investment.

However powerful and complex technology becomes, good old-fashioned writing skills – effective communication skills, in other words – will always be in demand. Indeed, your writing might get so good that companies would pay you to blog for them.

‘Content marketing’ is a big growth area in the moment, and businesses are always keen to make money from various audiences.

SEE MORE: 8 ways to tell if you are growing as a photographer

5) If it’s good, you will start to build a following

One of the best ways for a photographer to get noticed in 2015 is to build up a following online and attracting a growing audience for your blogs is a good way to achieve this.

To get beyond more than a few ‘likes’ or polite comments, however, you will need to find an angle, or a unique selling point.

Rather than just filling your blog with rather generic shots of landscapes and beauty spots from holidays and city breaks, maybe concentrate on a particular area near to you, particularly if there is some kind of story around it (how former industrial land is being reclaimed and ‘regreened’ for example). Or write about a particular interest and how you photograph it.

Once your blog starts to build momentum, this becomes a story in its right, and you might get the local press interested in writing about you.

SEE MORE: How to start a photo blog when you have no money

6) It forces you to process and publish pictures

By submitting to the discipline of a regular blog, you will also force yourself to regularly download and distribute your images, rather than allowing them to languish on a memory card or hard drive. This is good practice, which will sharpen your workflow and image editing skills.

SEE MORE: 9 creative photo ideas to try in August 2015

7) It’s a good excuse to post on Facebook

Ideally, you want to set up a virtuous circle whereby blogging attracts more people to your site, which gets you higher up the search engine ranks, which attracts more people to your website and so on.

Don’t forget also that every time you blog you can promote it on your Facebook page; as well as stimulating interest in your blog, this will show your Facebook visitors that you are regularly updating material on there. Make sure you also promote your blogs on Twitter, Google + etc.

SEE MORE: Social media for photographers: the 10 worst mistakes everyone makes

9 creative photo ideas to try in May 2015 Digital Camera magazine: Vivienne Gucwa

8) Remember Vivienne Gucwa…

Who? Vivienne is a talented US photographer who starting taking photographs of her native New York city and regularly posting and writing about them on blogs. Her audience grew and grew, so much so that she got a book deal based on the blog, and is now an ambassador for Sony. This stuff works!

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