Episode 34 – ShootDotEdit Acquires Fotoskribe, and What It Means for Photographers

Transcription was done by Rev.com

Scott: Welcome to episode 34, my name is Scott Wyden Kivowitz, and I'm joined by my co-host Rachel Conley from FotoSkribe.

Hey Rachel?

Rachel: Hey Scott, how're you?

Scott: Oh! I'm doing great, so it's actually warm today. Is it warm up there in Massachusets?

Rachel: Yes, surprisingly we got dumped with snow, off course to all of our non-snow listeners. It's a fun time, that was last weekend.

Scott: Yeah.

Rachel: Now it's like 50 , so we'l be out in T-shirts and shorts.

Scott: Yeah, hopefully, this means winter is ending, and spring is here, we'll see.

Rachel: Yeah, you never know around here.

Scott: Yeah, so we've got a really good episode. This could be a, probably a shorter episode just like the last one was. We're going to talk about how your company FotoSkribe was acquired by ShootDotEdit whom is outsourced post-processing and a few other things, the biggest in the industry, the best in the industry for it. We're going to talk about what it means for photographers that FotoSkribe, is now a product of ShootDotEdit.

Before we dig in, anybody who's listening, if you want to read up with the show notes, if you miss anything, please any air things we're linked to like what we're going to talked about in the WordPress photography related news, show notes are at Imagely.com/podcasts. This is an episode where you're probably going to want to reference things, and you'll see why as we get into it, but yeah, so be sure to check out the show notes for links.

Before we dive into what the acquisition means for photographers, let's talk about some news.

Rachel: Yeah.

Scott: One of my favorites that I've been playing with is, for anybody who wants to preview the upcoming content blocks feature that's coming in WordPress, there's now a public preview available. Now it doesn't fully function 100%, but you get an idea of how it's going to be, how you can move things around, how you can add images in certain places and texts and all these kind of stuff. If you're familiar with the Medium Blogging Platform, which is a company that's owned by Twitter or the same people behind Twitter, then you would recognize where the WordPress community is going with the content blogs feature.

Rachel: Oh! I didn't know, so-

Scott: Right now-

Rachel: Did they pull from that or is it just a similar interface?

Scott: No, it's just sort of one of it's inspiration points.

Rachel: Yeah.

Scott: It doesn't look anything like Medium, but it is very similar to how they're doing it.

Rachel: In the functionality part?

Scott: Yeah, the functionality part. It is very pretty how they're doing it, but again right now the prototype isn't fully functional, you can't add new content blogs in the live demo, you can only add it, what's already there.

Rachel: Yap.

Scott: .. but you can see what it's going to look like when you go to, add new things.

Rachel: ... so ...

Scott: What's really, yeah-

Rachel: Content blogs are we should say like we talk a lot about the drag and drop sort of systems that you can put on a theme or put in WordPress.

Scott: Yeah.

Rachel: They're actually trying to do that and make it in WordPress Core which I think is awesome.

Scott: Yes, but the way they're trying to do it, is that it's still [inaudible 00:03:22] regular editor.

Rachel: Okay.

Scott: Like we're used to it right now.

Rachel: Yap.

Scott: Instead of it being a page builder that breaks may other plugins, it's going to support everything that the regular editor supports as long as they continue on this path because they're still using the editor and they're just, ... Basically what they are doing is, they're giving you a blank slate of an editor, and you can drop in these content blogs, which are basically additional editors.

Rachel: Yap, I love it.

Scott: It's pretty neat.

Rachel: Yeah.

Scott: Yeah, it's pretty neat and then you can ... Right now there's no drag ability up and down but there's an up and down arrow for each blog, so you can move things.

Rachel: Okay.

Well good, it's definitely all steps in the right direction. I think the reason we keep talking about it is because, in case you update and all of a sudden something is there that wasn't there before, we want you to know why.

Scott: Yeah, and we will definitely make an announcement when this is in the official version.

Rachel: Yap.

Scott: My guess is it will be WordPress 5.0-

Rachel: Oh! That'll be cool, yeah.

Scott: That's my guess, Matt Mullenweg who's leading this big update, which is all about user interface and user experience and things like that. He's not putting version numbers on these, and he's not ... There's no set release times, he's doing it, when it's done it will be released.

Rachel: Right. Yeah, he talked about that in that State of the Word.

Scott: Correct.

Rachel: Which I think, he definitely tries to have as much full transparency as possible.

Scott: Yeah, so if you want to see this, try it out for yourself and again it's not 100% functional, but if you want to try it out for yourself visit the show notes, click on the link because it's a very compacted URL to just listen to.

Rachel: Yeah, so WordPress.gethub. ... Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Scott: Yeah.

Rachel: We should say we have show notes for every episode.

Scott: Yes.

Rachel: If there's ever something that you hear and you're like, "What did they say?" We have a full transcript and any and all links we talked about.

Scott: Yap.

Rachel: Just because, again, audio is hard sometimes or when you're in the car or when you're watching, so we want to give you as much as we can.

The second part of the news is recent; I don't ... When did 4.7 come out, a couple of months ago?

Scott: Yeah, 4.7 is a couple of months ago, and then 4.7.1 was like a week or two later.

