How to Break the Vicious Visibility Cycle in Your Creative Business with Maddie Peschong

Colie: Hello, hello and welcome back to Business First Creatives podcast Y’all. Maddie is back. Say hello, Maddie.

Maddie: She’s back. Am I the most frequent guest that you’ve had?

Colie: not even a

Maddie: me I am.

Colie: I mean, we could totally make that happen. I’m pretty sure that when you came last time I was like, we’ll just count the day. Oh my God. I just saw your, Hey, cheers.

Sorry guys. If you’re not watching, we are, you know, looking at our awas together. Okay. So I’m pretty sure the last time that you came on I was like, we need to just make this a regular thing and like every quarter let’s just do it. Um, I’m fairly certain that the biggest visitor to this podcast has to be Sabrina. But

you know what? Now I’m

Maddie: I’ll let her have it. Sabrina, you can have it.

Colie: on her podcast

more like that’s a given because we do our business Bestie

Chats, although we are bringing the business, the business Bestie Chats to this podcast as well.

So now they are going

to air on both of them

so

Maddie: that’s so cool. I love it. Yes, I love the business. Best use chats. I know. They’re the best. They’re the

Colie: See we need a business Besty

chat. Okay guys, I’m marking it down, but Maddie is here to talk about something that I personally hate and so maybe she’s on here today as like my personal, like, you are welcome guys.

It’s gonna be like a personal coaching session and you just get to listen in.

So today we’re gonna talk about visibility and all of you know that I have really struggled with visibility. I don’t mind showing up. I just don’t feel like it. And so we are gonna be talking about like the vicious nature of visibility and what happens when you lose visibility inside of your business, even if it’s temporarily.

So

Maddie, where would you like to start this conversation?

Maddie: Oh.

Colie: don’t wanna just talk about me ’cause you know.

Maddie: Yes, well, I tend to work, so I work with, uh, photographers who specifically want to shoot brand photography, want to market brand photography, and I would say the majority of my clients tend to fall into two camps when it comes to social media. We’ve got the first camp. Of they have not posted in six weeks.

Like you look at their Instagram and you’re like, baby, where, where are you at? Like, what’s going on? And those people and like, I’m lovingly calling you out. Love to come to me and tell me, not you, specifically the collective.

Colie: That’s okay. You can lump me in with them. Maddie. I’m good with that. That’s the whole purpose of this episode.

Maddie: Those people love to come to me and say, Maddie, I’m just not booking. I’m doing everything that you told me to do besides posting to social media, and I’m just not booking. And

Colie: Besides posting the social

Maddie: Literally, they’re like, I’ve done, I, my pricing is great. My website looks so good. I’ve done everything. And so I go look at their social media and I say, it looks like you’re not home.

So that is a problem. Those people have a visibility issue. Okay. And then the other side of the coin are the people who are showing up consistently. They’re, they’re, they’re putting posts out. Maybe they’re doing, you know, three, five posts a week. Like that’s all good. And it’s still not converting those peeps.

Tend to have more of like a content strategy issue. We can talk about that on this episode. But today I really wanna focus on the visibility piece because the majority of my folks definitely tend to fall in that camp. And the irony of that, especially as brand photographers, is that what we are selling to our clients is visibility.

We’re saying it’s important for you to get in front of the camera. It’s important for you to put yourself out there, but not me though. You do that. You should do that, but I’m gonna stay behind the camera. And whether they realize it or not, there is a disconnect and clients are picking up on that and they’re not going to hire you.

Not to mention the fact that they probably like don’t know you’re out there. They don’t know that you exist because you are literally not visible.

Colie: Yes. I mean, that would be like somebody coming to me with systems and I’m like, oh, but wait, let me manually send you this email. Oh

wait, let me send you this invoice in PayPal. Who the hell would hire me to do systems if I was doing that

Maddie: It is so funny that you say that. ’cause just, um, the other day I was like, oh, I really need somebody. You and I were kinda talk about talking about this. I really need somebody to help me with like some tech backend stuff in my business that like just needs to be cleaned up. And, I found someone and she was sending me onboarding stuff and it’s all, it is all automated and there’s a, there’s a form and there’s like.

Here, like, here’s how I can access your passwords. And, and I was so impressed and I had that thought of like, well, yeah, she better have this figured out that I.

Colie: I mean, absolutely. And I think where I struggle with the visibility is that I am a very visible person. I am all over my website. I am all over threats. I am all over my podcast twice a week, y’all, if you wanna hear me. There is no shortage of how you can cur currently find me, except on Instagram, like my Instagram feed.

