00:00 - Krystianna Pietrzak (Guest)

The number one reason we always say, like logging is not dead, you should be blogging is because your website is only going to have pretty much a finite amount of pages. Right, you're going to have your home about services, maybe a few sales pages If you want to like, dive into each of your different offers. But the best way to add more pages to your site and have other avenues of people finding you is through creating blog posts, cause every single blog post you write is going to be another avenue that you can then rank on Google for. That people can then search something that you can then help them with, and if you're ranking well for that specific topic that people are searching for, they're going to go to your site. They're going to start to trust you more.

00:39 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

This is the photo business help podcast, a resource for photographers of all levels, from brand new to burnt out, who believe that business growth starts with personal growth. I'm your host, natalie Jennings. I created Jennings photo back in 2010 and have been happily full time since, but not without some mistakes along the way. Those lessons, plus what's really helped me thrive financially and personally, are what I want to share with you so you can grow with your photo business too. You'll also hear stories from other photographers and industry folks, as well as my favorite ways to be more mindful and happier on this journey.

01:19

I had so much fun doing this episode with Jesse and KP of Inkpot creative. We're talking about some of the must have things on your website, why these things are important for attracting clients. If you're having trouble attracting the right clients, if you're wondering the secret sauce to actually getting clients in the door or just in your email box, we cover all of this, and these two are total experts. Not only do they have incredible tips to give you that you can just take and do right now, today, that are really simple, but they also offer some really great educational tools and they offer services. So if you're just like I don't even want to look at my blog or I don't want to look at my website. They've got you covered there too. So if you'd like to check out their blogging basics course, walking you through all the things to get the most SEO out of your blogging, if you're like I don't even know what to say, I don't know what to do, you can go to Inkpot creative, forward slash photo biz. Help Check it out. Check it out. This is exactly the thing that'll coast you into the new year with all the stuff you need to attract clients.

02:28

Jesse and KP. Inkpot creative. Our conversation will follow words from the folks that support this show. Well, welcome to the show. I'm so glad that you reached out and this is a topic that you both have a ton of expertise in. That I think, at least in my world, working with folks in my coaching program many people need help with. So and we're talking about SEO and websites and just in blogging and all of the things that I think ultimately still, all these years later I've been doing this a long time still are necessary to attract clients. It's not just about like Instagram, it's a little Instagram, but you guys are nodding your head, so I'll just let jump in wherever and maybe introduce yourself, and then we'll just we'll dive into some of this stuff, yeah, of course.

03:25 - Krystianna Pietrzak (Guest)

So hi, I'm KP. I am the founder of Inkpot creative, which is a queer led brand and website design studio for photographers who are leading their industry by creating something different.

03:35 - Jessie Andrew (Guest)

And I am Jesse. I am the web developer here at Inkpot, as well as writing blog posts for a lot of our clients, to not only give them a site that looks amazing that KP designed, but also helping them find a way to actually bring traffic to that new site and get clients on Google without having to constantly be posting on Instagram and social media and keeping up with everything.

04:00 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

Yeah, well, and the stuff that you've created is beautiful. I was looking through everything, as I usually do before a show. I would love to just jump right into the whole blogging thing, because it's something I've talked about a lot over the years. It's something that I hit a sticking point with so many of my clients. You know like I know I should wrong, but I'm not blogging and I always say those posts are going to work for you for a year. I have posts that are like from 10 years ago, that are still some of my top ranking posts, and you can't do that anywhere else. So I'm going to not be the one that gets excited about this. But can we just jump in about the importance of Google still, even though social media is really popular? Yeah, absolutely.

04:41 - Krystianna Pietrzak (Guest)

So the number one reason we always say, like blogging is not dead, you should be blogging, is because your website is only going to have pretty much a finite amount of pages, right, like you're going to have your home about services, maybe a few like sales pages if you want to like dive into each of your different offers. But the best way to add more pages to your site and have other avenues of people finding you is through creating blog posts, because every single blog post you write is going to be another avenue that you can then rank on Google for. That people can then search something that you can then help them with. And if you're ranking well for that specific topic that people are searching for, they're going to go to your site, they're going to start to trust you more and they're going to, you know, search around your website and reach out to you over somebody else.

