Running a small business is no easy task. It's messy and thrilling and terrifying all at the same time. But no matter what, it's definitely a journey worth taking. As a mom of two littles, I know the daily struggles, and I'm here to walk this journey with you. If you're ready to feel empowered, encouraged and on fire for the things you truly love, then you're in the right place. I'm Rebecca Rice, a pizza loving hot chocolate drinking family photographer and educator. And this is the business Journey podcast.
Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of the business Journey podcast. I'm
your host, Rebecca rice. And today we're on episode 78. Talking about why I still blog every week. So I'm really excited to dive in. Before I do, I wanted to let you know about a new guide that I have just for you guys, it's totally free. That the goal is to help you grow your email list from zero to 100 subscribers. So if you have less than 100 subscribers, you're wanting to break that 100 mark, you can grab this guide, it's a step by step guide to walk you through the things that you need to do. And I'm just excited to see how you'll use it and hit your first 100 subscribers. So you can grab that we have it linked in the show notes, if you want to type it in. It's Rebecca rice photo.com/email. So be sure to grab that download, I know that it's going to be helpful for you. Let's talk about blogging. Blogging is honestly one of my favorite things, just about long term marketing. I used to hate blogging, which is kind of funny, because now it's one of my like top sources to my website, like how people find me is through my blog. And so it's been really, really great over the years in the long term. I think I hated it so much at the beginning, because it is a long term play, you don't get the instant gratification, there's not really like a short term hit of dopamine to help keep you going. But blogging has turned out to be super, super effective in not only my business, but the business of so many other photographers that I teach. And so in case you're wondering, blogging is not dead. I literally hear people sometimes say like, oh, I don't blog, because social media is like where it's at. But I'm telling you blogging is I feel like even more important now than ever, especially in the age of social media with algorithms and all the things Search Engine Optimization, or SEO basically getting found on Google is a lot easier than getting seen on social media. I know it's super frustrating when you post something like a real or a post. And you know, you get like two likes, and that can be so frustrating. But it's a lot easier to like play by the rules for getting found on Google because the rules are pretty like standard and like open to what helps you get found. So talking about SEO or Search Engine Optimization, basically, there's so many things that you can do on there to help get found on Google. If you have a WordPress blog like I do. I use show it for my website host and WordPress blog, like comes with it. And WordPress has a free plugin called Yoast SEO, Yoast y o a s t. SEO that basically gives you like a checklist of things that you need to do to optimize your blog. And so you don't have to wonder how do I you know, optimize this to get found on Google. It literally gives you the step by step instructions to do that. So what I love about blogging and why I still blog every single week is the shelf life of a blog is literally years. It's so much longer than a social media posts. And what I mean by that the shelf life, basically somebody can find a blog post from years ago, I still get hits on blogs that I wrote, you know, 234 years ago. And you know, you can't say the same about social media. People don't find social media posts from four years ago unless they are like endlessly scrolling and like super creeping. But blog posts that get found on Google, they can absolutely have a much longer shelf life, not only in the posts section like of Google like websites, but also in the images if you optimize your images for SEO. Then when you type something in the Google search bar, you can click over to images and you can see so many different images from blog posts. So like for me, if you type in Franklin, a family photographer Franklin is a city close to where I live in the Nashville area. Then you'll see images from blogs that I wrote, gosh, backing In 2020, so over two years ago that at the time of this recording, those images are still at the top of that Google search in the images category. So it's really, really cool to see. And I literally have people still, like, reach out to me asking for photo sessions saying that they found me on Google. And I know exactly like where it is that they found me from, which was so cool. Another reason that I really love blogging is that blog content is really easy to repurpose. And what I mean by that is you make the content once, let's
say, you know, I did a photo session, and I put it up on my blog, I can then repurpose that blog and put it a lot of places so I can share it on my social media. I can send it to my email list if I want to. But my personal favorite way to repurpose blog content is through Pinterest. Pinterest is obviously really great for visuals like photography, because people are looking at pictures. That's all they do is scroll Pinterest, and they're looking at pictures. And so I use tailwind to automate my Pinterest and basically like once a month, we load up the queue. And it takes you know, a couple hours. And then for the next month, pins are just going out automatically. And so I Pinterest I think is my number two resource for like people going to my website, behind YouTube when I started YouTube, that became my number one like driving force of traffic to my website. But Pinterest, I believe is number two. And so people are finding even super old pins. Every year around Easter time, I have people checking out my Easter minis that I did, like in 2018, or something like that it was so long ago. And those pins still get hits my website all the time, especially during Easter, the shelf life is super, super long. And you can really easily repurpose that content to things like Pinterest. Another reason I really love blogging is acts as an extended portfolio. So obviously, we have a portfolio on our website. Hopefully, you have a portfolio, sort of in your like Instagram feed or your Facebook page images. But occasionally I'll have clients ask for, you know, examples of specific sessions. So like one that we get a lot is like lifestyle newborn sessions. So they'll say, Well, can I see an example of a lifestyle newborn session, because everybody knows what it posed newborn session looks like they're less familiar with lifestyle newborns. And