Betty, I don’t think you know this, but I went on there and cleaned it out 13 years, like gone.

It’s only got like 20 posts on there right now, but like if you went there you’d be like, oh no one’s home. Okay. Yeah, it’s ’cause I’m over on threats. Like, hi,

come find me on

Maddie: I actually think that that is a really good point. Yes, visibility is important, but it is perfectly fine for you to identify the platforms where you want to like rock it out and just focus on those. So if Threads is more the platform where you’re going to be consistently visible or your podcast or whatever, I would argue, like if you were just telling me I’m visible on my podcast, I would say, well pick a social media app.

Like pick a high volume type of app. Like we should be doing that. But you’re doing that with threads, and so if Instagram is not the main thing, that’s totally fine. What I tend to see is more in the like, no social media whatsoever, no threads, no TikTok, no Instagram, no Facebook, like none of it. And what really.

I think photographers, um, kind of fall victim to is what I call the vicious visibility cycle. And so they will go through this cycle of, okay, I’m gonna get my shit together and I’m gonna post and it’s gonna be great. And they do that for maybe a month, a month and a half. And especially if they haven’t been doing that for a while, it’s not uncommon for them to book clients pretty quickly after they start doing that.

It doesn’t always happen. But if you’ve got people who are like really close. To needing you. Right? They’re almost there. They probably only need to see a couple of posts to be reminded and to book. And so they get that like dopamine hit right away of like, oh my gosh, it worked. This is great. Well, then they get those clients in their business, and especially if they don’t have the lovely systems that you tell them that they should have, they’re overwhelmed with managing all of these clients.

And so then a few weeks go by and they’re like, I’m so busy. I can’t market. Like I don’t have time for marketing. Because there’s a bit of a lag time that happens with when you stop posting to when you stop getting inquiries. They don’t put it together right away, but it is a direct result of you saying, I’m too busy for social media, I’m too busy to market.

And you get a couple months down the road and you’re like, where did all my inquiries go? And this happens all the time.

Colie: I feel like we don’t talk about that enough though. ’cause you called it the lag effect and there are many people that talk about it in that way. But like when I’m on my podcast and I’m talking to Sabrina on hers, we always talk about it as like the 90 day effect. That’s

Maddie: Yes,

Colie: who you market to today is who’s going to hire you in 90

days.

So of course if you’ve not been on your social media for 90 days, there is no one knocking at your door because you haven’t been talking to anybody. And I do feel like even when you were saying that. You were saying you need to be on social media. I feel like the other part of the conversation that people don’t get, that they don’t connect, if you will, is that it isn’t just because it’s social media. It’s because we are constantly needing to bring in and grow our audience. Now,

if you are someone who is going to network events in your area multiple times a week, all month long, guess what you are doing that You’re just doing it in person. But if you are someone who is. Honestly doing, you know, online marketing and you are not doing in-person marketing, you have to have a way to connect with new people.

And so it’s like pick your poison, pick your lane, like

whatever you’re gonna do, you gotta stick to it. But you just sitting still and being like, I’m here only because your website is active. Yeah. I mean I love that for you, but Google is slow grow. It is not that

someone is gonna Google and land on your website and be like, oh yeah, this is great.

Let me hire her. Yes, that happened. No, that is not normal.

Maddie: And I think that when you get people who are experiencing like almost that feeling of having more business than they know what to do with, that’s only possible when all three of those things that you just mentioned are true. They’re active on social media. Their website ranks for SEO. They’re doing in-person stuff, like it’s not really one or the other.

Yes, you can have seasons where you focus on one or the other and like certainly there are seasons where I’m doing more networking or I’m doing less networking or whatever it might be, but it’s when all three of those things are working together that you start to get that effect in your business. That just feels like, wow, I always have this steady stream of clients, and that’s not by accident.

It also doesn’t come from just. Just relying on referrals, which I think a lot of photographers, especially in the more beginning of their business do, and then when they kind of burn through all those referrals and they like, those referrals aren’t quite ready for another session yet or whatever it might be, they’re like, oh no, what’s going on?

Well, you need to market like this is part of being a business owner. You need to market your business. That’s part of your job.

Colie: But, and I, I think that part of it is that we all, you know, we, we start these businesses and nobody told you you should be allotting this many hours a week for your

Maddie: That’s so true. Yeah.

