Improving Blog Content and Engagement

Meredith's husband 0:00

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 0:19

Right , good , yep , okay .

Meredith's husband 0:22

So I'll just recap on that very quickly .

Meredith 0:24

Thank you In case you listen to this .

Meredith's husband 0:25

This is part two .

Meredith 0:27

Okay .

Meredith's husband 0:27

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 0:39

Yeah , yeah , he has above his desk .

Meredith's husband 0:42

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 0:51

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

Meredith's husband 0:55

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 1:02

Yeah , which , coming from a .

Meredith's husband 1:03

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 1:21

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 1:38

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 1:55

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

Meredith's husband 2:03

Here's why that's not really helpful .

Meredith 2:06

It's not Like to differentiate me from other .

Meredith's husband 2:10

That's what your website is for .

Meredith 2:11

Okay .

Meredith's husband 2:12

Your website is to sell your wares .

Meredith 2:14

Right .

Meredith's husband 2:15

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 2:23

Help people , not sell people .

Meredith's husband 2:24

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 3:05

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

Meredith's husband 3:07

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

Meredith 3:11

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

Meredith's husband 3:16

But I explained it .

Meredith 3:17

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

Meredith's husband 3:27

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 3:39

Okay .

Meredith's husband 3:39

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

Meredith 3:46

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

Meredith's husband 3:49

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

Meredith 3:56

This is what it looks like in your room .

Meredith's husband 3:57

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 4:33

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 4:38

Yeah , that case study .

Meredith 4:40

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 4:54

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 5:03

I think you rewrote .

Meredith's husband 5:05

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

Meredith 5:08

I probably did , I can't remember .

Meredith's husband 5:11

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

Meredith 5:14

Yeah .

Meredith's husband 5:14

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 5:25

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 5:49

Wow OK .

Meredith's husband 5:50

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 5:57

Has more potential is what I'm hearing .

Meredith's husband 5:59

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 6:11

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 6:24

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

Meredith 6:30

step . Yes , what would be ?

Meredith's husband 6:32

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 6:44

Where do I put the image caption ?

Meredith's husband 6:46

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 6:58

Like little baby me as a girl .

Meredith's husband 7:00

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 7:10

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

Meredith's husband 7:13

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

Meredith 7:18

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

Meredith's husband 7:23

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 7:30

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

Meredith's husband 7:33

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 7:54

Yeah .

Meredith's husband 7:55

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 8:06

Could they send me their favorite baby picture ?

Meredith's husband 8:09

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 8:30

who is this blog ?

Meredith's husband 8:31

for like who is this ? Who is this intended ?

Meredith 8:33

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 8:45

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 9:10

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 9:26

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 10:05

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 .

Meredith's husband 10:16

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 10:26

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 10:32

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

Enhancing Photography Blog for SEO

Meredith's husband 10:47

. Like here's an idea . As a photographer , you know , obviously , maybe improve upon this idea a little bit with your expertise .

Meredith 10:51

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

Meredith's husband 10:53

But no and .

Meredith 10:57

Yes and and .

Meredith's husband 10:59

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 11:32

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

Meredith's husband 11:36

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

Meredith 11:42

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

Meredith's husband 11:45

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 12:01

Will you show us how to do yeah ?

Meredith's husband 12:03

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

Meredith 12:08

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

Meredith's husband 12:10

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

Meredith 12:12

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

Meredith's husband 12:16

I'll put the link below .

Meredith 12:18

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 12:24

Yeah , I'll put the link below .

Meredith 12:27

I'll check it out . Sure you will .

Meredith's husband 12:32

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 12:51

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 13:11

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 13:26

Right .

Meredith's husband 13:27

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 13:37

Right .

Meredith's husband 13:37

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 13:43

Right .

Meredith's husband 13:43

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 13:51

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

Personalized Blog Strategies for Engagement

Meredith 14:05

owner . Yeah .

Meredith's husband 14:06

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 14:23

I have a little bit of personality .

Meredith's husband 14:26

Okay , so yeah , I hope that helps .

Meredith 14:27

It does actually .

Meredith's husband 14:29

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 14:46

That's very nice .

Meredith's husband 14:48

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