Host 0:04
Welcome to the Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here’s your host, Jillian Leslie
Jillian Leslie 0:11
Hello, and welcome back to The Blogger Genius. If you want to get the Cliff Notes of every episode, the four major takeaways of this episode and all episodes going forward, head to Bloggergenius.com, sign up, and they will come directly to your inbox.
On today’s show, I have Camille Whiting. And we are talking about how to use analytics to make smart choices even for people who do not like analytics. I promise, this episode is not scary. It actually makes a lot of sense.
If you’re an entrepreneur and you’re thinking to yourself, “which way do I go?”, this is the episode for you because what you’re going to do is you’re going to learn strategies for how to make smart choices to help your business grow. So without further ado, here is Camille Whiting. Camille, welcome to the show.
Camille Whiting 1:12
Thank you so much for having me.
Jillian Leslie 1:14
I am really excited to have you on the show because as we were just talking about before I pressed record, we both come at blogging from two sides — from a creative side and an analytical side. And we were talking about how the analytical side does not have to be scary.
Camille Whiting 1:32
Yeah, absolutely.
Jillian Leslie 1:34
So I want to dig in. But first, could you share your entrepreneurial journey, just briefly, how you got started, what your blog is, and where you are today.
Camille Whiting 1:45
Yeah, absolutely. So it’s funny to be talking about an entrepreneurial journey because I am a business girl. I have an MBA and I’ve worked at some top marketing agencies in the world. And I remember somebody saying in business school like “what are you going to do as an entrepreneur?’ and I was like, “I’m not going to ever be an entrepreneur.”
Like, I’m good with working my 9 to 5. And, you know, anyway, and they kind of laughed at me and said, Okay, we’ll see.
And it’s really funny now to work full-time for myself and have this entrepreneurial journey almost by accident. I’m somebody who learned about blogging actually right when it started. I was in my undergrad. And I had a professor say, “this new thing called blogs actually got released last week, and it can be a really cool format to have conversations and publish things online.”
And I mean, this was kind of before Facebook became mainstream, too. And so it was interesting to get started with blogs and just get used to them as something that you could just share. You can just share ideas and thoughts.
And so I’ve kind of always had a side blog just to share information. And I’ve done all kinds of different pieces. I’ve done some fashion blogging, I’ve done some personal journaling, I’ve done a little bit of recipes. And then when I got married, my husband and I decided to create Friday We’re in Love.
Jillian Leslie 2:56
Okay, and which is your blog.
Camille Whiting 2:58
Which is my blog, yeah, and my business. And it was just kind of a personal thing. I was a big marriage phobe and was like, I don’t really believe in happy marriages. I had previously been married, I’d gone through a lot of abuse, a lot of sad background story. If you want it made for TV movie, you’re welcome to go read some of my articles on that, that I won’t get into.
But when I met Jacob, my husband, he was just perfect. He really is the greatest guy and I feel like I under-exaggerate him online. He’s just a wonderful person.
And he was like, Okay, but if we’re going to date, I really believe in marriage and I believe in this forever, and what do we need to do to like get you on board again.
And so we did some premarital counseling and we were encouraged to go on a date every week no matter what even if we didn’t have money, even if we didn’t think we had time, and all those things.
And so we decided that we would. We would go out every single week, just as this personal project. We would snap a picture, we would start a blog, and we would just share, here’s where we went and here’s what we did. And I never promoted it.
It was like super personal, never intended it necessarily to get huge or anything. So we did this for months and months, and then Pinterest came out. And I’d shared with like three friends I even did this, but somehow, people were pinning our dates and traffic was coming.
And so I’m kind of an accidental, really lucky entrepreneur that I just kept creating, kept doing it for the passion side of it. And then after a few years, I looked at it and said there is a good amount of traffic here and I heard people started making money off these things. How do they do that?
So I went to a conference. I learned a few things at the conference, but I really made connections that taught me how people made some money blogging, and I kind of applied my business background, my business side, it was kind of my side gig that the goal was like if it’ll pay for kind of elaborate fun dates, cool.
