If you’ve been wondering about the right blog content strategy for photographers, this episode is your answer. We’re breaking down the three types of blog posts your photography website actually needs — and why getting the ratio right could be the thing that finally makes Google take you seriously.

On this episode:

• The three blog post buckets every photographer needs — and exactly how many of each
• Why your FAQ posts are secretly your hardest-working SEO content
• How local feature posts help (and hurt) when you get the balance wrong

Tired of being invisible on Google? Learn the 5 SEO mistakes keeping photographers from getting found (and how to fix them) in Melissa’s free masterclass: https://pictureperfectrankings.com/mistakes

Thinking about a pivot or transition in your photography business? Book a free 15 minute discovery call with Alison to talk through your next move.

Ready to streamline your content? Melissa’s got you covered with her 35+ Blog Post Topics freebie—grab them now.

Looking for your next clients? Grab Alison’s list of 39 FREE ways to get more bookings—no ads required.

Links:

• Leave a review in Apple or on Spotify
• 5 SEO Mistakes Killing Your Photography Business Webinar
• Download 39 FREE Ways to Get More Clients
• Get Melissa’s Free Blog Post Topics
• Find Alison on IG @‌alisonbellphotog
• Find Melissa on IG @‌pictureperfectrankings

Used #getbookedpodcast on socials!

NEW ep 94 3 Types of Blog Posts

[00:00:00]

Melissa Arlena: All right guys. Welcome back. This week we are gonna talk about a blogging mistake that I’m seeing, I feel a little guilty for starting it, but I didn’t realize that it would take off the way it has been. so the mistake I’m seeing is a lot of you guys are. writing posts about things going on in your area or other local businesses.

And I know for some of you, you may be writing it yourself for others, you’re outsourcing it. Um, and I love those posts, that’s why I recommend them,

Alison: They’re

Melissa Arlena: didn’t.

Alison: Melissa.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah, I know you’re blogging and I love that. I absolutely do. But what I don’t love is when I’m scrolling people’s blogs and it’s constantly a post of like, and when I talk about these local posts, what I mean is like, you know, the best doula is in your area, number one birth center, um, Easter events near you.

Like it’s that kind of stuff. Now, don’t get me wrong. I do love those posts, guys. I am not saying no to those posts. I still recommend [00:01:00] them, but what’s happening is I scroll your blog and that’s all I see. And you guys are starting to look like the, like mom community blog. You know, the one that

Alison: Oh

Melissa Arlena: your, your, your city

Alison: yeah.

Melissa Arlena: blog,

Alison: My active Child City. Yes.

Melissa Arlena: blog and they’ve got all of like activities going on in the area and stuff, and that’s what your blogs are looking like. And they’re not telling me that you’re a photographer if I were just to look at your blog. And so that’s the thing that I’m seeing. And the reason I started recommending those is because everybody was just doing session shares.

Alison: Yeah.

Melissa Arlena: there was like nothing else on the, and I’m like, you know, you should also be blogging for your community, getting your business name out there in Google. And yes, you should still be doing that. But when I go out to your website and all I see are features on other businesses and I don’t see any blog posts about photography, like, you know, when to book your session, things like that, you’re confusing, you’re confusing me of looking at it.

’cause I’m like, are you a local community blog or are you a

Alison: Yeah, who are you?

Melissa Arlena: Also shares community events. Um, [00:02:00] so what I want to kind of put to rest right now. Is the number, the majority of the posts on your website, on your blog need to be photography related. So if you have 10 blog posts on your website right now, and all 10 of them are about local community resources. gonna need you to write like at least 15 on something else, something photography related. So we’re gonna get into those different buckets and stuff. ’cause Allison and I were talking about this and brainstorming and really kind of coming in, like what are these buckets that I want you guys blogging because I feel like that’ll be more helpful to you on like how many posts you need to have kind of thing. So we are gonna start with the first bucket. You wanna talk about that Allison?

