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Significance Of Constantly Marketing

Let's talk about a great joke. A man walks into a bar, chances are he found it on Google. That's the whole joke. It's my segue into internet marketing. No? It's hilarious to me. (audience laughs) Over 80 percent of people say they find businesses they love on the internet. It probably doesn't surprise you too much, right? That number's climbing. More and more it is our resource for everything. And I remember I had a workshop once where I was talking about internet and how significant it was for internet marketing a website and one of my participants raised her hand and said "I was just at a workshop a couple months ago and they said you should never have a website that the only way to market is through word of mouth". I said "huh," that's their instruction, that's good. But when you're somewhere, like you're out to coffee and someone says "Oh my God, you should see this place. It's absolutely amazing da da da". What's one of the first things you do? You look it up. Word of mouth is the...

re, but it kinda collapses without that compliment of how do I quickly look at it? 'Cause I am so impatient. I am so busy. I've got a million other things to do. I need to be locked in visually in some way quickly and informatively. Just your words alone are probably not gonna do it. Word of mouth is huge. It makes a huge difference in my business. It's a major way I get clients. But it's cause it's connected to this whole other part. So, internet marketing. Website, blogging, SEO, social media, everything right? It's all here on the internet. And it's currently the best way, in my opinion, to market what you do. In this business, right now, in my opinion, it's currently the best, most effective way to market what you do. And it didn't used to be this way. When I'd to do a whole section on marketing, internet would be down here, and then it moved up here, and then it moved here and I'm starting with it now. From my perspective, that's how powerful it is. SEO, we all know this. Search Engine Optimization. If those 80% of the people on the internet are looking for you, you need to tell them how to find you. You need to tell Google how to direct those people to find you. This is the only way they can find you is if you optimize your website and your presence and your offering. So when they do a search, that engine powers you in. "Search Engine Optimization" or "So Exhausted Oh My God". So many people they think of SEO, it seems like this big like blah blah blah blah blah. It's too hard and by the time I learn it it's gonna change on Tuesday. All of that is true (laughs) but there are few things, few ways you can optimize your offering so people can find you. First, set up your images to sell your business. This is massive. You cannot upload a photo called photo.jpeg and wonder why nobody saw that great sunflower shot of the child with the light behind them. I'm selling children's photography or family photography but I upload photo.jpeg. What does that mean? I put no descriptions, I put no old text, I put nothing. Why would anybody find my photographs? I don't even put my name with it. I don't put my market, anything. Doesn't really work that way. If I'm putting up this photograph, and I name it photo.jpeg. How will anybody find my Boston Terrier? You need to say "Boston Terrier Pet Portraits" or alt text is "Studio Pet Portraits," "North Carolina," "tongues." (laughs) Whatever the case might be. Don't put "tongues." Goodness knows what people... don't put that. But google now knows, that when people search for a Boston Terrier pet photographer or a pet photographer or studio pet photographer, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina Durham, North Carolina, or they're just searching for Tamara Lackey and wanting to see her portraits. When I put all that in, and it's associated with my photos my photos are selling me. That's one part of SEO, that I want you to start with as photographers, is to consider that. Any sort of geo-specific key words like your city, your address, the area of town you're in, all of that makes a difference too. Become more and more narrow, more and more specific about them being able to find you. Zipcodes. People look for zipcodes. "Da da da, photographer." And blogging, right? We'll talk about blogging in a second, but how do you take one piece of content and repurpose it again and again to maximize your SEO return. This was a really cool experience for me, Nikon used this as their Facebook cover image, and what's interesting about this image that they chose is, alright Kenna you're gonna find this fascinating. What's interesting about this is the image they chose, and this was just a couple months ago, I blogged about it, and I wanna show you the meta experience of repurposing content. This photograph is of a woman, Sarah Clemence, who I met seven years ago on my very first CreativeLive. She was in my audience, she flew in from Dubai. Met her, she was great, da da da, time passed, (laughs) that was that. But two years ago I went out to teach workshops in Dubai for part of Gulf Photo Plus, And while there we needed models. And this woman's name showed up as one of the people who might have children. And I looked it up and it was Sara Clemence. So I was like "Oh, no way! I'll meet you in the Arabian Desert". Which is actually where I met her. Her and her now three kids, at the time. And we did this photograph. I took this photograph, the light was dropping, and it wasn't like a sunset shot, but I was trying to show my students how to crouch low, use the sun, create a really cool silhouette, and how to expand on expressiveness, even in silhouettes. So we did this whole kinda thing where I talked about how much emotion can be shown, even when you can't see faces, or bodies, but you