Here is a simple time saving tip just for photographers.
When you’re running a photography business you wear a lot of hats – photographer, CEO, admin, website designer, copy writer, and the list goes on.
The saying “time is money” is true, your time is valuable. It may have taken me longer than I would like to admit to realize that. However, treating my time as my most valuable currency was when my business changed.
When I saw that to make money in my business I needed to be photographing families, however, I had been wasting a lot of time on other tasks. Over the years I have worked to streamline my processes, set up systems to save time, and outsource things that take me too long and/or I don’t enjoy.
With that, I’m sharing one of my favorite time saving tips. This tip will help you as you write your blogs and schedule social media posts.
Ready? Let’s go.
A simple time saving tip is to favorite images to use for blogging and social media as you do your final review of a gallery.
You already are looking through the gallery one final time ensuring it’s ready to be sent off to your client. Why not favorite images that can be used later for a blog or social media, saving yourself time overall?
I use Adobe Bridge to check my images that final time before uploading, and as I scroll through, I simply 5 star those images that I may use later. Once I’m done. I upload the gallery to ShootProof and then filter the images by rating to see my picks for blogging.
At that time, I drag them over to BlogStomp where I resize them right away. Then put them into a separate folder (I label it with “family name-blog”). That’s it!
When I’m ready to write a blog, I have a folder of images already pulled together and ready to go. I also can peek through these folders to pull images as I schedule posts on social media.
This keeps a flow of fresh images at your fingertips without wasting time searching.
This time saving tip is about adding a small step in something you’re already doing to save you time later. No longer will you run out of new images or have to search for images when you’re sitting down to blog. You’ll have folders from each family’s session all ready to go.
I will add, of course, I already have permission from these families to use their photos online. Families who decline permission, I simply skip this step. As I have the talent release as apart of my pre-session workflow (another time saving tip), I know going into a session whether or not I can use a family’s images. A year later when I’m pulling images I may completely forget, meaning ANOTHER step of having to go back to their project file to see if I could use their images or not.
Bonus time saving Tip: Note if a session prompts an idea for a blog.
Not all sessions provide an immediate blog idea. However, sometimes events during a session, or a question from a client leads me to have a great blog topic to help share and educate future potential clients. If that’s the case, I take note then, adding it to notes in my content calendar with the family name that goes with that topic. Again, I probably don’t have time right then when I’m delivering a gallery to write out the post, but I have set aside the idea so I can come back to it later when I’m in content creation mode.
Can this time saving tip work for your business? Add it into a workflow checklist on your desk and give it a try the next time you’re delivering a gallery. See how this simple step can save you time later as you create content!
Love saving time? Make sure you check out my other photography business blogs. Plus head to the Photographer’s Resources page for freebies just for you.
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