Content Marketing Q&A
Lesson 54 from: How to Start a Photography BusinessPye Jirsa
Content Marketing Q&A
Lesson 54 from: How to Start a Photography BusinessPye Jirsa
Lesson Info
54. Content Marketing Q&A
Summary (Generated from Transcript)
The topic of the lesson is content marketing for starting a photography business. The instructor discusses the importance of creating educative content on your blog or specific pages of your website, the potential pitfalls of curating content from other sources, the ideal length for blog posts, and the importance of valuable content for keeping visitors on your site.
Q&A:
Should educative content be created on a blog or specific pages of a website?
It is recommended to have educative content housed on the main website with a permanent home, rather than just on a blog, as it makes it more searchable and accessible.
Can content from a magazine be used on your own site if you credit them?
It is advised against using content from other sources, as it can be considered plagiarism and can negatively impact your search engine ranking.
Is there an ideal length for blog posts?
It is suggested to keep blog posts to around 500-800 words, with easily digestible and to-the-point content that is valuable to the reader.
Is it bad if people don't stay on your site for long?
If visitors are not staying on your site for long, it may indicate that the content is not valuable enough to keep them engaged. It is important to target the right audience and provide relevant content.
How can one keep up with changing SEO algorithms?
Following SEO Moz, a blog that provides updates on search engine ranking and SEO, is recommended. However, it is also important not to obsess over SEO and to focus on providing great content and targeting specific niches.
Lessons
Class Introduction
13:12 2Common Myths & Unknown Truths
11:42 3The Road Ahead
13:03 4Find Your Passion
06:06 5The Lin & Jirsa Journey
13:54 6Part-time, Full-time, Employed, Partners?
03:51 7Stop Wasting Time & Money
06:07 8Your 12 Week Roadmap
04:33Great Plans Still Fail
06:01 10Strategy Vs. Planning
04:16 11Mind Mapping
07:25 12Select a Focus
14:16 13Competitor Research
09:34 14S.W.O.T. Analysis
13:54 15Strategy & Long Term Goals
03:50 16Values, Vision & Mission
27:49 17Effectively Managing Your Time
15:05 18Artistic Development
07:30 19Create Your Plan
13:12 20What's Your Product
10:51 21Luxury vs Consumer Products & Experiences
11:44 22Quick Break for Econ 101
16:31 23Your Target Market & Brand Message
21:25 24What's in a Name
09:20 25Your Client 'Why'
05:43 26Crafting the Why Experience
24:17 27Document the Client Experience
08:29 28Business Administration Basics
27:03 29Book Keeping Management
06:51 30Create the Logo & Branding
07:04 31Portfolio Design
15:11 32Design Your Services & Packages
18:51 33Pricing Fears & Myths
08:46 34Three Pricing Methods
25:39 35Package Pricing Psychology & Design
06:15 36Psychology of Numbers
07:29 37Pricing Q&A
23:51 38Grass Roots Marketing
09:36 39The Empty Party
07:03 40Friends & Family Test Shoots
16:28 41Join Groups
04:32 42Second Shooting Etiquette
07:44 43The Listing & Classified Hustle
14:10 44Make Instagram Simple
13:55 45Your Automated Pinterest Plan
08:01 46Facebook Because You Must
07:37 47Giveaway & Styled Shoots
12:17 48Content Marketing & SEO
08:12 49The Monster: SEO
07:26 50Selecting Your Keywords
05:45 51Testing Your Keywords
07:53 52Grouping Main & Niche Goals
12:39 53Your Content Road Map
11:47 54Content Marketing Q&A
10:45 55Inspiration to Keep Working
07:45 56How to Craft Your Content
15:03 57Internal Linking Basics
05:30 58Back Link Building Basics
04:55 59Link Value Factos
14:38 60Measuring Link Value
04:24 61Link Building Strategy & Plan
06:10 62Link Building Plan: Vendors & Guest Writing
06:45 63Link Building Plan: Features, Directories, Comments
03:11 64Link Building: Shortcuts & One Simple Tool
14:44 65What is Sales? Show Me!
