Blogging Is The Key To Building Traffic and Generating Leads | Ep. #27

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Blogging can seem like a daunting task to most but every blog post is one more page that Google indexes and puts into their search engine. Furthermore, companies that published 16+ blog posts per month got almost 3.5 times more traffic than companies that published between 1 – 4 monthly posts according to Hubspot.

Blogging not only helps you build traffic but it also shows your audience that you are an authority in your industry and you are willing to help solve their problems for free. This helps them be selfish when it comes to choosing to use your products or services because it is now in their best interest.

We have a special guest in this episode, Maxym Martineau. Maxym Martineau is a copy editor and staff writer for GoDaddy. She’s an avid reader with an unhealthy addiction to Dr. Pepper and chocolate. She binge watches TV shows like there’s no tomorrow and is always up for a good plot discussion. You can follow her on Twitter for further shenanigans.

Beer of the Episode

Split Shot – Elysian Brewing Company

elysianbrewing.com

Resources Discussed In The Episode

Pexels.com – Stock Photos

Unsplash.com – Stock Photos

Pixabay.com – Stock Photos

Canva.Com – Free Image Editor

adwords.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner – Keyword Planner to show monthly keyword searches

 

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Transcription of the episode

Errors courtesy of automation

00:00 Everyone, this is Nealey and I don’t want to give a real quick introduction here. We were in a public co-working space, so there might be some background noise chatter during this episode, for that, I apologize, but the content is on point and we have a special guest. Thanks for listening again.

00:25 Thank you for listening.

00:25 Listening. This is Brandon. This is Nealey. This is a special episode of craft thinking who you might be asking yourself, well, why is it so special? Every episode is special because we drink beer and that’s always a special occasion is we actually have a very special guest on the show, Jessica. I know, right? This is. She’s a celebrity of sorts. This is Maxym Martineau. No, you might say that sounds like the name of a novel is really like a romance novelist and you’d be right. That’s actually one thing. One of the things she does, she is actually best selling novelists and , she also for, for work is a vertical content editor and writer. Now you may not know what that means and neither do. I will probably ask her about that in a second. , she also started a new venture called all the kissing, which is a resource resource site by romance writers for Romance Writers, and then over the next year she’s really going to be ramping that up and she’s got some cool stuff going on there currently like a podcast.

01:30 So it was cool to have her from her podcast to ours. So Maxym is just a rockstar and her probably the biggest accomplishment is she actually survived one of my training classes. Yeah, I would say my biggest accomplishment is being your friend. Wow. Fired. We’re going to add Whitney to or less than a smart ass Maxym. Thanks for coming on the show. So what is a vertical content editor and writer? So I work for the Godaddy bomb. Can verticals simply means that I cover a wide range of industries across all different types of small businesses. So from plumbers to Dr Craftsman to electricians typically runs the gamut, like every to hit St John’s hands. I’m going to come back to some of the terms of verticals and what that actually means, but I’m getting thirsty and we have some great beer in front of us and this is a beer brand and habits for the first time last night. So good. He said I have to have this again. Putting in the frickin episode. Yeah. And Maxym. Oh, she sounds perfect. She’s not because she’s not much of a drinker and we might forgive her for that, but it turns out that she likes coffee stouts isn’t espresso milk stout. So let’s go ahead and open these bad boys up here. I’m so excited. You talk to them. You gave it a four point seven five on, , on, on, on that. , it just every sip delicious.

03:07 Like why?

03:09 Well, yeah, the little sniffy sniff a snippet and then you feel like you’re going to drink it, but then snippet you’ve got a tricky. Yes.

03:18 I’ve got to guard the whole time that we’ve got your back.

03:25 Oh, this is just as good as last time.

03:27 So Maxym being the guest on the show lets you give your first, first thoughts first.

03:31 It’s a lot smoother than I expected. I really liked that. I can get behind that. Give me like two more. Two more sets. More so just a couple more gargles he when the Bot is done. Well Justin,

03:46 I’m just saying the actual, like the artwork on it. It’s pretty dope. It has a. What is it like a latte flower, a little flower. Do you go to a coffee shop and make them a little cool little design. So they got that on the bottle, which is pretty cool. Kind of gives that espresso hints there. , but it’s super smooth and it goes down nice. I can definitely taste the espresso undertones.

