Actionable PR and Content Marketing Tips for Photographers
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How to promote your success in The International Pet Photographer of the Year Awards
Caitlin J. McColl and Kirstie McConnell are the hosts of the hugely popular Pet Photographers Club podcast.
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The Content Confidence Accelerator programme is an eight-week content mastery programme for professional photographers. (more…)
Quarterly Reviews: Goal setting and planning tips for photographers
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Finding my niche: Photography PR and marketing
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Podcast Interview: The Pet Photographers Club
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Why PR and content marketing work so well together
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Is media publicity the missing piece in your photography marketing strategy?
Reading Time: 8 minutesIs media publicity a key part of your photography marketing strategy? If not, I believe you’re missing a trick!
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(more…)How I helped Georgina Edwards Photography transform her marketing
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(more…)How to give your photography business a spring clean
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Giles Christopher Photography: Ranking highly on Google for the very first time
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Giles Christopher is an award-winning food and drink, product and lifestyle photographer who creates stunning commercial and editorial photography and videography. (more…)
Eight habits to boost your productivity in 2021
Reading Time: 6 minutesWant to know how to boost your productivity and achieve more in your photography business? If so, read on. I’m sharing eight productivity tips which will help you get more out of each day, and help you smash your 2021 goals!
My 2020 Review and 2021 Priorities
Reading Time: 10 minutesDoing an annual review of your business is something I highly recommend as so many useful insights can be gained from this process! (more…)
What is public relations and how can it help your photography business?
Reading Time: 6 minutesHave you heard of ‘PR’ but are confused about how it could complement the marketing you’re already doing?
Are you actually wondering what is public relations and how it can help your photography business?
If so, then you’re in luck. Here I explain what you need to know about public relations and how you can use it to promote your photography business.
As you’ll also discover, there are many benefits to using PR strategies within your photography marketing.
If you aren’t yet seeking PR opportunities, you’re definitely missing a trick! PR can help you to build awareness of your work, your business and your photography services, as well as attract a wider audience, establish you as an expert and much more. Keep reading to find out how!
A definition: What is Public Relations (PR)?
The Chartered Institute of Public Relations says,
“Public Relations is about reputation – the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you.”
To put it another way, public relations is a form of marketing that aims to encourage those who are important to your business (such as your clients and prospective clients) to form a positive opinion of you.
It’s about putting your best foot forward, portraying a positive image and demonstrating your expertise – something you are probably already doing every day in your business.
Why should you use PR strategies in your photography marketing?
As a business owner, you naturally want people to regard you and your photography services in a positive light. Reputation is everything in business.
The great thing is that you can use PR strategies to get visible and to build a positive impression in the minds of potential customers.
Since people generally buy from those who they know, like and trust over and above complete strangers or unknown companies/brands, PR can play an important part in the sales process.
Yep. PR can help convert potential photography clients and buyers into customers. So, has that got you interested? I hope so!
How does PR help you to attract more photography clients?
So, digging a little deeper now, let’s talk about how PR helps to generate new leads for your photography business.
Over time, the positive reputation you build through PR can help you to attract clients and buyers as well as influence their purchasing decisions.
It comes down to the fact that PR can help build ‘know, like and trust’.
1. KNOW
Ultimately, the first step is that you need to get visible; to get on your potential client’s radar. The more they are aware of your photography – your services, products, art – the more likely they are to recall you when they are in the market for your services.
2. LIKE
Then, you need to manage your business and how you market and communicate in a way that forms a positive impression over time.
3. TRUST
If you’ve given them reasons to regard you positively, then the more likely they are to trust you. This will influence whether their decision to work with you or buy from you.
So, you see, a positive reputation that you build over time can prove incredibly valuable to your photography business, and PR is all about building this positive reputation.
Related reading: Five ways to become a go-to photographer in your niche
Other benefits of using PR to promote your photography business
As well as helping you to build awareness, likeability and trust, PR can help you also:
1. Educate or inform
Through PR, you can educate or inform others. You can share opinion articles, information and survey results to tell a story around a particular cause or issue that you are passionate about.
