Wedding Atelier: Photography Podcast

215. Attract Weddings with Blogs in POV Style with Inkpot Creative

• Alora Rachelle

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In this episode, Alora interviews Jesse from Ink Pot Creative to discuss the intricacies of SEO and blogging for wedding photographers. Jesse provides invaluable tips on keyword research, crafting compelling blog content, and leveraging venue-specific posts to attract ideal clients. The conversation also explores common misconceptions about SEO, the balance between visuals and text in blog posts, and the importance of creating long-term, impactful content. Whether you're new to blogging or looking to refine your strategy, this episode offers actionable insights to improve your online presence.

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome

00:21 Rapid Fire Questions

01:23 Favorite Business Book and Travel Dreams

03:33 Non-Negotiable Life and Business Rules

05:44 Dealing with Stress and Client Feedback

07:59 The Journey of Ink Pot Creative

12:08 The Power of Blogging for Business

12:45 Common Misconceptions About Blogging

17:35 The Importance of Keywords in Blogging

17:56 Weak vs. Strong Keywords for Photographers

18:33 Choosing the Right Venue for Your Wedding

19:23 Balancing Personal Stories with SEO

20:41 The Importance of Venue-Focused Content

22:20 SEO Strategies for Photographers

23:23 Getting Started with SEO and Blogging

26:30 Effective Blogging Techniques

33:52 Final Tips and Encouragement


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Alora:

Well, today I have on half of Ink Pot Creative. It's KP and Jesse. But I have Jesse on the podcast. Jesse, welcome. I'm so excited for you to talk about all things SEO and blogging for wedding photographers.

Jessie (she/her):

I am so excited too. We love talking about this, so thank you so much for having me on.

Alora:

Yay. Okay. Let's start with some rapid fire questions because I just thought this would be fun. I did prepare you ahead of time, so you kind of gotta cheat a little bit, but we'll see how this goes. So what is your drink of choice currently right now?

Jessie (she/her):

Hands down ice. Caramel macchiato. I cannot get out of bed without. We have two espresso machines. I'm obsessed with it. It's all I drink.

Alora:

Oh, that sounds good. I think I've had that since like college, that's a classic, right?

Jessie (she/her):

Yeah, it was my like, go-to Starbucks order, and then we were finally like, okay, we're spending too much money on coffee, so we got some nice espresso machines and just make our own every morning. But it's, I love it. I'm obsessed with them.

Alora:

Girl, same like when you're spending eight to$10 on coffee a day, it's like,

Jessie (she/her):

it gets expensive.

Alora:

It racks up really quickly. Okay, cool. Yeah. Mine personally, like at least around that time was, was it the caramel frappuccino? Do you remember the Frappuccino days

Jessie (she/her):

Yeah, I used to have those all the time.

Alora:

I mean, maybe people still have them, but I don't know if it was like as big of a deal as it was back then. So tell me about maybe your favorite business book you've ever read.

Jessie (she/her):

I would have to say unreasonable hospitality. It gives an interesting look into basically if you're in a service, client experience is like a big part of it. And so like in a way, everybody's in the hospitality industry and it's also told through the lens of a New York restaurant. So it's not like the business book where it's like just talking about business the whole time. So it's a interesting reading. It gives you a lot to think about, about what the experience you're actually giving people is and how important that is to whatever service it is that you're actually doing.

Alora:

I like the perspective of building more of a client first based in terms of being of service versus always trying to make money

Jessie (she/her):

Yeah,

Alora:

way, when you change the perspective, we're actually here to help people, not just to make money.

Jessie (she/her):

Exactly.

Alora:

So if you could go anywhere, all expense paid, which like, what a dream, where would it be?

Jessie (she/her):

I love this. We're huge into travel, so we've been a lot of places. One of the places I am dying to go would have to be Japan. I think first of all, it's a little expensive to just get over to Japan, so I think that would be great for all expenses paid, but a hundred percent Japan, Iceland is a close second. But I would love to go around Japan and eat all the food. That's all. I just want to eat all the food. That's all I want to do.