Colie: The truth is there is no specific amount of time that you have to market every week, but you have to market every

week. And it.

can’t be that you go a whole month and no one has seen your face and no one knows who you are.

Because that happened to me. And guys, I know all of these things, if you were in my world in July, you know that Maddie and I did a webinar, you know that I was active on like all the social medias because I was doing the sales parade with seals Lockley, and what happened? After I finished with Maddie. Now it was purposeful though guys. It was my birthday sabbatical, but wow, that is shitty timing. Considering I was visible every day, four to five times a day for an

entire month, and then almost for two and a half weeks I dropped off. Now I did it because that is my suburb sabbatical.

That is my birthday trip. I wasn’t gonna be online, but then when I came back it’s like, oh wow, it’s been like 21 days since you did all the things. And guess what guys? My August revenue. Was way lower than my July revenue ’cause I wasn’t visible. But also because I was doing all of the fulfillment for all of the things that I booked in July.

And so what we have to be conscious of is making sure that whatever amount of time you are designating for your marketing is on your calendar and you treat it like it is gold. You do not give it up for anything. If we were talking about Sabrina, we would talk about that pink sharpie, like it needs to be on your calendar and you need to not give it up for any reason.

Now, in the beginning. If Maddie is not telling you, you need 10 hours worth of marketing week. In fact, you

know what, Maddie, let me not speak for you. How long, how often should people be marketing in a given week?

Maddie: So should people be marketing or should people be like planning their marketing?

Colie: mean both I’m,

what I’m getting at is I think people think, oh, I need like 10 hours of marketing a week,

and you don’t, so what’s the bare minimum that someone should be dedicating to the actual marketing? I guess not the planning, ’cause you already need to have planned,

but like how much time should you spend, do the actual marketing in a week?

Maddie: I feel like I’m typically about two or three hours.

Colie: See, sounds

Maddie: think it’s two or three hours. I do marketing Monday and so I sit down Monday is blocked on my calendar. Like it, you cannot touch Monday. And so what I like, the actions that I’m taking on Monday are a little different every week depending on what needs to get done, but I know that like that’s when I’m doing.

Podcast ideation. I know that’s maybe when I’m recording podcast episodes, I know that’s when I am writing emails or scheduling social media content like that’s happening in those two to three hours. And to your point, like you probably already have like going into that Monday. I have some sort of an overarching strategy, like I know what I’m kind of pointing people toward because that’s something that I do more when I’m looking at like the year or the quarter or the, you know, that sort of thing.

Um, but that’s like kind of my execution based time, and it’s about two to three hours a week. It’s not terrible.

Colie: And I will say, so Maddie just said something and I wanna make sure that photographers, especially branding photographers, ’cause you know you guys have this one thing that you’re doing, like you are promoting and you are. Photographing these, you know, brands so that they can get their businesses out there.

But like you don’t have the same problems that Maddie and I do, which is we have different programs, we have different offers, and yes, we do need to think about which one we are marketing in any given season, any given month. But for you, it’s basically gonna be your sessions. So,

Maddie: Okay, cool. Eight. This is such a good point actually, and I want to, I want to like focus on this for a second because I actually think that because most photographers have one service that they’re promoting and one ideal client that they’re promoting it to, I actually think that that creates a problem for them.

It. It’s not a real problem. I think it’s something, I think it is something that we kind of make up because we get bored and that is one of the things that I see so often the mistake photographers make with marketing is they think that they need to reinvent the wheel and they’re like, well, I can’t say this because I said this last week, and I want to like take their cute little faces and be like, that’s the point.

Like that you have to say it again. Like that’s branding. That is marketing is continuing to say the same thing over and over again. And so that’s actually a really like, uh, inter, like that’s an interesting thing that you said because I’ve gotten that feedback from clients before where they’re like, well, but like the call to action is always to book a session.

And maybe they’re not saying that at the end of every post, but that’s the goal. And I’m like. Right, exactly. So all you’re ever doing is talking about like why book a session and what are the objections to booking a session? And like those types of, that’s all you’re doing, that’s all your marketing is.

So you can rinse and repeat until the cows come home. Like please do. That would be great.

Colie: But even if your CTA is always book a session, which I would argue that is not actually always your CTA,

Do you just let people book off of your website without any kind of conversation? Probably not. So you’ve got book a session. You’ve got book a call,

you’ve got whatever your freebie is. If you are telling people, you know, these are the 10 must have photos from every brand session.

