Great photography doesn't necessarily translate into a large client base. So, what are you doing wrong? It might be about what you are NOT doing than what you are doing.

In today's digitally driven world, it's necessary for professional photographers to exploit online marketing and social media platforms collaboratively and comprehensively. Without that, you risk obscurity and difficulties building a client base.

Getting your work noticed is a photographer's greatest challenge even when you're a great photographer! It's not easy. You've been busy honing your skills and crafting your art and not necessarily giving equal attention to marketing your business.

It's never too late using online marketing and social media to start promoting your work. According to The Guardian newspaper, online advertising has overtaken television to become the world’s largest ad medium. Google and Facebook attracted one-fifth of the world's advertising. Twitter is not far behind.

These statistics highlight the importance of social media. There are two key methods for online advertising or marketing: Social Media Advertising and Search Engine Marketing. They sound similar, but they're not.

Social Media Advertising (SMA) works differently than SEM because it targets people by their specific demographics including interests, job, or backgrounds. You can learn a bit more about social media marketing in this article. There's a lot of information available online on this topic. The best advice, however, is to link several social media accounts so that when you post on one, it cross-posts to the others. It's not worth your time to post individually to various social media platforms. However, by maintaining an active presence on social media, you could find that you bring awareness of your work.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a targeted paid advertisement. You pay to have your ad featured at the top of search engine results. It's a way for potential customers to become aware of your business when they are searching for specific topics such as photographers. Google AdWords is the leading search engine marketing platform.

Both SEM and SMA require that you have a landing page for your advertisements. It's especially true with SEM because the quality of the landing page can affect your ad's performance and how much you ultimate spend on ads.

There are some advantages and tips to using Google AdWords:

Be compelling as you pay for performance, (i.e., only when your ad is clicked), so it can be cost-effective.
You can set your budget by setting your price.
You can target your ads with keywords and by location, so it's good to be very specific when selecting keywords so that you don't overspend.
You can use Google Analytics to track your results and then optimize based on your tracking and measurements.

FACEBOOK ADVERTISING

You can use Facebook If you understand how to use Facebook advertising correctly, you could find it extremely useful to your business exposure

Facebook’s U.S. ad revenue will be larger than the biggest traditional media companies trailing only behind Google
You can use Facebook If you understand how to use Facebook advertising correctly, you could find it extremely useful to your business exposure.

Being extremely precise in targeting your Facebook ad is important. You can target Facebook users based on age, location, or interests. So, imagine you're a newborn photographer, you would want to target an age range likely to have newborns. If you are a real estate photographer, you ought to target industry, profession, and even those showing interest in real estate or architecture.
Your ad should send traffic to a unique landing page rather than your homepage. A landing page is a website page with a specific objective. If you need to, build a unique landing page for the Facebook ad and track the number of visitors. If you are advertising a special discount, make sure you direct traffic to a unique landing page for that discount. A bad landing page won't win over new clients. Your goal should be to convert new visitors into regular visitors or paying customers.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

To rank high, you will need to ensure you have a good website with quality content along with strategic keywords

Have you wondered why some photographers' websites end up at the top of Google searches versus those on page two? Those businesses rank on the upper part of a search thanks to their Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Your goal as a business owner should be to rank as high as possible on page one of any search. Doing that is tricky, and the algorithms can change dramatically.

To rank high, you will need to ensure you have a good website with quality content along with strategic keywords. You can learn more about SEO on directly from Google, check out here.

However, here are some tips to keep in mind when it comes to SEO:

File names: When it comes to image SEO, be sure to use the correct file name and identify what the image is subject or topic. If you do, it is more likely to come up in an Image Search by a potential client. For example, rather than posting a file number, use a name such as your professional name-wedding-photographer.jpg.
Use small file sizes: Using a smaller file size means your site is faster which translates to more SEO points in your favor. So, before you upload an image, reduce its size.
Use responsive images. Make sure that your images fit into every screen size making them more responsive and decreasing your bounce rates.
Use Captions. Captions work much like a headline in explaining your post. However, use only on images that require it.
Use alt tags and title texts. It's tempting to save time by not providing alt tags or title texts, but when an image isn't loading for some reason, you won't lose functionality. When possible, include the SEO keyword for that page or that particular post in your alt tag.
Submit XML image sitemaps to Google. Lastly, Google strongly recommends that you provide information about the pictures on your site. That means adding image-specific tags to an existing sitemap or create a separate sitemap just for those images. If you need help, a web designer can help, and it's usually a worthy investment.

CONTENT MARKETING

Take away points are to do the research, cross post across various social media platforms, create high-quality and unique content for websites and blogs, advertise strategically and use good keyword

Another method of online marketing is through creative, high-quality content on your website. It's critical that your content be original both for SEO purposes and to attract and sustain an audience. By maintaining visitors to your site, you're more likely to turn them into clients.

Website content can be in the form of videos, graphics, or even blog posts. You can include content through blog posts by linking to other sites such as LinkedIn or Pinterest. You can also back-link to previous blog posts or specific landing pages on your site.

The more exposure you can obtain for your work and your business, the greater the likelihood of converting potential clients into paying clients. It can take some time and online research, but it can pay off for those who take the time. The irony is that you can use the Internet to learn how to use the Internet to your advantage when it comes to Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Advertising, and Search Engine Marketing.

Take away points are to do the research, cross post across various social media platforms, create high-quality and unique content for websites and blogs, advertise strategically and use good keywords.