2. Position yourself
You can build up your reputation as a thought leader or expert within your niche through PR. For example, by securing numerous press mentions on a particular subject, you can position yourself as an authority.
3. Build credibility
By being featured by the media, for example, you are effectively being endorsed by the publication or media outlet. Since these are established and likely have a sizable following, and positive reputation of their own, this boosts your perceived credibility.
4. Attract people to you
PR can help you to attract new customers, prospects and fans. You could see a boost in your social media follower numbers, your email subscribers and online engagement with your content after being featured in the media.
Also, one piece of publicity can also lead to another. So, PR can help you to attract further media attention.
5. Create opportunities
Media coverage about your photography business can also potentially lead to exciting new opportunities. Simply as a result of being seen at the right place, at the right time, you could get noticed by potential business contacts and sponsors.
6. Boost your SEO
If you get featured on high authority domains such as news or industry websites, this can help boost your search rankings in Google. This alone is a huge benefit of PR.
7. Make more money!
Finally, I believe that PR will also help you sell more. It shouldn’t be relied upon to drive revenue, but in my experience, I know that an upsurge in sales for a product or service can be the result if it has benefited from the oxygen of publicity.
Is PR just media publicity?
No, media publicity is just one aspect of public relations.
There is so much more to PR than publicity, but publicity is likely to be the most relevant aspect of PR to you as a small business owner.
By getting featured in the media, you can secure valuable exposure that allows you to potentially reach a large number of people at once, and it’s completely free!
The audience you reach naturally depends on which media publications or programmes that you target. Whether you want to reach a large, international audience or have a very targeted, niche audience, there will be media outlets that can help you to reach the people who are important to your business.
How can you get started with public relations?
In my opinion, PR is a vastly underused form of marketing. I think that’s because many photographers don’t fully understand what it is, how it can help them, and how they can use PR to promote themselves.
Is this true for you? Do you stick to other marketing such as social media marketing, online advertising and content marketing rather than PR and media publicity?
It is certainly feasible for you to do your own PR and many small business owners do. My website has many PR blogs which I hope you’ll find helpful. You can also join my Facebook group ‘PR-Savvy Photographers’ to get tips, inspiration and PR opportunities, and subscribe to my freebie library which has PR templates and downloadable resources.
PR support for photographers
You can also choose to outsource PR activities to someone with expertise and experience.
All my clients are professional photographers. Typically, they enjoy the creative aspects of their business but don’t enjoy or have the time to manage all the promotional aspects.
If you’d like to know more about how I can help you get visible in the media and create marketing content that attracts your ideal clients, take a look at my publicity and content marketing services and then contact me if you’d like to know more.
I’ve 17 years of PR experience and have been working exclusively with professional photographers since 2015. I would be delighted to find out more about you and your photography and to see if we could be a good fit.
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A free PR tool that could help you secure publicity for your photography business
Reading Time: 7 minutesDid you know that there are free ways to secure publicity for your photography business?
How to find journalists’ contact details
Reading Time: 7 minutesIf you want to use the power of PR to promote your photography business, then you need to start building relationships with journalists. In this article, I’ll be sharing how to find journalists’ contact details so that you can be reaching out to them with your news, stories and photography.
How to get publicity for your photography business during times of crisis
Reading Time: 8 minutesDuring times of crisis, marketing your photography business remains important. In fact, it’s arguably even more important than ever.
The Coronavirus pandemic, which we are currently in the midst of as I write this in early April 2020, has all-but closed most photography businesses for the short term. Yet, marketing-savvy photographers know that just because trading is temporarily on hold, marketing activities can and should continue. I take this view too.
The goal should now be to adapt as best you can and continue to market and promote yourself and get publicity for your photography business, to stay visible and top of mind.
This way, you will be taking positive steps towards helping your photography business survive the pandemic and be in the best possible position once you can open up again.