Alora:

Oh my gosh. I love that. My husband's dream is also to go to Japan, but I wanna go to Korea, so it's kind of like, can we just take the ferry from Japan to Korea? Do both.

Jessie (she/her):

Korea was very close. We were trying to decide if we could do one bigger trip this year, and it was Japan and South Korea were two that we were going back and forth between, but that's definitely high up there on my list too.

Alora:

Honestly, I love Korean food, but I like Japanese food too. Didn't Ramen kind of come from? Where'd it come from?

Jessie (she/her):

I am pretty I'm 90% sure it's Japanese. I think everyone now has their own version of it, but I feel like you can definitely get good Ramen in Japan.

Alora:

I'm having a feeling when I would look it up, it's always Japanese Ramen, like when I see it, so that makes

Jessie (she/her):

Yeah.

Alora:

Okay. Well I guess I do like Japanese food. What is your non-negotiable life? First business rule, something you're not gonna apologize for that keeps you from hustling, working too much or at all.

Jessie (she/her):

So one of the things that I always tell myself is, if it is not going to affect your life in five years, don't let it affect yourself for more than five minutes. You can get very bogged down in what people say or like clients coming back with feedback or anything that's going on that I feel like we get very stressed about. So I try to, think about it and if things come up, be like, okay, is this really gonna affect me in the long term? If not, like I can sit in it for a couple minutes but then move on and I feel like it helps keep me lower stressed, then I probably would be. Because things are always changing. It's inevitable when you're. In business and doing your own thing. So that's never gonna change. But my mindset of how I actually approach it can. And so that's something that I've always tried to embody as much as I can. Sometimes it's easier than others, but I always try to.

Alora:

Yeah, no, it's good to have something to keep you grounded. Like, you know, in the chaos. I kind of like that'cause it's true, like you can't control what happens around you, but you can try to control what you think about View it. So is this like your, I can freak out for five minutes and then I have to move on? Is that like your take on.

Jessie (she/her):

Yeah. So I can sit in it and I can be like, okay, I'm a little stressed. This is like whatever it is. Whether it's something unexpected that came up or someone's not happy with something, like I can acknowledge that it's not necessarily what I wanted to do today or what I was planning on doing, or what I want to deal with and like have my little mini freak out or my little mini stress session. But then. I think for a long time I carried that with me for way too long and it was just like all I thought about and that is when I got bogged down and everything and then I wasn't able to think clearly or move on or do anything else. So I think that's my, if I ruminate on it too long, I just don't get anything done. And if it's something as small as, an email or feedback or something that popped up, odds are it's not a major life changing thing or something that's gonna alter the course of the business. I don't need to sit here and be super uber stressed out about it.

Alora:

Hmm. I like that. And as a mindset, girly, I do have a question for you about this. What would you. It feel like you would do if something really does stress you out? Do you feel like it's like stuck on the hamster wheel and you feel paralyzed and don't take action? Or do you just complain, you know, there's like one or the other you are like,

Jessie (she/her):

Yeah, I feel like it is a little bit of both.

Alora:

mm-hmm.

Jessie (she/her):

working with KP and having each other right here and like in the same space. It's nice because we can go back and forth and just walk into the other room and be like, okay, this came up. I'm stressed out. Let's talk through it. Which is like really nice to have that. But I think there's also the like almost second guessing like everything that you do or like thinking about. The next time you work with someone like second guessing that same thing that someone else said, even though like it wasn't that big of a deal. And so I feel like you fall into the like rumination in that part of just going over and over. So I try to not do that. And I think being able to talk it through and then also I feel kP and I balance each other out well, where we're like, okay, that's not what they meant. Or they're not it didn't, it's coming off a little rude because it's email, but it's not actually that rude and they just have a question and like we can answer it and move forward and everybody's happy, we're good. Like I feel like there's a lot of little things like that. Yeah. This is not like they don't hate us. I feel like that's always the like hard thing to be like, does my client now hate me? They don't hate us. So I feel being able to go back and forth and talk to each other and talk through things has been really helpful, and I feel like that's the big thing. If I try to internalize things and not voice them, then I end up on that. It's never going outta my head and I'm constantly thinking about it. But the second I'm like, okay, this happened, walk through it, figure out what the, next step is and like just move forward with it. It like gets me out of that way faster.