Alison: Yeah, so the first bucket would be pre-session FAQ posts. So these are things like client education, answering questions that you get often or haven’t gotten yet, or wish people were asking, um, examples like what to wear. When to book, like for me, why I only shoot at Sunrise. Um, behind the [00:03:00] scenes topics, um, or behind the scenes shoots of, of how your shoot works, what your philosophy is like.

Um, this is gonna get people on your side. It’s gonna get buy-in. Like, okay, so you’re a photographer, but can you work with my crazy 2-year-old? Can you work with my four older boys? Like, do you have experience with that? And that’s, that’s actually something I personally look at when I’m hiring a photographer.

I wanna know if you can handle my crew because. This is a very personal process, right? So when I’m checking you out, whether it be on Instagram or your blog, I wanna pre-qualify you before I ever reach out to you. Um, so

Melissa Arlena: really too, that goes along with Google. Like,

Alison: yeah.

Melissa Arlena: when you’re writing for the client and you’re convincing Allison that you know how to handle her four boys because you have all this photography experience and these tips and

Alison: Yeah.

Melissa Arlena: blah, blah, and all of this stuff, when you write that post for her, you’re also telling Google that.

Keep in mind, Google’s. Still is pushing their eat, which is, it’s EEAT. It’s experience, expertise, authority, and trust. And as you [00:04:00] write these blog posts, you are putting all of that out there into Google. And now you’re letting Google know, like I’m a photographer, I have experience in photographing. Big families with all boys. This is the types of things that we’re gonna do. So you’re convincing both Allison as the mom and you’re convincing Google at the same time and you know, for those different types of posts, like she talked about what to wear or when to book, things like that. Okay, y’all a what to wear post immediately.

You can write four versions of that for a family. For

Alison: Yeah. Yeah.

Melissa Arlena: fall, winter. you could write probably four versions for maternity,

Alison: Mm-hmm.

Melissa Arlena: winter, maybe for newborn. Maybe you’re only writing one if it’s indoors. That kind of thing,

Alison: Or focus on age range, like what to wear for teen girls. Teen boys, they’re hard as heck. What about wearing for baby babies or like the little kids? Like the little kids are kind of easy ’cause you just tell ’em what to wear and they do what you want. But when you’re talking about teen girls, y’all, every time I have a client get on the phone with me and they have a teen girl, I’m like, honey, no baby doll dresses that win.

We’re gonna have some Marilyn Monroe moments and we cannot have [00:05:00] that. And everybody gets it. They laugh. They’re like, oh yeah, yeah. And I’m like, sorry, not sorry. We need, we need that knee length. Right? That’s a big deal. So. Season, timeline, age range, gender? I,

Melissa Arlena: you

Alison: yeah,

Melissa Arlena: two, you know, then you’ve got when to book. You could write that for family, senior, maternity,

Alison: we just, we just gave you a whole year right there.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah. Yeah guys, I mean like, there are so many of these. I, one time I had a girl, she was like, I’ve been blogging for two weeks and I’m out of topics to blog about. And I was like, you are not digging deep enough.

Like there is

Alison: Mm-hmm. Nope.

Melissa Arlena: that you are at a blog post behind the scenes, stuff like that. I will say, if you’re a little stuck on that, if you guys go out to 35 topics.com, the number three, the number five topics.com, you can download my, um, my blog, uh. My lead magnet 35 blog post ideas and like again, even with those, look at ’em and say like, okay, Melissa, put this one for newborn.

Maybe I’m gonna do maternity, maybe I’m gonna do seniors. Maybe I’m gonna do pets. Like broaden your scope a little bit. But those pre-session FAQ posts, honestly, they need to be like 50% of what

Alison: Yep.

Melissa Arlena: blogging. [00:06:00] That needs to be the majority of what you are blogging right now, and then you’re gonna augment with some of this other stuff.