That’s what I want out of it. I started sharing a little more personal information, people seemed to like it. I started sharing infertility journey, people seemed to really identify with that, too.
So anyway, just long story short, it just kept growing. And when I had a baby, I had my maternity leave and I was kind of bored. So I kept working more and more at it and I watched it grow. And it just turned into a full-time job for me that I’m really lucky to call my job today.
Jillian Leslie 5:11
That’s awesome. And on top of this, though, you are a digital strategist. So explain that side.
Camille Whiting 5:20
Okay, so I do consulting for companies. I think this comes more from that and working with Fortune 500 company background. But I think a lot of small businesses don’t even know what they’re doing online. And they know they should have a website, then they’re like, “how come nobody’s coming to me? Where’s the marketing piece of this?”
Or they say things like, “I should be on Facebook, or I should be on Instagram, people are there.” But they haven’t really stopped to think through why or what they’re doing. I am a really big picture person.
And I’ve been somebody lucky enough to be, so to speak, in the room where it happens with some of the biggest companies in the world, saying what is our five-year plan, what is our seven-year plan?
I did a lot of pharma and it was like we have seven years before a patent wears off, what is like year by year strategy, and what are we publishing to get there. And I think a lot of companies don’t stop to think about that. Are you trying to sell something? Are you trying to get more traffic? Are you trying to solve specific problems? Like what is your end game? Where are you going? And how are the little pieces of what you’re doing online getting you there.
So I get hired sometimes to go in and to come up with content strategy, like you should be blogging so that you can have better SEO even if you’re a small business, not identifying necessarily as a blogger. And you may or may not want to be on a social media, right?
I’ve had a bankruptcy attorney try to get big on Facebook. And I was like, I just don’t think very many people are sharing like filed for bankruptcy today. I think there’s things like that, that companies just haven’t thought through what makes the most sense, where am I going to get the biggest bang for my buck, and what am I doing online with my content to really get there.
Jillian Leslie 6:56
Okay, now, given that you’ve seen that side, and now also you have your own business and your own blog, where do you think bloggers and online entrepreneurs are missing the boat when it comes to SEO and content creation?
Camille Whiting 7:13
Okay, so I meet a lot of bloggers. I’m kind of a social extrovert blogger, which can be rare, I know. But when I go to conferences and when I meet local people, it’s really interesting to talk to people about SEO.
I feel like it’s become this really hot topic in the last year or two where people are like, I know I should be doing it, I want to learn more about it. And then they’re in two camps.
They’re either like, “I love SEO, I’m all about SEO, I’m learning as much as I can,” or they’re like, “I’m terrified. This scares me to death. I’m not a very technical person, or I don’t want to focus on that piece, or it’s sucking all the fun out of writing and doing things.” I hear both sides of it.
Jillian Leslie 7:48
Right. I feel like there’s a lot of, I’m going to coin this term, SEO shame. Where people are like what you just said, “I know I should be doing it. I don’t really know what I’m doing. And I don’t feel confident. And so I’m just going to kind of close my eyes a little bit and just like, sit in my own little SEO shame bubble, and just make some content.”
Camille Whiting 8:11
Yes, yes, I agree. And so it’s kind of like the two-fold. And I would argue that I think most people should be somewhere in the middle there. They should really be looking at SEO and going, this is a great opportunity. I’m a wonderful content creator, I have a business for a reason. What can I do to kind of blend this, thinking this is all technical, all something that’s going to be hard to understand versus creating content.
And so I really think people should care more about it, but also know that it can be super approachable. And my theory on SEO too, is that content is king. We hear that all the time. But content really is king. And I think we get hung up on SEO being, “well, my site speed isn’t as quick as other people,” or “Because I probably uploaded images wrong eight years ago when I didn’t know what I was doing. And I’ve blown everything.”
And those things are important. These technical pieces are important, but I really think they’re maybe 10 to 20% max of your SEO, and your content is going to be that biggest chunk of it.
I mean, people aren’t going to come to your site to see how fast it is. They’re going to come to your site to see what kind of content is there and what it’s doing for them. And so I think instead of getting totally hung up on what is every technical piece that “I probably don’t know that I’m doing or I’m doing wrong,” people should reframe it on “I’m a content creator, I know how to create content and what can I do to make my content better serve my audience.”
