Late this morning, my last train chugged into Union Station here in San Diego, and now I’m playing catch-up with the piles on my desk and in my email in-box. It’s amazing what can accumulate over a week (okay, 9 days) and add to that the connections made at SB2 and my usual work, and I’m going to be a busy girl for a while. But, as Stewart Smalley might say, that’s okay. It’s a good busy. Articles to write and new friends and clients to get to know better, etc., I can hardly think of a better way to spend my working hours.
One thing I have been missing is keeping up with this blog. During my presentations at SB2 last weekend, I’m afraid I may not have made clear just how important regular posting is if you have a blog–verbal or photo. These can be great tools, especially the photoblog for photographers (your clients don’t care so much about your words and thoughts in verbal form, they’d rather just see more images), but if you don’t keep up with them, they won’t do you any good at all.
So, if you are going to blog, in any form, you must post regularly and fairly often. If someone comes to your blog once, likes it, and then comes back only to find that there is nothing new, you stand a good chance of losing that newly-minted “fan.” Twice, and they will almost surely bail. Of course, you can mitigate this by posting “I’m going on vacation” or “I’ve got a big shoot and won’t be able to post for a week” or “I’m going to be traveling for a speaking engagement” and people will forgive the lull, but generally speaking, you’ve got to give your fans something new.
Hopefully, you will enjoy the process. If you don’t, you shouldn’t blog. I know it’s one of my favorite parts of what I do, so when I don’t get to, it bothers me. But now I’m back, and back at it.
Thanks for your patience during my absence. And thanks to everyone from the SB2 Chicago event–it was amazing. More on that…well…in another post. 🙂
Agree with you on not writing “War and Peace” levels of copy in a visual artist’s blog. However, I do think you have to give your visitors some idea of what the image is about, the context in which it was created, and why you created it. The good news is that a good caption can cover everything that was mentioned in the previous sentence. With fewer words.
Martha–thanks for posting. However, I disagree with you–you don’t need to give context, etc. Instead, it is better to leave your images to speak for themselves. If you have to explain them, then they aren’t really working on some level. Besides, buyers have told me, clearly, they really don’t want to read about the work–they just want to look at the images. A photoblog is a working space anyway, so adding to the mystery of the process by leaving information out can serve to integrate the viewers into the experience of the process–that is, they have to participate more mentally. When you make the viewers part of the process, connections are formed.
Relatedly, on your main website, if you are going to use captions, they should be hidden by default and available by clicking or rolling over some sort of button (Livebooks has this feature that works quite well). Those few buyers who want more info can get it but this way you’re not pissing off the majority who don’t want the info.
-Leslie