Meredith's husband: 0:24

Got a question today and this is a question I've gotten a number of times from photographers in my consulting world small businesses people struggle with this. I've seen people struggle with this a lot, even if they're not asking this question, and from what you have said in talking about what you hear in your groups and your online courses and those sorts of things, this is something people are talking about there, okay, so would you please read the question?

Meredith: 0:51

Yes, it is, hey, meredith's husband. I'm a family photographer and I post on Instagram almost every day. I keep hearing other photographers say I need to blog too, but, honestly, I've never gotten a client through my blog. Is this still important, or should I just focus on Instagram, since that's where people find me?

Meredith's husband: 1:13

Okay, this is a great question.

Meredith: 1:15

It is a great question and I hear it often.

Meredith's husband: 1:18

First, good job in getting clients from Instagram. Yeah, you're doing something right, yeah. Okay, I don't know how that's, I'm not a big social media user or marketer, et cetera, but if you're getting clients that way, congrats. Nice job on that, yeah. Second, like I said, I see and I hear this dilemma a lot for people.

Meredith: 1:38

Yeah, because you want to know where you're putting your eggs.

Meredith's husband: 1:41

Right. So my question to you, meredith yes, from what you are hearing in your groups, what is the consensus around what photographers should do on their blog in terms of timing, how often they should blog and what they should blog about? Just kind of, what's the general feeling.

Meredith: 1:58

Well, it depends, because they're different groups. There's one group that I'm in that's very much social media, social media post you know X amount of times. And then there's also the group where that's kind of I had AI write this blog for me, so that was easy.

Meredith's husband: 2:15

Right. So how often do people those photographers in your groups? How often are people saying that you need to blog?

Meredith: 2:22

I think it's like once per week.

Meredith's husband: 2:24

Okay, yeah, that's kind of. That is similar to what I get from people who I speak to. They are under the understanding that I should be blogging every week.

Meredith: 2:32

Yeah.

Meredith's husband: 2:33

What about? Let me just, and for my own knowledge, what is the consensus in those groups about? If you're using social media, if you're marketing on social media, how often should you be posting?

Meredith: 2:42

I think a lot of people on social media.

Meredith's husband: 2:45

Yes, just social media.

Meredith: 2:47

Social media at least three times a week.

Meredith's husband: 2:49

Yeah, so from what I hear in my, so when I'm part of a marketing team, there's always a social media team. Right, there's a content team that takes care of blogging, there's a social media team, there's me, there's an organic team, and we all work together. But I know that the social media team, their goal is always to post multiple times per day, every day, on whatever platform you're active on, multiple times on all those platforms, and you really should be active on at least three platforms, so that's a lot of posting.

Meredith: 3:17

Oh my gosh, who has time for that?

Meredith's husband: 3:20

Yeah, well remember that's a team.

Meredith: 3:21

Oh right, so you're hiring them to do it, right?

Meredith's husband: 3:23

And it's their job. So to me, I mean, yeah, you're right, who has time to do that? To me, posting four times a day on every social media platform, compare that to even once a week, which you don't need to do for your blog that is a lot, but anyway. So I'm just kind of comparing the two baskets that we want to split our eggs into Okay. So my first response to this question and there's a lot here and there's kind of a lot to unpack the person who asked that I've never gotten a client through my blog Okay, well, my response to that is and you're not going to, you're not supposed to. You're not supposed to write blogs that you're trying to sell your services to.

Meredith's husband: 4:04

If that's your approach to blogging, you're doing it wrong, right? Okay, occasionally, you might have a blog where you announce a promotion or something or some sort of special announcement, or you announce maybe, like you have mini sessions. This is something I hear. Right, people do a certain time of the year, they have mini sessions, they blog, they announce it and they get things that way. Okay, that's an exception, but in general, you don't blog in order to get business, and I'll get more into this in a second, the other reason I like this question is because, like I said, I've come across a lot of people who I think struggle.

Meredith's husband: 4:38

They don't necessarily ask this question, but they struggle with this concept, and I say that because I often see especially photographers with like old blogs, like we'll review their site, and they have a bunch of really old blogs. Maybe they were carried over from their previous site, or sometimes even two and three versions of their previous websites, and the blogs no longer even work. Like the images are broken, the text doesn't display, and I've seen this many times. And when we go over this, I'm like well, what's your rationale here for keeping these online, because these are completely not even usable to a person? And the response is usually something along the lines of well, I was told that's what Google likes and my response is what? On what planet? I don't say this exactly, but on what planet do you live, where you think Google is going out and looking to reward sites that have tons and tons of blog content that doesn't even function, it doesn't even work, like there's no text there?

Meredith: 5:40

I don't think that we actually go back and check them. We just are like oh, it's going to take care of itself. Some magical way.

Meredith's husband: 5:49

But my point is, when we go back and I'm working with a student and we go back and we look at their blog and we find these things, sometimes they say like, oh yeah, I know of those and I left them there on purpose because that's what Google likes. People tell me those blogs are good for SEO. So let me ask you as a user, meredith Zinner, so I would consider that blog to be garbage. Okay, it's not worth anything.

Meredith's husband: 6:13

You, as a user when you go out and you use Google, are you looking for garbage? Are you looking for pages that don't work and have no content and just are garbage?

