Being a photographer is simply great! This is such a wonderful profession to be in! If you are an ace photographer, it’s a good idea to setup a photography blog that features all your photo collections. A photography blog is a great way to present your photos to the world and also feature your talent. If you are into photography since a long time, it means that your clients trust you and they are letting you sneak into their lives for capturing the big moments; therefore the more you provide them with a reason to be comfortable, the more people will think of hiring you; and a blog is the perfect platform for doing just that!
A photography blog provides you with the opportunity to show your photography talent, the type of photos you click, why you chose to be a photographer and how can you do justice to the scenes and events captured in your camera…
And the best thing about having a photography blog? People can see your great work!!
So how to set up a great looking photography blog? Here’s all that you need to know:
#1 – First Things First! Domain Name & Hosting
This is the fun part! You need to decide on the name of your blog. Once you decide the name, you can go ahead to check if that domain name option is available for you to register. So brainstorm and come up with some unique and attractive names that will get people wondering and curious to visit your blog. Most of the photographers prefer using their own name with the suffix ‘photography’ for eg : MurphysPhotography.com. Register your domain name right away when you have finalized the name as it shouldn’t happen that you are not able to get the desired one. You can go with a .com, .in or any other domain name extension that defines your blog.
Do you have a domain name in mind? Check if it is available right away! Click Here
Once you have registered the domain name, you will have to get your blog hosted. Initially it is a good idea to start with the basic shared hosting package and then you can upgrade to a higher package when the visitors to your website increase. If you have made up your mind to work with WordPress, you can opt for WordPress hosting and set up your image gallery within no time.
#2 – Set Up A Theme For Your Blog
Assuming that you are working with WordPress, you will come across many attractive themes for your blog. Depending upon what type of layout you want, you can select a theme for WordPress : Here : https://wordpress.org/themes/tags/photoblogging/
On the basis of your selection, WordPress will show you a wide range of themes to choose from. This will make your task easy as after installing the theme, all you have to do is add the images and describe them.
Apart from WordPress, you can also work with other content management systems like Weebly, Zenfolio, PhotoShelter, Tumblr, Wix, Joomla etc. You will get a wide selection of themes to choose from.
#3 – Start Adding Your Photos With Descriptions
Now that you have a theme setup on your website, it’s time to get down to the real work. You can create a new post now, and add your photos. However, adding the photos by themselves will not look cool. Add some additional information about your photos and caption them as well. For instance, if you have clicked the photos for some event or festival, add the name of that event in the title along with the date. Before adding the photos, write something about that event, so that people who don’t know about it will get an idea about that event / festival. Also make sure to caption each photo and be very creative while captioning, your humor and wit is going to keep your visitors interested and engaged.
#4 – Do Not Ignore SEO
You might have added the best theme and you are all set to create posts, but make sure that you have installed the necessary plugins in your blog. For instance, if you are working with WordPress, you can use plugins like – Yoast SEO, SEMrush, All in One SEO Pack etc. This will help your posts to rank in the search engines. Whichever content management system you are using, make sure to install an SEO plugin so that you can fill up the meta details of your post like title, keywords and description.
It is also very important to add image description. Add the right file name for your image while saving it on your local machine first as it will be uploaded on the blog with that file name, add the relevant title, caption and keywords for that image while adding it. Make use of Alt text (alt tags) and title appropriately. It is recommended to set a fixed dimension for all your images so that they look symmetrical. Image optimization plays a very important role in getting your images ranked; therefore make sure that your blog is perfect in terms of search engine optimization.
#5 – Enable Comments
Enabling comments is a great way to communicate with your blog visitors. Your visitors might want to provide a feedback for your photo blog if they see the comment box. Take all the positive and negative comments in your stride and reply to all the genuine comments. This is a great way to connect with your viewers.
#6 – Social Media
Social media is a great platform for promoting your photography blog. Make sure that you have the important social media icons on your blog and also in the individual posts. If your visitors like your photos, they can connect with you immediately on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Tumblr etc. Also make it a point to share your photos consistently on social media…Probably you can share one or two of your best photos and provide a link to your blog post to view more. Create a business page for your blog and provide details about your photography. You can also create a group for your photography blog.
Pro Tips!
*Remember that a better camera is capable of clicking better pictures so make sure you invest in the best one.
*Clicking the best photos is hard work and if you are worried about your work being stolen, you can put a semi-transparent logo or a watermark on your photos before uploading them.
Conclusion:
A blog is a great way to showcase your photography talent and the steps mentioned above will simplify the process of setting up your blog. It’s not at all difficult, get started and things will fall in place!
If you are still confused about setting up your photography blog, contact MilesWeb, they will help you to get online 🙂