Rachel: Right, so 4.7.1 came up pretty immediately, and then 4.7.2 came out a couple of weeks after that, but I normally recommend you wait a couple of weeks, but these are both security updates and ...

Scott: Yap.

Rachel: If you haven't already, you should update right now. I actually got hacked, I was on 4.7.1 but not 4.7.2, and some how they got in and I follow best practices when it comes to keywords and passwords and logins, and I have plugins, and it still happened. If you aren't on 4.7.2, I would pause this recording, go update.

Scott: Is the site that was hacked, is it running Jetpack?

Rachel: No, we had taken that off.

Scott: Yeah, is it running anything that uses the REST API?

Rachel: Yes.

Scott: Which is ... It is?

Rachel: Yeah.

Scott: Okay, so the vulnerability that was in 4.7.1 which was fixed and 4.7.2 is related to REST API. Basically, what that means for anybody who doesn't know what that is, it's basically a remote, it's a feature, it's a code that allows something to connect remotely to your site.

Rachel: Right.

Scott: There are two forms of these, and in WordPress, one is XML-PRC which is built into WordPress core, and the other is the REST API which is very basic in WordPress Core and you can, themes and plugins can add on top of it.

Rachel: What plugins would use it. My understating was, things that connect to Facebook use the REST API, is that correct?

Scott: I don't know if there's a Facebook plugin that does, but there are many like [inaudible 00:07:08] has one.

Rachel: Right.

Scott: If you use WooCommerce, then you want to use the iOS App, then it need the REST API to talk back and forth.

Rachel: Okay.

Scott: Things like that, Jetpack uses it, so ...

Rachel: Right.

Scott: Many things like that.

Rachel: Yeah, but even if you don't necessarily know if you have REST API or Jetpack, I would go in and do it anyway.

Scott: Yes.

Rachel: ... because it really isn't a question of, if you're going to get hacked and it's not because of who you are or what your services are, it's just literally because there are thousands of [robots 00:07:39] out there searching for WordPress sites ...

Scott: [inaudible 00:07:42] yap.

Rachel: ... so that they can get into.

Scott: Yap.

Rachel: So to them, you're just a number ...

Scott: Yeah.

Rachel: ... and it's just matter of time, so update and backups.

Scott: I will also say that there are many security plugins that were on top of the vulnerability like Wordfence and Sucuri.

Rachel: Right.

Scott: If you're using their plugins, they're already blocking this.

Rachel: Yeah.

Scott: iTheme Security I think was doing the same thing, they're already blocking that hack that could happen, so ...

Rachel: Yeah, we didn't have those. I had actually just gone through a transfer, a new theme and saw some changes had happened, so maybe I was particularly vulnerable in that situation because it was right after those changes but, yeah ... No, it was just like, "Are you kidding, did I just get hacked?"

Scott: Yeah, it can happen, that's for sure.

Rachel: Right, so that's what we're saying, is no matter cautious or careful you are ... Though you're cautious and careful because your website's your business right? I mean it's your store front.

Scott: I will also say, there are some [inaudible 00:08:37] who say WordPress is not good because it's so easy to get hacked. I will say, it's just as easy to get hacked on Squarespace-

Rachel: Right.

Scott: Or [inaudible 00:08:46] or wherever you are.

Rachel: Correct, you're just reliant on the ...

Scott: It's just ...

Rachel: This augments for, and it gets that, yeah.

Scott: Yeah, you're running a WordPress site, the majority of the internet is running WordPress, so you're more vulnerable because of your running WordPress, because of how popular it is.

Rachel: Right.

Scott: Not because it's just, WordPress and it's easy to hack, so ...

Rachel: Right and I think that, that also is the relationship with your host which we talk about all the time ...

Scott: Yap.

Rachel: Is really important too because if you don't feel that you can call your host and say like, "I just got hacked, please help me," then you're on the wrong host, no matter how much or how little you're paying ...

Scott: Yeah.

Rachel: That is a service that needs to be included. If you're on a host and you don't know the answer to that question then pick up the phone and call them and say, "What if I got hacked, what would you do to help me?" If they say anything like, "Well, you have to pay for the service," that's another red flag too. That should be included in whatever you're paying.

Scott: Yeah, well so it really depends on situation, and this is actually a pretty good topic before we get into the FotoSkribe stuff.

Rachel: Yeah.

Scott: Not all hosts will, even [inaudible 00:09:51] hosts will do a site cleaning of your site if the hack is your fault.

Rachel: Okay, so what does that mean?

Scott: For example, if your password is a 1,2,3,4,5,6 ...

Rachel: Right.

Scott: That's a problem, that's not the host's fault, that's your fault.

Rachel: Right.

Scott: That doesn't require a robot to figure out, that just means somebody is, where going there and typing in admin and 1,2,3,4,5,6 ... No.

Rachel: Which if you have that please change it.

Scott: Yes [crosstalk 00:10:17].

Rachel: ... and don't be ashamed because a lot of people have that.

Scott: Yeah, I think at one point we need to get a ... I forgot who mentioned it but the hack repair guy who's an independent hack-repair person.

Rachel: Yeah.

