Online Marketing

I probably won’t be telling you anything earth shattering when I share the idea that blogging can be great for photographers. Most savvy photographers know that a blog alongside their website is a good thing. But does your blog win you enough business? Or is it more a a time-drain with very little return? Read on for my top tips on how you can turn your blog into a client magnet.

1. Post regularly. The best blogs have fresh content – that means posting ideally 2-3 times a week, but once is great if that’s all you can manage

2. Post little and often: your posts don’t all need to be 24 picture epics – try just taking your top 12 images and maybe splitting into multiple posts. One of my favourite tricks I like to borrow from party plan bloggers is to blog one post with the people and events and another of all the delicious details. Guess which post is more popular!

3. Post about things you want to be known for: we all take work that’s not core to what we’re doing – it doesn’t mean that you need to put every single piece of work you do on your blog mind! Think about your brand: how do you want people to perceive you? Which leads me neatly on to…

4. Put your editorial spin on your posts. Your job as a photographer is generally to make things and people look as beautiful and enticing as possible. Your blog is there not as a showcase to your current clients but as an insight into what you can do for others – so you don’t need to clog it up with anything that isn’t beautiful or enticing (or edgy, or cool, or whatever your brand is about…). There’s no need to showcase 20 lineup pictures on your blog – it’s boring to your repeat visitors and your client can see them all in the viewing.

5. Brand your blog as you would your website. We create a lot of blogs for photographers and I love the creativity that we’re able to pour into them to help the photographs stand out to the max. Each one is different because each photographer is different. Resist the temptation to simply download a standard template and invest in your blog like your website. Love her or loathe her (I’m in the former camp!) Jasmine Star’s blog is a great example of what’s possible with a bit of vision

6. Introduce regular features to keep readers interested - on my blog we have In the studio this week… posts featuring work that we’re particularly proud of (I only tend to showcase 20-30% of what we’ve been up to simply because I want to blog about other things too!). Spend some time brainstorming ideas for  categories and titles when you’re feeling particularly creative (after a walk is good) and then you’ll never be stuck for what to post about

7. Showcase the sort of work you’d like to be doing. Try taking one photo a day/ one a week depending on your time that showcases the sort of work you want to get into. You might do a bride of the week or a simple pleasure of the day… It’s a great opportunity to showcase your own personal style without the interruption of a client brief!

8. Encourage your clients and your readers to comment by introducing articles that provoke some debate! And don’t forget to tell your clients that you’ll be blogging about them and that you’d love a comment – what could be better than a live testimonial?

9. Use the sidebars to call to action: make sure you invite people to visit your website and also have something on there that advertises your sessions with a direct link back to your site to sell them the benefits of a shoot with you.

So those are a few quick and dirty tips specifically to photographers but I’d love to hear your thoughts. What else do you do with your blog to make sure you win plenty of business? Have you tried anything that really didn’t work? I’ll be running a workshop on how to create a blog that’ll win you more business in February and it would be great to see you there – full details on our website.

Tagged as in Blogging, Online Marketing

We recently designed and built a new site for Yarwood-White which involved lots of research into e-commerce websites which has been a real eye opener! Many e-commerce sites aren’t the most attractive websites. There’s often a lot of clutter with little to distinguish them from any other site.

We discovered that it really is a fine balance between functionality and visually looking the part and at times it proved quite challenging to get this balance just right. It has been a great learning curve and the entire team has gained so much from it. We are all delighted with the result and it’s been well worth it!

www.yarwood-white.com

Working on Yarwood-White has been so insightful and I have learnt a lot about e-commerce websites. Here are my top 5 tips to help create a successful e-commerce site:

1. Design and functionality are just as important as each other. There is no point having a stunning website if it doesn’t work properly!

2. ‘Customers who bought this item also bought…’ This is a great selling tool on product pages and encourages the customer to view other items before checking out.

3. Add to cart. This needs to be really obvious! A button with a dark colour against a light background will stand out and avoid getting lost.

4. Easy navigation. The site needs to be easy to navigate around so having quick searches as well as detailed search facilities will ensure the user can find exactly what they are looking for. By having a quick search facility on the page itself the user will be able to find what they are looking for easily. It is also vital to have a breadcrumb at the top of the page so the user knows exactly where they are whether it be in the product itself of during the checkout process.

5. Keep it simple! Don’t over complicate the process make sure the user can find what they are looking for and complete their order as quickly and with as few clicks as possible!

And here are a just a few of my favourite e-commerce websites which combine design and functionality perfectly!

www.pumpkinpatch.co.uk

www.next.co.uk

www.boden.co.uk

Tagged as in Online Marketing, Web Design, Websites

I guess the short answer to that question is yes and no.

Yes in that writing for the web forces you to take account of the search engines and making sure that what you’re writing reflects what people want to know. But a big, fat, enormous no in that to write truly powerful copy you simply *have* to write for your customers and not for yourself. Great copy attracts, engages and galvanises people into action.

