In this episode of The Dietitian Success Podcast, Krista walks you through:
- Why a strong, cohesive brand is essential for communicating trust in a health profession
- How to find a local brand photographer
- How to plan out your brand photoshoot, including the types of photos you might want to have taken
- Using Pinterest to strategically plan your brand photoshoot
- The process that the DSC team uses to map out both paid and free content for the next 6 months
- How to conduct low-key market research to come up with content topics
Links:
- [Limited Offer – runs until mid-June 2024] Get your first 3-months of DSC at 50% off by using the code DSC50 at checkout
- Connect with Krista on Instagram @dietitiansuccesscenter and @kristako.rd
- Check out the Dietitian Success Center membership here
- Check out our Freebies here – PES Statement Cheat Sheet, Client Resource Kit & Business Planning Workbook
Episode Transcript:
Welcome to the Dietitian Success Podcast. I’m Krista, the founder of Dietitian Success Center, an online learning platform for RDs and students. I am on a mission to help more dietitians build confidence and expertise in running successful, profitable businesses. I went to business school so you don’t have to.
My team and I have grown DSC to a platform that serves hundreds of members. We’ve experimented with all types of marketing, tech, sales strategies, productivity tools, systems, and more. And we want to spill the tea on what’s working, what’s not, and how you can leverage our insights to kickstart, expand, or elevate your own business.
Ready to dive into your business school crash course? If so, let’s get started.
Hey there and welcome to a new episode of the dietitian success podcast. Woohoo. We have a new intro. Which is the. First time, I’ve rerecorded the podcast intro in such a long time. Like if you’ve been a long time listener, you know that the podcast intro has stayed the same for a very, very long time. And it was time for a shift and it all sort of aligns with actually one of the topics I’m topic you’re talking about today, which is branding. But I feel like when I was reflecting on this podcast and thinking about the fact that I really feel like I need to get a little bit more clear in terms of what this podcast is, who it’s for, what kind of content I talk about. And have a bit more clarity in terms of the brand around this podcast and how does it. Link up with the brand or how does it sort of synergize with the overall DSC brand? And so that’s why I decided to rerecord this podcast intro which is always challenging to do.
Right. It’s challenging to kind of summarize. Exactly what you talk about in something that’s really concise, something that’s under a minute. But I, but I have really enjoyed recording these topics over the last few weeks of just like. What are the things that we’re dealing with? What are the things that we’re going through?
I often find that some of the most valuable lessons are learned in just those real life scenarios, where we can talk about what’s worked, what hasn’t worked, what we’re doing, what we’re not doing. And so. Decided to really make it super clear for people who are new to this podcast. That that is what we are talking about. And so just a reminder for you, if you have anything out there where you create content, having a really clear idea of who your ideal client is and what exactly you are trying to deliver to them, having clarity on that is really, really helpful.
It makes it more helpful or more clear for you as the content creator and then more. Clear for the person on the other side. Hey, is this for me or is this not for me? And so excited about that and the other thing too. Which is what I want to talk about today is with regard to just like brand elements.
So brand elements I’m talking about. The overall look and feel of your brand. So the actual design elements of your brand, which colors do you use, which fonts do you use? What pictures of you do you use. You’ll notice that the podcast cover is sort of random. It really doesn’t align with the DSC overall branding.
And I don’t like that at all. Because if you look at our Instagram account at dietitian success center and our website, It there’s this clear blue brand cohesion, whereas the podcast is sort of off on its own tangent and. I used a, it was just a podcast cover that I created myself on Canva and I was using like water colors because I love water colors personally, but that’s not the DSC brand.
And so I need to make sure that there is a very clear mesh between all of our marketing channels. So even thinking about LinkedIn, thinking about Instagram, Facebook website, Podcasts cover, like, is it telling the same story across all of those platforms? So possibly a good chance for you to do a little bit of a brand audit or self. I, we have a branding course within dietitian success center that. I think is fantastic.