05:19 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

Yeah, do you have anything you want to add about that, jesse?

05:23 - Jessie Andrew (Guest)

I think it is one of the things that a lot of people have misconceptions about with what people actually use blogs for. But, like KB said, blogging is not dead. You probably go on blogs at least once a week. Anytime you look up a recipe that's on a blog, anytime you're Googling best places to go eat, like yeah, you might end up on something like Yelp sometimes, but like odds are you're going to get a list from a blog. Everyone is using blogs.

05:47

So you, as a photographer, you are an expert. You are positioned perfectly to talk about these topics and I think one of the biggest things with blogging that people Maybe don't understand or don't love is that it is a long-term game. Like you said, you have posts from 10 years ago that are ranking for you, but it's not something that probably ranked immediately. It wasn't the next day. It was bringing in traffic. It is a waiting game a little bit. You have to obviously do research, keyword research, you have to put effort into it, but it is something that you, you know, need to expect. Okay, this is going to bring me traffic, but it might take a couple of months for me to start ranking higher up on Google and once it's there. As long as it's still good content, you keep it updated.

06:32

Updating blog posts is great. Especially if you are, say, a wedding photographer and doing a venue roundup of some of the best venues. You want to make sure that those venues are still in business because unfortunately, some of them do close. So we don't want to want to have a blog post where you put you know Seven venues and four of them are no longer in business. But also the venues that were around five years ago Can be very different from the venues that are around today. So you want to make sure that you keep it updated.

07:00

You add new things to it, kind of keep it competitive in the online space to make sure that it is still ranking and bringing you those traffic and bringing you those Ideal clients who want to do the thing that you do. They want to get photography. They're trying to figure out how to you know what to do to prepare for a brand shoot or where to get family photos taken or couples photos or where to get married or anything like that. So they're looking for Questions and ideas around your business and what you do, and this is just a great way to lead them. You give them, all the information, you answer all the questions and like, oh my god, this is great. Let me just look at their services, because their photos in this blog posts are amazing and are exactly what I want. And I can do all of this in one go, and I've checked off all my boxes and now I'm set.

07:46 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

Yeah, you covered a lot of stuff there, but the one thing that I want to make sure I reiterate and I say this a lot too, but the blogging is a lot like growing out your hair or planting a plant or something you know you have to just give it a few minutes and then, once it catches though it is so Awesome to have that out there, because I don't know of any time I've wanted to make a relatively High investment and something that I didn't first Google it and then go read about it and then make sure that the person I was gonna hire had was a real person or had a real product, and I think that's a huge service that our blogs provide for us is this ability to validate Us as business people you know, in the marketplace, but if you're charged, if you're expecting somebody to spend Hundreds or thousands of dollars on your product and you don't really have much to show for it on the internet, I get that social media works for some people, but not everybody's there, and I still get.

08:48

Eight. Nine out of ten of my clients come from Google, so it's a real thing for sure.

08:53 - Jessie Andrew (Guest)

Yeah, and I definitely think having that Instagram is great and people can see your photos and they can follow you and whatnot, but you can't put all the information on Instagram. People are gonna want to know more about the like nitty-gritty details, more about how to actually do things. Most of the time, if people are getting photos taken, it might be the first time they've ever gotten photos taken. So, yes, they might look good, but they're also like I don't know what to expect, like I don't know what to wear, I don't know how the day is gonna work, like all of those things are blog post topics that People are gonna search for and that can give them more information than what you realistically can put on your social media.

09:31 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

Yeah, kb, did you want to add something, or just?

09:34 - Krystianna Pietrzak (Guest)

No, I was agreeing because, especially on Instagram, I find that people tend to we always think people are reading our captions, but a lot of the times you know they're just going to like that first photo and then just keep scrolling Like they're not even necessarily going to scroll through everything I try to think of. Like my own habits on Instagram, I'm one of those people who will always post like those long educational posts and I'm like I don't even know if people read these, because in my own habits I definitely don't Like. I'm more likely to go find something like TikTok or even just on Google to find like a blog post that covers the same thing.

