Fast Food Friday - For Professional Photographers

​Fast Food Friday is all about ideas to help you fine-tune your business, including your website, blog, and marketing efforts. Just like a New Jersey diner, there's a "blue-plate special" every week. Most of the dishes are easy to eat - although now and then we meet somebody with a food allergy! 

Here's the challenge for so many of you. You're working hard to become an artist and focusing on your skill set, technology, and production. You're on a quest for the ultimate image. So, it's understandable that you don't have the time or want to make the time to look at operational issues in your business.

Well, that's where I hope this series can help. We're serving up fast easy to eat ideas to help you raise the bar on your business. Think about it, what good is creating the most beautiful images of your life if you can't communicate with your target audience?

And there is today's special - working on your written communication skills!

A while back I visited a photographer’s site, and I had no idea what she was trying to say! I’m not talking about a typo here and there; I’m talking about trying to understand what her point was in her “about” section. Grammar, spelling mistakes and typos all contributed, and she just rambled.

Here’s your challenge: I know you’re an artist. I know you understand the expression “a picture is worth a thousand words,” but that doesn’t mean you can own a business and sneak by without writing a little!  

​So, before you publish anything in a blog, website, brochure, even a letter to a client.

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For those of you who used to English class...

• Do everything you write as a draft first! Never publish anything first round.
• Read everything you write out loud.

• Use spell check, but remember using the wrong word, but spelled write (just making a point) won’t get picked up in spell check.
• Use Grammarly.com - it makes us all look smarter than we really are. However, even Grammarly makes mistakes in their suggestions - so you have to read each one and see if it's accurate.

• Have an associate, a friend, a family member read what you just wrote. If they hate it, accept the criticism and remember, their goal is pretty much the same as yours – to make you look good!

• Keep your thoughts short and to the point. Anything longer than 3-4 paragraphs is going to get lost on a new client visiting your website for the first time.

• In your “about” section on your site, it's especially important to speak from the heart. Talk about why you’re a photographer, why you love working with new clients or what makes your work different from other photographers. I've already shared specific suggestions in the Fast Food Friday special on February 23, 2018.

• NEVER negative sell! Stress the positives of who you are and your skill set. Don’t talk about what other photographers don’t do.

• Use a few adjectives now and then! This is where you can make your high school English teacher proud! Are you "a photographer who specializes in family portraits" or are you "an award-winning artist who photographs from the heart, specializing in unique family portraits capturing the spirit of each subject"?

• Remember to pay attention to where the fold hits on your screen and remember, not everybody has the same screen setup as you do. Try not to have the most important point you want to make run below the fold.

When you’re all done and ready to publish whatever you’ve written, go back and read it one last time, out loud! 
And, remember...

You don't write because you want to say something, 
You write because you have something to say.
F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Missed any of the past sixteen Fast Food Friday specials? 

There's a lot of great content with each post covering another aspect of running a stronger business in photography. They're all just a click away.  And, if there's a topic you'd like to see on the "menu," let me know in the comment section below and we'll turn it into a future special!

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