I also just revamped and updated our defining your niche course. So if you’re feeling a little lost in terms of either of those areas definitely check those out. And this is an awesome time if you’ve been thinking about joining DSC for a while, but you have been holding off, we are running our three months at 50% off promotion.
Again. It did really well. Last time. We welcomed a ton of new people. And so we’re doing it again and we’re going to be running it. If you’re listening to this episode, it’s may 20, 24. We’re going to be running it until sometime in June. I can’t recall the exact date, but I think it’s running for about six weeks.
So if you’ve been thinking about joining. Now is absolutely the time to check it out, to join us in the membership. And so the link for that is in the description of this episode, or you can just use the code DSE 50 when you’re going through the checkout process. And that will only work for the monthly membership options.
It’ll work for either the nutrition membership or the nutrition plus business membership. And while you’re at it, if you find that these episodes have been helpful for you, I would so appreciate if you would share them with a friend or a colleague. That is the best way for. Our content to reach more people is just through organic sharing. You know, somebody telling a friend, telling a colleague, telling a coworker about something that we’ve done or the work that we do, it’s so incredibly helpful.
So we super, super appreciate your support.
Okay. So talking about branding, we are going through our own brand refresh for dietitian success center. And I would also say for myself as a personal brand, So when I look back at the brand photos, so like the headshots that I’m using on our, about page, on my Instagram, basically everywhere. My email signature has a headshot. And I look nothing like that anymore. It has been, I don’t know, maybe four years since those photos were taken, which is not that long, but since then I’ve cut my hair.
It’s darker. I’ve had a baby, so my face looks different. And they just don’t look anything like me. And so I knew it was time to get professional photos done redone rather, and it also felt like the right time to get a branding refresh done for dietitian success center. So by that, I mean, we’re actually having a profession. redesign our logo, our colors, our fonts that we’re using.
We’re getting her to create a. Like a slide deck sort of template for us. What else has she’s doing? She’s doing a banner for LinkedIn. A few other elements and I am so excited about this. She. Has already sent us the initial drafts and oh my gosh, they look incredible. And I’m so, so, so excited to show you all when they are finally ready and. Yeah, it was just the time was right.
I think that, you know, a brand is so how you present yourself in the online space is so important because, and I think particularly. In a profession like ours and apologies. My dog is whining in the background. If you can hear him. He’s just having a bit of a windy day, but, uh, a brand is super important because especially when in a profession where we are trying to build trust. We need to make sure that our brand is communicating that professionalism, professionalism equals trust. And. Uh, you know, on that note, always putting yourself into the person, the end user’s shoes.
When you’re thinking about how is somebody viewing my online brand. Like when they come to my website, what do they see? How do they feel? Is it disjointed? Is it a mess? Is, you know, do I have cohesion with my fonts? What are my colors telling people? Are they calming? Are they upbeat? Are they depressing?
Are. W what are the colors saying? What are the fonts saying? What is my, you know, do I have. Professional looking photos of me. I think that’s really important. And I don’t buy that. I don’t mean that you have to get professional photos done. If you don’t have the budget for it, though, I would say it’s a fantastic investment. But even just getting somebody in your family to take good quality photos of you go outside, get some pictures taken. In natural light you know, do your hair wear whatever makes you feel great and use those for your website.
Put some effort in there because. That whole brand, the whole brand essence really speaks to what somebody is getting when they choose to work with you or buy from you or whatever. So no matter what type of business you are in. We cannot understate or rather we cannot overstate the value of putting effort into your brand.
Your brand is somebody’s first impression of you. So again, we go through this in detail, within the branding course within the dietitian success center, nutrition plus business membership.
And as mentioned, so I’ve hired a local photographer to come and do some new brand photos for me personally. And so I thought in this episode, I’d love to talk about the process for that. If you’ve never been through a brand photo session, or maybe if you have one coming up or if you want to do a new one. I’ll talk about how I’m preparing for that to make sure that I get the shots that I want.