Jillian Leslie 9:38
Okay, so let’s say today, I am listening to this podcast and I say, “Okay, I want to do it.” What do I do?
Camille Whiting 9:46
Okay, so let’s start through just some good general practices. Because I’m a big like, takeaway, go-do-things, like a list type person.
So let me give you a couple of things. Let’s talk about content moving forward. If you listen to this today and you’re like, “I’m overwhelmed by the past,” okay, let’s start with moving forward. We’ll talk about the past too. But let’s talk about moving forward, and what your content should look like.
Most people are not reading your thousand word posts. I hate to crush anyone’s soul. I’m a verbose person. My posts are long, too. And people are skimmers. And so are you writing for people to find what they’re looking for in your post?
And if they’re searching for how to make the best chicken or something like that, can they scroll through your post and find exactly the pieces that they think they’re missing to make the best chicken? Or do they have to sit and digest your entire post word-for-word to have any idea what they’re doing.
I think making your posts so that they’re really easy to read is the first thing people should look at. I like Yoast, the plugin, but I have heard so many people say this, and I agree with it. Yoast is a robot and you’re not writing for robots. So kind of loosely follow Yoast.
But I think when I first got started looking at Yoast and going, “my readability score is always an F. Why?”
Starting to understand that I was writing too long of sentences, I wasn’t breaking up paragraphs, I was not making my posts skimmable, that was a good place for me to get started. To go, Okay, I need to make this easier to read. I need people to find what they’re looking for.
I had no idea a few years ago about headers. Headers are something that it’s a technical piece and an artistic piece. You want to use H2’s whenever possible that tells Google like this is a header, this is a piece of content people are looking for. The content under that header should answer this piece of information.
So for example, if you are writing that chicken recipe, maybe you want to make a header about the ingredients, maybe you want to make a header about how long to marinate, maybe you want to make a header about if you should beat it, flatten it. All the things that go into making chicken, right?
And so people can find those headers with those keywords, and they can really digest the content that you’re writing. So I think Yoast is great for that. Because it does put up the flags even though it’s a robot, it’ll put up the flag saying, hey, robots can’t read what you’re saying, so maybe humans can’t read this either.
Jillian Leslie 12:12
There’s a free version of Yosat, you can just install it on your WordPress. And it will give you kind of a green light, a yellow light or red light to tell you how well optimized your post is.
And I agree with you, which is take everything with a grain of salt, but directionally I always say to myself, if somebody were reading this post or skimming this post, in line at Target, could they get the gist? With a screaming kid.
Like, yeah, if you could, like there’s enough space between bullets, you know, it’s like broken down really easily. It’s like writing for like a fourth grader. And I don’t mean that pejoratively. I just mean that somebody could be kind of half distracted, and still know how long to marinate that chicken.
Camille Whiting 13:00
Yes, absolutely. I had a friend say this.,I know there’s been a lot of joke in the food community. And I only do so much food on my site, so once again, take this with a grain of salt. But a lot of people have said like, oh, but they’re getting so SEO heavy that like you’re like, just give me the dang recipe, right?
And food bloggers are going yeah, but I also make a living doing this and you don’t have to pay for a cookbook right now, so just scroll and help me to write. So there’s a blend there. But one of my friends when I told him that I said, well, it’s it’s their SEO. So to get to and he’s like, well, if I’m holding raw chicken in one hand, I just want to figure out what I’m doing next.
So I have now thought of that everything I write like, if somebody is holding raw chicken in one hand, can they still scroll and figure out what to do with that chicken. Proverbial speaking right? And with what you’re trying to share.
And so I think a lot of people, they don’t realize that they’re writing can be the main problem that is just too hard to digest and to get what you’re looking for. And I think when you start thinking of SEO, and you start going, Oh, I can do shorter sentences and I can really divide this up, that is like the best place to start to make your posts really easy to read and really easy to follow.
And a couple other things that I think are so key, I always say whenever I talk about SEO and to friends presenting anything, your goal is to be the most useful piece of information on the web. That is your number one goal.
