Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI.

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Emily Walker: Hey there, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team and you are listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. This week on the podcast, we are speaking with Dana Hassan. She is an entrepreneur, content creator, self-taught baker, and the founder of Homemade Ish, where she has recently launched her first physical product cookie starter kit. Dana has spent the last decade building her business, reaching over 3 million followers on TikTok and launching this first physical product. In this interview, she shares how and why she transitioned from beauty and fashion content to food content and how she balanced networking and creating in the early days of building her brand. She describes that season as one of quiet hustle, which I think a lot of you will resonate with. Bjork and Dana also discussed the process of launching a physical product, why she decided to make cookie starter kits, how she built the team behind the product, developed a scalable recipe and the food science involved, and then everything else you need to consider when developing your own product. Dana shares lots of her tips and tricks for growing a following on TikTok, creating video content, and then how to leverage that huge social media following to support other aspects of your business. It’s a really enjoyable interview. I think you’ll take a lot out of it, so I’m just going to let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Dana, welcome to the podcast.

Dana Hasson: Hi. Thanks for having me. I’m so excited to be here.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, we’re going to be talking about something that I personally don’t know a lot about. There’s a lot of things I don’t know a lot about, but one of them is TikTok growth. You have millions, multiple millions of followers on TikTok. But the other thing we’re going to be talking about that I also don’t have a lot of expertise or experience in is physical product, like creating a physical product to pair with your social following. It’s one of the things we talk about all the time. It’s great to do sponsor content, it’s great to build a following, but one of the smartest things you can do is start to think about, Hey, what does it look like to create a product adjacent to the following that you have? So we’re going to be talking about all those things, but before we do it, we always like to hear a little bit about origin story, how it got started. I know that you started to create content. Think about creating content when you were in school. Tell us about what that looked like and your exploration stage around what type of content you wanted to create.

Dana Hasson: Yeah, it’s funny because I always had a love for just visuals. Remember just being super young and forcing my family friends to grab their fancy camera and just start capturing myself or other just things around us. And so when I went to school, I studied fashion merchandising. I love fashion and it’s something that I still love very much. And we did a case study about Chiara Ferragni — I don’t want to botch her name.

And she basically is the OG on Instagram. She started with just a blog and the whole blogging and then Instagram kind of came along and at the time I think she had probably over 10 million followers. And it was that light bulb moment where I was just like, Hmm, okay, there’s something here. Maybe I should give it a full shot. And so I basically just started exploring. I downloaded Instagram. I did miss the wave of just weak algorithm where you can just grow blow up, unquote. And I was exploring. I was definitely just trying and posting. I mean, it was basically just my friends who followed me at the time.

Bjork Ostrom: And when was this the wrong time? Probably

Dana Hasson: Like 2016 I would say is when I was exploring and I basically told everyone around me when there’s a new app that comes out, please lemme know. I need to be the first one because I feel like I’ve gained the knowledge with Instagram and what to do on how to basically do it when a new platform comes along.

Bjork Ostrom: You developed the skills of content creation. That’s what you were practicing, that’s what you were getting better at, and then was the bet at that time. You want to know about these new platforms because willing to take the risk of showing up and being an early creator, there might be upside of being able to grow with the wave of the platform. There might be the downside of you spend a lot of time on a platform that doesn’t take off, but that’s what you were interested in at that point was to know about what these new platforms or the new apps might be.

Dana Hasson: Yeah, I had nothing to lose. I was in school. I just wanted to pursue something that wasn’t a traditional nine to five. And I interned to know that I don’t want to be in a nine to five area office, and I basically was just on the lookout, but at the same time making just as many connections as I can. I would just come into the city every day. I was on Long Island at the time with my parents and I was just literally asking everyone to just get coffee with me and I would not stop until they said yes. And so I

Bjork Ostrom: Feel like, yeah. And who were these types of people? Were they other creators or people who had jobs at agencies? What did that look like? I think that even that little nugget there is a helpful piece because sometimes we can look at somebody’s story and their arc and think, Hey, well, you did these things and you grew and you feel like you can understand it, building it backwards. But really there’s a oftentimes season of quiet hustle and it feels like that’s potentially what that was for you, which is quiet hustle. It’s not even you’re creating content, building a following. It’s like you were just trying to learn. It sounds like

Dana Hasson: I was trying to learn and just connect with everyone because my mindset was, your network is your net worth. If I am making as many connections and people can kind of spot me now than when I am hopefully one day becoming something bigger than what they’re seeing, they’re kind of like, Ooh, I watched this process go down and I want to be helpful and supportive. So back to your question, yes, agencies just like Brent pr girls that worked in agencies that are in-house or not and just anyone, and then of course other creators as well and creating content with other creators. But it was just like anyone that would say yes to me at this point.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And what did you learn from those early connections? Were there any takeaways that you could look back to and say, gosh, this was a nugget that I took away from this conversation, or this was the most helpful thing? Or is it more just collectively it was helpful to build your network?

Dana Hasson: I think, and this might be cliche, but being nice, honestly, I will always be just nice to everyone. And I feel like that’s something I learned early on because you do meet a lot of people, so when you’re nice, you honestly stand out. And that just felt to me like, okay, no matter what happens down the line, numbers don’t define me. I want to just be true to who I am. So I feel like them kind of just giving me a mirror of myself was mostly what was going on. But I wouldn’t say anything necessarily learning, it’s just networking, how to work,

Bjork Ostrom: Connecting with people. For a long time, my computer desktop was, there’s that common phrase. I think there’s a poster of it, work hard and be nice to people, but it feels like that’s kind of what that was for you is working hard. It’s networking, it’s reaching out to people. You probably get a lot of nos or non replies, but then you occasionally get somebody and there’s a connection there. And I was just having this conversation with Lindsay, my wife, Lindsay today around the importance, the important things I’ve learned from doing coffee, a lunch, having a connection with somebody where there wasn’t necessarily a clear objective, but it was a chance to connect. But so often what I found when I do have those interactions in those moments is they’ll mention something that I wasn’t aware of and I’m like, oh, that’s really interesting, and there’s a learning from that, or it’s a tool that they’re using that I didn’t know about, or maybe it’s a way that the industry works that kind of helps color the picture in terms of my understanding of the thing that I’m trying to get better at. And so it feels like there’s so much that can come from that, but oftentimes it’s not very well-defined. We don’t know.

How did you balance that type of time with people and connections, networking with the actual process of creating? What did that look like? Were you also trying to create a lot or was that more of a phase of learning and understanding the industry?

Dana Hasson: Yeah, so actually back then it was a tiny bit easier for me. I was focusing on just fashion and beauty. So that was just me going into the city, having a meeting and then snapping a photo of my outfit and kind of continuing with my day. Also, videos were not really a thing, so I’m consuming things. Were not really around. I feel like a photo is so much, I don’t want to say easier. There’s still a lot of science behind it, but definitely easier than video. And then I have to edit it and voiceovers and whatnot. So it was kind of like a multitasking meeting with another influencer friend, take a photo of me. I take photo of her kind of.

Bjork Ostrom: And you hear that a lot. There’s conversations I’ve had. I know my conversations with Lindy how content has shifted and it’s just so much more time consuming now, whether it be on social media or if people are creating content online, on a website or on a blog, the amount of effort that goes into any singular piece of content just goes up. A lot of that being video, like you said, but also what it takes to stand out, what it takes to be unique, novel, recognizable. There’s also a level of supply and demand. There’s a lot of people creating content. So you have to do a lot to stand out. At what point did you switch over to start doing video a little bit more? And my guess is that from one of those conversations, at some point when you were like, Hey, tell me about the new app, somebody was like, Hey, you should check out maybe Musically or TikTok, which is what TikTok was originally did right away, that was going to be a platform that was a good fit for you. Talk about the early days of building your following there.

Dana Hasson: So again, I was doing fashion and beauty, and that is what I thought was my biggest thing. And actually I found out about TikTok from my little brother because the little kids know about the hottest apps. And it was just a random summer day in July, 2019. So way before it was a thing. And I just saw him and his friend making a video with coins on the floor, and I was like,

Is going on here? And my parents kind of pulled me aside. They’re like, you should download this and give it a shot. And honestly, to me, the biggest thing is when you go on an app and then you see how many people have followers and you kind of gather and be like, okay, there’s enough people that are interested in this kind of content that I should give it a shot. And that’s what happened. Addison Rae was on my for you page dancing with her mom with 300,000 followers. So I was kind of understanding that there are a lot of people here and that I should try and give it a shot. But again, I did it very innocently. I didn’t tell anyone. I was kind of just like, let me just see what happens. And I was just experimenting with beauty and fashion. And then one day I decided to post a donut recipe for the record. I love food. I always loved food. It was always something I loved doing and hosting, so it wasn’t too out of the blue for me, but I just decided to post and see what happens. And then that video got 4 million views

And I basically was like, oh, it looks like we’re going to be baking for the rest of our lives now because

Bjork Ostrom: It’s naked funny. Yeah, it’s interesting. The same similar thing. There’s somebody I’ve referenced on the podcast before happened with a friend, his name is tj, where he was creating content online, was a really skilled creator, is a really skilled creator. And then one day created this video around birth order, youngest child, oldest child, middle child. And same thing where it went off.

I don’t know the exact story. I don’t know TJ super well. He is more friend of a friend, but I’ve hung out with him a couple times. But I think the general progression then from there was like, Hey, this worked. What if I did an iteration of this? It was a little bit different, but had echoes of that same type of piece of content, would that do well? And part of it is like think about songwriting. You write a hundred songs and then you write one song and it’s like, whoa. Something about this resonated with people you’ve practiced. You had 99 songs that didn’t hit. But I think the same is true with content where you kind of have to create a lot for a long time, be willing to try different things, be willing to experiment, and then to see if something hits. And then from there, see if you can replicate that in some way where it’s not the exact same thing, but it’s maybe a version of that to see if it continues to work. Is that a little bit of what happened with that first video that you created where it was like, Hey, this worked. Let me see if I can create another kind of adjacent piece of content that might also do well and that resulted in some of that early growth for you?