04:07 Stumptown coffee from a coffee shop. Well it’s just sometime coffee. Maybe that’s the coffee they use. That’s from Brooklyn. A coffee shop there. Ooh. She knows her stuff or stuff that she might be addicted to. Also. Um, my sister in law who lives in Portland and she swears by that. Yeah. I have like a bag of beans on my house.

04:29 Maybe why this is so delicious. They chose were coffee shop. Making an espresso , or a coffee shop is very tough because barry has a bitter flavor to it and then you throw the coffee in there, it can really mess it up and so I’m not a big fan of both of the coffee beers usually for that reason. And so I was really skeptical and I saw this but I really like , we can go to Washington and they give really, really consistent brewing. So I picked it up and I’m, I’m loving it just as much as last night. What about you, Justin?

05:00 I mean this is definitely going to go on a kind of like my preferred beer list. I’ll write very, a pretty high amount of [inaudible] will probably get four and a half. I’m not an [inaudible] scale, but it’s definitely [inaudible]. I did. I was definitely not an IPA so it doesn’t, it sucks less

05:20 beer. Sucks. Sucks. Last Hertz, let’s say like since I don’t re like I’ll give it a six, seven, five, five, six, five.

05:32 No, that’s pretty good. And you really did a great job there.

05:36 I’m digging it. So. So Brandon or PCC? More B to the g to c as he’s formerly known as

05:43 BTC.

05:47 So what are we actually talking about today? Like what, what’s the importance of having us here together and having Maxym here,

05:54 one thing that Maxym of her many talents besides for jazz hands, what she’s doing right now, , it as well as blogging. And so we figured, you know, we have an expert on the show, so we’d like to do something that’s definitely inside her wheelhouse. Maxym mentored me. It was certain parts of writing and also allowed me to be featured and go to garage. So I’m really excited about, about the topics we have in your, in what she’s going to be able to contribute to be a lot more coherent and make a lot more sense than compared to when me and Justin would explain it. Especially four episodes in one day. No more word vomit and no more worried about it. Right? So we’re talking about the importance of logging. It’s something that’s most small business owners don’t do, most businesses don’t do but can have a lot of benefits for your business. And I know that as a business owner, you’re probably sitting there thinking, going, I don’t think I have time for this. Is something worth making the time for.

06:47 That’s the biggest complaint I hear from small businesses is I don’t have time. Like there’s so many different things they have to do. Like I totally get it. Like this podcast is about like the small business and like the solopreneur and they have, they wear many hats and they had to do a ton. Um, but hopefully by the end of this you’ll see that at. Yes, it sucked because it’s kind of sit down and write when, especially in that’s not your forte. But hopefully you’ll see the value and what this is actually going to do with your business. So what, what’s the one of the most. What’s the one of the biggest reasons that you would say for someone to blog?

07:18 Well, if you’re looking at growing the business, most of that comes to seo these days. And having a blog massively helps with seo. It’s going to have relevant content and relevant keywords when you’re updating your site on a regular basis. So when it comes down to it, it’s something that can really bring a lot of great traffic to that you normally wouldn’t have gotten if you didn’t have the block. Google wants to know if you are trustworthy and relevant and if you are staying active in your community, in your industry, are your regulated not only updating the community, but you’re probably at that point then learning more on the process and then passing it on. It’s more likely they’re gonna. Send people your way. As far as, as far as blogs go, I know like when I, when I actually, when I wrote an article, a key words they’re looking for, right? So are we just want to hear you on this as far as the impact it has on your Seo Keyword specifically what in any way really it helps drive that traffic

08:23 graphics. He was are a definite component of blog posts. I was thinking about this a little bit earlier as I was looking at this copy actually hobbes out. Thinking like, oh, like you know, if you say you’re a small business and you run a brewery and you want to get the word out about this has copies out espresso, stout, whatever it is. It’s again, knowledge and beer guys,

08:47 if you

08:49 resignated keyword iced out, you’re never going to that blog post or that information. Even if you’re the thought leader out there is not going to rain, so you have to do your due diligence with your keyword research and just be a little bit more specific so like I’m a big fan of long tail keywords such as like characteristics of a coffee stout is probably going to rank well for you and then you could do a blog post about it and establish yourself as a thought leader and then that brings customers to your door because it’s not necessarily also salesy. While you can use some lingo in there that drives back to your products, establishing herself as the source is what’s going to bring in more traffic. Plus you kind of want to stick towards the females that are more. It depends on the scale of your business, but I would say more in the [inaudible] to [inaudible] range itself is probably hundreds of thousands like searches every day, every week, every I, whatever the metric is versus characteristics of the coffee stout might need more five k and you have a higher chance of ranking against other big name websites, right?