And then we’ve also just gone through as a team, our content planning process for the second half of the year. So in this episode, I was thinking I would walk you through that process as well. So how we think about that, how we do that? And that will help too. Hopefully provide some ideas. If you are thinking about, Hey, what am I doing for the second half of the year?
I can’t believe we’re almost halfway through. 2024 already.
So for the brand photos process, I want to just talk about the start to finish. Process, uh, in case you have no idea where to start, when it comes to getting branding photos done. So first thing that I did when looking for a brand photographer is actually looking people up on Instagram. And also Googling as well.
And I think it’s really important to search for specifically a branding photographer. Because as you know, all photographers have different styles and potentially different niches. And I feel like brand photographers, people who have experience in this area. They come to the table with a different skillset in terms of helping you consider all of the elements and areas where you may want to use your images. And taking photos specifically for those purposes.
So for example, You know, thinking about, do you want landscape photos that you can use on your website? Do you want portrait photos that you can use on your, about page of your website and your Instagram? Do you want more headshots? Do you want some action shots? Do you want any images that you can use as like stock images?
So let’s say that you like for us, we have our client handouts. Do we want her to take some photos of those handouts that we can use as stock photos on our website? And so, and that was an idea I got from. My friend photographer. I didn’t come up with that. And so, yeah. And so we w I have finding a branding photographer specifically, I would say, is quite important.
And so. I in order to find this person, I and I’m actually going to pull up her Instagram just so I can give her a shout out.
The photographer that I’m using her name is Jackie and her business is detoured creative. So she’s at detoured creative on Instagram. And so she is local and I just searched on Instagram. Calgary brand photographer and a bunch of photos show up. And I was able to sort of sift through those and see. What vibe do I like whose style do I like?
And this is how I found Jackie and so highly recommend using that method. I find that actually works better. You can definitely Google branding photographer in your city. But I almost feel like Instagram is a better way to get a. Plethora of images that you can sort through and see whose style whose style look and feel you like the best.
And then you can go to their pages and their websites. And so. That’s the staff. First step is finding your branding photographer and then. The next step is actually booking a location. Now, this is something that I didn’t know you could do when I booked my very first brand photos back in. I think that was a, it was about four years ago.
And I just want to. Take a little detour here for a second. And just talk about how. Brand photos are a really great investment because not only do they communicate that professionalism, they show people that you take yourself. Seriously, you take your business seriously. But. I have been using my brand photos that I got taken four years ago for the past four years.
I’ve been using them in so many ways on my website as Instagram content. As my headshot for if I’m doing speaking gigs or my email signature has a picture of my, my headshot. And so. You will use them again and again and again, and again. So definitely a fantastic investment. Uh, but you know, again, I think that if you’re just getting started and you’re on a shoestring budget, you can get. Uh, family member to just take good quality photos of you, but definitely something to add to the business plan for sure. Okay.
So like I was saying before booking a location, this is something that I didn’t know you had to do. I was always like, wow. People just have really aesthetic home environments when I would see other people’s brand photo shoots, but that’s not the case. There are actually locations you can rent. By the hour in your city where you can get photos done, you can also get photos done often at like places like coffee shops in your area.
If they’re okay with that, or like the library or. Other common spaces like that, you can do that, or you can pay a bit of money and you can book one of these locations. I like to do that because often the locations will come with just like really neutral walls. And they’ll sometimes come with props like chairs or plants or a table or whatever. And then you can bring your own props as well.
So you can bring like a laptop books a notebook or whatever you want shots of. And you can combine that all together to kind of make the photos that you want. And so I was able to find an Instagram, uh, or rather a location. And this was the photographer that I worked with actually recommended a few locations to me.
And so I just chose one that I liked the most. So if you find a photographer just ask them for suggestions, because especially if they’re a branding photographer, they will have some, and you can definitely just do it at your home as well.
The next step in this process is just to do a bit of vision boarding yourself. So pop on over to Pinterest and do a search for brand photos or branding photos, and create a secret board and save images that capture. Outfits that you like possibly images that you want to recreate. So for example, for me there. Was, I said, I found this photo that I really liked to have somebody who had kind of like hung up. Pages of, I dunno, maybe her program or something. In the background.
