In this week’s coaching call, Aileen puts me in the hot seat! We talked about how to get started with SEO, putting time in your schedule for checking off admin tasks, celebrating business anniversaries, and using Pinterest!
TRANSCRIPT:
Jessica Freeman
Welcome to the work your wellness biz podcast, a podcast for nutrition and fitness professionals. I’m your host, Jess Freeman here to help you save time and look good online. Hey, everyone, welcome back to another episode today is another member coaching call. So on the podcast, I have been spotlighting members from my community, the better collective.
And I’m doing both spotlights where we just get to learn about the members, or end or a coaching call where I can help just coach them through a problem. And you guys get to listen. So a lien has already been on the show, I will link her episode in the show notes so you guys can go listen to that if you haven’t already. But today, we’re going to have this little coaching call. I’m so excited. You’re hearing Leanne, thanks for being here.
Aileen Axtmayer
Thank you so much for having me.
Jessica Freeman
Yeah, so let’s just dive in watching out what what can I help with?
Aileen Axtmayer
You know, I’m a type a nurse, I’ve got my whole life down on brand for me, so. So I think one question I had is, I love how on the better collective we have the different modules. And so you can just go back and kind of check out the PDFs as well as rewatch the videos. I first started off like, on it every week, and then of course, life and so kind of playing all catch up, as I know is acceptable to do.
But I’m kind of thinking about best ways to use my time and like prioritization and a new part of the answer to this will be it depends on what my goals are. So basically a long winded way of saying, Do you think it’s most important to start, like I currently am updating broken links? I’m almost done. With all that. I think I have like 14 left that night pretty easy to edit. But next for SEO is going to do optimizing title description.
Do you think that’s more important than compressing all the photos and doing all those edits? Or vice versa? Like Which one? Should I tackle first?
Jessica Freeman
I would say doing the titles and the descriptions. I would say doing that first. Because Squarespace does do a tiny bit of compression for you that I wouldn’t say enough like I would still leave that on your to do list. But yeah, I would I would really start with the the on page SEO doing that. That’s where I would start. Yeah. And it’s it can be I know it can be a little overwhelming with like when you’re playing catch up and whatnot, if you can, something that I love to do is schedule in like what I call SEO days.
So it’s like no calls. Nothing. And I know I know, for you like your schedule, it might be just like a half day, it might not be a full day. But like, there’s no client work. There’s no like, it’s all like either learning or implementing something. So these are the days that I’m like, okay, I really need to update my email sequence I need to go, like stop paying for that thing that I don’t use anymore. I need to go finish this courses that I bought, like whatever.
So you might see if you can like look ahead in your schedule and like, Okay, I’m going to do like the first Friday of every month, or like whatever works for your schedule, obviously, whether it’s a full day or two half days or whatever, that might help. That’s kind of like an added bonus. I know you weren’t asking about
Aileen Axtmayer
that. But that’s definitely it’s part of it, right? Like why? Why does it keep not happening? And so actually carving out the time i think is an important way to do it. And yeah, it takes getting into that mindset, right, especially since I’m not of the SEO naturally. And so just batching it like not batching the type of way I’m using my brain I think would be really helpful.
Yes, agree. Awesome. Thank you. I was also catching up and what is an XML export for Squarespace. I know for backing up our contents First, we didn’t have a thing. What is that?
Jessica Freeman
So the XML export is basically just this file type that will allow you to it just has all the data all the information, all the blog posts, photos, that’s like more techie than even I can even explain but it holds all the website content. And then you can enforce I don’t know if this this has changed last I heard it has not but you can’t upload it into Another Squarespace site, so it’s where you can upload it to WordPress. And so what basically like if you really wanted to stay on Squarespace, what you could do is like, upload it to WordPress import, and then export again. And then do that, like, I don’t know why it’s why it has to be like that.
But But yeah, so you can, it just gives saves all your data and then you can upload that and like basically have your website back. Until like when I because I do move a lot of clients from Squarespace to WordPress, it literally is just like, export import. And then I mean, I don’t just import and call it a day, I feel like design and arrange everything but all the meat of the content with the photos and everything is there. So you can’t really open it or see anything, but it at least
Aileen Axtmayer
have it somewhere at least habit.
Jessica Freeman
And the nice part is that it does download from Squarespace with a date in the file. So you’ll say like November 30 2020, and then like a bunch of like random numbers and letters. And then you can see like, okay, when’s the last time I updated? Or if for some reason your site crashes or, you know, whatever you can like, okay, where’s the last update? Like, where’s my last download?