09:49 Just think about who you’re competing against. Forced out. You’re going to get the really big name. Companies who pay your money and who has longstanding association with Google in search results. It’s going to be almost impossible to be much more specific with your fewer choices.

10:07 I like that. A couple, a couple of things with, , what’s your first year? I was like the [inaudible] if there’s a site, well it’s google, I use Google’s keyword planner. You can actually see the, the amount of searches based on the keywords you’re searching for. That’s exactly what she was referring to and it’s free to use so you guys can of type in different key words are different and suggestions or whatever else to kind of see what, what, how many searches a month a that keyboard is going for and that one k to 10 k is perfect. And also with the, the long tail keywords like think of like Siri or a, what’s the Google one? Alexa or Cortana is windows. Oh Gosh, sorry. Do Go. , but essentially as OK, but if you guys think about it and where the power of voices coming, people are starting to use that as to actually search for stuff online. They’re using just conversation to just do a search and that’s where that long tail keywords come in. I suppose someone, someone’s not going to go a serious search stouts or they’re going to go histories. Tell me about the characteristics of style, but tell me about scouts or whatever it is. You want to capture those, those keywords and where people are actually having a conversation about it and that’s where still going to win.

11:18 Like for example, like if I was going to do a search for a coffee stout, I don’t really like coffee shop, so I would probably be a surgeon for smooth coffee, stout or nitrile copies down, something that is more specific. I’m looking for and with like knowing that industry, people that really want to craft beer are going to get specific with how it tastes. You’re going to want to care that we can talk about like the, the theory about it all day. There are some national statistics around it and we both, everyone knows that. Justin, I love statistics. I love it. I’m going to hand this one as far as the amount of blog posts per month and what that equal as far as traffic.

11:55 So hubspot is a legit company when it comes to , all sorts of tools to kind of help your business and they have a incredibly powerful blog and they generate a lot of their traffic from blogs. But according to them companies that publish 16 plus blog posts. And I did say 16 and that sounds super scary. Don’t worry, I, we’ll get to your different tactics later. But if you publish 16 plus blog posts a month, it got almost three and a half times more traffic than companies that publish one to four. Now think about how much three and a half times is. If you get 10 visitors a month, you’d publish 16 plus posts. You’re not getting 35. And that adds up. That adds up again. Um, so that, that’s incredibly huge just to a three and a half times rate just to kind of write some words on it, on a computer

12:41 can get the whole idea here is you didn’t just, you didn’t just invest in this website just for the hell of it. Like the whole idea is going to bring you business and it’s, think of it as an employee. So having that blog on there is letting that website work harder for your business to bring more people in. Three point five times more traffic is massive. That even if you have, , various low conversion rate law websites do, that’s, that’s still giving it three times a business that you didn’t have before. The potential of it. And then it does also the other things, like if they see you’re active on social media, like what you’re saying, and then they like you on social media, then you’re bringing other avenues. I do have an example. We talked about a CEO of a local company in Arizona you wouldn’t think would have a blog, but they dominated the, like the first two pages of Google.

13:29 So I live in Gilbert, Arizona. Um, if you were to search Gilbert Barbecue or Barbecue Gilbert, there was only one company that comes up, only one restaurant that comes up. And there’s other, there’s other barbecue places in Gilbert, not the only one, but according to the websites go, Joe’s real barbecue now. They don’t really do the as much as they used to, but when they were really ramping up to get that search engine ranking, they were releasing a lot more posts on the blog. And now if you’re in Gilbert or you want to go into Gilbert, you’re looking for barbecue and you search them, you’re not going to go anywhere else. I’m looking at the results right now. All of them are Joseph Barbecue, except for place that’s selling grills. So not their competition. No big deal. The other company on there is Joe’s bar and grill. And guess who owns Joe’s bar and Grill Joe’s real barbecue second. So datum. This is how you wouldn’t think of a restaurant had to do jazz hands. Fantastic. They’re delicious. Um, I absolutely love it.

14:32 That’s huge. Like you talked about, they haven’t blogged in a while. There are still dominating. Goes to kind of just building that, that long term result, like blogging is a long-term game. I’m also hubspot, I believe. , but basically they get that 70 percent

14:52 of their traffic each month comes from posts that weren’t even published in that current month. A evergreen content, evergreen content. You want to talk about that? All right. Tell us about every. Your content. Content is content that stands the test of time. And the best way to create evergreen content is to use. Like for example, we’ll go back to our characteristics of a coffee stout. Typically that’s going to change. So as long as you don’t stick anything that’s like date specific in there, that might need to be updated if you do just update it, but something that’s really well written, very well optimized and is a source of information which goes back to that whole blog for thought leadership content, creating this evergreen stuff that is always going to be the right answer. Looks so good on Google.