Scott: He doesn't work for a bigger company, he does it on his own. I think we might get him on the show and give us some basics. Now I can go ahead and say it, all the basics like, don't use the admin as your username ...

Rachel: Right.

Scott: ... But I think it will be good for, we get somebody on like him to and I can't ... I don't know he's real name; I just know that it's the hack-repair dude or something like that.

Rachel: Well, he's branded well.

Scott: He just followed me on twitter, so I'll be able to reach out to him. Somebody like him who can break it down for all photographers to understand some of the basics they can do, so anyway I think it's a great topic for us to ... Yeah.

Rachel: We should say this is our last until episode 40, just Scott and I. WPPI sort of got into the guests that we we're talking to but we have some great ones lined up for 36, 37, 38 and 39.

Scott: Yeah and episode 35, the next episode is one of the Snap episodes.

Rachel: Right.

Scott: It's going to be a short five-minute episode.

Rachel: Yap.

Scott: Then episode 36 is with from Lena Hyde from Design Aglow.

Rachel: Oh! Well.

Scott: I am so excited for that one.

Rachel: Me too, yes.

Scott: Yeah.

Rachel: She has a lot of web proprieties and how she uses WordPress and stuff like that.

Scott: Yeah and they're going to be launching a podcast soon, so I can't wait to hear about that.

Rachel: Yeah, that's awesome, all right. Well, let's get into my news which we ...

Scott: Yes.

Rachel: Imagely is where this podcast lives but I am along for the ride just because I love WordPress, and I love what Imagely is doing and we've talked about FotoSkribe but we're going to get into a little bit about what it is and what this merge happened because I truly couldn't be happier with the support that ShootDotEdit is providing and the growth that I'm seeing and allowed to to with their infrastructures, so all good things over here.

Scott: Yeah.

Rachel: We probably should start because the biggest question is how do you spell FotoSkribe?

Scott: Yeah, and this is again, even if Rachel spells this out for you letter by letter, visit the show notes if you really want to just click on the link and see it.

Rachel: Yeah, because the one thing we didn't think of with an audio format even video is that because it's spelled weird, so it's spelled, F-O-T-O-S-K-R-I-B-E. It's actually the Swedish word for 'PhotoWritter.'

When I named it, I wanted it to be Google-able and those sound of the letter 'K' is actually really good for Words, and I did all these research, and so FotoSkribe came in and the spelling of it. I truly never thought that hearing the works FotoSkribe is direct than spelling it the way that I chose to spell it.

Scott: Yeah.

Rachel: Lesson learned when you name your business, make it easy to spell.

Scott: Yeah.

Rachel: What does FotoSkribe do?

We blog for photographers, that's pretty much the tagline but it really is what we do. We get photographers on a schedule, so our most popular package is once a week at the same day and the same time which caters to Google Robots who make 60% of the web. We get you on a schedule and we do everything, we rename your images, we take a form input so that we're able to capture your voice with a series of writers. We make sure if you're in WordPress that it's optimized for SEO. If you have the SEO plug in installed we fill it out which we highly recommend. If you have co-scheduling installed, we make sure that, that's connected, so you're giving us a form and hire us images and we're hiding you back a fully ready to go blog post at the same day and that same time.

The reason we sort of [inaudible 00:14:11] so well with ShootDotEdit is we really also subscribe to their 90/10 policy of outsourcing where we're getting you 90% of the way there but there's still the opportunity for you to add that 10%, that special source, that voice that only you can do, which is what makes you different from every other photographer out there, so that's what FotoSkribe is.

Scott: You're kind of starting with their giving you the 10% and then you're finishing it off, right?

Rachel: Right.

Scott: They're giving you their own word and they your taking their words in their way and you're turning that into a blog post.

Rachel: Right.

Scott: Where at ShootDotEdit, they're getting the photographer's photos processing it and then the photographers can finish it up.

Rachel: Yeah and we still let the-

Scott: It sounds like a-

Rachel: Right, but we still let the photographers into, finish it off when the blog is complete, so ...

Scott: Oh! So you're not scheduling?

Rachel: We what we schedule for 6:00-

Scott: Your not scheduling, you're just ...?

Rachel: Well we are.

Scott: Okay.

Rachel: Yeah, we're scheduling it for like 6:00 pm and I'm giving them a final version at noon.

Scott: Ah! Okay, I see.

Rachel: They have 6 hours to go in, yeah, but they don't have to, I mean that's the whole point here.

Scott: Right.

Rachel: ... but yeah, [inaudible 00:15:16] I definitely want to give time because I know I'd want to check right? Anything that's public facing, right?

Scott: Oh! Yeah.

Rachel: As a brand ambassador and then we have ... FotoSkribe started four years ago, and it was very local here in the Boston's sort of photography community, and then I started getting photographers from all over the word which was awesome, but I can never scale it to where I really truly thought it would be, just because my strength isn't necessarily marketing. It's more in the operational side of things which I love. I love to blog.

I have a friend who'd rather do 500 burpies than blog, and I think she's crazy, right?

Scott: Yep.

Rachel: ShootDotEdit and I sort of came to this point where I value their values. I think just like Imagely; I've been really fortune in the photography space to partner with businesses that I would do business with because the people behind them are good people. I really believe in Imagely obviously being here and I really believe, and ShootDotEdit and I've worked with them, so when I was sort of out looking for partners, it was really just like a Dah! The moment, like why didn't we do this before.

