Fast Food Friday - For Professional Photographers

3/23/2018

I started Fast Food Fridays after taking a scroll through the SCU archives. Seeing how much content has been generated on topics to help you build a stronger business over the last five years, it made sense to do something a little more concise.

Knowing how so many of you are artists who hate to focus on the operational side of your business, I decided to break your business down into small doses of fixable challenges. Well, here we are with the sixth installment, hitting another easy to fix component of your business.

While your website is about what you sell, and your blog is about what's in your heart, with many of you it's hard to tell the difference, especially when it comes to the logistics of your website. For example, why make it hard for people to contact you? If they love your work, then stop making them jump through hoops to get more information.

On the menu for today is your contact page. There's no such thing as giving people too much information when they're excited and want to reach you!

Cleaning Up Your Contact Page

I'm not against contact pages, just the limits so many of you put on them! Think about the last time you wanted to contact any company and how good it felt when you could communicate with a live body. Knowing that, then why limit contact to just a template form? We live in a robotic-default-choice world when it comes to communication, and here's a chance to put yourself ahead of most of your competitors.

I completely understand if you don't want to put an address down if you work out of your home, but give people a phone number to call and an email address, if they'd like to write to you directly. Then, give them the third option of filling out an online response form.

If you're going to use a template form, then let's keep it short. Some of you have decided to sneak in a survey and ask for everything from "How did you hear about us?" to requests to fast for 12 hours before submitting a blood test! Yes, I'm exaggerating a little, but just use the contact form to make contact. Personally, I would keep the form as simple as possible and save more detailed questions once you talk with the client.

Years ago a good buddy of mine passed away unexpectedly, and a bunch of us took to the phones. One well-known professional photographer had moved, and we gave up trying to contact him before the funeral. There was no phone number on his site and no new address.

Months later I saw him at a convention and mentioned how we couldn't find him because there was no number on his site. His response still blows me away,

"I don't want people calling me! I haven't got time for phone calls!"

There's not one ounce of embellishment in this story. He really just wanted contact via email. For the rest of you though, how great would it be to have your website so fantastic that your phone rang non-stop? Give people a phone number and if you want to impress them even more, your cell number as well. Then give them your email address.

It's a straightforward lesson to remember and one that your grandmother probably taught you years ago - treat people the way you'd like to be treated. It's so easy to be accessible!