7 Hot Posts on My Blog this Month, and Why They Were Successful

I always find it fascinating to look at which posts go viral (or at least, which get shared the most) on my blogs. It isn’t always the ones that you expect!

Here are a few of the recent posts on my dPS blog that have done better than others over the last month, along with some reflections on why I think they were successful.

1. How to photograph babies: 9 tutorials

I’ll be honest: this post was one of those “panic posts” that I do on occasion. A post that I had lined up ready to go from one of our authors didn’t come in on time and I just had to publish something. So on the spur of the moment I decided to write this sneeze page (more on sneeze pages here).

While I knew it was a good topic, as we do get a lot of questions on it, I didn’t expect a lot from the post. Today it ended up on one of Google’s Cool Links lists and is getting heaps of traffic.

2. Posing guides

We published this series over the last few weeks. It contains posing guides for different portrait subjects:

• Females: http://digital-photography-school.com/21-sample-poses-photographing-female-models
• Males: http://digital-photography-school.com/21-sample-poses-to-get-you-started-with-photographing-men
• Children: http://digital-photography-school.com/posing-guide-21-sample-poses-to-get-you-started-with-photographing-children
• Couples: http://digital-photography-school.com/posing-guide-21-sample-poses-to-get-you-started-with-photographing-couples

The first post went crazy, so we commissioned the next three (and hopefully a couple more). The key I think is that they’re list posts, they’re visually rich with lots of illustrations, and they’re useful—many of our readers said they’ve printed them or are saving them for shoots that they’re planning.

3. Are you practicing these 5 natural light tips?

After our posing guides, this post has been our most popular this month. Why did it work?

Again, the post is visual (but then all dPS posts are visual—it’s what we do!). I think this one worked partly because of the title (I find question titles perform well, and this question makes people curious to see if they are doing what the article suggests), but also because it was on the theme of natural light that we’ve been exploring throughout the month, as part of the launch of our new Natural Light ebook.

While not a series of posts, this one is on a topic we’ve already sparked interest in through previous posts.

Another post in this series that did well was 5 tips for controlling natural light.

4. 31 [+10] Cool photography tutorials, tips, videos, hacks and how to’s from around the web

This post is a wrap-up of some of the best links from other photography blogs from around the web over the last month or so. These posts tend to perform well for us partly because the the links are genuinely good, partly because a few of the sites we link to then share the post in their networks, and partly because they’re list posts.

We also include ten of our own links in the post to drive internal traffic (another quasi-sneeze page).

5. Portrait tip: don’t fill the frame

This post was a quick one that I wrote that I think did particularly well because it is actually the opposite of the advice that most people are given.

Most people hear advice to fill the frame with their subjects, but in this post I take the opposite view and talk about the beauty of shots where you place your subject in the context of a larger scene.

It was also visual (I probably spent more time looking for example shots than writing the post itself), and it tapped into a problem that I think a lot of amateur photographers have—the comments on this post show how many people fall into the trap of zooming in too much.

6. Is camera lust destroying your photography?

This post went crazy. Perhaps it was having the word ‘lust’ in the title (a little provocative), or perhaps it was I took a slightly humorous spin in the intro.

Actually, it was probably more to do with the topic itself, which I know aways sparks debate and discussion. People love to debate how much gear plays a part in photography, and as you can see in the comments on this one, this post was no exception.

The post also tapped into a personal issue for many photographers and came from my own personal experience, too.

7. 7 Secrets every street photographer should know

This post again has a title that just begs to be clicked. The “secrets” and tips that “everyone should know” intrigue readers and grow their curiosity.

The post itself is well written and helpful. It’s also on on a topic that is pretty hot right now—street photography seems to be having something of a resurgence, and is really sparking interest at the moment.

Shtuff people say to photographers also got a guernsey. This one is all about humor—we had tens of thousands of visits to it. Make people laugh and they’ll pass the post on to others.

What were your hot posts over the last month, and why do you think they were successful? Share them with us in the comments.