Building an online audience is hard, but worth all the effort.


Nothing is more disheartening for photographers than spending hours creating a website that is beautiful and functional, and then sitting around waiting for users to find it.

 

The truth is that users are not going to magically find you.For better and for worse, the internet is a crowded space, and there is a lot of great work out there. You need to get out there, be proactive and drive traffic to your photography website. But how…?

 

Keep these 8 methods in mind and you’ll be in great shape.

 

1. Get Social


There’s no doubt that running an active social media marketing strategy is one of the easiest and most affordable ways to drive traffic to your website. Facebook and Twitter are great tools to have, but Pinterest and Instagram are invaluable to photographers, and a great place for your work to shine.

 

Get serious about social. Take a look at some top social media platforms. Start building a brand, establishing a unique voice, and growing your audience organically. It’s worth it.

 

Goal for beginners: Post 1-2 times per week on each social media channel. Try to focus on adding value to your post by giving insight, tips, ideas, or suggestions for your audience. Make sure to include an awesome photo (obviously) and links back to your website and/or blog to help drive traffic.

 

If your business is registered as a Facebook Business Page, then you can allocate some budget to boosting your reach and presence. Boosting your posts lets you get very specific about the kind of people you want seeing your content. You can select an audience according to age, gender, where they live and their interests, so that you know you are reaching out to people who will appreciate your services.

 

2. Clickable Links

 


Try to include as many clickable links that direct traffic to your site as you can in your social media. Instagram only offers one link placement, on the profile page, so you need to make that one count, but other networks let you connect your whole site if you want to.

 

Select the right page to fit the message, and make sure the content in your post matches the content that you are directing people to on your website.

 

3. Make it trackable


Make sure the links promoting your page are trackable. Invest your time learning how Google Analytics works, how to automate its most common features and understate the results you get back. Armed with this information, you can regularly tweak your marketing materials and produce constantly improving results.

 

4. Webinars & Live Events


You have valuable knowledge about some aspect of the business—something that makes you unique. Share that knowledge with people. Get it out there by setting up a webinar or a live event at no charge, and be generous with your time and your expertise.

 

Facebook Live is a great new tool that more and more people are using to showcase their talents and then share it with their networks.

 

People appreciate and engage with video. In return, you get to reach a broader network and share your skills with people who may have not known about you prior to your webinar/live event.

 

5. Influencers


Naturally, there are already users called social media influencers who have the kind of traffic that you can only dream about. Get in touch, propose a collaboration, ask them to promote your work, or listen to how they think they could help. It can be a humbling exercise, of course, but if they see something in you, then they will feel proud to be the one who introduced you to the world. Use influencer marketing to improve traffic and engagement.

 

Remember they were once small too and somebody helped them to grow. One day, you might be the influencer that someone else turns to.

 

6. Blog


It’s vital to to produce fresh content on a consistent basis if you want to generate traffic. You can do this with a blog. Set up a blog within your website and work to create interesting, useful content that your audience will enjoy and share. Optimize your content with strong keywords and SEO for website (try Google’s Keyword Planner), and see if you can get it placed or mentioned on reputable sites.

 

Offer to be a guest blogger or as guest bloggers to create content for your website. Guest blogging is a great way to generate more traffic to your website. By bringing in someone else to share their insight and then share the post with their network, it is a great way for you to get your website in front of new people and potential clients.

 

7. News


Stay on top of what’s topical. Find the issues that are making news or lighting up social media and get involved in the conversation. If you can create images or blogs that align with topical stories, use them. It’s a great way to get exposure and tune into a large audience interested in that topic.

 

8. Freebies/Bonus Content


Give something away for free, even if it’s some of your best work. Offer some bonus content of yours to a more established business, provided the traffic to claim the free work comes through your site. This gives you the opportunity to showcase more of your work, build your mailing list, and increase traffic. Be creative in what you can offer people as a bonus.

 

 

There is no easy way to drive traffic to your photography website. It takes time and effort to be able to increase your website traffic, but once you have clients lining up to use your photography service, it will all be worth it.



Getting people to your photography website is typically harder than building your photography website, but it’s the route you will need to take if you want to gain new clients and grow your photography business.