Blog or website

janineh · Oct 4, 2012

Hi guys,

Just had a dicussion with a wedding photographer who I used to work for. I am just building a new website and talked to him about it. Unfortunately after I bought a template etc.

The website has a wordpress blog as an add on, which I want to use for blogging new sessions. My friend photographer said not to get a website at all, it would be useless for getting business. A blog only would be the way to go bc of ceo.

I just spend $300 on a template, worked on it all week and now he tells me to get rid of it...

I will add a wordpress blog to the website to keep updates going etc. But I do like to have a website for a general portfolio and info, prices etc...

What are your thoughts???

Tamgerine · Oct 4, 2012

Honestly it doesn't really make much sense to me. The only time I have ever seen a blog without a website is when the blog IS the website, and they aren't selling their photography services to their blog readers. Like Strobist. If you want people to hire you, you need to tell them how to contact you, who you are, your prices, etc. If I went to a wedding photographers website and all there WAS was a blog I'd be kind of confused as to how to contact them, or where their main portfolio was.

What does his website look like? Does he not have one?

janineh · Oct 4, 2012

He only has a blog, which has all info on it.

Here is his blog:

www.danielsheehan.com.au

tirediron · Oct 4, 2012

I'm afraid I strongly disagree with your friend. If I was only going to have one, it would be a website. It's just as easy to add images to a website as it is a blog, and let's be honest; how many people actually read the text of a blog? Precious few. They'll look at the pictures and that's it.

janineh · Oct 5, 2012

tirediron said:
I'm afraid I strongly disagree with your friend. If I was only going to have one, it would be a website. It's just as easy to add images to a website as it is a blog, and let's be honest; how many people actually read the text of a blog? Precious few. They'll look at the pictures and that's it.

Thank you! I agree with you.

How many ppl actually follow a blog of a photographer? Mostly other photographers or hobbyists. It is great to post your blog update on facebook, but you can just use facebook as a 'blog'.

it might be better ceo, but I am not sure how important that is. Ppl like to book photographers their friends were happy with etc. A lot is word of mouth. Who sits down and goes through google and looks up lots of photographers. If you dont come up on page one ppl wont find you.

I am going to stay with my website and add a blog at some stage. He made me really doubt my decicion. Thanks for your opinion.

Steve5D · Oct 5, 2012

My idea of a "blog" is something that's updated periodically; far more often than a website would be.

I have both a website and a blog. The blog gets updated, sometimes, three or four times a week. Sometimes it may be three or four times a month. The website is far more static.

Maybe it shouldn't be, but it is...

KmH · Oct 5, 2012

SEO - Search Engine Optimization. Get your website advice from someone who does websites for a living.

The blog or website owner, or someone they have hired as a webmaster, has to make the changes in the web page code that are beneficial for improving their websites SEO.
As search engines adapt their web crawler algorithms SEO strategies also have to be adapted. So, SEO is a moving target.

Search engine optimization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

spacefuzz · Oct 5, 2012

I also disagree with your friend. In this market it is advisable to have both.

Aloicious · Oct 7, 2012

website > blog in every aspect if it's a business...blogs scream unprofessional to me as a place of business...if I'm looking for a product or service, and my choice is between someone who runs a blog only, or someone who has a business website....all else being equal, I'll be going with the website every time.

to me a blog is a place to keep just a log of quick thoughts and ideas you want to share (IMO facebook is just a collection of people's blogs in one spot)....things like 'I ate a steak the size of a toilet seat' belong on a blog, things like products and services NEED a website. even if a blog is well put together, and professionally presented, the overall blog format isn't a productive format to conduct business in...

however, supplementing a website with a blog would be good thing for a business to maintain customer interest, loyalty, word of mouth, etc...your website should show off your product (in the case of photography, your portfolio), costs, who you are, provide information on doing business, and how people can contact you, and the other aspects of your business....the blog should have your personal thoughts on a shoot, new equipment, or anything personal that doesn't specifically affect how the business is operated...

take your friend's blog, its well put together, the images are good, but if I'm a client trying to find a photographer, his site just looks like a personal blog if the time isn't taken to examine everything he writes, he has no obvious link to pricing structures, no straight forward portfolio (his link says 'lifestyle portraits', what is that? is that his portfolio or is it just a title for a blog post about how he likes to take portraits of people's lifestyle and share them, etc)...you have to comb through the page text to find the vital information that should be front and center....etc....just little things like that.

a business should have a site that undoubtedly conveys a professional and succinct atmosphere. a blog doesn't do any of that as a primary page to bring in clients.

thats my thoughts at least...

as far as SEO, there's MUCH more to it than having a blog, if you put the work into optimizing a website, it can be much more SEO friendly than a blog. but the tiny SEO difference between a blog and website (properly done) isn't anything to worry about. go after advertizing, get people searching specifically for YOU, not worrying about if people can haphazardly find your site in random internet searches.

hope that helps, best of luck! you should post a link of your site when you get it built so we can see how it came out. (plus that'll help with your SEO)

globeglimpser · Oct 7, 2012

Use Wordpress, make the front page static and have a few other static pages and then use the blog. It is fool proof!

swiftparkour94 · Oct 7, 2012

Blogs aside, Squarespace is great for sharing your work and contact information. I have a friend in San Francisco that uses it and it's great and pretty cheap too

swiftparkour94 · Oct 7, 2012

janineh said:
it might be better ceo, but I am not sure how important that is. Ppl like to book photographers their friends were happy with etc. A lot is word of mouth. Who sits down and goes through google and looks up lots of photographers. If you dont come up on page one ppl wont find you.

Throwing this out there, people use craigslist