Improving Blog Content and Engagement

Meredith's husband 0:24

Or I should say, last week we talked about your blog, you remember? We talked about a bunch of your blogs, but in particular, which, surprisingly, I found were very good. You've been blogging recently. Blogs are really good, but we picked the one that I thought was the weakest Not as good, and we? Talked about how to make it better.

Meredith 0:43

Right, good, yep, okay.

Meredith's husband 0:47

So I'll just recap on that very quickly.

Meredith 0:48

Thank you In case you listen to this.

Meredith's husband 0:49

This is part two.

Meredith 0:51

Okay.

Meredith's husband 0:51

So the blog was about why you you were talking to seemed like potential clients, why you should take baby photos of your kids now, why they are important, and in that you referenced your dad's photos of you.

Meredith 1:03

Yeah, yeah, he has above his desk.

Meredith's husband 1:06

So but the the way that blog looked to me as a reader, it looked like essentially you saying, hey, this is why you should buy my shit.

Meredith 1:16

Right, this is why you should hire me, not just necessarily a photographer.

Meredith's husband 1:19

Which it was basically why you should hire a children's photographer. Yeah, which, coming from a well, that's not really a helpful. Blog Like that is the go-to for a lot of business owners. Hey, why you should hire a children's photographer.

Meredith 1:26

Yeah, which, coming from a.

Meredith's husband 1:27

Well, that's not really a helpful blog Like that is the go to for a lot of business owners. Hey, why you should hire me? Why are my stuff's the greatest? That's good stuff to put on your website. Yes, why you should hire me? Who's going to go to a blog and read a blog about how great the person's stuff is? That's not a blog.

Meredith 1:45

That's not a blog. That's not helpful to anybody. Isn't there? Didn't you say? Didn't you recommend things such as here are some ideas of what to wear at a photo shoot. Yes, so then tell me how. The tangent of this is why photos are important. Because it's yeah.

Meredith's husband 2:02

Because people go online and they say and they type in searches like what should I wear in photos? Right To look skinny, to look tall, to look better. People are searching for that. They are looking for those answers. Now I'm seeing you can also send your potential clients there after they've hired you, before their session.

Meredith 2:19

It's a resource for a couple different audiences, Just saying hey, you should hire me to take your kids' photos.

Meredith's husband 2:27

Here's why that's not really helpful.

Meredith 2:30

It's not Like to differentiate me from other.

Meredith's husband 2:34

That's what your website is for.

Meredith 2:35

Okay.

Meredith's husband 2:36

Your website is to sell your wares.

Meredith 2:38

Right.

Meredith's husband 2:39

To differentiate yourself, to show your photography. Your blog is there to help people Okay, not to sell people. Help people, not sell people.

Meredith 2:47

Help people, not sell people.

Meredith's husband 2:48

So your blog, to me anyway, screamed buy my stuff? I guess so, and we talked about some ways to adjust that and one of my big recommendations, or my biggest recommendation, was change of the perspective. Yeah, you wrote that blog from your perspective, from Meredith's perspective, talking to your potential audience why you should buy my stuff. And I've said changing the perspective. You, meredith's perspective, talking to your potential audience, why you should buy my stuff, and I've said changing the perspective. You don't even need to change the blog all that much, you just flip the perspective and it becomes a more of a resource. We talked about case studies. We talked about some popular formats that people use, case studies, things like round tables, q and A's, survey results, things like that.

Meredith 3:29

Okay, I'm going to take your word for it.

Meredith's husband 3:31

Yeah. Yeah, it didn't resonate with you then either.

Meredith 3:35

However, Because I don't know what a case study is. I know.

Meredith's husband 3:40

But I explained it.

Meredith 3:41

You did. You don't know what a case study is. Go back and listen to the case study.

Meredith's husband 3:52

Because you actually you did kind of to my own surprise, you did go ahead and you revamped this blog yeah. And you kind of did make it a case study. I did. You made it a personal case study. Let me tell. I'll do a brief comparison of before and after.

Meredith 4:03

Okay.

Meredith's husband 4:03

So, before the image started, with an image of your photography framed in a mock-up, room.

Meredith 4:10

Oh right, yes, right, yes, yes, correct, now I know where we are.

Meredith's husband 4:14

Which, to me again, as a user, immediately the first nanosecond screams to me hey, buy my stuff here it is.

Meredith 4:20

This is what it looks like in your room.

Meredith's husband 4:21

Hire me, hire me, hire me, hire me. H, you changed it, I did. You changed it to a picture of the prince that your father has of you as a child above his desk in his office. Right, right, totally different perspective. Yes, that drew me in right away. Oh, it was the difference between hey, I'm great, buy my stuff here. It is All of a sudden it was a personal story. Oh, okay, kind of like a case study. It was a case study, like you're telling people, or in the original blog you were telling people why they need to buy or why they need to hire you, why they need to take photos of their kids and hang them on their walls.

Meredith 4:57

Right, that was kind of the gist of it, right, yeah, yeah, exactly, you made it a case study about your father and you.

