Frank's Cyber Cafe

Professional photographers join in our digital photography debate....
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10 Web Site Strategies for Emerging Photographers

I have ten must-have’s for photographer’s websites. Let’s take a look.......

1. Be Found When People Are Looking For You – Or Looking for What You Do
(Search Engine Optimization)

2. Constantly Changing Content

3. Content That is Compelling/Appealing

4. Access to You.
(Keep contact forms to a minimum)

5. Information For Clients – and possible clients
(Fees and Packages)

6. A PDF to Download
(Mini-portfolio to pass around)

7. Big Photos Not larger than 900 pixels
(Alt names for SEO a must)

8. iPhone Compatibility
The smart phones and devices are becoming very hot right now. Make sure your site can be seen on them, or at least mostly seen. I have known photographers who have gotten portfolio showings from their iPhone presentations.

As more and more smart devices become the rage, being seen there will be an important strategy. People Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, Plaxo and more from their smart phones… looking at websites is one of those things they do as well. To dismiss that trend as meaningless (as someone did recently) is to be simply unaware of the way things are going.

So if you have to have a site in full Flash (sigh) then at least make sure that the portfolio images can be seen on an iPhone or other smart devices. (BTW, Flash is not compatible with iPhone technology at this writing.)

9. A Very Strong “About Me” page.
(People WANT to know about YOU!)

10. Multiple Channels of Content Delivery
That’s a fancy way of saying you need to have other ways to get content under your site. The most easily understood is a Blog. Whether it is a full text and image Blog, or a Photoblog, it is a way for your site to gain content and keep the visitors interested in what you are doing.

A. Blog or Photoblog
B. Social Network (FaceBook, LinkedIn, Flickr, Plaxo)
C. Twitter – even if only for a tweet a day… to stay connected.
D. Email Portfolio showings
E. Additional Portfolio Sites to show off your work.