Assignment 101: A Little House-Cleaning - Your Website

by Skip Cohen

Most of you have taken advantage of the typical business slowness in the first couple weeks of the new year, and if you need more time to recharge, go for it. But, it's only the "slow season" for regular customer purchases - NOT for business owners who need to fine-tune their presence, marketing, and brand awareness.

I'm going to start this new series by hitting on three easy projects that are no-brainers in terms of raising the bar on your Internet presence:
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• Clean up your online galleries! The presentation of your work online is all under that old line of "less is more." You don't need quantity, but you do need quality. Look at your galleries right now. Are there images that anybody's Uncle Harry could have captured? Are you showing diversity in your skill set, or does every image look the same? Every image needs to be a "wow" print. That means each photograph is so good you'd only need to show one image to get hired! You know which photos don't deserve to be in your galleries - so let's dump them!
• Does your "About" page tell people who you really are? Too many of you share information the "Mom" doesn't care about. Why Mom? Because in the portrait/social categories, women make 95% of the decisions to hire a professional photographer. She doesn't care about awards you've won (unless it's a Pulitzer). And she's not interested in what gear you use or how you got started in photography. What she needs to know is why you're a photographer, why you love working with your clients: and can you be trusted to deliver the kind of images of her family she wants most.
• Time to update your headshot! Instead of a portrait that could put a rock to sleep, let's remind people what you do for a living. Create a shot that shows you working with a client with a camera close by or in your hands. Be creative and consider a 2-3 image collage that tells more of your story. So many of you have personal portraits that could be better and instill more confidence. I'm sharing this shot of Kay Eskridge again because it's one example of what I'm suggesting.

Remember, today's post is just the beginning of your "house-cleaning" for the new year. It might be the slow season, but that's not for you. Now is the time to do everything you can to ensure the new year is one of growth, and your website is a great place to start.

​Over the next few weeks, I'll share a few more "homework assignments" to help you stay focused on the task at hand - strengthening your business and making your website the very best it can be!

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