Meredith's husband 5:03

Yeah, that case study.

Meredith 5:04

Yeah, because it is amazing. Obviously you were not thinking about case studies, but no, I was just trying to make it personal because it means so much to me that he has photos of me as a baby in his home.

Meredith's husband 5:18

Still as a reader pulled me in right away how about that I actually read the. I actually read the blog the first one. I was like, oh Jesus, I don't want to read this, but I actually read this.

Meredith 5:27

I think you rewrote.

Meredith's husband 5:29

Like I said, I didn't read the original, but I think you rewrote the text as well.

Meredith 5:32

I probably did, I can't remember.

Meredith's husband 5:35

I thought it was very interesting. You took the original photo.

Meredith 5:38

Yeah.

Meredith's husband 5:38

The kind of stock photo of your photography hanging on a wall in a frame. You moved it down. It's still in there, but it's smaller, it's towards the end. Okay, fair enough, I accept that as a reader.

Meredith's husband 5:49

Okay, it's what you do A couple other things that we had mentioned last episode adding image, alt text, adding some subheadings, headlines and subheadlines, image caption. You didn't do any of that stuff. No, I don't know how, but that's okay. Yeah, that's okay, we can do that in the next, we can do that in the next round. Just the change in perspective is makes it infinitely better.

Meredith 6:13

Wow OK.

Meredith's husband 6:14

Now I would say how do we, how do you take it a little bit further, like, yeah, I think it's a good blog, ok, or has a whole lot more potential.

Meredith 6:21

Has more potential is what I'm hearing.

Meredith's husband 6:23

Right. So looking at it now, it's basically the same format. Now it has two images instead of one and then some paragraph text, no headings, although it's not really long enough that I think you need headings.

Meredith 6:36

It's just a little personal story, it just didn't seem it. Oddly enough, my blogs aren't long, which is shocking Because I can say the same things 20 gajillion different ways.

Meredith's husband 6:48

We are aware. So what would be a good next?

Meredith 6:54

step. Yes, what would be?

Meredith's husband 6:56

the next step, adding to that featured image of the baby photos, you as a baby in the framed print. An image caption would be great, because right away I'm wondering well, who is that? What is that?

Meredith 7:08

Where do I put the image caption?

Meredith's husband 7:10

Right beneath the image. Okay, the caption could be and here you could put in keywords here this type of image, it would be appropriate to put in an image caption or alt text.

Meredith 7:22

Like little baby me as a girl.

Meredith's husband 7:24

So your main keywords would be children's photographer, right, right. So that's what everybody typically wants to use as their image alt text, which is almost never appropriate, but here it is children's photography.

Meredith 7:34

Right, I would add the fact that it's you.

Meredith's husband 7:37

I would put in something like toddler Meredith or something like that Baby.

Meredith 7:42

Meredith, the first time my family hired a professional photographer. Yeah, you could, my family hired a professional photographer.

Meredith's husband 7:47

Yeah, you could. I use the term toddler because you don't really photograph babies and I try to keep the keywords kind of more related to what you photograph.

Meredith 7:54

I do now photograph babies, okay, so then, baby Meredith is super.

Meredith's husband 7:57

Yeah, baby Meredith. Then somewhere in the copy you can say this was the first time my parents hired a professional photographer, right? I think that would really help pull people in even more All right. Thank you. Then my feeling at looking at the blog is that it was there, it was good, but it just kind of ended. Yeah, there was no real call to action.

Meredith 8:18

Yeah.

Meredith's husband 8:19

Now call to action. I don't mean in the sense of, like your website, call to action like a button that says hire me, contact me, book a session. Not that kind of call to action, but something for the reader to then do.

Meredith 8:30

Could they send me their favorite baby picture?

Meredith's husband 8:33

That would be kind of a big commitment, I would say Especially, you know if people are reading this blog from all over the country or maybe all over the world. That's a big step to ask somebody to do. My thought is this you tell me if I'm, if I'm wrong. But first you want to say well, who?

Meredith 8:54

who is this blog?

Meredith's husband 8:55

for like who is this? Who is this intended?

Meredith 8:58

for I would say people who are on the fence and say, why would I need to do this? Now? I'm going to remember it. They're just going to keep growing and changing. What am I going to do? This now? I'm going to remember it.

Meredith's husband 9:09

They're just going to keep growing and changing. What am I going to do? Well, that's their attitude. But who are they? I would say this is probably for people who have never had pictures of their kids on the walls, pictures of their family, like me, like until I met, you never had pictures of anybody on the walls. We have a picture of the two of us in ireland above our fireplace which is wonderful. I love it, I do too.

Meredith 9:34

It was always a fantasy for me to have a picture of me and my beloved in my home. You're the only person I've ever had that of. I think I'm gonna cry, or for longer than like a month.

