Intro by Skip Cohen
Your website is about what you sell, while your blog is about what’s in your heart. The challenge with many of you is finding some middle ground when it comes to what you share in blog posts.
You need to be careful and stay with what’s most interesting to your readers, but that doesn’t mean everything you write about has to be photo-centric. Don’t be afraid to get a little personal when it’s appropriate.
For example, remember who your target audience is. For all of you in the portrait/social categories, it’s “Mom” or on the wedding side of the business, brides. Both targets are female leading to me to my never-ending reminder that 98% of the purchase decisions to hire a photographer in these categories are made by women.
This post from Justin and Mary Marantz’s archives is perfect for you to start thinking about now. I’ve only shared part of Mary’s holiday post. If you’d like to see all the images and read the rest of the post, it’s just a click away.
In a month we’re going to be full swing into fourth quarter seasonality. It’s the perfect time to share a little piece of your life, the more personal side, but it’ll never happen if you don’t start thinking about it now.
You always need to be professional with everything you share on your blog, but the holidays are the perfect time to share more than just best wishes – show a little of your personal side. Share your passion for Halloween, Thanksgiving and the December holidays.
By Justin & Mary Marantz
One of my other favorite things about Thanksgiving weekend that has become a tradition over the past few years of my Dad coming up to visit, is that we spend those few days putting up the tree and all of the holiday decorations right away so that they are up for the longest amount of time leading up to Christmas. Truth be told, I would just leave the decorations up year round if I could because there is nothing like sitting on our couch in the living room with twinkle lights everywhere. It just makes me HAPPY! But I’ll just have to settle for the day after Thanksgiving until as long as I can push it in January!
This year, we added quite a bit to our usual decorations so I thought I would give you guys a little tour of everything! First up are our new cable knit stockings we got this year with our names embroidered on them (they’re from RH baby & child). I LOVE them! They came in about a month ago and I have been dying to put them up ever since! We’re SO lucky to have this amazing huge stone fireplace that is original 1880s in our house (it even has a kettle hook!), and it’s just the kind of fireplace that deserves really fun stockings! 🙂
Going in closer to the mantle, we have a bunch of sparkly trees & the ones on the end light up which is fun! (gold spiral trees are from Pier 1, green sparkly trees are from Crate & Barrel, light up trees are from Home Goods).
Moving just to the right of the mantle, we have our “What’s Next” chalkboard set up that we took with us on every stop of our tour all across the country a couple of years ago. I LOVE having this board in our house after so many amazing dreams were written on it…I feel like it has really good vibes! 🙂 On that, we hung our new cable knit mitten garland (how cute are they?? Target!), mini trees & Let it Snow sign (all also from Target).
Right next to the chalkboard we have this cool old vintage desk we found when someone was giving it away years ago, and on that we have our Baby It’s Cold Outside sign (Home Goods) and this beautiful big ornament (a gift!)
We’ll head out the front door now & take a look outside. But only if Cooper can come with us! 🙂 That sled you see in the background there was actually my dad’s when he was little. He had it cleaned up & a bow put on it for our front porch!