Alora:

Yeah, and to validate you for a second, I feel like a lot of times some emails do sound rude. I'm like. Can you put this through Chatty Bee really quick? Because this could have been a little bit nicer.

Jessie (she/her):

Yeah, I know you're not trying to be like I, I have met you at least virtually. I know you're not trying to be mean, but like sometimes it probably happens on our end too. You're busy, you're just like shooting off an email. You send it off and then you're like, Ooh, I could have been a little bit warmer in that email.

Alora:

So tell us a little bit about your business. You guys are graphic designers turn bloggers and SEO specialists. And how that eventually got you into blogging as a marketing medium.

Jessie (she/her):

So originally KP started Ink Pot Creative. She started it back in 2020. Ironically, it actually started as a social media management agency because I feel like everyone started as that. She very quickly realized that she didn't love that. And she had her degree in graphic design from college initially had planned on going to book publishing'cause she loved the like layout design and all of that. And it fell into web design and it's been a great fit because it is that like same layout design but more interactive and on a screen instead of on a book. So she fell into web design and branding with that and. Switched everything more towards brand and web design. Eventually we found that all of the people that we loved working with were photographers and we were like, okay, this is a sign. Maybe we should just work good photographers. So we, eventually niched down to photographers about a year or two ago. But when it comes to blogging, this has always been something that's like kind of an outside thing. KP actually started a book blog back in 2012 when it was like journaling and everyone like just basically talked about it. So she had that for a long time and then morphed that into a travel blog. And when we were studying abroad in college, we did a ton of travel and so we morphed it into that and started building that up and actually got that pretty high up and had a good amount of viewers and people, coming to it every single month and looking at things and being able to put ads on it and all of that stuff. So as we were doing that, we were like, okay, if this works for this, like why can't it work for business? Like people aren't just looking for travel advice and recipes, like they're asking questions on. Every single thing that you can imagine. So maybe this will work for business and we can morph it. So we started playing around with it on, our own website and it's been nice that we've had these other outside. Technically we have. three or four different blogs that we have on a couple of different topics. But it was nice'cause we got to almost play around and test things out on our own content and our own stuff. And then eventually started with Ink Pot and started blogging on our website. And then we're like, okay. We can do this for other people and started offering blogging as a service for our clients. And it's been really cool to see that transition into, working with these mostly photographers. But we have done blogging for a group of other people as well. But seeing how it transitions and like still able to attract ideal clients, it's something that. One is long term. I know everybody it's hard to not be on social media, but social media can be very short term and it can feel really exhausting. So on the flip side, we have blogging where like we've written blog posts for clients that have been up for two years and they're still getting traffic and they're still getting inquiries and like they haven't touched it in two years. And that like long-term stuff is invaluable, especially when you are. So busy doing, like everything else it's hard to always show up. We know it, we know our clients are like, it's so like you're out photographing for, the entire weekend or 10 hour weddings or whatever it might be like, that's exhausting. And then you're editing all the photos and you're having all these client meetings. Like sometimes it's just hard to market. So this is something that we are like, okay, it's much more long term. You can attract the people that you want to attract instead of relying on algorithms to hopefully find. The right people.'cause sometimes it works and sometimes it goes very wrong. So this is you're very specifically trying to attract the people that you want to attract and, that kind of drew us in and gave us a bigger look into what, marketing could be and how it could work. And then. It transformed for us into blogging, became our long form piece of marketing that we then used to do like everything else and repurposing and one blog post can be used on literally everything. So it made even like social media marketing really easy because we already had content and we weren't like, constantly grasping for things. It was very quick and easy.

Alora:

Wow, when it comes to blogging, because I know it's either like people really know they want it and need it, or you're probably trying to convince people why they need it. What do you feel like are common misconceptions people have about blogging as a long-term strategy, which I believe that you have to have that set up first, at least before you decide to do other things. Because how many times has Instagram been down? Too many? Right? At least you own your blog.'cause your website, right? So yeah. What are common things that you deal with when people are like, okay, do I really need this? Why do I really need this? And how is this gonna help me in the long term?

