Meredith's husband: 0:24

I'm not going to tell you the title of this podcast, this episode.

Meredith: 0:28

Do I get to guess it? I'm kidding, we'll be here all day.

Meredith's husband: 0:31

I wanted to talk about your blog.

Meredith: 0:34

My blog.

Meredith's husband: 0:35

Yes, your blog. You've actually been blogging there are new blogs.

Meredith: 0:38

I did. There are a handful.

Meredith's husband: 0:42

And I'm kind of surprised to say it, but it's pretty good. Oh, really, yeah, it's really pretty good. Really, yeah, the blogs you've been doing are pretty good. Really, Ladies and gentlemen, I'm so glad this is public yeah out of the last three or four, probably four or five, I would say at least three out of four of them are pretty good. It could be improved a little bit.

Meredith: 1:05

That's good. I'm open for that. I'm always open for that.

Meredith's husband: 1:08

The latest one, though, is technically what I would call garbage, but it's super common, I say that kind of jokingly, because it's what everybody does. It's, it is super, super, super, super, super common. And do you remember what the latest blog?

Meredith: 1:26

is yeah, it was about, it was um importance of photographing your baby now, right now, right.

Meredith's husband: 1:34

So, and the reason I say that's garbage, that and the topic is not garbage in itself, but it's not. It's not blog content, that's main website copy. That's like sales copy.

Meredith: 1:45

Right.

Meredith's husband: 1:46

Why is it important to photograph your baby Like that? That's, that's your main website copy. That's not a blog entry, really shouldn't? It shouldn't be a blog okay, what should it be? Lots of business owners, especially like when I was starting seo kind of old school business owners. They just simply could not comprehend why they might create a blog and not focus on why you should buy my stuff.

Meredith: 2:08

Right.

Meredith's husband: 2:09

And that's all they wanted to do I know? I understand, but who is that for really? Who is that blog entry for? Is that a resource?

Meredith: 2:17

I thought it was because I thought it was, so this would be better off, perhaps as an Instagram post. You're saying.

Meredith's husband: 2:25

Perhaps, yeah, or you can, we can work on it, and I think there's a couple of couple of ways you could make it more of a blog post. But, the way, the way it is now it's. It's very straight up. The message is clear why you should get photographs of your baby, and to me that just screams. That's your marketing message. That's your main Web site, you know.

Meredith: 2:44

And I think, just if I may, because I usually only photograph babies six months and up, but that's now stopping, because I love babies. Okay, Should I open up the page, are you?

Meredith's husband: 2:59

going to. I will open it up in a second, okay, but I'm just going to kind of explain conceptually what I would do to make this more of a blog post, so you can simply change the perspective. So right now, the perspective is it's your perspective, right, it's you are. You are saying to readers why you should get photographs of your baby, yes, okay, so that's the wrong perspective.

Meredith: 3:22

Okay, you want to take a note.

Meredith's husband: 3:24

No, okay, you can listen to this podcast. That's not going to happen.

Meredith: 3:33

I know.

Meredith's husband: 3:33

That's why I'm not telling you the name of it Meredith's shitty blog. That's pretty close.

Meredith: 3:39

I'm happy, happy to be the toadstool.

Meredith's husband: 3:48

So if you were to change that perspective, what would it be, or what do you think it could be? It could be something like what to do with prints of your baby, like how to display them around your house, something like that. That would be a little more reasonable. That's along the same line.

Meredith: 3:59

So that's not salesy.

Meredith's husband: 4:02

No, not exactly that's that can be a resource.

Meredith: 4:05

OK, oh, I see.

Meredith's husband: 4:07

I could, I could come, I could live in Oregon and I could read that and it could be. Oh, these are good ideas. I'm going to try this. Another way to do it is to just change the format of it. Oh, and by changing the format, we we did an episode, many, many episodes again, about some common blog formats and things that people, uh, formats that tend to do really well, okay, and those are often case studies.

Meredith: 4:30

I was in that one.

Meredith's husband: 4:31

You were in that one Okay, probably 100 episodes ago. Case studies are super popular Now. They're kind of business oriented, so I'm just going to brainstorm now.

Meredith: 4:40

Okay.

