Blogging for photographers is a popular marketing approach that many photo businesses undervalue.
Read that again…
Most photographers know that they need to blog – it’s a common topic in online discussions and networking events. But…most photographers don’t do it…
There are a few reasons for this…
First, blogging often doesn’t come with much immediate gratification. To get organic search traffic, you might research and write your blogs and not see results for a few months (or longer).
Writing blogs can also be challenging if you’re not a natural writer.
Oh…and did we mention that blogging can be time consuming?
While these are just some of the excuses we see that cause photographers to avoid blogging, we want to shed some light on why blogging is so valuable for your photography business.
And if you’re not currently blogging – you’ll want to start in order to reap massive benefits over the course of your long-lasting business…
If you want help with blogging, our SEO and Blogging Course for Photographers is an excellent resource. It includes guided walkthroughs and templates you can use to create valuable content of your own to attract the audience you want to your website!
It’s a little weird that we feel the need to clarify what blogging for photographers is.
But…after spending a lot of time around online groups (in particular) …there is a lot of noise around the word “blogging.” So…let’s clarify!
“Blogging” should be seen as a catchall word that refers to the creation of new content on your website with text and image content.
We’ve seen descriptions of blogging for photographers that look like …
All of these are wrong.
Your blogging effort as a photographer will be most effective when you create an SEO and content strategy.
This strategy, if done well, will include the creation of different types of content on your website in a variety of formats.
We’ll be covering the different types of content you can create as a photographer later in this post!
Before we dig our feet in, we want to start at the end…
Blogging can be hard work, so what’s in it for me?
As a full time photographer myself, blogging has had a HUGE impact on the performance of my website and business bookings.
Here’s a screenshot from Google Search Console showing some results I’ve had with my photography website, with a lot of traction coming from my SEO focused blog content:
To break these results down just a little bit, in my photography business I’ve been able to achieve –
In my experience, blogging is a vital form of marketing to take advantage of as a photographer.
If you want to experience results like these for yourself, I strongly suggest joining our SEO and Blogging Course for Photographers or the full Photography Business Academy to create a stronger, more consistent business of your own.
The most significant benefits you will get from blogging:
So, blogging sounds like a good idea, right?
Now, let’s break down some of these to get into more specifics…
The impact of high quality and search engine optimized blog content is significant.
When you select the best SEO keywords for photographers and write content that is valuable to your users, search engines will reward you by ranking your pages higher in the SERPs (search engine results pages).
The challenge for many photographers is finding the right keywords and topics to target.
We’ve seen many photographers who “blog” – but the blogs are poorly written and optimized.
These blogs end up going nowhere…
And it can feel like a defeat when they were putting in the work, but not getting any results.
Don’t worry – we’ll be covering blog topic ideas for photographers and strategies for optimizing your content more in this post!
With more eyes on your website, the natural progression of a well optimized website will be an increase in inquiries and bookings.
As a rule of sales, providing your prospective clients with upfront value will get them more engaged with your brand and more likely to want to buy from you.
I’ve seen this firsthand in my business with daily inquiries showing up in my inbox from people who found me through organic search. Here’s just a few examples:
With a well optimized process to convert the inquiry into a sale, this is one of the main reasons we recommend any photography business to get started blogging today.
If you still struggle with creating blogs even after reading this article, we recommend joining The Photography Business Academy’s SEO and Blogging Course for Photographers to get more help bringing your own blogs to life so you can get more website traffic, inquiries and bookings!
Becoming an “expert” or “authority” sounds a little tacky, I know, but it’s a natural benefit that comes from creating good blog content.
People gravitate towards experts...
Photography clients especially gravitate towards people that share their experience and knowledge to help them solve whatever problems they have.
(Yes, even if those “problems” are as simple as how to have a wedding in a particular location).
As a photographer, you have access to the photos you have taken and can craft blog posts that incorporate these images in high value ways.
Session blogs are the easiest example of showcasing your work.