Scott: Yeah , 'sso how is the, transition been? Has it been smooth, bumps in the road? I'm sure the are bumps but has it been 100% pleasant migration over there or is there still like ...? I mean you perfectly happy, you're still on the fence on somethings or how's it going overall so far?

Rachel: Yeah, that's a really good question, and I think it relates. Any entrepreneur, right, anyone who starts a business and sort of has the passion into it, letting some of it go is always hard. I really had to get to a point where I had to recognize that I had gotten to the absolute limit that I could do in my existing structure, which I had a team of writers but truthfully I was doing the majority of the work, and so then it's always this time verses money sort of trade off.

It's a lot like having a baby, and the baby grows up, and at some point you have to let it go to school, and so in my mind this was kind of letting it go to school, but I'll be honest again because my values are so closely aligned with the ShootDotEdit values in terms of, I value really amazing customer service. I will go above and beyond for my photographers. They will also do the same thing, and they're doing it at a scale that I can really only imagine so in a lot of ways I'm learning from them.

They also, because they have a really strong team, they're able to say like, "Okay, this is probably not worth your time," we're on like, "Oh! But I want to do it but you're right," there are people that could do the same quality level and add a different level of skill, right?

Scott: The writers that you're working with, they went to ShootDotEdit with you, they're still working with ...?

Rachel: They did, yeah.

Scott: Okay cool.

Rachel: Yap.

Scott: Yeah, so the people who have been ... The photographers that they've been writing for in theory, they could still be writing for them now?

Rachel: Yes, so there's been no change on the operational side as of yet, so for it's only been marketing and it hasn't been a sales, it's literally just been an introduction but even that introduction has provided because of again the resources that ShootDotEdit has in terms of their market reach and the people that they've cultivated. Their client base is so, obviously it's the exact client base that FotoSkribe goes to, so it's been really interesting to see just being able to reach more photographers, not even in like a [salesy 00:19:26] way but just be like, "Hey, FotoSkribe exists," has brought in people.

Scott: Yeah.

Rachel: I just love meeting new photographers and I've been so fortunate these past couple of weeks to really connect with photographers again, that I wouldn't have been able to just by myself, and see different situations and see different applications of WordPress and see Squarespace and Photobiz and show it. At this point I've done over 2,000 photography blogs myself, so I really have a spread of what a blog means for a photographer on many different platforms. I've been able to help photographers, give them advice on maybe the h2 tag isn't the right tag for this, don't worry about that in terms of SEO ...

Scott: Yeah.

Rachel: Let's just get it out there.

Scott: The next thing I was going to ask you was, or talk about was the fact that, you're not just blogging, you're not just filling in their SEO [inaudible 00:20:24] data, you're not just scheduling their social media [inaudible 00:20:26] schedule, you're actually ... If something stands out that looks off on their website in general-

Rachel: Right.

Scott: You're actually giving them advice beyond just the blog.

Rachel: Right.

Scott: Do you want to talk about what happened recently? We don't have to name the company that did this but do you want to talk about what happened recently and how it caught your attention and what's happening with it?

Rachel: Yeah, I mean this is, so again our next question is what does it mean going forward? I can source out the writers, and I can source out the image processing but at some point there's this level of customer service that only a few people would do and me being the highest level of that and there are a few trusted people that are already at ShootDotEdit that I would already bring on for that side, but it's having that high level look of you know, this is your only blog so you may think that it's right for you or you may get advice but I have 2,000 blogs. The advice that you're getting isn't necessarily correct.

One of my photographers was given the advice to use header tags as opposed to a paragraph tag to simply make the font size lager. Their problem was they wanted the font size to be larger, and the advice that they we're given was use the header tag. Now there's h1, h2, and h3 and there's obviously h4 and h5 too, but for this purpose, the header tag h3 was the option to make the font size larger. The truth is, is that the paragraph tag should be the tag for the main text and ...

Scott: Right.

Rachel: The solution should have been that, that tag should have been increased in the CSS. It's a little bit harder, right? It's going to take somebody time to do that.

Scott: It's only harder because they're not using the right platform for what they're ...

Rachel: Right.

Scott: If they were using a better platform like WordPress, there wouldn't be an issue about changing a font size. It'd be quick and painless without any code, because they're using a platform that doesn't give them the ability to change the font size ...

Rachel: Right.

Scott: Without [code 00:22:38].

Rachel: Using a closed platform.

Scott: Yeah.

Rachel: Meaning somebody else has to do that for you. Correct.

Scott: Exactly.

Rachel: ... but even WordPress, I mean lets be fair, even WordPress, if you asked the average photographer to change the CSS of the p-tag, right?

Scott: Right, oh! Yeah.

Rachel: They would need to reach out to somebody for that too.

Scott: Oh! Exactly, but that's my whole point, is that they wouldn't have to ...

Rachel: Right.

Scott: They wouldn't have to do any custom code just to change a font size.

Rachel: ... or if they needed to, they could go to the iThemed developer, they could go to their host ...

Scott: Right, exactly.

