Dolly Delong: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the systems and workflow magic podcast. I am your systems workflow and launching BFF and guide Dolly DeLong. And I am just. So excited, that you chose to hit play on this episode. And I’m also excited. I think I had Glenneth is either here for a second time or a three Pete. I don’t really remember, but Glenn has been on the podcast before. And so Glenneth, I have Glenneth Reed and she is an SEO, Google ads and online marketing expert with over 12 years of experience, but she’s And she works with small businesses and online entrepreneurs. Now, Glenet’s goal is to help businesses get visible on Google, so they can attract new customers and become more profitable. She lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, and her hobbies include weightlifting, online shopping, and all things and gadgets. So I am so excited to have you on, Glenneth, welcome back.
Glenneth Reed: Thank you so much for having me again. I’m so excited.
Dolly Delong: I am really pumped you, you agreed to come back on and I’m really excited that, you are going to be speaking specifically in this episode to family photographers and all my other business owners who are listening in this, she will still have some nuggets of wisdom. So don’t leave quite yet. But as you may or may not know, we are doing a series, leading up to the family photographer advanced blueprint summit. So we are leading a summit at the end of March of 2025. And it’s going to be about more advanced systems, workflows, and SOPs to apply to the backend of your family photography business. Because you have nailed in your art, you have nailed in your posing, you’ve nailed in your editing. But now it’s time to nail in those systems. And so Gleneth is here to talk about the system of Google analytics. And this is something that even me as a family photographer, I’ve actually worked with Gleneth twice. Like we have had, one to one calls and she’s walked me through how to use Google analytics for my own business. And so I was like, I need to have her on the podcast again, just to talk specifically to family photographers- so let’s just talk about the first question. Why Google analytics is essential.
Glenneth Reed: Google Analytics is the best tool, plus it’s free, for you to see how your online marketing efforts are working. It’s kind of a one stop shop so you can see where your traffic is coming from and the quality of the traffic so that you can then make those data driven marketing decisions that your business needs.
Dolly Delong: what are like some misconceptions about why people, especially small business owners, especially small business owners who are wearing all the hats and they just don’t know where to begin. What are some fears and misconceptions about Google analytics? And what, what have you heard from your over 12 years of experience?
Glenneth Reed: I think a lot of people fear that it’s just going to be time consuming, that it’s something they need to look at every day. And that’s actually the furthest thing from the truth. I would honestly say once a month. And then again, like on your quarters, half year and years are your ideal amount of time to look for. The other thing is there is so much data within Google analytics. Like you could spend days looking at it, but knowing what The most important metrics are specifically as a, you know, family photographer, being a local service provider, knowing a few key metrics to be looking at and just leaving the rest behind will help alleviate that stress also that it’s hard. I get it in the beginning. It’s trying to figure it out. But once you’ve got a system of reviewing it, it’ll be super easy. It probably will take you less than an hour a month and it could save you some money, but also get you new clients. So it’s a win win.
Dolly Delong: I love that. I’m kind of going to jump ahead then cause you mentioned like there are some key metrics that like family photographers, especially can benefit from. Let’s, let’s like jump into that. And then I’m going to backtrack and ask some other questions I have for you. But, when like diving into analytics, what do you recommend? so that listeners can take notes and walk away with okay, I’ll start here. I’ll start with these key metrics. What would you recommend some key metrics be for family photographers?
