As an added bonus, we’ve also removed our previous limitations on Portfolios and Content Pages, so you can have the flexibility you need to show off your best work.

There’s no better time to sign up and create your custom website with clickbooq.

This is the deal you’ve been waiting for!

Existing user? Learn more about switching plans in our Support Center

Your best source for new clients is referrals from your existing clients. If you’ve done your job well, the best time to ask your clients for referrals is at the conclusion of a project or when delivering their photos. Create a referral card your clients can give to friends and family with a special offer or promotion. Then reward your customers for any referrals they bring in. Rewards can be additional reprints, credits towards future purchases or a cash incentive.

Support your community and think local. Are there events in your town that could use your services? If your specialty is family portraits, why not team up with a parents’ network or mother’s group that puts on Halloween costume parties, easter egg hunts, and other festivals or fairs to offer special packages or one-day event photography? Ask for promotional signage/sponsorship logos in exchange for supporting the event and have postcards or brochures ready to distribute. You can also capture emails when someone signs up to have their photo taken at an event.

Check out the site, meetup.com, for local communities in your area.

And finally, never leave home without your business cards – you never know when you might run into someone who is looking for your services or can refer you to others.

One of many MailChimp newsletter templates.

Ah, the ever promising email newsletter.  What exactly is a newsletter, though?  And why is it important to have one?  In this day and age, having a newsletter is a necessary component  for your business’s web marketing campaign.

There’s some key steps you should consider when setting up a successful email marketing campaign.  Among them are making your text easily scannable for readers, ensuring information is properly presented in small “bite-size” sections with links to read the full article, and keeping the majority of the newsletter’s content “above the fold” or visible without having to scroll down.

Next, you’ll need an audience.  Be up front and have a clearly viewable link to your email newsletter sign up form on your website.  Drive signups by offering incentives to newsletter subscribers.  What will make it most worthwhile for them are special promotions.  Take it a step further and offer specials for folks who refer new subscribers.  Gather emails from past and present clients, events, and through good old fashioned networking.  You can advertise your newsletter on fliers, stickers, price sheets, or any other sort of print collateral you use.

Plus, you should also promote your latest newsletter when it first posts.  It’s smart to tweet a link to your newsletter, or to post it to Facebook.  And finally, respect your audience by allowing them to unsubscribe at any time and protecting their contact information.

We highly recommend using an email newsletter service provider to help manage your newsletters and email campaigns. One such service is MailChimp, the one we use here at clickbooq. Our experience with them has been excellent and they provide lots of templates and tips to help you get started plus great reports for measuring the success of your newsletters.

Here are a few helpful links to guides you can download for free from their site:

1_ MailChimp Guides: How To Create An Email Marketing Plan, Email Marketing Field Guide, and Common Rookie Mistakes.

2_ Email Blueprints:  email newsletter templates that are easy to use and have intuitive modifiable fields so that you can tailor it to your own branding and content.

Major components of Imaging USA are the Imaging EXPO tradeshow; several all-inclusive parties; and presentations by some of the biggest names in the photographic industry. Imaging USA’s renowned educational classes are geared to improve a photographer’s business skills, photographic repertoire, and use of technologies.

Did you attend?  Or, ask yourself why you should consider attending events such as this  Well, industry events, expos and trade shows like Imaging USA offer a great opportunity to generate and nurture business contacts.  You can also gain current industry insights, check out the latest gear, and stay on top of the latest tech trends and developments.

Opponents of trade shows often site overhead costs of attendance.  They also argue that, with the internet and social networking, you can do most of this stuff at home.  For the most part, they’re right–you can accomplish a lot in front of your computer these days, but never underestimate the value of real life interaction.  Checking out the specs on new equipment versus testing out a camera in person and talking to the manufacturer’s representative is a much different experience. And you can finally meet all those people you’ve been following or friended in person.

Before you head out to an industry event, make the most of your trip by planning ahead so that you can maximize your time and money.  Here are three tips:

1. Establish a plan of action: Create goals and strategies to help expand your business

2. Prioritize: Schedule a list of panels, seminars, and classes that you will attend based off the needs of your business.

