307 - How Photographers Can Use AI to Automate & Elevate Their Marketing with Colie James

Summary

Podcast Summary: This Can't Be That Hard Episode 307: How Photographers Can Use AI to Automate & Elevate Their Marketing with Coley James Release Date: March 11, 2025

In Episode 307 of This Can't Be That Hard, host Annemie Tonken engages in a deep and insightful conversation with Coley James about leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) to automate and enhance marketing efforts within photography businesses. This episode delves into practical AI applications, tools, and strategies tailored specifically for photographers aiming to streamline their operations and amplify their marketing impact.

---

1. Introduction to AI in Photography Marketing

Annemie Tonken kicks off the episode by outlining the focus on practical AI uses rather than high-level theories. The discussion emphasizes actionable strategies that photographers can implement to optimize their marketing without feeling overwhelmed by technological complexities.

Coley James expresses excitement about the topic, noting his recent obsession with AI and its role in outsourcing business tasks:

"I'm in a. How much can AI do for me?" [03:09]

---

2. AI for Website Optimization and SEO

The conversation begins with AI tools that analyze and improve website performance. Coley shares his experience using an SEO tool that evaluates his website similarly to how Google crawls it, providing suggestions for improvement.

Coley explains the importance of structuring website content with proper H1, H2, and H3 tags to enhance SEO:

"H1 would be your title, H2s would be your subheadings, and then H3s would be like your key points underneath those subheadings." [07:15]

He highlights how AI can offer tailored recommendations, such as optimizing meta tags and generating blog post ideas to boost search engine rankings.

---

3. Content Creation and Repurposing with AI

A significant portion of the discussion centers on using AI to create and repurpose content efficiently. Coley emphasizes the time-consuming nature of content creation and how AI can alleviate this burden:

"This content creation is such an enormous, or at one point was such an enormous lift for small business owners." [05:44]

Annemie and Coley explore how AI can generate multiple content formats from a single source, ensuring consistent and high-quality output across various platforms. They discuss strategies for maintaining a balance between content quality and quantity, ensuring that marketing efforts remain effective without overwhelming the photographer.

---

4. Utilizing AI for Pinterest Marketing

The duo delves into specific applications of AI for Pinterest, a valuable platform for photographers to showcase their work and attract clients. Coley shares his method of using AI to generate Pinterest pins from existing blog posts or product pages:

"I was like, can you create 50 pins for me?" [28:06]

He outlines the process of creating a CSV file with titles, descriptions, and image links, which can then be uploaded to scheduling tools like Tailwind for automated pinning. This approach ensures a consistent presence on Pinterest, enhancing visibility and driving traffic to the photographer’s website.

---

5. Custom GPTs for Personalized AI Assistance

Coley introduces the concept of custom GPTs—personalized AI models tailored to specific business needs. He discusses their advantages over generic AI tools:

"It has already told the AI tool what is important so that you can get more meaningful output from the start." [19:41]

Annemie explains how custom GPTs can streamline workflows by integrating with CRM systems like Dubsado or Honeybook, automating tasks based on client interactions and preferences. This personalization ensures that AI tools produce outputs aligned with the photographer’s unique voice and business processes.

---

6. Challenges and Best Practices in Implementing AI

The conversation acknowledges the challenges of integrating AI into existing workflows. Coley shares his experiences with limitations in AI instruction sets and the importance of providing clear guidelines to achieve desired outcomes:

"It started like, one of the things that I want the output in these, in the workflow Magician to be is something where you are literally reading it, like a recipe." [42:45]

They discuss the necessity of iterative testing and refining AI inputs to ensure accuracy and relevance. Coley also warns against the potential pitfalls of over-reliance on AI, advocating for a balanced approach that retains the human touch in client interactions and content creation.

---

7. Conclusion and Final Thoughts

As the episode wraps up, Annemie and Coley reiterate the transformative potential of AI in simplifying and enhancing marketing efforts for photographers. They encourage listeners to experiment with AI tools, personalize their applications, and remain adaptable to evolving technologies.

Coley concludes with a tease about his upcoming projects and expresses gratitude for the collaborative discussion:

"Coley, you're always such a pleasure to have on the show." [43:53]

Annemie invites listeners to explore additional resources on her website and encourages them to leave reviews to support the podcast's growth.

---

Notable Quotes

• Coley James [03:09]: "I'm in a. How much can AI do for me?"
• Coley James [07:15]: "H1 would be your title, H2s would be your subheadings, and then H3s would be like your key points underneath those subheadings."
• Coley James [05:44]: "This content creation is such an enormous, or at one point was such an enormous lift for small business owners."
• Coley James [28:06]: "I was like, can you create 50 pins for me?"
• Coley James [19:41]: "It has already told the AI tool what is important so that you can get more meaningful output from the start."
• Coley James [42:45]: "It started like, one of the things that I want the output in these, in the workflow Magician to be is something where you are literally reading it, like a recipe."