Meredith's husband: 4:42

So case studies are really often very good.

Meredith: 4:46

What is a case study?

Meredith's husband: 4:47

Just for those who don't remember so a case study is like how this company changed their blog and it did xyz and you demonstrate how to the steps they did to do that. That's a case study like it's a success story basically, but with detailed points. In business it's pretty common because people want to see well, how have people done this before and succeeded? I can tell that really hit home with you. Yeah, so another one is another format that I talked about on that episode and I'll link to that episode below is a round table. A round table is, like you know, the actors round table.

Meredith: 5:25

Yes.

Meredith's husband: 5:25

Okay. So same thing in a blog format, just written. You've seen these, I'm sure Like somebody asks a question and you get responses from either people sitting around that table or they can be separate and they can just send in their replies. That's a good format too. So, taking those two ideas, you could do something like a survey or questionnaire about what do people wish they had done with their baby prints, and you want to get engagement. Engagement would be great and engagement is the basis of social media. It's what everybody's doing now, right.

Meredith's husband: 6:00

Same thing for your blog, if you can get engagement and you can use social to get that engagement. So when I say like a survey or a questionnaire, you can put a poll on Instagram and do something like that Ask a question, make it a vote, put those results on your blog, something like that. Huh, so you could say you know what do you wish you had done with your own baby prints, say you know what do you wish you had done with your own baby prints, right? And then you could have a multiple choice. I'm just throwing out ideas.

Meredith: 6:22

No, that's a great idea.

Meredith's husband: 6:24

Multiple choice. Of course it is Multiple choice. Do you wish you did A, b or C or something else? And then you know, post the results and if people comment and hopefully they comment put the comments on your blog.

Meredith: 6:38

So see how that's a different perspective.

Meredith's husband: 6:39

You're really doing the same thing, but covertly, and you're kind of almost making a game of it. You're making it engaging.

Meredith: 6:47

Yeah, I like that.

Meredith's husband: 6:49

So something like that. That's how you can take the same blog and adjust the topic to have a different perspective. Also, I'm going to pull it up now and we can talk about what you can do visually. Now, I'm going to pull it up now and we can talk about what you can do visually.

Meredith: 7:03

Okay, Now I'm going to explain it to our listeners, Okay, who are not missing out by not actually seeing it. It's pretty basic. You're going to say yeah it's pretty basic. It's what you would expect a blog to be, so I have a question. When people talk about blogging their sessions, is that a good idea?

Meredith's husband: 7:21

A lot of people blog their session. It could be. It depends on how they're doing it and who they're doing it for, like. If you had like educational content and you're going to say this is how I go through a session. That might be great If it's based on like here's a case study, here's a family. I've been shooting 10 years and this is what happens.

Meredith: 7:42

I don't know exactly the details of when they say blog their session, what that means. What it means is they'll say hey, I love this family. We had a great time outside in Central Park in Upper West Side. We got some ice cream at Mimi, and then they show like 20 images from the session.

Meredith's husband: 7:58

Yeah, that's not amazing, but it's not bad either. It would be great if you can find some sort of niche to discuss in there.

Meredith: 8:07

What about?

Meredith's husband: 8:08

That is like where to photograph in Central Park that would be a niche. Or how to photograph kids eating ice cream.

Meredith: 8:15

So would. Something such as this was a session with this family, and this is what they brought home. These are the products they brought home.

Meredith's husband: 8:25

So that would kind of be like a little case study. Okay, I think that has potential. Yeah, I think, right off the bat it has the same danger of perhaps being a little too salesy, but with some careful attention I think, yeah, definitely that has some potential. Okay, so now I have your latest blog in front of me.

Meredith: 8:44

All of a sudden my heartbeat starts racing more my skin tightens and I start like retracting into my skeletal self.

Meredith's husband: 8:54

That's impressive. You have, as all, I should say, most blogs. Do you have the title? Title why it's so incredibly important to get professional photos of your baby right now. Then you have a featured image. Yes, the image is very nice, very cute baby. And then you have a bunch of paragraph text yeah, okay, super, that's it. No headings, no subheadings.

Meredith: 9:15

No.

Meredith's husband: 9:16

And then at the bottom is a link to your next, most recent blog post.