Meredith: 6:25

No, so why would you think that Google is? I think people think honestly the more I throw at it, the more chances I have of something sticking.

Meredith's husband: 6:35

Yes, so a blog like that is garbage, right, right, a lot of garbage. If you produce a lot of it, a lot of garbage is still garbage. You're making your situation worse. You are burying your website in garbage. You are appearing to Google like you are a big pile of crap, your website. Okay and I'm being pretty blunt because I want to make a point I appreciate it.

Meredith: 7:02

I appreciate your lemmings.

Meredith's husband: 7:05

Let me get back to when I said blogging in order to get clients is the wrong approach. Let me talk a little bit about the wrong approach. A wrong approach and a better approach. Okay, I would say rather than trying to focus on producing one blog every week, okay, that's 52 potential pieces of garbage per year. Focus on maybe one decent blog post per month. That's 12 perhaps better blog posts. That is so much better.

Meredith's husband: 7:43

Okay, so imagine if you're Google comparing two different websites that you are potentially, and one of them has one blog every month and it has some valuable content there, yeah. And one of them has one blog every month and it has some valuable content there, yeah, and the other one has 52. Every single week it pumps out more stuff that is completely useless.

Meredith: 7:55

Now can you give an example of something completely useless?

Meredith's husband: 7:58

Well, one example is blogs that are carried over from previous sites and they don't even function right anymore. The images are broken, they don't look right, they don't work Okay, that's one example. Clear images are broken. They don't look right, they don't work. Okay, that's one example. Another example is like, let's say, as a blogger, a website owner, you go to chat GPT and you say I am a children's photographer, write a blog for me. Yes, what value is that going to have to readers out there? Okay, number one, let me. That was a rhetorical question. I guess All chat GPT is going to do is they're going to go out and they're going to look at other blogs.

Meredith's husband: 8:31

Regurgitate? Yeah, they're going to. So they're not creating anything new or unique. They're not creating your voice. Even if you train it to write like you, in your tone, in your style, that's not your voice, in that you are the originator of that content, right Okay?

Meredith: 8:50

Intrinsically, there's nothing new there.

Meredith's husband: 8:52

There's no value there. Ai. So increasingly, people are going to AI to do searches. So if you're doing that, here's what you're doing as a website owner you're going to AI and you're saying blog about children's photography. Are you then expecting AI to someone else's search to cite the blog that AI wrote as a resource to this other person? Like no, that's not going to happen, right, okay?

Meredith: 9:19

But people think, oh, it's easy, and all these sites are offering to do this.

Meredith's husband: 9:23

Yes, and here's a new. Yeah, I know Exactly.

Meredith: 9:26

And people are like great, that saves me so much time.

Meredith's husband: 9:29

That leads to another potential problem. Like you can go and create 10 blogs per day, yeah, in like less than an hour you could create probably 100 blogs a day in an hour. There is going to be and there already is an absolute explosion in the amount of AI-generated blogs out there. The amount of content is going to just mushroom. You're not going to get ahead by doing the same thing that everybody else is doing. If somebody had a magic button and I know all these websites and all these companies are promising-.

Meredith: 9:59

Promising a magic button.

Meredith's husband: 10:02

The magic easy button. Just enter your keyword and press, click and we'll generate a blog. It's going to put you right on the top of Google. Okay, well, how many people have that same button? Right? There's only one spot at the top of Google, right? Okay, you see my point here. I do 100%. My point is use common sense. Right, try to use common sense. Think as if you were Google. What type of content would you want to put at the top of your rankings or put in the results of your AI searches?

Meredith: 10:29

Valuable Something original please. That caters to your question.

Meredith's husband: 10:35

Now that obviously begs the question well, what is good content? What is valuable content?

Meredith: 10:41

Yes, it does.

Meredith's husband: 10:42

Well, we've already said what it's not. It's not just plugging your keyword into ChatGPT. Now my response there's no limit to the number of potentially good blogs or the types of blogs that could be good, so I can't tell you exactly what to do.

Meredith: 10:56

Clearly.

Meredith's husband: 11:01

My advice there must be something that you are good at you as a photographer, you as a business owner, you as a website owner, you as a professional, a person. There's something that you do, hopefully in your professional world, that you are really good at. You are better than other people. Yes, okay, share something about that. Make it valuable. Like, how many times have I said make your blogs a resource for people.

Meredith: 11:19

Yes, a gazillion.

Meredith's husband: 11:20

If you can do that once per month, even once per quarter, that's so much better than just pumping out useless information onto your blog every week.

Meredith: 11:31

Right, it's almost like a cookie cutter. You know that everyone's like, but mine's shaped like a Christmas tree, mine's shaped like a bird, I have a giraffe, but it's all the same cookie. Yes, you know, the dough is all the same.

Meredith's husband: 11:44

Yeah, that's actually yeah. Yes, yeah, that's a good analogy.

Meredith: 11:48

My Venmo is.

Meredith's husband: 11:49

There's no reward for lots of garbage.

Meredith: 11:52

This is true.

Meredith's husband: 11:53

Don't race to the bottom of the bin.

Meredith: 11:55

Yes.

Meredith's husband: 11:56

All right, I hope this helps.