Are you using your blog for more than your SEO efforts? In today’s episode, Jessie Andrew of Inkpot Creative joins us to highlight the value that blogging can provide to your overall client experience. Listen in as we chat through maximizing client experience through blog posts, finding content inspiration from FAQs, optimizing content for SEO, and the power of detailed location guides for photographers.
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Guest Bio:
KP & Jessie are the duo behind Inkpot Creative®, a queer-led Showit website design studio building unconventional, impactful brand and website experiences for photographers who are leading their industry by creating something different.
Today’s episode is brought to you by my Content Organization Hub! If you are drowning in a sea of post its trying to keep track of all your content ideas or maybe you’re struggling to remember what you posted on which platform and when, I totally get it.
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Find it Quickly:
02:24 – The Importance of Blogging for Your Business
03:24 – Generating Blog Post Ideas from FAQs
05:58 – Expanding FAQs into SEO Optimized Blog Posts
08:24 – Linking and Cross-Promoting Blog Content
13:52 – Creating Location-Based Blog Posts for Photographers
20:22 – Essential Tips for Family Photos
20:46 – Maximizing Your Online Gallery Store
21:46 – Organizing Your Content with Airtable
22:37 – Effective Blogging Strategies for Photographers
25:59 – Enhancing Client Experience with Prints
28:24 – The Long-Term Value of Client Relationships
33:33 – SEO and Blogging Consistency
37:20 – Outsourcing Your Blogging Needs
Connect with Jessie
Website: inkpotcreative.com
Podcast: cultofpersonality.com/podcast
Substack: copsoapbox.substack.com
Instagram: instagram.com/inkpotcreative
TikTok: tiktok.com/@inkpotcreative
Review the Transcript:
Colie: Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Business First Creatives podcast. I actually have a returning guest today, but she is solo. Jessi of Inkpot Creative is here to talk to me about blogging, which you guys all know I love and just don’t have time to do. So Jessi, good morning. Welcome back to the podcast.
Jessie: Thank you. It’s so nice to be back.
Colie: It’s so awesome for you to be back. Guys, we went, gallivanting. I’m going to use that word. I think KP went gallivanting across Europe and I’m a little jealous because my invite got lost in the mail. I don’t know why I was not invited to be the third wheel of this trip, but she definitely got me a little motivated to be like, Hmm, husband, do you want to go to Europe?
I mean, we should just go for like three months. No one will miss us.
Jessie: I mean, why not? You have, you have the opportunity. It’s, it’s great. You get to see a bunch of really cool things. And honestly, it wasn’t any more expensive than living in the U. S. So it worked out.
Colie: I mean, to be young and child free.
Jessie: I mean, to be fair, we did bring our cat with us. So that was a bit of a struggle to get her through everything and definitely took a little more planning, but yeah, not, not anything like bringing an actual human.
Colie: Yeah. I mean, no, no, no, no. I’m talking about leaving my human here. I mean, have you listened? My child bless her heart is so cute and adorable. And I was actually just talking to someone before we started recording this podcast episode about how difficult it was to bring her into the world and all of these things.
But right now she has 14. And I could really use like a three month break while I am, you know, eating all of the best food in Europe. And she is not giving me drama about what she wants to wear to school every day. Because when you come into my room and you’re half naked, my answer is, no, we are not wearing that to school today.
This is my life right now, Jesse, this is my life.
Jessie: I do not envy you. I have to say that.
Colie: So guys, I know. That I usually have like a story of how I invite my guests on. And of course, Jesse has been on here before, but she, I believe it was an email, an email. And if you’re not on their email list, I will have it linked in the show notes. You should get on it. They write fantastic emails, but she was talking about blogging and using them in your client experience.
And immediately I sent her an email and I was like, okay, come back on the podcast and let’s talk about this. Because If there’s one thing that I encourage every entrepreneur to do is to recycle your content. Everything that you do should be used for more than one purpose. And thinking about blog posts as part of your client experience is one of those like fundamental things that you should do because on your website, it’s giving you SEO traffic and inside of your client experience, it is giving your actual paying clients information that they need.
So Jesse, let’s start with where in the hell should I get ideas on what to write my blog posts about? So where would you begin?