Alison: All right, so second. So that was pre-session stuff. Post-session products. This is one I only recently just started doing. So educating clients on those physical products and heirlooms. And guys, I hear you now, I don’t offer IPS, I don’t sell products. I bet a hundred percent. You’ve got a gallery that has a built-in shop.

You need to be writing about what’s in that shop. Okay? So even if you’re not IPS. Even if you’re not IPS?

Melissa Arlena: everything that’s in that

Alison: Yeah.

Melissa Arlena: start with just loose prints, an album. And I was just giving this advice the other day to somebody. I was like, look, when you pick an album, don’t pick 12 different covers for them to choose from in

Alison: Mm-hmm.

Melissa Arlena: and 8 million different spread options, just pick

Alison: No,

Melissa Arlena: to start with

Alison: just pick one.

Melissa Arlena: this.

If you don’t have that shop turned on in your gallery, some of your clients are reaching out to people like me. Asking me to print their photos. I have a client who is a past wedding client every year she gets family photos [00:07:00] every year. Her photographer does not offer any printed products, and she comes to me and pays me to print them. You guys are missing out on money.

Alison: Wow. Yeah, so turn the gallery on. And then, so even if you’re just new to selling these products, like display how you do your own family photos, like talk about your stuff, what’s on your walls, what’s on your stairwell, right? Um, so some other examples, how to display portraits. What is a luxury, uh, album?

Gift ideas for grandparents? My personal one, I do so many albums. I used to work well. I didn’t used to work with ’em. I tried to work with a very popular, um, professional lab with my albums. I got a sample, didn’t love it. Went to trade show, found this company that I’ve worked with for three or four years now.

And I have side by side sample photos of the construction and the difference of why mine are better. Like the way they’re, the way they’re made, the way the print is done, the way the leather goes, all the way around the book or the miters, um, sorry. Corners are Mitre. Um, so that’s a, that’s a [00:08:00] deep dive on why I sell albums, right?

So that’s its own blog post. I use that in my pre-session email to tell my clients why they’re gonna wanna order one. Um.

Melissa Arlena: I used to do a blog series. I had a whole

Alison: Uh,

Melissa Arlena: on my product, so once a month I would blog a different product, and so it was like one month was loose prints, one month was.

Alison: yeah.

Melissa Arlena: in a print box. Another one was frame prints. Another one was albums. Like. That’s something that you can create a series, and then that way you’ve got all of them. You put that onto a page and you’re sending it to a client and pre-selling them before their session on

Alison: Yeah.

Melissa Arlena: are the products that we offer. Go ahead and take a look now and think about what it would look like on your wall.

Alison: Yeah.

Melissa Arlena: gallery, stuff like that. I’ve blogged all of that.

I’ve blogged how we hung. Things in our home so that I can show clients to get their inspiration. This is a big thing with products and stuff. You have to show everyone, you

Alison: Mm-hmm.

Melissa Arlena: it. Otherwise, no one wants to purchase products

Alison: Right?

Melissa Arlena: about it. Like, oh, that’s expensive, but you really start pulling their heartstrings and they got, you got ’em.

Alison: Yep. At the end of the day, guys. You [00:09:00] sell what you show. So if you’re showing photos in the final, final images, that’s cool, but if you’re not gonna show the end result framed on a wall in an album, what have you, you’re not gonna sell it. So blog it so you can show it off.

Melissa Arlena: Well, and keep this in mind too, when

Alison: Mm-hmm.

Melissa Arlena: it, you know we’re blogging it for future clients and stuff like that, but I bet you guys have an email list or a list of

Alison: Mm-hmm.

Melissa Arlena: who have been past clients that you write this post, it’s now for future clients, you’re gonna send it to new ones.

What if you also sent it to a past client, said, Hey, by the way, you know, or just

Alison: Yeah.

Melissa Arlena: to your past clients and you include this, you may find that you’re able to drum up some sales in the off season of just people coming back and being like, you’re right. I meant to order an album.

Alison: Yeah.

Melissa Arlena: thing with albums too, like I know for, um, another good post would be.