Jessie (she/her):

I feel like the two biggest things that we hear are like SEO is too like complicated and difficult to understand. And the other thing is that I'm too like niched and nobody's gonna be looking for the type of content that I do, Looking at, it's too difficult to understand. We totally under, there are so many resources out there that can make SEO feel really complicated, and the reality of it is that it isn't. When you break it down, it's really not that overwhelming. At the core of it, it's like just figuring out what people are searching for and like the language that they're using. I feel like that's sometimes where people get caught up because. It's very interesting when you go on like keyword research tools and stuff. Even something as simple as, if we're looking at web design, show it versus Squarespace and Squarespace versus show. It can have very different traffic results and like people actually searching it and it is the same exact topic that is the same exact thing. You're comparing the two things, but you could have, a hundred people searching one of those a month and 2000 people searching the other one. And so sometimes I think we get caught up on the actually finding keywords that we don't do that, and then just end up writing something. But at that point, you end up wasting your time because you don't know, like you're just guessing. You're like throwing something at the wall and hoping that it sticks and you're not really being intentional about it. And I think that's where the frustration comes, because you're like I've put out all these blog posts and I'm not seeing anything. But if you had, switched around your wordings or. Added this one thing in, you go from nobody searching that topic to everyone searching that topic. And that can be the differentiator between it. So I feel like it can be a little overwhelming to think of it at first because there is so much stuff out there. But I think the biggest thing is like breaking it down. Really simple to start off with. Starting with like just keywords. Just focus on that and you can build everything up after that. But that's what a lot of our clients run into Like we have found that there is nothing. Basically that we've come across that is too niche. We had one of our blog clients was a pet wedding attendant. Like literally watched your dog at your wedding and there were blog topics and we increased her traffic on her website of people looking for that. So she was able to book it, like literally people will search. Anything. And the good thing is like the more niche you can get, the better it actually works because you're getting very direct traffic from people who want exactly what you are looking for. And that's what we want. We don't want, it's the thing where you put it on Instagram and like anybody can find it, it might show up on anybody's page or you like post a TikTok and who knows who's for you Page is gonna show up on, right? But when you're posting a very specific blog post about. a topic or an era you're in or whatever it is, like only people searching for that specific thing are going to be looking for it. So it's the very specific type of client that you want, which is the balance of do we want a whole bunch of traffic with some people who actually want that topic or less traffic, but it's more. In line with what we actually want. So we found that our clients who get super, super specific have had great results and book, all of the ideal clients that they want. We have one who was in San Francisco and they booked out like half their year before January hit just from the blog post that, people are finding that are looking for these specific topics. So everyone's I'm too niche. I do something that's so different. No one's looking for if you're doing it and you're booking clients, people are looking for it. So

Alora:

Hmm.

Jessie (she/her):

lean into that and that's the people that you wanna try in. And that's the, questions that you want to answer. Everything like that.

Alora:

That's insane because to think that two niche actually is good for SEO and blogging, that takes, all the pressure off of feeling like you have to everybody with every single post. And I think that's why people get overwhelmed is like, just pick one.

Jessie (she/her):

Yeah.

Alora:

mean, a pet attendant, I. in a million years would I have ever searched for that. But if my friend wanted a pet flower dog or something, I probably would've, I'd be like, someone watch PET for a wedding And see what comes up. I mean, that's genius.

Jessie (she/her):

Exactly. Yeah. The more niche you can get, the better because it is, it's that direct traffic, it's the exact people that you want to work with.

Alora:

Mm-hmm.

Jessie (she/her):

targeting them. That's all you're doing. So it's not, other people might find it and that's great and they might connect with it. But on a more like broad sense, you're connecting with the exact people that you wanna connect with and. That's the point of marketing. It's like finding the exact people that you wanna work with. So why not actually just lean into that?

Alora:

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Why is it so simple, but like it makes so much sense. Okay, so you were talking about keywords earlier. Me an example of a weak keyword versus a strong keyword? Because I hear about keywords all the time, keywords everywhere, keyword tools, plugins. But like, what is an example? If somebody comes to you being, can you make this blog look and sound better? And you're like, well, this keyword is terrible what would that look like?