---

Resources Mentioned

• Coley James’ Website: coleyjames.com
• Tailwind (Pinterest Scheduling Tool): tailwindapp.com
• Annemie Tonken’s Resources: thiscantbethathard.com

---

By integrating AI into various aspects of their marketing strategies, both Annemie and Coley demonstrate how photographers can enhance efficiency, maintain consistency, and ultimately grow their businesses sustainably. This episode serves as a valuable guide for photographers seeking to harness the power of AI without sacrificing the personal touch that defines their craft.

Transcript

[Coley James]

I'm going to keep this introduction short because the interview was a little bit longer than my normal interviews, but man, oh man, you are not going to want to miss this one. I invited my friend Coley James back on the podcast for, gosh knows, like the fifth or tenth time. And this time we are having a conversation about AI. But this is not AI from some sort of, like, highfalutin, you know, top level. This is really in the weeds. This is exactly how we use and in particular how Coley uses AI to create and repurpose content. And man, there are some gold nuggets in this one. If you are out driving, walking, whatever, listen to it, but you're probably going to want to go back and listen again with a notebook because there's too much good information and too many good ideas in here to miss.

[Annemie Tonkin]

Welcome to this Can't Be that Hard. My name is Annemie Tonkin and I help photographers run profitable, sustainable businesses that they love. Each week on the podcast, I cover simple, actionable strategies and systems that photographers at every level of experience can use to earn more money in a more sustainable way. Running a photography business doesn't have to be that hard. You can do it and I can show you how.

[Coley James]

Holy freaking. James, it's so great to see you. How are you today?

It's great to see you. It was very fortuitous that you sent me an invite to the podcast because I was literally thinking to myself the week before you invited me, I have not been on this can't be that hard in so long I can't even remember. Maybe I should just invite myself and then I didn't have to.

You should have invited yourself. But I was having. We were on, as usual, a wavelength and I was like, I need more Coley in my life and certainly everyone else does too. It's been too long on the podcast, but it's also been too long since we had like a deep dive catch up. And I will say, obviously the people listening don't know this, but we were supposed to start recording half an hour ago and we've just been chit chatting.

For the whole thing because this is what happens.

I know, I know we have to catch up, but anyway, that was my ulterior motive, but I really am stoked for this conversation because I've talked about AI and I use AI on a daily basis and I have, like, mentioned it, but we really haven't done a show dedicated to, or at least we haven't recently done a show dedicated to how, like, smart ways to be using AI in your photography business.

And the funny thing is, if you had told me that I was going to come back on this can't be that Hard and come pretend to be the AI expert, I would have laughed you in the face and asked you how much you'd had to drink that day. This is definitely a new thing for me. I mean, I feel like my AI obsession is more recent than most people. And I mean, I've had people like. Dawn Richardson is an excellent example who we are both friends with. Like, she comes on and every time she comes on my podcast, she talks about like, or every time I see her in person, she talks about some new AI tool that she discovered and I'm just like, no, I'm. I'm not familiar with any of that, but.

Right.

I mean, I've just gotten on a kick where like, now my first thing. I think I've said this on your podcast and if not, I'm going to say it again. Um, at some point in my business, I started figuring out how to out outsource things instead of doing them myself. And I feel like right now I'm in a. How much can AI do for me?

Yeah.

Before I go to the outsourcing, before I even consider doing anything for myself.

Yeah, yeah. Well, agreed. And I feel like there was method to my madness in terms of having you come on the show to talk about this. Not only because I feel like you have done and you are not giving yourself enough credit. You are not late to the party, you are way ahead of the credit curve, especially in the artist world. But I feel like I, you know, I get pitches for my podcast sometimes, and I'm sure you do too, where it's like somebody sends me this thing about how they're like a consultant to Fortune 500 companies and blah, blah, blah. And it's like, you know what? I don't need an AI expert that's on, like, the cutting edge of AI. I need somebody who's in the trenches doing this the way that I need to use it and the way that my listeners want a need to use it. Not. This does not have to be like super cutting edge strategies. We just need the stuff that helps us get our business done.

Yes. Helps us spend less time on admin work. I mean, I feel like this is the flip side to me telling everybody that you need better systems now. You need a system for how AI is going to help you in your business.

Yeah, totally. You can systematize anything, as you and I both firmly believe. Amazing so we're going to take kind of a, an organized approach to our conversation because at first we were just spitballing ideas of like, oh, I use it for this, I use it for this. But I love what we've arrived at, which is that we are going to kind of walk through a system for content, like marketing content in your business that uses AI at every level, not to replace you or your voice or make it sound like a robot, but to make the production and the organization of all of this much faster, much smarter.