3. Arrive with an arsenal of business cards

Bargain shop – seek out the retailers and manufacturers who are offering tradeshow-only discounts and specials. On the last day of the show is when the deepest discounts can be found – most exhibitors don’t want to schlep product home.

After the show is over, RSVP for events with your favorite vendors – this is a great time to unwind and chat with friends.

When you get home, go over the business cards and collateral you’ve collected and follow up with the companies or people you were interested in learning more about or possibly forming partnerships with.

So, keep an eye out for upcoming events.  SXSW is on the horizon, and while not catered specifically to photographers, their film festival, interactive conference, and music festival offer a plethora of opportunities and resources for photographers, and anyone interested in new media.  It was also recently announced that PMA is now CliQ, and whereas it had previously targeted photo retailers, it is now targeting the photographers.  Check out their official CliQ website over here.

With the new year, you should also do some housekeeping on your website. Take a look at your online portfolios and remove any photos that seem dated or don’t reflect your latest work. Remember – less is more – typically brides are only spending a few minutes on each photographer’s website so make those minutes count by showing only a well-edited, best-of-the-best selection.

Also, think back to the venues and locations you shot at previously. Add this detail to your captions and metadata – brides often like to see examples of images from their chosen venue or destination wedding and will do an internet search based on those keywords.

Santa Barbara is a popular destination for weddings.

Many couples will take their engagement photo session as a practice run and prefer to have their engagement photos reflect the time of their engagement – so a winter engagement often leads to a winter photo session.

If your prospective couple is early in their engagement, offer an engagement session at a discount. This is a wonderful way to start a conversation with your couple and their friends and family – your engagement photos will serve as a preview of what’s to come. It’s also an excellent way to get familiar with a couple and find out their likes and dislikes – so you can really deliver on their Wedding Day.

When you’re ready to deliver their photos, you might consider giving a package of personalized engagement cards the couple can send out to their families with a link to their engagement photo gallery and your studio’s information on it. Not only will the couple appreciate the gesture, it’s also a great way to promote your business to her friends and families. And if you start creating an online gallery for your couple now (check out proofbooq – our shopping cart solution from the folks at RedCart), invited guests can bookmark the URL now for the big event – the wedding!

Image from Modern Luxury Weddings Bridal Show in San Francisco

And finally, even if you’d prefer to stay warm inside your studio, don’t forget to venture out this winter. Put yourself in the mindset of your potential brides and see if you can “cross paths” with her – you might try exhibiting photos at the café across from your local bridal boutique – or even ask if you might leave some business cards at the dress shop itself. And don’t forget all the bridal shows – here you’ll find information-hungry brides who are actively shopping for your services. Best of luck for a fun and fruitful 2011 to all our clients!

1. DEFINE YOUR MARKET

(Image courtesy of Qminity)

First off, it is important for any business to define their market. Ask yourself: what areas of photography do I excel in? Is there a niche market for my work? Who are the clients I want to attract? Are they located in a specific region, or are they defined by a certain style, or a certain need? When identifying your audience and clientele, it’s important to imagine yourself in their shoes and ask, “Why should I hire this person?” and “What makes his/her business special?” Do you offer a unique service or product offering? By asking yourself the right questions, you can attract more of your ideal clients and better define your strengths.

2. REACH THEM

Once you’ve identified your market, you will need to reach them. In this day and age, many of us have gotten lazy with easy access to tools such as email, IM, Twitter, Facebook, and message forums. But remember the other ways we used to reach our customers? A direct mail piece (letter, postcard, mailer, etc) is still a great way to get someone’s attention, especially when their email box is filled with hundreds of email promos they receive. Send a promotional postcard with a special discount code on it, exclusive for these clients or potential clients on your mailing list. If you have their phone numbers as well, follow-up with a friendly phone call to see if they’ve gotten your postcard and have any questions.

Purchase This Promotional Post Card Template From Graphic River

Or, let’s say you’re a portrait photographer and it’s senior portraits season. Get in touch with the yearbook staff at your local high schools and let them know you’d love to be one of their preferred photographers. Plus, you can get their guidelines on what is and isn’t acceptable for their yearbook photos. Find out where teens are hanging out – post up flyers at football games, your local Starbucks, etc.