Giving them permission, like if they’re doing family photos and stuff. Yes, go ahead, print that at Shutterfly if you want. Like, I

Alison: Yeah.

Melissa Arlena: your photo book there, but when you have, when you’ve put this money into a photo session, you’ve done hair and makeup, you’ve bought all the outfits, and now you’re [00:10:00] just letting it sit on your hard drive, never to find it again. Instead, you know, they could have a beautiful album. Like kind of putting it in that perspective of like, how much did you spend to do this photo shoot? Just to have the photos sit on your hard drive. Like why not spend just a little bit more and now you have this beautiful book or this

Alison: Yep.

Melissa Arlena: portrait that you’re gonna look at all the time.

Alison: Yeah.

Melissa Arlena: and here’s the thing too, with some of these blog posts, like this one reminded me ’cause for the blogging club this month, um, for April, I just did one on why a family photo album is important because I wanted them to be able to like. Start this series where they can do these posts every month and then they can use it to sell forward and sell backwards.

So if you’re ever stuck with blogging and like you don’t know what to blog and stuff, go check out blogging club.com and uh, we’ve got all kinds of information you can join us and you get two blog posts a month kind of thing. So I try to make it easy. I had one girl, she was like, Melissa, I left. She was like, and then I came back because I didn’t blog at all without you.

And I was like, yay, not yay that you’re not blogging, but yay that you’re back.

Alison: Yeah. So the next thing, kind of the third and final bucket or content idea we have [00:11:00] is the local features. And this is where Melissa was saying people are going hard in the hard, in the sauce for, in the wrong direction with having too much of this, but it is still important to have it. This is where I focus on for, um, traveling to Hawaii with kids, with teenagers, with small children, with boys eating for free, eating on the cheap whatever.

Um, that kind of stuff. Uh, and this is where people are getting hung up. Like, it’s one thing to share your FAQs, it’s another thing to share your philosophy. Um, but this local features and, and kind of digging into the non photography side of things. Matters. And you should be doing it because you, it humanizes you.

And it does, it gets back to what, um, Melissa was saying about eat, like your experience, your trust, your this, the prequalification of do I even wanna be around you much less trust you with my family? Um, who are you? Right? Um, and so this kind of stuff that the. The world’s your oyster on this one. But I say my strategy is who are you?

Because [00:12:00] typically, a lot of times your ideal client is very similar to you, your kind of lifestyle, your values, your approach to things. And so you can use yourself on that. Like, is your family gluten-free? I know if you use this example a lot then like where all the great gluten-free dessert places in your town, um, where are the, are?

Do you have small children? Are you uh, work from home? Mom? Where are all the great indoor playgrounds in your area? Things like that. And if, and if you’re getting, if you feel like you’re toeing the line of too much or too little on this, this is the kind of stuff, um, coming up with my blog to book workshop that we’re gonna be strategizing, like we’re gonna get into the nitty gritty of what works for you.

For your clients, for your area, and what’s going to ultimately get you bookings because it works for you specifically. Um, so you can click the link in the show notes for that, but local features is big on traffic. It helps and supports your SEO authority and it’s gonna get you in front of clients who aren’t necessarily looking for the photographer yet.

They don’t know you [00:13:00] exist, but now they just entered your orbit. And then you can go, then you can go talk about, go listen to the episode about lead magnets, about keeping them in your orbit and absorbing them, and then da, da, da, da. So

Melissa Arlena: Yeah,

Alison: specific.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah, and with these local authority ones, I absolutely agree with Alison that you need to be writing them, but they’ve just got to be a lesser portion. I would say. If you are saying like,

Alison: Mm-hmm.

Melissa Arlena: gonna write four blog posts a month. I would do two blog posts on photography, pre-session FAQs.

I would do one blog post on some kind of product or GIF guides or something like that, and then I would do one post that’s a local feature post. So you’re still

Alison: Yeah.

