If someone wanted to know your family's story, what would you tell them? What would you show them?

As a father and husband, I have been thinking a lot about this. How will my kids and wife remember me, how will I remember them? How have we spent time together as a family? What fun moments do we remember the most? What challenged us and how did we overcome them?

Lastly, how have we loved our children? There is never enough time, to be together, right? It seems that way, but it doesn't have to be the way all the time. Certainly, we can give ourselves some time away from work, from social media, from blinking lights and other distractions to hang out with our family and just chill out.

Well, all of these questions, observations and potential solutions highlight what I want to do for families and couples in Connecticut, with Amata Pictures, a new project that I launched. But I am sure you are wondering how you would go about documenting your family right? Well, I am here to tell you about The Familyness Photo Workshops led by Davina Fear.

Davina Fear is a Clover, South Carolina based photographer and author. More than those obvious titles, she is also a wife and mom. From what I have seen her do in the last few months, where she launched Love 15, to her kits for photographers (some, I personally use), I know she puts her heart and soul into whatever she produces.

The Familyness Photo Workshop is no different. It's meant for parents who are juggling with jobs and life in general that take them away from their kids, their “familyness,” a term Davina freely admits she made up. To that end, I think photographers too, who are parents, can benefit from the workshop that launches tomorrow (January 20).

Davina and I had a chance to sit down for a brief chat. Check out the video below.

Sign up with the following code: “FPW30seshu” to save $30. Sign up here for The Familyness Photo Workshop.

The dictionary definition of “thrive” is – prosper; flourish. What makes your “thrive”?

I am sure you all remember this video by Zack Arias that went viral. Zack is back again, after a nine-week hiatus on social media (well, being online constantly, I suppose) to create this new video for Scott Kelby's blog.

I feel you must watch this right away. It's only five minutes long. So, take a look and comment below:

“Feed your soul. Not your feed.”

Like you, I am juggling a job, a business, a family with kids, this blog and a project called Amata Pictures. There is always “stuff to do.” But I worry sometimes if I am doing the “right stuff” at the “right time.”

My friend Eric O'Connor is all about being “agile.” That's an interesting word, isn't it? The concept, according to Eric, is a simple one: DO SOMETHING, but focus on action rather than inaction. Eric is teaching me to prioritize the things that must be done to run a business. He is a natural mentor and I thank him for his patience and perhaps more for his persistence when dealing with me and my various “attractions.” Do you want to become an agile photographer too?

If there is one goal (not a resolution) in 2013 that I would like to reach, it is to only do the things in my life that add value. When I think about it, I run through the day doing a lot that is just all “noise” and no “signal.” It's time to turn that around. It is time to thrive. So, yes, less Twitter, perhaps more Facebook. Shorter blog posts on Tiffinbox. And, definitely more photography that evokes honest feelings for my clients and in me. More time spent with my family and less time in front of a computer. And who knows, I might reach for my sneakers and start running again.

I stumbled upon Matthew May's book, “The Laws of Subtraction: 6 Simple Rules for Winning in the Age of Excess Everything.” You might want to either buy it or check it out at your local library. It is possible to achieve more by doing less of the wrong things in life. At least, that's the way I am starting to see it.

Do you?

Have you thought about stepping away from it all, to clear your mind and reconnect to what is truly important in your life? If you have taken a break like that, describe it to us below. What do you thrive on? Your comments might inspire others to do the same.

I am incredibly fortunate to have two amazing photography conferences within stone's throw of each other and my home in Connecticut. I just came home from the Mystic Seminars. The other conference I enjoy attending is Inspire Photo Seminars. As a photographer who is eager to keep abreast of all that is happening in this industry, I have found going to these two local or regional conventions (and they are tiny compared to WPPI or Imaging USA) to be refreshing. I asked my friend Mark Higgins to give us an idea of what to expect at this year's Inspire Photo Seminars.

Inspire Photo Seminars is an intimate retreat-style conference of 150 people with an emphasis on building a stronger community. The conference is designed to establish professional relationships and even create friendships among your peers – which can be a sustainable support system to help you grow your business over the years to come. We do this by designing the conference around networking, education, and fun community time. This year, the conference runs from February 11 through February 13 in Sturbridge, Massachusetts.

