A Missed Opportunity in Case of Mistaken Identity - Britain's worst wedding photos

The papers today have been full of a story of "the worst wedding photos ever" by a photography company known as Westgate Photography run by Ian McCloskey. Despite the hype that the papers have put on it there are plenty of worse wedding photos when some of the ones shown could have been rescued with some basic editing. Thomas and Anneka Geary paid £750 for their wedding photos which probably gives some idea of the likely quality to expect. The type of story is nothing new and we covered something very similar in our blog about choosing your wedding photographer carefully back in 2010.

Hopefully not the worst wedding photography ever - from one of our weddings

Unfortunately another wedding photographer also trades under the name Westgate Photography and appear at number 1 in Google if you search for Westgate Photography. They appear to have realised the connection and placed a banner stating they are not linked.

However with this perfect opportunity to promote their wedding photography and the benefits of hiring a professional with the right kit, experience and insurance they seem to have totally missed the mark. The most recent post on their blog is 15 February 2012, blogs are so easy to update at very short notice there is no excuse not to react to the latest news if it could benefit your business. With social media and promotion the key is to move fast while the traffic is searching for the story. Wait even 24 or 48 hours and the story is old news and in newpaper terms will be wrapping someones fish & chips.

With the human canonball tragedy that happened a year ago this week the spike in traffic was amazing. Our YouTube channel had over 400,000 hits in just over 24 hours and our daily blog traffic increased 10 times overnight. With a story like the "the worst wedding photos ever" that has been so widely covered across both print media, online and social networks such as Facebook and Twitter the potential promotion loss to Westgate Photography has been huge.

So the moral of the story is - if you see the potential for a story - act fast and make the most of the aspects of the news to promote yourself even if the original aspect could have been negative.