Dana Hasson: Yeah, so I would say that, and also reading the comments because I was like, okay, something clearly triggered these people to make this video blow up. And basically I kept on saying, should look like this after every step of the way that I was creating. And so I was just leaning in and I was like, all right, it looks like I’m going to be baking, saying it should look like this all the time. And it just kind of honestly just went viral every time I would post a video. It just did really well. And again, I think it’s the algorithm. Not a lot of creators were there. I was probably the first creator to not dance on the app too, which was very interesting.

Bjork Ostrom: Like Addison Rae, that was a huge thing. It’s like she, that’s what she was known for and yeah,

Dana Hasson: Exactly. I kind of was like, okay, I don’t know how to dance. I’m not trying to dance. Let me educate them in a different way. And I think that’s also why it kind of stuck.

Bjork Ostrom: So your point in that was you did this piece of content, you looked at it and you’re like, why did this go viral? You started to look through the comments to see if you could extract some understanding of what it was from that content that made it perform well. You started to see people reference a line that you said in the content, is that right where you said should look like this? And that for you was a learning? So then that was the thing that you looked at repeating in the content moving forward and started to notice a pattern specifically with that phrase. Is that more or less kind of what you’re saying you learned in that initial piece of content?

Dana Hasson: Yes, but also the baking, so it was kind of just a mix of both. Yeah,

Bjork Ostrom: That was going to be my next question was did you try and experiment in the world of fashion by doing a similar thing and having a similar phrase, maybe even that phrase to see, Hey, does saying this work with fashion content, was that something that you experimented with?

Dana Hasson: Honestly, no. I was just kind of dividing my content into just a fashion category, a beauty category and baking. So I didn’t really overlap except for the fact that I would get super dressed up to the kitchen, but we’re talking, you couldn’t even upload videos to TikTok. It was straight up, you have to film on the app and post immediately, which is why people did dancing. It was effortless. You put on a sound, you just do it. So it was very different to hold the phone speak. There was no voiceover at the time, speak and bake and altogether. So I kind of just tapped into different categories until it was evolving.

Bjork Ostrom: And it’s interesting, I did an interview, I’m trying to remember what episode it was with somebody who’s a creator, TikTok creator, and she talked about this idea of she had this salad and she’d shake a salad and she noticed that as being this variable within the piece of content. But I think part of what it is is there’s a little bit of experimentation with it, of course, and then saying, okay, what does it look like to create? Could you do this forever potentially? And I think one of the things that we sometimes want to do as creators is we find a thing that works and then we very quickly look for the next thing, and it’s like, well probably go deep with the thing that works and continue to do that. Now obviously there’s the element of wanting to have variety and be creative, but also it’s like if you find a thing that works, continue to iterate in that world as opposed to try and get too far away from it.

In the marketing world, there’s this concept that they talk about that I really love, and they say, one funnel can change your life, which it’s like it’s kind of marketing speak and whatever. But I think it’s really true that if you find one process, one funnel, and you’ve maybe seen this for your case, that can change your life. And I feel like an ultimate example is Tua, that phrase changed her life. But what it requires for us is creators is showing up, putting content out in your case, looking through, understanding that, trying to experiment with it and seeing if you can build and iterate off of it. In TJ’s case, it’s like he found a thing that works and it’s like these birth order humor videos and what does it look like to go deep with that while also then looking at how do you diversify around that without getting too far away from it. So as you’ve thought about your content, the things that have worked for you, what does that look like? How do you strike that balance between continuing to do the thing that works while also building other experiments around that and trying other pieces of content to see if you can get other things that work?

Dana Hasson: Yeah. Well, at first I was very focused on just growing. I didn’t even care. It was definitely quantity over quality. I was just posting five times a day every single day. And then Covid happened, which kind of worked in my favor, and everyone started downloading the app and posting and everyone were on it. But I entered Covid with a million followers, so I was kind of like, okay, what I’m doing is working, I might as well just keep going. So I was experimenting with different videos. I kind of knew, okay, my really big hits are my food, but then let me just do some beauty tutorials and just experiment with other things. And I feel like everything was just picking up at the same time people were coming to my page. So it was kind of being able to do all the things that I like in just different formats.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. Lindsay’s talked about that with her. So Instagram is her primary channel platform, and she’ll do videos that are her in person in front of the camera walking through recipe, but then she’ll also do ones that are not her, and it’s more of a focus on the recipe. She’s doing a voiceover with it, and she’s had this kind of understanding of, hey, I think I can kind of understand the format for, it’s not a format, it’s not guaranteed, but the probability being higher with her not being in a video and it just being about the recipe and the potential for that to have some type of virality. All that to say she’s kind of living in this phase of experimenting, but not wanting to get too far away from the thing that works. And

I think it’s so wise as you talk about, Hey, I was growing, why not just continue to do the thing that worked and that was working? So do you feel like there’s anything that you could extract from that period of growth as you get to 3 million followers that you could share with other people who are interested in building a following, maybe on TikTok, it’d be the easiest one, or any social platforms in general, but what did you learn along the way that let’s say everything goes away, you’re back to zero, that you could implement pretty quickly today?

Dana Hasson: Yeah, consistency. Honestly, I think it’s annoying to hear because everyone tells you that, but it really is the secret. I was posting five times a day every single day for probably a year, which of course, I mean we were home, so it was much easier to just do it now even I can’t even, I’m like, how did I do it? I have no idea. But consistency and also just really understanding what are you passionate about? And then do it because it shows when you’re doing something that is forced and you’re just doing it, everyone is doing it, versus when it’s something you actually have some sort of knowledge, for example, baking. I mean, not everyone can just wake up in the morning and be like, oh, I’m going to bake and it’s going to be amazing. No, it’s a learning curve. So I think just finding that one, again, niche. I feel like I’m probably saying what everyone is saying, but

Bjork Ostrom: No, but it’s great finding

Dana Hasson: A niche and I don’t know, just be authentically yourself and if you keep on posting all the time, I mean, I don’t know. I feel like anyone can go viral.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. We talk about this idea of tiny bit better every day. I think there’s one thing, and I think of spectrums. You could post a piece of content, which is like you watching tv and you could post it 10 times a day, and in 10 years you probably wouldn’t have a very successful content business. But let’s say today you started and you posted a video today and it was a video of you watching tv and it got two views, and one of ’em was like, this is boring, a comment on the piece of content. So you’re like, okay, what can I do to make this a little bit better? So the next day you post a piece of content, it’s like you watching tv, but then it’s like you get up in the middle of it and do a weird unexpected thing, and then it’s like, oh, there’s 50 people who watched it. Point being, I feel like it’s consistency paired with continual learning, continual improvement, and that execution paired with improvement, that to me feels like the secret sauce. And I’d be interested to hear your reflections on, if you look at the content that you’re producing in 2019, what have you done to make your content today better in order to allow you to continue to grow?

Dana Hasson: Yeah. Well, first of all, the app evolving I feel like has been helpful. Now I can film not on TikTok and then edit it how I want and then upload. So that alone is huge for me. But also just showing more luxury. I started and I was just putting click bait stuff, so food coloring and the craziest, the dessert the better. It was really just doing over the top things. But then I was like, okay, I want a different demographic of people following me and I want them to actually be going home and recreating my recipes and not just watch me for entertainment. And so I basically took a step back, moved to New York City, I got a really beautiful kitchen, and I just started creating really beautiful content that is not only just another recipe, but something that maybe can educate someone in a way.

But it took a long time and a lot of rejection. I mean, I remember at first when I started shifting away from food coloring, people didn’t even want to watch my stuff, and it was kind like, Ugh, I have to kind of still migrate that old content to show them that it’s still me. But you slowly shift away. And then last and last, and now I really never use food coloring anymore. I feel like my content grew up as I like to call it. I grew up and a lot of people that have been following me five years ago are like, oh my God, we grew up together. I remember when you were at your parents’ kitchen.

It’s kind of like we all evolve and I’m actually feel like I really physically feel like I’m going through that growth pain right now where I feel like content I was doing maybe three months ago doesn’t necessarily react the same that it was. So it’s kind of like trying, and I’m saying this out loud and telling to myself, but trying to not be so fixated about the views. And some videos are not going to perform as good as others, but just breathe in, lean in and see what does work. And kind of going back to square one and what can I do differently?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s such a common refrain that I hear when talking to people who have, it could be a hundred thousand followers or it could be 5 million followers,

But there’s this common refrain of like, oh, things were this way and now they’re this way. And it feels like the decision that you have to make. That’s a really hard one, is do I try and is what I’m doing what I want to continue to do and I’m going to stick with it and feel like, will there eventually be an unlock with that thing? Or do you consider the algorithm and look at something else that’s working? And do you shift a little bit that way? It’s a little bit of personal taste versus algorithm considerations versus observations of what’s working. No point in that other than for anybody listening that might feel that way to know that there’s this universal truth around trying to sort through all of that stuff. And it feels like our brains aren’t very well equipped to process all of that data, especially as it relates to ourselves.

It’s different if it’s something abstract, you’re looking at data from a sports team or you’re looking at data on a spreadsheet, but when it’s like you have a personal brand and that brand is the thing that has numbers attached to it, it feels like a hard thing.

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Are there things that you’ve done from a mental health consideration, mental health standpoint as you’ve been building this business to help protect yourself from that type of stuff?

Dana Hasson: Yeah. Well, first of all, kind of backtracking from what you said is the hardest part about this job is actually not having control. I have no control.