Rachel: They could go to a number of people that no one would tell them, no ...

Scott: Right.

Rachel: ... because the point of WordPress is it's all open source.

Scott: Exactly.

Rachel: This photographer was told, "No you have to use header tags," and so I was able to interject and say actually, and the excuse is always because it's foe SEO. Like how many times do you hear that, because it's better for SEO?

Well SEO is supper changing thing like ...

Scott: Yeah.

Rachel: Photographers should be worried about their [inaudible 00:23:34] sizes not SEO, right?

Scott: Yeah and really it's bad advice ...

Rachel: Correct.

Scott: ... because if you're telling people to only use header tags as your entire blog content, that's horrible advice.

Rachel: Right, because you can actually get penalized negatively by Google which I didn't know until probably the past year or so, but things like keyword stuffing will get you negatively.

Scott: Yeah.

Rachel: I don't know if using too many header tags will get you penalized, like put it in a bad way but I wouldn't be surprise, and it would definitely be something that I wouldn't be comfortable telling someone to do.

Scott: I won't be a penalty as far as SEO, it would be just, Google wouldn't know what the point of the article is as far as the topic.

Rachel: Right.

Scott: It wouldn't help the blog post [inaudible 00:24:18] in anyway by having only header tags.

Rachel: .. and we should tell you, so WordPress brings in h1 tags in the title. You don't actually want to assign any h1 tags in the blog post .

Scott: Yap.

Rachel: ...because you're already bringing them, you only want one h1 tag. H2 tags are really appropriate for headlines like if your doing five reasons to blog and engagement session. Those five reasons should be in h2 tags, and then all the rest of the body text should be in a paragraph tag because that tells Google what's important. The title, the h1 tag is your blog tittle, the h2 tags are the five reasons and then the paragraph text is the paragraph text, right?

Scott: Yap.

Rachel: It's the thing that you want to read and go into if you have the time, so their doing that with the TL;DR thing, those are the headers, that's when you use those.

Photographers also don't necessarily need to use a lot of headers because we have so many images, so on a wedding blog post, I don't necessary use and h2 tags because there's a story and then 20, 50, 70 images. That amount of images also helps Google to rank higher in SEO as long as you're key wording them better. As long as your making sure that you have all tags for those things. Again, it knows your industry and the way that you use WordPress.

Scott: Yeah, so knowing ShootDotEdit's more recent ... They changed their policy maybe 2 to 3 years ago, were they weren't just taking any wedding photographers. Now they're very specific; they have a minimum requirement for their wedding clients. The amount of weddings they do, I don't know what the other requirements are specifically, but they have these minimum requirements.

Rachel: Yap.

Scott: ... because ShootDotEdit now is the parent company of FotoSkribe ...

Rachel: Right.

Scott: Will FotoSkribe had the same minimum requirements ...

Rachel: Nope.

Scott: Minimum requirements in general or are you still going to be taking on whoever wants the service?

Rachel: FotoSkribe is still a separate company, we have separate client bases. The new ones are very settle because ShootDotEdit really is the number one post-processing for wedding photographer but we at FotoSkribe have a lot of success with not only wedding photographers but portrait photographers, senior photographers, [inaudible 00:26:44] photographers, because they all have a client base that needs their story told through blogs.

ShootDotEdit and FotoSkribe are still two different companies. ShootDotEdit is just the parent company, so it's like FotoSkribe [comma 00:27:00], A ShootDotEdit Company.

Scott: Right.

Rachel: ShootDotEdit is the parent company, FotoSkribe is a separate company with a separate operations. The benefit so far is that we've been able to tap into their team structure which is a group of really awesome people who care about photographers. You go in there, and anybody will talk to you about [inaudible 00:27:22] or WordPress or SEO or blogging or image Size ...

Scott: Yeah.

Rachel: You don't really get that in any other company. Although I have to say there are so many companies in the photography space that I love like, [Handy 00:27:36], LensProToGo, Imagely, but for me ShootDotEdit, the business that they're in for photographers of outsourcing editing, is so similar to the business that FotoSkribe is in outsourcing blogging so ...

Scott: Yeah, without a doubt.

Rachel: It's also been a paradigm-

Scott: It was definitely the perfect fit?

Rachel: Oh! My gosh! Right?

Scott: It was definitely the perfect fit.

Rachel: Yeah, it really ...

Scott: Yeah.

Rachel: It's been years sort of in the making, but again as an entrepreneur, I had to sort of let it grow and let it grow to a point where I could let it go. It's hard, and I hope as a listener you guys understand when you own your own business, you want to do everything a certain way.

Scott: Yeah.

Rachel: ... but sometimes bringing other people in ...

Scott: Just have to let things go.

Rachel: Yeah, it really opens up.

Scott: Look at the The Youngrens. Actually the The Youngrens who acquired Bauman Photographers from Jared Bauman who owned ShootDotEdit ...

Rachel: Yeah.

Scott: They've got people running their wedding business.

Rachel: Yap.

Scott: They've got three wedding businesses as, I don't know what episode they're on, 4, 5, or one of the early once.

Rachel: Yep.