15:34 So you’ll still going on google, but let’s talk about your customers. Are we talking about perception is everything. If people, if your customers use is an expert in that field with its barbecue, whether it’s home cleaning services, whether it’s anything you think you wouldn’t think of. Barbecue restaurant would have a block. Right? But they did it when others weren’t and it brought them up and they are seen as like the best barbecue place that knows the most about barbecue. I’d been there. I love. I do have the bbq. It’s not the best where we, you know, it’s one of those things where I was in a couple months ago, I was like, yeah, try somewhere else. Go Barbecue and Gilbert. They were the only camp on the first two pages. I’m like, you know, I’m just going back.

16:15 It’s just if it’s top of mind, it doesn’t matter if you’re inefficient or not. That’s going to go

16:20 right. So we talked about, I’d like to mention before about it’s going to be very tough to compete with the larger companies, right? One of the big things that I always encourage small businesses to do is to look at what the big companies are doing. The successful companies are doing the right things are doing and copy to take a page from their playbook. So we’ve talked about if you make it into the fortune 500 list, you have your successful company at that point. So 36 percent of fortune 500 companies have blogs from [inaudible]. This is a trend that’s growing and growing and now the good news is, right now it’s us and 50 percent eventually let’s face it, everyone is going to have a block. It’s going to be a much more common thing of more and more businesses are more successful with it. So getting it now before it’s over-saturated, it’s something that, I mean, most businesses that are approaching it the right way are seeing extra business from it. And then other businesses and other businesses. When are you going to jump in on it as a business owner? Are you going to wait until everyone else is doing it or while it’s tempting to minority and a few successful companies are doing,

17:31 um, what do you guys feel is the most important reason or the purpose of having a blog is,

17:41 um, I, you know, I started off with Seo for, for a reason. A Seo is something that is insanely

17:50 fast, you know, and who knows what they’re going to do it with the next voice recognition. Justin, I’ve been talking about when you do another Seo podcast and we’re looking at all the trends and all the future stuff and we’re just trying to figure out what we can do in one episode here with blogs is something that has, has worked very well for the last few years. It’s increasing a seo traffic to sites massively right now. I think it’ll continue to grow and I believe with the voice activated stuff going out, like you’re Alexis and your google homes that might be using blogs is more of a resource for knowledge bases if you’re seen as a thought leader and expert in that industry. Right. So I think doing that might two years down the line might mean you’re showing up on Google home searches, searches. It’s a possibility,

18:35 right? Yeah. Seo is obviously a big, um, for me it’s touching on the tail end of what you were just saying, VDC and that’s I’m establishing trust and awareness amongst your customer base and your client base because at the end of the day, even if you’re just blogging about inflammation and you’re still selling something, you’re selling information, you’re selling, you’re selling where you’re selling something, and the best way to do that is to create a relationship with your readership. And the only way to do that is to have this personal feel, right? It’s really hard to get someone to come in and say like, Oh, I want to buy this tee shirt, but I never touched this tee shirt before. So how do I know that this is the t shirt that I want? There’s no tactile experience, so the best way to communicate and to prove that you are a trustworthy business is like a blog in my opinion. You can do other things, but that’s my.

19:26 Yeah, I love it. Those are some, some solid points as it’s like talking about the future and like where you stand in it and then building that relationship and that authority and at the end of the day, drink my little a filler word, but what I think of blogs, biggest purpose is to essentially it’s to help your customer solve their problems. Like the whole reason for having a blog. It’s not about you, it’s about them and what value you add to them and what questions you’re answering for them that they’re searching for A. There’s only a small amount of people that actually read blogs avidly like that, subscribe to blogs, but most of the time they’re on, on Google looking for information and trying to answer one of your questions and they end up on a couple of blogs to find that information. Few pop up there and you’re answering their questions and solving their problems.

