Marketing a Photographer Online
A photography business isn’t easy to sustain, especially once you feel as though you’re doing everything that’s required of you. Your portfolio is the beginning place. In addition to putting together a body of work that reflects your aesthetics as well as your specialization, and then you have got advertising to worry about.
Suppose your portfolio is filled with your best wedding photos and is ideal as it is. What are the next steps to promoting your own work? Photographers need to have go-to instruments and channels to really have the ability to talk about their artwork with the world, get opinions, connect to a broader community of photographers and expand their business.
Successful Photography Business Essentials
Let’s break down your tasks into bite sized pieces. There are a couple things you need to be careful off before you go off promoting your job. If you do not have your essentials ready to go and presentable, promoting yourself and your job will be time down the drain.
A well curated portfolio. Your portfolio can not only be a dumpster of your pictures that you think are excellent. A nicely curated portfolio takes customers on a journey so that they have a better comprehension of your personality and your specialization.
A personal craft web site. This is an important element for any business, however small. A personal website is another way to publicize your work beyond your portfolio and reach customers so that they can contact you if they are interested in your services.
A blog (optional). A site can be a time-consuming part of your company and is certainly not a necessity. But having a website helps drive traffic to your site and is another means to reach out to prospective clients and give them an opportunity to get to know you, your style and keep up with your work, it is most definitely something you should consider in your digital strategy.
A general idea of your marketing objectives. You need to come prepared if you would like to dominate the internet space. Understanding your goals can allow you to take the necessary actions to progress and grow your business.
What to Consider in a Photography Website for Sharing and Promotion
A good photography promotion website may also act as a cloud management platform to store photos. This means that you can upload your best images and have them safely stored on a stage. Below are a few basic things you must remember when picking a website.
- It is really important that the site you select makes it effortless for you to share your work if you will need to send some of it to customers. You need to have the options of sharing your collection on popular media like Facebook, Google +, Instagram and many others.
- You will need to have the ability to store your photographs based on the size of your portfolio through cloud management. Various sites have different storage allowances so get acquainted with the basics before you upload your work.
- You need to be able to upload photos, edit them and curate your portfolio as you desire. Pay attention to what every site provides you concerning accessibility and utility.
- Quality controller. That’s right, you are your very best quality control. Make sure that the website you choose permits you to keep the high-resolution quality of your photos, otherwise there’s absolutely not any point in promoting sub-par work.
- The website you pick must provide you the right to ‘spread the word’ on your photography business. Choose a website which has a community of creatives that may help further boost your work within the site and out of it, they’ll be knowledgeable on the area if they’ve been around for a while and could act as an online small business coach for you. Locate a platform which attracts the sort of people you want to reach and decide on a web site that can allow you to build a credible reputation.
10 Places to Promote Your Photography Online
There are hundreds of potential places to promote your work online. We will not go into the social media where you are able to market your work like Instagram, Google +, Facebook and other popular social networking sites with your digital content. We’ll be taking a look at alternative options so you can tap into the creative business and market your work within communities that are creative.
1. SmugMug
SmugMug is a site focused on the creative community that also provides an easy and trendy platform to host your own work. It’s not a completely free site, it costs about $5.99/month or $39.99/year to host your own images. It isn’t an expensive option thinking about the fact that you could have unlimited storage for videos and photos and a couple of useful and simplified editing tools.
2. PhotoShelter
PhotoShelter is among the most popular photography sites and reaches out to a very large, global photography community showcasing some of the best wedding photographers. You can upload your pictures and even offer them on the site.
3. Flickr
Millions of individuals are using Flickr for inspiration and professional targets. Photographers and other creatives use it to market their functions within the community and outside. This site also has some innovative features that others don’t have. It’s a very active and engaged community and individuals visit to research pictures and even rate them.
4. Pinterest
Pinterest is only growing in popularity and is still one of the go-to sites for inspiration for creatives all over the world. It is a social networking website in its own so that you can produce boards and pin your pictures to make them discoverable. Ensure that you link back to your site or portfolio so customers can find you without the need to engage a web agency for SEO or AdWords.
5. Behance
If you’re looking to become part of a community of creatives, Behance is an excellent option. Behance is an online community of professionals and creatives from a number of industries from the arts through to small business coaching. For those who have photography projects which you want to discuss separately, you can make folders and present your works on a project basis.
6. Photography Talk
Photography Talk is a major site with thousands of people on a daily basis. The photography community hangs out on important platforms such as this one and gives you the option of learning from other musicians and receiving feedback on your job.
7. Pixpa
Pixpa is a website that helps you create an online portfolio and discuss your work with other creatives and traffic to the site.
8. Exposure
As the name has it, here is where you get your vulnerability. Talented photographers have the chance to showcase their work. It is a relatively new site but has attracted plenty of photography professionals and artists who share a common interest of displaying their work.
9. About Me
About me was not initially designed for photographers but it will make it really simple for people to find out more about you, your specialization and see your work on the site. About Me provides you statistics about your site visitors, what they click on and their place. This is a superb place to include links to your site.
10. Depositphotos
Once you upload your portfolio to Depositphotos and become a contributor, you are able to share links to your portfolio with your prospective customers. Depositphotos is a large photographer network, it is a terrific way to make a name for yourself in the photography community. You can create your own collections of pictures and share them with fellow photographers and customers.