And so sometimes as bloggers, especially someone like me, who started this as a journal, you gotta reframe how you’re writing. Are you writing this egocentricaly?
Jillian Leslie 14:31
Oh, my God, I was just having that exact same thought. Okay, keep going.
Camille Whiting 14:37
I think through and I’m like, yeah, we share a lot of date ideas in our content. And a few years ago, I had a friend say, you know what actually would be more helpful is if you broke down, like quick at the top of your post, what you did, how much it was, the website. where people can buy tickets, like, all those kinds of things.
And I was like, that’s genius. I’ve never thought of that. Because I’ve always been sharing my story. I understand that you guys are coming here to try to find date ideas and fun family activities. So what can I do to better serve you? And I’m glad she said that.
This was before I started digging in deeper with my own personal SEO. But I really was like, What can I do to be more useful to my readers? And I think that’s another place a lot of sites should take a step back and go, What can I do with my content to be more useful? How can I be the most useful piece of content on the web regarding this subject matter?
Jillian Leslie 15:27
And I think there’s a life lesson in there too, which is, it’s less about me and more about how I can be of service.
Camille Whiting 15:35
Yep, absolutely. So taking some of that ego and that vanity out of it and saying, What am I giving other people here? How do I make this more user friendly?
And I’m big on user experience. I used to sit in these boardrooms where it would take us a year to put up a new website. And it would be like a million dollar website with top people in the world, creating the website, right, with all the pieces of the website.
But we really stopped and looked at every single piece of the website and saying, how is it serving? What is it doing? What is the strategy behind this? And I think it’s really important to get very real about that with your content and with your website too and say, What is the user experience here? What are people coming for? How do they get there? How do my menus lead to that?
So we used to say, in the digital world, if people, if it took more than two to three clicks to get a piece of information they were looking for, we had failed them. So they need together.
And that was, you know, working on a pharma side, it was like, Okay, if you’re a doctor, how do you get the drug information you’re looking for quickly on the site? Well, that’s not exactly what I think any bloggers are really writing about.
But when I think of it, if people have come and they know we shared a recipe as a date, how do they quickly funnel into the content in two to three clicks, to get what they remember from my site?
And so that is something to think about as you design navigation, as you design, posts as you interlink within a post you’re writing, right? Don’t assume that your readers have read every single thing, especially when it comes to SEO, right?
They’re searching, they’re finding you and this is very likely their first interaction with your site. So you want to make sure it’s just so easy serving them, getting exactly where they want to be in two to three clicks.
Jillian Leslie 17:20
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Are there any other things that you would say as an overall strategy? So serve your audience, don’t serve yourself. This isn’t a vanity blog. It used to be, No, it’s no longer.
And by the way, I also would say that’s true about photos. You know, if we’re food bloggers, we take all these beautiful photos, and we want to put them all in the post because we can’t like, you know, they’re all so beautiful. And the truth is, do all these photos serve your audience? Probably not.
Maybe marinating the chicken and showing what that looks like serve your audience. But at the end of the day, how many photos do they need of this beautiful completed chicken? Probably one, maybe you cutting into it. And that’s it. So be very mindful of are you putting this photo in for yourself, or are you putting this photo in to serve your audience?
Camille Whiting 20:18
Absolutely. I mean, I can say that I do some fashion blogging too. And I think not as many fashion bloggers do as much SEO just by nature of it kind of, you know, a quick turnaround and what you’re selling and showing.
But when I think through that, every time I put up a fashion post, I’m like, people only need to see like maybe the front of the dress, the side of the dress, a closer detail. And that’s good. Even if I did a billion glamour shots and I love them, that’s totally. Exactly whatever genre you’re in, you should stop and think about, are my images serving my audience? Or are they just weighing down my site?
And then I think also thinking about user experience, I’m going to go back to that one with your content, most people are on mobile these days. And a few years ago, I remember looking at it and going okay, 70% of my traffic is desktop and 30% is mobile. For me, that’s now flipped. And I think for most people, you’re going to continue mobile traffic and think through your images and go what is best? Something that’s actually a horizontal picture.
