Photographers – Website, Blog, or Both?

I just read an interesting article by Scott Bourne at Photofocus.com on why photographers should be using blogs rather than websites for their web presence. If you haven’t already done so, I encourage you to read Scott’s article before reading further.

I am going to dive into some details that challenge some of Scott’s article. As a relatively newbe to the photography world I may stir some opinion from you, which is good. I could use some discussion on this to help me better understand something that I might be missing. If I missed something, please let me know.

Now on with it…

This article will attempt to present arguments that are as objective as possible; meaning that the information will be without bias. I do make some very obvious statements, but only to make sure the message is clear and understood. The goal is to provide you the information that helps you make decisions that best suit your personal, or professional, photography goals.

Some Context

It is important to first understand the context in which a photographer is going to be using the internet, or the “Web”,  for. Is the use of the web for information gathering or for marketing purposes? Probably both.

With the passion for photography comes an inherent hunger to learn more about photography. It’s like being a “creative perfectionist”, never satisfied with what you have done and always wanting to do better. An addiction if you will. The web is a fast and easy to use way of finding the information to feed that desire to learn. The more you learn about photography, the more you become passionate about it.

With passion comes expression. The output of an photographer’s passion is an expression through visual means. To communicate that, photographers make their work available for others to see. When an audience views a photo, the communication between the photographer and the audience begins. Getting that photo out there for an audience to view is the “marketing”. Whether it’s for artistic expression or commercial reasons, some kind of marketing has to occur.

So, in the context of use by you as a photographer, the web is arguably the fastest and easiest way of finding information as well as marketing your photographic work.

Definitions

Showing the differences and similarities between websites and blogs requires an clear understanding of what each is.

According to Wikipedia a Website is, “…is a collection of related web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that are addressed with a common domain name…”.

Also according toWikipedia a Blog is, “…is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video…”

Both websites and blogs are found on the web and while a blog is considered a type of website, we won’t get caught up in semantics because nowadays each word is used to describe two unique takes on a web presence .

Websites

Just like the definition above says, a website is collection of web pages. Today, most inferences to websites bring up expectations of an online brochure, or “brochure ware”.  Information is typically static. Exceptions include sites such as social networking websites where the users of the web drive the content, rather than the owner of the website pushing the information to the users.

Typical business websites are not content dynamic in that site content is not published on a relatively routine basis. In the context of a photographer using the web, the photographer’s website is used as an extension of their artistic expression, which explains why content is delivered in a more dynamic view, which explains why tools like Adobe Flash are used. Still, like typical business websites, the content itself is not dynamic. Updates to sites are not relatively frequent. The front page of a photographer’s site will still show the same a month from now, as it did today. Yes there are exceptions, but we’re talking able typical scenarios and what is todays perception of a website.

For reference, I have an older blog entry titled Web Sites for Small Business where I provide a plain language overview web sites including some history of the web and what is involved with setting a web site up. No need to read it now, but might interest you for a later read.

Blogs

A blog, or “web log”, is essentially a website with relatively more frequent and somewhat dynamic content. Information on a blog is published much more frequently than brochure ware type websites. Information on blog is published and usually always available, even as new content is added. Content on a website is edited and updated or replaced. Content on a blog is added, making older blog content always available.

As social creatures we thrive for community and social interaction. Using the internet as the foundation, the world wide web is the framework that opened the window to a global community. People started using web sites to make themselves known and available for interaction. Communities started to evolve at exponential rates and at greater levels of granularity. With that growth came the evolution of tools that made it easier to socialize.

The web has evolved from a place where content is published and pushed, to a place where the community is the content. Blogs are a product of the evolution of web. Blogs are an extension of our need to socialize. Where blogs allow us to publish content more frequently, blogs also invite the community to contribute to the content; sometimes reshaping the original purpose or goal of the blog.

From a evolution perspective just check out how quickly social networking applications, like Twitter, have been adopted. As quickly as information is posted to a blog there is much more information being published to Twitter users – almost instantly.

What’s Better?

What’s better for a photographer, a website or a blog?

That’s a good question, and one that I am not going to give you a this or that answer on. What I will do is give you some objective information that you can apply to some of the more common arguments for each.

Cost

There are free web site hosting providers out there. Do a quick Google search on “Free Website Hosting” and check out the results. There are lots. Some providers even provide you online tools to administer and edit the web site.

Keep in mind that your don’t really get anything for free. Using a free service means that you will have to trade-off for something. For example, most free service will require that some kind of advertising or service provider branding be present on your site.  The service provider will gladly remove this – for a cost.

Paying for a web site is whole new blog article in itself. Again, my older blog entry titled Web Sites for Small Business is a good place to start for information. Costs for a paid service ranges anywhere from a few dollars a month to a few thousand.  It all depends on what you want out of a site – again, a whole new discussion.

As a photographer, are you just starting out and trying to conserve costs? How much money, time, and resources are you willing to commit to creating and administering a web site? What are your goals for marketing on the web? These are some common questions you should ask before making a decision on any kind web presence, let alone a web site. Answers to these will have an impact on your decision to use only a web site, and whether or not to pay for one.

