In December 2010, my family packed up our house and drove for 8 days with a toddler and 3 cats, from Portland, Oregon to the DC suburbs in Northern Virginia. At the time, I was a wedding photographer. We had less than 3 weeks notice before our move (due to a job offer my husband received) so I didn’t have time to market my business in advance in our new area.

Before our move, I ran my business in a bit of a bubble and got all clients from my website, using social media and SEO. As a website designer, I’m of course a big promoter in having an online presence that gets you clients.

Earlier this week, I wrote a post about using your website to establish yourself among your colleagues so that you have a community around you to work within, both for referrals and support.

Moving my business from Oregon to DC is what taught me about the importance of networking.

We arrived and settled into an apartment, filled with too much stuff and not knowing anyone. My husband had to report to work the morning after we arrived. I spent my days exploring with our daughter and my nights trying to figure out how to relaunch my photography business.

I started blogging about our new area. On a whim, I created a blog post about wanting to meet other photographers in the area. I reached out to a couple of photographers and shared the post. Before I knew it, I had 10+ responses of others that wanted to network.

We planned our first get together at a restaurant in Maryland. Only 4 of us showed up, but I made some valuable connections. In fact one of the photographers I met that day, I became friends with, and eventually asked to work on a freelance basis for me, when I launched Jessie Mary & Co.

Within a few weeks, we had formed a Facebook group and had a much larger meetup. Before long, we had built a community, and what I didn’t expect, was that I got a ton of work from these connections. Many of them hired me as a second photographer for weddings that were coming up soon, and then started sending me referrals when they were already booked. Quite a few people from this group became good friends, and valuable colleagues, even 13 years later.

Having a good website is what let these people trust me.

I believe that having a website that showed what I did, my experience, and looked professional, is why the photographers I approached were willing to talk to me. If my online presence was sloppy, I don’t expect I would have been treated seriously and given time. It also gave them the confidence to send referrals my way, and ask me to work with them.

It’s about balance.

Marketing your business with your website through SEO, social channels, and networking, all ties in. My website has pretty good rankings on Google, and while my social audience is small, it’s loyal, creating a good amount of inquiries. However, over half of my business comes from repeat clients and referrals from peers.

While you want to design your website for your clients, definitely consider that you should be using it for networking and developing peer relationships as well. Not only will those peers send you clients, but they are also who is there when you need a trusted professional to refer to, to pick their brain about an idea, or even just hang out together for an online coffee while swapping business stories.