Glenneth Reed: So the first thing you want to look at is your traffic sources. Where is the traffic coming from? And you really only want to look at it from, A metric of what can I actually control? So you can control organic traffic by if you’re doing SEO work or not paid traffic, obviously, if you are paying Google ads, et cetera, you can control that and then social, you know, how much. Social you are posting and on what platforms you can’t control direct traffic or referral traffic um spam Like those are things you can’t control. So just Push it out of your mind. You can’t control. Let’s worry about what you can control. So that would be the first thing I would look at. How are those sources doing? And then after that I would look at the pages that people are coming to. You know, we want to make sure are they coming to your home page? Are they looking at whatever services pages you have? Being photographers, you probably have galleries. How much time are they spending on those pages? You know, if you’ve got people coming to your gallery page, but maybe they’re only spending two seconds on it. Is there something wrong with the page? Because most likely those pages will have a higher time on site than others because people want to look. And if it’s a low time on site, when was the last time you went on your own gallery page and tested it? Okay. Making sure you’re also testing on mobile because so much traffic comes from mobile these days, those are really the big ones off the bat that I would look for the other thing again, because you are local is I would go to where’s your traffic coming from and you want. If you are like me, maybe you’re in Knoxville, Tennessee with me. You want to make sure that the U S is the country sending you the most traffic that Tennessee is the state sending the most traffic. And then that Knoxville is the city sending the most traffic. And if not, you may have to think, okay, have I done something? that’s getting all this outside traffic. Now, understand if you have a blog that answers a lot of frequently asked questions in general and you do a great job with SEO, you will probably have traffic coming from all over, but you want that majority of your traffic to be coming from whatever city or area that you are in.
Dolly Delong: I love that. I, do want to attest to the fact that it’s so I was actually sharing this with Gleneth right before we had recorded. So listeners, late in 2024, I, I hired Glenneth to do a one to one coaching call with me just to get to know Google Analytics for a little bit more. Cause it, it really was a little overwhelming for me. And essentially I, I asked her these questions. I asked her, how do I know where my traffic is? specifically coming from because I know that I’m doing all, like I’m checking all the boxes. I’m working on SEO, I’m working on long form content, but I’m, I feel like I’m just Kind of just like throwing it all out there and hoping for the best. And hoping is not the best strategy. Like you need to make like good data driven decision sign. I knew that in my gut. So I, she taught me like, hey, this is how you spend time. Like it literally was a few clicks. And she showed me in the last 90 days, this is how you know exactly where your traffic sources are coming from. And because of that, that has helped me make better marketing decisions. Like where to begin now with my marketing and where not to spend any more time on my marketing. because I was just like, literally, Glenneth, I was just like throwing all my content out there and just, I’m like, okay, I know my long form content is working because I have great SEO and I checked that, but then I hadn’t been digging more into the data, so now I know, because of you, thanks to you, I know social platform wise. To concentrate on Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook. And I don’t need to worry about anywhere else. literally. That is where a lot of my family photography traffic is coming in from. Outside of SEO and paid traffic. And so, that was so clarifying for me. And that kind of opened the door for better marketing strategies.
Glenneth Reed: I love it. I love it. It is knowing that data can really save you some money and allow you to, maybe you do have extra money in your marketing budget and you hire somebody for a specific social platform. Then, you know, after a certain amount of time, and I’m not saying 30 days, but maybe at the end of 90 days, you really evaluate it and say, am I getting more traffic? Is it quality traffic? you know, if you’re spending thousands of dollars on something and only get five traffic sessions during the entire time, that’s probably money you could spend elsewhere. You know, maybe you put that into paid, which is already doing well. I have a lot of people say to me, Oh, well, you know, I get all this traffic from X, Y, Z source, and I’m going to be honest a lot of time it’s Pinterest. And I’m like. They’re staying on your site less than a second. Is it really quality traffic when your Instagram traffic is staying on your site for over a minute and leading to conversions? Which one is better? And because sometimes it’s, okay, let’s just put the money aside. Let’s not spend it. And let’s just focus on what’s actually working
Dolly Delong: I love that. And I love that you also reminded, you, you actually just reminded me, hey, you know, your social traffic is Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook. I need to also, I was like, okay, now I need to like, dig into the time that each of those sources are spending. And so that’s also a really good point. So listeners, even I’m learning alongside you right now.
Glenneth Reed: me. So my business personally, I get almost equal amounts of traffic from Instagram and Facebook, but the time on site and the conversions is so incredibly different. With Instagram winning. Now, I do my own social. I use a scheduler. It’s super easy for me to post the same thing from Instagram to Facebook. So I do, but I don’t focus on what does Facebook need. I focus on what is working on Instagram.