Scott: If you want to learn really more about this look for our early episode with The Youngrens. They have three wedding photography businesses, each with different clientele and types of clientele and the only one that they're actively, the two photographers on, are The Youngrens.

Rachel: Right.

Scott: The two of them. The other two businesses are their employees doing the work.

Rachel: Yeah.

Scott: Sometimes you go to let things go.

Rachel: Yeah and I've worked closely with their studio manger when she was transitioning on to help find those voices, and I have to say, they have an amazing team.

Scott: Yeah.

Rachel: Again, it's a group of people who really care about photographers and about their clients and about customer service and those kind of people ... I truly believe that if you have that kind of passion and that kind of understanding about your target market, those are the people that succeed because they will go above and beyond where they need to be or where they feel like they need to be for their clients.

Again as photographers I think we can all learn that too, like who hasn't heard the wedding client who's a total nut job right? Sometimes kindness can be the right thing and somethings being a little bit harder with that and understanding where your customers service goes is helpful. I have to say, I've had both, I've had amazing clients and I've had once that I've had to part ways with, but having another group of people to be able to have those conversations with like ShootDotEdit, it's already help me to be like, "Oh! I get to talk about this with someone, like not my cat," although he cares, right?

Scott: Yeah.

Rachel: Having a team, I'm a total control freak but having a team, even the podcast here with Scott and I, like we talk about things, we talk about what's going on in the industry, and I love those conversations. That's again where ShootDotEdit has sort of brought that into my life like, "Oh! Well here's what I think I should do for this client, what do you think?" Here's their recommendations, "Alright, those are great, let's come somewhere in the middle."

Scott: Yeah, so let's talk more about blogging, why it's important, how it relates to WordPress. Why do you think and we both know the answer to this, but why is blogging so important for photographers to do and beyond that should they consider or at what point should they consider, okay multiple questions. Why should they consider and what point should they consider outsourcing their blogging? Why is it important, why should they consider outsourcing and when should they consider outsourcing?

Rachel: Yeah, it's a really good question obviously there are a thousand layers. I just recently on Instagram saw a little meme that was like 'Content is king,' which we've heard about for how many years? A million, right? As photographs we're told we have to blog. Well the second part of that was, 'Content is king but consistency is the new queen,' and I really resonated with that because I think photographers should blog. It's not even why you blog, it's you should be blogging because it helps get the stories out of your clients, it helps give them a place to come back to, it helps share your favorite images, it's truly the only place, the only marketing place that you control. Even if you put something on Facebook, you don't control where it goes or who sees it so you should be blogging but on top of that you should be blogging consistently, so just as simple as the same day and the same time every time every time. Time isn't as important as the day, but that consistency part is almost harder then creating a blog.

We're giving people a task, blogging, which is not easy if you're a visual person right? Adding 300 words to something is really daunting. Then we're telling them, well in order to get the most [bang 00:32:37] for that, you should then also do it on a schedule. Plan things out. Which again for photographers is like, "Are you kidding me? That's really hard to do."

Scott: Right.

Rachel: "It's hard for me to do," so that's where FotoSkribe works in terms of being a partner and I think the word outsource it really should be also the word partnership, like whoever you choose to outsource with, you're not just hanging it off and walking away, unless that what you want. From a brand point of view, you are your brand.

Scott: Yep.

Rachel: I would caution that, so ...

Scott: This actually, that what you just said is also what ShootDotEdit does with the post-processing.

Rachel: Right.

Scott: It's not just photographers sending it to them and walking away. It's them working with photographer to make sure that ShootDotEdit has their style down pack in their presets.

Rachel: Right and that's where they're going, the direction of capturing new styles and their, I think at WPBI they just announced their new style match. There really is great things happening in their outsourcing space and blogging is something that isn't as tangible, so blogging is never going to be the screaming baby in the room. Your clients are always going to want their edited images and they're going to call you and yell at you until you give it to them, so it made sense to outsource your editing first.

Blogging, nobody's going to call you and say, like, "Where is my wedding blog?" But the perception of, if you're not blogging, your not working.

Scott: Exactly.

Rachel: The reality is you're not blogging because you're so busy, right?

Scott: Yeah.

Rachel: ... but the perception to your clients and your potential clients is, "Hey I know that photographer shot my friend's wedding, but they never blogged it. Did they not like them? Did they not like the images are they too, just not working, like what's going on?" By blogging and stetting the expectation that the work that you do, you're also going to share, it only helps your business.

We can take SEO aside, putting your client's stories out there gives them a place to tell your story.

Scott: Relationship, good word of mouth ...`

Rachel: Yeah.

Scott: It gets them to share it around with their friends and family, and You can get more business from it.

Rachel: Right.

Scott: Yeah it's ... There are so many benefits, you right when you said there's a lot of layers.

Rachel: It's hard, right?

Scott: Yeah.

Rachel: I mean even me like, okay, Thursday's my blog day, I have to get a blog up by Thursday, but I have 8,000 other things to do, everyone does, right?

Scott: Yeah.

Rachel: This is where I almost wished there was a FotoSkribe for me and again this is kind of where ShootDotEdit comes in because they have a whole marketing department. It's better to do it with someone. I've had clients reach out to me and be like, "I have no idea what to blog about this week," and so we brainstorm.

