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If you’re looking for tips on how to grow your photography business during COVID, then you certainly aren’t alone. Articles filled with photography business tips on our site are being devoured by readers. It can be difficult to simply sit and wait, which is the advice many of us are receiving from government officials right now. 

So, how can you expand your photography business from home? Here are some tips we’ve used in the past. 

Focus on Effective Communication

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If you’ve ever done any research on your photography business then you know that the first tip pretty much anyone gives is to focus on your communication.

This is for a number of reasons, but the most important, for me at least, is that people demand really quick responses from businesses they are thinking of hiring. This expectation is definitely not going away in our digital age. If another photography business responds to your prospective client before you do, then you’re really going to have to blow that person away in order to snatch their business.

Of course another reason why you should focus on effective communication in your photography business is that your existing clients deserve it. The better you are at communicating, the better your clients will be. This means your job will be easier and you will likely be paid faster. 

However, with so many different apps that require your attention (I spend an hour sifting through just my email account everyday), it can be incredibly difficult to keep track of which clients are waiting to hear from you.

This is why I use Podium for my photography business. Podium basically pulls all of the messages your photography business receives from all of these different platforms, like Yelp, Gmail and Facebook, and puts it into one, easy-to-read platform.  

So, instead of jumping around from app to app all day, you can respond to everyone through Podium. It also allows you to send invoices. Nice, right?!

Plus, you can get a free trial of Podium to see if it really helps you to improve the communication of your photography business before spending a cent.  

Work With Google

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This is one of the more difficult aspects of running a photography business in 2020. You have to learn how to play the digital game, and in this case, it’s the game of Google.  

So, Google basically ranks your website on three different qualities: expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. 

Now, keep in mind that people are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to play Google’s game for large corporations, so you shouldn’t expect to spend just a few minutes on learning about Google’s metrics and fix your whole website. 

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However, there are a few ways you can make Google trust your site more than your competitors’ sites. For instance, you need to keep in mind that Google is rating your site, but they’re also rating you as an author. So, if you want your site to be seen as an expert site, then getting other businesses to talk about your site, or better yet, winning an award as a photographer, will help your site to be ranked higher. 

But, in order for you to be seen as an expert, you should include a bio on your site about the number of years you have been working in photography and any formal training you’ve received.  

Learn More:

• 7 Tips to Make Invoicing Your Clients a Breeze
• 3 Things You Can Do to Make Your Photography Business Better

Include Videos on Your Website and Social Media Channels

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As frustrating as this is for a lot of photographers who hoped they would never need to learn a lot about videography, videos are pretty much a requirement across the board now.  

You should include videos on your website and all of your social media channels. What these videos consist of will vary widely depending upon the type of photography business you are running. 

For instance, if you are an adventure wedding photographer, then your videos could track one specific wedding adventure that you went on with a client. Or, if you’re a food photographer, then you could create a video showcasing the set up that is required for a shoot. 

The important thing is that you create quality videos to put up because people are much more likely to watch your videos than read anything you post, even if you’re running a photography business and not a videography business. 

Create a Quality Blog

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Another important thing you must do in order to learn how to expand your photography business is to learn how to create a quality blog. 

The word “quality” is really important here.

You should be blogging consistently on your website. You should also be following basic SEO rules about the length of your articles and the keywords you use throughout them. But, if your article isn’t interesting, nobody is going to care about it anyways. 

A rule that I like to use for myself is if I read a blog article I’m about to put up and realize I wouldn’t want to read it on another site, then why would I want it on mine? 

Be Consistent Across All of Your Platforms

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No matter whether you’re running a photography business, a marketing business, or any other sort of business, you will need to be consistent.  

For example, I talked about the fact that you need to create a quality blog that you’re regularly posting on. If you were going to be consistent with these posts, that means you would post once a day on Sundays and Wednesdays, for instance.  

The same goes for all of the other tips I’ve given you. While posting a video to your Facebook page once is good, posting videos on a regular basis is much, much better because you want to keep your followers engaged with where your business is.

This is an especially important tip right now because so many businesses are temporarily shut down. If you aren’t posting photo and video updates, then a lot of your followers and potential clients may accidentally think that your photography business is one such business and you could lose out on a paycheck because of it. 

Even a simple message every week telling your clients what your COVID business procedures are should suffice. 

Learn More:

• Free Marketing Ideas for Your Photography Business
• The Most Overlooked Success Tip for Photographers