I know a lot of us think in Pinterest terms. A lot of times it’s easier to see the horizontal with the text. Sometimes it’s not. The horizontal looks terrible in that little screen, right? So think through that experience on both places, and how your content will be served up for both audiences. And that is a really easy way to start with your SEO.
I think another one, the biggest one that I’m kind of missing is, keywords. We think of it as I should be searching, I should be putting a keyword in. You should be putting multiple keywords in. You should be looking for three to five keywords in every post and really optimizing for those keywords. So put them in your headers, put them very logically in what you’re writing. Don’t write for bots, write for people.
Yet also putting keywords. So no keyword stuffing, that’s like a bad practice from a decade ago. But put them in naturally, so people can find them. Use synonyms and also do some research. Look up programs and find the best keywords. You’ll be amazed at how, you know, we all use a specific nomenclature for the industries we’re in or what we do. I could say jargon too, you have jargon for where you are.
It was amazing to me to go to college and have a roommate from South Carolina and learn how many words we used differently. And very enlightening.
And so I think looking it up and going oh, well, geez, a lot more people search it this way than the way I would say it. But also on the inverse, if you’re looking it up and you’re feeling a little disheartened, like, I’ll never rank for that term, chicken recipes is all over the place. Find those other smaller terms and other ways people use words and go after those.
There’s room for everyone to really grow in SEO, even if you have the exact same blog as your friend. You can both rank for different keywords in a very similar post. And it’s kind of a really fun, beautiful thing to blend that creative side of this with some of that technical research of how much people are searching, what words they’re looking for.
So whenever you write a post, I would stop and think about what you want to write. And I would go do some research and find three to five keywords that you can naturally fit in your post several times. And I would make sure you include those as you get started with SEO.
Jillian Leslie 23:32
Now what about building content off of existing content?
Camille Whiting 23:38
Yeah, that is a great strategy. So for example, if you do Instant Pot recipes and you had an Instant Pot soup recipe just really take off, that is a great place to stop and go through and do some of your own digital strategy and say, what makes the most sense? Should I now be an Instant Pot soup Recipe person because I have a ton of them and that did great, so I’m going to go create more Instant Pot soup recipes.
And I’m even going to create a category that is Instant Pot soup recipes, I’m going to create a category page that has Instant Pot soup recipes. And I’m going to go after some of those keywords and I’m going to use my posts to continue to build that and to get some more domain authority, so to speak on that.
But you also can look at it and go did I share enough? I shared how to create this Instant Pot soup? Did I share enough about the ingredients that go into it? Or how to, I don’t know, how to clean my Instant Pot? Or how soup is different than a casserole? Like are there more helpful, best piece of content on the web type articles I can write as my content strategy based off this?
Jillian Leslie 24:44
I love that. So you’d come at Insta Pot from a variety of different directions.
Camille Whiting 24:49
Yeah, and that’s the fun part where I think people think SEO is just technical. This is really the artistic side where you get to say, well, what else do I get to create? How else can I help audiences? And what else can I write?
Jillian Leslie 25:04
Yes. And like there are cool ways to think about it. Like you could do a quick start guide to Insta Pot recipes. Or I like your idea of like how to clean your Insta Pot, or where’s the best place to store your Insta Pot. And then you can be linking to all of these different resources in each post.
Camille Whiting 25:24
Yeah, absolutely. And building it out and making these landing pages that you can start to go after bigger keywords, right? You might be ranking for like lemongrass Instant Pot soup.
But going after Instant Pot soup recipes is a lot more search traffic, I can guarantee that. I’m not even researching it right now. But I can guarantee that that is a much bigger keyword with much bigger traffic. And it’s often building these little articles that do really well and then making that landing page that links out to them that really gets people with SEO.
So it’s a fun strategy to think of like, how do my little pieces of content now start to grow? And how do I get a content strategy to go after bigger things that I really want to be?
Jillian Leslie 26:08
That’s cool. Okay. Now in terms of Google Analytics, I’m going to say it, it’s like a dirty word, Google Analytics. If I’m somebody who’s scared of I put Google Analytics on my site, and I have to say, I’m a technical person and I still find Google Analytics to be a bear that I can’t even get my arms around.