And I would say, to keep those old XML files to just in case like, I don’t know, if the last three is to all glitched and have something wrong, and they don’t work. And you’re like, Okay, let me try July 2020s. Download?
Aileen Axtmayer
Let me see better than starting completely over. Yeah, exactly. So yeah. And that might be a dumb question. But is it? Do I just Google, like XML export, and then I’ll find,
Jessica Freeman
oh, so if you want to do the export in Squarespace, it’s under if moved into Brownback settings, and then I believe advanced, okay. And it will just it doesn’t say XML, it’ll just say import slash export. Okay. And then there’s not really like, many options. It’ll literally just say like, download. Okay, so
Aileen Axtmayer
yeah. Perfect, please about what it is. Yeah. And then let’s see. So this is more of kind of the bigger picture of picking your business. Brain. I just realized last night, oh, wait, it’s almost December. So I launched a fire with a lien in December. Five years ago, like, that was the end of December. So my official official like launch account in January. So my five year would be this coming January.
And I was thinking it might be a good excuse to do something fun for like, prospective clients and current clients, things like that. And so, and also just like a nice way to remind people of what I do. Because it always feels weird to just like, go on LinkedIn, be like, Hey, this is what I do. But it’s kind of like an excuse to do that. Right? Like, hey, celebrating five years of doing this. And yes, so I feel like it’s a rare opportunity to just reiterate that versus like, promoting something in particular, or launching something. So, um, yeah, I think I was just picking your brain.
Jessica Freeman
Yeah, either what I can do, or, or ways.
Aileen Axtmayer
Like, I guess, to capitalize on that. So maybe like, a goal would be to have that capture people grow my list more probably makes sense. So it feels less like, hey, do you want to hire me? Like, that’d be a reminder, like, I have these resources, and then point to things where people could opt in. Does that make sense? So yeah, guys,
Jessica Freeman
so there are a lot of different things you can do to like, celebrate, or like, whatever would I would first figure out is what do you want to like, grow the most during this like little celebration. So like, some people do like an Instagram giveaway to celebrate because they’re also trying to grow their Instagram. Or like you, you might want to grow your list. So you might do something, like, grow, like doing some kind of giveaway, where you have to join the list to, you know, be a part of a giveaway to enter whatever.
Or it could be, you know, if you want to really focus on something for corporate wellness clients, then you could maybe like, Okay, I’m going to give away a one to one session. So then it just raises awareness of that. And I mean, that would also depend on like, okay, so do people have to like, share something Do they have to tag you, do they have to it could be that and that could coincide with like your email list and like, Okay, so what am I going to do? Like?
Am I trying to grow to get more corporate wellness clients? Yes. Okay. But I also want to grow my list. So I’ll do something that makes sense with, like, so that I’m attracting. Yeah. So that you’re attracting those corporate wellness clients, or potential clients, not just random, like other people, or people who are more interested in the career coaching, like, great, but like, I really wanted the career or the corporate clients.
So think about like, which kind of clients you want to attract more of? And then, like, do you want to grow your Instagram because of that your email list? Something like that? Yeah. I will say whatever you do, keep it simple. keep it really simple. Like, some people are like, okay, so you can you have to follow me and subscribe. And vice pros do you like, like, do all these things do this, do this?
And it’s like, What was I supposed to do? Or like, Okay, once you subscribe, then you have to do this and this and then it’s just like, what? Something that I did I I’ve never done like a giveaway, or any kind of celebration. I don’t know why just, I just didn’t. But I, for my five year anniversary, I think it was I had clients submit video testimonials, and then compiled them into like one video and then uploaded that and was like, hey, it’s been five years, like, I have the best clients.
And then that way, it was like social proof for me. And then but also, like, you know, people like love the video. It’s, like, pinned at the top of my Facebook page and my feed and the very last person in my video raps. Like, this is like, just a wrap for me. And so like, people always like they see the comments. And they’re like, wait, someone’s rapping? Like, what? Watch this. Yeah, so they go watch the whole video.
So then it’s just like, one, it’s just, you know, people are like, oh, like such nice things. You know, like, Great fun, but then it’s also a little bit funny. And it’s that social proof. So I didn’t like give away anything. I didn’t really promote anything specifically, but it just kind of reinforced. And that was like marketing that I could keep using for Yeah, because like they weren’t specific.