We will be kicking the conference of Monday afternoon with some intensive pre-conference classes that are free to all attendees. This will be a great afternoon including “Building an All-Star Team” with Jason Aten, “Portfolio Hack” with Allana Taranto, “Lightroom Workflow with Tim and Chris Riley from RPG Keys, and ”Pricing for Profit” with Jared Bauman.

Amy Deputy will be the keynote speaker Monday night after dinner setting the tone of the conference with her talk on “Creating authentic imagery in the land of eye candy: a discussion of seeing clearly through the heart with a camera.”

There will be a talk by Abby Larson of Style Me Pretty on how and what it takes to get published Wednesday afternoon and this is something we’re really excited and proud to offer the studios attending Inspire.

We’ve designed Inspire so you can learn what you need to learn. The schedule is set up so that attendees can choose between sessions in different tracks for each time slot (Business, Technical Skills, and Inspiration). We realize everyone has different needs when it comes to photography and business education so we provide choices to ensure you’re not sitting in a class that doesn’t fit your goals and needs.

Check out the schedule here.

This year we’ve broadened the focus outside the business of wedding photography. You may be looking for more creative outlets or a new type of photography to rejuvenate you and your business. Make sure to check out speakers like Brian Friedman, Christa Acosta and Nicole Taylor, Michael Connor, and Tomas Flint.

We’re also excited to have David Murray as a speaker and David will be doing an Intensive Critique/Editing Process. I have seen David do this on the Fearless Photographers Forum and it was one of the most enlightening and educational three hours I’ve had in during my 8 year tenure in wedding photography.

On Tuesday afternoon we will offer an intimate tradeshow that’s a hit every year. Come see the latest offerings from Pictage or the folks at LensProtoGo and their technical demonstrations. Check out what Couture Books has been cooking up and see how Shoot dot Edit can help optimize your business giving you precious time back with their great editing service or see how to design an album quickly with Fundy Software.

On Wednesday afternoon we offer extended shooting courses with everything from baby portraiture, shooting headshots, intimate posing for boudoir, stepping into the light, learning how lenses affect your perspective.

We include all meals from Monday night until the conference ends, and plan fun late night activities because we want to maximize the opportunities for everyone to come together and connect outside the classroom. We encourage everyone who comes to step out of their comfort zone, and their circle of friends, and meet some new people each day. What better way to break the ice than to sing karaoke with some of your new friends!

This year one of the new things we’ll be doing is assigned seating for the staff so that an Inspire Team Member or Speaker will be at every table. We realize that sometimes it’s intimidating to walk into a room full of strangers so we hope a friendly face at every table will get the ball rolling.

We really hard to create a unique retreat style conference where we all get to know one another while accessing education that will help propel your studio forward. We want to grow this year, and we can’t wait for you to join us on the journey!

This guest post is by Feuza Reis, a NJ Wedding Photographer, founder of the Un-Jersey Bride Blog and helps photographers and artists Get Found Online. You can follow Feuza on Twitter.

For many photographers January is the month to take care of business. We have to worry about doing our taxes, updating website images, blogging previous posts we missed, and strategizing for the new year. I think January is the perfect time to work on optimizing websites and blogs for SEO. The biggest hurdle to overcome with putting SEO into practice is lack of information, time and its complexity. SEO for some is a strange buzz word, and for others it is this painful complicated process full of difficult words and terms.

I prefer to view SEO as a practical method I can put into my workflow so that it does not control me. With that being said, it will be hard to make it part of one’s workflow if he/she does not lay out the basic principles for getting found online. Before covering how a photographer can make SEO part of their daily routine, here are 3 tips on laying the foundation to get optimized.

Follow These 4 Steps To Lay The Foundation

1) Add Text To Your Website Pages.

The easiest thing one can do right now is add a text on every page of your website with the city you city and state you live in and also which areas you are willing to service. If one visits 10 photographer’s websites, more than half leave out where their location. This makes the hunt for a photographer nearby to be rather difficult, much like finding a needle in a haystack.

Google is crazy about the local search and will give results based on where the person searching is located while they search for a photographer. Google wants to show the searcher who is available to work near their area.

