“Show Notes”
There is an event for photographers about using website and email strategies for business success. This is run by Sam and Gillian Devine on the 27th November 2024.
You can get more details and book a free place by clicking here.
Sam and Marcus say that some photographers websites have no writing at all, which is terrible for SEO and getting business. Some things to think about before writing your website are:
• Make sure you know your target audience – See this show for details.
• What your call to actions are –see this show for details.
• Plan your site – see this show for details.
Once you have all of those things done you can start the writing. While you are writing think constantly about your ideal client. What are their problems, why are they coming to you? If your writing is too generic it doesn’t engage anyone. Be concise. We all know our businesses too well and can give far too much detail. Avoid this. Be clear and concise. Too many options causes confusion. When writing a page be very concise at the top of a page.
So the first 5 sentences at the top of the page should cover everything needed for the page. But then further down the page go back to the different topics and dig into more detail. Then even further down the page circle back and give even more details about the same topics. You need to think about keywords. You can listen to the SEO shows here about keywords.
It’s important to use the keyword / phrase enough on a page, but without going mad and including it in every sentence. Focus on feelings, outcomes and results. Don’t focus on the nuts and bolts of what is included in a package. Focus on what you will gain from working with you in a big picture way. How will they feel working with you? People buy with feelings and then justify their purchase with logic. Testimonials can help with this. Ask clients to mention feelings in testimonials. Remember that no one will browse your website for no reason. They are coming to your website because they have a problem and they are wondering if you can solve it for them.
Sam does not recommend a testimonial pages. He recommends spreading testimonials across all of your pages, not all of them in one page. Know what you readers care about. About pages. Sam says please don’t tell the story of how you got a camera when you were 12 and fell in love with photography.
Every photographers site says this. Remember that people care about themselves, and the problem they are trying to solve. So an about page works best if it’s about how you have helped people in the past with your photography. Some small snippets about your life is great, but that’s not the aim of the about page.
Structuring your pages using bullet points, numbers lists, sub-headings really helps make it easy to follow. Marcus asks about the use of Al. Sam says Al is great for helping but not creating. So give it your writing and ask for ideas. But don’t use Al to create content. Repetition. People do not read your website like a book. They jump from place to place and so you need to repeat lots to ensure all visitors get your key messages.
“Show Transcription”
Marcus: Well, hello there, Sam.
Sam: Hello, Marcus. How’s everything with you?
Marcus: Yeah, do you know what? Things are good, thank you. Yeah, things are very good.
Sam: Excellent, that’s good to hear.
Marcus: So, Sam, I believe we’re going to dig deep into your specialty, which is websites and talking about copy.
Sam: We are, so yeah, writing for your websites. And it’s something, yeah, I was looking through the past shows, and we’ve got a few different ones on your website. I actually found one about what to write on your website, and it’s a fairly essential part of your website: what you’re going to write on it. Contrary to one or two photographers’ views that it should all be photographed, number one is, you do need some writing, and we’re going to talk about what that writing should be and how to make it as good as possible. And Marcus, did you notice on our Facebook page that we got our 101st member this week?
Marcus: I know! It’s a momentous occasion, Sam. I’ve been celebrating all week.
Sam: That’s it! I did promise whoever invited the 101st member a shout-out on the show, so we must do that. So, friend of the show who has been on before, Gillian Devine, she managed to invite our 101st member. Thank you so much, Gillian, that is amazing, and our 101st member was Zaira Young.
Marcus: Drum roll, drum roll, drum roll!
Sam: That’s it, welcome Zaira! And Gillian, thank you so much. We must get you on the show again and have another amazing chat. And Marcus, speaking of Gillian, Gillian and I are actually doing a workshop that’s coming up. So, on Wednesday the 27th of November, midday UK time, Gillian and I are running a Capture Clients Workshop: website and email marketing strategies for your photography business success. So that’ll be a whole hour learning from Gillian and myself. Lots of photographers will be there; it should be a great event to book yourself into. All you need to do is go to gillian-devine.com/Capture. I will put the link in the show notes. A really good event to be at.
Marcus: Well, Sam, you say one or two photographers, but I look at a fair few photographers’ websites, and a lot of them have no copy on whatsoever.
Sam: Yeah, which is terrible for SEO. I think what doesn’t help is a lot of software for photographers says, ‘Oh, this includes a website builder,’ and they don’t mean that at all. They mean this includes a way to put your photos online in a portfolio, which is not a website; they’re two different things. So, people press the button, say ‘I’ve got photos online, therefore I’ve got a website,’ and it’s a nice way to put your photos online, but it isn’t really going to get you any business, and nobody’s ever going to find it on Google if you’ve got no writing.
