I think it’s important to be willing to try new things and see what happens.
That’s why I wanted to experiment by putting the blog into hibernation for a while. I wanted to see if there were benefits to only using Facebook and Twitter to keep clients and fans updated with what’s happening. There were definitely benefits, like not having to publish things in three places and being able to tag people in photos, but there were also drawbacks.
Firstly, not all of my clients were among the 500 million people on Facebook, or if they were they weren’t very active. So even though it was easy to tag them in photos, they didn’t always see it. I was never a big fan of how images appeared on Facebook either. Their small size and low quality meant that they had less impact and were much less impressive than I want them to be.
And I’m not sure if other photographers feel this way, but I’ve never felt entirely comfortable posting images to Facebook. I can’t pinpoint why, but I always felt uneasy putting my images in their hands and having to submit to their rules. I feel like Cameron did when Ferris Bueller left the Ferrari with the parking garage attendant. When I’m putting my images and images of my clients out in the public, I need to trust that they are in the right hands.
There were also things a blog can do really well that I didn’t fully appreciate until I wasn’t blogging anymore. It’s so nice to have my own space that I can customize just how I want, and I’m able to turn the blog into a valuable resource for brides that isn’t really possible with Facebook alone.
I also began to realize and really appreciate the fact that I know my blog will be around in three years, or five years, or fifteen years. I can’t say that about Facebook or Twitter for sure. Even if my blog doesn’t exist online anymore, there are ways to easily archive the posts here to keep for whoever may want to see them in the future. So many things online seem like they are here one moment and then gone the next. I really like the idea of my blog being a permanent record of what I do.
Now I’m not vacating Facebook or anything, even though I am admittedly beginning to tire of it. I’ll still have a presence there and on Twitter too, but I’m glad to have the blog back and I’m looking forward to using it as a space for my thoughts and my photos. Stay tuned!