This is how you plan your wardrobe for your brand session. All of you guys should have this information out there in a blog post or in some kind of freebie. And so even if you only have one service and you are marketing the one service, the CTA is not always book a session.

And if you are just saying, book a session every single time. That is why you are bored, because literally you are saying the exact three words every single time.

Uh, change it up.

Maddie: Yep. Yeah, such a good point. The, I love that what you said about the freebie. One of the things that I, teach a lot of my brand photographers is to get, like, get people onto an email list. And I actually tell them like, you don’t need a freebie to be able to do that. Like, tell them you’re gonna send out a weekly.

I don’t, I don’t love the term newsletter, but like a weekly newsletter with brand building tips, like these people are interested in building their personal brand. You are literally an expert at that. Send them a weekly email with stuff that feels so easy to you, but is gonna be really helpful for them and get them on your email list that way.

So there’s one piece of content every single week, every single week.

Colie: To share and guess what, um, she’s telling you to grow your email list. That means that you need to actually have a way to send the emails. That means that you actually need to have an opt-in form. On your website, perhaps link it on your Instagram, to let people raise their hand for these fabulous emails that you are gonna send out.

And guys, it is not rocket science. I know that now we are moving into like email marketing and I feel like half the audience just literally closed their ears

Maddie: They’re

Colie: Don’t do that. I mean, you can get on Maddie’s List. I love Maddie’s emails. Okay. I read them.

I mean, I’m not even somebody who would join, rebrand.

Do you know what I’m saying? Like read emails. Emails are interesting. It is not just sell, sell, sell. Sometimes you are putting your own personal brand out there. You are putting tips. I mean, that could be a whole nother episode. Guess what guys? That’s what we’re gonna talk about when Maddie comes back next time.

Maddie: Yay. We can talk about content. This, it’s like, do you wanna hear what we’re gonna talk about next time? The, like content repurposing, right? Because like so often it’s taking, , like you mentioned a blog post or a podcast episode or a like how to prep for your brand session, like taking that type of content and kind of piecing it apart into.

Two emails that you can send and four posts that you can post. Like this doesn’t have to be hot, new, fresh content all the time. It’s probably a bunch of content that already exists on your website and just looking at it in different ways. And also because you are building a personal brand, whether you’re a personal brand photographer or not, infusing some of your own storytelling into it.

So not just talking about how booking a session makes you feel more confident ’cause you get these photos back and it that you look like. So great in them, but telling a story about how it took you a really long time to book your first personal brand session because you weren’t feeling confident and you were really nervous and like create that empathy with your people.

So you can see just by this conversation how like there are so many different things that we can talk about online, which is all content is in new ways simply by like infusing our perspective and stories that we’ve experienced and all of those things.

Colie: I mean, and you can really go beyond your personal stories and your client stories as well, and it doesn’t even have to be related to your business. I think one of my most opened emails recently and actually most clicked was the one where I talked about planning my 25th anniversary trip, uh, for a Disney cruise.

What does that have to do with business guys? Absolutely nothing. But I tell you what, people lapped it up and did I connect it to planning workflows? I sure did. Like there’s a lot of ways that you can connect randomly, you know, seemingly random stories from your personal life into something that can be content that someone in your audience is going to find interesting.

Maddie: Absolutely. And it takes practice. Like in order to be able to do that with storytelling, it takes practice. And that’s another reason why it is so important to make sure that you’re making time for marketing every week, because it’s going to get better the more that you do it. Like I so often hear from students who are like, well, I’m just not good at this.

I’m not a good writer and I’m not a good content creator. And again, we look at their Instagram and they’ve posted. Three times in the last like six months. And I’m like, well, yeah, of course you suck. Like I, I, I suck at Pilates. I’ve gone three times like that is why. Right. And if your kid came home from his first football practice and was like, I suck at football, would you be like, okay, you can be done.

fine. No, you would be like, get your butt back out there and practice and you will get better. And it is the exact same with marketing. Like we have to hold ourselves to higher standards here to not be perfect right away and to like give the grace to get better at it.

Colie: So I’m gonna say two things that just came to mind, and the first one is I think when people hear visibility, they immediately think of face to camera. I, you know,

they immediately think of photos of you looking into the camera, and I was, you know, doing my Instagram scroll a couple days ago, and it was somebody who was typing on their computer, so it was like B-roll.

