photo by Jessica Rose Photography

I recently shared some thoughts on blogging with the Central New York Pictage User’s Group, and ironically I have had a rather hard time blogging since then. I spoke at the start of a busy wedding season and prepared some thoughts and tips on how to blog regularly and manage it as a photographer. However, I felt as though I didn’t quite answer the question on everyone’s mind : how will blogging get me more business?

I didn’t have exact numbers on how many people found me solely through me blog or for whom it was a deciding factor in booking me. I didn’t bring any google analytics data to share how blogging has grown my network, I just talked vaguely about how it’s allowed me to create a platform to stay connected. While blogging has certainly allowed me to reach an audience (around 24,000 visits this year from 14,000 users) I don’t follow the traffic as closely as I should to give people specifics on the subject. As I thought about why blogging is worth it for anyone, I realized that the reason I started blogging and continue to do so is for myself. I like creating relationships with the people I work with, and maintaining them through blogging. I think if I approached blogging solely from the stand point of getting more business, my blog would not be as interesting.

On this blog I have written about the day my daughter was born (most popular post ever), the time I dropped a lens after a wedding, shooting with a pinhole camera, how I’m trying to become a morning person, and so on. I haven’t deleted posts from my early years where my photography was in need of improvement and my logo took up a third of the image. I’ve maintained the space as a place people can come to see what I’m working on, what I’m interested in and how I’ve grown. It’s been so rewarding, even if I don’t have measured results of how it’s benefited me financially or an exact formula to help you do the same. In my opinion, the benefit in blogging has come through the relationships I’ve built through years of investing in it, and perhaps you will choose to do the same.

If you do, there will certainly be days when you don’t know what to write. You can’t quite figure out how to say what you want or you start to get self conscious about the words that you publish. You aren’t alone. Somehow, writing as if the world is not reading helps you find your voice, and somewhere there are people reading who feel the same way.

If you are interested in seeing the presentation I talked through you can take a look at it over on slideshare! Of course it’s missing my voice and everything I added in at the talk, but it will give you a framework.