Great copy answers questions that your readers have; shows them that you can solve their problem/ inspires them and entices them to put their trust and hard earned cash your way. It’s very simple really. And to be honest, writing for the web should be no different to writing for your readers.

Sure, you need to make sure that your website gets found. But if you understand *at the outset* what people are looking for in your niche; what people want to know about your product or service then it really isn’t rocket science. Now I’m telling you all this as a copywriter, not as an SEO expert (which I don’t profess to be). But just think about it for a moment. Truly bad copy (and we all see plenty of that about ) often starts out with a headline that bears no resemblence to what follows in the paragraph below. Writing for the web forces you to stay focused. If you want to get found for bespoke kitchens in Surrey; well then you need to make sure you use those words in what you’re writing. And so that it makes sense to the humans that are invariably going to read your website if your SEO ninja tricks pay off; then you need to make sure that the whole paragraph, or better still the whole page is around that theme too – just so that it makes sense…

I’m currently writing two pieces of copy for Stanbrook and Nicholson, a local joinery company based in the Surrey Hills. One is for their brochure, one is for their website. I’m pretty well placed to write this at the moment because we’re currently in the process of starting an extension, so I know exactly what their clients want to know.

I started by writing their brochure. Izzy and I planned out the structure a couple of weeks back, I interviewed the team and we’re now in the process of writing up. I still find it easier to write for people first – call me old fashioned but I have more love for them than robots. We’ve decided that the brochure is going to let the pictures do the talking so it was all about writing short, sharp, evocative paragraphs that told a story.

I then translated this to their web copy. Web doesn’t bring the space constraints with it that printed literature too – so we can allow ourselves the luxury of a few extra pages – more detail on the team and their environmental policy perhaps. It’s at this point that things start to get a bit more focused. With the help of my (now friend) Google and a few other tools I’m looking at various keywords – what people are searching for, what the competition is like, and how we can be different.

At the bottom of each page I’m specifying the keywords I think should be relevant to this page. That’s partly for my own sanity – to make sure each important one is covered off, and mostly to keep me focused. If I want to get found for bespoke kitchens surrey then I need to use those words – and there were places on relevant pages that I hadn’t.

So yes, writing for the web is slightly different to writing for print. But surely it’s just about a bit of discipline in giving the readers what they want? And let’s be honest, we could all use a bit of that!

Tagged as in Copywriting, Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Websites

This post has been a looooong time coming and I am delighted to finally share with you the new Yarwood-White website. Clare Yarwood-White runs a very successful jewellery design business. Over the past six years she’s scooped numerous awards and can count the likes of Danni Minogue, Cheryl Cole and Diana Vickers amongst her clients. [...]

Tagged as , bridal jewellery company redesign, website design, yarwood-white in Branding, Case Studies, Colour Psychology, From The Studio, Graphic Design, Logo Design, Marketing, Mood Boards, Online Marketing, Web Design, Websites

Receiving a comment on your blog is wonderful – it reaffirms that someone, somewhere out there is reading your ramblings. And very often it’s the start of a community all centred around your blog. What’s not to like? Well not all comments are good comments. Spammers have become very clever at singling out bloggers, writing [...]

Tagged as in Blogging, Online Marketing

There are many things that hold people back from blogging: fear of writing, fear of being exposed for your weaknesses, fear of peoples’ reactions to your beliefs and at the top of the list: fear of being ridiculed. How many times have you hit the “publish” button terrified of what people will think? What they’ll [...]

Tagged as in Blogging, Online Marketing

Samantha Jones is an expert Home Sales Strategist. She works with people who own unique houses and are struggling to sell them. These homeowners have often poured decades of love and affection into their homes; they’ve brought up their children their; their friends have commented on how beautiful their home is. And yet no one [...]

Tagged as , homes under the hammer, sam jones, samantha jones in Branding, Online Marketing, Web Design, Websites

Tracy Stonard runs Magenta Cakes, a cupcake and cake baking business based in Surrey. You might remember me sharing her new logo designs here and she also baked the cakes for the Flourish launch party. We created Tracy’s website for her some months back and are delighted to unveil her shiny new blog. It’s been [...]

Tagged as in Blogging, Case Studies, From The Studio, Graphic Design, Online Marketing

When was the last time you critically looked at your website? Have you analysed how effectively it’s working for you recently and looked at the tweaks you could make to get it performing even harder for you? The Flourish website has been live for a little under six months now and we’ve reviewed and tweaked [...]

Tagged as , web design guildford in Case Studies, Flourish Stuff, From The Studio, Graphic Design, Online Marketing, The Flourish Identity, Web Design, Websites

Natalia Barbour is an elegant and stylish Interior Designer based in Guildford. She approached us initially to help her create a brand identity for her business, and just recently we’ve been working on her website and blog design. Natalia is a lady with high standards to rival ours (yes, it is possible!) and a very [...]

Tagged as in Blogging, Case Studies, From The Studio, Graphic Design, Online Marketing, Web Design, Websites