It’s kind of like I’m relying on outside factors, and that’s how I’m getting paid, which is very cruel and hard. And so yes, leading up to mental health, oh yeah. I mean, therapy has been life-changing for me. And then also knowing to just really be present and disconnecting from my phone and hanging out, talking to my friends and family and just, I dunno, doing normal things, which sounds, I mean, what is normal things, but normal things is for me not being on my phone, not thinking about posting or not thinking about filming everything that I’m doing in my life, which I’m very grateful. My content is not necessarily a, oh, I’m walking down the street. Let me film it. It’s very

Bjork Ostrom: Much, yeah, purely lifestyle. Yeah,

Dana Hasson: Curated, yeah. But again, pros and cons, right? Because what maybe I do need to dive into more lifestyle because that is where everything is shifted and it’s constantly, I feel like my brain is pulling me from different directions all the time. So it’s important to just, I dunno, stay grounded. I meditate a lot and just journal. I really try to prioritize my mental health because one, this can get to your head and you can just be like, oh, I am better than everyone. And no, this is just our job and we’re good at it and that’s great, but I don’t want to not be myself.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. One of the things I think about occasionally is how would using my grandparents as inspiration? I actually have on my desk, it’s like the 1948 basketball championship for my grandpa. It was like a high school basketball championship, and then it’s like a mint tin from my grandma. But the reason for it is one of the things I occasionally remind myself of or think of is they lived, they had some really hard things in their life, but they also had a pretty charmed life, at least when I experienced life with them. And it was pretty simple. And I think of that for myself and trying to say, when you talk about normal things, it’s like they would really consistently get together with a small group of friends that they had, and they would have patterns around, they would do church on Sunday and they would do coffee on Saturday morning. And those as being the things that, for myself at least, I feel those as the most life-giving. And I think sometimes when I look at, they talk about checkbooks and calendars being moral documents, does my calendar reflect the things that I think would be best for me? Not always. And so I think that piece around, hey, reminding yourself to step back to connect with people is such an important thing.

One of the things I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on is the process of launching a physical product. So you have homemade ish cookies starter kit. One of the things we often talk about on the podcast is this idea of product, having a product, you have attention, it’s the attention economy. And then with that attention, our decision is what we do with it. We can talk about nonprofit, we can talk about a brand that is giving us money to talk about them. We can talk about whatever we want to and monetize via ads, or we could talk about our own product. And if it’s a good product, people go and they buy that. So in launching this cookie starter kit, the brand homemade dish, what have you learned in that process? Because it’s something that not a lot of people have done.

Dana Hasson: Yeah. Well, I always knew I wanted to have something. I didn’t know what it was. And I think mean the hardest part was probably just where to start. I think we all kind of have this fantasy of like, oh yeah, I want to have my own thing one day and I want to start this thing, but what is the thing? Honestly, looking back two and a half years ago now, I was just like, I’m launching a product. Everyone’s like, great, what is it, Dana? No idea. What is it?

And I remember just writing down, what is it? What is it? What is it? And I would just talk to every person around me and just be like, yeah, so I’m thinking of launching a brand. I dunno. I mean, obviously I like baking. I just kind of gather information and then once I start, I feel like getting some sort of a feel. I then start doing real research, which just like, okay, what is the most popular thing that people are purchasing or just things that people are loving. And I basically just dived really deep into baking mixes and how it’s so powerful, but then how bad it is for you and how there’s so many horrible ingredients. And as someone who touches food basically every single day, and I feel like we all do. I mean we need to eat to survive, but I do it also for fun.

It was just really eye-opening to me to just be like, wow, we really are consuming things without knowing what we’re consuming. And that is so scary. I’m obviously getting older and I’m like, wow, I really do care what I put in my body. Don’t get me wrong. I mean, it’s nice to have a little treat here and there where I don’t have to think about it, but it’s just something that really sunk with me. And so I just start diving deep and was like, okay, what if I actually created a mix that not only was just clean, simple ingredients, it was also something that was so easy, so delicious, and tasted homemade

Bjork Ostrom: From

Dana Hasson: A box.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, sure. That’s the idea of homemade ish where it’s something that you would feel like, Hey, this is, you’d go to somebody’s house and it would feel like they’ve made these cookies, but it’s actually something that’s a little bit simpler to put together. What was that process like? Who are the team members that you need to assemble in order to do something like that? My guess is there’s some, with a content business, you can download TikTok, you can start creating your own content. You can scale that up. You probably eventually work with an agent or maybe have a team member who helps with contracts, maybe a va. But when you get into an actual physical product, it looks really different. You have shipping, you have storage, you have the development process of the product itself and regulations around food. And so how did you go about finding and assembling a team for that?

Dana Hasson: Yeah. Well, I had no idea. Just have to say it because I think people are just like, oh yeah, you launched a sprint, you know what you’re doing. I’m like, no. And actually I still don’t. And I’m kind of just learning as I go, which is honestly the best part about it. But I think the first thing I did was like, okay, I need a recipe and I need someone to develop it with me, so a recipe developer. So I kind of just was backtracking. I’m a very visual person, which is why my product is very visually, I like to say beautiful, because I was just so focused on the visual. So actually first thing I did was hire someone to help me with packaging, even though I didn’t even know what my recipe was. So everything was a bit all over the place, but a graphic designer and then a recipe developer, and then someone who is going to help you with operations because there’s a lot that goes down into operations that I’m still learning and I feel like I still didn’t crack down completely.

And then, yeah, okay, great. Now, so then you need a warehouse. Am I going to shape it for my apartment or is someone else going to be doing it for me? And then also the recipe that we developed, it’s not a normal recipe, it’s a scalable recipe, so the ingredient sourcing is a different game. It was a lot of just learning and asking people and other founders that have been so incredibly sharing just would share information that I’m so grateful that they did, and honestly, that makes me want to share because I’m like, oh my God, they were so generous to tell me things that I honestly would’ve probably taken years to learn if they didn’t.

Bjork Ostrom: Like what? What’s an example of something that you think would’ve taken a long time that somebody shared?

Dana Hasson: Well, one of my friends, they have a pickle company. It’s called Good Girl Snacks. You should check it out.

Bjork Ostrom: Great, we’ll link to it.

Dana Hasson: And they basically connected me to my scientists, and I just know that without that knowledge, I don’t know what I would’ve done. I mean, I’m sure I would’ve figured it out, but it was just kind of like, oh, wow, they really were so amazing to do that for me that I’m so grateful and it would’ve really saved me. Well, it did saved me a lot of time. Of course, you still have to interview and see that it’s a good fit because I’m a people person and if someone has weird energy, I just cannot work with ’em. But it worked out and I still work with ’em and they’re amazing.

Bjork Ostrom: When you say scientists, can you talk about what that person does in the process?

Dana Hasson: Yeah, so basically they understand how to create a recipe but not a home recipe. So it kind of goes back to percentages. I’m still trying to understand it myself, or maybe I’m not saying it right, but they basically just think about things differently. So for example, when you’re packing dry ingredients, there needs to be no moisture. I wouldn’t have known. So things that you would buy at the store wouldn’t work for you to just pack it and put in a little box. It needs to be things that are just low moisture and I guess it’s a different product then because it’s not your typical, I dunno, sugar. So it’s just a lot of things that I feel like I didn’t know vanilla we’re using a powder vanilla where I feel like at home I’m using extract. So it’s just a lot of small things that a scientist would know and I can,

Bjork Ostrom: And so are you able to come to them and say, Hey, you work with a recipe developer in this case it’s a cookie recipe. You kind of get it to the point where you personally feel like this is something I’m going to be excited about. So you have this recipe that is fine-tuned for one that you’ve created at home and that you can bake. Then it’s taking that to a food scientist and saying, okay, if we were going to productize this and create it as something that can be sold at scale, how would you do that? Then they kind of apply their scientists formula to it and say, okay, I see you put vanilla extract in here. We actually do have to do a dry vanilla. Here’s what that would look like for the conversion from whatever, two tablespoons to this amount and dry vanilla. Is that kind of what’s happening in that step with the food scientist?

Dana Hasson: Yeah, I would say so. And then also just doing all the backend of things like the nutritional facts and all these things that I’m like, how do you know how to do this?

Bjork Ostrom: And is there some fine-tuning that happens there as well? Because my guess is you have your at home recipe that tastes one way, and then you have the one that will be the packaged version and then it’s tweaking the package version to get it to where you want it to be.

Dana Hasson: Yeah, so basically what I would do is they would send me the brands that we would source from would send me their ingredients, and then I would sit there with a scale and just measure it exactly as they would be packed. And then I would be able to kind of test and see what I like and what I don’t like. I remember the biggest thing for me was the salt. I couldn’t figure out the salt because salt is so important in baking, and I remember just baking and then being like, oh no, not enough salt or too much salt. And it was just stressing me out and it took so long. But I think that’s what makes a recipe perfect

Bjork Ostrom: Is the effort that you go through to make sure that you’ve painstakingly made decisions around how much each ingredient should be and whatnot,

Dana Hasson: And not giving up too. I feel like

Bjork Ostrom: That’s a hard sticking it, sticking with.

Yeah, if you were to go, and I can really relate to this, gone through this process with businesses before where you have an idea and you’re like, I’m just going to get after it. That’s the most important thing is you get after it and then you get to the point in your case right now with homemade, you can go on, you can buy this, but if you were to go back and do it again now on the second time, you’d be able to do it all so much quicker because the order to do it in where it’s like you don’t start with somebody from branding and then do the scientists and then the recipe development, the order that you’d go through for it, what would that order be if you were to go back and do it again, how would you stack that up?

Dana Hasson: I think idea first and then nailing the

Bjork Ostrom: Recipe idea being in this case

Dana Hasson: Cookie.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, right.