10:00 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

Yeah, I'm glad that you brought up this whole topic thing because one of the things that comes up a lot in my coaching is I don't know what to say in a blog post. I don't know why I should be sharing the 12th family photo shoot that I've done this. You know, I think photographers get stuck in this. You know, in the early days, the early days which is really like dating me, but I mean, this is like 13, 14 years ago, when the internet was literally a new thing for people. Some of those long form just look at my photos I took. Things worked really really well with all taking and everything, and that's still a thing.

10:37

But I heard you mentioned wedding venues, for example. A huge portion of the folks I work with are like, yeah, lifestyle, family photographers, wedding photographers. So maybe we could dive in a little bit and I've done a couple of episodes about this and we'll link to them in the show notes. But I want to get your thoughts on topics that are helpful for people. If they're just sitting here listening right now, what are maybe one or two things that they could sit down and do right now that would help them?

11:05 - Krystianna Pietrzak (Guest)

So, when it comes to blog posts, there tends to be three types that we always recommend, but especially photographers. It's going to be more of these first two. So the first one is educational. Those are going to be like your Buzzfeed type posts, so you know, the ones that are like 11 best places to take a photo in Las Vegas, or something like that. Those are going to be the ones that are really just going to be serving a purpose of educating whoever is looking for that specific topic. We find that those tend to be the ones that will get you the most traffic in the long run, but those are the ones to that take a little bit longer to rank for. The next one is a gallery type post or a portfolio type post, so that one could be really easy to do if you just sit and think about OK, what was the last gallery that I just delivered? If you can find a keyword related to that gallery, then you are golden. That's going to be one that tends to be, depending on your city or location, I'll say tends to be pretty easy to rank, and that can be one where you literally just talk all about that photo shoot.

11:56

One thing to bear in mind is that unfortunately you don't want to put like your entire gallery into the post. That's one of the biggest mistakes we always see. We do really want to put information first. So try to think of the person who would be typing in a specific keyword to Google what they would want to know. So I'm trying to think of an example. So we're in Vegas, so let's say maybe you did a seven magic mountain shoot because we got our brand photo taken there. So you're trying to rank for you know seven magic mountains photo shoot.

12:19

Someone searching for that is going to want to know a little bit more information about the actual location, maybe like the best time to go, where to go once they're there, things like that, more so than you know all about Jesse and I, because we were the people in the photo shoot. So really just try to focus a lot on the information that somebody's going to want to see. And then the last one is affiliates, like an affiliate type post. So if you're part of any affiliate programs, those can be great to write posts for if you do want to make any passive income from your blog. So, for instance, you know, maybe you use like 17 hats or honey book for your CRM. They probably have an affiliate program that you can join and if you can just write about why you love that product. People search for reviews a lot and again, that's going to be one that's more so for other photographers rather than you know your clients, but it can be a great way to start to boost your passive affiliate income on your site as well.

13:05 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

It's so helpful to be reminded, especially as a photographer, that you don't have to write about just the photo that you just took, that you can write about all kinds of other things related to your business that might be helpful in your my post that I was referring to. That's forever ago was when the VSCO, the VSCO film stuff came out. This is like 2010 maybe, and I did a bunch of posts reviewing the new packs when they'd come out, and I get many hits every single day still from those. That was not geared towards my clients at all. I mean, clients like wedding people that just get engaged aren't looking for like VSCO film pack reviews, but photographers are, and I think just any way that you can boost your SEO is going to float all of your other stuff to the top as well.