And then she was facing those pages and kind of like pretending to take one down off the wall. And I think it was a really cool way to combine a picture of her with her product. So like, we’re going to recreate that for instance. So like I’m going to print off some of our handouts that I can use in our photos. But anyways, saving things like, yeah.
What images do you want to recreate? What outfits do you like? And share this with the photographer. And a lot of photographers will have this as part of their process. For you to create a Pinterest vision board and share it with them. But not everyone. And so it’s definitely something that you, you can create on your own just to make sure that you’re getting the most out of the session. And then from there it’s really about, okay.
So finding outfits that you want to recreate some of those photos and you know what, you could always keep the tags on. If you feel like if it’s, it’s not something that you’re going to wear every day in your home office. If it’s a really nice, like cute little like business suit or something like that. You know, you could always go that direction.
Uh, I like to, I like a more casual looking photo cause that’s sort of more, our brand is like casual down to earth. I’m approachable. And so like, I’m just planning on wearing jeans. I always love a ripped Jean with like a white button down shirt. I bought a really cute. Yellow like E light yellow. Dress off of Abercrombie that I’m going to try out because I think it would look really good with our other brand colors.
So that’s something to think about as well. Like, will your outfits match your brand colors? What else? I bought a light blue button up as well. I bought a couple I’m combining things that I already have in my closet with just like a couple new items as well, just to see how things go. And or what, what sort of looks and feels the best? And so you can get photos taken in different outfits just to see what you like. And I think it’s good too, to have like some casual, some sort of more, maybe pulled together more professional for different scenarios.
So for example, Like, if I’m doing a speaking engagement or something, I may want something a little bit more professional looking. Whereas for our website or social media, I probably want something that that conveys or communicates. Just that laid back, feel more. My true personality. And then you can also choose to book, hair and makeup if you want to.
You absolutely don’t have to. I did not for the last photo shoot for this photo shoot, I’m going to do my own hair, but I am going to get my makeup professionally done, which I’m very excited about because I love getting my makeup done. I’ve only had it done like for weddings in the past. And so I’m actually getting. The makeup artist who did my wedding makeup, she was available to do makeup for for this event as well.
So that’s exciting. And one of the tips that my photographer gave me is like, make sure and find somebody who. Has done. Who knows what you mean when you say branding photos and they don’t just do like super glam wedding makeup, because that’s not what you want for this type of photo where you’re trying to look more natural, more like your true everyday self.
And so, yeah, that’s pretty much the gist.
And then, you know, you run the session and then they’ll send you your photos. Every photographer has a different timeline, but they’ll send you your photos a few weeks later. And it’s great because then you can use those assets again and again, in your business. So. I hope that that was helpful in terms of just helping understand the process and some of the things you might want to think about.
If you’re considering getting a new brand photos done. And then. I wanted to also talk about planning content for the second half of the year.
So our content planning process has changed and shifted as time has gone on, but I feel like we’ve come to a place where. We’ve sort of nailed down how we do our planning and we do our planning. Every six months, I feel like six months is a good frequency. And you can start off with a shorter timeline, you know, even starting off with like two months. Or three months. If you feel like you can’t think that far ahead. I think it gets easier to think that far ahead, the longer you’re in business. But six months is a good frequency for us, because I feel like it allows us to have feel like we have a clear plan for a fairly long runway, but we don’t have to think about the entire year.
And that’s really important because. As a year goes on, you get new ideas, priorities change your time changes. There’s lots of things that change. You learn more about your ideal client. And so you may not want to like your original content plan from six months ago. I may need to be tweaked and shifted and adapted and that’s totally fine.