Jessie: So our favorite place to start is literally just thinking about the things that you get asked over and over and over again. So you can honestly do this throughout any part of your client experience, but if you’re getting the same questions, if you’re getting the same requests, if clients are constantly asking you the same things.
Odds are they are not the only people in the world asking those questions. And they’re probably keywords that you can use to write a post. That’s going to be SEO optimized. So you might drive people in, which is great, but then it’s going to give you a post that you can just be like, Hey, here you go.
Here’s the answer to all your questions. It took me two seconds to send this. You know, link to you instead of 45 minutes trying to pull everything together and type out an email or look through your inbox, which I do all the time to figure out who I sent it to last, so I can just copy and paste the email to someone else.
Like it really is your clients and what they’re asking you is the perfect place to start because that’s honestly what most people are going to come with and what most people are going to have questions on.
Colie: So, I mean, Jesse’s telling us to start with our FAQs and I know that everyone has heard me say many times. I am a big fan of your FAQs. And when I am helping one of my clients set up the back end of their business, I ask them for their FAQs and they’re always like, Oh no, they’re already on my website.
I’m like, I know, but how do you know that people saw those? So I take the FAQs and I dwiddle them down to like the most important ones to get someone to say yes to your services. And I add those FAQs onto your proposal directly inside of HoneyBooker Dubsado. But you’re now saying, okay, let’s take these FAQs.
And not only are they living somewhere on your website, like on an FAQ page, Hey, that sounds like a great idea. I’m telling you to take some of those and put them inside your client experience, inside of your booking form. If they are questions that someone might have after you’ve made the offer and they haven’t booked your services yet.
And now Jesse is saying, okay, but some of those probably need to be expanded and each one of them could make their own. SEO optimized blog post. Guys think about that. If you have seven FAQs, maybe not all of them deserve their own blog posts, but if at least four of them do, that’s four blog posts that you could write.
I mean, that’s one a week. That is consistency for Google.
Jessie: Exactly. And they really. You, you hit it kind of right on the head with not every question is going to be one that can be expanded on. But a lot of times we’ll give a very quick answer and a very basic answer in our FAQs, but there’s probably a lot more that we can say about it. So you know, we work a lot with photographers and wedding photographers.
So a question they might have on their pages, you know, how far in advance do I need to book my wedding photographer? That could be something where you could be like, okay. 12 to, you know, maybe nine to 12 months in advance, but then you can write an entire blog post about why you need to book that far in advance.
What, you know, actually goes into it, all of the things that you need to do after, you know, maybe you need to book that far in advance. You can do an engagement session and you get to know each other and you can make sure that everyone’s on the same page. Like there’s so much more that you can probably say about these FAQs that is just going to be, if you put that all in an answer on your website, nobody’s, it’s going to be super overwhelming and everyone’s going to be like.
Okay, that was a lot of information when I thought I was just going to get like two sentences. So it really gives you that chance to expand on everything and position yourself as the expert. Give them all of the information they need and kind of show why you’re the right pick.
Colie: I mean, absolutely. And then you get like sub questions. So like how far in advance should I book my wedding photographer? Maybe you also give them a list of other vendors that they should be, you know, a checklist. Hey, have you booked your florist? Have you got your vendor? Are you looking for a videographer?
I mean, there’s an plus if you are someone and you have referral partners for these, maybe you give those people links inside your blog post. Hello, backlinks. No one’s ever going to say no.
Jessie: Exactly. Yeah. You can really kind of go off of it and, and give them a lot of information that answers even more of their questions. Cause at the end of the day, we want to be the people that kind of stand out in their mind. And a great way of standing out is checking all of those boxes for people being a source of reliable information, because you can find anything on the internet, everyone’s going to have really.
Differing opinions on, on something. So if you can be like, look, here’s what I would suggest. And here’s why I suggest it. And here’s all of the other things that you might need to do. And here’s all of the other people you can look at. Like that’s. Giving them basically an entire guide and like booklet that they can just be like, all right, let me do this, this, this.
And like, that’s going to be super valuable.