Going a step further, you can create content that naturally includes your work like in depth venue guides, showing off a location for portrait sessions, and much more. If you need more ideas, check out our Blogging Ideas for Photographers guide.
Sharing your images while sharing informative content leads to this constant drip of exposure to your work while adding value to your users.
One small part of SEO for photographers is interlinking your website content.
There are many reasons why this is a good practice – from helping user retention and providing a better user experience to getting more SEO results for your website…both things we cover at length in our Websites for Photographers Course (by the way!).
Let’s focus on that last point for 1 second…
Here is an example:
There are other things happening here too…
By creating related content, you are helping position yourself as an authority on being a wedding and engagement photographer in Toronto.
You can even link to your blog from your home page to show this value in a more “in your face” kind of way.
What is so exciting about blogging for photographers is that there are countless other uses to…did we mention yet the ability to repurpose blogs to enhance your client experience?
Wedding and portrait photographers traditionally have relied heavily on venue partnerships, word of mouth referrals, getting a booth at an expo, paid directory listings like Wedding Wire (which is generally terrible for vendors), and similar marketing efforts.
SEO and blogging allow you to skip the line in some ways.
I do feel there is a place for these traditional marketing efforts (don’t get me wrong), but I’ve seen time and time again where my clients found me through organic search…and decided to book me instead of the photographers on a vendor list.
In the coming years, I am predicting this will become even more common as Gen Z couples increasingly get married or look for portraits of themselves.
It’s very narrow sighted to think marketing strategies will stay the same when they’ve been applied to generations like Baby Boomers, Millennials (where I fall), and even Gen X…yet Gen Z is increasingly in touch with finding things online.
One thing I mention to photographers in online coaching sessions and other contexts is this – if someone is getting married at a popular wedding venue that I’m not on a vendor list for, and finds me through Google search then chooses to hire me, it’s evidence that traditional word of mouth is not everything. I am getting work, while the photographers on those lists are not (at least in this instance).
One thing I love talking about is the “compounding effect” of SEO efforts.
You can reuse and share your content on your socials, driving traffic to your website with valuable resources.
This is where your content creation strategy goes beyond just “blogging” and hoping for things to rank in search engines.
One of the biggest short-term payoffs I’ve seen with my content creation has been using blog posts to help make connections with wedding venues and other vendors.
Even a studio portrait photographer has opportunities here…
As an introverted person, I’ve never been great at just calling someone up and naturally finding some conversational route that leads to a strong partner relationship.
Blogging became a buffer that allowed me to connect with lower pressure, but maybe even higher value…
If you don’t have an ideal client avatar, it’s a good exercise to do to have a more focused business.
My ideal client informs all my business decisions.
Yes, that also includes my marketing efforts and how I spend my time when it comes to content creation (like blogging for photographers).
When you create blog content with your ideal client in mind, you get the following benefits:
Now it’s time to get into the heart of this post about blogging for photographers.
There are 5 different types of blog posts you can create.
For photographers, blogging your recent sessions, weddings and elopements are a unique opportunity compared to any other industry.
This type of blog ticks the following boxes:
In general, session blogs are a great “easy” way to start blogging for photographers.
There are a few problems that come up with this type of blog post regularly if you aren’t careful:
Most significantly – a lot of photographers we’ve talked to don’t blog their sessions consistently (or at all). Typically, the reasons for this come down to not enough time, not enough commitment, or not enough of an immediate return.
If you’re not blogging your sessions (or doing them smartly), you’re leaving money on the table.
In 2022, one of my session blogs brought in 8 inquiries for one venue in New Jersey.
I had calls with 6 of them and converted 4 into bookings at around $6,000 per sale.
This is a super popular wedding venue with a ton of photographers on their recommended list (and I wasn’t one of them).
This one post helped drive $24,000 in sales…in just one year.
You need to get started now and stay consistent with it.