20:19 They trust you and you build that relationship and then it, when it comes time to actually sell to them, like Cool Maxym magazine has it all, all this awesome stuff. And that’s the Maxym with a y Maxym magazine Dot Com. The why don’t sue us. Maxim. Yeah. Unrelated Salad. Remember when you got that domain name to. We want to have a training class to digress. But again, it’s about their problems. At the end of the day, that’s what you have to do with the blog itself. Like you can go on and on about what you do with your business and try to sell your stuff, but if you’re not there for your customers and for your audience. So it talks about when we’re talking about like best practices for your blogs, what are some of the, the, the best practice that we should, that personally we should be doing on crafting it [inaudible] but, but all of our audience to kind of be kind of moving to be selfish here to help us to what are your best practices?

21:15 So, um, don’t take Maxym,

21:17 I need to update that website.

21:23 You’re a busy girl. I got a lot going on and

21:27 jazz hands, the audit. True Story. She is a phenomenal.

21:32 The answer to that, like a well-kept secret

21:36 that you’re on youtube right now. Oh yeah. When I first like at first when we started hanging out, I kind of stopped doing that a little bit. Like my biggest accomplishment was being friends with you. I just googled Maxym Martineau and there was like this youtube video popped up like me dance with Maxym, I think maybe related. Anyway, Jim was. And again, I don’t think so. Let’s look at an untoward event is on Youtube, on the botanical gardens that it looks like.

22:15 I can’t remember. That was like years ago when I was appointed my dad’s friends.

22:18 What’s the best practice

22:21 since I’m. So I will hammer this in as much as I possibly can until you guys decide that I’ve said it. To establishing an editorial calendar and follow it. Good.

22:36 Yeah.

22:38 Everything like editorial calendars on my life. I think they have as small business owners like myself included. Right. In the sense, for example, my own website, which editorial calendar for that, but I have an editorial calendar for all the kissing and we use an editorial calendar for the Godaddy garage and it is just the easiest way to track. You can, you know, like I guess you guys kind of do that. Sometimes we do a batch of podcasts that once you can write a batch of blog posts at once and then just schedule them at work. So like if you take an hour a couple hours over the weekend, you look at your editorial calendar and you go, OK. So like in June is a stout’s. A July is just around that themes. It’s a lot easier to come up with those topics, drop them into your ed calendar, pick a date for publication, sent them all to publish at the same time. However many times a week. You can manage it at least twice if you can. I would say bi-weekly to start. Um, if you can only do once a week, he can only do it once a week. It’s not the end of the world. But you saw the stat or heard the stat we talked about earlier, but honestly I swear up and down those Ed cals because I’m not at the same time. You can be doing your research and putting them into your editorial calendar and then your keywords are already and you

23:45 can spec out posts the way you need to and it’s just,

23:50 that’s the way you don’t, in my opinion. I would take home. Ed can definitely do not have that counter jump on board, but you would sound like it’s just like as a business owner, you just send a lot more credible for like, listen, I get to work on my account, I guess deadlines it, you know, that’s the reason I, it, it looks like I’m doing something right. That’s a good. I’m probably going to steal that means. So it really will sound like I’m doing something. I’m counselor. Sorry. Um, you know, I think that there’s two best practices really resonate with me and Justin. I’ve talked about this before. When you create a business and you hear this all the time on shark tank is that you need to be solving some type of problem. You could be providing solutions. We you can find problems and provide solutions for those problems that tie into what you do. Less sales-y as far as whatever you’re trying to sell or get people to, you know, invest in your business with.

24:49 Yeah,

24:51 and they’re going to be a lot more trust trusting with you as well because you’ve done something for them and I know I’ve said it before, you need to let your customer be selfish. If you’re solving a problem for them, you’re letting them be selfish. Then choose you to give their money to and that’s a great relationship being. Another thing that I, you know, Justin and I, we go back and forth between social media and email marketing as far as the effectiveness of it, and I’m a big advocate, especially for your marketing. I’m not saying that I don’t want to take away from social media because social media, if you’re not a business owner, you’re not doing it right for the most part. But with email marketing, don’t expect your customers to set your blog as their homepage. It’s not gonna happen. There’s, there’s a billion blogs out there already.

25:36 Everyone has an opinion on the Internet. More and more businesses are doing it. Everyone need to. You need to be proactive and reach out to them. That is your job as a business owner to reach out to your customers that want to hear from you reading the blog. No, I like this business. I want to hear from them. You need to have a sign up form on there. And the great thing about email marketing programs, which will automatically convert your blog posts into an email marketing campaign and it’s sad that you won’t take you pretty much any time beyond your blog already. And these are people that want to hear from you, that top of mind awareness through the first business they think of when they’re looking for anything that you may be offering that they’re looking for. So that’s one of my big ones. I think I know Justin’s gonna say let’s, let’s talk about social media.

