What Photographers Could Do to Better Cultivate a Relationship With You
Developing great business relationships takes creativity and ingenuity. Sometimes the most dramatic difference comes from the simplest concept—help those who help you!Let’s face it, we live in a fast-moving, image-heavy world and have been for quite some time. There’s never been a time in history where images and content were shared and spread globally as much as they are today. Just look at a few statistics:• 95 million photos and videos are shared on Instagram per day (source: Wordstream).• Facebook sees 300 million photo uploads per day (source: Gizmoto).Images are everywhere, and they’re absolutely critical in attracting new customers to your business. The challenge is developing a high-quality, relevant, and current image library you can use to promote your business or service.Photographers hold the keyIt’s true; photographers are holding the keys when it comes to the valuable image content you need. How else are you able to share that amazing wedding or event you were part of last weekend? Cell phone images should be the last resort, but unfortunately, they've become the norm instead of the exception. Why? Two reasons; Photographers either take too long to deliver images to vendors, or sadly do not deliver them at all. This helps no one.It’s all about the homeworkEveryone works hard during and leading up to the wedding day. Everything has been planned down to the last detail and set up beautifully for the wedding. The photographers’ role is to capture the emotion and surrounding environment to tell a story. Most of the details were either made by someone or put in place by someone. Decorations were placed, florals were designed and beautifully showcased, chairs were delivered and set up, the cake was made, and the list goes on. It’s all there, perfectly set up and positioned for the photographer to capture. Most of the time, the venue is so beautiful it’s an absolute joy to photograph. However, the most important thing that can’t be forgotten or taken for granted is the fact that none of it would be possible without the amazing team of individual creatives that made it happen. That fact is not lost on us. We’re so incredibly grateful for the hard work that’s gone into making things run smoothly and look beautiful, that it’s incredibly important that we deliver images to these vendors within 48-72 hours.Our 48-hour processWe’re constantly hearing complaints from wedding professionals that they’re waiting for images from events that occurred two to three months ago. Here’s the deal; 48-hours is the “golden window of impact,” and here’s how we’ve tailored our process to help benefit everyone involved, not just us: The day following a wedding is spent culling the entire wedding and editing the select 50-75 images that will be used in the blog. In our business, my partner John is usually writing the blog copy, finding links for the vendors and preparing the back-end of the blog site for the post. Once the blog images are edited and complete, they’re editorially paired and uploaded to our blog along with the couple’s story and how their day unfolded. We then send an email to the wedding couple announcing that their blog is ready for viewing and sharing. Next, all of the blog images (plus more) are uploaded to a private online gallery for vendors and the email goes out that your images are ready! This is a password-protected gallery, and the images are high resolution and free of watermarks. These are your images to download and use for your marketing and promotional needs. Our ultimate goal is to have the blog posted and the vendor images delivered by Tuesday or Wednesday immediately following a weekend ceremony.Business helping business comes full circleIt’s such a simple concept—help those who help you! We’re fortunate to have the opportunity to work with many amazingly talented wedding professionals who allow us to create beautiful images for our clients and ourselves. If it weren't for everyone involved, our images might not have the same impact. These wedding pros are the reason our images have the impact they do, so it only makes sense to provide them with images within just a few days while the excitement is still high.How thankful would you be to have images from Saturday’s wedding by Tuesday? Would you talk about that and recommend that photographer? We’ve handed the keys over to you, and we’re happy to share. We’re grateful for the hard work of wedding pros, and we’re showing it by making sure they get the images they need in order to grow their brand. WPM__Carrie McGuire, Carrie McGuire Photography, Winchester, Calif.