Jessie (she/her):

The biggest thing that we see with photographers and wedding photographers specifically is when it comes to things like wedding features. We know that photographers love to like feature weddings and blog about them and like absolutely. It's amazing. But the biggest thing that we see is it'll be like Jack and Jill's wedding, and that will be what they focus on. That'll be the title, that'll be the keyword. And. That's great, but literally no one knows who Jack and Jill is, and they could care less about their wedding. On the other hand, what they do care about is the venue that they had their wedding at, because that might be a venue that they're looking at. If we're out in Las Vegas, so maybe it's Seven Magic Mountains. It could be Jack and Jill's wedding at Seven Magic Mountains or Seven Magic Mountains wedding. That is something that people are gonna be searching for. You can still talk about the couple and like their day and what they did. A lot of different venues have, different getting ready spaces or different places that you can choose for your ceremony. Different places that you can choose for your reception. So talking about what that couple did, where they actually had it. Anything special about the venue, other features of the venue, all of that stuff. Like you can still focus on the couple and infuse their information, talk about their day. But making it not specifically here's this couple that you know nothing about, that you don't care about. No one, like they might look at that post. Their friends and family might look at that post, but it's not gonna show up on Google in the way that you want it to. So finding a way to, in anything that you're writing. Finding the kind of broader topic of what question can I answer for people? What question would they want answered in this post? It's gonna be, what does this venue look like? What would my wedding at this venue look like? What spaces could I find, where can I go take my engagement photos in this city? Like those kind of specific things or what people are actually gonna be searching for versus you just showing off the photos. So that's like the balance that, that we've seen. That's been the biggest thing with photographers of we wanna show off the photos, we wanna talk about, the experience that you've had there, because Google loves, personal experiences and any anecdotes and any, insider information you can give. But we also need to acknowledge that when people are coming to the blog, they're coming to get a question answered, and we need to actually answer that question.

Alora:

Mm. Shifting the narrative of let me make this post about my couple versus thinking about, let me have a nod to the couple what they did, where the wedding was at, but also answer any objections that future couples who are looking Blog post, it's gonna be like, oh, is this the photographer for me? Let me show you how your wedding could kind of look like this.

Jessie (she/her):

Yeah. And there's a lot of stuff that can, go into it. And the biggest thing too is when you switch it to things like, venues are something that we found has worked really well for photographers.'cause obviously you're always at these venues. You have venues that you love to be at that you, would wanna keep going back to venues that you want to go to, areas that you want to be in, anything like that. So you are able to show off your work, show off your expertise. Show off how you made another couple's wedding, happen there and how great it looked and all of that stuff. But you're also getting the people who are just googling that venue as in do I wanna have my wedding here? And the reason we say venues are really great is that's, when you're looking at wedding photography and weddings in general, the couple might hire a wedding planner and a venue before they hire a photographer. So if we are hitting them at the venues, odds are nine times outta 10. They haven't hired a photographer yet. So you're giving them information about the venue that's really helpful to them and it's giving them valuable things on where they are in the process right now. But you're also being like, I'm also a photographer who has shop weddings here and can do all of this, and here's everything I can do and here's my work. So you're answering next question, the next step in the process. And that can be super, super valuable. So that's why we always, love, when clients are like, Hey, can we blog about this venue? Absolutely, it's gonna be great. We had one client who we blogged about a venue like a year ago, and I now have a lot of weddings here that can we do some other ones so I be at venue for entire year. Because now so many weddings here that everything is the same. So it works both ways being able to show off your work obviously that's what we do. We show off the work, but also hitting them before they're actually at the, I am looking for a wedding photographer can be really valuable.

Alora:

Yeah. Oh, this is so good. I feel like I've heard a lot about the SEO and it's kind of like up and coming'cause people are getting tired of social media or. You know, the algorithm and we Instagram algorithm, like that's a whole nother episode. Right. But I feel like people are like, okay, my eggs were in one basket. I built my entire house on Instagram, I also heard that Facebook is making a comeback with wedding and queries too, but like knowing that she's like, mm-hmm. I don't know what that's about. Like I don't even go on Facebook. Okay. But. I've also think that people are starting to be like, okay, wait a minute. Like SEO is such a long-term strategy and Results from, like you said, older posts. People are getting results from like year old blog posts, and I mean, that, that's insane. Like how one post done right can serve you for the rest of your business. Good, right? You're set. If somebody wants to get started right now with like SEO and blogging, what is it that they need to know?

