August 6, 2020
This episode is for all the photographers and wedding vendors out there! Your mind is about to be BLOWN. If you’ve ever wondered how people get featured on big time wedding blogs, you’re about to get the step by step formula.
Today’s guest is the incredible Nicole Taliaferro, Junebug Weddings Executive Editor. Junebug Weddings is an online wedding publication that’s mission is to Empower couples around the world with the inspiration and resources to create a celebration worthy of their love. As one of the world’s most popular online wedding planning resources, Junebug Weddings is well-known for editorial excellence, showcasing phenomenal photography, and providing the most trusted list of recommended wedding professionals found anywhere in the world. Junebug Weddings is dedicated to helping couples plan the wedding they’ve always dreamed of.
Nicole is a resident enneagram expert and thrift store connoisseur. Nicole has fielded thousands of submissions in her five-and-a-half years with Junebug and has taught professionals from Portland to Poland how to craft a blog-worthy submission. She is passionate about empowering couples to celebrate their love authentically and is especially driven to increase representation in the wedding industry. Recently married in a colorful elopement in New Orleans, Nicole lives and writes in Austin, TX with her spouse Oodie, dog Franky, and cat Contessa.
This episode is jam-packed with the most helpful and tangible tips on how to get your work featured and the dos and don’ts of submitting your work!
Nicole breaks down why getting featured is so important, what types of submissions are annoying to receive as an editor, her preferred submission method, the types of photos editors look for when it comes to submissions, what to do when planning styled shoots, and the biggest mistakes she sees photographers making when it comes to this topic.
Nicole has been creating online content for close to 10 years now. What started as a small style blog back when Nicole was in college turned into getting a job as a writer at Junebug Weddings. She was quickly promoted to be the Executive Editor and she has held that role for about 5 years. Nicole has done everything from working with couples to help them tell their story in weddings to working with photographers and vendors to help them reach and connect with their couples.
Junebug Weddings is an online wedding resource for couples and vendors to be able to connect. Their mission is to empower couples with the tools and resources to create a celebration worthy of their love. Truly, every single thing they do as a small team of 5 women is to help a couple celebrate their love in a way that is authentic to them and connect vendors to couples.
They are not prescriptive in any way, they want to give you every possible option so that you can pick and choose what resonates with you. Weddings can look so many different ways! It should be unique to each couple.
Junebug takes a lot of pride in sharing the best photography possible because they believe that everyone deserves to have that. The photos are what lives on.
Junebug wants to put the very best work and ideas in front of couples. This is why being published is so important! The couples that are coming to Junebug while they are planning their wedding are looking for creative ideas and creatives who can carry out their vision.
Nicole is the perfect example of a Junebug bride! She got married this past December and it was so special because she got to use everything she learned over the past five years! She was feeling a bit of “ideal overload” so she hired her very favorite wedding vendors to put together the wedding for her. While she was instrumental in the planning, they actually didn’t know what a lot of it was going to look like until they showed up! They trusted their vendors and their skills.
Junebug educates couples how to find vendors that they can trust. You want to find creatives and artists who are at the top of their game and can carry out your vision for you. Couples who are planning weddings have probably not done it before, so no one is expecting them to be an expert. This is why you bring in the experts. This is what being published on Junebug is about. It shows off that you are the expert and shows what you can do at the top of your game and shows what you can do for couples. As a couple, you want your vendors to advocate for you.
Really think about what is important to the couples that you have worked with and what is important to the couples that you want to work with in the future. Build your submission with this mindset. Show them all of the things that they need to plan their wedding and show that you are the expert in not just creating beautiful photos but in all of the other things that weddings encompass. You are their expert and guide. You are going to advocate for them throughout the whole process. Anticipating the couple’s needs before they even need them is how you are going to get your work in front of readers and couples in the beginning of their planning process.
So many couples start their planning process on Pinterest. If your photos are popping up, you have so much power to get couples to carry out their day in a way that makes them excited as well as you excited to shoot it.
Junebug is looking for all of these exciting details that are helping couples through their planning process that happen to be taken by you through your artistic eye. They want to see the bridesmaid dresses in a vertical photo because that is what is going to do best on Pinterest. A bride may be looking for inspiration for what to put on a table. Put these things forward because couples are searching for those details before they are ever searching for their vendors.
Capture details like you are a product photographer. Think about it like you are shooting an Anthropologie catalog! You are the one who is capturing those types of images. No matter how small the detail is, it might be the exact thing that resonates with the person who is doing the searching. If they click on your photo it will eventually lead them to you.
Pinterest can be the entry point to your work. It’s a search engine. People are clicking through those Pinterstes images and will see how you tell the story. It all started with the way that you captured a candle on the table.
This is hugely important! Send the photos in chronological order. Nicole receives so many weddings that she can’t figure out what the story of the wedding was because they were submitted in a random order.