If you’re struggling with blogging but still want to reap the rewards, we can help! Our SEO and Blogging for Photographers Course has been designed with you in mind. It includes short form videos, walkthroughs and blog templates to help you easily understand and create the content you want so you can start seeing results.
Pillar content meets the following criteria:
In general, pillar pages will be comprehensive and showcase your expertise on a topic.
They often come in at higher word counts (3,000 – 5,000+) – this is a result of being more comprehensive, as well as needing to be better than the competition to compete for higher value keywords.
Your website will typically only have a few of these.
For wedding photographers blogging, some pillar content ideas include:
For portrait photographers blogging, a few pillar ideas for you, too:
You can swap out “family” for virtually any niche.
Blogs designed to educate your audience fall into this category.
There are many different formats these posts can take such as…
Around here, we sometimes refer to these posts as “growth blogs” – because while they do provide education, the purpose of writing them as a photographer and business owner is to help catapult growth for your website traffic, inquiries, and bookings.
There are a few things we’ve found to be true about educational blogs…
While most of the content in the categories above will focus on SEO keywords to drive traffic to your website, there are some blogs photographers might make that aren’t focused on SEO as the main goal.
Blogs focused on sharing things happening with your business fit this niche.
An example of this type of blog would be sharing news about your business (like launching a new website or changing your pricing).
For blogging photographers focused on driving more site traffic, this type of blog is probably going to be more rare.
We don’t recommend them all that much unless you have an active following or are going to use these content pages to share on social media and other platforms.
Lastly, personal blogs may not focus on SEO – but can provide great opportunities to connect with your audience (potentially even deeper than all the other content you write).
I actually love personal blogs when they are done well and compliment your brand.
For example, a few years ago I created a blog series that talked about my trip to Iceland with my wife.
It was an amazing trip – 14 days traveling around this awesome country in a campervan.
I made posts for every day, documenting the sights with what is basically a journal entry and some photos.
This content wasn’t directly related to our work as wedding photographers, but gave people an extra touchpoint to connect.
While I didn’t write these with SEO in mind, they also naturally began to rank for some terms.
I ended up getting a number of nice backlinks from travel related websites – which helped my site out with a little more exposure..
We even picked up elopement inquiries over the years from couples who found our journey interesting.
You can create personal blogs about really any topic, but always keep in mind what your ideal client will find interesting to learn about.
I do also recommend separating this type of content from your regular blog roll (or hiding them altogether behind a category tag).
Does all this blog talk feel a little overwhelming? It’s all simplified into an easy to digest, step-by-step video course in our SEO and Blogging for Photographers course. Click that link to check it out! 🙂
Now that we’ve covered the different types of blog content photographers can create – it’s a good idea to think about how they can work together to create a synergy.
Yes, I used the word “synergy.”
It takes me back to my days working in a corporate office.
I’m sorry…(lol)
For better and for worse, synergy is a great way to describe what I am ultimately looking to do when I blog as a photographer.
Too many photographers view their blog posts as independent from one another.
This works against them.
One of my preferred approaches to creating a blogging strategy is by creating topic clusters.
Here is a quick illustration of how a topic cluster works in theory:
Creating a topic cluster is fairly easy – at least in theory.
Topic clusters involve identifying a good pillar (or top level) post, then creating additional educational articles covering sub-topics in more detail.
In practice, solid topic clusters may even have 3, 4, or 5+ levels of depth.
An example topic cluster for a wedding photographer could look like this:
Some opportunities that come from creating topic clusters:
Creating topic clusters is a great way to introduce some structure to your blogging efforts.
If the motivation to start blogging still hasn’t kicked in, let’s look at how you can use these blogs to start getting short term wins in other marketing channels while you wait for it to rank in organic search.
A few ways to use blogs in your social media marketing:
This is a more advanced technique and will require being able to create well targeted ads for Facebook, Instagram, Google, and other platforms.
Your ads can refer to your blog content.
They can also refer to specific landing pages you’ve created with conversion goals really in mind.
