In 1983 Cyndi Lauper released her debut single, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun!” while Madonna’s “Holiday” was the first of her records to really make an impact on the Billboard charts. They dominated the airwaves. Rumours of fueds and mutual distaste behind the scenes raged but they both received equal amounts of success. Their catchy pop tracks and punk inspired looks influenced a generation of girls who crimped their hair and danced around their bedrooms with hairbrush microphones. Whether they liked it (or each other) or not both Cyndi and Madonna were changing the face of a generation.

In the 80s the girls looked quite similar…

Fast forward to 2012 and where are they now? In a nutshell, Madonna is still a global superstar…in fact the global superstar. She’s just written and directed her first feature film, W.E. She’s also about to release her 12th studio album, MDNA, this month and her mammoth world arena tour starts in July. Her appearance on The Graham Norton show (UK) in January drew in a remarkable 4.2 million viewers (over a million more than the show usually records) and her performance at the 2012 Superbowl was watched by an estimated 1 billion viewers across over 200 countries.

…But today they couldnt be more different

Forgive me but while Cyndi looks like the lovechild of Christina Aguilera and the 80s gone wrong Madonna is effervescent, modern and doesn’t look anywhere near her 53 years.

So what’s happened? Why has Madonna stood the test of time while Cyndi hasn’t? The universally accepted theory is that Madonna has moved with the times and has been the ever changing chameleon whereas poor Cyndi appears to be trying to cling onto that 80s glory. Cyndi hasn’t allowed herself to move on and so she’s been left behind.

This is an idea I think about often. I am acutely aware that although the pink haired mouthy blogger thing is rocking my world right now, it probably won’t last forever. Can I really be 50 and still doing things exactly the way I am now? Christ, I hope not! I want my business to naturally grow and progress.

So, how can we make ourselves and our business a little more like Madonna and a whole lot less like Cyndi Lauper?

Diversify your business & don’t put all your eggs in one basket

It is so important to never ever rest on your laurels or allow yourself to think that you’ve ‘made it’. This is a sure fire way to get left behind. You need to be always thinking about your next move and what you can do to improve and grow.

Taking wedding blogging as an example, it seems to me that advertising is currently the biggest way that bloggers make money. However will this last forever? Will people still want to be advertising on blogs in 5, 10, 20 years? They may do but they may not! We all know magazine advertising is falling out of favour, so it stands to reason that this may well happen with blogs someday too. If, as a blogger, I was only making money through the adverts on my site I’d be a little bit nervous.

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Photography Credit: Peachey Photography

I’m asked over and over again by wedding suppliers how they can target and book alternative wedding clients – i.e. the type of readers that my blog attracts. While saying ‘stick an advert on my site’ or ‘get featured on my blog’ might be easy answers, they’re not necessarily the right ones, and simply paying a monthly fee to have your logo in front of those alternative eyes isn’t enough. It’s a good start mind you, but this action alone isn’t going to see your inbox flooded with enquiries from my readers.

The best piece of advice I could give would be to ask you to question yourself and at every turn ask yourself why. Why do you want to attract these types of clients in the first place? What is it about these kinds of people and their weddings that you like. Be specific. Only when you know the answer to these questions can you take it to the next step – the how.

It’s also vital to keep up to date with what you ideal client is doing outside of their wedding. What magazines do they read? What TV shows do they watch? Where are they shopping? What activities are they doing? Only when you know these things and question why they are doing them can you offer a product they will instinctively want.

Another important idea to think about is the one of shifting your expectations. I’m going to be brutally honest here, if you’re a middle aged guy with a penchant for camera equipment and World of Warcraft, you’re probably not going to be attracting uber cool hipster types. And that’s great! Focus on a market that works for you – maybe graphic designers, photographers, geeks, gamers. Also, ask your past clients what it was, specifically, that they liked about you and build your brand around that. It’s easy being yourself and you’re probably doing something right without even thinking about it! Wedding photographer David McNeil noted the same thing and actually completely changed his branding ideas because of what his past clients told him.

“It’s important to listen to what it actually is those clients like about you, and what they perceive your strengths are,” he advices. “For a long time I thought my couples were booking me because of my edgy portraiture style.  However, when I actually listened to what images they liked, and read their feedback emails I realised that what they really liked was the informality, the laid back approach, and the natural moments of laughter I captured.  So I scrapped a radical re-design of my website that was black, neon and angular and went for a warm, rustic, natural feel instead.  My couples are now not expecting Mr Cool Dude, but Mr Chilled Out – and that’s what they see when they meet me  – it’s the real me and that’s so much easier to portray than a fake, polished version of myself!”

Photography Credit: David McNeil Photography (full wedding here)

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Photography Credit: David McNeil Photography

Whether or not to watermark or add a credit line to images published online is always a touchy subject because everyone seems to have a very strong opinion on the matter (as I’ve learnt when researching this article!) It is an issue I have wanted to address for some time and finally feel that, after various discussions with bloggers and photographers alike, I am finally in a position where I am comfortable to open up this debate.

To lay my own opinion out from the beginning – as a blogger, I prefer to see and feature non-watermarked images. However tastefully integrated the watermark or logo may be, my opinion boils down to the fact that the image was not originally conceived with it included, and that therefore the whole concept is compromised by the addition. My job as a wedding blogger is to share inspirational weddings with future brides and to help the photographers I feature get bookings from these brides. In order for me to do both these jobs, I want the images I share to look their best.

This opinion was echoed by all of the wedding bloggers I chatted to. “We feel that watermarks distract from the overall look and feel of an image,” agree The Wedding Chicks, one of the largest wedding blogs in the US. “When we put a featured wedding together, we want all of the images to flow and look cohesive without having the distraction of watermarks.” However this is most definitely not a straightforward cut and dried issue, especially when you get into discussions about ownership, copyright and proper image use online. We work in a visual medium, and whilst I respect and understand an artist’s right to protect their work and their copyright, I am of the opinion that fundamentally images with watermarks are less attractive. I am a publisher, an editor of my own online magazine, and just as a print magazine would not publish images with watermarks on, so I have rejected images where the watermarks distract from the overall impact of the image.

Unlike traditional print media however, an online publication has the problem that the images it publishes can be copied, edited or re-published with just a few clicks of a mouse. There are therefore a large number of photographers who only allow their images to be featured online with watermarks or credit lines on them, especially those who have had their work stolen or misused in the past.

Photography Credit: Stuart Stevenson

Photographer Stuart Stevenson posted some of his images from a trip to London on his Flickr a few years ago. His work was well received and he gained a lot of praise and encouragement from the website community. However one day he discovered that some of his images had been downloaded, printed as postcards and were being sold at a tourist market in the city. “Seeing the image for sale made me sick” he told me. “To me it was a completely different ball game to having a shot re-blogged on tumblr or on someone else’s blog. It also really scared me, because my images were clearly able to be copied at 1024 pixels, and some people thought this was good enough to make prints. Also my portrait work is generally of my kids and the thought of those pictures being used anywhere else made me act quickly by downsizing everything by half, killing off the ability of users to see large views, and slapping on a watermark that takes up roughly one fifth of the image on them.”

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