So how will they know if you match that query? TEXT. Text is the main component of SEO, so be sure to add your town, state or region on your website. The actual text to add will depend on how local folks might search in that state or area: examples are the greater Atlanta area, South Jersey, NYC, Manhattan, and so forth.

Since I don’t have a studio I don’t put an actual address but for photographers who have a retail commercial space, then add your full address.

My example is as follows:

Adding a text like this may not be so appealing, but it is vital if you want to get found online. Make it small enough but not transparent. You can get black listed by Google if you do things like transparent text. If you have a fear of committing to one particular location, just add the main city you serve and that you also do destination weddings. Since Google loves text and local search, it is extremely important you add where you provide your services on your website. You can also do this on
your blog as much as possible.

2) Install The All In One Plugin Pack

Many photographers I speak to already know about this plugin BUT many have not updated their settings nor are they updating the All in One SEO box at end of their blog posts. Here are steps to install and use this great SEO wordpress plugin.

A) Install Plugin All In One SEO Pack And Enable It

B) Next Go to: All In One SEO (Options Configuration Panel)

C) Fill Out The Title, Description and Tag Words.

Be sure to update the options at the end of the page and save.

D) Many photographers think this is the last step, but it is not. At the end of every blog post, there is a section named ‘ALL IN ONE SEO.’ This section can be found all the way at the bottom past the text and photo box. Here, you can also add a title, description and some key words and you definitely should. (You should continue reading the article for more information).

3) Create A Keyword list.

Start a keyword list and save it as an excel file on google drive, or your desktop. This list will help you organize ideas for blog posts and pages on your website that you may want to add for SEO purposes. The biggest mistake photographers make is that they think like a photographer and not in the perspective of the client. Avoid trying to rank for words like session, e-session, and your studio name. The purpose of SEO is to get found by new clients and get booked. Most clients are new to hiring photographers and won’t know what any of these photography key terms even mean. Think more in generic terms like photos, pictures, pics, professional.

4) Set Up Google Alerts.

Google Alerts is a free tool by google and it helps you find out if anyone is talking about you and your business on the web. I set up a Google Alert for my name, my studio name and once in awhile a keyword name so that I can see who is being ranked for that keyword.

For more information on Google Alerts, go HERE.

SEO Every Day.

Now that you have laid the foundation for your SEO work, it is time to automate it as much as possible. SEO is ALL about text, and the best thing you can do is blog. However, you don’t need to blog as much as you may think. You do on the other hand need to optimize your blog post and promote it well.

Here is my SEO workflow:

1) Create a sample folder on my desktop which will be used to copy and paste for every shoot.

This folder has 6 subfolders: (I have changed it to include blog and slideshow together now)

2) Copy and paste the main folder for every shoot, rename it by date and name of client.
3) Backup photos onto external hard drives.
4) Import photos into Lightroom.
5) Cull the photos, choosing the keepers etc
6) Edit the images as desired.
7) Star rate #5 the images that may be used for blog post and slideshow (I clump these together because I usually choose too many and only decide which ones I am using while I am actually blogging.)
8) Filter the 5 star rated photos, which for me is usually between 60-80.
9) Rename the photos with the one main keyword I want to blog about.

Here are some examples for different keywords you can do for other types of photography:

Weddings – I like to pick the name of the venue: plaza-hotel-wedding-photos

Engagement Sessions – Either choose a state, city or name of place where you took the photos for your main keyword.

NJ-engagement-photos
NJ-engagement-photographer
Engagement-photo-ideas or pictures-of-engagement-photos (remember to think like a client and not like a photographer!)

Portraits – You can use the type of session or your city/location:

Newborn-photographer-in-NJ
NJ-newborn-photos
kids-photographer
kids-professional-photos
maternity-photographer-in-nj

Boudoir – Use more common words clients who have never had a boudoir session would use.

Sexy-pictures-NJ
NJ-boudoir photographer

Now onto Blogging:

1) Upload all the photos you want to use for your blog post.

2) Rename Title (Since we have done this in LR already skip this step)

If you use Blogstomp to watermark your photos make sure in settings, you change it to leave name of photo as is instead of the date which is default.

3) If you copy the title and paste in alt-text and or add a variation like by your photography name or town/state.

