Lessons

Lesson Info

Building the Content for Guides

so again how do you build the guy this is actually pretty easy because typically your guys can be solved from a whole host of different opportunities so first off if you've been building outta blawg that is designed not just to publish images when you shoot them but also designed to be helpful and to find all sorts of different ways to communicate and share your brand in action with your target market and you'll probably already have a lot of block post that are ready to be made into a guide whether it's a matter of taking multiple blawg posts and put them into a guide or taking a blogger post and expanding on it and making it a guide if you've been doing your job on your blawg and using that block strategy we talked about yesterday then you already have ah whole army of content waiting to be flushed out into blog's and it's okay to make your blood post content into guides you don't want a copy and paste that's a little bit of a m it's a little bit of a shortcut but you have to underst...

and the people are people are taking in your content from a guide and a block post at totally different totally different times and so you can use the same and similar content to build your guide from so block post is a great place to start if you've already done on interview with several florists that could be a great spot to pull those articles from your blogger post and used those as the underpinnings of a guide on you know how to pick out the right color scheme for your florals if you've already interviewed a bunch of djs on your block and that's a great place to start to build a guide that's howto pick your first dance song you know things like that these air little guides that you can create but you can start you have to do all the work over again you can start with some of the content that you've already shared in this could extend even into images and stories bind images oftentimes the stories that go behind the images you're sharing have underpinnings to a lot of content that you want to talk about number two slide shows and videos um slide shows and videos I would say this one you'll probably utilize a little bit less but if you have videos that you've created you can link out to those in the guide you can also you can embed them in the idol that's a little complicated we don't embed videos and guides right now she doesn't cause it it's just kind of complicated and nobody can have the right browser there looking at the view it but one thing that makes a guide really wonderful is when you provide supplemental resource is so when you have links that go out that say basically kind of like hey if you really want to get even deeper into this check this out and this is where slide shows and videos coming to play again let's say that you're doing a guide on top five things toe wear top five outfits to wear for your engagement session you probably don't want to show twenty pages of images of all the different outfits you probably want to kind of summarize and group but the bottom of every one of those tips you can say hey here are a couple galleries that showcase this outfit or this outfit collection and so slide shows and videos thes make great things to add in your guides that provides supplemental on extra even additional content for them to consume it also drives them right back to a blogger right back to your website and creates that wonderful circle of continuing to engage them number three venues that we talked a lot about this you grab some great thoughts about vendors both earlier this week earlier today when it comes to facebook and howto how to incorporate vendors we talked about vendors yesterday we're talking about utilizing vendors is great because there's so many benefits it's like a win win win win win if there is such a thing you can really take advantage of a lot of the social social reciprocity factor along with getting expert opinions about things that you're just clearly not an expert on I could tell you my opinions on what color your floral should be but I'm not an expert on that I don't know actually I don't have any reason to be an expert on that but I am an expert on you know best times a day to do different photos I am an expert on how to put together your family formals I am an expert on the things that make had the photography and so pulling in vendors allows you to expand your reach of what you're an expert on and expand the number of problems that you solve again we talked about yesterday what a great idea to start blogging and start having guessed post or siri's from other vendors on your block could help educate your target market that help solve the problem you're talking market that also introduced them to other things that they're interested in that just don't have to do with images that are being shared and then you can use those interviews toe build different guides and like we talked about the social reciprocity of that is if you go to all the effort and again like we talked about make sure you share it with him ahead of time make sure you don't have a dime hey we're gonna be doing this guide and using some of your block post you know is that all right with you we're going to share it with everybody and chances are they'll be very happy about it because going to put their name in front of their target market as well and when you come out with it chances are very high they're going to want to share it they're going to want to use it they're gonna want to put on their website they're gonna want to put on their blawg they're gonna feature in their content and so using vendors has a couple of benefits bands the areas you could be an expert in and by you I mean you and your brand it expands number of topics that you can solve problems with and it also allows you teo to really get the social reciprocity factor one of those valuable ways toe grow your brand is to give we've talked about that give give give so I really recommend you do this for the first two reasons I mentioned not for the third don't do this simply the strategy just to get more you know don't look at incorporating vendors in your guys just because it allows you to get more eyeballs on your guide use it as a strategy to truly an authentically help your target market help your customer help them out by solving problems and use vendors to help that and again when you give without expecting return chances are you'll probably end up getting more in return than you could've ever asked for that's the guy rating but if you give and you set up a level of expectations for what you want to get in return you might just get that if you're lucky number four past customers nothing beats the power of the past customer right now in in general there's a real power of what they call social proof right now it's kind of a thing that's being talked about a lot in in in the internet on web sites a lot of businesses are adding social proof and they're adding it all over the place because social proof has kind of been proven to really help a lot why didn't yelp is so successful yelp yelp really is social proof as a model and it's it's what people mean it's inside of iphones now you know it's inside of the map system in iphones it's crazy yelp has taken this idea of social proof why would people want to go to a restaurant that their friends recommend who are not experts when there's plenty of websites that share the best restaurants in town as voted on by the experts and the reason is because we trust our fellow cohorts more than we trust experts sometimes we trust our fellow travelers more than we trust experts sometimes they're long long has been the list of years and years that experts go to restaurants and tell us about the best ones I'm not even just the high end fancy ones here's show's on food channel on food network it's just food network right there's no food channel you can tell much I watched that have been shows what you know diners dives and drive throughs where that show is I mean it's not just about experts talking about high end establishments but yet we trust a za community we tend to trust yelp even more so than we trust these experts and it just is a whole psychological thing there but the bottom line is that understanding that in the social power of bringing past customers in not to talk about