Marcus: Well, and also, Sam, I think if you look at really big-name photographer websites, there’s no copy, and the reason for that is because they’ve got agents getting them work.
Sam: That’s it. So, for some, I mean for those people, they only need the photos because there’s somebody else doing the work. But for most people in the photography industry, they don’t have somebody else doing the work; they need their website to bring in clients. And if you need the website to bring you clients, you need some writing on there.
Marcus: Love it. Okay, let’s go for it, Sam.
Sam: Cool, right? So, a couple of things you need to think about before you start writing your website, and these are actually just going to refer back to past shows. So, one thing is you need to know who your target audience is — who is your ideal client? We’ve got a show about that; we’ll link to it in the show notes. If you’re not sure, go and read it, okay? You also need to know what your calls to action are — what do you want people to do when they leave the site? Before they leave the site? And again, there’s a whole show on that. It’s about, you know, whether you want people to book a call or whatever, which, for most photographers, is probably to book a call or get in touch. You might have some other options, and again, there’s a whole show about that. Then, you also need to plan your site, and there’s a show about that, too. So, I want to kind of say — you need to have all that done. Go and listen to those shows if you’re not sure about them. But I want to talk about the writing itself once you’ve got all of those things done, okay? The first thing you need to think about when you’re doing the writing is aiming it at that target audience. So, you know who your ideal client is, what sort of person they are, what they like. You’ve got to think: well, what problems have they got? Why are they coming to you? Yeah? The whole time you’re writing, have them in mind. You’re writing and aiming it at them, yeah? Some people make the mistake of being so generic that the website is the most tedious thing in the world. Think about your ideal client and speak to them when you’re writing; don’t just kind of speak to the ether. Because, as we’ve said many times on the show, if you don’t aim your writing or your marketing at anyone, then nobody is going to be interested. For example, Marcus is going to be thinking about small business owners in the Bristol area, and he’s also got a few more niches than that, so he’s really thinking about who it’s for. If you’re, say, doing wedding photography in Sussex, and maybe you particularly specialize in LGBT weddings, then you’ve suddenly got an audience you’re speaking to. That’s really important — the whole time you’re writing, think about the tone that works for them, the problems they’ve got, their interests, and who they are. That should be consistent all the way through. The next thing is: be concise. Lots of people are really bad at this, especially because we all know our own businesses too well, and we want to give all the information we can. That’s way too much for someone coming to a website. I’ve been to lots of websites where, for example, a wedding photographer, again I particularly remember, they go, ‘You know, we can shoot your wedding and do this, and we can do a one-day shoot, and we turn up,’ but then they’re like, ‘Or we could do this, or we could do that, but if you don’t like this maybe we could do that.’ And then it’s like, ‘Oh, shut up!’ You know? Yeah, exactly, because people are thinking, ‘Well, I’ve got all…’ No. People don’t want to know all those options. You will confuse them. Just say, ‘We do this,’ and maybe there’s three options or something, but you don’t need, ‘Oh, but there’s that option, and we can tweak it for you, and maybe if you want this, we can do that.’ Just be concise and clear: what are you offering? Don’t waffle. So, yeah, I’ve said avoid options. Have a couple of options, but not for ‘all this or that or the other.’ You know, option one, option two, option three — make it really clear. That’s great.
Marcus: When you talk about the ideal customer, Sam, I hear the term “avatar” bandied around quite a lot. What are your thoughts on creating an avatar? Do you need to go that deep?
Sam: It can help you with the writing and getting the tone. You don’t have to, but I think when you’re writing, it can really help if you’ve got a person almost in mind. Then you’re thinking, ‘Well, what would interest them?’ I think it’s one of those things that can be overused, but having one in mind can help in some situations.
Marcus: I mean, I’ve seen some cases where they really, really describe them to the nth degree — yeah, it seems a bit over the top.
Sam: Same with most things, that’s it. It may be useful in some situations, but sometimes you need to step back a bit as well. I think it’s one of those things that’s useful as a tool when you need it, but not necessarily all the time. The next thing is actually very similar to newspaper writing: you need to be concise at the top of your page, and then you can give more detail lower down. So, if you’re on your homepage, you want to, within the first five sentences, have described absolutely everything you do. But you don’t want that to be the whole page. Then, you know, say you do headshots and brand photography and something else, you give the three options and start with literally a sentence or two on each, because you want to make it really clear what you do. Then further down, you can come back to those and give a bit more information and maybe a bit more detail. At the start, be really concise and get that information across. You can then send them to relevant pages and stuff. Don’t start with the detail, because lots of people do. Some people want it, which is why it’s good to have it lower down, and Google loves it, which is why it’s good to have it lower down. But other people don’t, and they just want the headline. Bang! That’s what they want. For those people, you don’t want to give them the waffle.