Dana Hasson: What are you doing? What is your idea? Then I would say developing the recipe. Then dealing with operations, well, operations and recipes kind of hand to hand sourcing the ingredients as well. So it’s kind of the same step in a way. And then finding a manufacturer and then finding, I guess parallelly again, like a warehouse or if you’re going to do it in your apartment or you’re going to get a studio and do it and then

Bjork Ostrom: To store it,

Dana Hasson: To store it, and then you need a website developer to create a website, and then I think you can then launch, but there’s more to it to the packaging takes so long and that’s what delayed us the most, and it’s like things you don’t think about. They always tell you things are going to go wrong, but then it’s your case and you’re like, oof.

Bjork Ostrom: For other people it happens. Not for me, no, for me as well. When you say operations, what does that involve? What’s under operations?

Dana Hasson: Just sourcing everything. Someone who’s going to

Bjork Ostrom: Help every single ingredient, the bags that the ingredients go in, the

Dana Hasson: Things you don’t think about, the seal to close the box, just things that I’m like, oh my God, we need that. Or a barcode, I don’t know, I need a barcode. Just all these things.

Bjork Ostrom: And so you need to make, and my guess, who would be the person that helps with that if you are sourcing those? Is it a connection within the agency that has the food scientist or is there an adjacent operations industry that you work with?

Dana Hasson: So mine is all in one, but I would just look for operation, someone who is some sort of experience with operating literally the operation of the

Bjork Ostrom: Business. We had friends who were thinking of developing a drink,

And what was interesting as they were talking about it was I started to realize, oh my goodness, there’s these companies that exist and they exist in order to help people create and scale a product. And they have opinions on what bottle you would put in there, and then they also are able to create different variations of it that they were able to test and see if they liked one more than the other. And it’s this whole world that exists and you don’t really, I mean, I know there’s web agencies, I know there’s Facebook marketing agencies, but it’s like, oh, of course there’s also food product agencies. It’s just something that I’m not as familiar with. And so talk to me about the point where you go through the product development, you have the package, you’re able to have it, you’re able to ship it. How do you start to intertwine that brand with your content? What does it look like in terms of making sure you mention it enough without doing it too much? How do you make it organic without people feeling like you’re selling all the time? What decisions did you make as a creator in pairing your brand with your content?

Dana Hasson: Yeah. Well, so I feel like series is probably the best way. I basically was introducing something that people didn’t even know I was working on, so it was kind of like a surprise, this has been happening. So I really created a kind of how I built this moment, and I took the how me your mother sound, and I kind of backtracked and I was like, kids, this is what happened. And kind of just took them along of how I developed and what I’m doing without telling them what it is yet until the day I launched. And then the day I launched was kind of like, ah, this is it. So excited. But now that I am doing it, I mean, it’s only been a month and a half now, so it’s still very new, but I don’t think there’s right or wrong because I think if your content is genuine, they don’t feel like you’re selling anything.

And for me, it’s mostly brand awareness. I want people to just constantly see my box all the time, so when they do come across it and I dunno, an ad one day or on the streets or in a market or at Whole Foods, they’ll be like, Ooh, I’ve seen it before. Actually I know this brand, so I’m not even thinking so much conversion, more so just awareness. I want everyone to know about us. And then, I mean, conversion just happens because obviously they see it and they want to try it and they’re curious. So it’s kind of like, I would say a healthy mix of the two. But I’m still trying to figure it out. Sometimes I’ll go a week without posting about it and I’m like, I need to talk about it.

Bjork Ostrom: But I love that idea of investing your effort into awareness. And one of the things that I talked Nathan Barry, he’s the CEO of a company called Kit previously ConvertKit email marketing, he has or had a podcast called The Billion Dollar Creator. And the whole premise with it, which I’ve thought a lot about, and I think it makes a ton of sense, is this idea that creators have this ability to speak to a large group of people and they’re really good at it. And a lot of creators, if they’re interested in value maximization, like building a business that’s big, which not everybody’s interested in, but if that’s your interest, one of the best ways to do that is to build an adjacent brand. Because so often that brand can be bigger than the footprint of your following or the creators that you’re speaking to. It can be a launching platform into something bigger, more significant, more valuable, because it’s scalable in a way that us as an individual creator wouldn’t be scalable. When you think about what you’re doing is that a little bit of your hope is building an adjacent brand in homemade ish that is able to scale. Maybe you create other product lines within it, you create awareness within it, but that becomes, that eventually eclipses the content business side of what you’re doing.

Dana Hasson: Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, again, I’ve been doing this for five, seven years now, five years on TikTok and then seven years overall. And you see, obviously it’s an incredible income and I’m so grateful for the opportunities, but I’m thinking about my kids and I’m like, okay, one day I want to have something that is so much more meaningful. Not to say that being a creator is not, but something that is more physical, you can literally grab it and touch. And I feel like that’s something that it’s hard to do and we’re just people on the screen. And yeah, I’m hoping that one day, hopefully not soon, I still love doing content, but it will be my main source of income. And then content is kind of like a side gig and I really do see it happening already. It’s kind of just crazy. But I started this brand actually, and I was like, okay, I’m pretending I don’t have any followers. I want to create a brand how, I dunno, any brand that has been so successful, like a Betty Crocker, how they started. Obviously every story is different and I’m still utilizing my platform, but there’s still so much business 1 0 1 that you still need to know. Just because you have a platform doesn’t mean you can cheat your way through it. And also navigating the fact that you don’t want to be a viral brand because then there’s no longevity really creating a strong foundation and something that I know will be longevity and not just like, oh, another really cool, just whatever

Bjork Ostrom: Flash in the pan kind of thing. And what you’re talking about is this idea that the things that you have learned as a creator also apply in the world of a brand because you’re able to, as a brand, use those kind of cheat codes for creating that you’ve learned over the last seven years, which a lot of times you have a brand who has a great product, but they’re trying to figure out, how do we show up online? Is what you’re saying. You kind of know how to do that. You’ve been doing it for seven years, and now you can do it within the context of a brand.

Dana Hasson: Exactly. And also, I do ads all the time. Brands pay me to create ads. So to me, I’m like, great, let me create my own ads now.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. So can you talk about from a business perspective, if you look at the pie chart of your business, what does that look like? Is it primarily working with brands right now and then you’re backfilling and building homemade ish as your own internal brand that gets revenue for you? Do you have other types of ad income that you get from other places, just percentage wise, kind of at a high level? What does that look like and where are you hoping that it goes?

Dana Hasson: Yeah, I would say right now, I mean, again, I just launched, so I feel like I can’t even speak into the brand giving me sort of income yet.

But I would say right now a hundred percent of my income is from social media, from sponsorships and brands activation. I do a little bit of consulting as well. So that kind of adds in and mix in, since I have a lot of knowledge and I’ve seen it all, but where I’m hoping it would be, I’m hoping that it would be 90 10 of my brand being 90 and content creation is just the 10% that is fitting my income just because, I mean, TikTok is getting banned. That’s just another reason why you should have something that is more than just something you’re relying on. Other factors, my brand, it’s up to me. I can go to the streets every single day and hand out cookies and give people the spiel on this is why you need to buy it. And probably within two months it will blow up. But then it’s like social media, okay, great, I’m creating all this content, but then tomorrow they’re banning it and then I’m like, now what? I don’t have an income.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. Can you talk about your thoughts on the TikTok ban and what’s happening with that? I know just from headlines, but I haven’t really done any deep dive on it as of today. We’re recording, this will obviously change and shift after the episode comes out, but what does that look like right now and what’s your understanding of the scene?

Dana Hasson: Well, it’s not looking promising, if I’m being honest. I feel like we’ve had many scares in the past five years, but this one for some reason just feels a bit too serious. Do I agree? And I feel like we have other things in America that they should focus on. Sure.

Yeah. Yeah. 1000%. I think TikTok is probably their least of their concerns, and they’re moving it oddly quick, which is also what’s super suspicious to me. But I mean, listen, I’m a big believer with everything happens for a reason. This is out of my control. It seems like they ask for an appeal, I think, from the Supreme Court, and they agreed to basically hear TikTok speak about it on January 10th, I think, which is just probably a week before they do ban it. But I mean, their goal is to sell it. They want people another company to buy it in the us so then it’s a US owned company. And I understand, of course. I mean, who am I to say anything about that? But I don’t know, it just feels like we would potentially go into every session because there’s so many businesses relying on it.

I dunno if you’ve gone just scrolling on your free time, but you can see so many people going live and doing like, okay, we’re selling our product via live. It’s the new QVC. I dunno. I just feel like if they really will ban it, it would be a really tough year for a lot of people. I mean, luckily we have other platforms, so I’m not so worried. My content is my content, I’ll just start binging Instagram content and then hopefully I can master that on YouTube and whatnot. And I’m sure a new app will come. I mean, honestly, we’re due for one, so I feel like that’s probably happening anyways. But I don’t know, it just really feels like it’s touching about freedom of speech here and it feels just a little bit suspicious again. But I have no idea what’s going to happen. I mean, right now I would say, yeah, it’s getting banned, but I hope I’m wrong.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s interesting you hear, I think that’s the counter to it, is freedom of speech. Like, hey, this is a platform. It offers people freedom of speech. Obviously other side is like it’s controlled by an outside government agency, which with a tweak of the algorithm could potentially impact people’s political views or whatever. And so the hope would be that to your point, there’s a lot of people who, their job, they’ve left their full-time job, or they came out of college and this is what they’re doing. And so to take that away would be massively significant for thousands of people, obviously, and other businesses who might use it as a marketing platform. So the hope would be that they are able to kind of thread the needle on doing a sale. Maybe we’ll know by the time this episode comes out, fingers crossed that it’s successful and that all of our creator friends on TikTok continue to create. So we could talk on and on about creating products, the things you’ve learned, best practices for TikTok, best practices for Instagram. I feel like the great thing, like you said about doing what you’re doing is you have the skills and expertise that you’ve learned over the last seven years, and those can transport onto other platforms. Obviously it feels different when you have 3 million followers versus not having 3 million followers on another platform, but you can still accelerate that with the knowledge that you have. So Don, it’s amazing what you’ve done, continued success. If people want to follow along, they can do that on TikTok if it still exists by the time this podcast comes out. But where are the other places that people can connect with you? And then we’ll link to homemade ish as well.