how amazing you are because now it just sounds weird sounds kind of fake sounds like you ass which he did even if you didn't it's it's just seems weird but to actually come back and educate to come back and also play the role of educator much like a yelp uses regular people people were in the same position I was in san francisco I wanted to go get a great pieces see great seafood because that's their known for and I didn't know where to go I was just years ago last weekend so I'd love to hear your opinion about where you ended up and that's almost as valuable if not more valuable to me than some expert who ranked the top five seafood restaurants in san francisco because I don't know if he got paid by those people and I don't know and etcetera etcetera member how our guard is up so much nowadays social proof has never been more valuable using your past customers to contribute well I really didn't know what to wear to my engagement session and such and such I ended up picking out this outfit may end up doing this and I love how it looks in the photos and I didn't even realize this but actually not matching my couch which allowed me to buy a large image that I put above my couch oh by the way now you're helping helle prints too you know I mean there's just so many values that come with bringing an engaging your past customers your past customers get excited they will want to share this guy's social reciprocity who are they going to share it with more people like your target market there's just so much value in bringing in your past customers okay let's talk about building the guide here is the problem we move on we do have a lot of people who are watching who are not wedding photographers yeah love it if we could just kind of brainstorm an idea for a guide for something other than that maybe let's say a landscape photographer you have inner thoughts around content for them yeah I think it's great so landscape photographers let's look at that let's let's assume that's a landscape photographer that sells their prints to individuals let's not assume it's an editorial style landscape photographer obviously if you're the type who gets paid more for your stock images being used in magazines or online that's a different model but if you're a landscape photographer who's selling your images to individuals again I don't know I'm not an expert in space so I'm not going to tell you exactly how but I first want to look at okay where where my customers and where do they enter you want to go back to slide back to that list and just go through and show exactly that it's because that's the thing we talked about yesterday but I don't think we've mentioned it yesterday and I want to reiterate then you're using a lot of wedding photography because that's your background but the principles that air here are the same regardless of your style regardless of your particular putin's so let's just kind of like reiterate those principles that you're applying as we go through I think it's great actually love he's a real life example from somebody I know somebody who who I've known over the years very not very well not very well just as an acquaintance travis burke he has built up a massive instagram following as a landscape and travel photographer and I know that he makes money off selling his prints and so we can look at travis and I don't I don't know him very well so I can't show the exact what he's doing but what I'm seeing him doing is utilizing these same kinds of things now I don't see him building guides but it's the same amount of same kind have a concept he shares images and he builds images on instagram that showcase the image but he also shows what he's doing in the image so he'll have an image he'll have an image that shows our beautiful landscape but also show himself in the image sometimes now if I wanted to build a guide based on me is a landscape photographer and I knew that people were buying prints off of me I would think that I'd want to start by building out this blawg oh that talked to people and talk to my car get market before they were actually at the buying process they have a lot of questions about what it looks like the bio landscape print for their wall where would you put a landscape print that's a wonderful problem that I would imagine people that space would have where am I going to put that how big do I need it how am I going to make the decision I know I thought I love the nature and I love outdoors and I have a couple favorite landscape artist but you want to know what I would buy one of their prints I run into the problem of I don't know which print I would buy because I love the artist but I love twenty five of their photos and I don't know which print I would buy of theirs I mean that's a big decision this is an expensive piece of art is going to go on my wall and it's going to stay there for the rest of my life what if I pick the wrong one what if there's another one that would have actually been better that's a huge problem I have these air all problems I have as the buyer before I actually get to buying that I can solve as the landscape photographer because I'm an expert in that I know when I'm taking the image what I envision and what I envisioned for people utilizing consuming this this content if you will I know how to educate them on these types of things I know how to educate them on howto pick which images teo showcase I know where they're probably going to be when they want to buy these images again we talked about yesterday are they just coming back from a travel destination did they just get back in the mountains is it actually going out to the mountains that triggers them wanting to buy my landscape photos well then I can start to share content about where to go in the mountains but how to plan a trip to the mountains about how to plan a trip that inspires you these are all see hime segmenting down the list of the problems that these people start tohave once I know more about my target market so again I'm not an expert landscaper but I hope that helps at least flush out some of the guys from the block post I would create because like you said the real thing that you're looking at the general principle you can apply to any industry is what are the problems that your audience is having and then how can I solve that for them how can I solve it for them is it how to prep your home for a print how to like something about styling as far as like how cluttered should your wild bee you know stuff like that and just looking to see what are the problems with your industry should my furniture match my photos color scheme or not I don't I don't know I mean I'm sure there's probably a lot of things about that help me out with that but get me closer to feeling more comfortable making a decision yes or no and solve my problems and you can do that actually by the way post customer this is a lot of we're talking about once they bought the landscape print there's so many opportunities because if they're happy with that first one they're gonna tell their friends about it they're gonna come back and buy another landscape print don't lose that connection continue to have how to care for your landscape print you're moving how to move and transport that landscape print there's so many problems you can solve there that they don't even know they're goingto have until after they bought the landscape uh quick question before we go down to the practical of how to actually physically make it is there a good rule of thumb to no one give your block away or went to sell it for a photographer I think it would be good to give it away to build trust but what if I want to teach a non photoshopped user tricks to using the software for instance do you ever sell these guides and if so how do you make that decision yeah I mean selling your content is a completely different strategy than what we've been talking about in the three day course selling your content is now a business model instead of a way to love your customer if you put a price tag on it it's not about love anymore it's about profit there's nothing wrong with that by the way it's a different model so if you're gonna ever look to monetize your content it's not a love your customer model it's not market anymore it's now a product line and now has a totally different view to look at it from