Promoting your weblog
From pixyWiki
Now that you have your site up-and-running how do expand your audience and get more visitors viewing your site? There are many things you can do, and there's no clearcut solution, but some of these should help get new visitors and keep existing ones coming back for more.
Register with photography communities
You've probably seen photoblogs with lots of small button graphics at the bottom, these are most likely links to photography communities which the site's owner has registered with. These online communities help correlate, index and sometimes rank photos, photographers and their sites. These are a great way to get your site known and joining communities is often a rewarding experience. Some communities may be local to where you are, and these can get you in touch with like-minded photobloggers/photographers. There are community annual awards you can enter and local meet-ups you can attend, it's all out-there depending upon how involved you want to be.
Here's a list of some popular community sites you might be interested in joining, there's a lot of choice so you can pick-and-choose the one's that interest you:
- http://www.photoblogs.org
- http://photos.vfxy.com
- http://www.coolphotoblogs.org
- http://www.photoblogsmagazine.org
- http://www.jpgmag.com
- http://www.photoblog-community.com
- http://www.photoblogdirectory.net
- http://www.vazaar.com
- http://www.onexposure.net
- http://www.lightstalkers.org
- http://www.fredmiranda.com
- http://www.photolinks.com
- http://www.fotodigg.com
By joining in discussions forums and groups you can also help promote your site. Often these communities will have a profile page where you can write a little about yourself and include a link to your site, see also using signatures.
Post regularly
If you post on a regular basis, perhaps weekly or even daily, and at around the same time-of-day then your visitors will come to know your pattern and when to expect new content. It can be off-putting for visitors to keep coming back to your site to see the same old photo they commented on last month and it won't be long before they don't return at all. If you are away, no problem, with pixyBlog you can pre-schedule posts to appear at a set time and date in the future. You could also use this feature to set your posts for the whole week (or month) in advance so that (1) it's quicker for you doing all your posts in bulk, (2) you can be sure that you won't miss a day, and (3) your posts will appear at the same intervals.
Experiment and Innovate
Your site is one of many... a very many! To get yourself noticed amongst all those photographers out there don't be afraid to experiment and try something different. One of the great joys of photography is that there are endless possibilities for you to pursue, even more so now in the digital age. No doubt your viewers would welcome any experimental photos you upload. Photoblogs are a great medium for experimenting with too, you may well want your very best photos displayed, but there's no harm in dabbling in other areas which you are unfamiliar with. Your viewers will no doubt be supportive and positively critique your work.
Enter competitions
There are many online and traditional magazine competitions covering all types of photography. By entering a competition you will get free exposure for your photos and often you will be allowed a link back to your site.
Here are some online photography competition websites.
- http://www.weeklyshot.org/
- http://www.ephotozine.com/competitions
- http://www.photoshopfaceoff.com/
- http://www.betterphoto.com/contest.asp
You will be sure to find the magazine competitions in your regional Photography journals.
There are also many online photography awards, but you usually need to be nominated for these, they include:
Get your own domain
Running your site on your own domain name makes your site more personal and also it can appear more professional. But that's not the only advantage; it takes a great deal of time and effort to build-up your site, and as your site ages more and more links will build-up providing more visitors and giving your site a higher position in search engine rankings. If you then decide to move all your photos somewhere else, then you have control of your domain and can simply switchover without losing all you visitors (and links). pixyBlog makes it easy for you to run your site under your own domain name and we encourage it; it's best for both of us.
Reply to comments
If visitors take the time to comment on your photos, thank them. If anyone asks a question, reply as soon and in as much detail as possible. Comments are a great way to build-up a dialog with your visitors and you will get to know them and they will get to know you. New visitors will be able to see this and will be encouraged to also drop a comment or question. The more effort you put into your visitors, the more visitors you will get.
Make comments on other peoples posts
If you post a comment on someone else's site they will no-doubt read that comment and be encouraged to find-out who posted it, leading them to your site. This will be the same for other people viewing the comments; perhaps if you agree or disagree with someone else's comment they too will be curious and will checkout your site. Making comments and joining-in discussions on other sites is a great way to promote your site; you build-up links back to your site and also from the comments you leave people will start to form an impression of who you are. If you post regularly on a site people will come to expect a comment from you and will look-out for your opinion. The more comments you post, the more links to your site, the more visitors you get.
Tagging and Galleries
By taking the time to organize your galleries and making them relevant to your photography it will payoff in the long-term. If your photos are of a photojournalist style, then you might want to create regional galleries, for example:
- America
- America > USA
- America > USA > New York
- America > USA > California
- America > Brazil
- Europe
- Europe > Spain
- Europe > France
- Europe > Romania
- Asia
- Asia > China
- Asia > Japan
Alternatively you might do a lot of street photography in the city where you live. In this case you might have galleries similar to:
- Portraits
- Graffiti
- Cityscapes
- Landscapes
- Sports
The galleries system is very flexible and you can have galleries within galleries and move these about as you like.
Tagging is also a must. It's a great way to describe your photos and like galleries it also helps group similar photos together.
Both tagging and galleries make your site easier for your viewers to find the content they are after, and as your site grows these features will become even more important, so it's worth the extra effort to get familiar with them from the start.
Document each entry
"A picture is worth a thousand words"; this may well be true, but it's still well worth adding descriptions to your photos. This could be as little as where it was shot or who's in the photo. By adding descriptions it not only gives your viewers more insight into the photo, it also helps search engines index them.
If you are photographing an event, then link to the events official website. Better still, email the event organizers and inform them of your photos, they may well add a link to you or ask if they can use your photos on their website (with a reciprocal link to you of course).
Your photographs may not be straight shots; perhaps you do a lot of post-processing on your computer, or maybe you use HDR imaging. In these circumstances it's great to document what steps you took, your viewers will be very interested in how you got to the end result.
You can over-describe your photos though. Remember that your visitors are most probably there to see your photos.
Link to other sites
Using your pixyBlog bookmarks you can easily link to other photoblogs which you like to visit, or perhaps influence or inspire you. By creating a link to other sites these links will show-up in their referrers and there's a good chance they will see that you are linking to them. This may encourage them to create a reciprocal link back to you, or at least get them looking at your site.
Use email and forum signatures
By including a signature block with a link to your photoblog at the bottom of all your email correspondence, it's an extremely easy way to get your site out there. Whenever you send or reply-to an email there's a link back to your site. You've probably seen these before in business correspondence, and it's the same approach for promoting your photoblog. Signature blocks can also be added to any posts you create in discussion forums or groups as well.
Create some business cards
How many times when you're out taking photos has someone struck-up a conversation with you about your photography? What about when you're at an event or on the street and you ask to take a portrait of someone, or even out socializing and you get talking to someone about photography. These are all occasions when having a business card at hand would be useful, so why not get one.
You can get some really funky designs made-up from your photos at moo.com, or for more traditional business cards, checkout Vista Print.
Add statistical analysis tool to your site
Although this won't drive any additional visitors to your site, it does give you great insight into who your visitor are and where they are coming from; a must for serious bloggers. We recommend Google Analytics or Site Meter. For more information you can read our guide to adding Google Analytics to your site.