Colie: I mean, and when we write these blog posts, I want you guys to not just think about them as one single piece of content. Of course, everything that you’re producing on your website should be linked. So inside of this blog post where you’ve answered this FAQ, you should have links to other blog posts that you’ve already written that people would find informative and would help them along the same lines.
And again, external links. If you have referral partners, if you have favorite venues, if you have any of these things that are related to the topic that you just wrote about, Google loves it when you are giving them additional information to feed that same person who has just done a search.
Jessie: Absolutely. And our favorite thing to do, if you can’t naturally and I’ll emphasize naturally fit in things that kind of link back to other similar posts, a great way to do it is have kind of like a read more section or, you know, check out these posts next. Some platforms will let you do like a similar post where.
It might pull other posts in that same category or whatever, but if you can have a keep reading these and then like Colie said, put related posts in that section, like that, you could have a FAQ on when to hire a wedding photographer and that is your main post. And then post linked to it might be, you know, when to hire other vendors or how to pick the perfect photographer, questions to ask your wedding photographer.
All of those are going to be the same. Kind of line of that pre planning phase. I’ve not quite booked everything, but I’m trying to get it set. Here’s all the things that I might need. Like even just putting those as links at the bottom can be really helpful. It can keep people scrolling on your site.
Colie: And you want them to keep scrolling on your site. I mean, you know what, if you’re not watching the YouTube video, you can’t see Jessie. She seems to be like pulling on a string and she hasn’t actually said those words, but really when people read these blog posts, you want it to be like a string that they just pull a little bit that engages them and keeps them going to another post and another post.
Because if you get someone on your website, And they spend any amount of time, I mean, other than like 10 seconds, and then they go to another post and they’re spending time reading that one. And then they go to another post. Google is paying attention. You are letting them know by keeping people on your website, that your website has great information.
And so the next time that someone else is doing the same kind of search, they are going to be more likely to serve up your blog posts. As the answer and that my friends, is how you get ranked on Google
Jessie: And I think too, when it comes to it, you also want to make sure that you have, like having other places, other articles. Linked throughout to keep them going is great. But you also want to make sure you’re linking something else. If you’re given a post about, you know, when to hire a wedding photographer, put a link at the bottom that’s to your services page or to your contact page.
Let people have really quick access to actually book you or learn more about your services or whatever buyer products, whatever it might be, because part of it is keeping people scrolling on the site. Part of it’s also just easy access. People don’t like to look and search through a whole bunch of things.
If you can be like, look, if you like this, I might be the right photographer. You can click right here and we can talk about it. We can get on a call. You can fill out my inquiry form, whatever it might be. And that’s just going to make it so much easier for people to connect with you.
Colie: The funny thing, Jessie, is I was just helping one of my coaching students and she has a blog post that has continued to get like amazing traffic for years now, and she recently redid it. You know, she has. Newer updated photos of the same family throughout the years, which is great. Like if you get, if you have really old blog content and it’s like, Ooh, that’s not really my current style or Ooh, guys, you can always go in there and refresh that blog post.
But at the end I was like, you don’t have a call to action. You don’t have a link to your contact page. I decided to skip the click and just put a shortened Contact form embedded at the bottom. So now they don’t even have to click to go to the contact page in order to inquire about her services. There is just a contact form already at the bottom asking a few questions to get them hooked while they are still on that blog post.
Cause I mean, that particular blog post had a lot of examples of her work. It had a lot of information. I was like, while we could send them to like a family photography page or send them somewhere else. I mean, For some people that one blog post was probably going to be enough to get them to take action
Jessie: And I think it’s also important to think about your clientele, right? So if we’re thinking about. People who are family photographers, the people reading those posts and reaching out are probably parents, well obviously parents, but probably parents who are exhausted, don’t have a ton of time to scroll through a ton of things, read a bunch of stuff, they really just want to get straight to the point.
So the easier we can make it for them to actually get out there, get the tasks done, get something checked off their to do list, the better. So I think even, you know, we talk about it when writing the blog posts, picking your topics, literally everything about your business should be based on your ideal client and who you’re serving.
Even things like how you, Set up your CTAs, where you lead people, how you talk to people is all going to be based on that ideal client and making sure that it gives them the easiest path that they’re going to follow and feel comfortable with.