Where should I go? What are the kind of down and dirty places that I should be looking in my Google Analytics? And how often should I be checking them?
Camille Whiting 26:38
Okay, I used to be a little bit of one of those people. And then we had someone at one of my jobs in my office, and his title was literally Analytics Guru. That was his job title. And I once was like, Hi… he asked for a favor for me, and I said, Can we go to lunch? I am a big believer in hiring people. And not just saying, could we go to lunch?
But I was like, could we talk about analytics? And it’s so funny how if you have a friend that’s even okay with analytics, I would be like, could we sit down and just like, you just show me a couple things. I do this a lot for people. You can even hire me, I will do this with you for an hour.
Jillian Leslie 27:13
I love it.
Camille Whiting 27:13
I think once people go into their analytics one time and really look at a couple of reports, they’re like, this is cool. How did I not do this before?
The other thing is, I think people think they’re going to break their analytics. You can run any report you want, you can click in any way you want, you can try and experiment and make these like custom reports of like, Ooh, I’m going to look at my acquisition. So that’s one place I would start looking. Acquisition is a tab in there that shows you where your traffic is coming from.
Jillian Leslie 27:42
So I just want to stop for a second. So think about it this way. You are acquiring your audience. That’s why it’s called acquisition.
Camille Whiting 27:50
Yeah. And where are they coming from. And so don’t be afraid of them. Just click around and start to look.
And the other cool thing is they’ve made it so you can like hover over areas and they will explain to you what it is. There’s also Google, there’s YouTube, there’s people that have gone through your analytics that you can learn anything you want. And I promise once you master like one report, one way to look at something, the floodgates open after that.
You’re like, Oh, well, then what are these other tabs do? I think acquisition is a big one, especially as we talk about SEO, looking at where your traffic is coming from and being very real. Are people even searching for things? Do you have zero search? Do you have a foundation of some search, hat words are getting them there.
That also is linked to Google Search Console. So if you don’t have that set up, I would get that set up and I would get your analytics and your search console linked.
But look at acquisition and start looking at the overview, start looking at all of your traffic, and you can drill down really specific into really fun things like, oh, people are coming from Pinterest, which is also a search engine and also a form of SEO, I’d argue.
But you can start going what pins are doing well? What are what are people really looking for? And if I’m looking at search, what percentage is search? What can I do from here? So acquisition’s a great one.
And then I personally like looking at the behavior tab quite a bit too, which is just on the left. These are like top level things. I don’t know if anyone that’s never seen this before. And start looking what people are actually interacting with on your site. Are they sticking around? Are they clicking off certain posts? Are they going from post to post?
And this will help you better understand a lot of your actual content on your site. There’s even a tab within it called site content. And you can look at how pages are doing, you can look at content drill downs, you can search from their content drill down.
I’m going to search chicken and see how many hits you’re getting in a timeframe on chicken posts. And that’s another strategic thing you can do to go, oh, wow, people really do well, with my chicken posts, I’m going to keep writing chicken recipes.
Jillian Leslie 29:53
And again, it also gives you insight into putting those internal links so that somebody is clicking on your chicken recipe, and then there’s a link to like how do you clean a chicken? And that they’re clicking over to that because the goal is to get them in and then have them stay because they’re learning.
Camille Whiting 30:11
Yes, absolutely. And I have found in personal experience, when you do a couple of posts that serve them, you often get them as a long-term reader. They’ll opt in to your email list or they’ll start bookmarking, you know. It’s a beautiful thing to get that search traffic and then try to keep them long-term as readers and followers.
Jillian Leslie 30:31
Okay, so Google Analytics, definitely check it out. Play around. I love the idea that you cannot break it.
Camille Whiting 30:38
So you can break it. Make a report, go in and play at the top. It has like I thought of it is add segment at the top of anything, try it, click it make custom reports that pull, I mean, you can get so nitty gritty about I’m only pulling search traffic on these days that are coming for chicken recipes.