Meredith: 9:20

Yeah, they just link to the next one.

Meredith's husband: 9:21

Yes, right, okay. So what I would do right off the bat is this image, the first image. It's nice. Does it have alt text? No, no, it does not, I can tell you it does not. This could be, so I will describe the image because people can't see this, right, no-transcript. A photo of a bedroom with a framed picture of a baby above the headboard, and I would assume that's one of your photographs.

Meredith: 9:45

That's my photo.

Meredith's husband: 9:47

So this looks really nice. There's no alt text, so alt text. You need to have alt text for every image. We've talked about that before.

Meredith's husband: 9:54

And just for somebody just tuned in, alt text is Alt text is if this image didn't display, if I had a slow internet connection and the image didn't load and I had images turned off or I were vision impaired and I'm using some sort of Braille reader, I would see or read the alt text instead of the image. It's accessibility. It's also good for Google really, really, really likes images to have alt text.

Meredith: 10:22

Oh, because Google wants the.

Meredith's husband: 10:23

Web, the Internet, to be accessible to everybody. Imagine how many people are around the world with slow internet connections Lots Okay, they might not see the image. It might load too slowly. Google wants. Google wants their experience using the internet to be decent also. And vision impaired people Google, we want their experience to be good also. That's the reason for alt text. The myth that always, always, always, always gets passed around is put your keywords into your image alt text, and I've said before, don't do that unless it's appropriate. So what I see often is photographers like say New York wedding photographer.

Meredith's husband: 10:58

Yeah, and every single image is alt text, or her alt text is NYC wedding photographer NYC wedding photographer and it's. Don't do that. A picture like this though it would be appropriate you could put some keywords. I mean, this is a picture of a photo of a toddler. It's family photographer. It's a framed print. It's not your exact. It doesn't say children's photography, but there are plenty of related terms that you could use to describe this.

Meredith: 11:24

Okay, and while you're doing it, will you put in the alt text in the place?

Meredith's husband: 11:28

Not right now, okay, maybe later. Also, you could give this image a caption. You can put some keywords in the caption also. Captions are the second most read portions of webpages from some report that I read. First is the headings, second is the image caption and most likely the very first thing that people look at is going to be the image. Right, okay, so that's what I would do. So now we haven't gotten to the text yet, so I'm not going to read the text, but just looking at the text. It's, I don't know, short paragraphs, which is good, easy to read, I think, but it's just a whole bunch of paragraph text.

Meredith: 12:05

Yes.

Meredith's husband: 12:05

There's no headings or subheadings. No, there's not, so I would put some in. Really, yeah, your goal in creating a blog, especially one that's text-based like this, is make it as easy as possible for people to read. I was going to say consume, but let's say read.

Meredith: 12:20

It's going to say consume, but let's say read. Let's say read. I don't want them eating the words.

Meredith's husband: 12:23

So, yeah, I don't know what they would be. They don't need to be anything in particular, but it's just going to make it easier for people to use. I would also, if you can, throw in a second photograph.

Meredith: 12:34

I was going to.

Meredith's husband: 12:35

Yeah, and it doesn't need to be big, like the first one is big. It's the featured image, but it could be something similar, smaller and again, give it image alt text, give it a caption, if you can.

Meredith: 12:45

And caption for those who just started listening.

Meredith's husband: 12:48

Caption. You want me to define a caption. Yes, A caption. An image caption is the caption of text underneath an image.

Meredith: 12:56

Uh-huh Describing it yeah.

Meredith's husband: 12:59

It basically. It will probably be very similar to your alt text.

Meredith: 13:03

That was my next question.

Meredith's husband: 13:04

Yeah, and I think if you do those couple things, work on it a little visually and try and adjust the perspective of it, I think this could be a really good blog.

Meredith: 13:14

Yeah, okay, that's good, thank you.

Meredith's husband: 13:16

So we're going to check back next week and see what you've done, yes or not. We're going to check back next week and see what you've done, yes or not. But what I would say is, if you're listening, you think these ideas are at all worthwhile. Go check out your own blog, yeah. Go pick a single blog on your site that you think you can either change the perspective or make it easier to read visually. Just one, just do one. Yeah, no-transcript.