so I'm able to point them to a blog post of a lifestyle newborn session on my blog, I can super easily search that I can grab the link and send it to them so they can go check it out. Maybe they're wanting to see images from a specific location. So you know, if we shoot at Adriatica, a lot in Dallas, and so it's just a really beautiful area. Let's say clients want to see Adriatica, we have a blog post that is like a location spotlight. I think this one's on my associate team blog. So not necessarily mine, don't go searching for x, you probably won't find it. But on their blog, you would find it. So we do location spotlights so we could show a blog post about Adriatica. That's got lots of images from lots of different sessions showing all the areas we like to shoot. And that's a really easy thing to send to clients. Some different examples of things that you can blog, I mentioned a couple obviously, blogging photo sessions, you can blog, those location spotlights, you can even do things like helpful tips. So like what to bring to your senior session, or how to get your kids to cooperate or whatever, different helpful tips that you can send your clients along the way. But another way that you can utilize your blog is to answer FAQs. So pay attention to what questions people ask leading up to their sessions. And those would be really great things to make as blog posts. So you don't just have to blog photo sessions, you can answer your clients questions. A question we get a lot is can I bring my dog to my session? So you can have a whole blog post about pets and like your pet policy and how to ensure that the session goes really well. Maybe you have somebody asking, Well, what time of day is best to like schedule our session, you could have a blog post about the times that you choose to shoot for best lighting and just educate your clients in that way. So there's so many different types of blog posts that you can put out. My associate team right now is putting out one photo session blog every week and one like helpful tip or FAQ or something like that per week. And so that's been really, really great. That way they have just a loaded amount of blog posts to be able to send and potential clients that are asking questions and things like that. Now, do you have to blog twice a week? No, definitely not. They're only doing that because we have the capacity to we have several full time team members that are on that team making that happen. But if you're a solopreneur, and it's just you, if you could do once a month, do once a month, if you feel like you can do twice a month, then do twice a month. Ideally, if you could do once a week, that would be great. But if that overwhelms you just start with, you know what you can, because blogging is such a powerful way to get found on Google, to be able to create content to share on your social media to share with your email list and all the things if you are like wondering, how do I blog? Well, right? How do I create a blog? How do I optimize for SEO, I actually have a blogging and SEO mini course, that is available in my shop, you can go check it out today, we'll link it here in the show notes. That in there, it has a list of I want to say over 50 blog ideas, not just photo sessions, but all other types of blogs that you could do. There's even like specific FAQ ideas in there that you can take, I have blogging templates in there that's fill in the blank kind of templates. So you can it'll say write details about your photo session here, write something specific about your clients here. And then it fills in some blank flowery words in the middle. So you can use that copy and paste and just fill in the blanks. I had somebody try it. And they said they completed a blog the fastest they ever have before using that template, and it was so easy for them. So it was great. Also included in that blogging and SEO mini course, is an SEO checklist. So it walks you step by step through all the pieces that you want to put together to make sure that your blog is optimized to get found on Google easier. And then of course, I have videos walking you through how to do all of that, how to use the blogging templates, how to optimize for SEO, and literally I share my screen and walk you through all the steps. So you don't have to wonder what your should look like or anything like that, like I walk you through so you know how to do it. So that blogging and SEO mini course is available in my shop, definitely go check it out, especially if the idea of blogging, like overwhelms you or stresses you out. Because it doesn't have to be that way. Blogging can be fun. Dare I say, I, I am a testament to that I used to hate blogging, and now I just see so much value in it that it's absolutely worth it. So go check that out. If you have any other like questions about blogging, or SEO or anything like that, you can always find me on Instagram at Rebecca rice photography,
shoot me a DM and I would love to help answer any questions that you may have there or whatnot. So yeah, you know, I feel like we could bounce ideas or whatever would help you the most. So find me on Instagram, shoot me a DM I'm super active there, get to blogging, my encouragement to you is after listening to this episode, don't just do nothing. Set a goal maybe this week or this month to publish one blog post that you know if that is a push goal for you. Or maybe your push goal would be to blog once a week, do something, don't just listen to this. And then you know, let it go in one ear and out the other, I highly encourage you to take action, do something and further your blogging because I'm telling you it's a long game results. Usually it takes several months to start seeing results and getting found on Google, you know, working your way up from page 62, page three to page one. But it is so worth it. Because Google does all the work for you after that you don't have to worry about it and you start getting leads from Google. So I know you can do it. I'm telling you, it's worth it, trust me. So get to blogging and let me know how I can help and serve you as you're doing that. So with that we'll go ahead and close out for today. Hope you guys have an awesome week and I'll see you back this time next week. Bye guys.