Absolutely. And it's interesting because now that we're going to have this, and this is the topic of this podcast, I think this is going to be like my fourth or fifth one where I'm talking about automating your content, repurposing your content. And who would have thought that the person that legitimately despises making content most of the time is going to be the person on this podcast tour to talk about all the ways that I am organizing and repurposing my content. Mostly because I'm just really lazy. I mean, let's be honest.

And lazy or not, I mean, this content creation is such an enormous, or at one point was such an enormous lift for small business owners. Like, even if you love doing it, that does not take away from the fact that it eats up a ton of time and the return on investment of that time is hit and miss at best. Right. Like, especially with things like, you know, we're trying to feed the SEO gods and you're, you're sending out messages in bottles with the hope that like, they will one, you know, one day find somebody or come back to you. And so it really is like there is, it is important to balance quality and quantity, but do so in a way that respects the fact that, like, we've got other things to do in our businesses as well.

Absolutely. And I mean, I feel like AI is now making it to where even when I am not in the mood for content, even when I am tired, even when that just can't take a priority, I can still put something out the door. Mostly because I have a lot of content that I've created. And you know, if I said something a year ago, likelihood no one's going to remember what it was. Not even me with my previous steel trap mind. I mean, I don't even remember what I was talking about a year ago. So it's a really good thing if you can have all of your content organized in a way to where, when it is time to kind of recycle it, you have it. And then you can use AI to put a new spin on it.

Yep, exactly. All right, well, let's start at the top. So you are a photographer, which you actually are, and you are sitting down thinking, okay, I need to build some sort of like, I need to build, add something to my website that's fresh, that's going to like keep Google indexing me. That's going to give me a reason for, you know, to invite people to come back to my website. All the good, all, all the good things. How do you start?

So before we start, before we talk about making the new content, I think I want to start with the latest thing that I did with AI was I made it evaluate my website as it currently is. Even better, because that gets you in a new frame of mind and if you can use what it spits out for that, you can probably create some content like, hey, behind the scenes of how I redid my website or whatever it is that you want to. But I came across an AI tool and what it doesn't, I mean there are many variations of this and so I'm sure Anomie is going to link the one that I particularly used in the show notes. But I fed it my website and I basically said, tell me how I'm doing. It's like, you know, here's my website. Tell me what could be improved. Tell me how I compare to my competitors. I mean, gives you a broad overview. And then the AI tool says, okay, and what would you like to do next? Would you like for me to give you some suggestions on blog posts to write that will help you rank better? Would you like for me to help you reevaluate your H1, H2 and H3 tags for a particular page? I mean, and just in case you don't know what these things are, these are what Google uses to review your website, the copy and figure out if it's going to serve your website to someone who's looking for, for what you offer. So in my case, like if I wanted to do bolder family photography and someone Googled that, Google has a decision to make who is going to give this person the most relevant content that they are seeking. And then it serves up the websites. But Google can't really read pictures unless you have alt text. Google is really looking at the copy on your website and it's looking for particular things which changes, you know, on a pretty regular basis. But H1 tag is like, if you want to think about it as like an outline of a book or an article, H1 would be your title, H2s would be your subheadings, and then H3s would be like your key points underneath those subheadings. And so if you do a good job on your website with these things, Google will be able to determine that your website is very insightful to the user. Now that's when they initially serve it up. Of course, after they show your website to someone, they offer evaluating you based on how long someone stays on your website, whether or not they take an action like going to your contact page. And there's, there's, you know, analytics that it's using to figure out if it's going to serve you up to someone else again. But bare minimum, you have to let Google know that you're here and you have to have your content organized in a way to where Google understands what kind of content you are providing to the people on the Internet.

Okay, so the tool that you're talking about, you feed it your URL and it goes and sort of crawls the website the same way that Google would. Out of pure curiosity, and this has never even occurred to me before, can you or have you ever played with sending ChatGPT or something like that? Either a screenshot of or access to your Google Analytics?

[Annemie Tonkin]

Hang on guys, I have a quick message for you. Hey friends, just a quick interruption. I wanted to take a minute to thank you as always for listening. If you're a new listener, I have a special welcome basket that I've put together just for you that includes three of my most popular actionable resources to help you build a more profitable, sustainable photography business. You can grab [e-mail] welcome. But if you've been a long time listener, if you've been here for a while, I would really appreciate it if you could take a second to leave a review on Spotify or Apple or wherever it is you're tuning in. Your support helps the show grow, reach more photographers like you, and elevates the industry as a whole, no matter who you are or how long you've been listening. Thank you so much. And now back to the show.

[Coley James]

Okay, so the tool that I use, I believe that it is looking, it is doing the same thing that Google Analytics would. I have never fed it a screenshot of my Google Analytics, which is, I mean, hey, that's a pretty smart idea. And I would be really surprised if someone didn't already have an AI tool.

Yeah.