Jessie (she/her):

I would say first, first step is keywords. Find a keyword research tool that you can use. We personally love Key Search. That's the one that we use. Uber Suggests is also a really popular one, and you get like a couple of free searches a day on that one. Key search is a paid one, but it's gonna completely change how you approach it because you're, it's taking that guesswork out. You can literally see. Who is ranking, how many, people are searching for it. So you're not putting out content that nobody's actually looking for. you put weddings in front of the, location instead of after it. And that changes everything, like those little things. But it also gives you insight into like other things that people are ranking, like who else is ranking for that? So you're making sure that what you're writing about actually matches what. People are looking for that. Like search intent is super important because you don't wanna write a post and be like, actually that's not what people are searching for when they actually look for that. So keywords are definitely a big thing that we, stress. It's not worth it to start going and post all this content without it. The other thing that we would say is we run into, a lot of people are like, I don't know what to write about, which like, fair, totally valid. The best place to start is first looking at any venues that you love to work at. If you've been to a venue that you've loved, you wanted to go there more. Blog about that venue. You can also think about if there's like your area specifically doing any sort of like roundup posts of the best venues in your area. You write a little blurb about each of them on the kind of roundup post. You then have seven individual posts that you can write about each of those venues. So that's eight posts right there. That you just came up with in 30 seconds of thinking about where you like to work. So it doesn't have to be super complicated. The other thing that you can look at is any questions that you get asked frequently by your clients. If they're asking you the questions, odds are people are typing into Google. So think about anything that you're giving them, any resources that you're giving them. All of that stuff can be really great for, starting off and thinking about those posts and what you wanna do. And then you can go look it up in the. Keyword research tool, make sure you're finding the right words before you actually start to write it. So that kind of keyword research and thinking about your topics and then just sitting down and writing. I know it can feel really overwhelming, but just getting started, giving yourself maybe a goal of I wanna post two posts a month and trying to stick to that. It doesn't have to be absolutely perfect, but just getting the content out there. And we like to think of consistency as a strategy. It's not necessarily. You have to post every other Friday and you have to stick to that schedule, but just continue to get content out there whenever you can. It's gonna help because it's also more pages that people can find you through Google and it's also showing Google that you're like updating the content, positioning you as the expert, giving you all that kind of, confidence that people are gonna wanna see when they're, looking to hire someone.

Alora:

What is the bare minimum amount of words or keywords that they need to have for a blog to even count? Because doesn't Google need a minimum before it even thinks about ranking you.

Jessie (she/her):

So you definitely wanna make sure that you have a little bit of content in there. We don't wanna have a post that has two paragraphs and then like a bunch of photos. That's not gonna be great. Generally, we try to say that you should have more words than photos. Which I know super, super difficult for photographers means not necessarily putting the entire gallery on the blog post. We can, pick specific photos to show it off. If people wanna see more, they can always reach out to you and ask to see more. They can go to your portfolio, they can go to other blog posts, like it's not the end of the world, but you wanna try to have more words than. Photos. However, we also wanna make sure we're not just putting in a bunch of filler content. Like we want everything to serve a purpose in the post. So there's some posts that you can get away with, 600 words, 800 words. There's some posts that, we've written some that have been like 2,500 normally with our blogs and our clients. We're in the range of a thousand to 1500. That normally is a good space to. It seems like a lot, but I promise once you sit down and you're like, okay, I have been to this venue before I shot this wedding here. I was the person who was here. I know all the information. So when you're looking at it and you're writing it, you're just thinking back on that day and writing your experience and like what you saw and the things that you loved or where they were. So it'll flow out a lot faster than you think it will, and you'll be able to fill it out a lot more. But generally maybe 700 words. Is it good to try and hit if we can, get a little higher, but you wanna make sure that you have more words than photos and you're actually answering the question that somebody would be asking. So if it's a venue feature, you wanna make sure you're actually talking. About the venue and like the spaces that are there or what you can do or what's great about it, what you loved, secret spots that you found, whatever it might be, so that people are getting valuable information out of it and not just looking at a post and being like, I just wasted five minutes reading this and nothing has changed in my mind.