Many times, I leave this as is due to lack of time and it still works. Remember I like to keep it simple and practical. The ideal would be to be more specific and have more variation.

4) Copy this in description, but add nj photographer or add something like “photos by Feuza Reis.” as seen in example above.

5) Add a few tags, not that many because they don’t have as much weight as you think.

6) Don’t mix keywords. For example, if it’s a family shoot don’t put that you are also a wedding photographer.

7) Blog 2-3 times a month, optimizing and promoting it well. Promoting is a different topic in itself to address.

8) Last but not least, track your results. What is the poingt of doing the work if you are not measuring your efforts? Start a document and state which page of Google you are appearing for some keywords you want for yourself. Also have a tab for how many blog visitors you are having a week or month.

Track your results with statcounter.com or Google analytics. I prefer using the plugin, Google analyticator, which shows me a summary of which keywords are gettings hits on my blog right in my WordPress Dashboard.

Overall the most difficult work of SEO is laying down the foundation and installing what you need to install, but then it is done! Yes, it may be annoying to do and to keep up with, but if you are tired of not getting found online and Google not recognizing you as a photographer, taking these actions is extremely important, so don’t postpone it!

Tell us if you make content marketing and search engine optimization a natural part of your everyday workflow. If so, how?

Today's guest bloggers are Paul & Sylvia. They are Toronto, Canada-based wedding photographers. Find them on Facebook or Twitter. You are likely to see them guest blog here as a monthly contributors. Please welcome them on board!

I think it's safe to say that most of us, despite it all, got into wedding photography or any other photography business for the same reason.  To make money. I know, I know, we are artists and we are doing this because we love what we do. This is essential, no question. You need to keep the fire stoked and the wheels turning. So what's next?  Well we all know the importance of being a good salesman, for there are many brilliant, starving artists. But where do we go from here? Well, let me tell you a little story.

When Sylvia and I started out as wedding photographers and were hungry for clients, anyone willing to sign and pay our package price seemed like a great client to us. We thought, hey, we're getting paid, filling up our calendar and maybe we'll get some referrals. We would lower the price a little too quickly just to book a new wedding and began to find that everything would always come down to price. This is not the client base we were looking for. Our clients seemed happy, but the referrals just didn't come. What were we missing? Well it was at Mystic Seminars last year that the answer presented itself like a ray of sunshine through the clouds.

The answer came when one of the speakers introduced us to “The Golden Circle”. It is a simple model on how to inspire and it is the brainchild of visionary, Simon Sinek. Here is a link to TED talk presentation. It changed everything. The model itself is simple, picture three circles set inside one another. The outside ring is “What” the inner one is “How” and the centre is “Why”. A conventional company will state “What” they do, then “How” they do it, but most never make it to “Why”. This is the approach that most of us took when we started out and sadly, it's where a lot of businesses stay. There is no emotion involved in this and lets face it wedding photography and portrait photography are all about emotion. It's simply “This is what we do, here is how you can buy it”.  

Now picture your business using the opposite approach. When you start with “Why”, you have immediately attached emotion. When Sylvia and I started implementing this our results changed almost overnight. At every consultation we showed the couple how excited and happy we were to be apart of their day, how much we loved creating new relationships and the energy level would soar. By simply showing our potential clients how lucky we felt to be doing what we do, we created a connection.

Isn't this industry all about relationships? We started to find that everybody we booked our wedding photography service were like old friends. We started regularly receiving emails after a consultation telling us how much they enjoyed talking with us and how excited they are that they were able to book us for their wedding. Yes, there is the odd couple that we don't feel the connection with and funny, they don't book. We are okay with this. It wasn't meant to be. We have found that the “shopping around for the best price” couples don't even contact us anymore. The most amazing thing we found was the referrals. We had multiple referrals from several brides immediately after the booking, before experiencing the service or before they had seen the photos! The price also seems to be less and less of a concern with couples spending more than ever.

Now, don't misunderstand, we know that there is a lot more to this game. We offer amazing service, awesome products and a fantastic experience. But if we hadn't changed how we approach our potential clients in the first place, things would be very different. Think about how you do things, are you starting with “Why”?

What is YOUR “why”? Brave enough to share it with us? Comment below!