Name: Holly Wise | Emphasis: Digital & Social Media Marketing
Project Title: DreamBox Blogging and SEO Strategy
Project Summary:
One of my biggest goals in coming to college was to find a way to learn how to write for a living. While taking classes in my Digital Marketing emphasis, I found that becoming a freelance writer would give me what I was looking for.
Any freelancer will tell you that the most common problem they face is being able to find clients to write for. To get clients, you must be able to show them real results of what you can do. I’ve had the opportunity to write a good blog post here or there, but I wanted to create a portfolio piece to show potential clients that I have what it takes to help a real business. All that was left to do was find a business that would give me that chance.
This was my senior project: to find a business that needed my services. Write a lot of high-quality content for them, and bolster my portfolio with this content.
Through a stroke of luck, I was introduced to the owners of Rexburg’s DreamBox. They had just recently opened their business the year before and after talking to them, I realized they needed someone with the skills I had. It was finally time to put my skills to good use.
The Beginning:
DreamBox is a brand-new selfie studio in Rexburg. A selfie studio is just like a photo studio, except with interactive backgrounds and props for pictures. It’s a photo studio that’s specialized in creating content for social media posts.
DreamBox was set up and ready for customers. I noticed that their website, however, was not. Their website wasn’t ranking very well in Google’s search results. Part of this problem was due to the lack of content on their website. Without including keywords in their website, it’s going to be hard to get to the top of search results in anything! I met with the owners and we decided that I would be responsible to start a blog on their website. This would allow me to help them rank for words like “dreambox,” “rexburg photo studio” and “selfie museum”.
I knew that Google can sometimes take a while to rank a site and that any content I add to their pages might not rank for several weeks or months. After meeting with them, we decided the best course of action would be for me to write SEO-optimized content for their website that could help them rank, and create a plan for them to continue to optimize their website once my project was completed.
The Writing:
I began my journey with DreamBox by helping them write thier About Page. The owners had already started writing it, but starting a business is a lot of work and their About Page had been put on the back burner. After meeting with the owners, I had a better idea of what DreamBox meant to them. I was able to capture that in their About Page here.
Once that was complete, I started writing their blog posts! I wrote a total of five blog posts for them. Here are the links to them, and a brief explanation of what I hope they can do for DreamBox.
Blog Post 1: Welcome to DreamBox!
- The biggest questions that DreamBox is asked are: what is DreamBox, and what is a selfie studio? This blog post was meant to serve as a guide for any guests or potential guests at DreamBox.
- The keywords that I optimized for in this blog post include DreamBox, selfie museum, Dreambox selfie museum, and Rexburg Photo Studio.
Very quickly after writing the first blog post, I realized something drastic needed to change. Blog posts need pictures. If I wanted to write about specific photo opportunities or specific ways to pose, I needed to take those photos myself. In all the blog posts after this one, I used pictures that I had taken and edited to supplement what I was writing.
Blog Post 2: 5 Ideas for a Perfect Selfie Museum Date
- There are always people looking for fun, unique date ideas in Rexburg. This blog post answers the question of how to have a fun selfie museum date.
- The keywords I optimized for in this post include fun Rexburg date, date ideas, and selfie museum date.
Blog Post 3: 7 Selfie Museum Photo Tips to Take Your Photos to the Next Level
- In a meeting with the owners, I learned that a big question that they get is how do I take pictures here? How do I make them look good? This blog post is meant to give a few simple quick tips to take good photos at DreamBox.
- The keywords I optimized for in this post are selfie museum photo tips, selfie tips, and DreamBox.
- Fun Fact: This is the most popular blog post that I’ve written for DreamBox with over 16 views!
Blog Post 4: Discover Rexburg’s Hidden Gems: The Top 5 Unique Photo Spots!
- This blog post is meant to target photographers who are looking for new locations in Rexburg to take photos in. There are always people in Rexburg who want photos, and this blog post is for them.
- This blog post puts DreamBox at number one in the list of unique places to take pictures in Rexburg. My hope for this post is that when someone searches something like, “unique places to take pictures in Rexburg” this post will not only rank on Google but also place DreamBox as the number one answer that Google displays.
Blog Post 5: Upgrade Your Selfie Museum Posts: 3 Tips for Crafting the Perfect Captions
- DreamBox photos are meant to find their way online. This post gives 3 different ways to caption your selfies to get likes and comments on your post.
- In my research with the topic tool, AnswerThePublic, I found that one of the most-searched questions related to Selfie Museums was how to caption a selfie museum post. This post is meant to draw in that audience with a few suggestions on how to caption their own selfie museum photos. Throughout the post, I direct readers’ attention to DreamBox’s own Instagram.
After writing all these posts for DreamBox, it was time to move on to the second part of my project.
The SEO Guide:
The final leg of my project included creating an SEO strategy for DreamBox. Before I started designing and developing this strategy, I spent hours doing research to make sure I gave them the most relevant insights.
This final SEO Analysis/Strategy included information about where they rank on Google now, some general best practices, and some specific things they can do to improve the rankings of their overall website. This guide will help them continue to optimize their website in the future.
My Goals:
And with that- my short time with DreamBox was over, and my journey as a freelance writer just beginning. As I said before, Google can take a long time to rank something, so DreamBox hasn’t ranked for any new keywords yet. However, I did funnel over 20 unique visitors to their website to read my blog posts!
My other goal in this project was to learn about becoming a freelance writer. Here are three big things I learned:
- Writing for Clients Is Different: I’ve written blog posts before, but I’ve never done something like this. This job included researching, brainstorming content ideas, taking photos, and formatting/publishing the post to the website. This process took longer than I was expecting and helped me better understand the workload that I’m able to handle for creating quality contet.
- SEO isn’t Simple: The overall goal for my project with DreamBox was to help them rank on Google. Though I wrote content that will definitely help their chances, I won’t know if it worked for another month or two. Before this project, I felt like writing ranking on Google was simple, but after this project, I learned that it’s actually much more complicated and includes a lot of little factors.
- Working with Clients takes Work: Through this project, I learned more about all of the different elements that come into play when working with clients. If I could go back to the beginning of this project, I would have spent more time working out how I was planning to communicate with my client. I also would have prioritized in-person meetings over communicating online.
The most rewarding part of my project is when the owner of DreamBox messaged me saying, “Honestly I can’t thank and recommend you enough! You have given us so much and left DreamBox in a better place than you found it.” Even though the results of my project are still unknown, this was enough proof to me that my project was successful.
My Time:
This 50-hour project was a fantastic experience. Here’s how I spent my time:
- Each blog post took an average of 5 hours and 30 minutes.
- The SEO Guide took 6 hours and 45 minutes.
- I spent 8 hours brainstorming, outlining, and researching.
- I spent 15 hours writing.
- I spent 11 hours formatting the blogs on their website (including taking and editing photos).
- I spent the remaining time (7 hours) writing this blog post and preparing for my final presentation.