26:20 I didn’t want to do a different tangent, just just being in the room with, with so BDC as a creative writing major and he’s writing, he has a novel to a the Maxym’s future romance novel.

26:34 I’m going to give it to you. This is why you really brought me closer to the microphone. Will have this conversation for you, right? Sidebuy am the wrong person to give you good feedback on Scifi [inaudible]. I don’t know if I can mention someone sitting there that I know and it’s awful and I should have added it rip up the first time that this was just the first page was garbage starts in a center does. I just don’t feel like I have to write ability to get feedback and it’s not like I could give certain feedback about like sentence structure and that kind of stuff. But like I write romance novels. So you want to add some like alien sex, like you’re telling me it’s a Sci-fi Romance, romance in the book. What would you classify it

27:34 back to? The whole reason why I brought that up. Like these guys, right? That’s all they do. Um, I’m not, I hated writing as a kid in high school and everything else and in college or whatnot, and I hate writing and I’ve had to kind of learn and do as I go and pick up and I’m sure I have a ton to, to work on it because I thought, again, I’m not the most that was the eloquent when it comes to writing, but I get there, I use grammarly to kind of help me out. GRANDPA is dope if you guys don’t know about it, do it. Um, but w what kind of helps me, , it’s two part. So when I create a blog post, I created a quick outline, kind of like we have here down with our sheet of what we’re talking about, the podcast, but the main bullet points that I want to hit and that posts that way. I’m not going off on a tangent. And then once I have that outline, I’m stealing this quote from Ernest Hemingway, write drunk, edit sober. , essentially what that means is not to be drinking beer and doing a podcast or

28:33 for writing blog post.

28:37 Right? But, but what I, what I get from that is to write drunk as just just right, like, don’t, don’t worry about what you’re actually writing the worry about that when you’re done, you don’t want to continue to go back and figure out like that’s not the best thing as you’re writing, she’ll never finish and then there’ll be one blog posts a year and that’s not going to help you write out as much as you can and then go back and fix it and make it sound a little bit more eloquent. Little bit more specific to the point. And not so much word vomit a that that’s, that’s what’s helped me with writing some blog posts and whatnot. Especially when it’s complex that I’m really passionate about or if I just have no absolute idea.

29:14 Tell me about what you said is actually a really good perspective on it. Honestly, every creative writing in English class I took, I had to do with writing any type of novel is that was the advice that they were just like, well, you guys just write like quit just talking about it and just write. Quit worrying about the edits and just write and you write that chapter. If you’re going to protect a person that’s going to get

29:40 a distracted by the

29:42 grand river, just ignore it for a second and just keep writing. Just get your thoughts down. Right. And so yes, in being with you, with your blog, just sit down and write a few out, did a little bit ahead of yourself and then go back and worry about the editing. But that’s the biggest that once you start writing, you’ll find out it’s pretty enjoyable and you can really come up with some good stuff.

30:03 There’s a pervasive thing in the writing industry, like a concept called the self-doubt monster as happens with a lot of creative writers were at the second you start writing something, you think it’s utter shit and I’m. That’s OK.

30:16 Yeah.

30:18 Writers like, I mean it happens like to, to all writers, like people who consider themselves like future best sellers or people who just, you know, write for their small business blog. I’m, it’s OK as long as you are not actually just spouting fake facts or like incoherent language or anything like that. It really just comes down to writing the best that you can to the best of your abilities, ignoring that self-doubt monster because you are going to constantly question yourself like, this is good enough, this is the traffic. Is this what I need for my website is this. It’s never going to end. And there’s the thing about editing because you can always edit more. You can never stop editing. So like at some point you need to just accept what you’ve written, get it, get it looked at, and then move on to the next topic.