Is marketing and self-promotion appropriate during a crisis?
Some may take the view that marketing and self-promotion during a crisis should be the least of our concerns. But presuming you and your loved ones are safe and well, there is no shame in wanting to do what you can to protect your photography business for the longer-term.
Halting all marketing and going off the radar now, just as your clients and ideal clients are online in greater numbers than ever, and are seeking information, inspiration and connection more so than ever before, would actually be doing them a disservice.
You have knowledge, creativity and talents that are still needed right now, so do remember that keeping yourself visible is not only benefiting yourself but also those in your community.
Sadly, there are lots of people out there trying to make business owners feel guilty for continuing to market their products and services at the moment.
But my view is that as long as you are doing marketing in a socially-sensitive way, and are coming from a place of service and are trying to add value, then it is OK to do what you can to keep your business visible online.
Related reading: What to focus on now to help your photography business survive the pandemic
Publicity can help you to stay visible during the pandemic
You might presume that journalists don’t want to hear from business owners during a crisis; that publicity opportunities don’t exist if your business has nothing to do with the Coronavirus pandemic.
But, in fact, journalists are hungrier than ever for stories and they aren’t just interested in crisis-related news.
Certainly, in the past few weeks here in the UK, media consumption has sky-rocketed. People are spending more time online. They are seeking answers to their questions, solutions to their problems, and they are turning to the media for that information.
There is more demand than ever for news and information so many publications have increased their output. Therefore, in contrast to what you might think, journalists can actually be short of stories at a time like this. Which is why now is a great time to focus on securing publicity for your photography business!
What journalists want from you now
Journalists want to hear from people and from business owners with something insightful to share. They have column inches to fill, stories to write and, as ever, they need your help. And, while the pandemic is the major story of the moment, journalists are interested in a wide variety of topics so there’s a lot of scope for getting featured.
For example, there’s a big demand for inspirational, happy and funny news stories to counteract the vast majority of negative stories. Some light relief is always welcome when times are tough!
I’ve noticed that most newspapers, are now making a point of featuring positive news and have created dedicated columns or sections for sharing uplifting stories. This is what the Telegraph is doing, for example. Similarly, the Daily Mirror currently have a ‘Coronavirus Community Corner’ – a double-page spread in the paper full of uplifting content.
These journalist requests below are also good examples of what is currently in demand and note the “desperately need…” sentiment in the first. Journalists are hungry for your news!
How to get publicity for your photography business during times of crisis
As I’ve been saying, during times of crisis there are still many opportunities for you to be featured in the media.
As ever, there are several ways to land publicity and I explain these in more detail in this article: Three ways to secure free publicity for your photography business but to summarise, you can either:
1. Proactively pitch your news and stories
Create a press release or email pitch to summarise the key points of the story.
2. You can help journalists who are working on already-commissioned articles
Twitter is your friend here. Search the #journorequest hashtag within Twitter to find potential opportunities.
3. Or, you can use ‘newsjacking’ to make your business relevant to the current news agenda.
Related reading: How to use newsjacking to promote your photography business
Now, I’ll go into more detail about how you can make yourself relevant to the media and I’ll include examples of journalists’ requests, as shared on Twitter in recent days.
Newsjacking: Hooking onto the news agenda
News and stories related to the pandemic
If you have been affected in some way by the Coronavirus pandemic, you may have a personal or business story that could be of interest to the press.
The media are hungry for first-person accounts of how the pandemic is affecting small businesses. They also want your thoughts on the emerging situation and developments as they happen.
So, have a think about how you as an individual and as a business owner have been affected, and whether you have an interesting, unusual or, perhaps, slightly controversial story to share.
This is a technique known as ‘newsjacking’, which is a popular way to get publicity for your photography business. If selected to be featured, you could benefit from a mention in the press.
BUSINESS STORIES
For example,
- Have you had to cancel all of your bookings for the foreseeable and are now pivoting your photography business in order to survive the pandemic? You could share what plans you have for the short-term and how you anticipate it may impact your business in the long-term.