And so I feel like six months is sort of that good sweet spot. That allows for you to be able to adapt well. So making you feel like you have a clear plan. But again, if you’re just getting started with this, you can absolutely try for a shorter runway for sure. And so. That’s the number one thing that we think about when it comes to how we’re planning our content is. And so by content I’m talking about free and paid content. Free content, meaning. Maybe podcast topics, blog topics. Instagram content. Web free webinars that you’re going to do, launches that you’re going to run.
And then I also think about paid content. So are you going to do any updates to a program that you run or a course that you have. Or are you going to create a new course? Or are you going to make a change to what you offer and how you offer it? What are. Those things that you want to create or shift in your business. So come up with a list of those categories that you want to create content for.
So by categories, I mean, so for us, our categories are nutrition content, which is, it was just paid content within our nutrition membership. Business content, which is paid content within our business membership. Professional development content, which all of our members get access to. Launches. So like I was talking about earlier in this episode, how we’re doing the three months at 50% off, that’s an example of a launch. And so we actually mapped those out.
We plan those out. Blog post topics. And podcasts. Those are our categories of content. And then we make plans within each of those categories. And Instagram, I didn’t mention because Instagram, we tend to just, we tend to just link it with other things we’re doing. So like, if we’re doing our launch, then our Instagram content will relate back to that launch or a four. You know, we have a new blog post podcast, or sorry, a blog. Blog post.
Yes, that’s the right word, blog posts coming out. Then we’ll create social media graphics that will correspond to that blog post. And so come up with your categories. Of. Channels that you’re wanting to create content for. And so, as I was alluding to before. The number one thing that we need to think about when we were mapping out content is what does your target audience. Want what topics. Do they want, do they need to learn more about. And you may be asking yourself, well, I don’t know what those topics are. And if you don’t know what those topics are, or if you feel like you just need a refresh. This is a great opportunity to do a little bit of market research. And so you can do market research as simply as conducting. Like a little Instagram survey through your Instagram stories. Post a couple of survey questions and get people to just check off different topics that they’re interested in. I would recommend this strategy over.
I’ve seen a lot of times people asking like a general question, like what type of content do you want from me? And I think that’s a really hard thing for somebody in the audience to respond to, because it’s so vague. Like if I don’t know anything about nutrition, I don’t know what, I don’t know. And so like, I can have a sense of things that I’m struggling with, but that’s a lot to ask for somebody to. Respond back to such a big question like that. And so I would recommend doing more things like polls.
So saying like, Hey, are you interested in a or B. Are you what type of content do you like the best? A, B, C, D give people options and allow them to respond that way. If you have an email list, you could also do the same thing. You could do market research. That way we do that every year we run. A a member survey. Ah, in the fall every year where we’re really able to, that’s a opportunity for us to gather a ton of content ideas, because we ask things like, you know, what’s a gap for you.
What’s missing for you. What do you need more of? If you work with people one-on-one, you can also go back to chart notes and look at the topics that you talked about with clients. Those would make for great content topics. Do some keyword research. That’s how we come up with our blog post topics.
I talk about this extensively within the SEO course within dietitian success center. If you are a member and that’s in the nutrition plus business membership. You could also just ask friends and family. Just, you know, asking, Hey, like what are you not sure of when it comes to nutrition? Just have a casual conversation.
Sometimes I feel like those conversations, what people will say will be things that you’re like, oh, You maybe never would have thought that somebody. Didn’t know that, or thought that way about the topic that you talk about. And so those conversations, those sort of more casual conversations can sometimes be really eyeopening. And so generate a list of topics.
And I would just recommend having a running list. I used to keep it in the notes app on my phone. Whenever a topic would come to me. I would just write it in the notes app. And then when I, when I would get to my planning session, that way I would have a whole bunch of different topics that I could choose from. For us, like I mentioned, we have our annual survey. And then we also have a. Little informal poll that is in our it’s embedded within our community.
And so people can vote on topics that they want to see. And we use this mainly for the nutrition membership, nutrition topics. So people can vote for the topics that we want to see. And that’s basically how we prioritize. The content that we develop for the nutrition membership is what has the highest number of votes.