Dana Hasson: Yeah, so Instagram, TikTok, I am a little bit on YouTube now, so all there. And then I have my websites, which I feel like just my name, donna hassan.com, and then homemade ish.com.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. Thanks so much for coming on. Really appreciate it.

Dana Hasson: Thank you for having me.

Emily Walker: Hey there, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team. Thank you so much for listening to that episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. I wanted to take a minute and just ask that if you enjoyed this episode or any of our other many episodes of the Food Blogger Pro Podcast, that you share it. It means so much to us as a podcast if you share episodes with your friends and family, or if you are a food blogger or entrepreneur, if you could share ’em on social media or even in your email newsletters. It really helps us get the word out about our podcast and reach more listeners. Thanks again for listening. We really hope you enjoyed this episode, and we’ll see you back here next week.

Bjork Ostrom: This episode is sponsored by Clariti. Here’s the thing, we know that food blogging is a competitive industry, so anything you can do to level up your content can really give you an edge. By fixing content issues and filling content gaps, you can make your good content even better. And wouldn’t it be awesome if you could figure out how to optimize your existing blog posts without needing to comb through each and every post one by one, or I know some of you have done this, create a mega Excel sheet with manually added details for each post that’s soon to be outdated Anyway, that’s why we created Clariti to save you time, simplify the process and make it easy. So with a subscription to Clariti, you can clearly see where your content needs to be optimized, like which of your posts have broken links or missing alt text.

Maybe there’s no internal links or what needs to be updated seasonally. Plus you can easily see the impact of your edits in the keyword dashboard for each post. Here’s a quick little testimonial from Laura and Sarah from Wander Cooks. They said, with GA4 becoming increasingly difficult to use, clarity has been a game changer for streamlining our data analytics and blog post performance process. That’s awesome. That’s why we built it, and it’s so fun to hear from users like Laura and Sarah. So as a listener of the Food Blogger Pro Podcast, you can sign up and get 50% off your first month of Clariti to set up your account. Simply go to Clariti, that’s C-L-A-R-I-T-I.com/food. That’s clarity.com/food. Thanks again to Clariti for sponsoring this episode.

Bjork Ostrom: Hey everybody, excited for you to be tuning into this podcast episode. We’re going to be talking about all things keywords, and for those of you who are like, “Ah, I kind of know what it is, but why is it important? How can I be doing it? What’s the best software?” We’re going to cover it all. We’re going to try and cover both the basics, what it is, why it’s important, how you can strategically think about keywords as it relates to the content you’re including. And we’re going to be covering some of the more advanced things, even the different philosophies around keyword research, and trying to figure out how you can balance inspirational content with strategic content.

Bjork Ostrom: And for those of us who hate the idea of keywords and just love creating content, what are some ways that you can really lean into both the strategy, but also not let go of the inspiration. And for those of you who love to geek out in keyword research is your thing, and it’s the sweet spot for you, and that is your art, we’re going to be talking about how you can do that well.

Bjork Ostrom: The purpose of all of this, the reason that we are having these conversations is because we want to help you figure out how you can do your craft better. In this case, we speak to people who publish content online. It could be a blog, but oftentimes we are talking to people about social media, we’re talking to people about business strategy. We try and cover it all, but all in the food space.

Bjork Ostrom: And the conversation today with Aleka Shunk from Cooking With Keywords, that’s her course, but she’s also a blogger. And she’s going to be talking about how she approaches keyword research from a blogging perspective at Aleka’s Get-Together. We’re going to be talking about that. We’re going to be covering this idea of keyword research and what it is, why it’s important, how you can be using it.

Bjork Ostrom: Whether SEO is the number one thing that you’re thinking about and trying to do, or if it’s a complement to something else that you’re focusing on, all of us will be able to take away different pieces from this interview and apply them to our business. I know it was true for me as I had this conversation with Aleka. There’s a lot of inspiration that came out of it for me and learning as well. So let’s go ahead and jump into this interview.

Bjork Ostrom: Aleka, welcome to the podcast.

Aleka Shunk: Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to be here. I’ve listened to Food Blogger Pro Podcast for the last five years and it’s what got me started in the first place with blogging.

Bjork Ostrom: Look at that.

Aleka Shunk: So I am so excited to be here, and I feel like I checked off a box of my bucket list being here.

Bjork Ostrom: Totally. One of my favorite things for doing this as long as we have, which five years, it’s like, there’s some podcasts that started out 10 years ago, where it was like super early and we were right in the middle when people started talking about doing podcasts, why it would be an important thing, but we’ve continued to do it.

Bjork Ostrom: And I think that’s the one thing, if you look at podcasting stats, it’s like … I’m making this up. 80% of stats are made up on the spot. This is one of them, but it’s like, it’s a high double-digit percentage of podcasts make it like three episodes and then they fizzle out.

Aleka Shunk: Oh wow. Well, you should be proud of yourself.

Bjork Ostrom: So the reason I say that though, is because one of the things that’s really fun about having done something for five years and done something in the space of working with other business owners or creators is I feel like three, four, five years is the mark when it gets to the point where you can actually do something substantial.

Aleka Shunk: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: You can learn something. You can start to work on it. You can get traction. And then you can get to the point where you are, where you’re coming on, because you’ve developed an expertise, you’ve developed a skill. And it’s probably in the category of that 10,000 hours, Malcolm Gladwell talks about that, where you’ve been able to dedicate a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of learning around a skill and now you’re able to come on and teach other people about that and also have a successful business in that space.

Bjork Ostrom: So what did that look like for you when you were starting in that early stage five years ago, listening to the podcast and now where you are now? What did that transition look like? And what were you doing at that time five years ago?

Aleka Shunk: Yeah. So I think a lot of bloggers, including myself, can agree that we start off blogging thinking, or I should say food blogging, thinking that all of our recipes are going to get seen right away and they’re better than everybody’s and we’re going to be the exception and we’re going to get all this traffic immediately, which completely didn’t happen.

Aleka Shunk: I think that’s the norm, but it takes a year or so for you to realize that your recipes are not going to rank on their own. They take some work and there’s strategy behind it. And for the first year I wasn’t seeing much success at all. And I think it took me at least two years, if not three, to really get completely comfortable with keywords.

Aleka Shunk: The first, I think it was two years in, I was stuck at about 10,000 monthly sessions. And I know we’re not supposed to compare, but I would always compare with other bloggers and I would think I’m so behind, but I think that’s more normal. But I knew that at that point going on to the three-year mark, I wanted more success. My goal was to make money off of it, which I feel like everybody’s goal eventually is, and to make it my full-time job, right?

Aleka Shunk: So I started to take it a little bit more seriously and really focus specifically on keywords because I’m not a huge blogger and I feel like that is something that smaller bloggers, those that start off have complete control over, unlike backlinks to an extent, and other things involved. So only a little bit control, but keywords, if you know what you’re doing and you have the right strategies, you can really outrank a lot of other bloggers. I was like, I’m going to take this little piece of SEO and I’m going to run with it and learn everything I can about it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. One thing that’s great about that, it actually ties into a question. We have a Food Blogger Pro Podcast Facebook group. So if anybody’s interested in joining, you can just Google Food Blogger Pro Podcast, and then you’ll see that group. I think you have to apply. I don’t know what it’s called on Facebook. But people-

Aleka Shunk: Request?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, request. Thank you.

Aleka Shunk: Okay.

Bjork Ostrom: But one of the things that we use that for is to get questions from people who listen to the podcast, because otherwise it’s just me asking from my perspective, which works out okay some of the time, but other times I forget perspectives from other people. And one of the questions from Sanilla Cammy, she says, it tied into this, how can smaller bloggers use keyword research to their advantage? And she says, what you talked about here, we know that food blogging is very competitive and there are already plenty of big food bloggers in the food niches that occupy the coveted top spots in Google.

Bjork Ostrom: So you already kind of addressed that, but can you talk about, number one, what is a keyword? We’re going to start basic. And then number two, what is keyword research? This is a three part question, which is a terrible interviewing tactic. But number three, why is it important for people in the early stages who might be beginner bloggers to think strategically about keyword research?

Aleka Shunk: Okay. I’ll try to remember all those questions.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay.

Aleka Shunk: So first, what is a keyword? And it’s so funny you say that or you ask that because you think you know what a keyword is. I talk about it in the course, right away, off the bat in my intro, because no matter how long you’ve been blogging, sometimes you assume things, and you don’t really know, or you’re afraid to ask simple questions like that. So you don’t want to come across like … There’s no stupid questions.

Aleka Shunk: What is a keyword? It’s what users type in Google. It’s a query. And it’s something that took me a long time to figure out, it can be more than one word. Even though keyword is singular, a keyword could be two, three, four words together. So that’s something that took me a little bit to understand. And it’s something that it’s very important because the ultimate search engine, Google is what people use every day, multiple times a day, and it’s how our recipes are going to be organically found by typing in these queries, these keywords.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Aleka Shunk: What was the second question? See, I forgot.

Bjork Ostrom: So a keyword’s basically anytime that somebody’s going in and searching something?

Aleka Shunk: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: So a keyword, it could be blueberry muffins, it could be how to make blueberry muffins, it could be best blueberry muffins, it could be healthy blueberry muffins, right? We could go on and on and on.