Alora:

I have done so many portfolio reviews, website reviews, and most people use blog posts as a gallery, you know? So you're saying don't do that.

Jessie (she/her):

Yeah it's a balance.'cause we definitely want the photos in there. Absolutely. You wanna be able to show it off. Especially if you can walk through, like if you're talking about the different spaces in the venue, have photos of the spaces that you're talking about. If you're walking through their day and like where they got ready and then their first look, and then the ceremony, and the cocktail and the reception. Put photos of each of those under the heading. I think that's the big thing too. We see. A lot of people will just have a chunk of text and then have a hundred photos in a gallery underneath. People aren't necessarily gonna scroll through all of those photos, so instead picking the best photos from the day and putting it inside of the article so it breaks up the text. They're not looking at a wall of text, but then they're also getting that show and tell. You're talking about it, and then you're showing them what it actually looks like and giving that, specific visual indicators. That is super, super powerful. But I know it's. It's definitely somewhere where you wanna show off the photos. You just wanna make sure you're not overpowering it, where people either don't actually scroll to the bottom to get to your last CTA or get to other pages or read out other articles and you're not putting so much photos in between the text that they're like, is there any more content to this blog post? And like exit out before they actually make it through the whole thing. Oh my gosh. Okay. First of all, while you're talking, I thought of the title of this episode, like your blog post as a POV or your blog. As a POV.'cause basically you're just taking them behind the scenes, Absolutely.

Alora:

and telling them, okay, I get it now it makes sense. So you said not too many photos. What? Maximum what?

Jessie (she/her):

Generally for us, we like to look at it based on the different headings for the post. So first of all, you wanna make sure that you're breaking up your post, but like different headings, because it's gonna be really great for people who are skimming and want to just pull out the important information. So for us, we normally look at every single heading. We'll put anywhere from. Three to six photos in a like little gallery. Most blogs, you can put a little gallery feature in it. So we'll put three to six photos in a gallery underneath each heading, so you get a lot, especially if you have six headings throughout your entire post. You put six there, that's 36 photos. You can show off a lot of the wedding and a lot of the different aspects of the wedding. Your favorite things about it in 36 photos, and it's not an overwhelming amount that people are gonna be like. I'm only looking at photos or I'm not getting to, this is the one specific thing I wanted to know, and now I feel like I'm scrolling forever to actually get to it. I would say, in general, 50 would probably be the max that we would say to put on a blog post which is still on the high end a little bit, so that's the max that we would want to go. But having it, broken up by every heading and putting, a smaller gallery under every heading is what we tend to do. And what we've seen has worked well. You can show the variety, but it's not super overwhelming. And you also have to think of if people are looking on their phones, because most people are gonna look on their phones. If you have a hundred photos in a gallery on your phone, the amount of time it takes people to scroll. Through those a hundred photos is so long. So we have to think about the mobile experience because a lot of people are gonna be looking on their phone and so that's why we also like, breaking up the text, not having super long walls of texts, having the photos in between, but then not putting so many that they're like, okay, I've been scrolling for five seconds and I still haven't hit more text. So maybe this is the end of the blog post.

Alora:

No, that makes sense. I honestly thought you were meaning like maximum 10 and I usually say 25 because I feel like after that it's just redundant, you know?

Jessie (she/her):

Yeah.

Alora:

Yeah.