12:58 66Your First Massive Failure
05:17 67The Sales Process
07:31 68Your Second Massive Failure
05:23 69Understand Buyer Psychology
10:00 70Step 0: Building Rapport & Trust
15:14 71Step 1: Identify Need or Want
15:39 72Cognitive Dissonance
12:01 73Steps 2 & 3: Value Proposition & The Solution
14:21 74Step 4 : Close, Make the Ask
04:32 75Step 5: Follow Up & Resolve Concerns
06:13 76Family Photography Hot Seat
12:06 77Business Example Hot Seat
15:52 78Boudoir Photography Hot Seat
16:09 79The Best Sales Person
07:45 80Your Mindset, Vibrations & Frequency
06:56 81Always Positive, Always Affirming
11:55 82The Second Money & Dual Process
07:39 83Chumming the Price Waters
03:57 84Creating Want or Scarcity
09:54 85Timeless Advice on Being Likable
11:53 86Selling Over The Phone
10:59 87Forbidden Words in Sales
11:40Lesson Info
Content Marketing Q&A
So, do you recommend to create educative content on your blog or on specific pages? Well, a lot of times you can actually, so you want them to be housed on the main website. You want them to have a home. Things that are just on your blog, don't really have a home, right? They don't have a place to get to from that main menu. So you generally want these things to be searchable. That's not to say that often times these blogs and things that you purchase, whenever you publish a new page, you can actually give it a home on your website, and you can serve it to your blog. Does that make sense? Your blog basically serves up all new content, whereas you gave it a direct link and a permanent home on this spot. So it does both. I expect it to hit your blog, if you write something about new venues, I hope it hits your blog, it needs to. I have a question from Danny, who says, for example, for five tips every new bride should know, or newborn safety tips, I love that. her question is, can s...
he use content from a magazine if she is crediting them, so how much can you be sort of curating other content that's out there and putting it on your own site? I would very much advise against that. There's a fine line between what's called curating of content and plagiarism. So, yeah, don't go there. And the other thing is, it doesn't benefit you from an SEO standpoint. The reason why is, if you pull content from some other place, if it's been up there for 24 hours or more, what's the likelihood that Google or all the other search engines have already crawled it? Raise your hands if you think that it's already been crawled and searched and looked. The engine has already found that content. That's bad news when you take that content and you publish it on your own page. Because then the search engine itself dings you. Ooh, bad practice, you just plagiarized someone else's stuff, your ranking is gonna drop. So, these are things that are very legitimate, and any time you publish non-organic content, the SEO benefit is minimal, meaning that if you're not creating the content yourself, if it's not new content, if you're taking somebody else's stuff, the benefit is either minimal to damaging, depending on what it is that you exactly did. So avoid it, don't take other things, that's why I say look to the Lin and Jirsa site as an example of what to do, go take it and make it your own. Adapt it, put it in your own voice, make it your own, write your pages. Cool? Alright cool, and Chris chimed in and said, "Google penalizes duplicate content." So there you go, you got it. Yes! Look at that. How long should blog posts be, is there sort of an ideal length, or is does it really kinda depend on your genre, or I know people don't like to read on the internet sometimes, they just wanna look at pictures, but... This is a great question, I'm gonna answer this from the standpoint of, I used to be the editor in chief for SLR Lounge, so our writers would come in and write stuff, usually 500 words, 800 words, is great. You don't need to go and write page long essays and in fact, what I would say is, the more you write, it better be so damn good that people are gonna keep on reading. Because beyond a certain point, Google's not looking at the keywords 10 pages down in an article, they're looking, what's closer to the top. Is that making sense? So they're gonna look at, that's actually one of the search factors, is what are the closest things to the top of the page? Those are the more relevant things. You're better off with to the point articles, easily digestible, because even though we are, we're gonna cover this in the next segment, even though we're writing, with keywording and content, kinda this categorization and SEO in mind, we're not writing for the search engine. We're writing for the end user. We're writing for the consumer who's gonna come and read it. It needs to be good content, it needs to be valuable. It needs to serve all those things, and in fact, if it's not, if Google feels like you wrote this for Google, bam, knock you down, it's that good. It's that good at detecting how you're writing. And if you say things like, we're gonna talk about keyword stuffing, like, I really love being a wedding photographer in Los Angeles. Being a wedding photographer in Los Angeles means the world to me. That is a keyword stuffed sentence. It has absolutely no value to the person reading it, and Google knows it. So, keep it shorter, keep them targeted, the easiest way to write beautiful content is list format content that follows a popular keyword term. Newborn safety is your keyword term. Five tips on newborn safety. As I'm saying this, do you hear Gizmodo, and all these other sites popping up in your head? Buzzfeed, and every single other site that uses these frameworks? This is where it comes from, okay? You just take it and adapt it to what you do. Boudoir. What do I wear for a boudoir shoot? What to wear... My boudoir shoot, what to wear, 10 ideas. And you have 10 simple ideas that guide them through. This way, Haldis, you don't need to be the best writer in the world, you just need to come up with interesting ideas. And two or three lines here or there to explain them. You don't need to write an essay for any of these things. Got it? Follow up question from Kate Garen, If your blog posts are too short, and