Meredith's husband: 0:24

This podcast. This episode, is about using your blog to be happy. Using your blog to do things that make you happy. Not just for better SEO, because you need to blog. Use your blog to do things that will make you enjoy life more. Do you remember having that shoot a couple years ago where you shot a kid who had autism? Yeah, let me rephrase that If we don't want to shoot kids with autism, you remember photographing a kid who had autism?

Meredith: 0:50

Well, I photographed a school of autistic kids.

Meredith's husband: 0:53

But before that I mean a couple of years ago.

Meredith: 0:55

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Meredith's husband: 0:57

It was a single family.

Meredith: 0:59

Yeah, with one kid. And you came, yes, yeah, who had autism?

Meredith's husband: 1:03

Yeah, and you came home. I remember you coming home from that. You were super excited, you were just buzzy. He was the best you were like me after having too much coffee.

Meredith: 1:12

Yeah, I'm actually, can I say, I'm photographing. I then photographed them again and then I'm photographing them again this weekend.

Meredith's husband: 1:20

Oh, wow, that's great and I remember also you photographing the school with autistic children. Yeah, and you came home also from that like super electric.

Meredith: 1:28

Yeah, with autistic children. Yeah, and you came home also from that like super electric, yeah, okay.

Meredith's husband: 1:31

So let's fast forward a little bit. Okay, to, can I say, your ADHD diagnosis.

Meredith: 1:37

Yes.

Meredith's husband: 1:38

And then your subsequent photographing ADHD kids, although not on purpose.

Meredith: 1:44

Yeah.

Meredith's husband: 1:45

You have done that and you have found that you connect with them. Yeah, you resonate with them. You resonate with them, I should say you're able to connect with them, whereas not everyone can. That's sometimes challenging?

Meredith: 1:57

Perhaps? Yeah, because I speak the language.

Meredith's husband: 2:00

So you remember talking about this as a service that you might want to offer, that you wanted to do more of this.

Meredith: 2:05

Yeah, after the very first shoot I wanted to.

Meredith's husband: 2:08

Yeah, I know, know, I remember the problem was and is that's not something you can really just put up on your site and say you offer as a service, just out of the blue. I feel like it's, that's a big step. You don't really know what, you don't know what kind of search activity is out there let's say, you don't know if people are looking for that you don't't know, et cetera.

Meredith: 2:28

I know people are looking for it, but I know especially people who are high on the autistic spectrum, who have children, rather that are high on the autistic spectrum, always fear and they don't want to approach photographers because they think, oh my kid is going to.

Meredith's husband: 2:44

It's just, there's a lot of surrounding it. So it would be nice to have something on the site that makes those people feel more comfortable, though right. Unwelcomed, yeah. So let's fast forward a little bit more. And you recently have started blogging, yes, to my own surprise, and the blogs have been pretty good, also to my surprise. And you recently asked me if you should blog about, if this was something you should blog about yeah, photographing kids with autism, with ADHD neuro other neurodiversities yeah.

Meredith's husband: 3:18

And at first I didn't really know, because I did some some very quick keyword research and I didn't see any search activity for that. But then I started thinking, well, let's just do it, even though we don't know exactly how many people are searching for that sort of thing. Let's just do it, and then we'll get feedback Right. The problem with keyword research is that you can't tell exactly what people are looking for.

Meredith: 3:41

Google just kind of gives you. You need to research, right. That's why it's called research.

Meredith's husband: 3:45

No, that is the research. Like typical keyword research, Google is just going to give you kind of rough estimates. That's the best you can get. However, if you write a blog about something and people start to see it and it becomes visible in Google, then you can see exactly how people are searching.

Meredith: 4:02

Hence the necessity for blogs. Yeah, so they secretly can help you.

Meredith's husband: 4:06

They can Exactly blogs, yeah, so they secretly can help you. They can.

Meredith: 4:11

Exactly.

Meredith's husband: 4:11

So what we're doing now is you've written that blog about photographing kids with ADHD. I think it was specifically ADHD in that blog and, like I said, I did some keyword research. I can't tell you what other searches are happening out there, but the step now is I got a little bit of an idea about what types of searches are happening. So we're going to fine tune that blog a little bit and we're going to publish it Okay, and then we're going to see how it connects with people.

Meredith: 4:42

Okay.

Meredith's husband: 4:42

Then we will know exactly what people, because right now we don't really know what to target exactly.

Meredith's husband: 4:48

Do we talk about photographing kids with ADHD, with autism? Do we say neurodiversity, what are the popular terms? We don't know really what resonates. So we're going to publish that blog and then we're going to see what resonates and then we'll come back in a month or two months or in the future at some point and we'll fine tune again. We'll have a better idea of what people are looking for. Then we can take the next step about oh, what resonates? What might you put on your site? What might you start to offer?

Meredith: 5:16

as a service. So the people listening, who may not focus on that but may have their own special niches, can do the same.

Meredith's husband: 5:26

Yes, in fact, I would say that's, that's, you've, you've, you've gotten to the point before I have.

Meredith's husband: 5:32

Welcome to my world. You should use your blog not only just for, like, seo purposes and doing stuff that you feel you need to do, but find something that you like to do, something that makes you happy. Yeah, use your blog to explore that, without having to make it official and put it on your homepage. This is what I do, because that's a big step, because a lot of times you might want to do something like I don't really think people would appreciate that or there's probably nobody looking for that. Your blog is a perfect opportunity to explore those things a little bit and figure that out.

Meredith's husband: 6:07

There's got to be some part of your business that you really like yes, and maybe is not like the main focus of your business. Yes, like you really connected well with kids with autism and ADHD and you found you really liked it, but you don't think there's a market out there for that.

Meredith: 6:26

I do think there's a market, but I don't really know there probably is there.

Meredith's husband: 6:29

Probably is there, probably is. I agree there probably is, but we don't know how to go about it. To access it so we will use the blog. Now that you are blogging, now I'm blogging, we can use the blog to explore that a little bit. Find a niche and another added benefit of blogging about kind of niche topics like this you can get to the top of Google a whole lot faster with a niche topic than you can by targeting, say, family photography, brooklyn.

Meredith: 6:55

Right.

Meredith's husband: 6:56

Because there's not going to be anybody. I should say there are probably going to be very few people competing for that niche term. So I took that recent blog that you did.

Meredith: 7:05

Yes.

Meredith's husband: 7:06

And I did a little video, demo, tutorial type of thing about how we can fix it. Actually, I shouldn't call it a tutorial, it's just a demo. It's not like a course, but I made a little video just doing what I would do as the next step for this blog in targeting that niche and I just kind of went along. It's like an over-the-shoulder video just explaining what I'm doing and why. That's in the free section of SEIQ. I'll put the link below so you can go find this episode on your favorite podcast player and then visit the link.

Meredith's husband: 7:40

That's never going to happen. I'll save the link.

Meredith: 7:43

What is the danger of putting a blog out and then realizing it's not helping and you don't like it and then taking it off?

Meredith's husband: 7:53

There's very little danger to that. Oh, there you go. If you put a blog up and then you decide that you don't like it and you want to take it down, the only danger would be if a whole bunch of other people like it and it's getting a lot of attention and a lot of links and a lot of traffic, and then you take it down. What's the likelihood of that? Close to zero right.

Meredith: 8:13

Is there a way to check first?

Meredith's husband: 8:15

first, what do you mean? Just before you take it down oh, absolutely how I got about a hundred other episodes you can check out meredith's laughing so hard that you can't hear her. Oh my stomach hurts.