13:54 - Jessie Andrew (Guest)

So, just keeping that in mind, as little thought I had- yeah, definitely, and I think there's so many topics that you can write about and, honestly, in almost any industry, I really don't see a way that you can run out of blog post topics or keywords to write about, like everyone's, like I don't know what to write about or anything like that. And if you're thinking like, okay, where do I start, if you are a wedding photographer, you can take a roundup of the best wedding venues in your study or in your state that you love to shoot at. So say, you have 15 wedding venues there that you put in that roundup post. That's one post there. But then you can write a post about each one of those wedding venues, so you have 16 posts right there. If you post twice a month, that's eight months of content. You almost have your entire year planned out with one idea. So I love it. I think, when you think about breaking it down to things that people ask you every single day, if you have clients come in and ask you questions, so a lot of times people will get like, what do I wear for a photo shoot, photo shoot, outfit ideas. Breaking it down to winter photo shoot, fall photo shoot, spring photo shoot, summer photo shoot, like people are asking all of those specific things. So there's so much content out there that you can actually write on. I think sometimes we're like, okay, here's the one post about outfits or here's the one post about venues, but people are going to be searching for specific things within that as well. So you might think, oh, I'm writing so much content on this one thing like nobody's going to want to read. All of these People most likely aren't going to go through your blog and read every single post on your blog.

15:30

They're going to be coming to your blog to read specific things. They can read more information about that. If you have it. We always suggest having some sort of like check out these posts next or like read more section at the bottom of your post to link related posts and keep people on your site and going. So you can kind of like interlink and keep related posts and related venues or related cities together to give people more ideas and show your expertise even more. But realistically, there is a endless amount of information, questions, topics that people are going to be searching for, that you do are involved with every single day that you might not even think about. That you can answer the questions. That's a whole blog post and you're not even having to do research because you're like I go to this venue all the time, I go to a photo shoot here all the time. I know everything. Like, let me just sit down for an hour, write everything down and there's my blog post.

16:21 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

You nailed it because one of the episodes I was referring to about just kind of getting past this block of like, what do I blog about?

16:29

Just look at your last 20 emails from potential clients and how many of the same questions you've answered over and over and over again. I mean, I know I've answered the same questions at the Julian times and those are perfect things to write about. Or even if you don't want to put it publicly on your page, like you can create a hidden page in your website that you just link to and give to people every time that they need all these questions answered, and it's still bouncing them back to your site and boosting your SEO in a different way. So I think that I'm just glad that you brought it up, because it's one of those things I bump into all the time and I'm always telling people, like just listen to the show where I talk about this like 10 times a month. But no, I appreciate that. I'd love to hear a little bit more about your business, your company, what you're offering folks that are looking for a little help in their website in general, I guess yeah.

17:25 - Jessie Andrew (Guest)

Yeah, so we primarily do websites on show it. That is where we love designing websites where show it design partners, so we have their stamp of approval. But our main goal and what we love to do is to help give photographers personality driven. Websites where it looks and feels like them are like. Number one Complement is when somebody comes back and they're like I show this to my friend and they just said that it like screamed me, like you can see my personality, you know exactly who I am, you know exactly what it's gonna be like working with me. Everyone feels like seen and heard on the site. So we're super big on inclusivity and diversity and making sure that it's not the whole world can look at your site and envision themselves in your photos and actually see themselves, you know, on their wedding day or at their family photo shoot or at their brand shoot, whatever it might be. So we love personality driven websites. That is our specialty.

18:22

We also do have blog writing services that we do, so we write posts for our clients to post monthly to Help them gain that traffic, and this is where we have a lot of Knowledge on what people are searching for for photographers, because we're finding keywords for them every single month and we can promise you we've been blogging for some people for I don't know, maybe close to a year and a half now and Haven't even come close to running out of keywords for them. So it is almost impossible to run out of keywords, but just helping them kind of get a better understanding of SEO and blogging and taking it off their plate, because sometimes we all have great intentions but busy season comes around and you just it's hard to keep it going and so we're kind of just that extra help in hand. Give them the keywords, make sure that they're writing posts that are actually going to rank, that people are searching for, and they're not wasting their time. Because that's the other thing we see a lot of times with, I'd say, photographer specifically is writing posts, putting all this effort in, but no one's actually searching for what they're writing about. So you just spend an hour or two hours, three hours, writing a blog post that no one's ever gonna see and it kind of feels like a waste of time.

19:33

So making sure that people have client or have blog posts that people are actually searching for, bringing traffic to their site, bringing in More clients and more leads but our bread and butter is websites on. Show it that kind of scream. This is my personality, this is who I love to Work with, this is who I want to work with and kind of giving people a site that they're proud to send to clients and their friends and anything like that. I Love that.