- Or, in contrast, is your business thriving in the wake of the pandemic? Have you managed to pivot your business or devise a way to generate revenue despite the challenges presented by the pandemic?
- Are you facing financial difficulty as a result of the pandemic? Or have you a story about surviving and thriving a previous crisis that could inspire others?
- What is your perception of how the photography industry is adapting to the changes brought on by the Coronavirus pandemic? Could this potentially be a good thing for the industry in some way (this is an example of a potentially controversial view), and if so, how?
- Are you the leader of a photography group or organisation? As a spokesperson for a group of photographers, what could you share with the media about how the photography industry is faring? What is your take on what support the photography industry needs at this time? What are the challenges photographers are facing and how are you actively involved in supporting them through this?
- What are you doing to help your photography clients at this time of crisis? How are you supporting them and what policies have you introduced into your business to safeguard your client’s interests? For example:
Stories like these could interest the business media and general news media.
PERSONAL STORIES
Alternatively, you may have a personal story that might interest the press. Personal stories are a great way to get publicity for your photography business!
For example,
- Are you a parent who is now juggling school-aged children with working from home? You could share your experience, talk about the challenges and how you are adapting to this new routine.
- Have you developed new skills in lockdown?
- Have you started a home-based photo project, perhaps a photo diary documenting your experience of self-distancing or home-schooling? If so, what images and personal stories could you share?
- Do you have a second area of expertise that is relevant in some way to the Coronavirus? For example, relating to fitness, self-care, mental health etc. Do you have any expert tips you can share with the media at this time when people are looking for this kind of advice and information?
- Are you helping others in some way, such as your neighbours, members of your local community or fellow photographers?
These are all potential routes into the media based on linking in with the current news agenda.
News and stories unrelated to the pandemic
News journalists are largely focused on the pandemic right now, but others are planning articles and features that are in no way related.
Which means that there are still opportunities for you to secure publicity for your photography business even if you don’t have a Coronavirus related story to share.
Your local radio station, newspaper and lifestyle magazine will have core features that they run regularly which are not impacted by the news agenda.
Editors still need strong stories and quality photography. They always need news, expert comment and tips, insights and anecdotes and people to interview about topics unrelated to the pandemic.
Related reading: 500+ National Awareness Days to use in your photography marketing
Similarly, bloggers are still welcoming guest posts, podcast hosts still want people to interview, online news and media sites want information unrelated to the Covid-19 crisis. The opportunities are still very much there for the taking.
A word on ‘lead times’
If you know anything about how the media work, you’ll know that the lead times for magazines can be anything from two to six months. So, features are being written now for publications which won’t be out on newsstands until the end of the year.
For example, Christmas editions of national magazines are usually compiled in July/August. Summer editions are wrapped up at the start of a new year, and ‘back-to-school in September’ related features are all done and dusted by the previous March or April.
I mention lead times because they are an important consideration when pitching the media. Don’t stop putting yourself forward for PR opportunities now in fear that it’s inappropriate during a global pandemic. The results of your hard work may not be seen until further down the line when, hopefully, this will have all blown over.
Publicity for your photography business during times of crisis
There is no shame, as a business owner, in wanting to stay visible throughout the pandemic. PR is a great way to leverage the power and reach of the media to reach new audiences and to remain top of mind, so I highly recommend that you continue to seek out publicity for your photography business.
Just be sensitive in your communications, empathise with your audience and seek to help. Serve your audience with useful content, create opportunities to connect with them and provide what they need. Come from a place of service and you’ll be on the right track.
Have you been featured in the media since the Coronavirus outbreak? I’d love to hear about it. Do get in touch via the comments below.
If you’d like more tips like this, sign up to my fortnightly ‘Content Connection’ emails and receive free access to my growing resource library which includes PR and marketing checklists, templates and worksheets exclusively for professional photographers. Sign up here or click the image below.
Photography marketing support: Let’s grow your photography business
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