It was like above the ca, above the computer. She was typing on the thing, and then it was kind of grayed out and it had text over it, and I don’t even remember what the text was, but all of a sudden I was like, oh yeah, that’s the reminder. I don’t actually have to show my face on any of this.

And so I feel like That’s really important for this conversation is that we’re not telling you to like sit down and record a bunch of stories and do it every single day where you’re looking at your camera and you’re posting this to Instagram. There are so many ways to be visible on your growth marketing platforms like TikTok and Instagram without you actually having to talk to camera. And it reminds me of the second thing that I wanted to mention. I don’t know what episode it is. I’m gonna link it in the show notes guys. But one of my previous guests mentioned that the reason that people hate being on video is not because of how they look.

It’s because of how they sound. And ever since

she said that, I was like, oh, I love the way that I sound. I could listen to my own podcast every day. Does that make me a narcissist guy? It’s okay. You could totally DM me Colie James and let me know, but like. B roll of you walking somewhere or from the side sitting at your desk, like it doesn’t have to include audio.

So again, like if we are talking about visibility and you are automatically thinking face to camera and there is anything about that that bothers you, the way that you look or the way that you sound, there are totally ways to eliminate that from the content that you were putting on social media. Now, you can’t always not show your face. Please don’t walk away from what I just said with that, but

Maddie: They’re like said, I don’t have to

Colie: said, I don’t have to, but what I’m saying is if you post nine posts, I mean, hey, one of them. I would love to see your smiling face. Other than that, there are other things that you could do, guys.

Maddie: I would also like to say that oftentimes it’s not how you look. Or how you sound, it’s exposure therapy of experiencing those things. We talked about this a little bit at the retreat that I just hosted. ’cause someone had said this like, be all of my clients are beautiful, but one of one of my clients is just like this beautiful woman and she was talking about how she doesn’t like to see herself on camera and she’s put in a lot of work on her physical self over the past couple of years.

She’s done having babies and she’s like really focused on her and we were like. So I, we were just kind of coaching her through it and someone said, I don’t think it’s that you don’t like how you look. I think you’re not used to looking at yourself and you need some exposure therapy. And I was like, that is, that’s a bar right there.

Like that makes so much sense because we’re like, you’re not staring in a mirror all day. You’re not like, of course you’re not used to seeing yourself in that way. And I’ve been. That conversation kind of forced me to look back at my own journey a little bit, and I do think that that’s part of it because I don’t know, I’m certainly more confident than I was five or 10 years ago, and yet.

I kind of look about the same, like, it’s not like I got prettier, like I’m just used to seeing myself. I’m like, okay, that’s how I look. And I think because I’ve had so much exposure therapy with seeing myself, I’ve been able to separate, this is very deep, but I’ve been able to separate my worth from my looks.

Like my looks really have nothing to do, and I get that. I say that as like a, like a pretty average size white woman. There’s some privilege there for sure, but like I do think that there’s some truth in that of like, I see myself so often because it’s part of my job that I’m able to see a photo where like I have a little belly pooch or I have a double chin and I’m like, okay, that, that whatever.

Like, that’s fine.

Colie: and I think that when people are looking to hire someone to photograph them, sometimes they’re looking for someone who knows how to deal with maybe some of the insecurities that

they have. It was really weird. I mean, this wasn’t a branding session, this was a family session and it was one of the husbands that’s hired me.

I mean, I don’t have husbands hiring me all the time, but the ones that do, I really remember, like each and

every one of them and this particular husband, I mean, I didn’t know who they were. We didn’t have any mutuals and he hired me to come to their house and do a session. And you know, I always ask, Hey, like, you know what made you hire me?

And he is like, you, um, look. Your portfolio, you know how to photograph, you know, heavier people and he is like, both me and my wife are heavy. And so I just know that you’re gonna come in our house and that you are going to make us feel comfortable based on what I saw on your website and based on what you talk about on your website.

And I was like.

Well, thank you. I mean, I don’t know that I’ve ever really like, you know, thought about that super hard when I was doing it, but I am a plus size woman and so, you know, yes, me putting myself out there constantly, photos of me everywhere makes those of my clients that are plus size feel more comfortable because I know what to do when I get them in front of my camera, and that is a hundred percent true.

Maddie: Exactly, and that I think that that really shows the importance of showing up because so many people will say like, well, I don’t wanna show up because it’s like, I don’t feel confident, or I don’t look perfect, or whatever. That is even more reason to show up because your clients are not strutting into a brand session feeling super confident.