20:01 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

I would love to just ask people who are listening right now Are you proud to show other people your website right now? And I guarantee you there's a few that are like. So here's one huge resource for you, those of you who need a little help with that link in the show notes, obviously, but also the blogging. You know. If you're struggling with that, I mean ask for help and there's services that are available. I think that's amazing that you both do that. I like this idea of just like a personality driven brand. Can we talk about that a little bit more? Can you explain, maybe just sort of like, what that looks like, maybe just an example? Or for people that are like, what do you mean?

20:41 - Jessie Andrew (Guest)

Yeah. So I think for us, a Personality driven brand is kind of one of two things. One a little bit of it has to do with the copy that's on your site, which obviously we don't do, but making sure that the vibe of your site, what people see when they land on your site, is the same vibe that they're seeing on your Instagram, is the same vibe that they're seeing when they get on the discovery call with you and that's what they can expect when they, you know, have their session with you or their wedding with you or anything like that. So very much Making it clear who you are, what you stand for, what you love, how you kind of work and operate, so that people aren't surprised, people aren't Seeing you and being like, oh, I expected a super introverted person, because I'm introverted and that's how you kind of sound on Instagram, but you're super extroverted and this might be a little overwhelming for me and maybe you're not the right fit. So we kind of look at the copy side of making sure that everything connects but then also making sure that your personality comes through in the actual design. So if you are Super fun and bright and bubbly, maybe you have fun elements on your site that are Little icons. And we have people who have done little like wavy, rainbows and stuff throughout their site to add little pops of color or even being able to kind of show off your style.

22:03

We've had very different types of photographers. We have luxury New York City photographers that have more of a Maybe like a little bit of an editorial vibe and it's a little more darker and moodier but it still has some pops of color and it draws your attention. But then we have people who are like no, I want my website to be like bright and colorful and rainbow and I want to show all of this off, and theirs is the complete opposite vibe. But it attracts the clients that they want to work with. Those luxury clients who want that editorial vibe are gonna go over here and the ones that want that bright color pop are gonna go over here. And that's not to say that they're not gonna pay the same amount of money. They can absolutely pay the same amount for those two services.

22:47

But it's all about style. Photography's an art. You want to make sure that the people you are working with Appreciate that and want to hire you because of your art and your style. So making sure that that style and that personality comes through in the design and they really get a feel for what it is gonna be like working with you, so that if they do get on discovery call or anything, they're already like absolutely I want to hire you. I have this question, but like I'm on board, send the contract. Like you are my photographer. That's always. Our main goal is to make that that process so much easier. So people are like yep, I'm done, you're it, let's go.

23:24 - Krystianna Pietrzak (Guest)

It's twofold too, because you know when someone comes to you on a discovery call and it's like I'm already sold on you a lot of times those end up being the clients that you're gonna be a lot more excited to work with. So it's kind of going, you know, getting you a better fit client both ways.

23:36 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

I I love that you just said that, kb, because I mean you can feel I talk about a lot of like intuitive business decisions and stuff like that just the feeling you get when you get an email and you're like or like yay, and my absolute favorite clients in all the years I've been doing this are the ones that found me and already knew. They're like we just want to work with you and you're just like okay, let's do it. And I think and I'm still working through this and iterating this but one of the things that is difficult to do when you're trying to get clients and trying to build momentum is to repel people. But it's so important to be able to do that.

24:12

I had a I don't know if it's still up on my site, but it's. I kind of rotate my copy sometimes but one of the things that I was saying for a while on my site is like, if you want like a posed photo with like straightened collars and everyone looking great, then I am not your photographer. You know, just saying that and you know that's not a very bold, crazy thing to say, but people definitely hesitate to do that because, again, when you're trying to build a business, it's counterintuitive to try and like repel people. But I promise if you repel people and stay true to like what you want to do, you're going to have the best clients ever and I think that gets really cool that you help people do that.