Where if you gave it permission through some API, that it could actually crawl your Google Analytics on I mean, that is really good. Okay, when we get done talking, I'm going to go see if I can find such tool.

Well, and I mean, even if you were to just literally screenshot, because I'm. As you were talking about that, I was paying attention, but I was also thinking about. Yeah, the fact that like we. So Google does want to know what your H1, H2, all those kinds of things are, but then it, then it's paying attention to where people are, like what direction people are taking on the path through your website and you know, are they clicking from here to here, where are they bouncing, etc. And I wonder if chat could give you advice about, like, maybe you need to put another call to action at the bottom of this page or something like that.

Oh, it will. So one of the things that it does tell you is one of the options is would you like me to look at call to action? That's the best, better language. Oh, I mean, this tool.

Yeah. What is this tool?

Okay, so it was, It's. Which I think is so weird. It's S E O and then M A T O R. And that is just something kind of like ubersuggest. But when you get to the page where it lists all their tools and many of them are free for you to use, I mean, it has keyword research, it has all of those things. And by the way, guys, I don't pay for this. So everything that I'm talking about was 100% on the free plan. But when it, when it said how to use chat GPT for SEO 6 practical ways. I read this blog post and it was like, hey, we've got a custom GPT for you to use. And I clicked on it and I mean, I must have spent three hours that day constantly feeding it. And I mean, I started with my main URL, but then, I mean, and most photographers won't have this, but I'm currently really obsessed with my shop pages. So then I fed it my main shop page and then I fed it the individual product pages and I was asking it to help me. You know, what kinds of keywords are people looking for for this particular product? Okay, what do you Suggest? Give me five suggestions for a new H1 that might rank better than the one that I already have. I mean, I just started asking it a bunch of questions. And I think the key thing is, number one, again, you can't just ask an AI tool to do something for you and you take whatever the result is and you copy and paste it. The longer the conversation you have with the ChatGPT, the better results you are going to get. And so I mean I just kept drilling down and drilling down and then I think I took a break for the day. And the next day I was like, oh no, let's go look at this page. I mean I was obsessed with this tool, with this particular custom GPT. I think for about two weeks I did nothing. But almost every day I would come and ask it new questions.

And that is part of the free plan on this SEO mater. Wow.

Well, it's just a custom GPT. So any custom GPT that you get off the Internet, when you click on it, it just adds it to your, to your chat GPT account. Now I will say I do pay for chat GPT because I made my own custom GPTs for the.

Yeah, we're going to come back about later.

Yeah, but so that is when I had to actually pay chat GPT and I paid 20 bucks a month for that plan. But it is well worth it.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. It is becoming pretty ubiquitous. Okay, we could just continue going just on this and I can't wait to go dive into that because. Well, can't wait is it's a double edged sword because I can also see myself falling straight down rabbit hole. But okay, so you go into this tool or chatgpt and you get some ideas for like this is maybe the next step that I need on my website to work on next.

So then if we get to the whole idea of okay, we've got your website optimized your current pages, you've redone your tags, like you've done all that base work and now you're like, okay, I really do want to create some new content a of the custom GPTs that you can find out there or even yourself if you just, if you don't want to use a custom GPT, if you feed regular ChatGPT your website and you say this is who I am, this is what I do, what blog post would you suggest that I write to inform my audience? It will give you ideas. And then for each of those ideas you could get keyword research, you could get a rough outline, you can ask it to write a rough draft. Now, before we get too far in the weeds, I feel like I want to emphasize this for everybody listening because I feel like this is the difference between getting crap and getting really good output from any AI tool that you use. I am constantly feeding AI tools things that I have already created.

Right.

So I'm feeding at the blog post that I've already written. I'm feeding at the emails. I want to make sure that the first draft that it spits out for almost anything is using language that sounds like me. Because if it's using just regular language language, you have to work harder to get it where you want it to be. And so whether that's feeding it templates, whether that's feeding it content that I've already created, I am giving it an idea of the voice that I need it to use in the output. And that takes away from what I feel like. Used to be, like five or six steps to go back and forth every single time and say, no, I wouldn't use that word, or, no, that doesn't sound like me. My favorite thing to say to ChatGPT is, that doesn't really sound like me, does it? As a question mark, can you try that again? And then it always says something like, you're right. I know it doesn't sound like you. Here's a new version. How does this sound? And I tell you what, the new version that it spits out is always at least 10 times better than what. Even if I trained it, when I tell it that, it's like, it takes a harder look at my voice and then spits it back out, you know, in a way that I would. And I don't necessarily have a list that I keep on my computer, but every time it uses a phrase, because now Chat GPT has memory. Every time it uses a phrase that I would never say, like, Swiss army knife, I'm like, no, can you remove that from your vocabulary for me? I don't use that. That is not a good descriptor to use for anything that I would say.

You mean you don't spend a lot of time camping?