Like, I don’t, I do brand sessions twice a year and every time I’m like, oh my God, this sucks. Like I hate this. It’s. So uncomfortable. And then after we get going, I’m like vibing and things are good, but it takes a minute. And so if I’m working with someone as a, working with another photographer who I know has insecurities like I do and is going to pose me so I’m not as aware of problem areas or whatever like that, that’s trust building and that’s what gets people to book.

Colie: Let’s go back to the vicious cycle of visibility. So I feel like we’ve talked a lot about what you shouldn’t do. Like guys, you can’t just disappear for a month and then come back and expect everything to be peachy. But I don’t know that we’ve talked enough about like, okay, but this is like the concrete thing that I want you to do.

So Maddie, like if you find. That you are struggling with consistency. ’cause you know what, we’re 26 minutes into this and I don’t think you or I use the word consistent. Did you use the word

Maddie: No, we did. No, I, I have like a thought about consistency, but I haven’t said it yet.

Colie: Okay. So you know what, I’m gonna let you go first ’cause I’m pretty sure you and I have the same thought, but, uh, you know, you’re the guest.

Maddie: When it comes. So I think consistency is a word that like comes up so often when we’re talking about social media marketing specifically, and just marketing in general. And my take on consistency is that it’s a lot less about like the daily and the weekly tasks and a lot more about looking at your brand as a whole over months.

Years and asking like, do I show up consistently when I, when I look at my brand from the perspective of months and years, because Colie, we’ve had this conversation, like you’ve had stuff in your life where you’ve disappeared from the internet. I’ve had stuff in my life where I’ve disappeared from the internet.

Consistency is not asking you to like power through and show up even when you’re uncomfortable or when like life is pulling you in a different, different direction. That’s not what consistency is asking of us. But when you are consistent, most of the time you can look at your brand as a whole over years because that’s, that’s what we want, right?

We want the longevity of years, not just days and weeks and say, I show up, like I show up. You know, there was that one time that last December where I didn’t show up as much, but overall, I show up and to me that’s more what I’m focused on when it comes to consistency.

Colie: And for me, I’m glad that you, you didn’t go in this direction. I mean, I knew you wouldn’t, let’s be honest, but like, I feel like a lot of people talk about consistency and you must post three times a week. No, that’s

not what consistency looks like overall. Also, I as a systems person am actually more concerned with how you are preparing for those times when you do not want to be visible.

I mean, I think we don’t spend enough time talking about that because guess what? You get to be human. You get to not show up when you don’t want to, but you should have a plan. It’s like systems. Sandra was on my podcast, I think it was last year, and she was like, you create systems for your worst day, not your best day.

Maddie: Yes.

Colie: The way that this shows up for visibility is you should be prepared for the times when you are unable to be visible in that moment. So last year when I was basically gone for like five months, uh, most of you didn’t notice? Not even a little bit. It was only my closest friends that

were like,

Maddie: I didn’t even notice. I mean, like, I kind of knew after the fact, but like during, I was like, CO’s good.

Colie: Yeah, I mean, and someone started like, you know, sending me emails and was like, oh, you know, I love blah, blah, blah. And I was thinking to myself that was scheduled like six weeks ago. Like, I just want everyone, as Maddie says, you look at your, your brand overall, and it’s, are you showing up in a way that feels good to you, and are you showing up in a way to where people don’t feel like it is a rollercoaster of. They see you every single day, five times a day, and then they don’t see you at all for

Maddie: Right,

Colie: Like we don’t want the rollercoaster effect, we want something a little bit more level. ’cause nobody should be riding a rollercoaster 24 hours a day. Right. So

what should people do to prepare to be more consistent in the way that you and I are both discussing, but also so that if they do have a little bit of a rollercoaster. They don’t disappear from their brand overall, and they’ve still got something that is like promoting their brand forward.

Maddie: So, so much of it is what you just said. In order to be consistent, you have to plan for the inconsistency. You have to, because you are not going to be a hundred percent consistent, whatever that means. So I like to have a couple, if we’re talking specifically about social media marketing, having a couple of posts just kind of in my back pocket and at this point I don’t even have those like planned out.

Which you totally could, you could have them in your drafts or in your notes. I’ve done this enough where I’m like, I, I know what I post on a day where there’s nothing going on up here. Like I know what to, what to bust out. But like a re introductory type post or something that I love is like a re introductory type post, but saying like, I’m an Enneagram three, six two generator.

