Optimize a photographer's time

Written by Laura Llorente in the Arcadina's blog

Photographer welcome to 2020! A year ahead of great projects, successes and recognition in your work awaits you. Of that we are very sure. And so that you achieve everything that you propose during these next months today we want to help you optimize the time you dedicate to your photography business.

Like every year around this time, it's time to take stock of the previous year, see what has been achieved.alldesigned to improve it and reinforce all those tasks that have served you to improve in your business as a photographer, videographer or creative.

“The time has come for set goals for this year 2020. ”

To achieve all these objectives that you will set for this year You will need to organize your time very well. And that's why today we want to start this 2020 with a series of recommendations for you to get be more productive in your work hours as a photographer, videographer or creative.

Contents

• Plan your photographer job every week
  • Weekly schedule to optimize time
• Delegate and automate work not related to photography
• Avoid distractions and optimize your work time
• Optimize your time and you will go far as a photographer

Plan your photographer job week by week

There is no worse feeling than getting up on a Monday morning and not knowing what the day will hold for you.

Therefore, one of the first habits that you should acquire in order to improve your photography, video or creative business during this 2020 is that of schedule your weekly work well in advance and for that Ideally, you work for goals or objectives.

At the end of each month or each quarter, you should take a small balance of your photography business and see if you are meeting the global objectives you have set for that year.

The best way to achieve these annual objectives little by little, is to break all these goals into small tasks or milestones and include them in your work calendar.

“Take advantage of the days when you don't have to do a photo shoot to spend time organizing your photography, video or creative business.”

Weekly schedule for optimize time

For this, the ideal is that at least once a week you plan the entire workload of the next business days:

• Organize your agenda and write down the time you will occupy the photo sessions each week. This way you will not miss an appointment or you will overlap several photographic reports.
• Reserve gaps in your agenda for editing work. Depending on the number of reports you have each week you can modify and adapt these hours in your calendar.
• It devotes every week some hours working to improve your business of photography, video or creative. Whether uploading photos or posts to your photography web page, improving the aesthetics and content of your website, training or looking for new customers through the Internet.
• Always leave gaps free for possible unforeseen events. Illnesses, delays with any session or even the arrival of new clients that appear suddenly.

At the beginning, you might think that these types of tasks are a waste of time and that you get along very well as before, pointing all the tasks in your yellow post-it. But when you make this activity a weekly habit and see for yourself how you optimize your time, we are sure that you will not be able to do without this productive habit.

"Starting each week with a clear idea of ​​all the work that lies ahead will give you much more peace of mind and will make values ​​every little achievement you get."

Because if you set small daily goals and you check day by day that you are fulfilling them, you will end the day with the feeling of having done a lot for your photography and video business.

Then we are going to leave you a very complete article of everything you have to take into account to set the most productive goals for your photography business for this 2020.

Delegate and automate work not related to photography

Within your work as a photographer, you know that there are certain tasks that you must perform and that they have nothing to do with your passion for photography. Some of these tasks are:

• Keep an eye on your photography business accounts, as for example: creating invoices, sending them to clients and the manager, closing each quarter, etc.
• Improve your marketing strategy looking for customers, advertising on the Internet, creating content in your photography blog, etc.
• Serve customers and providers by email and phone, send quotes, etc.

Many of these tasks can be delegated and others can be automate so that these works that have nothing to do with your vocation as a photographer occupy you as little time as possible.

Here we are going to leave you some ideas so that these works can be done more quickly and quickly:

• Automate emails that you send to your clients and those who are not yet and look for more information. You can also prepare a list of usual answers so you don't have to always be writing the same thing.
• Create templates of your budgets and contracts so you only have to modify the data of each client.
• Create a list of subscribers (by email, SMS or whatsapp) to send mass offers, news or announce new services.
• Includes all the information possible of your sessions on your photography website to minimize the time you spend answering emails or calls giving the same content.
• Program your Publications in Social Networks not to be aware every day of Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

If you still see that this type of task still takes you too long, today there are many professionals specialized in all these fields such as social media advertising, email marketing, copywriting, SEO or marketing strategies to which you can Delegate this type of tasks.

Avoid distractions and optimize your time working

Even if it seems incredible to the day you can waste a lot of time with tasks that can be secondary or that are not related to your photography, video or creative business.

How many times have you gotten into Social Networks for a work issue and have ended up watching videos that had nothing to do with the task you had set?

Read emails that are not important and distract you with the Social Media or the they are small habits that we have acquired automatically and that are making us be less productive in our workday.

• As you do when you are in a photo session, avoid distractions with your mobile phone when you do other tasks such as editing the photos or improving the contents of your photography web page. To do this, it is as simple as Disable notifications from Social Networks or email on your mobile.
• Do you know if your photography, video or creative website is receiving many visits? Today there are programs that analyze each step that a user takes on your website. You can also automate these queries to use the right time to analyze this data.
• Did you know that there are ways to prevent advertising emails from reaching your inbox? Besides not bothering you and taking up space, they will help you not to be distracted.
• Having the information of each client well organized will save you a lot of work time. You may create folders in your email and on your PC to organize the information of each client and the emails that he sends you. You can not imagine the amount of time you will save looking for your emails.

A trick that can also work for you is plan small spaces of time (for example, at the end of the day) to read the emails or take a look at your Social Networks and reserve the first hours of the day for the most important jobs or that require more concentration (such as editing the photos, searching for clients or improving the contents) from your photography, video or creative website).

Optimize your time and you will go far as a photographer

As you can see, working as a photographer is not just taking pictures. You could say that this is the beautiful face of this profession. But, as you know, if what you want is to dedicate yourself in a professional way to this vocation, you must dedicate time to other less pleasant but very important tasks.

If you know how to optimize your time and learn to delegate and automate certain tasks, you will get improve your photography business dedicating less time to those jobs that you are so lazy to do.

• Plan your work every week and forget about writing down the reports that you are booking on paper. As an idea you can use the application of Google Calendar which will allow you to consult your tasks and appointments from any mobile device, PC or Tablet.
• Automate tasks that are repeated over and over again such as sending emails, information from your reports, creating budgets, creating publications on Social Networks or articles on your photography blog. And if you see that you still need more time for your sessions, Delegate this type of work.
• Avoid distractions during the most productive hours of the day and follow the schedule you have set for each week.

Written by Laura Llorente in the Arcadina's blog