And although I will say sometimes it takes it too far. So one time I was using an email template from Ashlyn Writes, and she said something like, say it in wherever you live language. And it started talking about the fact that I live in Colorado, and it started talking about nature stuff. And I was like, no, wait, stop. I hit stop. And I was like, listen, I live in Colorado, but I am not an outdoor person. Can you replace that with Disneyland language?

Right?

And then on me, it went, like, way too far. Like, it wrote an email for me, too far. It was using phrases like hakuna matata and bibbidi boppity boo. And I was like, you know what? That's just one step too far for me. Can we come back? Like, I like Disney references, but no.

I Didn't know that there was a. I didn't know there was a line in the Disney World for you.

I didn't either. But now I've learned there is one, and I want to make sure that I don't cross it again.

Oh, my gosh. Okay, so we keep talking about custom GPTs. That keeps, like, popping in, and as you said, we're going to be talking about that later. Can you just. For people who are new to custom GPTs, can you give sort of a basic definition of that and talk a little bit about how that's different from a, you know, regular ChatGPT?

So when you open ChatGPT and you have a conversation with it, you are basically giving it commands. You are in charge of telling it what kind of output you want in what kind of format. But when someone else, an expert on a different topic, has already created a custom GPT for you, it has taken, like, the instruction part and the formatting part. It has done that part for you. So that when it asks you, can you give me your URL for your website? I don't have to tell it, well, can you make me a list of all of my tags on this page? It already has an option where it knows that that's important for evaluating your SEO, and so it automatically does it as one of the opt options. So it's kind of like it gives it an instruction manual. Some outside person has given ChatGPT. ChatGPT an instruction manual for this particular tool. And it takes a lot of the weight of figuring out, well, what is it that I really need to ask this AI tool what is important? It has already told the AI tool what is important so that you can get more meaningful output from the start.

Right. The ones that I have used will often start with a bit of a dialogue where you don't even have to say, okay, I'm here. I'm ready to go. It'll say, welcome. You know, start by answering this question or the buttons. Right?

Or buttons. When someone creates a custom GPT, you can have initial buttons, and those buttons will do something. And so I have also found that to be, you know, extremely useful, at least when I'm trying to make tools love it.

Okay, good. All right, back to our. Back to our plan. I'm gonna hold on to this. So you have first talked to some tool and gotten ideas for, I'm gonna make this kind of content, or this is my next project. And then next you get ideas or some level of outline or whatever for this. Let's call it a blog post, just because that's an easy one to sort of work with. Then what?

I mean, then you can go back and forth on the drafts. You can start with that kind of outline and have somebody else do the copy editing for you. I mean, the whole point of this is so that you can create. And I will say, I don't tend to do this live. Like, I feel like everyone should, like, set aside a few hours and like, create a content bank of these ideas and get them to a place where it won't take very much tweaking to make them live. That way. You're not constantly going to the tool every single week in order to create new content. Because when you're in a flow and you get your first blog post and you've kind of gone back and forth with it about your language and all these things, it takes way less time to feed it your next idea. And, like, each time you're doing it, especially in one sitting, it's probably going to take you less time to get that finished product while you're sitting there. So I don't know that I've ever sat down and only did, like, one single piece of content, whether it's a podcast outline or a blog post or something else. I mean, I'm sitting down and I'm doing that first one, and then I'm usually getting at least two or three others done before I, you know, turn off the lights on the AI tool for the night.

Oh, you're so much better than me. I am totally a. Like, when the inspiration strikes, I go do that. And it's not the best use of my time, so do as I say, not as I do. Okay, so you're working on this content bank. How do you. Are you starting from the perspective of, like, we're going to write a blog post with these keywords that we're optimizing for? Or do you kind of take the flip side approach and then, like, feed it your content and say, what are the keywords from this that are, you.

Know, standing out or you're going to hate my answer? I've done both. It just depends on. It depends on the piece of content and where I got stuck. Like, if I was able to write like an entire blog post, let's specifically talk about photographers. If I went to, I don't know, New York City and I did A Day in the Life for a Family, and I was able to kind of narrate a story about that experience and tips for, you know, family sessions and whatever it is. If I was able to write the copy easily. I might feed it into an AI tool and be like, can you help me optimize this for SEO? What kinds of subtitles should I have? What kinds of of questions might this piece of content answer? I would go from that perspective versus if I have an idea of something that needs to be written and I don't know where to start, I would feed at the idea and start from like the keywords and then go forward. It just depends on what the piece of content is and what I've actually gotten done before I sit down.

Yeah, I definitely don't hate you for that answer. I actually think it's a really important thing to remember that, like, sometimes you're. Yeah.

And the.

The thing is, at the end of the day, no matter how powerful AI is, you still are the expert, not only on your subject matter, but like on your audience and what they care about. And you know how this is because yes, we create content for Google and the algorithms and all that sort of stuff, but you don't want to create content that comes across as only being for that. You do want to create helpful, real content. And that. That ultimately is. It may feel like the long game, but that's the way that, that's the way you play to win.