Aleka Shunk: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: To your point, it’s a little bit confusing because it sounds singular, but really it’s a query that people are typing in to get a result. And to draw the full picture, as publishers, one of the strategies, one of the main strategies is figuring out how we can rank for a specific keyword and that being it’s free to get that traffic. And so if for every person that visits, you can make one penny and you get a thousand people to visit, then you’ve made $10, or a thousand page views, however the number’s you want to use.

Bjork Ostrom: So you can start to play the numbers game a little bit. If you’re monetizing the ads, if you have a product, it’s even better because you might get more money or more revenue when somebody visits. So we understand keyword, it’s keyword, it’s queries, essentially something that somebody searches using what we’re going to assume to be Google.

Aleka Shunk: Any search engine.

Bjork Ostrom: In a search engine.

Aleka Shunk: Yeah, yeah. That’s the one.

Bjork Ostrom: So then the second part of the question is keyword research. So we know what a keyword is. What does it mean to research a keyword?

Aleka Shunk: Yeah. So basically keyword research, I mean, it’s hard to talk about that without talking about a tool, because that’s where we would keyword research. Starting off, I just used Google itself to do research. And fortunately, Google does provide certain things to help give you an idea of what people are searching for, right?

Aleka Shunk: So you, as a user, if you’re typing in a keyword like pizza, Google’s going to recommend keywords or other links, URLs, recipes related to that because they want to serve you as best as possible. So when I started off, I used Google itself to search what other keywords or what keywords are most likely searched.

Aleka Shunk: If you’re not targeting highly searched keywords, you’re not doing it right. A lot of people say, “Well, I’m ranking in a top position for this such and such keyword.” But if that keyword, if nobody’s searching it and the volume’s not there, there’s really no point, right?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Do you have an example?

Aleka Shunk: Yeah. An example of a keyword that no … Yeah. Many of my recipes when I started off, my creamed corn biscuits, I talk about that in the course. Creamed corn biscuits. I loved creamed corn. It was a Thanksgiving side dish recipe, but starting off, my blog was just all bite-size food and all finger foods and I’m like, how can I make creamed corn finger food? So I threw it in a little biscuit cup and I called it that.

Aleka Shunk: Nobody’s searching for that ever. So nobody found it unless I directed them to it using social media, but organically, forget about it. Maybe I can rank for creamed corn, but that would be on the eighth page of Google. No one’s ever going to find it. And if you type in creamed corn biscuit cups, there I am at the top, but that means nothing because nobody’s searching.

Aleka Shunk: So I think that’s important to understand the difference between ranking in a top position for something that’s actually searched versus something that’s not being searched at all.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. Yeah. And maybe we’ll get here with the next question, it’s maybe a good lead in, but that becomes this complicated in between then because it’s like I could create a recipe called Bjork’s Favorite Peanut Butter Pickle Sandwich, but if only 30 people are searching that month, like one person a day in the entire US let’s say, or globally one person searching that a day, it’s not going to really make a meaningful impact.

Bjork Ostrom: But then if you go to the other end and you are trying to rank for chocolate chip cookies, there are so many people searching for that and so many sites that are really well established. So my understanding is, you have to land somewhere in the middle then. Is that then where, third part of the question, keyword research comes in?

Aleka Shunk: Yeah, for sure. The goal is to rank, put yourself in the position to rank for a recipe as quickly as possible with the most search volume, with the least competition. That’s the three things you look for. Really the two things, low search or low competition, high search volume. I think we all know that. If you know anything about keywords, I think that’s pretty obvious, but really targeting something that’s not so competitive and really focusing.

Aleka Shunk: And I know we’ve heard the term long-tail keyword many times before, but it’s basically targeting a keyword that’s not so specific, not so broad, something that will increase your chances of being found. And I talk about in the course using modifiers and really crafting the perfect title tag, because I think that is so often overlooked.

Aleka Shunk: Every word in your H1, in your title, is super important and should be used strategically and not just thrown in there carelessly. So I think that’s super … Something that a lot of bloggers … Initially, I know I did. I just crafted the title that I thought sounded good and was clever. I didn’t really focus on any strategy or any thought behind it.

Bjork Ostrom: So a couple of things that you said there that I think would be good to point out, first, modifier. So can you talk about what a modifier is and maybe give an example of what that is?

Aleka Shunk: So pizza recipe with mushrooms, the modifier can be with mushrooms or it can be homemade pizza recipe. So basically extra keywords that are not necessarily your target or seed keyword, but you’re creating that longer-tail keyword by adding these modifiers or extra keywords onto it.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it.

Aleka Shunk: Do you know what I’m saying?

Bjork Ostrom: Yes.

Aleka Shunk: So homemade pizza recipe with mushrooms, the modifiers will be homemade or with mushrooms or something like that.

Bjork Ostrom: That makes sense. And so the idea is that let’s say you’re just starting out, maybe it’s year one, maybe it’s year two and you’re doing a pizza recipe, one of the things you could do is you could say, hey, that would be really awesome if I could rank for any time that somebody searched pizza recipe because you’d get thousands of people visiting your site.

Aleka Shunk: Oh, for sure.

Bjork Ostrom: But what I hear you saying is you could do that, but you’d probably need to be a super established site, like New York Times is probably the number one or a site like that.

Aleka Shunk: Yep.

Bjork Ostrom: And so you need to think strategically and say, if I can’t rank for that, how do I rank for something that still might get traffic, and it still might be the same recipe, but I’m focusing a little bit more by adding a modifier. So if it was a pizza recipe for me, my favorite is pineapple pizza. And also probably long tail in that, there’s not as many people doing pineapple pizza as pepperoni pizza. And so you would add a modifier and there’d be less people searching for it, but also less competition.

Aleka Shunk: Sure.

Bjork Ostrom: The other things that you had mentioned that relate to that are being really intentional, you said with your H1 and your title tag. So can you talk about what those are?

Aleka Shunk: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Why that’s also important when you’re thinking about keywords?

Aleka Shunk: Sure. Well, your title tag is basically the result that comes up in the SERPs, in Google on the pages. That’s what shows up and-

Bjork Ostrom: Sorry, SERPs being, just as a real quick explainer, search engine result page?

Aleka Shunk: Yep. Yep.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep? Okay, great.

Aleka Shunk: Search engine results. So the results that Google’s providing all the pages. And then your H1 is your actual recipe title, what shows up on your post itself. And usually they’re the same. A while ago, I would encourage people to tweak your title tag a bit to entice people, to click on your recipe by adding certain words, which sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t, but I’d encourage them to keep them as similar as possible, but crafting it so that …

Aleka Shunk: And you have to think about things, like the title tag, I think it’s like 60 characters they give you. You don’t want it to cut off. And especially if it’s an important keyword that people are looking for, if you cut off the pineapple on your pizza, people don’t see that, they’re not going to click. So trying to keep it short and sweet, but still add those long-term keywords and make it the perfect length and targeting the perfect keywords is important.

Bjork Ostrom: Can you talk a little bit about adding in the items that encourage people to click? Because I think that’s a little tip that not as many people know about. And is that something that you do? Is that something that you see a lot of other people doing?

Aleka Shunk: Yeah, it is.

Bjork Ostrom: And how do you do that in a way where it separates from the blog post versus a search result?

Aleka Shunk: So it’s something that I do occasionally when I feel like it’s super necessary and maybe I feel like something that will make it pop from the other results, the other 10 results on the first page. It does, for example, a word like the best, right? Well, first of all, you better make sure it’s the best. You don’t want to just throw this into every recipe title, but that, obviously if I’m the user, I’m going to probably click on the best pizza recipe, as opposed to just a general pizza recipe. It’s going to make me more interested in that.

Aleka Shunk: Easy, quick, from scratch, five minute, those are those keywords that are going to really make your result pop, stand out. And I usually will examine all the results on the first page first and the titles and see. And I don’t want it to blend in and look just like everyone else’s. So that’s usually the cases where I will add a word or something to my title tag.

Bjork Ostrom: And it reminds me of in the early days when I was figuring out what does it look like to be an entrepreneur, I would wholesale shoes from Chicago. So I’d get shoes shipped up and then would list them on eBay. And then eBay, you’d have to pay additional for putting a little star by it or getting it bold or to change the result in a way that looks-

Aleka Shunk: Gives you a leg up.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And the nice thing is with this it’s you can do that and it’s free. If you’re intentional about adding some of those things to your title tag, then it might encourage people to click, which obviously is a great thing because more people are then coming to your site. So are you doing that with Yoast and how do you do that in a way where it doesn’t also update your blog post because the title in the H1, the blog post title wouldn’t include that, but what I hear you saying is the title would. Is that right?

Aleka Shunk: Yeah. I know that it’s something recently that we’re encouraged as bloggers to keep the title tag in H1 as closely related as possible, but if we were to change and add a word or something, then … And if you’re not a food blogger, I feel like with a food blogger it gets a little bit tricky. But even if you’re not a food blogger, it’s something that you can take advantage of.

Aleka Shunk: The Yoast plugin on the bottom gives you the opportunity to change it, or in that bottom window, above the meta description. And you can easily just change it there and it will not affect your H1 at all. But more recently I’ve been thinking if I’m going to add quick and easy in my title tag, most of the time, I’ll just throw that in my H1, too. Really, what’s the difference? So, yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that makes sense. Cool. Love the little tips, the tricks, and I think those are the things where if you add those up over time, if you think strategically about how you’re titling something, if you look at other search results and see what are other people saying, how are they structuring things, if you do keyword research and find, hey, here’s something that has the potential to have a decent amount of traffic and isn’t super competitive, all of those things add up over time.

Bjork Ostrom: And the one thing we haven’t really dug into yet, which is kind of the sweet spot of this interview is the actual keyword research process. So what does that look like? Do you brainstorm once a month, all the different recipes you could create and then go in and research ones and try and find ones that are in your sweet spot? How do you go about doing keyword research? What is it and how do you do it?

