Here in Italy wedding season is getting longer every year. A lot of couples choose the offseason to plan an engagement session in Milan, Venice or Lake Como so it is important to set some reachable goals and to have a plan to sharpen our tools and not to waste our precious time.

"A GOAL WITHOUT A PLAN IS JUST A WISH.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

First I identified some critics point in my business strategy and I made some strong decisions:

1. It is the right times to change my website I want something elegant and easy to use, I choose Flothemes, check it out there are a lot of discount during this season, but there are also some good WordPress ideas like Photography, Imagely, Tripod or if you want a complete platform for photographers you can choose Photoshelter.The idea is simple: get something that helps your pictures to stand out immediately you will not have a second chance to give a good impression to couples looking for a wedding photographer;
2. Check my SEO strategy and improve it here two exhaustive guides from our friends at Photoshelter and Flothemes;
3. Improve my English skills in writing, yes of course 90% of my clients are coming from abroad so it is clear to me that I must communicate in English and unfortunately I am not mother-tongue and I need some training I found a great book written by a master Stephen King. On writing English edition, On writing Italian edition;
4. Learn from peers: I always think about colleagues and friends as a great resource to sharpen my tools so I always take my time to make some phone calls to them to talk about our strategies and what we have learned from our mistakes and success... Yes, of course, we talk a lot about cameras and lenses but also about life, well being, clients, and products, photography and future projects. Big thanks to all of them;
5. Take time to shoot some project outside wedding photography: ok it's easy for me but shooting some portraits or assignments for magazines, NGO or commercial shooting for advertising make you think a little bit out of the box and to meet some amazing people that will give you a lot of good energy and ideas;
6. Train a little bit my body;
7. Sleep a lot;
8. Eat well;
9. Stay with my family;
10. Cuddle my cats;
11. Make everything works: ok as you can imagine I have really few free time and I must be really well organized. This book helped me a lot: Getting Things Done by David Allen.

Next time I will share some tips I used to be a better photographer, some little exercises...

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