And one thing that I've been talking about is, you know, I feel like you and I have been having this conversation as let's create content for strangers. But there is also the point of view of let's create content that might be useful to strangers, but is actually more useful to people who are already my clients or people who are considering hiring me already. And so writing blog posts that you can use inside of your client experience is like my new kick. It's my new thing that I'm shouting from the rooftops. Yeah, because if you end up writing a blog post that answers a question that people typically ask you over and over again when they go to hire you, you should probably make that a blog post because it will be out on the ether, you know, people will be able to search for it. But also, anytime you get that question in your inbox, you can send them a link to that blog post without having to think of a response. Wants to write.

Right.

If you are, you know, running your client experience and it's how to prepare for a session at a particular location and you have a client who is going to be doing their session at that location, I would recommend that you have an email template inside of Dubsado Honeybook. Whatever your CRM is to send them that piece of information as they are preparing for their session. So don't just think of this as, oh, I'm writing these really abstract blog posts so that people on the Internet can find me. No, these can also really help you nurture the clients that you already have to help them have a better session and experience with you.

Love it. All right, so we've got that piece of content polished up and published. Then what?

Okay, so then there's the whole repurposing because. And I don't want to beat a dead, you know, I don't want to beat a dead horse. But long form content, short form content. Usually you're picking one form of, of long form content. And for photographers, it's most likely blog posts. I don't see a lot of photographers that are running out with a YouTube channel, although there are some. But most of us are writing blog posts. But then why waste all of that energy to create a blog post and then you don't use it for anything else. So there are a million and one, you know, infinity times infinity number of tools out there to where you can give it a piece of content that you've already created and you can say, help me create 10 Instagram posts. Help me create, create 10 thread posts. Like what a Pinterest pins is the one that we were talking about right before we hit record. You can use AI tools to take this big piece of content that you are so proud of and help you make shorter pieces of content to share on social media so that you can get the most bang for your buck out of every single piece of content that you publish.

Let's use Pinterest as the example because I feel like I don't. I am woefully, like, it's so funny because I actually had Pinterest on my website, on my like, photography website for years. But like, back when Pinterest was new in my bio, I was like, I love Pinterest or something about Pinterest. And I was like, you know, and it was new enough that I knew that people saw that and didn't know what it was. And so I was like, you'll thank me later or something like that. That. And then so I was using Pinterest like crazy back in, I don't know, 2012 or something. And then I just fell off a cliff. For me, like, I don't use Pinterest at all in either of my businesses. And I know that that's like, I should be. But I, you know, you can only do so much. So when you brought this up, I was like, oh yes, let's talk about that. Specifically how you would take, let's say a blog post and turn that into Pinterest content.

So we're going to take this from two perspectives and one of these, I'm going to readily admit to you guys, I don't do it, but I know that it's possible and I know of you will care about this. So inside of Canva, there is now a way that you can use the AI tool to make you a bunch of graphics. If you feed it particular things, like you feed it the title, you feed it like these things, you can have it produce the actual PIN graphics for you. Now, if you like design, maybe you still design your graphics individually, but you use an AI tool to help you write the titles and the descriptions, versus if you are good at that part, maybe you have some AI tool that helps you create, create the graphics. And if you hate both like me, then you could try and use AI tools to create them both. But one thing that I discovered, and I think this was in November, is when I started this, because I got on a Pinterest kick, guys. I mean, like every day I was pinning like 20 things a day. It was a little ridiculous. But I would go into Chat GPT and I would feed it either a product page from my website or a blog post that I wrote. And I told chat GPT and this is not even a custom GPT, this is just regular old chat GPT. I was like, can you create 50 pins for me? And here's what I need them to do. I need the title and I need the description. And I would actually tell it like, you know, if you don't want the description to be more than so many words, you could do that as well. But it would basically spit these out to me. And if I reviewed it and let's say that the language didn't really sound like me, I would give it some tweaks weeks. But once it spit out a list that I was happy with, I think the most, the best thing that I learned last year was I asked Chat GPT, okay, can you output that for me in an A CSV file please? And it spit me out A CSV. I will also say that is when I paid for Chat gbt. Yeah, because you like when you're asking it to spit out these formats, it doesn't take very long before you use all of your free usage and then you have to wait three more hours. Hours. And I'm not A very patient person. So it would give me the CSV and then I would go move that into airtable, but you could do it in like a Google sheet as well. And then I would start adding links to pins that I had created that I had either put like in a drive folder or that were on my website. And so now I've got a CSV file that has a link to an image, it has a title, it has a description, it has a link to the blog post or wherever it is that I'm sending it. And there are so many tools that you can take that CSV file and upload it and it will do your automatic pinning for you. It will pin it to initial boards and then it will pin to sub boards and like, it just takes on a mind of its own. And so if you have ever wanted to be active on Pinterest and you just don't have the bandwidth, this is a really smart way to use an AI tool to give you that initial CSV file and then you can upload it into something like Tailwind and have it automatically schedule your pins to go out on a schedule. Because that is one thing. It's Pinterest likes it when you're consistent, just like every other.

