WordPress Photography Podcast – BTS – Ep 3 with Tamara Lackey
After the success of episode 1 & 2, Scott and I were really excited to record episode 3 and speak with Tamara Lackey, renowned professional photographer, and educator in the creative arts space.
I really loved this conversation. I admire Tamara a lot, I think she is a great educator for photographers, but beyond that, I love her passion for charity work. She recently co-founded the non-profit Beautiful Together with her husband Steve, and I feel she definitely lives what she promotes.
I also really appreciate that she isn’t afraid to ask questions. I think that was why this episode resonated with me. Tamara was not only talking to us, explaining her experience with WordPress, but she was asking questions when we talked about topics that she herself would want to know more. I always feel that if one person has a question and asks it, many more people have the same question, they just don’t voice it.
Ok, beyond Tamara being a great guest, my cat was NOT cooperating with me that day. So, I have to apologize for some tortured meowing at the injustice of being locked out of my office. If you can get through the first part of the episode, there’s so much exceptional info after that – without cat noise. When you work from home, your animals become your coworkers, and apparently I didn’t realize how much she didn’t appreciate being locked in a room, and lesson learned, needed to lock them in a room farther away from the microphone. If it really drives you crazy, fast forward to around the 15-minute mark. We talk about so many great topics after it gets worked out, I would hate for you to miss it.
Around the same time we fixed the audio ::cough:: cat ::cough:: problem, Tamara brought up an interesting discussion about automating your social media pushes – meaning when you write a blog post or when you do something on social media, there are tools like Buffer and Hootsuite, that will allow you to schedule to platforms like Facebook, Twitter, even LinkedIn or Google+. She shares why she does NOT use those tools, but does manual pushes instead, and her thoughts on the sort of the ethics that can come up when you automate that online conversation. Specifically, what we should do as small business owners and photographers during major international crisis events. We also touched on smaller things that can happen to your clients, major life changes like divorce, and how that can affect your blogging and social media sharing of their specific client work.
Truthfully, there are just so many nuggets of gold in this episode. There was a point where we were all talking over each other a little, which may not make for great audio, but we were all so invested and interested in the topic we couldn’t stop! I think there are multiple subjects in this episode that all photographers can relate to at some point – with or without WordPress.
We did talk about Squarespace, along the same lines as our discussion with Christine in episode 2, how it is a great starter platform if WordPress is a little bit too intimidating. I like that we’re having these discussions because I think it’s good to have options if WordPress overwhelms you. I do think WordPress is the best platform for your photography website (obviously), but it doesn’t have to be your first platform. Again, there’s just so many little packets of information like that in this podcast. It definitely was a great recording.
Thank you, Tamara, for talking with us! And I apologize for the cat, but don’t worry, she had a very stern talking to after. Kitty will NOT be making an appearance in any future recordings!