And then you can you know, make a custom report and look at that same thing every week and see how it’s going for you. But that’s something that you got to play around with and you got to kind of test it. And you know what, if it doesn’t work, you can delete. The customer metrics are not broken, you can still find all of the data. It’s really easy to do once you’ve just kind of got in. not had a panic attack, and done with all that stuff.
Jillian Leslie 31:25
And if you need help, reach out to Camille because she will help you.
Camille Whiting 31:30
Yeah, I love it. I’m giddy about this. I know that you said most people get terrified of this. I have to set like timers on how long I get to be on Google Analytics. And it’s like my reward. If you get two posts schedule, you have 20 minutes to play around in analytics. I know I’m weird, but I love it. I really love it because the data doesn’t lie.
And there’s so much you can infer from the analytics that can help you make better business decisions and better content strategy decisions. And it’s really fun for me. So if it’s not for you, let’s hang out.
Jillian Leslie 32:03
I love that. I love that. Okay, now, when you were starting out, what is the one thing you wish you knew then that you know now that you would have, you know, that it would have helped save you hours or help move your business forward faster, that kind of thing? What would you say?
Camille Whiting 32:22
You can hire things out. I did everything, I bootstrapped everything. I’m kind of proud of that fact that I really was like, very little investment. But at the same time, I think I would have grown so much faster if I would have hired some experts to do some things that I didn’t know how to do.
And like, for example, I’ve done a lot of do-it-yourself, set up your website. And there was one point where I was like, I’m making enough money. Why am I not hiring someone to do all of this for me and a redesign?
And I did. I hired an expert. It was smooth, it was prettier. It was faster, it was all the things.
And I think when you look at those weaknesses that you know you have and your guts just telling you, you know, if I just had someone actually, you know, taking care of my Pinterest, or I just had someone designing this for me, or if I just had a coach come in and tell me how to get a better system, invest in those things.
I think if I would have done those with mentors earlier on, I would have been a lot more successful.
Jillian Leslie 33:21
Wow. Okay, and what is the one tool that you use in your online business that you couldn’t live without?
Camille Whiting 33:28
There are a lot. I kind of have to give two. Automation software are one. You gotta buy time. Like Tailwind, Instagram app scheduling. And I even use Google Calendar. I would argue with the automation software that tells you how and when to.
And then on that SEO side, SEMrush is my favorite. It is pricey and it is worth it. If you’re really going to dig into SEO, it is a tool I absolutely think you need.
Jillian Leslie 33:56
We use it too. We do. I decided to pay for a couple months. I think it’s about 100 bucks a month, I actually share it with somebody, I don’t know if you’re allowed to do that. I don’t know if SEMrush is coming, are going to come after me. So we each pay 50 bucks a month.
And I find it, at first I was like I’m just going to have it for a couple months and then I’ll cancel it. And then once I started to dig in and really see, not only can you see your own keywords and stuff, but you can even see your competitors. It’s just a really rich tool, I couldn’t get rid of it. So I found somebody to split it with me. So if you’re thinking about it, that might be a strategy.
Camille Whiting 34:35
It is a good way to go. I have a little more information on this also on my site on Fridaywereinlive.com/analytics. I go through a couple tools that I like, just a few words, and SEMrush is my favorite.
You can split it, I would caution you if you’re going to split it, do it with someone you absolutely trust. Because this is your business strategy in the background. And you just want to make sure it’s someone that you would be okay if they ever clicked over and saw some of it.
But absolutely, it’s fine to share it. I was the same. I know how to get a lot of that information in other places, but my husband was the one that was like, why are you spending an hour doing that research when you can just pay 100 a month and get it in a minute or two?
And I was like, Well, alright, I will try it. I mean, I’m married to my husband. My husband is who I love most, but SEMrush is not far behind. I really love it. It’s a tool. I couldn’t do the content I produce now without it.
Jillian Leslie 35:26
Absolutely. And I will link to it in the show notes if anybody wants to check it out. I think you get a month free or do you get some sort free period like 14 days.
Camille Whiting 35:35
Sometimes it’s a week, sometimes it’s a month. So find the time when you’re like, I can commit a week. Yeah, it’s only a week. And then try it. That’s what I would say.