Sure.

Although it's a search engine as well, it is also somewhat considered social media. But it likes it when you're consistent, just like Google. So you don't want to make a hundred pins and pin 100 things in one day and then walk away for two months. Like that doesn't give you any traction. But so if you can use the tools to get all these and then you can use a different tool to schedule them, it's going to get you far on Pinterest, it's going to get you more reach and then hopefully the people coming to your website are looking for what it is that you offer as a photography service.

And then we can loop it back around to the Beginning and Feed ChatGPT A screenshot of our Google Analytics with our Pinterest inbound links and say, how's my Pinterest strategy working and how could we potentially tweak that to improve?

And I will say one of the reasons that, like, as a photographer, I don't feel like I got into Pinterest enough because I got really irritated. And like you said, it was 2012 for me it was probably like 2015, 2016, but I have so many what we would all consider to be viral pins. I mean, they get tens of thousands of views a month, but guys, they're all fresh 48s. I mean I went through a period where my fresh 48s were just like everyday people were looking at them. And the problem with fresh 48s, I can only do them for the local people. And if all of my traffic is coming from across the US across the world, right for fresh 48 pins, that really doesn't help me. But Pinterest has also grown a lot in terms of local things that you can do. And so if someone was actually looking on Pinterest for ideas for their, you know, to take pictures of their newborn at, let's say, Boulder Community Foothills Hospital, then hopefully mine pop up, right? I have put those kinds of things in the alt text of the image, in the title, in the description. The same things that they say about Google also work on Pinterest. They just work in a slightly different way.

Amazing. All right, so we dangled this like carrot of a magical and I now I've blown the name but the like some sort of magical custom GPT where you show up, answer some questions and get already curated output that has been refined by somebody who knows what they're doing. For instance, Coley James, tell us about your custom GPT.

So I created custom GPTs for photographers like in the listening audience. But honestly, since we've been talking, I didn't realize you might want to create a custom GPT for yourself in that if you have determined like what it is that you like, a particular outline that you like for your blogs or anything that you've determined is important that you like for the output, you always have the opportunity to create your own custom GPT and use that in order to write your content every time. I have not created one of those yet, but now I think it's on my mental list. But where I got obsessed with custom GPTs, what was you know, I ever since I came on this can't be that hard the first time in 2020, I have been helping photographers and other creatives set up Dubsado and now Honeybook on the back end. And one of the things that I realized was I was selling my workflow templates in a Google Doc and while I have different versions, like one version for a family photographer and one version for a birth photographer, it still wasn't as custom as I wanted it to be. And when everybody got obsessed with AI and I discovered custom GPTs, I was like, well, what if I gave it the templates as a base and what if I told it how I would customize these based on responses that people gave Me during the process, because not everybody wants to do consultation calls, even though you teach that in simple sales. But so one of the very first questions that I ask in my Inquiry workflow custom GPT is, do you want to do consultation calls? If you do, are they required or are they optional? So that now the custom GPT knows, okay, if they say that it's required, we are going to add this as a workflow action and trigger inside the inquiry workflow. But if they say that they don't want it, it's going to leave it out. And so it's kind of, again, taking away some of that brain space for you in that I have told it different things to ask you so that when it spits out your final list of workflow actions and triggers, it is completely customized to what you told it about your business. I mean, I've even added in some additional things, like, is there anything that we missed? Are there any other touch points that you have with your clients? Are there any other pieces of information that you need to disseminate while you are preparing them for their session? And then if you say yes and you tell me what it is, the custom GPT will say something like, okay, how does this time frame suits you? Do you want it earlier, later, or is this fine? Like, it asks you all these kinds of questions so that you are no longer buying a Google Doc for me and you have to go in and make the changes.

Right?

The custom GPT is really trying to get it as close as possible to what is the optimal workflows for your business before you ever open Dubsado in order to start creating the workflows.

It really is magical. You named it, you named it appropriately. So tell people where they can get their hands on this, this magical tool.

I mean, you know, you had to ask me that question. And I was thinking to myself, do I actually have a URL? I don't. You know what, we're going to make one up on the fly. How about if you go to colleyjames.com magician? Yes, because it is the workflow magician. By the time this goes live, that will forward you to the appropriate page.

Love it, love it, love it. It really. So Coley sent me the beta of this. Or maybe it was. I mean, it was brand new. When you sent it to me and I went through it and I was like scraping my jaw off the floor. I want, I want them for everything. And you were telling me how much time it took you to learn how to build it. And I was like, okay, I'm going to shelf that for the future.