Blogs

There are plenty of free blog tools and service providers out there. Blogger, one of the first successful providers of the blogging services, is the grand daddy of blogging services. There are other big players out there too. Wordpress, Live Journal, Type Pad, and Microsoft are just of a few of the big names on the scene today.

Keep in mind that your don’t really get anything for free. Using a free service means that you will have to trade-off for something. For example, most free service will require that some kind of advertising or service provider branding be present on your blog.  The service provider will gladly remove this – for a cost.

Blogging tools are also available commercially. Paying for a service, or paying for tools that you can install and manage yourself, will provide you with more options than a free service would. One example of a commercial tool you can use is Movable Type. There are not too many blog specific commercial tools out there, relative to commercial content management systems that include blogging functionality.

You can even use a combination of free and paid services and tools. For example, I am paying a web hosting service provider for my web presence. I then use some free tools such as WordPress which is something that can be downloaded for free. I have installed WordPress on my hosting account and because of this, I have can use my own branding for the web address of my blog – blog.selectsystems.ca.

As a photographer, a blog is an excellent way of publishing timely updates to your audience. Categorizing and keyword tagging is an excellent way of organizing articles. Over time, articles accumulate and become a great body of knowledge that is much more marketable than a single web page. Free or paid services define the options and flexibility you have in marketing your body of knowledge.

Features

Anything is possible! What is possible with a website is possible with a blog. What is possible with a blog is possible with a web site.

Here are some of the more commonly required features of both.

• Content Management - Content management is the most important requirement for a web site or blog feature. You need to publish content. Whether it’s a web page content, blog article, photos, or multimedia files, you’ll need to somehow get that stuff up to there so people can see it. Both have WYSIWYG tools that allow you to simply type what you want and format as you go.
• Social Interaction – Websites and Blogs both have the ability to allow feedback and comments. Comments on web sites are generally centralized and allow for one place to input comments. Blog sites make commenting and feedback available on every article; not just the one page.
• RSS and Subscriptions – Both websites and blogs can have features that provide for Really Simple Syndication. It is possible to also have a website or blog push information out to an audience via subscription based services.
• Search Engines - It doesn’t matter if you are using a blog or a website, search engines will see yours – if you have correctly configured and optimized your blog or site specifically for search engines. I’ll get into this more in a section below specifically addressing search engines.

There is absolutely no difference between the features available for a website or a blog. Remember, a blog is a web site. It boils down to what objectives you are trying to achieve with your web presence.

As a photographer, ask yourself questions like; How do I want to update my content? What kind of information will I be publishing, and how often? How do I want to present my work and how will people find it?

Search Engines

Search engine optimization, or “SEO”, is a very interesting topic and one that would also require a separate post. I am not going to go into it much here. However, I can tell you that a website is no different than a blog in terms of configuration for search engines. Websites make use of a combination of content and keywords. Content contains the text of the web site that a search engine will periodically read and keep track of. Keywords are embedded into the html, the source code, of the web pages. Search engines will also use these keywords in the databases to index your website with.

Websites typically have a static number of web pages. This makes the number of keywords constant and content static. Not much will often change in a web page so there is nothing new for a search engine to index.

When creating and publishing photography websites, be sure to carefully craft content and keywords that will be easily indexed by a search engine. For example, if you are pet photographer you would include “pet” and “photography” in the keywords, not “child” or “wedding”.

Blogs

Blog articles contain much more granular levels of information than a typical web page. Blogging tools provide for categorizing and keyword tagging for each article. Because blog articles are published with much more frequency than a webpage, more precise keyword indexing is likely to occur by search engines.

For example, publishing a blog article about a wedding photo shoot may be categorized as “Weddings” in your blog. Additionally, you may add keyword tags such as “wedding”, “photo”, and “bride” to your article. When a search engine visits your article the content and keywords will help index the article appropriately on the search engine.

Both

Search engines don’t necessarily go out an start index your site when it feels like it. Publishing a webpage or blog article does not automatically prompt a search engine to do an indexing; although there are tools that you can use to do that for you too. Search engines will do an indexing of something prompts it to.

For example, indexing can be manually initiated by you going to the search engine web site and telling where the new information is. The biggest and most effective way to have your entry indexed is by having other sites and blogs reference yours. When a search engine indexes a site that has a link to a page or blog article that hasn’t been indexed yet, it will go get the information for indexing. If it already has information about your page or article, the search engine will consider how many other indexes are also referencing yours.

So depending on what you want to communicate out to the world as a photographer, you need to carefully consider how search engines will be told to go to your information, and then how the information should indexed so that others who search for work like yours will find you.

Marketing

This is going to be a subject for my next post. This subject is just way too huge to even try and summarize here. What I will say however is that while a website and blog serve unique purposes, each should be asked the same questions.

When considering the business side of the profession, a photographer must carefully craft and execute on a marketing plan that best suits their goals and objectives. Considering how competitive the market is, photographers need to leverage every and any tool that sets them above the rest. Word of mouth will only get you so far. “Success is a journey, not a destination.” – Unknown.

Feel free to leave me some comments. I made any glaring goof-ups or tweaked an opinion from you, let me know. I love talking about this stuff.