Colie: in order to hire you for your services. I just feel the need to add that on Jesse. So before we hit record, I was asking you about some possible blog posts. And so we’ve talked about FAQs, but now this one is kind of really specific to photographers and that is location blog posts. Why are these important?
And why might photographers want to make sure that they are covering their bases with these kinds of blog posts?
Jessie: So with these, I feel like it’s almost a guarantee that every photographer is going to get the question, like where to do this. The, you know, if we’re lucky not. Engagement photos, couple’s photos, family photos, they’re not necessarily in the boat of wedding, you know, couples who are maybe booking their venue before they book the photographer.
So that might almost be, those ones might almost be in that category of pre planning, but for most other people, you’re booking the photographer and then you’re planning everything out for the session. So if you’re sitting there and every single couple you get is like, or every single family they get is like, okay, great, where would you suggest we take these photos?
And you’re having to sit there and write over and over and over again. Well, here’s what you can do. Here’s what you can do. You know, anything like that, that’s going to get really time consuming and it’s going to get really exhausting. And honestly, the biggest part of that is the time. We don’t have an infinite amount of time as.
Business owners. And the more time we can get back, the better. So having these posts where you’re like, okay, here’s my top picks. You could even have like, even if it’s Roundup posts that are like the, you know, 10, 12, 13 best places in your area to do a specific type of session. That way you’re giving them variety.
You’re letting them see pictures from everyone. You’re giving a brief, you know, why this might be great. And then if you can write posts about every single location, that’s like one of our favorite tips for getting a lot of content out is just doing that listicle and then writing a post for every single one.
They can click on it and see more information, but that’s going to save you so much time. So you’re not sending it to every single client. You’re not coming up with that list for every single client. And you can even put that in your, like, Onboarding email. Once someone signs the contract or books you, you’ll be like, Hey, great.
So excited for this. If you need any suggestions on where to do this session, you can look at this. Here’s a list of all my favorite spots. You know, ask me any questions on it afterwards, but like, you don’t even have to wait for them to reach out, you can literally just put it in your email sequence after they book, so that they already have the information, and you’re kind of like skipping one step ahead.
Colie: You are, and everybody knows I’m not going outside to photograph clients, so I’m going to show up at your house. All I need is your address, but for other people who are willing to, like, go outside with the elements and photograph their couples or their families, Cutting off questions is like the number one thing that you can do for customer service.
And so if you know that your clients are going to be asking you, well, where can we have our service? Having that blog post, which is like cornerstone content. That’s like, these are my five favorite places in Boulder to have your family session. And And then inside of that blog post, you have links to different sessions that have happened at these different locations that they can actually see the location, the light, all of these good things.
You are not only helping. your clients who have already paid you money inside of your client experience. But chances are someone who hasn’t picked a family photographer yet and is like, Oh, show me photography sessions at Chautauqua. If you have a blog post about that location, Hey, maybe they will find you before they’ve hired a photographer and reach out for a session.
I mean, We’ve been talking about kind of portrait sessions and, you know, in that case, they may hire you then decide on the location. But what you said about wedding venues is golden. Like if they’re hiring the wedding venue first, like if they’re booking that and then they’re looking for photographers, if you have a highly ranked blog post related to that venue and they have been googling information about the venue, Chances are they are going to see your blog post with your amazing wedding photography, and that is a way that you can get more incoming leads when they’ve already decided on a venue that you have knowledge and experience shooting at.
Jessie: Exactly. And I think that’s one of the things why it’s so important to have content that kind of stands out. Because a lot of times you might be able to get those people who are like, okay, I’m looking for a venue. Let me go do a lot of research. Cause let’s be honest, most people don’t just do like five minutes of research and pick their wedding venue.
They’re going to sit there for hours and hours and days and weeks going through everything, trying to find the perfect venue. So if you can get them in that early stage, they might not immediately book you because odds are they’re going to book their venue first. But once they have it, they’re like, all right, next step is photographer.
Wait, I remember this photographer that actually gave me really helpful information about the venue that I picked. Let me go back there and see all of their information. And just that little bit of, again, positioning yourself as the expert early on is going to make you stand out because they’re going to remember.