Aleka Shunk: So do I do it in advance? I wish I was that organized. I do not. I literally will keyword research words every day just because I love doing it. And if I find a keyword, and I randomly come across them every day, I’ll search it up quickly and see if it’s something I’m going to add to my … And I do have an ongoing list. Then I do it every day.

Aleka Shunk: But you don’t have to, you can do it in monthly increments because I know it takes time. To do quality, thorough, deep keyword research should take you a couple hours, and I feel like people don’t. And it does depend, the recipes. Some recipes are a little bit more to the point and you don’t need to dig that deep. If there’s more variations of the keyword, then you definitely want to spend time looking through it.

Aleka Shunk: So what I would do is, say, talk about how there’s three phases of keyword research. The first phase is the best phase to research, that is from scratch, when you don’t have any recipe idea in mind. You’re just starting with a clean slate and you have a wider net to cast of keywords and you can target whatever you want, according to your niche, and you go from there.

Aleka Shunk: And you can do your research ahead of time and collectively write down all the keywords that come up for, maybe you start with a chicken recipe and you notice that these keywords keep popping up, or this cooking method keeps popping up, or this flavor, this something keeps popping up, or this ingredient, and you’re writing it down, and then afterwards you craft and put together.

Aleka Shunk: It’s so much easier to target that way because you’re not held back or restrained by a recipe, whereas in phase two, is what I call it, is after you already have a recipe. So it could be a recipe that you’ve been making for your family over the last few weeks or one that’s been passed down and you want to share it with your users. And in that case, that phase is a little bit harder to keyword research after the fact that the recipe’s already developed and you already have a set ingredients and cooking method.

Aleka Shunk: I mean, if say it’s a chicken marsala recipe and it’s delicious and you definitely know you want to share it, what direction are we going to just target chicken marsala, because I’m sure that’s super competitive. If you’re a larger blogger, maybe you can rank for it, but definitely not if you’re starting off.

Aleka Shunk: So it’s harder to tweak the title and your keywords when a recipe’s already developed. So that’s not the ideal phase to be in, but it’s still possible. You can maybe research certain cooking methods, and if you happen to do it in a cast iron skillet, and that looks like a keyword that is highly searched for that recipe, you can throw that in your title. And it happened, coincidentally, it worked out that way.

Aleka Shunk: And then the third phase is the worst phase to be in, but it’s still possible to do research, that’s after your recipe’s already published and on your site and has been sitting there. Then you have to think about, well, I have to go back and I have to update it. And I realize it’s not really ranking for any keywords, so how can I update it and optimize it to target a better keyword?

Aleka Shunk: Do I need to change the entire post? Do I need to delete it and just start over? Do I need to just tweak the recipe title of it? Do I need to add some more subsections or maybe some other questions addressed to better optimize for another keyword that I originally didn’t think of?

Aleka Shunk: And that’s definitely the hardest and something that a lot of people ask me about when I do my coaching sessions is we go through all those older posts and think about, well, what’s worth updating? How can we update it? Is it even possible to update this and target any keyword? And if not, then we go in a different direction.

Aleka Shunk: So that’s really the ideal process or phase is the first phase from scratch. And when I do that, I use a keyword research tool. It’s a must. If you’re not using a tool, you should definitely consider investing in one. There’s Keysearch out there, which is I think $30 a month. Very manageable, it’s not super expensive, like the other ones are. Don’t buy some Starbucks coffees for a couple days and you can afford that. It’s not going to break the budget and it’s very user-friendly and just a must when you’re keyword researching. So you use that. You get an idea of the competition level and if it’s really worth going after.

Aleka Shunk: And use Google, always use the actual results to compare and see if it’s actually worth it, because I think we rely too much on keyword research tools. Although, and I’m on it every day, I’m on multiple tools, it’s super helpful, it should not be the end-all, be all for deciding whether you should target a keyword because it’s just a machine. It’s just going to tell you things based on numbers. You are going to be the best person to evaluate whether that keyword is worth targeting. And you can see if the recipes are meeting user intent. If they’re helpful, if they’re optimized well, which the tool doesn’t do that.

Aleka Shunk: So I think a lot of people just look at a score and they’re like, “Oh, there’s no way I’m going to be able to rank for this keyword.” And you do a little bit deeper research and you actually read what’s on the first page, and you’re like, “Oh, just because they have, say, a high domain authority doesn’t mean I’m not going to be able to outrank them.”

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. So you mentioned tools and I think that would be one thing that people would be really interested in hearing about. You mentioned Keysearch is one, a lower-cost entry-level one that can do the job. What are the other ones, just so people know the lay of the land? And if you could rank order them, or are they all pretty similar in terms of what you’d need?

Aleka Shunk: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Is one like a Lexus and the other’s like a Ford Focus? What is the landscape of actual tools that you’d use?

Aleka Shunk: So there are so many tools, some free, some paid, and I literally break this down in my course, the free tools, the paid tools, and I do a side-by-side comparison and a chart and tell you what the pros and cons and what I like from each tool, because I think that’s super important to understand before you invest in a tool, what it’s going to offer you and what’s going to be the best one.

Aleka Shunk: The most popular and the most used are going to be Keysearch, Semrush, and Ahrefs. Keywords Everywhere is also a tool that a lot of people use, which is an extension and is pretty reliable, but I feel like it’s not as popular. It doesn’t give you as much as the other tools do. I use a extension, Keyword Surfer, that also helps and it’s free. While you’re on Google, it’ll just give you a quick idea of an approximate search volume. And those are really the top four that I talk about in my course. Well, really just those three.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And then can you talk about data as it relates to those tools? Because I think one thing that I found to be true for myself as I started to just get more into the world of all things online was I had this belief around all data being accurate. And I think, especially in this world, you start to realize, oh, this is incomplete data. And you reference that a little bit by saying you need to check and look on your own to verify when you search that keyword, what does that look like, what are the results like.

Bjork Ostrom: So to the extent that you know, how do these tools get this data? How much do you trust it? And what should publishers have in mind when they think about using a keyword research as it relates to the accuracy of the data?

Aleka Shunk: Well, what’s recommended is Keysearch because apparently it does use Google APIs, which is basically an interface that talks with Google and gives just more knowledge and more accuracy directly from Google. I think Keywords Everywhere also uses APIs. But from my experience I’ve seen across, compared to Semrush and Ahrefs and Keysearch, which I’ve used them all and compared, just out of curiosity, they’re pretty close most of the time to each other. So I haven’t seen a huge difference in those.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Aleka Shunk: You had asked about …

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. I think that addresses it. Is one considered more premium than the other? And the nice thing about a tool like Keysearch is it’s created with, I think solopreneurs in mind a little bit more, whereas the Semrush, I think Semrush is a public company.

Aleka Shunk: Companies, yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: So it’s more enterprisey in terms of its pricing. It’s a department that would not blink at spending $500, whereas if you’re early in your blogging, you probably don’t want to pay $500 for a tool.

Aleka Shunk: Yeah. But with that said, and I agree, I think when you start off, you have a small budget and you need to invest wisely. But I do think if you really want to bring your keyword research game to the next level and you’re serious about this whole blogging thing, Semrush and Ahrefs are hundred percent worth the money, in my opinion. They can do so much more quicker, give you so many more. They have so many more features.

Aleka Shunk: My favorite thing is really I’ll very often research a competitor. So if Keysearch says you can maybe rank for this keyword, and this gives me an approximate volume, I will check out the top results, really the first or second result in Google for that keyword and then pop that URL into an Ahrefs or Semrush and see what traffic they’re actually getting, what keywords they’re actually ranking for.

Aleka Shunk: And you can do this in Keyword Explorer as well in Keysearch, but it doesn’t give you as much information as Ahrefs and Semrush. It’s really awesome, they can tell you your keyword history and if you’re trending upward and on the right track, because a lot of us wonder, should we update a post, we’re not getting traffic, where does it lie in the SERPs, is it ready to update?

Aleka Shunk: All of us are so anxious to update posts, but sometimes if you see that keyword history just going up like a rollercoaster, just hold off a little bit longer, because sometimes it takes longer than 12 months or so, which is usually the recommended time to wait before updating and it’s on its way up. And Ahrefs allow, Semrush … Keysearch is starting to allow things like that as well, but I find they’re not as user friendly as the more expensive tools.

Aleka Shunk: So I do love them. And if you can afford that, you definitely want to. And even if you can’t afford it for 12 months straight, I encourage people to just buy one month subscription and do as much keyword research in that month as you can, and then you can cancel it. At least you’ll get a good amount of knowledge or information from there.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, batch it.

Aleka Shunk: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Bjork Ostrom: And to be clear, those tools, the default isn’t $500 a month. That would be more the more expensive plans. I think they’re-

Aleka Shunk: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: I’m looking at Semrush and it looks like 120.

Aleka Shunk: 199.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, 119.

Aleka Shunk: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: And I think Ahrefs is similar and to your point, come with more features and functionality and whatnot. This is more of a less technical, but just a curiosity. So in this world, people are doing similar things like publishing content on a blog, on social media, but they’re all coming to the table with different skills and interests. And I think for some people, the idea of keyword research is in their sweet spot. They love the idea of doing that, finding something that ranks well or has a potential to rank well, spending time creating a recipe around that and seeing it perform well. Like I have friends who, not in this niche, but they love that. That’s what they do. If they could just spend all day in Ahrefs, they would.

Aleka Shunk: Me too. Me too.

Bjork Ostrom: And then there’s people on the other side, who it’s like, “Please no. What I want be doing is I want to be in the kitchen, working on a recipe that is inspired by a meal that I had when I was traveling in Italy last week. And I just want to create that recipe and not do keyword research against that.” Do you have advice for the people who would fall in that latter camp around inspired creation? How can they still do that, to not give up on the thing that gives them joy, but to still be smart about it from a strategy perspective?