Jillian Leslie 35:44
And in your business, what are you most excited about right now?
Camille Whiting 35:48
I’m excited that summer’s coming. I know for a lot of people it’s like the slump time and they maybe don’t even work as much. But for me, it’s a time I work a lot. I’m a mom with a toddler and a nine-month-old right now. And it’s a time where I have more babysitters, childcare.
And I think strategically just because this is my brain and what I do, this is when I really put my, what’s the word I’m looking for, I guess I just put to practice the things I want to do. The dreams in my head, I finally find the time to create some products, some things that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time.
So I am really excited that summer is coming and it’s like my content powerhouse time. So that when the busy like holiday seasons come where I’m working more with sponsors and other things, and my other content and everything else is in a row.
Jillian Leslie 36:38
I like that. I thought I find that too, which is summer is my time to go deeper on stuff because I’m less distracted even with email. I like that everybody’s on vacation. Because sometimes I am on vacation in the summer, but sometimes I’m just working my tail off and I can get a lot done.
Camille Whiting 36:57
Yes.
Jillian Leslie 36:58
Okay, Camille, how can people, one, get some date ideas, dating ideas? And two, how can they reach out to you to learn more and pick your brain about all this cool strategy that you talk about?
Camille Whiting 37:12
Okay, so Fridaywereinlove.com, website, every Friday, we post date ideas. A lot on Monday’s, we post lists of categories. So I have my site really organized, so you can drill down to any type of date you want free, active. It’s very categorized. So go check out there.
I also have an email opt-in right on there, and I promise it’s a good one. Every week, I send out a date idea or a date list to people. So you can get on the list. And I feel like I’m very much serving the need for date ideas through email right now.
And then Instagram, I’m really active on Friday We’re in Love. They’re all date ideas, and then some of our other lifestyle content, parenting as well. You can reach out to me if you want to do more consulting, come to me at Camille@Fridaywereinlove.com
Jillian Leslie 38:02
Okay, spell your name,
Camille Whiting 38:05
C-A-M-I-L-L-E, then it’s just at Fridaywereinlove.com. And you can also find that really easy on the website.
Jillian Leslie 38:12
Okay, one last question. If you are feeling disconnected from your spouse, what kind of date do you recommend to bring you back together?
Camille Whiting 38:25
Do one that you can talk a lot at, but it still has a fun activity. So I’m not even the biggest sports person but I think like a baseball game is a good example for that. You both can have fun and kind of watch, but you can talk quite a bit through it as well.
And I think there are all kinds of courses and things you can take online that you might want to do at home and look at that open up conversations and help you feel more connected. And then I also think sometimes you just need to laugh if you feel a little bit like not as connected.
So find a comedy club or find a touring comedian and go do something hilarious. So you start on like a really happy foot and then go get dinner, go get ice cream, go get a drink, whatever, after and really spend some time talking while you’re in that great mood. That seems to really connect to people every time.
Jillian Leslie 39:14
Oh, this is great. This is great. Awesome. All right, I’m going to go do that. I typically feel connected to my husband, we work together. So sometimes having to turn that off can be difficult. But I do find laughter is like the best way to bond.
Camille Whiting 39:30
It really is. And it breaks the ice and it gets you back into it. And if you’re out of the habit of dating, I have some posts on this too, about getting back to it. And getting back in the groove, setting your own like weekly or bi-weekly date goals. I mean, we’re really passionate about it.
And I really feel strongly that this has made our marriage awesome. We’re eight and a half years in and everything we plan to do when we were engaged, I feel like has come true because we do really fun, really cool things every week. It’s just been awesome.
Jillian Leslie 39:58
Awesome. Camille, thank you so much or being on the show.
Camille Whiting 40:01
Thank you for having me.
Jillian Leslie 40:03
I hope you guys enjoyed that episode. And remember, if you want to start immediately growing your social media followers and your email list, you want to do it effortlessly.
Go right now. Act now. Head to Milotree.com, sign up for your first 30 days free. Try it out, email me, let me know how it’s going. And you will join an exclusive group of professional bloggers who are already using it to grow their businesses. Okay, I will see you here again next week.
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