Like, which of these do you have in common with me? I love a post like that because people love talking about themselves. So that is like the most perfect personal brand post because it’s about you, but it reflects back to your people. So like that post is a slam dunk. So know what type of content that you have in your back pocket.

That’s a slam dunk and so easy for you. Like pop up a brand photo and call it a day. You can do that same thing with your process, right? So talking about the different pieces of brand photography, this is something I believe in as a brand photographer. This is part of. My process as a brand photographer, you don’t have to think really hard about that.

You can just post it and go. So a few posts like that in your back pocket, that’s gonna go a long way.

Colie: I mean, as you’re saying that, and I know people are not watching this on YouTube, but I was viciously shaking my head Yes at you. But also like, just so that you guys know, when I made my, you know, return to Instagram in July, I was like, let’s not make it awkward, but hey, just in case you forgot who I was and I did. Several posts that were really around like me and when Maddie started talking about, talk about your Enneagram and all this. Yeah, that I need to do that, expect that next week guys. But like I did some where I was just giving you my background again, there were several that were related to Disney and I mean those got like, I don’t know, thousands of views, hundreds of views, however many it was because people love to know about you personally. And so those should totally be things that you have in your back pocket. Like Maddie said, like maybe you don’t have these planned out, but like if you ever like write a piece of content and you’re like, oh, this is really good content, but like this is not the right time to share it. That’s definitely something that you should just put in your back pocket for when you can’t be visible and hey, I had those like three posts. You post ’em, schedule ’em, call it a day.

Maddie: By the same token, if you post something and it pops off and does really well, take that into chat, GPT and say, follow a similar framework, but like ch, change this up a little bit. Like use a different hook or like write it slightly differently and then post it again a couple of weeks or a couple of months later.

Like if it was a carousel, make it into a reel. If it was a reel, make it into a carousel and just like repost that same content later on.

Colie: I mean, I don’t, I’m assuming that some of you guys are following Maddie on Instagram. If you are not, it’s Maddie Bong. It will be in the show notes. You should definitely go do it. But one of the things that I love is like your little witty. This is what I will say, your little witty carousels. Um,

so I’m pulling

Maddie: Oh, they’re

Colie: I know they’re so sassy. And this one says I can only post this session once, or people will think I only work with one client. And then it’s like this is the lie that’s keeping you content broke. Guys, as photographers, you are literally creating content every single time you pick up your camera for a

Maddie: Every single time.

Colie: every single time. Guess what, um, clients that you photographed last year, six months ago, nobody that’s currently looking at your Instagram remembers that you already posted those posts, repost the images, say something new or not.

It’s

Maddie: Or not literally. Or not. Like nobody, not only do people not remember, nobody gives a shit. Like nobody is looking at your feed being like, wow, she is posting a lot of this one session. No, they’re not. They’re not thinking that one. If they’re going to your feed like Good on, good on you, like you, you did something right.

That’s impressive right there. They’re probably just scrolling their social media and two. They’re seeing again, brand consistency, client loyalty, like they are not seeing, oh, she only works with one client. That’s just not something that they’re thinking.

Colie: Yeah, I mean, so guys, what, what have we, what have we talked about today,

Maddie: Everything

Colie: I know? I’m like, this one. I’m like, you know, I usually have that sassy. Let’s bring it all together. But honestly, I feel like every time Maddie comes to the podcast, it’s super good, but. I hope that everybody’s listening to us when we say visibility doesn’t have to be hard.

There are ways to make it easier, and if you, you know, get some of these ideas and you get going, it is going to be easier to continue. It’s when you struggle. You decide, oh, I can take a week off. A week, turns into three, three turns into six, and all of a sudden it’s been 90 days and you have no inquiries and nobody knows who you are, and you’re feeling a certain kind of way about putting yourself back out there yet again. Here’s the, here’s the thing, guys, if you don’t stop, it’s not that hard to start again.

Maddie: It’s true.

Colie: So, Maddie, is there anything else that you think we need to cover in the vicious cycle of visibility?

Maddie: Well, I hope that you listen to this and if you are one of those people who I adore who maybe have not posted in the last six weeks, I hope that you’re inspired to, uh, to take some action here. And I want to say, when you’re taking that action, it’s okay if it feels hard. Like it’s okay if you’re like, I just spent an hour and a half editing this reel and I want to throw my phone out the door.

