For the creative small business owner running a photography service, success often means a full calendar. Imagine your Google Calendar filled with weddings, engagement photo shoots, and senior portraits — all those colorful appointment blocks good news for your business and revenue.
But that success may necessitate an extra layer of organization, a workflow management system to handle important details, such as emails, contracts, and lead generation.
Over the next few minutes, we’ll take a look at some of the most important business and personal benefits of strong workflow management for photographers. We’ll also provide a hypothetical example so you can see how workflows streamline task management, and you’ll get a peek into how monday.com can support photography workflows with easy-to-use tools, including customizable templates.
Let’s start by answering the elephant in the room.
What are the benefits of having a workflow as a photographer?
Whether you’re just getting started as a wedding photographer or you’re an established photographer, the right workflow can make a difference in your daily work and personal life.
Professional photographers don’t wing it when it comes to their business because they know they can save time and enhance customer satisfaction when they use tools—such as client management software—to organize and manage the details.
Workflow management can ensure gorgeous pictures and happy clients by streamlining processes from the first point of contact to the delivery of the final portfolios.
Let’s explore a few benefits of great photography workflows for you and your business.
Supports efficiency and productivity
Creating a workflow forces you to think about all the tasks required to run your business and provide great work for clients. From online booking to photo delivery, routine tasks, such as digital asset management, plays a role.
With an effective workflow, you streamline and tie together every task required for success, integrating them to create more efficiency.The results of good workflow management can include:
- Time savings: Great workflow ensures each task informs or flows right into the next bit of work, saving time on manual administration or chasing down details. When a workflow is working the way it should, task details are all within the workflow, easily accessible by all involved, instead of scattered across multiple locations.
- Cost savings: As a creative, your time is one of your most valuable resources, so time savings can equal cost savings. Smart workflows also automate routine tasks to reduce potential errors that might cost money. For example, workflow tools that let you automatically send invoices or collect online payments reduce the chance of missing a line item, or forgetting to send an invoice after a whirlwind weekend of shooting weddings.
- Happier clients: The best workflows keep client needs and communication in mind and include options to automate emails or streamline it with email templates that help you keep clients updated on the entire process. Happier clients can lead to benefits like better reviews and word-of-mouth — which are great for photography-based businesses looking to grow.
- Better time management: All of these benefits can lead to better time management, which is good for you, as well as your business. When you reduce the time it takes to manage the day-to-day minutia of your business, you have more time for the creative aspect you love.
Helps you create better images consistently
Good workflow offers those administrative benefits for almost any business, but for photographers in particular, it can change the game for your product. When you approach your work following a tried-and-true method, you more consistently deliver great results — in this case, photographs that capture the moment perfectly.
When you use the right workflow tools, you can:
- Build roadmaps for success for each type of photography
- Keep track of specific settings and equipment you use to create certain effects, so you can re-create success in the future
- Keep an inventory of props, hair stylists, and designers to complete the artistic vision
Ensures you complete important business tasks
It’s easy to get caught up in the magic of your clients’ moments. Spending the weekend capturing memories at an exotic location or falling into the joy of a newborn baby session can be exciting — so much so that photographers might forget to return to the daily management of their business right away.
A good workflow lays the breadcrumbs that lead you out of that creation and back to necessary business tasks, such as charging the client’s credit card and paying business bills.
If you build a good workflow and use the right workflow management tools, you won’t even mind that journey, and you’ll be able to find joy in being productive across your entire business.
Let’s lay out what this could look like.
Example of a photographer workflow
Photographers might use technical tools, such as Sprout Studio, to manage customer relationships or QuickBooks to manage finances and invoices. Workflow can tie disparate systems and tasks together to create a cohesive system that ensures complete work, happy clients, and on-time payment.
Here’s an example of what a photographer workflow for senior portraits might look like:
- Lead generation: Your workflow starts before you have a client. Generate leads with online galleries that demonstrate your work, blog posts and content that help your photography site show up in the search engine results, social media content, and other marketing and advertising.
- Appointment setting via contact forms: Include options for setting appointments or requesting information on your website so potential clients can take action anytime to move forward with your photography services.
- Pregame tasks: Once customers set appointments, ensure you handle any tasks required to support success. That might include getting full payment or a deposit upfront, setting up a location for the shoot, and finding out more about the preferences and goals of the client, so you can bring the right equipment, props, and supplies.
- Photography session: Hold the session and take the pictures. Make sure to get signatures on any contracts and iron out payment details and other important matters before you pick up the camera.
- Follow up with details: Send a follow-up email thanking the client for choosing your photography services and reiterating details about editing and delivery of photographs.
- Photo editing: Complete editing of photos so the client receives what they wanted.
- Delivery of photos: Deliver photos as agreed. This is a great time to ask for feedback, reviews, or referrals to drive more business.
Whatever your workflow looks like, having a single point of truth and technology to manage it can help you stay focused. On monday.com, you can bring all of these elements together and create a smooth work process for client-facing projects from beginning to end.
How monday.com supports workflow management for photographers
Whether you’re an individual running a freelance photography business or a team of photographers working together to capture large events, monday.com’s customized workflow options can help you manage clients, photos and edits, invoicing, and other business processes.
Our Digital Asset Management (DAM) solutions make it easy to collaborate on files in one location. Work with images, leave comments for others, and enjoy streamlined version control that ensures the client gets the right files every time.
Build a customized board to manage all your photography projects, or create boards for specific types of projects. Add columns for updates on workflow and automatically employ time tracking to ensure your rates help you generate a profit and pay for the time you put into photos.
View your workflow in a way that makes sense for you and your team. Options include spreadsheet-like boards with color-coding and automations, Kanban boards for visual task management, and Gantt charts that help you ensure work is done on time.
You can also leverage templates on monday.com to get started quickly with whatever workflow you want to manage.
monday.com templates for photographers
Start with one of the hundreds of templates in our Template Center. We’ve selected two that might be helpful for photographers:
- Client Management Template: Track all your clients’ details and what work you’ve done for them with this template.
- Facebook Post Template: Quickly generate posts to market your photography services on Facebook when you start with this template.
Want more info on workflow details for photographers? Scan the FAQs below for some answers to common questions on the topic.
FAQs relevant to photographer workflows
How do photographers keep track of clients?
Photographers keep track of clients in a number of ways, including:
- Hardcopy methods, such as notebooks, ledgers, and filing systems
- Simple digital methods, such as spreadsheets and Google docs
- By using tools, such as CRM solutions
How do you create a photography portfolio?
To create a photography portfolio, follow the steps below:
- Shoot a variety of subjects and images that match the theme or purpose for your portfolio
- Gather digital copies of your best work
- Arrange those images on a web page or in a gallery by type
- Consider adding tags and categories, so viewers can search through your portfolio easily
- Don’t forget to add a contact option, so potential clients can reach out
What is a CRM for photographers?
A CRM, or customer relationship management, solution is software that automates the capture and storage of contact information and other data related to client relationships. Photographers might use a CRM to capture client names, phone numbers, email addresses, and addresses and track the status of work ordered or done for a client. Most CRMs also support tracking leads, which are potential clients who might be interested in photography services. For an all-in-one solution to run your business, build a customizable software that includes both a CRM and workflow management strategy with monday sales CRM.
Increase success for your photography business with great workflow management
You know that the right tools, such as high-quality cameras and the ideal lenses, make a huge difference in the photographs you take. The same is true for your business. The right tools for your workflow can increase client satisfaction, save you time and money, and help you drive increased revenues.
monday.com has everything you need to create great workflows that power your photography business. Check out monday.com for workflow management for photographers, today.
Get started