As a photographer and marketing coach for creative service professionals I’m always looking for new tools and strategies that can be used to help get the word out about their businesses.

In the age of Internet marketing and social media networking it’s critically important now more than ever for creative service professional to take advantage of every opportunity to get your work in front of and connect with our target audience.

With websites, blogs and social media tools like Facebook and Twitter just to name a few, they are more avenues than ever for pro- photographers to reach potential prospects. So the question becomes “if it’s easier to connect with our prospects online – how do I capture the leads I receive on my blog -or- website?”

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Most of you who have followed the PhotographersHandbook in the past or have heard me speak online or elsewhere are painfully aware of my stance on All FLASH websites and since it’s been a while since I’ve gone on a tirade about the subject or even posted on the PhotographersHandbook.com for that matter, I felt like this was a good opportunity to do so.

Maybe, just maybe I can keep one photographer from making the dreaded mistake of developing an ALL FLASH website or change your thinking in regards to All Flash websites than I can sleep a little better tonight. Insert dramatic music here.

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So you’ve just spent a half-day writing your latest and greatest blog post, you hit submit and then wait for your throngs of blog fans to come racing to your site to read it… and … nobody shows up.

There is an often-overlooked step in the blogging process that will help drive traffic to your blog. You need to notify the various blogging search engines that you have new content waiting to be indexed. There are probably at least a hundred different blogging search engines but really only a handful of them you should concern yourself with. Even if you pick the top 20-30 manually updating each of them can quickly become a pain.

I come bearing a solution.

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So you just took the wraps off your shiny new website and want to announce it to the world. . .

Woah hold on there trigger.

While everyone wants to optimize their sites for the highest possible search engine rankings, remember who you are and what you do. Most of us can only dream of big market art directors hiring us to shoot the next Pepsi Campaign. So why are we spending so much time optimizing our sites for the global market and completely overlooking the obvious business right in our own backyards.

Before take on the daunting task of SEO (search engine optimization), and trust me it’s daunting, make sure you are listed in some of your local website directories and portals including the following:

• Internet Yellow Pages
• Local City Guides
• Your Local Chamber Website
• Local Business Portals
• Local Online Portrait and Bridal Directories
• Newspapers

These are just a few examples i’m sure with a little searching you can find others in your local market.