You know, a photographer’s website that has a bunch of pictures and really great couples that they can see themselves in more than, you know, the venues website that just has a couple of pictures, because that’s one of the things we’ve noticed about venue websites is they’re not, not always the best you can do a lot.
I don’t know if you in your blog post, showing off the venue, showing off your style, showing off what a wedding could look like there. So, just having that there, you’re going to get those people in the early stages, if there’s anything you can do to like, get them on an email list, or get them to kind of interact with you in any way, so that once they are at that point where they’re ready, To start looking for a photographer.
You’re still top of mind. That’s great. But yeah, those venue posts are like gold mines. The other thing too, if you’re like Colleen, you’re like, no, I’m just going to go to your house. I’m not going to do anything else. Even having like prep guides, because everyone’s going to ask how to prep for the session.
I can’t tell you the amount of keywords that have to do with outfit ideas. There’s so many, you can. Do general, you can break it down by season. Like I promise you, I’m doing this stuff every single day. I know for a fact that those are keywords. So even prep guides, what to wear, stuff like that. Your clients are going to ask you that they’re going to want more of that information.
And you can write a post again, either send it to them or just put it in, you know, the onboarding email to be like, Hey, I’m Here’s how you can prep for the session. Here’s what you want to do the night before. Here’s what you want to do the day of. Here’s what you want to bring, you know, here’s how we’re going to do things, anything like that.
It’s going to be really helpful. And a lot of people are also like, I’ve never taken family photos before. I don’t know how to do this. Like, what do I need to know before I actually, you know, dive into this. So it’s all going to be really helpful for people finding you, but it’s also going to be really helpful for your client experience.
I
Colie: of that client experience, the third blog post that we talked about is probably like the one that I’m most fascinated with these days because I am like on a mission. Every time I hear a photographer say, Oh, well I have an online gallery store and like no one bought anything. I’m like, okay, so when did you talk to them about the online gallery store?
And they’re like, well, I mean, it was attached to their photos. Yeah, I get that. But people are not going to open the link that you sent them with the photos of themselves and immediately go to the gallery and think, Oh, what can I buy? No, they’re obsessed with looking at pictures of themselves. I mean, and I’m, I fully admit that even as the client, like, I’m like, Oh, she made my ass look really big in that picture.
Okay. We’re not going to use that in anything. I mean, but I’m of course, pouring over my photos. And at that point in time, I don’t want to hear about the things that I can buy in the gallery. You’re supposed to talk to me about that before I get the photos in order to prep me. So Jesse, you said that you are often writing blog posts for your clients about what to do with wedding photos.
So, cool. Where does this line up in the client experience, um, for you? Like where are your wedding photographer clients sending this email that includes a link to this blog post? Mm
Jessie: think it can kind of be in one of two places, uh, a lot of wedding photographers specifically, but I know a lot of, you know, couples, families, brand, anything like that will share some sort of preview or highlight gallery with their clients very soon after the wedding. The photos are actually taken. So some of them will put it in there just to kind of prep people and give them an idea of what they can do with them.
Obviously that’s not going to be all of the photos. So they’re not immediately going to be like, Oh, let me go print this on a canvas or, you know, do any of these stuff because I want to see all the photos. But even kind of prepping them beforehand to be like, Oh, I didn’t even think about doing that with the photo.
Like. That’s really cool. Maybe I can, you know, think about that, do a little research on it. And then if you come and be like, you can do this and look, you can do it right here with one click and all you have to do is, you know, pick the photo and it’ll all be set. So I think in that kind of preview gallery is a great place to send it or in the full gallery, if you can find a way to kind of work it in.
Without it being lost in the excitement of I got my photos back. I’m really excited about this. So I think if you can put it in there somewhere or if you have any kind of follow up emails, Or maybe you make it a follow up email, you know, a couple days after so people get a chance to be really excited about them and see all of it and that kind of, you know, excitement.
I’m not going to pay attention to anything else. Comes, comes down a little bit. And you’re like, Hey, now that you’re super excited about these and you love them, here’s everything you can do with them. And here’s everywhere. You can get it done. You can link directly to, you know, if you have a specific online store that you sell stuff in, you could do that or, you know, be like, here’s where you can find it on my galleries.