Meredith's husband 9:50

So, with that in mind. So if you're writing a blog, if that's the audience who you're writing to, their next step is probably not going to be to hire you and buy some framed prints. Also, there's a good chance that this is your blog. People are not going to be in Brooklyn. Hiring you is not even an option. Right, people are not going to be in Brooklyn. Hiring you is not even an option. So, with that in mind, what would be your advice to these people to get started on this path? It could be something like take one of your favorite iPhone photos and send it in to. Where are some places that can print family photos super cheap? Remember, this is somebody doing it for the first time. They've never had.

Meredith 10:29

But you see, that's the whole thing. Is that? One of the things that's important to me is they don't just print it cheaply, that they invest in it because it's going to last.

Enhancing Photography Blog for SEO

Meredith's husband 10:40

But remember this is something who has never done it for printed out on a home computer and stick it on the wall and see how you like having prints of your kids on the wall.

Meredith 10:50

See how it makes you feel and see how it makes your kids feel, because that's really what everything's for is the kids.

Meredith's husband 10:56

So that's, you know, something like that could be the call to action. Like it's not a call to action, like hey, book me now. Here's a link to my session page, but it's here's something for you can do. Like here's a link to my session page, but here's something you can do. Like here's an idea. As a photographer, you know, obviously, maybe improve upon this idea a little bit with your expertise.

Meredith 11:15

I don't know how possible that's going to be Easy.

Meredith's husband 11:17

But no and.

Meredith 11:21

Yes and and.

Meredith's husband 11:23

And Another thing that I think you might want to do is in that blog you still have the image that shows your own photography framed. That image is still on the blog and you say PS, something like I'm going to paraphrase PS if you want to hire me to take your kids' photos, blah, blah, blah, that's great, that's perfect. I would just take that sentence If you want to hire me to take your kids' photos, link the term kids' photos to your children's photography page.

Meredith 11:56

Oh, I see, See, yeah, and I believe you also mentioned artwork.

Meredith's husband 12:00

Yeah, take the term artwork and link it to your products page, your artwork page.

Meredith 12:06

Now I see where you're coming from and where you're going.

Meredith's husband 12:09

Now also, there were several technical things which you did not do, like the URL. Nope, the URL is terrible. Yeah, it's off. It's the default URL, which they're always awful. That's something you want to change Rather than get into all of that stuff now.

Meredith 12:25

Will you show us how to do yeah?

Meredith's husband 12:27

Okay, I will link to the ultimate blog checklist. We did an episode about this.

Meredith 12:32

Yeah, I remember and I have a PDF of it.

Meredith's husband 12:34

I'll just link to that below about the things that you need to check.

Meredith 12:36

Do you have a thing where you show it, where you show like your-?

Meredith's husband 12:40

I'll put the link below.

Meredith 12:42

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Where you? Where you have like a video of you doing it and showing where to put it.

Meredith's husband 12:48

Yeah, I'll put the link below.

Meredith 12:51

I'll check it out. Sure you will.

Meredith's husband 12:56

I'll follow along so you can do stuff like fix it up technically. Now, the one downside to a blog like this and I hesitate to call it a downside, but this is still not really great for SEO, call it a downside, but it's this is still not really great for seo like there's no, there's not a lot of value here for seo because it's not going to, uh, match up with what people are searching for.

Meredith 13:15

there's like, when I, when you try to imagine what keyword would lead into a page like this, I can't really think of any I do know that there have been studies shown that kids growing up in a home sorry, where there are photos of themselves, feel more a part of the family and feel important.

Meredith's husband 13:35

I understand that. I agree with that, but who, what? How would that translate into a search? Who? What is somebody searching for in order to find that? I don't think that exists. But my point is not every single blog has to be specifically for SEO.

Meredith 13:50

Right.

Meredith's husband 13:51

Like somebody might link. I think this is a pretty good and interesting blog. Somebody might link to it or share it on social. That's going to help your SEO. That's good for SEO as a whole.

Meredith 14:01

Right.

Personalized Blog Strategies for Engagement

Meredith's husband 14:01

But it's not like this blog is going to get a lot of traffic because somebody is searching for how to do something.

Meredith 14:07

Right.

Meredith's husband 14:07

That could also although you could enhance this even more like that could be your call to action how to frame a print from costco. You could.

Meredith 14:15

You could do something that would be a bit of a stretch yeah, I'm just saying that because I want people to come to me to do it but I'm just saying you don't not every single blog has to be just for SEO, right, especially as a solo business owner. Yeah.

Meredith's husband 14:30

So, like my clients, they hire teams of authors. Yes every single blog has a purpose. They have a strategy for everything. As a solo business owner and somebody who works directly with their clients on a personal level, you want to show some personality, and I think this blog does that.

Meredith 14:47

I have a little bit of personality.

Meredith's husband 14:50

Okay, so yeah, I hope that helps.

Meredith 14:51

It does actually.

Meredith's husband 14:53

If it helps you listening to this, let me know in the comments. I would love to hear it. Or if you want to join us on SEIQ, we do a session once or twice a month like a sort of blogging brainstorming session where we talk about all of our individual blogs. Yeah, we do the same thing. You can join us there.

Meredith 15:10

That's very nice.

Meredith's husband 15:12

Oh, the day that Meredith actually follows one of my links.