The sun is out, the sky is clear, the birds are singing. It can only mean one thing: Busy Season is upon us! Through this exciting and hectic time, it’s easy to get bogged down. Over the years, I’ve found that photographers tend to make the same three mistakes over and over again when they get caught up in the weeds of Busy Season. Does this sound like your Busy Season?

• Not posting new content or new blogs
• Delaying marketing efforts
• Slacking off on your social media

If this does sound like you, we’re here to help! A successful blog is one that is consistently maintained so that audiences (and Google) can rely on new content. New content keeps customers coming back for more.

Your Blog Will Not Yell at You

I get it. Your blog is not the screaming baby in the room.

Your blog will never yell at you. It will never leave you angry voicemails. I’ll bet your blog has never sent you a passive-aggressive email with thinly veiled threats about reviews.

Clients come first, of course, but it’s so important to make sure your business does not stall. The best way to do that is through regular, consistent blogging. Your blog is one of your best sources for lead generation. Here are four ways to make sure your blogging doesn’t slow down during the Busy Season.

1. Schedule out your Content

So, here’s the deal. If you get behind and you decide to go on a blogging binge and knock out six blogs in one day, you are wasting your time. Google cares about new content, but it doesn’t want it all in one day. It’s far better to blog regularly and consistently.

Ideally, the same day of the week. Every week.

At the same time of the day, if you can.

So really, instead of posting all six on the same day, you can schedule them out over the course of the next month and a half! With most blog platforms, you can queue up your posts ahead of time. Go ahead. Take a boring Wednesday and a stash of weddings to be published and schedule them out for your busy months. Take the worry out of blogging and set your business up for success.

2. Reduce, Re-use, Recycle

Hey, nobody said that your posts can’t be used more than once. Grab a wedding from 2015 and wish them a happy anniversary. Build an inventory of strong posts. Think about Evergreen Content and how you can position yourself as an expert to your clients. These posts allow you to have an amazing array of posts that can be used and used again. This content seeks to be read and shared. Write strong pieces and share them with abandon.

Just because you posted it once doesn’t mean that it should rot in the back of your blog. Share those links! There are some amazing apps that can help you to stay organized and re-share your content. Co-Schedule is a brilliant marketing app that helps you keep your content organized. Their ReQueue feature, uses data-driven intelligence to re-share your best messages to every major social network. How cool is that?

For more information on building a consistent content sharing strategy, make sure to download our E-Book.

3. Get Creative!

We love telling stories here at Fotoskribe. Love stories. Wedding stories. Stories about local wedding vendors. Venue stories. Your couples will cherish the pictures of their wedding, but those images are currency. You can write SO MANY blogs with the images you capture.

• Grab 15 of your favorite shots and do a post about First Looks.
• Do a “Top Five” post and use a handful of your favorite venues. Get some local link-back love.
• Are a lot of your couples going unplugged? Do a post about Unplugged Weddings.
• Get sentimental and put together a post of father/daughter or mother/son moments.

This goes back to building an arsenal of evergreen content. These posts are awesome to pepper into your Busy Season. And really, brides love them. Think about some of the topics your brides want to hear about and have fun getting more mileage out of your favorite images. The great thing about re-using images is that you can reconnect with previous clients and can help generate referrals!

4. Trust a Specialist

If there were a way to add another day to the week, that would be awesome. But really, sometimes finding trusted partners is the best way to do that. Whether you use an app, a program, or a specialist, you should focus on the business tasks you do best. Work smart, not hard. Work happy. Trusting a specialist can ensure that your business tasks get completed even when you are deep in the weeds. Here’s a great article about what a specialist is and how they can help you make your business more profitable, provided by our friends at ShootDotEdit.

Your images are social currency. Let them do the heavy lifting for you through the Busy Season. Have a plan in place so your marketing continues to deliver new leads to your website, no matter how busy you get. Blogging regularly and consistently is the key to making your blog a well-oiled marketing machine. If you need help with getting onto a regular blogging schedule, contact us and we’ll be happy to help.