You can go here. Here’s where you can get other things printed if you don’t do a lot of, you know, I mean, you can print photos on canvases, mugs, whatever, you know, coasters, there’s literally no limit to what you can get things printed on. So if you don’t offer everything, even just being like, Hey, this is a great website that I trust that does really great work that you can get this stuff sent out on.
Again, you’re just giving them that even better client experience, especially if you’re sending those things before you send like. Your testimonial review. If you can just get that one extra thing of like, I’m not done helping you. I’m going to give you one more thing and then follow up with a, how was your experience?
Like it’s going to be even better for them. So those are kind of our suggested places to do it. You definitely don’t want to overwhelm them and send that like right when you’re onboarding them because they’re not going to care about it. And they’re like, I don’t even have my photos. So why would I care?
What I can do with them after I have them, but sometime in the end, finding a way to work it in or right after a day or so after you send the photos is kind of a great place to, to do that.
Colie: Oh, I totally agree Jessie. I mean any I call the dead zone The point between you having the session or photographing the wedding and then when you deliver the images, like there are days and weeks and for wedding photographer, sometimes months in between those when there is nothing happening, your clients are like holding their breath, waiting for their photos and there’s just no communication.
So this is when you have their attention. This is when you want to send them links like this to blog posts. Now, I know that. I said what to do with your wedding photos, but one of my favorite things, and I mean, maybe it’s like a Pinterest thing. I was never a Pinterest mom. I love that all of my clients are like super creative, but if you’ve ever been to like a one year birthday party and they have a photo from every month printed and they have it kind of like hanging from string on the wall or whatever, people want to see those things.
And even if. All of the images are not going to be yours. I’ve been to quite a few one year birthday parties where if my clients had two or three sessions that year, I mean, my photos are like the ones that look really, really nice that are hanging and the other ones are like cell phone photos and it’s okay.
Cause I mean, my photos should look better. But, that is definitely something that if I was doing a lot of motherhood or a lot of baby photography, that would make a great suggestion. At some point during that first year, but before the first birthday, maybe you want to send it early so that you get it in their mind.
Oh, I should take one of these photos every month so that when it comes to the one year birthday, I’ve got all of these. Same thing, Letting wedding couples, you know, what can you do with your engagement
Jessie: Exactly.
Colie: for the wedding? Like, is there a way that you can print them and have them center stage at the reception?
I mean, these are things that sometimes your clients know. Sometimes those of us that have those clients that love to spend way too much time on Pinterest, they’ve probably got more ideas than you, but. But you are always going to have clients that just don’t have time for that. And so if you can make a suggestion for something that really wows them, it is just going to enhance your client experience, which is going to make their satisfaction higher.
And it’s going to make it more likely that they return to you for additional services and, or that they refer you out to their family and friends.
Jessie: exactly. Yeah. And that’s the big thing about photographers. Most. Most photographers, I won’t say all because some are special, most photographers aren’t going to only do one specific type of photography. We work with a lot of wedding photographers who also do maternity, they do family, they do couples, like all of that.
So if you get in with the wedding and you do a really great job with the wedding, you You know, a year and a half, two years down the road, they get pregnant, you now get to shoot the maternity photos and you do a great job with that. And now you’re, you know, capturing their kid’s first year of life. Like it’s something that kind of can work through that longevity of your entire experience with that client.
And I think that’s something that’s really important that sometimes is overlooked of having people return throughout different stages of their lives. Obviously, if you like only do wedding photos. You really don’t want to necessarily see people coming back that often because you don’t wish that your couples need to get remarried But if you do other types of photos like it can be a great way to you know Give that really great client experience.
So when they do want photos again, they’re like, it’s a no brainer I’m gonna go back here. Like I got awesome photos. They were helpful the whole time They answered every single one of my questions. Like why would I go anywhere else?
Colie: Exactly, but I also just want to emphasize, even if you only do engagements, elopements, and weddings, your return investment is going to be the referrals that your clients are giving you. And so maybe I’m not getting remarried, you know, speaking as someone who’s been married for 23 years, I don’t necessarily have a need for another wedding photographer at this time.
