We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Haleigh & Jack Audet a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Haleigh & Jack, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Alright – so having the idea is one thing, but going from idea to execution is where countless people drop the ball. Can you talk to us about your journey from idea to execution?

We have been photographers for over 13 years, and we know our craft well. However, we noticed a decline in profitable bookings, and we knew we had to take action. That’s when we joined a mastermind program with Kyle Goldie, a renowned photography business coach and SEO educator. With Kyle’s guidance, we quickly realized what was holding us back – we were not blogging strategically.

We knew we had to make a change, so we worked tirelessly for eight months to create over 250 strategic blog posts (which we finished in February 2022). The result was astounding – our ideal clients came flooding in, and we finally found the missing piece.

In May of 2022, I (Haleigh) asked the members of the same mastermind program what their biggest challenge was when it came to transforming their business. Almost everyone replied that they found it hard to blog strategically for SEO because of their busy schedules and family responsibilities. We were determined to find a solution, so we decided to launch Rokee and Co in June of 2022, an SEO blogging service specifically designed for photographers to outsource their blogs.

In order to launch our business, we needed to find a team of writers as well as tackle what our workflow would be with the services we envisioned offering. We first conducted a trial run with a handful of photographers and one writer. This allowed us to see the turnaround time for delivery and work on what information both we and our writers needed from the clients. Additionally, we discovered the workload we could handle each week and what additional team members we needed to run efficiently. It only took a couple of weeks for us to develop our workflow for each week before we were ready to launch fully.

From there, we personally handpicked a team of writers and editors who helped us with our own blogs the year prior. Then, we built a Google Drive workspace for us to collaborate with the writers and searched for weeks to find the perfect CRM centered around freelance writing and a flexible subscription-based model. Once those pieces fell into place, we created our website through Showit and never looked back!

Haleigh & Jack, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Over the past 13 years, we have been working as photographers in different niches, gaining a vast knowledge of the photography field. We have shot everything from maternity and newborns to weddings and boudoir sessions. As photographers ourselves, we understand our clients’ struggles when it comes to generating organic leads. We’ve been in their shoes, and not many copywriters can say the same.

Haleigh has been working with photography business coach Kyle Goldie for almost three years. Starting as a coaching student, she eventually began moderating the program and helping teach new students. Through Kyle’s coaching and teaching, she became an expert in the blogging side of SEO for photographers.

As a team of writers, editors, and SEO specialists, we create SEO-optimized blog posts that come with everything you need for the blog to rank on Google. Internal links, titles, meta descriptions, headings, and placement of the photographer’s photos all come with each blog. Photographers simply hit publish and watch their website traffic grow. Or let us publish for them as they take back even more precious time to spend with their families.

Another huge relief for our clients comes through our Keyword Selection services. We offer the option of doing the research to choose the most effective keywords for their unique local SEO. For this, we hop on a Zoom call with our clients and chat about their business and how they want it to grow. Whether a maternity, wedding, or boudoir photographer, we pinpoint what their ideal clients search for on Google and make sure their blogs are the first thing those future clients see.

Additionally, we provide an Alt-Texting service to ensure that our clients’ websites and blogs are ADA-friendly.

Aside from the joy of helping others thrive in this difficult business, one of the things we are proudest of in this business is that everything is completely original. We do not use AI, which is significant for written pieces these days because so many use it and rely on AI. Our team of writers receives blog topics and writes over 100 original content pieces each week. Another challenge with this comes from having many clients in the same locations. But none of their blogs are the same, as the writers create each piece from scratch.

Moreover, we hop on calls with our clients to walk them through what they don’t understand or what they’re struggling with. This could range from anything from blogs themselves or guidance in operating platforms such as WordPress, Google Search Console, or Showit. Above all, our ultimate goal with this business is to help fellow photographers become successful like we did with our photography.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

As photographers ourselves, we know the importance of building a good reputation in the market. We have been in the same position as our clients, and this has helped us understand what needs to be written about and the exact steps to take to achieve success with SEO blogging. Our success with blogging in the states we’ve lived in adds credibility to our expertise and we are dedicated to helping others.

Moreover, our experience as moderators of the photography business coaching program has been instrumental in building our reputation. Kyle Goldie is a well-known name in the photography education industry and working alongside him for many years has helped us gain the trust of other photographers and educators. This has allowed us to establish ourselves as a reliable source of information and guidance in the industry.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

Our greatest source of clients so far has been word of mouth with other photographers and other photography business educators. By clients sharing our business in other education communities we were not involved with, we got the opportunity to help teach our system of blogging to other photographers. These education outreaches have been the driving force of our client base. By sharing and teaching exactly how we create our blogs, we build a relationship and trust with our clients. Sure, by following our guides they could go DIY blogs, but they also see how much really goes into making it right.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://rokeeandco.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/rokeeandco
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/rokeeandco

Image Credits
Haleigh Nicole Photography