During this time of uncertainty, there are many things we can do to set our business up for future success, support our clients, and grow as artists and professionals.
Look through the list below and leave a comment on how you plan to work on your photography business when shooting is not an option.
Show Up Live
Showing up live on Facebook or Instagram can be a great way to connect with your followers. People are searching for familiar faces and interactions.
- Walk someone through an album you have recently designed. Go page by page and point out why the images pair well, highlights about the materials chosen, and the importance of print.
- Interview a past client. Sharing a screen is easy to do with Instagram. Sharing a screen on Facebook is possible with tools like Be.Live.
- Poll your audience for some FAQs about your service and answer them on a Facebook live. You can take additional questions during the live, but make sure you have a list of questions to answer before you hop on.
Improve Your Website
Do those things you always said you would do it you had more time!
- Improve your SEO. Davey and Krista have a wonderful class that I have personally had amazing results with. The Inquiry System course will step you through not only improving your searchability on Google, but it got me thinking through creating content people WANT instead of only thinking of my website as a portfolio. If you are on a budget, Fuel Your Photos has a really extensive free SEO guide available. They have paid courses as well that are certainly on my bucket list.
- Refresh the images on your website.
- Want a new website? I highly recommend Showit. I switched to Showit from Squarespace in February 2020 and I am so impressed. They have great tutorials to get you going and wonderful templates to choose from. I built my website from a Davey and Krista template and not only do I love their designs, their customer support is wonderful.
Customer Experience & Workflow Improvement
- Do you have a workflow set up of how you want to communicate with your clients from start to finish? If not, write down everything you want them to know and start deciding in what order you should communicate information. If you have one already, try going back and rereading each email you send. You might be surprised that some need some tweaking!
- Clean old leads out of your CRM system if you are using one.
- If you are not set up with a CRM, this might be the time!! My personal favorite is Dubsado. You can use the code ‘dubsadolove’ to get 20% off your first month OR your first year. I also receive a credit. But, you can set everything up FOR FREE before you start loading in clients. That means you can use your free time now to establish all of your workflows and learn the program. I use Dubsado for contracts, emails, workflows, invoices, and project management. I could not do business without it.
- Record a video to incorporate into your workflow. Consider a video thanking leads for their submission, welcoming them after a contract is signed, or a follow-up video requesting reviews.
- Create a guide for your clients. There are many great templates out here for this. Two examples I love include the Bridal Guide by Katelyn James and the Style Guide by Amy & Jordan.
Step Up Your Album Game
- Reach out to last year’s clients and offer them a custom album design. I love using Fundy to design albums and share with my clients online utilizing zoom.
- Create sample albums to show future clients. My very top album company choice is Kiss Books. Their quality and customer service are just amazing! You can use this link to get a $50 credit when you place your first order over $100. I receive a credit too!
- Create a slideshow of a recent album design and share it.
- Write a blog post about why you love custom albums.
- Invest in education for print and album sales. If you really want to up your game, I highly recommend the Legacy Sales Course. You can use that link to get $150 off the purchase the course!!
Extras
- READ. Tackle that book you have always been meaning to get to. If you have not read Total Money Makeover or Profit First, start there. I know it can be scary to think about money, but now is the perfect time to start making a plan.
- Create a client Facebook group. I was completely against starting a client Facebook group for years because all I could think was, “Who needs another group!” After some nudging from a mentor, I finally launched the Franz with Benefits Facebook group for past, current, and potentially future boudoir clients. It has been one of the most unexpected business joys! This is a great (free) opportunity for all genres of photography.
- Think of that one thing you wish your clients were more knowledgable about an write a blog post about it! Add sending that blogpost to the client into your workflow.
- Get bookkeeping completely up to date.
- Host a print sale through your online gallery and email your clients about it.
- Write a blog post about a question you get asked often.
- Caroline Fox at Engaged Legal wrote a great post with 5 Free (or VERY cheap) Legal Tasks for Your Small Business from Home.
- Build an email list!! Now is the perfect time to dive in and I highly recommend using Flodesk. It is the easiest, prettiest, and most well-priced tool around. You can use this link to get 50% off when you sign up FOR LIFE. I have absolutely loved creating beautiful emails with this tool. (Suggestion by Honeysuckle & Wine)
- Make a post about a business tool your love! Many online platforms offer rewards for sharing about their services. You will notice next to a few of the links, I included information about bonuses for the link user and for me. This can be a great way to set up passive income!
- While people have more time to browse the internet, take advantage of the additional traffic by cultivating Pinterest to send traffic to your website. Learn from the best with education from Vanessa Kynes.
Last but not least, rest. You are allowed to use this time to rest, relax, and come back refreshed. If it brings you joy to work on your business, then hopefully I have provided some inspiration for ways to do so.
Stay safe!