Are you a wedding photographer? If so, have you left your promos at wedding gown boutiques, florists, or venues? In fact, you should try to partner up with other businesses that cater to the same market. Extend an offer to a wedding planner to refer clients to them if they do the same by referring clients to you. Take the co-promotion a step further and print a co-branded brochure or promotional piece –you get the back side, and they get the front side. Speaking of print, buy an ad in the local paper, when and if it makes sense. For example, if your business caters to California’s Napa Valley, where a lot of weddings take place, you might want to take out an ad in Napa Sonoma Magazine or Napa Valley Life Magazine. And don’t forget events – do a Google search for bridal shows in your area and consider setting up a booth or at least do a little networking at the event. Another idea would be to list yourself with the local or regional trade organization.

Lastly, and arguably the best way to reach them, is word of mouth. Encourage people to talk about your business–create a referral system where clients can receive special discounts or offers by referring their friends and family to you. And you may not normally think of competitors as bringing you business, but in all likelihood you’ll run into situations where you’re already booked and the client could use a referral. Why not ask a few of your competitors to refer your business in these situations and promise to do the same?

3. CONSISTENT BRANDING

Put Your Name On Everything! (Image courtesy of CreativeBits.com)

When relying on many of these traditional marketing techniques, always remember to keep your visual branding consistent. Use the same logo, the same color scheme, the same fonts across all media, from print collateral to online collateral. After all, your web presence is essentially a business card or billboard that exists in cyberspace. Tie all physical material back to your online presence. Remember to include website address, email address, Twitter handle, Facebook page on your flyers, ads, business card, etc.

MARKET AWAY!

As you can see, there are still many effective ways to attract new clients offline, so combine this with your online tactics to maximize your efforts!

First off, don’t use your personal Facebook profile to promote your photography business. You will need to build a separate Facebook fan page to do any professional promotion on Facebook. Take some time to read Facebook’s terms and conditions if you need clarification on what constitutes personal and professional activity.

Once you’ve created a Facebook fan page, share it with all your contacts – whether through Facebook’s Suggest to a Friend feature or through a personal email. Now when someone “Likes” your page, it gets posted in their Facebook News Feed and shared with their friends (depending on their News Feed preferences).

Use your Facebook Fan page to send updates about your business, share photos from recent shoots or events, and connect with your clients and the photographer community.

Promote your Facebook Fan page on your clickbooq website by adding links to your page within one of your content pages. You can find a sample Contact Page with Facebook and Twitter logos in the Support Center > Downloads. You can also drive traffic to your Facebook Fan page or your clickbooq website by running small ads targeting Facebook users based on their age, marital status, location, and preferences.

And don’t forget to join clickbooq on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/clickbooq

Here’s how. Create a free account on Wufoo, which includes up to 3 forms and up to 100 entries per month. If you need more than that, or want some of the added features that come with paid accounts, you can upgrade to one of their monthly payment options. Once you’ve signed up and logged in, you can start creating your form immediately. In the Wufoo Form Gallery, you can find pre-made templates for a variety of forms, everything from simple Contact Forms to Event Registrations. I started off using the “Retreat Registration” form and then just tweaked the fields to create an inquiry form for a wedding photographer.

You’ll need to spend some time thinking about what information you want to capture from visitors to your photography website. For my form, I included fields for name, email address, phone number, mailing address. And to give me more detail about what they were looking for, I included a drop-down menu to choose which photography package they might be interested in, a calendar for selecting the date of their event, and a fill-in the blank for the location of their event. Plus, so I know what marketing channels are working for me, I included a drop-down menu with options for how they were referred to us. You can make all or some of these fields required.

Once you’ve setup your form fields, you can create a theme that matches the style of your clickbooq website. You can select from different fonts and colors as well as upload custom patterns and logos. When you are done designing your theme, save it and assign it to the form you created.

Now when you View the form from your Forms Manager, you can get a link to the form. It’s easy to link to the form within your clickbooq website, by creating an External Link in the clickbooq Toolbox > Content Page section. When visitors come to your clickbooq site and click on the external link you’ve created, it will launch a second browser window and load your Wufoo form.