But if I had a sister who was getting married, technically that’s like a repeat client, right? It’s the same family. It’s just not the exact same bride and groom that you had last time. Which again, I mean, and oh, what about renewals? I mean, technically you could have the same couple come back to you and it not necessarily be to get married again.
So I mean, there’s always possibility.
Jessie: 100%. And I think that’s why it’s so important that early on in your kind of career as a photographer, you’re still giving that incredible client experience, because those are the things that are going to stick with people year after year after year. So, you know, maybe you’re just starting and you’re in, you know, year two, But you want to do this for the long haul and you have a couple that gets married this year, maybe 15 years down the road for their anniversary, you know, they want to renew their vows.
And they’re like, well, I’m just going to go back here. They’re still doing wedding photography. It’s still amazing. It’s probably a little more of an investment than it was back
Colie: Then it was when you first got married.
Jessie: But like, it’s, it’s one of the things where like, no, I know that the photos are going to be great.
And I love the experience that I had with you. So why would I, I go with anyone else? Like it’s, it’s one of the things that if we’re looking about the long term life of our business, it’s going to be around for years and years and years, and those client experience, like that’s going to stick in, in your, your couple’s minds, your family’s minds, your client’s minds, whatever it is.
And that’s something that’s going to be really invaluable.
Colie: Absolutely. While Jesse was talking a little while ago, I was trying to find the phrase, like I couldn’t remember who said it, but it’s don’t let your images grow up to be JPEGs. And any of the photographers listening understand what that means. You never want to deliver a gallery that never gets printed.
It never gets seen on a wall. It never gets held in someone’s hand. It just lives on these devices and we share them, you know, with everyone. So, I feel really strongly that you at some point in your client experience, and again, I vote the dead zone between the session happening and the delivery of the actual photos, everyone should write an email that is geared towards making sure that your images do not grow up to be JPEGs on your clients, you know, devices.
And in that respect, if you can write a blog post. As Jesse has suggested, put it on your website, get some of that SEO juice, and you’re just sharing it with them. You’re not only helping your clients, but you’re also doing like a public service for the community at large to make sure that images don’t just live on our phones and never get printed to be seen in their entirety.
Jessie: Exactly. And honestly, some of it comes down to in general, we’re so used to having everything on our devices that some people might just not know the best way to print photos, the best places to get photos. Cause we’ve all seen the photos that are printed and we’re like, I don’t know what that is, like having reputable places to get them printed.
giving people ideas on what to do with them, how to print them, you know, which photos are going to work best or, you know, different sizes. If you want to make a super big canvas versus, you know, a little wallet size photo, like things might be, be different. So just giving them that information, honestly, it could just be the little push that they need to be like, okay, this actually isn’t that complicated.
I can just do it all right here.
Colie: Yeah, it’s not that complicated, but I do feel like we’re going to end this episode by telling people what to do if they feel like it’s too complicated, or you just feel like you don’t have enough time to write these blog posts. Before we get there, Jessi, how often are you suggesting that people blog on their website in order to appease the consistency gods at Google?
Jessie: So what we’ve seen work really well with our clients It’s two posts a month. This is what we’ve been doing for, you know, over two years now for two and a half years for some of our clients. And we’ve seen really great traffic gains, inquiries coming in more aligned inquiries coming in, which is what we all want.
So our suggestion would be two a month. Obviously, if you want to do more, absolutely like go for it. But I also know a lot of us are just busy. busy day to day and don’t have the time to sit down and write four, six, eight blog posts a month. So if you can aim for two, publish them throughout the month, whenever you can, you don’t necessarily have to sit there and be like, I need to publish it every other Wednesday.
Like,
Colie: It’s not every other Friday at 9am? Okay,
Jessie: no, not, not anymore. That’s not really something that’s, that’s being, calculated in with, with how well a post is going to rank. Our suggestion is the earlier you can get it out, the better, because then it’s going to sit in Google a little longer. It’s going to be able to rank a little faster.