No one specifically said like, happy five years. Like, I just was like, Hey, I’m celebrating five years, I want to do like a compilation of clients. Can you send me a video? So like, it was timeless? Because none of them were like saying anything about my five years. So that’s something else you could think about doing? Yeah, that’s, you know, kind of fun.
Aileen Axtmayer
Yeah, I like the ability to repurpose things from it. And like you said, I think you’re not necessarily promoting something, I don’t want to come out of the woodwork of not like posting much and then be like, hey, and now buy stuff. But just like the reminder of what you do, and then people say she’s good at what she does is Yeah, encouraging anyone who sees it, who needs the service that hey, this thing.
Jessica Freeman
Yeah, and I totally could have in the video, like caption on Facebook, and like, you know, if you’re interested in working with me, like click here or something, but I kept it for whatever reason.
Aileen Axtmayer
Yeah, but doesn’t mean it didn’t lead to that.
Jessica Freeman
Yeah, exactly. So that’s something else you could do. But I think just keeping in mind, like, Okay, what kind of clients do I want to attract? What’s like a platform that I want to grow? And how can I like make these two things coincide to celebrate, but also maybe give my business a little boost, or at least some brand awareness? That all working together would be really nice.
Aileen Axtmayer
Awesome. Thank you. That’s very helpful. Yeah. Um, and then let’s see. Pinterest. So I had done a paid for you, Pinterest program. I’ve emailed you actually. And you recommended someone. And I did it for a few months and then every good little chunk of money and I felt like the pins are still going to repin get pinned and keep moving. So I stopped doing that service.
But now I’m not doing anything. Pinterest, myself. So do you feel like in terms of so that I had tailwind with that and all that stuff. Basically, I think I’m looking for permission to still not pay a lot of attention to Pinterest because there was so much energy put into it. But should I should I be spending a little bit of time, maybe leaving some stuff on
Jessica Freeman
you always have permission to do to not Do something you don’t want to do. I do love Pinterest because it drives so much traffic. And yes, you do have to pay for tailwind, but they do have the auto looping feature. So you could basically it’s, I mean, you have to like there’s like limits on it. But you can basically say like this pin I want on auto loop. And so it constantly gets re pinned.
Like, it’s just always in your queue. That’s it like it’s constantly. So, and like, again, there are limits. So you can’t just like here, I’m going to like do these 50 pins on auto loop. But you can do one for like, if one goes to a landing page to sign up for your newsletter, or you have like, a really popular blog post or like whatever you you’re like, I just want to drive a bunch of traffic to this post or this landing page. then great.
Just put that like I have one of my auto looping pins is to to a landing page just like here we go. Just put that on auto. And so you could do that. And again, yes, tailwind does cost but it doesn’t cost as much as someone having to doing all that do it all for you. You could also look into like my VA, she manages my Pinterest. She’s not a Pinterest VA. She does not do strategy.
She does not like I basically had to teach her Pinterest and teach her tailwind. But because I knew what I wanted her to do. I knew what I wanted that, quote unquote strategy to look like. It’s just easy for her to implement. So no, she’s not a Pinterest VA or Pinterest strategist. But she’s keeping my Pinterest going. So that trauma is still coming to my website.
So that’s something else like you could look at. Like I literally just did loom videos for her and was like, here’s how it went. Like this is how you do it. And there are Pinterest VH out there. They might be I don’t want to assume but they might be a little more extensive because they are specialized. But that is another option. If you don’t want to do that. You can also like schedule way in advance on tailwind, so batch and do a bunch.
Before I had my VA start handling my Pinterest. I would literally like pin schedule schedule pins for like an entire month. And yes, it was like Okay, any new podcasts or whatever won’t be pinned this month. But I can pin them next month. You know what I mean? Like Okay, so like, all these new podcasts or blogs or YouTube videos that come out in June?
Well, they won’t get pinned in June. They’ll just get pinned in July. That’s fine. Whatever. They’re still getting pin. They’re still getting pinned. But yeah, again, batching might be a good
Aileen Axtmayer
Yeah, might be thank you for noticing a theme here. batching. That’s helpful, because I still have tail and I’m just not
Jessica Freeman
doing anything, do the auto looping at least do the shares until you start like batching. That’ll that’ll at least get you a little bit of traffic.
Aileen Axtmayer
Yeah, I like that a lot. Awesome. And I think last question I have is blog posts, and I know I can probably go back in and book in some previous better collective modules, but I have not posted anything since March. I was doing like, weekly when I first started five years ago that sure. AF has not continued.