Click here to see my example.

Once you’ve posted your form on your website, Wufoo can send you an email or even a text message to your cellphone to let you know when someone submits an inquiry. There are also reports and graphs you can create to track your results as well as download all your new prospects.

So you have your clickbooq website up and running. The portfolios look awesome, you’ve customized your website with your very own background and the whole thing is sizzling.

The problem is your website still sucks. Why? The people who want and need your service still can’t find you. Now is the time to learn about search engine optimization, often called SEO, and how it works with your clickbooq website.

Getting listed by search engines at or near page one for important keywords should be a crucial goal for your business and website. It means new and better clients which of course means more money in the bank. So how can you accomplish this with your clickbooq website?

Since investing in a clickbooq website in 2007, I’ve encountered a stigma from other photographers and search engine marketing “experts” about using a flash-based website and how difficult it is to improve search engine rankings for these sites. Some insisted I had wasted my money and that mirror HTML was seen as “black hat” or illegitimate by search engines and such websites would be punished in their rankings for using such techniques.

I knew it was hooey. While there are very real limitations to how search engines interact with Flash content many Flash websites using mirror HTML are ranking very well.

Promoting your business with a Flash-based website like the one offered by clickbooq can be a unique challenge… but my experience proves it is possible. Clickbooq provides each of its users with a mirror HTML web page that opens up some powerful possibilities to enhance your rankings on Google, MSN, Yahoo!, etc.

Disclaimer:, The material I am sharing has been acquired through research, trial and error. I am merely a wedding and portrait photographer in the trenches with a clickbooq mirror-HTML website who has managed to rank on page one or near page one for a few keywords important to my business and potential clients. My guidance here comes from my experience, research and success using these tips to advance my own online marketing. That learning process is ongoing.

Good SEO isn’t being listed No. 1 for your name:

O.K. So this one isn’t a tip as much as a reality check. Too many photographers are content getting listed on the first page of results when someone searches for their studio’s name or their personal name. This isn’t where the growth potential for your online presence is. The people you need to grow your business don’t know about you and are searching for generic terms such as “Portland photographer” or “Miami fashion photographers.” They are not searching for your name.

Effective search engine optimization seeks to place your website in front of an audience seeking your services who do not know about you nor what you have to offer.

Understand how search engines work and how they “see” your clickbooq page:

I love my clickbooq site, but Google could care less about those wonderful image transitions, big pictures and clean design. Why? Google has virtually no ability to “see” Flash websites and index their content. Therefore Google has a very hard time telling what your site is about and who is your intended audience. It’s computer brain cannot see what a human sees so it relies heavily upon text, coding and links in a website to discover what a website is about, how it compares to others and who needs to see it when they search for certain keywords on Google.

To see what Google sees when its spiders crawl your website, disable Javascript in your browser and go to your website. You will see a very basic looking website with a picture and text links. This is a very important page. Even though virtually none of your visitors will see it, it is the only content search engines “see.”

Research your keywords:

This is a crucial early step for building an effective search engine marketing plan. Keywords will form the basis for much of your work. What are your keywords? A good bet is to make them multiple word phrases unique to your location. Avoid the ultra competitive keywords.

For example, a Texas wedding photographer will have a much easier time making the first page for “San Antonio wedding photographer” than he/she will for “wedding photographer” not to mention reach a much more local and more likely to book clientele. A good place to check the popularity of keywords is Google Adwords:Keyword Tool. Enter in your keyword ideas and it will show the popularity of those words plus related keywords and their popularity.

Write these keywords down and keep them close, they will be critical to your work.

Use keywords in your title:

Log into your clickbooq toolbox, click on the “Settings” tab and click on “Search Engine Settings” on the far left of the toolbox. There’s important work to be done here.

Let’s start with the “site title” field. For search engine purposes, there’s a few good titles and a thousand bad titles you can use. A website title should be informative to the visitor and helpful to search engine rankings. A Utah child portrait photographer will get better rankings if they title their website “PB&J Photography: Salt Lake City children’s photographer” rather than just “PB&J Photography”. They will achieve even better results if they use “Salt Lake City children’s photographer | PB&J Photography”

Search engines like each page to have unique titles so vary your webpage titles where possible. If you have any HTML pages hosted on your domain be sure and vary the titles from your clickbooq’s website titles.