people aren't staying on your site very long, is that bad, are you considering how long people should be staying on your site? I believe that's one of the tracking metrics, that Google would use, or a search engine would use is how long do people stay on the site. The key there is it's an important thing to understand, but the problem there is that the content itself is not valuable enough to stay. So you're pulling somebody in somehow, you got them there, but for some reason whatever they're seeing is not enough to keep them there. Which would lead me back to what keywords are you targeting, are you getting the right people on the page in the first place? Because if it's somebody that's interested in what you do, they should be willing to look around a little bit. It's like walking into a store and browsing. Imagine this. Let's go back to Louis Vuitton. We're standing in Louis Vuitton, and I wanna get people in the door. So I put ice cream on a cone, I'm like, "I got free ice cream for anybody who wants free ice cream, just come on in!" You could probably get a lot of people to walk into Louis Vuitton with some free ice cream on your cone, right? And you just hand out free ice cream. Free ice cream, one for you, one for you, Sharon you want some, what's your favorite flavor? Salted caramel. Ooh, I love salted caramel. You got some salted caramel, but then after you've had that salted caramel Sharon, are you gonna stick around and buy a bag? Nah. You're good, you got your salted caramel, you're out. (audience laughing) And that's the problem that we have, when people are coming into a site and frequently bouncing, is that we're either engaging the wrong audience, or the content is not valid to that audience. So pick one or the other, and then adapt it. Question from MPD Photo Guy, who's wondering about how you find out, how you track how algorithms are changing when it comes to SEO, so he's mentioning that some of the bigger ones have announced that some of the algorithms don't work anymore, and so how do you keep up with that? Okay, I'm gonna channel Chris right now. SEO Moz. SEO Moz is kind of the foremost authority on search engine ranking, everything search engine, they have a blog that you guys can follow. Keeping up to date on it is a good thing, don't drive yourself crazy with it. Don't let SEO drive yourself nuts, this is where your main thing, if you're too focused on that main SEO keyword term, you can drive yourself nuts, because one day you're at first, one day you're third. One day you're second, one day you're sixth. And it'll keep bouncing around, don't worry about it. Worry about your niches. Those are honestly the gold mines. Because those are things where somebody's considering something specific in your area, and it's a direct lead to you. That's your bread and butter, your niches should be your bread and butter. And then the organic ranking of the overall site will come a time. And we have more factors, the next segment is gonna talk about all the other factors and how to build that authority. Which sucks, because it used to be called page rank, and Google deleted that. There's no more page rank. So now we're just stuck saying authority. Because nobody knows. That make sense? It's a non-stop game. I wanna break this down in the simplest way possible. Don't think about what do you do for a search engine. Okay, if you go that route, all of you are gonna drive yourselves crazy. Think about this. Let me use my search engine to dictate what keywords, what category to be using. Then from there, just put out great content. From there, just put out good articles, good education. Okay? We're gonna teach you some back lane stuff, we're gonna teach you, but that is the big piece of it. Because if you're putting out good stuff, that people like and people read, that's the end goal of a search engine, right? The algorithm constantly changes because they're trying to figure out what is the most relevant thing to be serving up? So don't think about what do I need to do to please them, think about what is the most relevant thing you could serve up to your target market. Just use some good practices along the way, and it'll automatically rank.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Armstrong Su
This class and materials are to the point and eye-opening on the business side of photography. Pye Jirsa is an amazing and fun teacher as well! Most photographers need more business classes offered to bring us who love to create art back to reality for a more successful business that makes a living on it's own. This course will definately get you started in the right direction and so cheap too! Great investment! armstrong outdoor tv case outdoortvcase Pye Jirsa is one of the best instructors that I have the pleasure to learn from. He and his team have given me so much more than they'll ever realize. Knowledge, wisdom, training, friendship, mentoring, inspiration, joy... I cannot thank Pye enough for changing my life for the better. I owe them more than they'll ever realize. Thank you, Pye Jirsa!!!
Angela Sanchez
This class has been an eye opener for me; a point of change in my vision as photographer. Pye is and AMAZING, INSPIRING, GENEROUS instructor, with an, authentic desire to help people and to share with them the best of his knowledge. I will not have enough words to say thanks to Pye Jirsa, as a teacher and as a human being, and thanks to Creative Live who allows us to benefit from the experience of such a knowledgeable, educated, well-versed photographer and instructor. 1000% recommended!
Yenith LianTy
Been following this guy forever. Pye Jirsa may be well known in the wedding & portrait photography world and if there is something that this guy knows it is how to create a business, a sustainable one. The workbook he provided is comprehensive, and I honestly wish I had this when I first started out as a photographer! I love that he talks about his failures, keeping it real and honest for anyone starting out. He is definitely one of the best instructors around, super humble, down to earth and with a sense of humor to boot. The course is worth it! THE WORKBOOK is AMAZING! SUPER DETAILED!