24:49 - Jessie Andrew (Guest)

Yeah, I definitely think repelling people like. You're right, people are totally scared to do it, but they're not going to be people that you're going to love to work with anyway, so why spend your time? Or they're going to people that get on discovery call, you go and do this whole process. You spend a lot of time, you know, sending proposals and doing all this stuff and then they just ghost or they say no or they walk away and you're like well, now I feel like I just wasted all this time on a client that at the beginning, I knew probably wasn't the right fit for me. And also, you don't want to fill up your schedule with people who aren't the right fit and then not be able to take on the people that are the right fit because you just don't have any space. So, like, creating that space for people who are going to be your ideal clients is going to attract them more as well and bring them into your schedule and onto your calendar and into your bookings.

25:35 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

Yeah, a thousand percent. I'm glad that you said that. Okay, it's fun. I don't think I've. I think I've only done maybe a handful of shows with two folks and it's really fun to do, but I'm always like wait, did you? And no one can see what we're doing. But I think we'll start recording these, maybe next year. It'll be fun for people. I would love to just hear your thoughts before we wrap up here. Just a tip that you have, like a random tip that comes to mind about websites, whether it's like what to do or not to do, if you're doing it right now, stop or make sure you do this, or just something to leave people with that they feel excited about. And then, in addition to that, the best place to find you and get in touch other than the show notes?

26:15 - Krystianna Pietrzak (Guest)

Okay. So my weird fact is going to be when people land on your website, they actually read in an F. So try to put your contact button all the way over to the right on the top if you can, because their eyes are going to stop there and then they're going to go down and read the next thing. So that's always one of our best tips for trying to increase conversions. Another really good tip kind of going along with that, I feel like now I'm giving a double tip. But if you can put a button behind the word contact in your navigation bar, like just putting a little color block behind it, that's going to draw the eye even more.

26:44 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

Beautiful, that's awesome. I'm like thinking through my stuff like, okay, f F that's great.

26:51 - Jessie Andrew (Guest)

And then for me, the one thing that I always like to say, specifically with photographers, is be careful with your galleries and making sure that when you're updating them because people want to see your most recent images or the images that you love the most, but two as much as you love all 600 photos, people aren't necessarily going to want to scroll through all 600 photos. So generally we say 30 to 50 images is the sweet spot. When it comes to galleries, if people want to see more, one that's great, because they like your work and they want to see more of it. But two you can always send them gallery links on the side in an email to ask for more, or they can go to your blog and see all the images on your blog.

27:30

But we don't want to create an endless scroll of images at our site where clients are like I can't even get to the bottom Now I have to spend just as much time getting back to the top to click to the next page, like they might click out of it. Well, we see that a lot with photographers. So, as much as it's hard to do, maybe even ask a friend and be like okay, can you look through these and tell me which ones you like the best, because it can be really easy to get like emotionally attached to the photos and you're like, no, but these are all amazing and they are all amazing. But we want to make sure that we're only putting a finite amount on the site so it's not overwhelming to people.

28:04 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

You've opened up a whole other can of worms with that one and me, because I'm just like. My first thought is like why is anyone getting 600 photos to begin with? Who has the time to do this, to do this? And I did have the time, like 10 years ago. I was giving away these massive galleries. But if you have, you can tell a great story in a minimal amount of photos too, and I know weddings are a little bit different, but even so, you know, I think that's amazing advice, because it's the first thing. I mean, I love looking at other photographers, stuff, and even my most favorite photographers. If it's too long, I'm like I'm out. So I think that's really brilliant. Okay, where's the best place to find you?

28:44 - Krystianna Pietrzak (Guest)

So we're most active over on Instagram. We're at inkpotcreative over there. You can also catch us on our website, inkpotcreativecom, and our podcast, which is called the unexpected entrepreneur.

28:54 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

Amazing. Well, thank you both so much for reaching out and for coming on the show. I think we just gave people a bajillion things to do. I'm even like, okay, I got to check this and I'm going to do that, and I think it's really, really useful. So hopefully a few folks reach out and we'll have to do this again sometime. Absolutely, thank you so much. Yeah, thanks so much for having us.

29:13 - Krystianna Pietrzak (Guest)

Yeah, you're welcome.