Scott: Yeah.

Rachel: It takes five minutes out of my day to answer these mails, to go back and forth and be a true partner for them and so then they're like, "Wait, all right, I have these images. Let's do this blog post."

Scott: Do you help your clients figure out when there best time to post a blog is, like how to create their schedules?

Rachel: I don't, I give them the option we blogged Tuesday through Friday, so I give them the option of the day and then we promise to have it up by 6:00 pm and then again they can change that at their will. I mean the problem Scott is, you and I have talked about this, you kind of need testing to try out different times of day.

Scott: Yep.

Rachel: Again, that's a brand decision, so I don't ever want to pretend to be an authority on their brand and their market.

Scott: My suggestion and I completely agree, it's always testing, and the testing never ends really.

Rachel: Right.

Scott: I found my own site, me blogging Tuesday's and Thursday's was the same traffic as me blogging just Tuesday's.

Rachel: Really?

Scott: I cut out one, yeah.

I cut out to one a week from two a week.

Rachel: Yeah.

Scott: The way to start figuring out how to ... What's the best day and time to post your blog post is to look at your Google analytics. Hopefully, you have Google Analytics hooked up.

Rachel: Right, and that's one of the questions I ask.

Scott: Yeah, see when you get the most traffic, right?

Rachel: Yap.

Scott: Then you can actually digging in the analytics to find out exactly what day of the week that is and what hour of the day that is.

Rachel: Right.

Scott: You might find out that it's happening whenever you post a blog post already.

Rachel: Right.

Scott: .. but you may find out that it's another day when you're not posting anything. Then if that happens you know that's the exact day and time that you want to start.

Rachel: To change your day, right.

Scott: ... and you start there and you see how your analytics goes, and you just keep track of it overtime.

Rachel: Well, it's not even starting there, it's starting by getting on the schedule.

Scott: Yes, exactly.

Rachel: You're not going to get even the organic SEO until you hit that schedule and then when you hit that schedule, if we help you get it up Thursday at 6:00 pm and then you've got the analytics and you analyze it and you want to change it to Tuesday at 1.00 pm, I think that's awesome. I love that kind of feedback of again, a true partnership like, we've got you on the schedule, you've done the research for your brand and your market. You have a different time? We switch that time immediately.

Scott: Yap.

Rachel: It's hard, again photographers their full time business is taking images and their second is client communication. Blogging is always going to be the bottom of that to-do list and what I'm saying is, it shouldn't be but here's a solution to help you do that, so [why 00:38:02] I want to talk about how blogging and WordPress.

Scott: Keep going ... Yeah.

Rachel: Do you want to jump into that?

Scott: Yeah, so I know that WordPress a lot of times comes across as a blogging platform when it ...

Rachel: Right.

Scott: It is how it started. WordPress is now a full content management solution that also has the blogging built into it.

Rachel: Right.

Scott: We all have our own workflows and if you don't have a workflow yet, you're going to want to come up with one and hopefully if you are at the point where it's time to outsource, you get FotoSkribe involved with your workflow, but ...

Rachel: ... or ShootDotEdit, again the editing part, you have to find what point is painful for you.

Scott: Yeah, but one of the reasons that WordPress does so well in [SEO 00:38:53] is actually because of the blogging aspect of it.

Rachel: Right.

Scott: Search engine, they know that is somebody has WordPress website, they're almost likely going to be using the blog which means there's going to be dynamic content, there's going to be moving things on the site and what I mean by that is, if you're posting every Tuesday and you have a WordPress theme that has the latest blog post on the homepage, that means your homepage is actually changing every week, right?

Rachel: Right.

Scott: Something is actually changing on the site, and on the home and the search engines love that. It also means-

Rachel: Right, the search engines look for that. Dynamic content is the number one thing that they're looking for.

Scott: Yeah.

Rachel: ... and they learn to reference your site.

Scott: Yap, it also means you could put recent posts or popular posts in a widget area, like in a sidebar or a footer. You could also link related posts using a WordPress plugin. You can link related posts underneath your new blog post, you can link related posts to another one that was in the same venue for example or so on ...

Rachel: Right.

Scott: ... and do with images and texts so its visual and it gets people moving and it also gets search engines to see okay, this ones probably related because it's interlinking.

Rachel: Right.

Scott: SEOs [why 00:40:09] is there's a lot of benefit on the WordPress site to blogging regularly.

Rachel: Well and photographers have 50% of the hard work done. Guys have beautiful images like a lot of people who put blogging on their tax form, they might have the words and then they search for the images. They create them, they source them, in some ways photographers have half of the work done almost the harder work depending on who you talk to and you have to find the words, but you also have intrinsic stories from your clients. In your images, you're telling a story of that moment in time, wherever that moment maybe. From a wedding, form a new born to a family session where somebody lost their took or that year. Those are memories that those families want to remember and those are really good blog stuff that you can also then interject your own personal feelings and your own personal connections, so that the potential clients and I know we talked about The Youngrens and they talk about their dreamies ...

Scott: Yep.

Rachel: You can connect with more of those dreamies, those target clients through blogging your true personal thoughts. In some cases you may alienate like if you're a vegan you may alienate the meat lovers, but that's kind of okay too, because they're not your target clients. There is value to not only bringing in your target clients but also in making clear who is not your target clients.