Next, make sure that you are sending the right amount of photos. Junebug asks for 100-150, but this can vary for other blogs. Junebug is looking for everything they will be in the post, what will do well on Pinterest, and what they are going to post on Instagram and Facebook. They have to know if it will not only be a good fit for their blog but that it will perform well.
There are so many variables that go into a submission and such a small fraction of that has to do with the photographer’s ability. Don’t let that get you down if you have had a feature declined. It probably has nothing to do with you!
If someone sends photos in that are the wrong size, they have a button that they can use to send back and let them know it was sent in the wrong size.
Another hugely important thing is to send vertical photos! A lot of documentary-style photographers love to shoot in only landscape and don’t want to turn their camera. Vertical photos take up more real estate on a phone or on a computer and this is what gets posted on Instagram and Pinterest. Horizontal photos just don’t get clicked on! Think about how couples are actually engaging with your work. It’s not on your website where the photos are 1000px wide, it is on a tiny screen. Vertical photos are super important! Submissions will be turned down if there aren’t enough vertical photos. The subject should take up at least ⅔ of the photo!
Part of the reason Junebug asks for 100-150 photos is because they like to see options. They want to see the ceremony space with no people, with the people, and with the first kiss. They love to have a ton of different options to create collages that do great on Pinterest.
For photos on Instagram, it is great if there is some humanity in the decor. For example, seeing the couple cut the cake or sitting at their sweetheart table or even standing in front of their ceremony backdrop. This allows people who are viewing it to picture themselves in the photo.
When it comes to the couple photos (which most photographers are passionate about) make sure to give it to them WITH the decor.
If you send too many photos it can be hard for them to pick out what the heartbeat of the story was! Nicole recommends leaving out photos of guests dancing at the reception, the house where the girls got ready, family photos, or other things that aren’t relevant.
These are your marketing materials. You are the photographer so you don’t have to hire someone to shoot your work. You’ve got to think about a lot of things on a wedding day. You have to think about the photos you want to deliver to your couple as well as the photos that are going to help you book your next couple.
This box is only there to explain anything that isn’t understood just by looking at the photos.
For example, you can explain that it was a cultural wedding which is why the bride changed clothes, or if the wedding was at night to explain why the photos are so dark.
Nicole only looks at that box if there is something she doesn’t understand about the photos.
The chronological one is a big one!!
Sometimes it comes down to what platform you are using to submit the photos. Dropbox is really hard to figure out because the photos are so small and all square.
Pic-Time and Pixiset are great!
Don’t forget to give a full photo of the groom. Don’t just send a photo of the dress hanging up. Make sure to send a photo of the bride in the dress.
If you shoot a wedding that doesn’t have a ton of details, extra load the details that were in there. Beef up the fact that there wasn’t a lot of them rather than saying that the wedding didn’t have any details.
A styled shoot isn’t just taking the couple to a location with a bouquet and grabbing a few photos. That is not a styled shoot in Nicole’s opinion. That does not help a couple plan their wedding in any way because there isn’t anything there to be inspired by. The photos may be beautiful, but it isn’t useful.
The reason Junebug features true styled shoots is because that is where they see a lot of the new trends. Weddings happen so far out and trends can take years to run through.
Styled shoots really need to be focused on a theme or style that you want a couple to take away and put in their own wedding.
One idea is to plan a whole styled shoot around a really unique rental! People don’t know what they want until they see it.
Use a real couple and try to stay away from models. Get those real emotions out there and use the moment to start a new trend. You are the trendsetters! Empower the local vendors who you love!
Use a styled shoot as an opportunity to show something that is not being done right now, that you are excited about, and that you want a couple to call you to recreate what you did.
When you submit it, submit it like you would a wedding day! Take photos of them “exchanging vows” or at their sweetheart table. Take the same photos that would mimic a wedding day.
Junebug has such a wider audience. They are a huge wedding resource and people come to them with a specific intent in mind. They also have domain authority. When they publish a post, it is going to rank better just because Google already knows who they are and what they do.
Getting published allows your work to reach so many more people.
You don’t have to be a huge account on Pinterest to get seen, but Junebug does have a big following. People are going to get their content in their feeds!
Junebug exists because people give them their best work.
It’s not personal.
Everyone is carrying their own context. The reason why someone does something very often has nothing to do with you. Whether it is a couple not booking or a publication not accepting your submission, it doesn’t have anything to do with your value as a person and a professional. There are so many things at play. Don’t let it get you down if you are receiving a rejection. Abundance is coming from you. You are going to get that win one day. There are wins coming your way. They keep coming as long as you don’t get down on yourself and you know that you still have value.
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WASSUP FRIENDS. We’re Evie + Lindsey, co-founders of this wild partayyy called The Heart University. Our goal is to empower entrepreneurs to kick freaking BUTT in their businesses, dive down into the heart of their why and how, and serve you with all possible tools you’ll need to up-level your business game and CRUSH those goals of yours.
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