One of our favorite marketing strategies is to take blog content and get other business owners on board.
There are many strategies to go with this, here are a few simple ones:
By viewing blogging as a photographer not just as it’s own marketing effort, but a form of marketing that is connected to other things you are doing – it can give a boost to your motivation. That was my experience as I realized that creating this content that is permanently available and mine was so beneficial and preferable to other forms of marketing that can feel more finicky.
While the main target of blogging for photographers is typically to attract new photography clients to buy services from your business, there is another opportunity to keep in mind...
With affiliate marketing (and to a lesser extent for photography business blogs – ads), you can monetize the blog posts you are already creating to make extra income.
A simple way to naturally integrate affiliate marketing into your blogs would be to refer to valuable products or services that your users are already going to be interested in purchasing.
For example…if you write a blog about “Best Farm Wedding Décor”, you can include referral links to websites like Amazon and receive a commission of every sale made.
You need to identify the best affiliate marketing programs for photographers and remember to register for an account. Every company and offer is unique and may have certain eligibility requirements.
One of my favorite things is earning passive income.
This is the money you can make from doing a little work up front, then letting your content circulate in organic search, bring in traffic, and convert them into the sale of different product offers made available through your web pages.
In my photography business, I earn passive income using affiliate marketing.
Some of these earnings come from targeting my wedding clients – sharing offers for wedding décor and invitation suites.
Some content is also geared towards other photographers on pages hidden from plain view (not easily accessible in my blog roll) and I’ve sold everything from camera and lenses to CRM subscriptions.
I also created a separate photography website with the specific goal of challenging my SEO and writing skills, with the goal of generating passive income in perpetuity. I worked aggressively on that website over the course of a few months and have mostly let is sit since (for a few years now), and it brings in consistent 4 figure earnings every month.
Yes. People read blogs. And if they aren’t “reading”, they are skimming through them to identify if it’s content they find valuable for what they are searching for.
It also depends on the type of blog.
Someone may rush past filler text on a session blog because they want to see photos from a particular photographer at a particular location.
For a pillar article, users will be more likely to read more – since they have much more to gain from spending time slowing down and taking the words in.
To help counteract people who don’t love reading every word, it’s important to optimize your headers to make your text easy to skim through.
At the end of the day, one goal of blogging for photographers isn’t just having people read your content, but to just get them on to your website where they will be exposed to your unique brand (colors, graphics, personality, etc.) and images (the work they’ll want to hire you for).
No. Like all good SEO myths in the photography industry, there are some important things to consider when blogging your sessions.
But, when done correctly, your sessions can add a ton of value to users and provide an excellent source of consistent blog content that can get SEO results.
Things to know about session blogs:
Additionally…
Session blogs benefit from a compounding effect. Post most (or all) of your sessions/weddings, and you will experience benefits to your business.
I know this post has been quite the wordful, but hopefully it gives you a good introduction to what you need to do (and what you stand to gain!) to blog better for your photography business.
In my experience, blogging is one of the best forms of marketing when done well since you maintain ownership of your content and have the opportunity to reach people through organic search (passively) as well as have the ability to repurpose your content to share on social media, with clients, with other businesses, and more.
If you want help creating a great SEO and blogging strategy, and actually creating the content you need to get the traffic, leads and bookings you want, check out our SEO and Blogging for Photographers Course, part of The Photography Business Academy.
Honesty is a cornerstone of Shoot and Thrive, so we want you to know that some links in this post are affiliate links. This means we may earn a commission if you make a purchase—at no additional cost to you. We only recommend products and services we trust, have used ourselves, or have thoroughly researched based on industry feedback. Our goal is to provide solutions that genuinely help, whether they come from our direct experience or the collective knowledge of the photography community.
As photography business educators, we believe it's important for educators in this industry to be active photographers themselves. The images used throughout this website were taken through our photo studios - Hand and Arrow Photography and Marshall Scott Photography, except for stock images or if otherwise noted.
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