Dolly Delong: That is so smart. Can I dig into that a little bit more? I’m going to like actually open up Google Analytics and I’m just going, I’m like trying to look at my screen right now cause I am curious where this time thing is. Okay. I’m here. So when I go to, I know I go to reports, I go to acquisition, traffic acquisition, and I honestly like to set it up for the last 90 days and then I go to traffic source and then the session source medium.
Glenneth Reed: Yes.
Dolly Delong: And then that is how I’ve, again, the most traffic is Google organic search, paid. And then Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook. But then down the line, I’m guessing the average engagement time per session. Is that correct? Okay.
Glenneth Reed: And again, that is just an average, depending on it could be higher or lower. But when you’re looking at like your socials and comparing them or looking at, you know, organic versus paid, maybe organic is staying on site one minute, but paid is only staying on site 10 seconds. Then you need to reevaluate something within your paid marketing strategy.
Dolly Delong: That’s really good. No, it’s it’s so true what you said like the How much time they’re spending on average on pinterest is way less than instagram for me.Okay. Well the you all live Not life, but like you you are hearing like this like play out in real time. okay. So my other question is we kind of have an idea of what metrics to check out. So how can a business owner know that their data is being, like, has been set up properly and is connect collecting data because there is also that paranoia in small business owners brains. Like, did I do this correctly? Did I set this up correctly? I don’t know what I’m doing.
Glenneth Reed: without hiring somebody to check and make sure it’s set up correctly, one of the, Best ways to tell is to go to the pages and screens, tab, set it back for about 90 days, you know, get a good amount of data and then see, are people going to multiple pages? Let’s say you set it to 90 days and the only page showing up at your home page. You most likely do not have it set up correctly. Maybe it’s home about services and contact are showing up, but none of your blog posts are showing up. Most likely you don’t have it set up correctly.so just looking at that is a great way to say, okay, Is it actually getting data? Um, if you are brand new and you are just setting it up, let’s say you set it up today. Tomorrow, go back in and look, make sure you change the date to, you know, yesterday, because I’ve, I’ve been guilty of really focusing on something and going, I am looking at the wrong time period. you know, change it to yesterday. And see if you got some data, you know, see, did anything track it honestly is instantaneous. I can set it up on somebody’s site. I go incognito. I go to real time. I’m on their site doing some things and I just wait for those numbers to pop up.
Dolly Delong: Gotcha. I like
Glenneth Reed: but if you’ve, if you’ve set it up and you’ve never gone back to check, go back and check today while you’re listening to this episode, pull up analytics, go in. Is it actually tracking data?
Dolly Delong: Okay. And you recommend checking it via incognito.
Glenneth Reed: no. So I go to their site to be an incognito while analytics is just regular. I don’t want it on the same thing when I’m, when I’m testing it,
Dolly Delong: Okay. Good to know. Good to know. So what are, okay, you just shared, are there any other quick fixes that if their data isn’t being tracked correctly, do you recommend how to troubleshoot? So,
Glenneth Reed: I would. So how to set Google analytics up is very different per platform. So I would go to Google and I would Google how to set up Google analytics for Or GA4, that’s very important, on whatever platform you’re on,
Dolly Delong: So, like, I use ShowIt. So, I would type in, How to set up GA4 via ShowIt. And there should be so many help articles.
Glenneth Reed: it should be and go, go to the actual platforms help file. I know that all of them have, I. I actually put a blog together that has how to set it up, and I went to every platform and found their help file for how to set it up. And so, walk through that process again. Here’s what a lot of people miss. They go to analytics. google. com, they fill out all the things that Google asks them for, and They see the code, there’s going to be a code, and it starts with like g dash something.
Dolly Delong: Yes.
