When you shoot an engagement session or a wedding, you work your hardest to capture the important moments of the wedding day. After you receive your images back from a photography editing service, you should be sharing them on your blog (which many times is used with WordPress). Your blog is a necessary aspect of your business that helps you connect with your target audience. A blog post typically contains your past engagements and wedding shoots, as well as a narrative to make the story come alive for your followers. The more your content is shared with your ideal clients, the easier it can become to reach couples who are perfect for you. But, as a busy wedding photographer, it can be difficult to spend all of your time-sharing content with your followers (and trying to reach new ones). For you to optimize your blog and reach new audiences, you must encourage your past, current, and future clients to share your content on social media.
Because people who read your blog are also busy with their work and personal lives, encouraging social sharing needs to be an easy process. If there are too many complicated steps involved, readers will be less likely to share your work with their family and friends. Plugins are available for you to feature within your blog posts and are easy for readers to click on and share. Here are 3 plugins your blog needs to jumpstart social sharing (and help you meet more couples!).
1. Mashshare
Throughout the Internet, there are thousands of other photographers who offer content to their target market. Those photographers also want readers of their blog to share on social media so they can reach larger audiences. How can you make your social sharing experience more enticing for your blog readers so they choose to share your content over others? Mashshare is a quick and easy plugin to help encourage your blog readers to share your content.
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Specifically, Mashshare allows you to place visually pleasing social share buttons on your blog. Whether you use multiple social platforms, or only a few, Mashshare provides social share buttons that live on the top and bottom of one particular blog post. When a reader on your blog post clicks on a social share button, there will be text already included based on the social platform. Another great feature of this plugin is it shows you how many people have shared the blog post. Most readers want to be a part of something which is popular, so showing the share count on your blog may encourage them to stay on the page a bit longer.
Tip: Create short links, such as bit.lys for your Twitter social shares so you can track the shares from that post. From the data, you will have an idea of what content your blog readers love and which may need improvements.
2. ShareThis
When couples looking for a wedding photographer (or couples you’ve already booked or worked with) read through your blog posts, they may not immediately notice the social share buttons you’ve incorporated. Another option besides placing larger social share buttons on the top and bottom of your post is to use a social sharing bar, which can come in the form of a Hover Bar or a Pulldown Bar. ShareThis has a plugin for WordPress which enables you to create both of these options. The Hover Bar stays on the page as the reader scrolls up and down, so there is always subtle encouragement to click and share on a particular social platform.
The Pulldown Bar can be useful for you if you want the reader to focus only on the content, meaning the social sharing bar will only appear when the reader scrolls down on the blog post. If you are unsure which look you desire, test out each option over a few months. Because the plugin also provides analytics, use those to determine what your audience prefers.
3. Shareaholic
As you continue creating blog posts for your target audience, the design of your posts in WordPress (such as the font you use, headers, and where the graphics go) has become part of your personal style. Every part of your blog post represents you as a photographer, so your social sharing methods should match your style. Shareaholic offers a WordPress plugin known as Floated Share Buttons, which creates a more natural look for your sharing options.
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Similar to the other two plugins, you can choose what social platforms you will include. These buttons are small and can be adjusted to float vertically on the side of your blog post or horizontally at the top or bottom of your post. The Floated Share Buttons feature how many shares you’ve received, but are placed in the right-hand corner of each individual platform. This gives a cleaner look for your blog post and avoids taking the attention away from the main content.
Continuously encouraging social sharing on your blog posts can help you reach a larger audience than you already have. When your content is placed in front of couples who are perfect for you, your chances increase of grabbing their attention. Because social media and other marketing techniques are so important for your business, download our Guide to Marketing for Wedding Photographers to learn advanced ways to provide content specifically for your ideal clients!