Write a brief and informative description:

Next you need to fill in the “Meta description” field. The importance of page descriptions to SEO is debatable but they are very helpful to potential visitors. The description is listed below your website title when potential visitors see your listing on a search engine. Usually limited to about 150 characters, this text is an important means to pique the searchers interest in your website.

Make your description 150 words or less and make it useful and informative. Do not pack it full of keywords and gibberish. Such practices are considered spam and it will not help your rankings. Put your keywords and phrases in the Meta Keywords field. The meta keyword field is not all that crucial to your SEO but fill them in anyway.

Every picture on your clickbooq site should have a title and keywords:

Since Google relies heavily on text to index a webpage use your targeted keywords in your clickbooq images’ keywords and image titles. Every image should have a title and use important keywords in those titles. If “Atlanta fashion photographer” is an important keyword phrase go ahead and name some images “atlanta-fashion_01.jpg,” and “atlanta-fashion_02.jpg” and “atlanta-fashion-photographer_23.jpg” Do not use non-descriptive filenames like IMG_3456.jpg.

It is also wise to vary your use of keywords phrases. Don’t repeat them too much, that’s called “keyword stuffing.” Google knows when you are trying to game their results, they will punish your rankings for getting too cute with your SEO efforts or repetitive with your keywords. I try to limit my use of a keyword phrase to no more than twice a page.

Use captions on each and every picture:

Again, it’s all about text. Regardless whether you feel captions are an important aspect of your work as a photographer you need to have captions on each of your pictures. If you don’t have captions visible on your website (usually marked “info” on the flash website) you need to change that immediately. Log into your clickbooq toolbox, click on the “Settings” tab, click the “Website Features” field on the left, on the far right under “Portfolio Settings” make sure to have “Display image captions field” marked.

Make unique captions for each of your images. Use a keyword phrase from your research in the captions. Once again, do not overdo it. One keyword phrase per photo is sufficient. Use the other keyword phrases you have researched for the other text fields like “title” and “keywords” for your images.

Blog, blog, blog:

If your clickbooq site is your showhorse for your business, a frequently updated blog with lots of content is the workhorse. Your blog is loaded with text such as captions, headlines, descriptions, not to mention backlink opportunities from other places on the internet. These are very valuable in building your entire site’s search engine ranking.

Blog everyday, make a weekly plan and stick to it. Write articles that showcase your knowledge for your relevant audiences, tag the posts, keyword them and watch them attract visitors and links.

When showcasing your work, create sub-domains with your keyword terms and stash the images in those sub-domains. Use the “ALT” term within your IMG tags to add other keywords. Again, beware of keyword stuffing.

Blogger is not your friend:

Clickbooq websites allow you to host a WordPress blog on your own domain. Use it, it is crucial. (edit: not available for plans after June 2011; blogs can only be hosted on a subdomain)

Early on I made the mistake of using a blogspot blog hosted on the blogspot domain and not my own. That meant all the posting, tags, comments and backlinks I earned through blogging were giving search engine credit to blogspot and not my domain (glowimagery.com). Transferring all that stuff over to my wordpress blog was a big pain. Request clickbooq to install a wordpress blog on your website and start blogging now.

Creative places for links:

Did you know you can publish links on your website through the “Copyright Holder” field? You certainly can. The possibilities are pretty neat considering there’s a limited number of content pages and links you can publish on the navigation bar of your website. You can link to your own text-rich, Google-lovin’, HTML content with a mission statement, bios, FAQ, a sitemap or an about page. The linked-to HTML page will be indexed by Google and is yet another opportunity to use keywords and build backlinks.

Most people don’t know you can also place links in your captions. In my captions I have links to other wedding vendors, photographers and articles I have written.

Get backlinks, get backlinks, get backlinks:

Most of this post has dealt with on-page SEO through keywords, captions, URL structure, blogging, etc., but a major factor in you achieving first-page listing for your keywords will be off-page SEO. Namely who’s linking to you in the vast internet universe. It’s pretty clear Google favors websites that are popular and trusted in search results. A key judge of a website’s popularity and trustworthiness is the quality and quantity of links back to that website.