31:06 You understand that people that love writing the best authors hated their own work. I know every time, every time I write I’m like, what was in my head didn’t exactly get on there, and eventually it takes them to draw these beautiful murals in my mind and I draw it and it’s like a stick figure. Creatives. And actually I, I actually reminded me some and California called stupid whatever, but actually it reminded me of Lincoln Park Lyrics is actually one of the lyrics is I hate my rhymes, but everyone else was more. The whole idea is when you write it down you’re probably not going to like it, you know? And for me, when I first heard that song and I was in college and I just was like, you know what, that does speak to me because I do hear it write down. I just feel my stuff is a little bit of the stuff I’m reading right now. So that’s actually a really good perspective, Justin, that you picked up very well that the writing community and creative community struggles with all the time

32:02 constantly. Plus one for Nealey trying. Another garage of them are working on progressive profiling on wordpress. I had to look it up so I had no idea it was coming up 20 sometimes. Should I pull up my account and tell you when I have it down somewhere, I have a presentation for have to work on by next week that I had started his first one point I was like a weekend ahead, but I’m now back to some more best practices. And when we talk about blog posts, it’s not just about the writing, it’s about the visuals to now vaccinate. I think he might be an expert with some of the visuals. And what that apple tried posts on drive stick figures, just using visuals in blog posts. , so what are kind of your best practices or things to these? These small businesses are still the printers should be looking at.

33:01 I use a couple of different tools. One of my favorite tools is canva. Um, I don’t use it so much for the go daddy blogger. Use it more for all the cases in our, for our social media shares. But you can take the same approach to like your instagram account as you can’t hear blog. Um, if, depending on the type of blog that you have and what you’re blogging about, like if you’re blogging about a product that you owned, go take your own product photos, like that’s just best practice. There are some texts you can do like use natural lighting, that kind of stuff to make it more engaging and like pretty on the website itself. But if you don’t, and maybe it’s more of an esoteric concept and you’re talking about email marketing, go do some stock photos, there’s nothing wrong with stock photos, made sure you attribute them correctly, they’ll go to google and just like copy a picture and hope for the best, right?

33:53 That’s how you get sued. And then if you have a specific brand. So like say my brand colors are pink and white, like the for all the kissing. And what we’ll do is we’ll take a stock image and then we’ll go pull out like a particularly strong quote from a post, overlay that over the image and then share that on social media or we will incorporate it into the blog post itself as a stand out like sort of feature. Um, so I like visual content, I don’t know like the stats off the top of my head, but I know that they’re like having actual media files in there. It makes a huge difference on your blog post plus like back to the keyword point, you get to add your keyword into your metadata and like your image tags and your image alt tags and your descriptions and if you have photo captions, like it’s just one more way to get that keyword in there.

34:38 I’m, I’m such a huge proponent of images. So handbook, definite tool a, if you do youtube videos or any sort of like mini could do like a snapchat video and you want to embed it in your blog posts. Like if you do that to a test and it’s a different form of media. Anything that you can do to actively engage your readership because you don’t want to just have a block of text, like white space is your friend and integrating different types of imagery. Is your friend like didn’t call out different fonts within the same thing. Comic sans if you don’t.

35:12 Yeah. Statistics though she didn’t have a statistic, but you do basic statistic now I woke up a couple hours ago, but content with relevant images get 94 percent more views and content without according to quicksprout. Adequate system. Almost double the views like if you just shared on twitter or instagram or really instagram, but like facebook, things like that. Linkedin and that image kind of aligns to what you’re writing about. That’s almost double the views that you’re getting and a super dope. A stock photo site that I use predominantly is pexels [inaudible], I think we’ve talked about it before. It’s p e x e l s.com to free stock, a stock photo site and there’s not like the corny stock photos of like the guy screaming whatever, like they’re legitimate photo photographers that donate on slashes. Pixabay is hit and Miss

36:08 Pixabay is hit and miss your time to get the more corny stock photos. I’m like personal practice is even with these, these sites, like I try not to use images with people’s faces in them that are super prominent. Like I kind of have a rule where it’s like 50 percent or less of the face because there is no absolute guarantee that the site didn’t get the appropriate paperwork from the person that they can actually use their image, right? Unless you’re purchasing the stock or something like that, that’s different and did not know that you can risk it. Right? They say everything on here is free, like it says it on splash, but it’s a personal thing for me. And that’s how they got it. Bob, I believe takes it. Um, and another good one is visual hunt. That one is less stocky. That’s all uploaded by people just taking pictures. It will pull from other places too, like Pixabay and pixels and unsplash. You’ll get a lot more like just random people. And Are you just going to make sure you pick like for commercial use attributional quiet and just pay attention to whether or not that is required. And they let you just copy it out.