So I will say it did get much better. And actually, I'm going to just very quickly tell you the story because if anybody listening to this was like, ooh, I want to create my own custom GPT to create my content. Yeah, please learn from my mistakes. So one of the things that was really weird is when you create a custom GPT, you are limited. I believe it's 8,000 characters in the instructions that you can type out into the custom GPT, y'all. 8,000 characters didn't get me like a single workflow. Like, it only got me one workflow and I sell four of them together. So I was like, this is not going to work. But it has an option where you can upload like a PDF, PDF or a doc. Oh, yeah, with, you know, and that doesn't necessarily have that same character limit. Now, what I discovered was after I got the inquiry workflow perfect, I tried to. I tried to upload that into a doc, into the project documents so that it would reference it. And then even though I had gotten the custom GPT perfect, the moment that I told it to read the file for the instructions, instead of using my written instructions instructions, it started going haywire. It started like, one of the things that I demand, and I do say demand because you guys should have seen my back and forth. I want it to ask you only one question at a time. I don't want it to give you 10 questions and you have to, you know, like, type your answers like you're filling out a long questionnaire. I do really want it to be a back and forth. And so it started asking all the questions at once, or it was asking questions that I didn't tell it to ask or that I explicitly told it not to ask. It was very strange. And after I went back and forth, forth what felt like hours, and I do think it was hours, though, it finally admitted to me that when I give it instructions that are written in the little box that's limited to 8,000 characters, it explicitly follows the instructions. But when you upload it into the documents area, it takes it under advisement and it tries to be as helpful as possible. But, like, once it admitted that I was like, okay, is there a way for me to write the instructions where you won't do it? And it gave me some suggestions and I tried them all and it didn't work. But I will say, a lot of the back and forth error that I was getting when I was doing this was because I wasn't aware of that distinct difference between putting in written instructions and uploading a document. And they virtually said the exact same thing. But it couldn't stick to my script when initially I did. I did eventually figure out a way to do it, but it didn't initially stick to my script when I uploaded it as a Google Doc.

I have been sort of hearing, and I'm not like, like, super up on all a AI stuff, obviously, but I do hear about this issue that they're bumping up against where it's like, there's so much AI content out there now that AI is learning from AI. And in some ways, you know, in theory, that should create this sort of exponential growth curve. But instead, what's happening is the old, like, copy of a copy problem, where it's becoming less and less certainly accurate. But, like, things like it wrote the directions and it did it perfectly, but then when it went and read its own directions, it started going haywire. So that's an interesting sort of example of that.

Well, and I tried to give it a lot of instruction, like, and some of the things that it did to be helpful were in fact helpful, but it did it in a way to where it kind of took them. It took it away from where I was trying to go. Like, one of the things that I want the output in these, in the workflow Magician to be is something where you are literally reading it, like a recipe and you're clicking and typing in dubsado, and then you're done. And so in some cases, it was taking away, like, the dubsado trigger part, and it was summarizing it. And I was like, no, that's not helpful. Like, I need this part to be the actual button that they click in order to make it. So I needed it to be a very rigid tool. And I mean, that's part of the problem. When you're creating content, I don't think it needs to be as rigid. But in particular, I was trying to get that output as close as possible to the actual button options in Dubsado. And so summarization was completely unacceptable for this particular tool.

Right. Amazing. All right, we're at 40 plus minutes. I have to cut it, but, oh, man, what a great episode. I just love this so much. Coley, you're always such a pleasure to have on the show. We didn't even do an introduction of you at the beginning because I hope and assume that everybody knows who you are. But why don't you, outside of your workflow magician tool, why don't you tell everybody where they can find you.

Well, I'm Coley James and my website is coleyjames.com I am less and less on Instagram these days, but I do, like, head over to Threads and read random things. But if you need to contact me, sending me a DM on Instagram is actually a pretty good place to go. Yeah.

And she has an amazing podcast, if you're not already listening, that you should be checking out as well.

Yeah, it's Business First Creatives and Anomie has been on There is it four times.

It's a lot I would have to look into. Airtable. All right, well, this was a pleasure. Thank you so much. You are always so generous with everything that you know and. And we will not let this amount of time go by before I have you back on the show.

Oh, I'll just go to the URL and and just invite myself. You'll be like, oh, you're on my calendar. What are we talking about? Like, I don't know. We'll feel figure it out before we hit record.

Absolutely. Anytime the door is wide open.

[Annemie Tonkin]

That's it for this week's episode of this can't be that Hard. I'll be back same time, same place next week. If you like the show, be sure to check out thiscan'tbethathard.com to explore all the resources we have for photographers. And of course, it would mean the world to me if you would leave a review of the show on itunes or Spotify. As always, thanks so much for joining me. I hope you have a fantastic weekend.