Melissa Arlena: local feature post every month, but it’s gotta balance

Alison: Yeah. And for a month is a lot, guys, so even if you’re just doing for one a month, that, that’s the general recommendation. Yeah.

Melissa Arlena: about it from a quarter

Alison: Mm-hmm.

Melissa Arlena: just doing one a month, then I don’t want every month that one to be a local resource. I want you to kind of think, okay, I did a local resource this month. Next month I’m gonna do a pre-session FAQ. The next month I’m doing a product.

The next month I’m doing another FAQ, and then I’m doing [00:14:00] another local resource.

Alison: Yep. Or you could batch it, do three and, but don’t, don’t publish them

Melissa Arlena: Schedule

Alison: time. Schedule them, schedule them, schedule them, and that’s built in. You don’t have to pay a platform to do that. So do so.

Melissa Arlena: no. And then for like bonus updating content. So that’s

Alison: Mm-hmm.

Melissa Arlena: that you can do is go back and update like an old blog post. Look for something that has dropped in rankings. Might need

Alison: Mm-hmm.

Melissa Arlena: check on something that’s ranking on page two. Can you get it to page one? Um, is the keyword you initially picked. The right one, or now when you look at your Google search console, you’re like, oh, actually I’m ranking better for this one and it gets more traffic. Let me go ahead and pivot because it’s already doing well. Um, and you know, if you’re only blogging once a month, then I would recommend that at least you’re refreshing another post once a month kind of thing.

So you’re hitting something new and then something old every month. Um. And then if you’re doing four a month, you know, maybe you could even do it that way where you just are like, okay, hey, I’m gonna refresh a post this week, but then next week I’m gonna blog. So I don’t want you to feel like you’re constantly having to blog, but you [00:15:00] know, we do wanna make sure things are kept, update and that you’ve got just a good ratio.

Just keep that in mind if that’s what I drill into you today, it’s just have a good ratio that your site, when I look at it and I scroll, it is obvious to me that you’re a photographer, but then you’re also super helpful. ’cause look, there’s some Easter events that are going on in my area that I didn’t know about, that

Alison: Yeah. Yeah. You guys, if you’ve been listening to the podcast for any amount of time, you know both of us are really big on blogging. Okay, I, I have blog posts in three different cities that are number one for their target search results right now. Right. One of them I haven’t touched in five years. Like this is important stuff for so many reasons.

For your SEO, for your email marketing, for your general marketing because the crux of. All of your messaging should start from your blog post, right? And like Google even says they wanna know that you have experience and authority and trust. So what you write on your blog post and on your website, one builds your website out and answers questions.

People are already asking, but it puts you in front of a warm audience that may or may not even [00:16:00] know you exist. And then you show ’em beautiful work and then they’re like, oh, I wanna be in her orbit. And then you have a booked client. That is the point of booking, booking and blogging. So. We have support for this.

This is a really big deal. Um, so if you’re not doing it, you’re not doing it well, you’re not seeing results. You wanna see from this jump on my workshop, it’s $34. We’re gonna figure it out. And if you’re listening to this later, there will be a recording available. So blog.

Melissa Arlena: That’s all we’re

Alison: for

Melissa Arlena: you to do

Alison: Yeah.

Melissa Arlena: blog. Well think about what you’re blogging and if you, and here’s the thing, if you’re looking at your website going, oh crap, Melissa, I have all of these blog posts that are local and now what do I do? Don’t get rid of ’em. I’m not saying

Alison: Oh yeah. Oh my God.

Melissa Arlena: start adding to them.

Just

Alison: Yeah.

Melissa Arlena: to them as much as you can, putting out photography related FAQ stuff. Um, and just start making sure that that tide is shifting. That if someone’s looking at your content, they’re like, oh yes, she’s a photographer who is also knowledgeable about her area. That’s the goal we’re looking for.

Alison: There it is. Mic drop. [00:17:00] Until next time, guys.

Melissa Arlena: Bye-bye.