37:15 Yeah. Stock photos, um, understand that when people look at this, they’re going to judge it very quickly. If you don’t have amazing photos, it’s going to kill the look of your block right there to save on some money. They may take their own photos. If you’re not a not a professional photographer, if you can’t produce images that look like a professional for a took them, recommend you find some stock photos or you hire a local photographer was for your position, your showcase on there where it’s just images in general to remember that the thing that we have done the most in our lives as judge, we’re very good at it. Every time we look at something we touched it smelt whatever. There’s automatic judgement, so keep that in mind when you’re putting the images on there. Not every image is equal and it can hurt you if you put on low quality or images that just don’t flow right, so get the professional images

38:10 with any website I the most important thing he should do. What I make sure that I didn’t get lost in the outline, you put your heart and soul. You’re writing all these blog posts, you’re building your site. The absolute most important thing you should do is back up your website, making backup, a rolling day, 30 backup. Most hosting fighters offer some sort of service. There’s offsite stuff you can do, all of things you could do backup your website. The last thing you want to do is pour years and years and years and your website and all of a sudden you lose your content for whatever reason, hosting spires or say it gets hacked or whatever it is, which happens a lot, especially using word press or some other open source platform. Go to blog with a and your. Your site’s gone. You don’t have a backup done. You’re done. Like you have to build that up and spend those years and years and years to get back to where you are. If you can ever actually get there

39:03 next Sunday will cause your site. They see those as content. That’s not a good thing. Right, so yeah, I completely agree with that. Your hosting provider, if you’re a writer, doesn’t offer backups. I wouldn’t use that hosting provider. Honestly. They should offer a service and if they do, yeah, I know it costs, but probably an extra 20 to $50 a year or so. It’s worth it.

39:25 Absolutely secure their investment. Like this whole, this whole thing is that your investment? , I talked about a lot, but you’re working your employee and sorry if I can talk, your website is your hardest working employee or you want to make sure he’s taken care of a he or she. Um, but , as far as the blog itself, like a Mac. So I think you’d agree that blogging isn’t just a one and done thing. Um, what are, what are your thoughts on that?

39:52 What I mean by that or like when I, when I think about when it’s not one and done, you can’t just put the blog posts up and hope for the best or you have to constantly be aware of it, promoted whether that’s through social media or I get an email signup form or whatever. And that goes back to optimizing it for Seo and whatnot. But really it’s constantly making sure that you’re, you’re on top of your game. Maybe new information comes out and you have to update your own article one. That’s not a bad thing. It’s like you’re that url already has enough traffic associated with it. Let’s say you had that article, so for a year and then they come out with a new statistic or something that upset you can use and update in your article. That looks really good to go in. Then you’re reengaging and you’re showing, you’re following that. You’re staying on top of what’s happening. So even these evergreen posts that I mentioned earlier, they can still benefit from some logs every now and then fried still just to make yourself like you person to go to like be go-to resource so it’s not just one and done. You can’t just post it and hope that someone’s going to see it. Right. That’s not how that works.

40:57 I like the idea of going back and updating old or maybe I’ll do information because for example, if I, if I pulled something from your site and then you know, I’m, I, I find the article and then I’m having drinks with my friends and I’m like most of my knowledge and like this is not true. That is our smartphones. Right? And they look up on their smart phones and there’s updated information that they find just doing basic google search, how am I going to feel about that company where I got that from? I’m not going to see him as an expert anymore. So you always have to be always thinking about how is my customer going to to perceive

41:34 me or see my bike, my business? And if you gave some that’s out of date, that’s how they’ll see your business. And it could be personal to them because it made, it may have made them look stupid.

41:42 Right? And it’s incredibly powerful. Like you’re writing a blog post in and even if a second opinion based and come like years later, like you’ve changed your opinion or you found out you were wrong, or you go back and say, Hey, I was wrong, here’s my updated perspective, or is that the information that is powerful? Your audience will kind of relate to that because we’ve all been wrong. Like we’ve all had ideas that we’ve thought about and then we’d come back and like, yeah, I was pretty dumb back then. Um, I don’t really think that way anymore. Everyone relates to that and it ties into your blog and it builds that relationship. Then it’s OK to admit that it update it and make sure your evergreen content is still evergreen. I think that that just about wraps it up. We’ve been talking a 42 minutes

42:29 on this episode, right? Right. But we went with third person flies by quick. , yeah, that was fun. , an hour, about 40 minutes, , , between beer and, or topic. And that’s the story. So she is the expert. Well, thank you for having me on again, especially if you’re doing what you do and there’s so many different avenues that we can kind of jump into. Um, what. Well, and , with that, that wraps up our episode tonight and I’m BGC. I’m Nealey done. I’m Maxym. Jazz hands. Thank you so much for listening.