It helps to think of your clickbooq website as a town out in the desert, the more roads and highways you have going into that town the more visitors you will receive.

How do you build links to your site? This will be the central challenge of effective search engine marketing. It can be grueling and unglamorous work but it is the lifeblood of getting and keeping a page one search engine listing. There are a myriad of ways to build links but it should be a constant effort on your part.

Provide tips and advice through a blog for people relevant to your niche. Serve others by sharing what you know. Are you a fashion photographer? Write a blog post about how to work with stylists and make-up people. Did you develop a cool Adobe Photoshop action? Post it to your blog.

Do a guest blog for your affiliates and professional contacts, of course make sure you put a link back to your website.

Give and you shall receive. Start a links page on your website and begin putting other people’s links on neatly categorized lists. If you give someone else a link they are much more likely to return the favor.

Enter contests, donate to a local charity and get a link on their thank you page, submit to directories, participate in forums.

The good news is building links fits exactly into the practice of old-fashioned, press-the-flesh offline marketing efforts which you should constantly be doing as well as your SEO. Asking for a link back should be as regular a request as handing out a business card.

To help you get started, I am building a new link page to my website and would love to help your search rankings by furnishing a link to your photography-oriented website. In return all I ask for is a link from your website or a blog. Contact me at chris@glowimagery.com to provide your linking information.

See how it works? I’m not kidding either, shoot me an email.

Oh, and stay away from link farms. Build incoming links naturally and organically with people and websites that are relevant to your service.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint:

Good things in life don’t come easy and they don’t come without sacrifice. If they do come easy and painlessly they tend to disappear just as easily and quickly.

This is especially true of SEO. You’re not going to be on page one for “Los Angeles photographer” after only a few days of working on this stuff. SEO is just like regular, old-school marketing. It’s a slow arduous process that is best accomplished by working on it a little bit each day. No matter how busy you are, set aside an hour each day building links, blogging and tinkering with your keywords.

Use Google Analytics to track your progress. I keep a journal with weekly goals and a weekly evaluation of where I am ranking for my most valuable keywords. I also track offline marketing goals and efforts. They are all to service the same goal: more visitors and more business.

Stay focused and don’t give up. I hit the wall a couple of times but kept tinkering, learning and trying until little victories became bigger ones.

A portfolio showcased through clickbooq is a powerful presentation tool so you already have a competitive advantage. A quick scan of your competitors will reveal most photographers who are accomplishing high search engine rankings do not have websites with the clean, intuitive and impressive design of a clickbooq website. The challenge is to wisely implement a strategy using the tools available through your clickbooq website to rank highly for keywords important to your business.

It is possible, it just takes commitment and work.

Chris Cummins is the owner and chief photographer of Glow Imagery, a wedding and portrait photography studio based in Kansas City. Chris has been a clickbooq user since 2007. Newly married himself, Chris enjoys writing, reading, cooking, good cinema and giving belly rubs to his beagle, Opal. Want to ask Chris a question? Swap a link or two? Drop Chris a note at chris@glowimagery.com.

You may still be stuck on what the heck “tweets” are.  Tweets are very short messages – a maximum of 140 characters –  that can range from what you had for breakfast to breaking news about a local earthquake. Twitter describes itself as “a free service that lets you keep in touch with people through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing.” “Following” someone means you will receive their “tweets” on your Twitter homepage. You can follow celebrities, politicians, companies, or fellow photographers.

Twitter can be a collaborative tool – used in a work environment to let people know what you new projects you’re working on. It can be a community builder in a time when face-time’s a premium. It can also help you get instant feedback from your followers or quickly get an answer to your questions. But will Twitter actually help you land a new contract or sell more stock? The jury’s still out, but we do know it’s nice to have a place to gather for “water cooler talk” whether you’re in your studio or traveling solo for a shoot.

Read the Fashion industry’s take on Twitter: http://jcreport.com/intelligence/twitter/240309/fashions-tweeting-frenzy