Like that is probably. Going to be the case if you haven’t done this before or if you haven’t done this in a while, and if you haven’t been practicing, it’s not going to be like that forever. And so I think it’s definitely a case of like the only way out is through if you want this to be easier, if you want it to feel more fun, if you want it to take less time.

You have to do it and it will get to that point and it will happen quite quickly, especially if you’re, if you give yourself the challenge of posting like three, five days a week, like let’s say you’re in a season where you’re like, I could really use some clients right now. I would up the ante and post more frequently.

And if you’re doing that on a regular basis, you will be shocked at how quickly you build those skills.

Colie: Snowball effect.

Also, I’m just gonna bring it into this podcast before we close out because anybody who’s listened to it for a while knows I hate solo episodes, like there was an entire year. I did not do a single solo. And do you know what I do? Every time I wanna come back, I literally record every single day and force myself to, to publish.

And it’s like, so that’s why if you look back in the archives, there’s a couple weeks where there’s like seven episodes in one week. And that is because I will sit down, have a thought, do it for 10 minutes, and I only allow myself five minutes of editing and then I have to

publish and I do it.

Maddie: good exercise.

Colie: Maddie and I do it until I record one that I don’t hate and I’m like, you know what?

I’m good now. And then I go back to doing my one solo a week. I’ve now done that three times and it’s never taken me more than seven days in a row to like get my shit together and be like, okay, I can do this. It is the exact same thing when you are posting on social media. I know it’s hard. I know that you feel like a certain kind of anxiety, but once you do it. Then you do a second one, and then you do a third one. By the next week, you won’t even remember why you were struggling to hit publish.

Maddie: I think that there’s kind of, in recent years been this like soft girl era trend in business ownership of like. Be gentle with yourself and if you don’t enjoy doing it, don’t do it. And like, okay, sure, to an extent. But like, there are things I, I set up Facebook ads for like two hours yesterday and I was like, this is my nightmare.

I hate this, this is awful. But it makes way more sense for me to do it and learn it than it does to hire someone. I don’t have the budget for that. Like, so I’m gonna figure it out. And there are so many things I’m sure Colie, that you would agree that we do in business because we need to figure it out.

And it’s just a core principle of business that has to get done. I, I think that we have been sold a, a bit of a lie of like, don’t do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life. Bullshit. That’s such shit that’s not true

Colie: you gotta do the thing because you gotta do the

Maddie: and you will be okay. You can do hard things.

Colie: You can do hard things.

Hey Maddie, I know you’ve got a webinar coming up next week. Tell me about it.

Maddie: Yes, so this is the Booked Out and in Demand Masterclass. So we’re talking a lot about what we have talked about on this call with content creation and not just like, you know, do more content creation, but like truly getting a simple system. You love a system. In place. So content creation doesn’t have to feel like something where you just feel like you’re pulling teeth and your people aren’t responding to it.

Like we want you to be creating content that actually gets your people activated and booking. And so that’s what we’re talking about in the Booked Out and in demand webinars, you can truly start booking clients and getting more leads from places like Instagram. So you can go to maddie pong.com/masterclass to register.

Colie: Yes. And guys, I love that she like brought it back around the systems because I shout from the Rooftop client experience systems. Maddie does it sometimes for me and I’m like, oh my God, she’s so amazing. She should just create my content. Which, which she tells me, no guys, but I’m gonna keep on trying. But like these content systems. When you put them in place, they basically feed people into your client experience systems,

which is what I love. All of these systems are cyclic, like they just feed into each other over and over again.

And so if you have ever felt motivated by me talking on this podcast to get your client experience systems together, please take this episode to think about getting your content systems together. All right, Maddie, you’re gonna be back soon. We’re gonna talk about email marketing.

Maddie: Yep. That sounds great.

Colie: All right, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for this episode. Maddie is very soon going to be my most returning guest. I mean,

we’re just gonna put that out there. All right, that’s it for this episode. See you next time.

01:28 – The Importance of Visibility

02:09 – Social Media Strategies for Photographers

06:01 – The Vicious Visibility Cycle

10:03 – Effective Marketing Practices

15:37 – Email Marketing and Content Repurposing

18:27 – Engaging Your Audience with Personal Stories

19:05 – The Importance of Consistency in Marketing

19:58 – Visibility Beyond Face-to-Camera

22:02 – Overcoming Insecurities on Camera

23:58 – Client Comfort and Trust Building

26:12 – The Vicious Cycle of Visibility

28:23 – Planning for Inconsistency

30:17 – Repurposing Content for Consistency