So, if you can, start with two a month. Just kind of work on getting consistent. Don’t feel like you have to like completely reinvent the wheel with everything that you do. Just write like yourself. Give people a look into your personality. What it’s going to, what it’s going to be like working with you.
You know, start with the questions that you get asked all the time. Start with the places that you love. Photographing, if there’s, like Colie was talking about, you know, the five best places in, in your area. That’s one post right there talking about the five, and then you have five other posts talking about the individual spots.
That’s six posts. That’s three months of content right there, with just one single idea. Like, it doesn’t have to be super, super complicated. So just take it one step at a time, try for two a month, and kind of see, see how it goes. I will say it is going to take some time. It’s not an instant overnight thing.
Colie: No,
Jessie: No, unfortunately, if it was, that would be amazing. But most of the time you’ll start to see things grow after about six months and you’ll really start to see the difference it can make around the 12 month mark. So as hard as it is, since it’s not that kind of instant gratification, just keep doing it, keep working.
And you’ll start to see all of those kinds of positive benefits rolling.
Colie: I’m so glad that Jesse mentioned that because guys, SEO takes time. I have said this every single time. I have an expert on this podcast. Every single time we talk about blogging, websites, whatever. SEO is not, let me put this up here and then next week I’m going to get flooded. Now, let’s go. Let’s actually talk about that though, because you’ve said six months, but guys, you kind of have to know what you’re looking for.
And so if you are not currently tracking the amount of traffic that you are getting to your website every month, that is something that you should do immediately. Like today, go get yourself an analytics account. And in one month, figure out how many new visitors landed on your website in the last 30 days, and then in 30 more days, do it again.
Like, you should be figuring out how much traffic you have, because then, when you start writing these blog posts that Jesse and I talked about today, you’re not gonna know whether or not you actually have increased traffic if you don’t start keeping track of your data today.
Jessie: Google Analytics are free. Google Search Console, free. It takes like maybe five minutes to set up. It’s, but it’s so, you get so much valuable information from there. And it really, you can’t know if it’s working until you actually have the data to show that it’s working. So it’s, it’s so important that you get that set up sooner rather than later.
Colie: yeah, and guys if you happen to be one of those super busy humans that Jesse and I were talking about a little while ago Inkpot creative actually has a back pocket of Blogger product.
And I’m like, it’s the, the name is so great. I’ve, I’ve honestly wanted to steal it and do like back pocket systems, but I’m not going to do them like that, but they will write two blog posts a month because, Hey, that’s what Jesse suggested to you. They will do it for you. They will do your keyword research.
I mean, I feel like I’m giving a sales pitch and I am, they don’t give me any money. I’m just saying like, You should not have an excuse for not getting it done where you can actually outsource the task to someone else. Isn’t that right, Jesse?
Jessie: Absolutely. Yeah. If you are too busy, it’s a great option. Like Colie said, we’ll do the research for you. You basically just come to us and you’re like, hey, I want to write this post. I want, well, you’re not going to write the post. I want this post written. It can be on a session that you did. It can be on a question that you’re getting.
It can be on an educational topic you want to talk about. We will find a keyword that matches it. We’ll write the whole post and we’ll send it back to you within 72 business hours. So really quick, get in that quick turnaround. You get a chance to leave feedback on it because who doesn’t love making sure that their voice is heard.
And we always love making sure that everything, you know, looks and sounds and feels like you, and then we’ll take care of uploading it for you. We will index it for you. We’ll take care of all the SEO side of it. And you’ll just have posts that are constantly going out. You’ll get two a month. We’ll help keep track of your analytics so you can actually see what’s, what’s working for you, what’s not.
So, it really is a hands off way to get everything that you want written, but also still be able to kind of make sure your voice is heard throughout the process. Absolutely.
Colie: All right, guys. So this is Colie, your business coach talking to you. I want you to set aside time. Either you do it, or if you have not found the time in two to three months, I want you to look at hiring someone to do it for you. And then again, six months down the road is when you should expect to see some of these benefits coming from your SEO.
All right. Jesse, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast yet again. I mean, she’s one of my favorite people, guys, so you’re probably going to see her again in another six months. We’ll find something different to talk about next time.
All right, everyone, that’s it for this episode. See you next time.
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