You asked, I’m answering: today on the blog I’m answering your biggest blogging questions! We’re talking about how to start a blog, how to save time while blogging, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and so much more!

“Which website builders should I use?”

I’m not an expert when it comes to the building of the actual blog, but I can tell you this:

• You need a domain (aka your website URL). I got mine from GoDaddy

• You need somewhere for your blog to call home. I use WordPress

• You need website hosting. I use Bluehost

Here’s a great blog post with a step-by-step list!

“Where the heck do I start and when!”

Once you’ve actually set up your blog, you need to do some planning and some goal setting. Ask yourself these three questions:

1. What do you want this blog to do for you?
2. What do you want to blog about?
3. How often do you want to blog? Is this realistic?

Be honest and realistic with yourself. Here were my answers:

1. I want this blog to show off my work, highlight my past clients, give value to my current clients, save me time in my business, and boost my SEO so people can find me on Google.
2. I want to blog about my sessions and weddings, tips for clients, and photographer education.
3. Realistically, I want to blog one session/wedding and one education post every week.

Next, you brainstorm ideas for each category. For me, this meant listing all the sessions and weddings I wanted to highlight, tips for couples I could send them as value, and educational posts for photographers. If you’re feeling stuck, here’s 50 blog post ideas to get you started.

Next, start a content calendar and get batch working! Here’s a helpful guide:

Day 1 (Monday): Brainstorm all your ideas for each category, then pick 4 total (I recommend blogging once per week to start out so you don’t feel overwhelmed!). Schedule them in your content calendar.

Day 2 (Tuesday): Outline each of your posts. Brain dump everything you want to include, then rearrange so it makes the most sense.

Day 3 (Wednesday): Sit down and write out each of the posts. Turn off all distractions and crank it out.

Day 4 (Thursday): Add images to all the blog posts.

Day 5 (Friday): Optimize your blog posts for SEO.

Ta-da! In an hour every day for one week, you have blog content for a whole month! And to answer your “when” question, there’s no better time than now 🙂

“What do you write about? I feel like no one will read my blog posts.”

Write about what your clients need to hear from you, or what interests them.

• FAQ’s
• What can you help your clients with?
• Give them tips!
• Directly ask your audience to see what they need from you!

If you’re stuck, here are 50 blog post ideas that will interest any audience!

“Blogging takes too long. How can I save time?”

Here’s a blog post that goes into detail for how to save time while blogging!

In short:

1. Use a content calendar so you can plan ahead and not feel stressed.
2. Outline your blog posts instead of just sitting down to a blank screen.
3. Batch work!

“A lot of emails I receive are summed up blog posts or little previews with some photos. What content do you include in emails from the blog?”

I don’t know about anyone else, but I do this manually.

Usually I’ll copy and paste the first paragraph of my blog post into the email. I work hard on this first paragraph of every blog post because it’s the most important. You need to grab the reader’s attention, tell them why this topic is important, and let them know what they’re going to learn or get out of this blog post.

Then I usually include the first point or part of the first point in the email, followed by a “read more” button that links to the blog post. If they made it that far and are interested in the topic, they’ll click the link to finish reading. I have a super high average open rate (50%, average is 18%) and average click rate (20%, average is 2.8%), but my list is small right now so that’s expected.

The whole purpose is to get people hooked on the content and click to your website to keep reading.

“I’ve been told blogging gets my website seen on Google. Is this true?”

In my experience, yes! Blogging seriously boosts your website’s SEO, Search Engine Optimization. Since blogging, Google has become my second highest referrer to my website, after Facebook.

If you’d like to read my best tips about SEO, check out this blog post!

And you can get my free SEO checklist here!

In short:

• Consistent blogging tells Google that you have an active website.
• When you define what you want people to find you for (your keywords), you can add them to your blog posts and people will find you for it! For example, I have tons of blog posts that say “Skyline Drive Engagement Session,” so I attract people who search for that on Google!
• The more content you have on your site, the more likely someone will find you for something. Plain and simple.
• When you have a library of blog posts, you can link between them (like you’ve seen me do so far) as well as link to other websites and Google loves this because it reads it as you giving your reader more value and information.

Have a question that wasn’t answered here? DM me on Instagram and I’ll answer it or add it to the next video where I’ll answer your questions again!

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