Marcus: Sam, could you think of that in the same way — and I hope I’m not jumping the gun here — as your h1, h2, h3, and h4 headings?
Sam: Yeah, I guess so in some ways. So, you’re labeling a different heading. You can label your different headings on a website. Normally, you have different levels, h1 down to h5, with different levels of importance. Yeah, it could be a similar thing.
Marcus: Expanding as you go down through the different levels, as it were.
Sam: To some extent, yeah. Okay, cool. So yes, that’s one. Next is keywords, and again, there’s a whole show on this—actually, about three shows in SEO where we talked about keywords. Just go back and listen to the shows. You need to have done your research, and you need to think about what words you’re trying to get found for on the page. The key is, if you’ve got a keyword on a page—say, for example, ‘brand photography’—use it in the title, in the first bit of text, and a couple of times throughout. You have to use it enough but don’t go crazy. Yeah, don’t ‘keyword stuff’ as it’s called by just repeating the same word. For readers, that sounds pretty awful, and to Google, it signals you’re ‘taking the mickey.’ Focus on feelings, outcomes, and results. A lot of photography websites are really good at focusing on the nuts and bolts. For example, if you get our branding package, you get 43 shots, 20 prints, 3.5 hours with me, and 10.9 hours of processing time. No—what clients care about is that they get shots that can promote their business. They’re able to reach higher incomes because they come across so much better online with our images. That’s what they get; they don’t care about the technical breakdown. They want the big picture—what do they get from it?
Marcus: And what was that you said there, Sam? Just go over that again—feelings, what were the other two?
Sam: Feelings, outcomes, and results.
Marcus: I like that.
Sam: So, yeah, how do people feel during a photo shoot with you? How do they feel afterward when they get those images and have had a great experience? Feelings are what people buy with. People are funny—they won’t admit it, but everybody buys with feelings and then retrofits some logical reasoning for why they bought it. For example, why did you buy the last pair of trousers or shirt you bought? Was it because you went into the shop, did a financial assessment, and got the most economical one? Or did you just go in, see something you liked, and think, ‘Oh, that’s a nice color. I’m going to get that’? It felt right, didn’t it?People do that with everything they buy—feeling first, then logic. So you’ve got to talk about feeling and emotion on the site. A great way to do this is with testimonials. Ask clients, ‘What did it feel like to have a photo shoot with me?’ Let them talk about those emotions. This can be awkward to say yourself, but if you have those testimonials, sharing what a positive experience people had, how supportive they felt, how amazing they felt afterward, is incredibly powerful. Those emotions are far more important than a list of bullet points about what they get. People aren’t as interested in the technicalities; they want the outcome.
Marcus: Sam, I saw a post on LinkedIn a few weeks back by a friend of mine, a photographer called Dan Barker, who I must try to get on the show. He did a great post about problem-solving in photography, as there’s currently a real trend for ‘visual storytelling’ or ‘storytelling.’ While that approach is popular, Dan suggested focusing on problem-solving in photography, which I thought was an interesting perspective.
Sam: Yeah, yeah, well, people usually come to you because they have a problem—they need photographs for a reason. That’s what we always talk about in websites: what is the problem of the person visiting your site? Think of it like a dentist—when do you visit a dentist’s website? There’s usually only one reason; let’s be honest, we don’t browse them in our spare time. Your tooth hurts, and that’s why you’re there. Similarly, no one is randomly browsing your website. They have a problem and need to address it. Browsing photographers’ websites isn’t anybody’s hobby—
Marcus: Maybe 20 years ago, when the internet was new, but not anymore.
Sam: They’re coming because they have a problem, and they want to know if you can solve it.
Marcus: I thought that was an interesting way of looking at it, which aligns with what you’re saying—problem-solving. It’s not easy to come up with that approach, but it’s effective.
Sam: You’ve got to think about what they need and how you’re going to solve it for them. Cool, okay, testimonials—definitely include those in your content. My recommendation is not to have a separate testimonials page, as they’re generally unpopular and rarely visited. Instead, integrate testimonials across different pages so they’re more naturally encountered. Spread relevant testimonials on appropriate pages. For instance, if you have a page about dog photography, include testimonials specifically about dog photography on that page. Don’t just put the same random one on six pages. Make them relevant. And avoid endless scrollers of testimonials, as people won’t go through all of them. Instead, place one or two prominently, and then add another one or two further down the page. Spread them around so they fit with the page’s flow. Use testimonials to convey feelings, show how you helped people, demonstrate that you’re busy, and reinforce that you’re capable. Definitely don’t make a dedicated testimonials page. Know what your readers care about. That’s about understanding emotions and what’s important to them, which is really useful for writing about pages. On your ‘About’ page, please avoid the usual story: ‘When I was 12, I got my first camera and fell in love with photography.