can just get a feel, in terms of the shadows can express so much. And so that was the picture that I showed to the class and took home. And then Nikon saw that photo when I posted it on my blog. And they're like "We'd like to use this for our next Facebook month cover" and I said "that's awesome!" And so they put it up there and posted it, and then I saw that, so I took that screenshot and blogged about it. And then I posted about it on social. And then I went ahead and tagged everybody who was part of this in any way. Which was Gulf Photo Plus, and Dubai, and CreativeLive, and Sarah, and all of that, and Nikon. And then they repurposed some of my share. (laughs) I mean this is kinda meta, right? And now, wait for it, I'm standing here, at CreativeLive, seven years later, showing you this and telling you that whole story, which started with CreativeLive seven years ago. It's trippy. But it's how you maximize and repurpose and repurpose in a way that allows you this maximum SEO. People are gonna find you on the internet when you're talking about it, you're talking about it, you're talking about it, you're talking about it, you're talking about it. Versus, "I took a picture, and I left it on my camera". Like it's just, okay, you did the work, you took a great shot, you built the content. Now market the crap out of it. It's one of the big mistakes photographers make and I've absolutely been guilty of it, and I will be guilty again. But we do great work, and then we think that was the job. Where you wanna keep doing that great work? You now have to show it. I think some people say like 10 percent of it is the content creation, and 90 percent is the marketing. I'm just saying 10 and 'cause I like those terms together. But there's something in there that actually is real. And right (laughs) and correct. So, repurposing things as much as possible. Optimize yourself for Google. Sometimes it's really easy. Set up a Google Plus page. A lot of people complain about Google Plus, it's just not their favorite way to do social media, fine. But set yourself up to at least have your Google Plus page because, guess what, Google prefers their social media page. Prioritize their social media page. I should put a huge caveat that anything I've said or am about to say about SEO, because it absolutely changes all the time. So if we're in the future and it's three years ago, and people are like "There is no Google anymore, Tamara"... Right here and right now, this is all accurate. Make sure that you are logged in with... Do you guys know what I mean about this, when I say about this, setting up your Google Plus page to have a profile that's very well informed. It's the name of your business, it's your photographs, it's photographs of your business, it's descriptions of what you do, and it's photographs that are uploaded to show what you do. You don't have to go on it a million times a day. But create a presence, so you are now searchable for this optimized site, and then if you can, if you're posting other places anyway, copy and past to Google Plus. I'm very touch and go with this. Sometimes I'll do a really good job every time in a row and other times I'll just forget it exists. But if you keep doing that, everything you blog about and show, you repurpose on Google Plus, that much easier for them to find and share your work. So, review sites. Make sure you listed predominately with all the review sites. And that means you have to go in there and set yourself up. If that's not already done for you, and you want to control that, you will go to these review sites. Trip Advisor, Yelp, gosh there's so many local network ones. Local community ones. Where you put up your name, your address, and your photos and invite your clients to rate you. Things like Yelp? It's a platform where people can talk about you and say what their experiences are. Anybody here not know what Yelp is? More importantly, Yelp feeds to Apple Maps. So you want a presence there so you show up on the maps. And when people go ahead and search for you, you come up in multiple ways and you come up higher up on the search engines. Same thing with Google Plus. Once I optimize my Google profile, I'm coming up with Google Maps. These things are all kinda threaded together. How do you get better about knowing what to put your time at when it comes to SEO. What matters and what doesn't. My favorite plugin, 'cause it's simple, and I don't wanna be an SEO expert. I'm not. I don't wanna be. I wanna know a few things and do them well. My favorite plugin is SEO Yoast. All our websites are managed through Imagely, I'm not sure if you guys know them, but they're great because I'm able to quickly get up a template website that has all the SEO capabilities, and they recommended I use this plugin. And so what SEO Yoast does... Anybody here use it? Yeah, it's great because it basically give you a stoplight. (laughs) Like you're either, hey, red... Red, yellow, green. Red means, eh, you got some problems here. So I blog a post. I then go look at my SEO Yoast plugin and it tells me, this post has problems. First of all it's not long enough, your words are too complex for the average reader to get, it's not descriptive, you don't have enough photographs, your key word is like, nondescript or your title of your post is not readable. It tells you right there. It's like having someone lean over your shoulder and say "Yeah, you're gonna wanna change that. That does not work". Except you don't have to worry about the breath. 'Cause it's a plugin. So, yellow means you're almost there. I would go ahead and put more in here. Make sure your keyword is one more time, or something. Just change that one sentence. And green is like, golden, good, go. Keep going, don't worry about this anymore, you're maximized for SEO. So this is a great plugin, I think it's like 25 bucks. So worth it.