That’s also how we came up with our counseling and coaching certificate is because that was the number one. Content request, uh, from members. So. Those are a couple of the different ways that we gather. Market research. And so we have our market research, we have our list of content topics, and then we have our categories of content channels.
So where are we planning content or what are we planning content for? And within each of those channels, it’s up to you decide what is the frequency. Of content that you’re going to release in each of those channels. And this is totally an individual choice. What do you feel like you have the capacity for be really realistic here? So for us, for example, within nutrition content within that category. We release something new or we update something every month.
And so we need to come up with at least six nutrition topics that we’re going to cover by the end of the year or within the next six months. For launches. For example, we typically do one launch every quarter. So we need to think about four launch ideas before the end of the year. For blog posts, we typically do two per month.
So we need to come up with two ideas per month. For the podcast, I do one per week. Now this year, if you’ve been following the last couple episodes, you know, that I haven’t been planning out the topics as much. They’ve been a little bit more ad hoc where I’m talking about just like what we’ve. What’s come up for us over the last week as a business.
And so not planning these out as much anymore, but I used to plan the topics for like one episode per week. And so write out your categories, write out your frequency within each category. So for you, it might be blog posts and then two per month. Maybe it’s you have an online course update. I want to do one online course update before the end of the year. Maybe it’s Instagram content.
I want to create one reel a week. And whatever those frequencies are for you, and then come up with your topics within each. So of those two blog posts that you are going to write each month, what are the topics going to be? And you don’t have to have these fully flushed out. They can just be sort of high level you know, thinking about, okay.
So, uh, what are the topics prioritizing based on what are the topics that you’re getting asked about the most, or, you know, what keywords are the hottest keywords that you want to make sure and write blog posts on? That’s typically what we do is we look for the highest ranking keywords, and that’s how we prioritize our blog post topics. And so. Once we have our master list of content topics.
And so we don’t actually. Now we’ve gotten to a point where we have our categories listed out and then we’ll just sort of as a team, get on zoom and like talk through what our topics are going to be. And then we map them out and we use air table, but you can use whatever calendar program you want. You can use click up, you can use a sauna, you can use your Google calendar.
You can use a paper, pencil, calendar, whatever you want. But make sure you are mapping out those content topics when they’re going to come out in which months, so that you have that clear plan in front of you. And one thing that I used to do. Is, uh, Canva actually has a blank Calen calendar templates.
And so I used to print off. The blank template for the next six months. So I would have six separate pages. And then I would write in what content I was going to be doing on which days of those monthly overview calendars. And then I would post those on my walls in my office so I could see clearly, okay.
What was the next six months looking like for me? And then I would cross off the days as they passed. Uh, so that’s just one idea. If you are wondering what kind of a process to put in place around this. Hi, DIA. Okay. So that is our content planning process. I hope that that was informative. I hope you were able to gain some ideas for your own content planning. Content planning is a lot of fun. If you haven’t done it yet for the second half of the year block, some time in your calendar block, a couple hours go to somewhere that you feel like is inspiring for you.
A coffee shop. Uh, restaurant wherever and bring your laptop and do some content planning. It’s it’s always a really fun process. Funding and creative process. All right. So that’s it for today. Uh, again, I ask if you found this episode, helpful, share it with a friend, share it with a colleague, and it’s a great time to join us three months at 50% off.
Right now we’re offering this until around mid June. And so if you’ve been thinking about joining us for a while in either membership option, the nutrition membership or nutrition plus business, Then now as an awesome time, if you are new to us. Dietitian success center is an online learning platform for dietitians and dietetic students. Uh, with your membership, you get an all access pass to nutrition, client handouts, evidence, summaries, nutrition courses that you can really stay up to date on the latest and greatest when it comes to. Nutrition evidence what the science is saying.
And then if you are in our business membership, you get all of the nutrition content, and then you also get extra business courses, tools, resources to help you run a. Profitable business. And so. Again, great time to join us links for everything. Or in the description of this episode. I hope you have an awesome week and I will see you next Thursday.