And that it was a couple times a month and then monthly and yeah, now crickets. So is once a month. Okay, it’s since I’m not like considering myself a blogger, it’s just showing some subject matter expertise in those and you know, then I can repurpose them in different places. Yeah. Or do I need to be aiming for a higher number to have it?
Jessica Freeman
I work? I am always over. I’m always for whatever sustainable over like, these are the best practices? Yeah, what I would focus on if you are just doing once a month is really making sure they are optimized. So doing keyword research, looking at like what’s trending look at just like in your industry if there’s something and then I would try to make them a little bit longer. Okay, so like aiming for 802,000 words.
Aileen Axtmayer
Just have them do more for me if I’m gonna do less of them.
Jessica Freeman
Yeah. And not saying they have to be this huge like two to 3000 words.
Aileen Axtmayer
long winded effect. is not a problem.
Jessica Freeman
Okay. Um, but yeah, I think just all those SEO practices that we talked about the better collective just really making sure that they are well optimized for doing the keyword research because that can that can do way more than it than 10 blog posts a month. Yeah, they’re not. Yeah. So, because like, I mean, I have lots of like, I have, you know, in 2020, I had weekly posts with podcasts and videos.
And I did not that I ever, like, marketed them or like, Hey, guys, I have a blog post. But I was doing it for SEO. And I have a blog that I did that ranks number one for its keywords. And it’s a very short post, but like, and I wasn’t sure if it would actually like I was like, I think this will do well. And sure enough, it did. And so like, it’s just, it’s all SEO, as much as there is strategy to it.
There is also a lot of guessing, because like I have, I have all these, you know, however many, you know, 50, some podcasts and 50 videos, and this one blog post ranks number one Now, obviously, other things are ranking too. I’m not saying that nothing else is ranking, but like this one, like, Oh, I should just do a blog post about that like to do. Great. Now it’s like, right.
So all that to say, once a month is fine, just make sure it’s working harder for you. And doing what you can also if you don’t already like you could start accepting guest bloggers. But then not that’s a good call. You could you could totally do that. You could also do good for really good for SEO was like roundup posts. So if you wanted to do like, Best Places to Work in Boston, I don’t know.
You know, best like career interview to like, sir, yeah, for weird interview tips. Especially if you did like really niche things like interview tips for Mark, like in marketing or in wellness, or I don’t know, pick any niche, any. You could do a whole series on just like best interview tips and then just like crowdsource those answers. That’s something you could do on LinkedIn is like getting input from people or something like that.
Aileen Axtmayer
So awesome. Yeah. And then even just taking the mental load of thinking of what to write for blog posts, reverse engineering and doing some seo keyword search first, and then be like, Oh, yeah, that’s something I could talk about. And then going that way,
Jessica Freeman
yes, that would be, that’s definitely how I would start is look at the keywords like great, this needs to be taught, I can totally talk about this. Okay, now I’m gonna do a blog post about it. And you can even you can even do that, like for guest bloggers, like, if you see a keyword, like you don’t have to say like, hey, Jess, I saw that, like, the keywords for career coaching, like, whatever, are really trending.
I’d love for you to write a post. Maybe Yeah, yeah. But if you know, someone who’s like, let’s say, a career coach, for, like, people in the restaurant industry, I don’t know. Then you see that that’s like a really hot keyword. You could be like, hey, Brian, I see that you specialize in the restaurant industry would love to have you do a guest post if you’re interested? And then, you know, they get to they get some exposure for them. It’s a win win. Yeah. You get a little SEO help. So yeah,
Jessica Freeman
yeah. So then if you did guest posts, like if you got enough lined up, you could even do it every other month. So you you are writing for January, and March, and may and then June, best post February, April, June, etc.
Aileen Axtmayer
So you’re speaking my language how to work smarter, not harder. Yeah. Okay. That’s very helpful. Yeah. I’m glad you had some great questions.I think those are all of them. I’m sure I’ll come up with more as I do this stuff is really, really helpful. Of course, of course.
Jessica Freeman
So before we hop off, I’d love for you just to share where we can connect with you online.
Aileen Axtmayer
Sure. So alien x Meyer, my businesses Aspire with a lien. You can find me on Instagram, Facebook, and my website is Aspire with the lien calm. Awesome. I will put the links
Jessica Freeman
in the show notes for you guys. But thank you so much for being here.
Aileen Axtmayer
Thanks for having me, Jess. Thanks for all the help