Jessie (she/her):

that's the thing too. It's hard sometimes to pull yourself out and be like, all of these photos are great and they all show different things, but then when you have an outside perspective, you're like, yes. But these are all detailed photos. And as someone who doesn't know photography and understand the intricacies of it, like these are both just flat lays so we can show one and it shows off. Everything that you can do and different things that you can do without. Feeling like we're showing, like people are looking at it and they're like, okay, these are all just a picture of, portraits of the couple. In a field, they might look completely like when you look at it, you're like, these are completely different photos. They show off different things. We're, doing this, that and the other. But to someone who doesn't know that, they're like, okay, I want to see more variety. So having smaller amounts that we can show and like being intentional about what you're actually, I don't know how that always happens. The amount of things that I do on these, I set fireworks off. I'm doing thumbs up. I don't,

Alora:

Sorry, A thumbs up. Just showed up at her scream and I was like, oh, great. She's doing

Jessie (she/her):

I, it just, it doesn't, it always does it to me. But yeah having that variety, being able to show off the different parts of the day is way more valuable than having the entire gallery on there because again, these people like. Random people visiting your blog don't know who this couple is. They're not gonna care to see every single photo from their wedding day. They wanna know that you can capture all of the different parts so that when you photograph theirs, they're confident that they're gonna get what they want to get out of it.

Alora:

Mm-hmm. I mean, I feel like you have given the people an SEO blog masterclass, so I was gonna say, what advice do you have? But I'm just like, you've given all of the advice so know what to do, how to do it, when to do it. So tell us, you know, where, how we can find you and if you have any lingering thoughts or advice for people.'cause I feel like they should already know, they need to get on with SEO. There's no reason not to. But if they still have like, oh, I just, how do I start? How can I write a blog because I hate writing X, Y, Z? What should they do?

Jessie (she/her):

Our biggest thing is just start. It doesn't have to be perfect.

Alora:

Mm-hmm.

Jessie (she/her):

like one of the things that we posted recently was like, you're not a chef, but you still make dinner every day. You don't have to be a writer to write blog. It is your content, your knowledge, your experience. So just sit down, write it. It can be in your voice. You can write it exactly how you talk, because that's how you're gonna interact with your couples anyway. So it's not gonna be this, big thing. It's not high school English class where you have to have the perfect format and you have to sound super, like no, write how you talk. Put it out there. Eventually it'll be easier and easier, but don't stress about all of the little details, give yourself an hour, set a timer, sit down for an hour, and just brain dump and put it all out there. We love starting with outlines where we can get like the headings or specific points you want to talk about. I know that sounds super high school of outlining your essay before you actually started, but do an outline. Give yourself the, the headings that you wanna do or the specific points that you want to touch on. And then when you sit down, just let it flow and just write. You can always go back and edit anything, but don't get so caught up on feeling like it has to be perfect because no one is going to your blog expecting it to be like the next great American work of fiction It is a blog, and they know that you are a photographer. You are not a writer. So they're not expecting a writer. They're expecting to get some knowledge that they didn't have before. So don't put too much pressure on yourself. Just relax and you have all the information. You know what you're talking about. So just put that on the page, and that's all you have to do. But that's our biggest piece of advice. Just don't put too much stress on your shoulder. Getting it done is better than like feeling like it has to be quote unquote perfect. It's never gonna be perfect. I think everyone has learned that, like nothing's ever gonna be perfect. So just getting it out there, you'll start to see the benefits and you'll feel more and more confident every single time step up to actually write a post and put something out.

Alora:

I love that. Thank you so much, Jesse, for coming on the podcast. This was so, so good. And I'm gonna put all the links to work with you in the show notes Of course. But how can people find you, and then how can people also work with you?

Jessie (she/her):

So you can find us at Inpo Creative on basically every social media platform or inpo creative.com is our website, and we have a done for you blogging service that if you are like, I know I need to do this, but I just don't have time we have a service called Back Pocket Blogger. Where we'll write the two blog posts a month for you. You'll get feedback on it, but we will write it, edit it, upload it, publish it, all of the things that you don't want to do. So you come to us with a little idea, we'll write it and get it. Totally great for you to actually publish on your blog. So if that's something interested. That is the, all the information's on our website, but if you have any questions, we're always down to talk about blogging and geek out about it, so feel free to DM us. We will 100% answer anything that you have questions about.

Alora:

Yay. Well we're gonna go hop on your podcast now, Jesse and everybody else. Thanks for tuning in and I will see you next week. Bye.

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Alora Rachelle

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