Marcus: Every photographer says this. We’ve discussed this endlessly on the show, and yet I still see it almost everywhere.
Sam: The truth is, nobody cares about your background, except maybe your mom. They care about themselves and their problem. They want to know if you can solve it. So, instead of talking about yourself, focus on how you’ve helped people. Make the ‘About’ page less about you and more about your clients and the problems you’ve solved for them. This way, readers may find something they relate to and think, ‘They helped them with that; maybe they can help me too.’ Of course, I don’t mean helping people across the street; I mean helping clients with photography-related issues. For instance, someone might have come to you needing headshots for their business. They were tight on time and worried because the last photoshoot didn’t go well. You handled the session smoothly, everyone was happy, and they got great headshots. Focus on these stories rather than a personal history. A sentence or two about your journey is fine, but avoid long paragraphs about your life and travels. People want to know you’re the right person to solve their problem. Yeah, your structure is good. So, to start with, when we said you’d just put in small details at the top of the page, that doesn’t matter. But if you’re doing a lot, like maybe writing a blog or giving more detail, using things like bullet points, numbered lists, and subheadings really helps. You see some websites that look like a Word document—do not do that, as it turns people off very quickly.
Marcus: I was going to continue on that. I just came from photographing an AI conference up in London, so I wondered if you have thoughts about using AI. It must be so tempting to use AI when building a website.
Sam: I’d say, use it as a tool to help you, but don’t rely on it as a creative tool. I recommend doing the writing yourself initially, but by all means, plug it into ChatGPT to ask questions, provide information, and get some feedback. One thing to note with AI is that the more specific prompts you give it, the better the output. For example, you could write your homepage and then give AI detailed information about your website and business, and ask if it has comments. It’ll throw you some useful ideas. For that kind of thing, it can be really good. I don’t recommend doing the opposite—giving it all your business details and asking it to write a homepage. As a creative tool, I don’t think it’s very strong, and Google is constantly on the lookout to detect AI-generated content, which could hurt your SEO.
Marcus: That’s what I wanted to ask—has Google started penalizing AI-written content now that ChatGPT has been around for a year?
Sam: It’s still somewhat unclear, but yeah, as a tool for refining ideas or generating new concepts, AI can be helpful. For example, you could start by saying, ‘I’m a photographer specializing in [niche]; what sections would you suggest for my homepage?’ and it’ll likely give you some good ideas. For brainstorming and reviewing, AI can be useful. Separately, you could also ask it to review legal documents, like terms and conditions, and get some basic advice. But don’t use it to write your entire website—Google may penalize you for it, and AI-generated text tends to be bland and overly generic. By the time you’ve provided enough prompts for something unique, you might as well have written it yourself.
Marcus: Cool,
Sam: Cool. So, let’s talk about repetition quickly. People don’t read your website like a book—they jump from place to place. So, don’t worry about repeating information in slightly different ways across pages. We used to have professional writers create content, and we’d show clients the writing in a document, but they’d always say, ‘You’re just repeating yourself.’ However, once we built it into a website, they’d say, ‘Oh, this looks great!’ because it all makes sense in context. So, we don’t show the Word document anymore; we know it only causes unnecessary concern about repetition. But I think, Marcus, we’re running out of time, aren’t we?
Marcus: Yes, we are, unfortunately. This has been great, though! I’ve been taking notes and am looking forward to checking my website to see how well I’m doing. Very good, Sam, thank you!
Sam: So yes, this was supposed to be about writing a new website, but as you said, Marcus, use these tips to review what you already have, which is more relevant for many people. And don’t forget, you need Shoot to the Top delivered to your inbox every week. You’ll get extra tips from Marcus and me, the opportunity to be a guest on the show, past episodes, and more. Go to shoottothetop.com to sign up for the newsletter, and you’ll get every episode weekly. Who wouldn’t want that, Marcus?
Marcus: Oh, indeed, Sam! And reach out to us as well; we love to hear from our listeners. You can contact us through our thriving Facebook group.
Sam: Yes, join the group! And if you have any trouble, just contact us via shoottothetop.com. Marcus, I’ll see you next week.
Marcus: Next week, Sam. Have a good one!