Glenneth Reed: What most people miss, forget, don’t get right, is you have to take that code and put it on the back end of your website. And the, and honestly, Squarespace, Wix, ShowIt, those three are super easy because you just need that code,
Dolly Delong: In one
Glenneth Reed: They’ve got a spot on there. You put it in, boom, you’re done. Honestly, WordPress is the one that makes it a little bit harder.
Dolly Delong: Mmm. Yes. Oh, man. WordPress. I love it and I hate it at the same time. I, I started out with WordPress at the very beginning of my business, like back in the day. And yes, there were so many good points to it, but then so many frustrating points to it. So. Okay.
Glenneth Reed: you’re on WordPress, there is a plugin called site kit by Google. Use that.
Dolly Delong: like literally. I know like you’ve given us like a fire hydrant of information. I know listeners. I would encourage you to re listen to this episode. Take notes. Take action. The most important thing is to actually have your Google Analytics set up on your website because you need to make those data driven decisions to know Where to start with your marketing to therefore get the better qualified leads because it all works together and I wish somebody would have sat me down years ago and explained it to me like that because I Just felt like I had to do it all at the same time and it was so stressful So I just want to say thank you for coming back on and just like breaking down this one thing about google analytics Do you mind sharing with the listeners what you will be speaking on, at the summit in March?
Glenneth Reed: So I’m actually going to be showing how I would review Google analytics. If I were a, family photographer, local, just so they have something that they can follow step by step. There are some just weird points about GA4 that finding some of this stuff is difficult. So I want to show you exactly what I would look for and then Based on your own business, figure out which metrics really are the most important for you and then start tracking them. But also understand traffic is going to come and go. You’re going to have some months that really increase. You will have some months that decrease. And until you’ve been in business for three or four years, you may not understand that some of that is still there. Seasonality, um, for just the entire world, but then specific industries. So once you’ve got years worth of data, you’ll know, Oh, you know, maybe may is always a low time for you. And so you don’t stress over it. You’re like, Oh, I know this is going to be low, but you also know that a certain month is going to be high. And if it’s not, then you can really start digging into, okay, what happened this year?
Dolly Delong: That’s very true. Oh man. I cannot wait to watch this. And, you all should know this, advanced family photographer summit is absolutely free. So I want to encourage you to grab your ticket. It will be in the show notes. And when I say online summit, it’s a pre recorded virtual summit. And so you can watch it again, on your own time, like each, Recording will be held on a specific date and I, you can read more information in the show notes, but grab your ticket. It’ll be in the show notes and there are over 21. Speakers who are going to speak about different, more advanced systems, workflows, SOPs to apply to the backend of your family photography business. So you all, I’m so excited about this. I have been dreaming about this for quite some time and now it’s finally happening. So I am so thrilled that you are a part of this Gleneth. So, um, anyways, Gleneth, how can people find you, work with you, connect with you just in case they’re like, okay, I. I want her to help me on the back end with my Google analytics. Like I take my money, Glenneth, because I’ve told you to take my money. And so I highly recommend reaching out to Glenneth. And if you are ready, and able to work in a one to one capacity, I would say hire Glenneth. So. Yeah.
Glenneth Reed: So they can find me. My website is. Thevisibilitymethod. com. On social, my number one platform, and the one I use is Instagram, and it’s glenneth. com, all spelled out. And I would love to hear from them. Yeah, absolutely. It’s making sure the analytics is working is your first key step. And then just setting aside, you know, when you’re doing your financials or you’re setting up your month, take 30 minutes, to an hour and say, I’m going to look at my metrics because we spend so much time as business owners doing these online marketing tasks. We need to know if they’re actually working so that we only do the things that are working and we spend our money wisely.
Dolly Delong: I love that. Preach it and re listen to that clip over and over and over again. thank you so much again. and listeners, if you are interested in any of the links, again, they will be in the show notes below. until then I will see you all next week with a brand new podcast episode. So stay streamlined and magical. mYou amazing muggle you, and I’ll talk to you all next week. Bye.
