Your blog is probably one of the most important marketing tools you’ll employ as a photographer. Gone are the days of carrying large portfolio cases, or prints even. Everything is digital. The internet is available almost anywhere at any time. You need to be available too! Your online presence may be the first contact a potential client has with your work. You are going to have to work hard at presenting only your best, in a neat, professional, and easy to navigate format (let’s face it, even our parents and grandparents are online these days…).
A blog is the best SEO tool you have for getting out there. They are a lot of work to get setup but can be a great, fun place to keep your clients (and family… “hi Mom and Dad!”) up to date. You’ll need to make a lot of decisions about what you post and how often, that is all up to you. But, the format MUST be user-friendly and professional if you hope to get anywhere.
Now, those independently wealthy folks out there (do I hear crickets???… ) can pay HUGE bucks to get a super awesome fantabulous custom masterpiece created just for them by a big name programmer and artist… for the rest of us, the approach may be more DIY, plus, it allows YOU to maintain control and make changes as you’d like!
So, here are some of our favorite somewhat-easily customizable FREE wordpress themes (remember, these are for wordpress.org people folks… if you are confused… this about taking our class!)
- SLRLounge has some great themes (which we LOVE to customize!): Photo Lounge, Photo Flash, and Photo Feature. All three of these choices are fantastic and we cover installation and customization tips in our class.
- Lawrence Chan has a couple of editions of a photography theme for photographers too at tofurious. The first edition is FREE!
Our main purpose here is to show you it can be done… and for less money than you think. We’ll get you started down the right path and then the entire world is in YOUR hands!
If you know of other great FREE photography wordpress themes, leave ‘em in the comments.