Scott: Yep.

Rachel: Before you get them through the door and have the conversations and spend their time, so there's values both ways, but WordPress is actually how I thought of FotoSkribe because I love WordPress obviously and my photographer friends because I was a photographer would say, "Can you just blog for me?" I would say, "No, it has to be your voice, it has to be you, your brand," and they were like, "Here's my money," and I said, "I'll figure it out."

At first I only blogged on WordPress platforms but the art of blogging, the work of blogging, the task of blogging really is across any platform. It can be on Squarespace, on [inaudible 00:42:19] which has a WordPress component, on Photobiz which has their own blog platform but I personally feel and I know Scott is too, that you get the most bang for your bark, when you have a WordPress site and a WordPress blog. We have everything in, all in one place. That's why we're here.

Scott: Yep.

Rachel: Right?

Scott: Yeah. I'm excited for the future of FotoSkribe for you.

Rachel: Thank you.

Scott: Like I said earlier, I think it's a perfect fit with ShootDotEdit and I see a lot more photographers now finding out about it and hopefully if they're at the point where they're ready for outsourcing or if they're curious ...

Rachel: Right.

Scott: If they should, and they want to talk to you more about it-

Rachel: Yeah, reach out please, we have a great team.

Scott: They should definitely ... Yeah, so we're going to link the FotoSkribe website going its F-O-T-O-S-K-R-I-B-E, but we will link to it in the show notes so if you need to go to the show notes Imagely.com/podcast/34. You'll be able to go to the FotoSkribe website, you can even read the official announcements, will link to that in the show notes and ...

Rachel: Yeah, and you asked me if I'm happy? I am ecstatic. Did I ever think that this would be a transition period? No, but I'm so glad that it is and I think again, whether you're starting your photography journey, whether you're in the middle of your phototopography journey or whether you've been doing this forever, never underestimate the power of team and the power of ... This podcast kind of came out of the blue too but I believe in Imagely, I believe you guys are the best WordPress solution for photographers.

Again it's about partnership and when I started FotoSkribe four years ago as a photographer I couldn't have imagined the journey of this and I am just so happy.

Scott: Yeah. I'm happy for you. I know you've been ... This has been going on for a while and it's glad to see it done and growth. One thing I'm really looking forward to, is to the point where when, ShootDotEdit decides , "Okay it's time to bring FotoSkribe to WPPI."

Rachel: Yes.

Scott: Then there's a big FotoSkribe booth, that will be awesome.

Rachel: Right, yeah, we'll take pictures and ...

Scott: I'm really excited for that to haven at some point.

Rachel: Great, well thank you-

Scott: ... and it will, I'm sure.

Rachel: Yeah, we'll see. Again, it's a journey, right?

Scott: Yeah.

Rachel: You never know, but we know we're here right now and the next steps are the next steps, whatever they maybe.

Scott: Yeah, cool.

If you have been enjoying this episode, if your enjoying previous episodes and you're looking forward to future episodes, we'd love to have your thoughts on I-Tunes ...

Rachel: Yeah.

Scott: The more reviews that we get on I-Tunes, the more people find out about the podcast, so just go to I-Tunes search for the WordPress Photography Podcast or just search for Imagely and that will come up in I-Tune search for the podcast.

Rachel: Yep.

Scott: Then you can leave a review and I think we just had two or three this past week so that's fantastic stuff.

Rachel: Awesome and so next episode 35 is our short 5 minute tips which have been really well received.

Scott: Yeah.

Rachel: We appreciate that.

Scott: It's about Co-schedule.

Rachel: Oh! Nice, perfect, yeah.

Scott: It's another one talking about Co-schedule, so kind of relates to this topic.

Rachel: Cool and then will be talking to Lena from Design Aglow which we're both excited about so tune in on for episode 36.

Scott: Yeah and I'm working on getting Smart Albums, I think it's Pixellu is the parent company.

Rachel: Yep.

Scott: The Smart Albums just released Smart Slides and ...

Rachel: Yes, which I've seen.

Scott: Yep, so I play with it a bunch and it's pretty neat and I think we're going to try to get Daniel form Smart Albums, Smart Slides on the show to talk about videos and how they're important for photography websites.

Rachel: Awesome.

Scott: That should be coming in the future as well, so lots of great stuff-

Rachel: If you have any people that you would like us to talk about, we talk about everything relating to websites not just WordPress but if there ever topics we very much welcome that feedback and you can get to ... I think there's a Q and A forum on the Imagely site.

Scott: Yep, Imagely.com/podcasts/q and you can ask your question to get talked about in the show which is actually coming up in episode 40, will be the next Q and A episode.

Rachel: Awesome. Yap. All right, well think you Scott.

Scott: Yeah, it's crazy [inaudible 00:46:54] thank you. Again I'm so happy for you and I look forward to seeing what FotoSkribe is doing more as time goes by so cool

Rachel: Awesome, me too.

Scott: Yeah.

Rachel: All right.

Scott: Again you can find the show notes on today's episode at Imagely.com/podcasts/34.

Rachel: 34, thank you.

Scott: Until next time.