First class delivery ..

They say the best Wedding bookings come via 'Word-of-Mouth', but wait 'til you hear about the Wedding I booked over the weekend. Leasha and Callum came to see me at Manchester Wedding Photography and I asked them, as I ask all couples, just how exactly they came to hear of me. I mean, God knows, I put that much effort into Social 'Meeja' and website SEO that it is nice every now and again to hear that's it's actually worked! "Google?" .. I asked "Wedding Fayre? Hotel flyer?..." No, they answered, none of that! Turns out there was a postman who used to deliver to the offices that my partner used to work in, who was told by my partner about my work, who knows Leasha's Mum and who passed her my details and she, after vetting my site, told her daughter in Sheffield who then came to see me at the weekend! How's that for a first-class delivery? What a route! So that's it! No more faffing about with keywords and tag lines .. I'm just gonna start bribing posties across the North-West! .. 

A gentler pace ..

Child and animal studies taken at a reasonable price! Sounds so quaint, but I think I might market myself like that from now on! The line's from this fantastic 1980 classified newspaper column I found in my archive. Portraits, canvas or standard; magnificent album from £39.99; samples in your home, without obligation! It all sounds so civilized and gentlemanly, not like the rip tear of modern marketing and I for one would gladly go back to putting a nice 'ad' in the paper to get my work.
There's just so much info out there now and, sadly, getting work's very often not about the quality of your photography but your skills with SEO and getting your name up the Goggle ranking! (Not a spelling mistake!) ..

Sit down, Martin! Have a cup of tea!
Ah, now there's an idea for your new Home page picture ..

Do you blog?..

Further to my ramblings about the Google ranking system and how to get yourself up it, I was chatting to a new chap at badminton last night who turned out to be a 'senior IT consultant'  (That was handy!) I asked him if he knew anything about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) "A little .. " he said, self-effacingly, so I asked him if he knew how I could get my website higher up the search pages. "What is it you do?" he asked. "Photography!.." I said. "Ah, ok.." he nodded "So do you change the pictures on your site very often.." "Oh, yes.." I said "In fact, I just changed the front page this very day..."


He thought for a moment... "Do you actually submit the site to search engines?"
"I do, indeed" I said "And I use Google Adwords, albeit at a very low budget"
"And are you on Facebook?"
"Oh, yes, of course.." I said "I have a specific Facebook page for StudioFiveFour"
"And Pinterest, Flickr, etc...?"
"Yes, I use all of those.." I said "and Tumblr"
"And you Tweet?"
"I tweet"
He scratched his cheek and twirled his badminton racket as we waited for our turn on the court. "Ah, well..." he said, breaking into a smile "What you need to do is to write a blog!.."

Oh, bugger....