Blogging: Why it is so essential to your marketing as a photographer.

Why blog?

1. It's amazing for SEO
2. It gives you things to talk about on social
3. It gives you content for your newsletter
4. It’s good for authority marketing
5. It increases engagement on your website
   

Sam explains that if you only write your blog and don’t promote it, no one will ever find it. He says your blog needs to be about a theme. It needs to be about a topic and help to show that you are an expert in your field. For example, Samsuggests that a wedding photographer could review wedding venues. A blog without a theme or purpose is not much use. Also, consider what is valuable to your target audience and how the topic can demonstrate your expertise.
Once you have a theme, we are then down to writing individual blogs. Marcus asks if your blog should be on your website or elsewhere. Sam says one of the points of a blog is helping with SEO. This does not happen if you use a blogging platform instead of your website.
Blogs are words. Photographs only are not acceptable and don’t work on their own. A blog must be at least 500 words. 1000 words average. Once it gets much over 1500 words, it’s time to think about splitting into two smaller blogs. A mix of sizes is good, some longer, some shorter. For SEO, Google needs to understand who you are and what you do, and only words can do that. For social media, there is no point promoting your blog on social if it is only images, as they would expect to see the images on social anyway. Do use images in the blogs. But there should be plenty of text to go with the images. Do not fill space with photographs.

Organise the writing in your blog. Make it easier for people to skim read. Use sub-headings, bullet-pointed lists, etc, to help people skim read it. This structure helps people and Google to understand your blog. Give value in your blog. The blog has to be useful to them, or it won’t be engaging.External and internal links are essential. Both to other websites (external links) and within your website to other pages and blogs (internal links).

1. Marcus asks if Sam blogs and how he blogs. Sam says that inthe past, he has had copywriters blogging for him. This ensures that you get regular blogs created. But he also blogs himself, both written and video blogs. Sam says one key is ensuring you put time aside to create content. In terms of ideas, Sam often uses topics that have come up in conversations in the last fewweeks.
   Marcus asks about AI. Sam says it's good for some stuff. It is bad at writing blogs. Do not simply ask AI to write you a blog; it will be very generic and easy to spot. But it is useful. It is great for ideas. If you cannot think of anything to write, it can give you ideas. You can also ask for a blog structure. Don’t 100% stick to the structure, as it will be quite bland. Then write the blog yourself. But once you have written it yourself, put it backthrough AI and ask for improvements.
   How do you get people to your blog? First of all, no one will come if you don’t tell them about it. What can you do?
   

1. Send out social media posts sending people to the blog
2. Make an email newsletter and send people to the blog.

Those are really good ways of getting people to your blog. As part of SEO, Google assess how popular your website is and how long people stay on the website. So by sending engaged people to the blog, you are helping with your website's SEO. Ensure that you have your website connected to Google Analytics so you can see who is visiting your blogs and where they are coming from.

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