Aleka Shunk: That’s a great question. When I started food blogging, I would literally lay asleep or awake in bed at night just thinking of all the different recipe creation possibilities. And once I realized that those ideas weren’t being found and that keyword research sucks the inspiration out of us a bit, it was a little bit disheartening and made me a little bit sad about the whole idea of food blogging. I’m like, “I really have to strategize? Why can’t I just publish everything and anything that I want? Why can’t I be creative?”

Aleka Shunk: But that’s the reality of it. We are competing with so many other people, so many other blogs, so many other websites, and this is the way it is. Do you have to sacrifice all creativity and inspiration? No, for sure, definitely not, but think about maybe doing a balance. I still create and share recipes that I truly love, even though I know that there’s not much volume out there.

Aleka Shunk: I will be honest, I rarely create a recipe that has zero search volume. I will somehow try to get in some type of keyword and there are ways around it. If you’re doing the right research, you can still share that amazing, nostalgic recipe that you had when you were a child and still target certain keywords, you just have to do the right research.

Aleka Shunk: And even if it involves maybe throwing one extra ingredient in, or maybe cooking on the grill, as opposed to in a skillet or using an Instant Pot as opposed to a Dutch oven, certain things just to tweak it just so you get the traffic, it’s completely worth it. And that motivation is going to keep you going, if the inspiration is not always there. You know what I’m saying?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. I think that idea of balance is a great one where you’re not maybe necessarily doing things that are a hundred percent inspiration and you’re also not doing things that are a hundred percent search, unless you are somebody who loves that process, doing keyword research and creating content around that.

Bjork Ostrom: I think the other thing that’s important to point out is it’s like, what game are you trying to play? And if you’re trying to play the game of search engine optimization, but you don’t love the process of optimizing for search, then as a creator, it’s probably worth looking at a different game to play or strategy, if you want to say that.

Bjork Ostrom: There’s lots of different ways that you can be successful as a creator online, like I see a lot of incredible, artistic, wonderful creators doing Substack. Their strategy is they know that they have followers, they know that they don’t want to play the game of search and try and outrank, and so what they do is they say, “I’m going to speak to my followers and create in a way that feels really organic, and it’s an email.” You don’t have to optimize an email for search.

Bjork Ostrom: So I think it’s an important thing to point out as we, as creators, think about what is our best path. And if we’re like, our only path is search, I think it’s important that we remember there’s lots of different ways that you can play the game. Search obviously is a really important one, people talk about it a lot in this niche, but lots of other avenues to explore as well.

Aleka Shunk: Yeah. I think it’s also important to point out that there are recipes that will go viral or get a lot of traffic on other social media, like Pinterest and those. It’s funny because the more unique you are on Pinterest, the more successful I found. So it all depends. If you really like a recipe, it could … I’ve had recipes that zero keyword, but Pinterest traffic is still, even though Pinterest stinks right now, I think the traffic still is coming from those pins.

Aleka Shunk: And then, if you do publish a recipe that you really like, and you had zero keyword research done, you can analyze what keywords Google thinks is good for that recipe in matching user intent and you can work off of that. And when you update it the next time, tweak it according to what Google is ranking you for.

Bjork Ostrom: Can you talk about user intent? What does that mean?

Aleka Shunk: It’s so tricky because with recipes, and this is the biggest confusion when it comes to food bloggers and probably the most common question I’ve had in regards to certain recipes and ranking and updating. It’s basically creating what the user is looking for and what they’re expecting. So if you’re not giving the user what exactly they want or are searching, they’re not going to click on your recipe, or they’re not going to spend a lot of time on your recipe. So the dwell time will be super low, right?

Aleka Shunk: And you can check that in Google Analytics if you want, but that’s a sign that it’s not matching the right intent. Meaning, if say somebody is searching meatball sandwich and maybe you’re using maybe frozen meatballs and they don’t want frozen, they want homemade meatballs or from scratch. And you can compare with the other recipes on the first page, and if it’s not matching up, you’re going to fall in the rankings.

Aleka Shunk: And I see this so often, especially with dietary niches and vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free niches all the time where bloggers will think that they have the right keyword down, but they’re not realizing that somebody may be ranking for … What was one of the …

Aleka Shunk: I was working with somebody one on one a few months ago and the keyword was so specific and they basically took two modifiers or two long-tail keywords and put it together. And I said, “Well, people may be looking for gluten-free scones with blueberries, but are they …” Well, that was a bad example.

Aleka Shunk: Basically, the idea is that the user needs to know what to expect, and if you’re not giving them what they expect, it’s not going to be found. You got to make sure both keywords together are being found. Yes, they may be searching for this type of recipe, this type of muffin, gluten-free, but are they searching for gluten-free pistachio scones? Do you know what I’m saying? Pistachio scone recipe could have a super high search volume, but if gluten-free pistachio scone recipe doesn’t have a high search volume, the users are not going to be staying on the result and Google’s going to push you down. Does that make sense?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. It’s almost like I think a lot of times come back to this core foundational piece of what we’re trying to do and what Google’s trying to do. And what Google’s trying to do, what any good search engine’s trying to do is successfully match a search term to a result that’s going to be the most helpful. In our world, it’s like, how do we give people the best recipe? Or maybe it’s a food process, how do we give them the best explainer for how to make tofu? And that’s what Google’s trying to do.

Bjork Ostrom: And I think sometimes we get lost as publishers by thinking about what does Google want, but that’s what Google wants is how to best serve the piece of content that is going to fulfill the intent of what the user is searching. And I think if we can keep that at the front of our minds, you can layer that with technical best practice around search, which is important, it’s foundational.

Bjork Ostrom: But I think that as an explanation of user intent, to your point of, hey, give somebody what they’re looking for. And if you are going after a keyword, just because you see it’s really good, but then the content that you’re serving doesn’t match that, then Google is going to through whatever means, figure out this actually isn’t-

Aleka Shunk: Yeah, Google’s smart.

Bjork Ostrom: Even though you’re saying by all the technical things you’re doing that this is the keyword, when it comes to it, that’s not actually what that person needs or what they’re finding helpful. And what I hear you saying is in those scenarios that will be impacted by your ranking being pushed down or not as performing as-

Aleka Shunk: Yeah. Yeah. I use the results. I mean, Google tells you what it wants, right? Just look at the results on the first page and get an idea of what other bloggers are offering. If they’re offering most of the recipe cooked in the oven and yours isn’t in the oven, yours is maybe in the air fryer, maybe that’s not what users are going to like, because either they don’t have an air fryer or they weren’t planning on that. So certain things like that I think is often overlooked by a lot of bloggers, especially in the food niche. It’s right there and it’s free information, so take your time and analyze all the competition.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. So Chelsea from the Facebook group asked when should I be worried about competing with my own recipes, for example, if I’m trying to rank for blueberry muffins, shooting myself in the foot for also making a lemon blueberry muffin recipe.

Aleka Shunk: Oh boy. So that’s a great question. I feel like something that I used to always get confused, because we’re encouraged, I feel like to keep doing similar things. So I think we think in the food blogging niche, similar recipes, right? But that’s not necessarily true.

Aleka Shunk: I mean lemon blueberry muffins and blueberry muffins are very similar, but if you think about it and keep in mind that our recipes are going to rank for the same keywords, many of our recipes, and it’s inevitable. And that’s okay to happen when it happens, but it’s important that our target keywords are not competing with the other target keywords, right?

Aleka Shunk: So lemon blueberry muffins, we could be ranking for blueberry muffins with lemon, lemon blueberry muffins, blueberry muffins, just blueberry muffins lemon without the with. So different variations of that keyword. And they all could have high search volume.

Aleka Shunk: And most of the time, your blueberry muffin recipe won’t rank for lemon because that’s a key ingredient. You can see the results on Google are going to be all blueberry muffins, no lemon. And the results for lemon blueberry muffins will be most likely all lemon blueberry muffins. So there’s so much competition out there that Google’s not going to rank your blueberry muffin recipe for lemon because you’re targeting an entirely different keyword even though the recipe’s similar.

Aleka Shunk: So to answer her question, I wouldn’t be so concerned. It’s very difficult to compete unless it’s super similar. But just to be safe, I probably wouldn’t do or create a recipe that similar just because there’s bound to be other smaller volume keywords, like homemade muffins that essentially both recipes could rank for that keyword or moist muffins or from scratch muffins.

Aleka Shunk: So do you want those keywords to compete? They could. And usually we don’t want that to happen. So it depends on the recipe. I haven’t found it to be much of an issue, but it is something that you have to keep in mind. And when you can control it, try to make them a little bit more different than that.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that makes sense. Variety is probably going to be a good thing compared to something that is so close. You don’t want to do 10 iterations of blueberry muffins unless they’re-

Aleka Shunk: No, probably not.

Bjork Ostrom: … drastically different.

Aleka Shunk: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: So let’s say that somebody comes to you and they say, I’ve never done any of this, I don’t know where to start. Obviously your course, which we can talk about is going to be super helpful in walking people through that, but just at a high level, where would you say the outline of how people can navigate next steps for starting to dip their toe into keyword research and start to learn a little bit? What would the outline of those next steps be?

Aleka Shunk: So I think there’s, other than purchasing a tool, Keysearch, we can start off with that, get to learn and know the tool as best as you can and become an expert at the tool because a lot of us will use the tool and we’ll only use one feature over and over again. But there’s so many things and the tools are constantly being updated with new features that you’re never going to be able to be an expert in keyword research or anything if you’re not really fully learning it to its fullest capabilities.

Aleka Shunk: And I am going to create a course on just Ahrefs and Semrush, because I feel like those two tools are super complicated and you almost need some guidance with that. But know the tool that you use. And you learn by doing and learn from your own rankings and your own blog.

Aleka Shunk: Once you have recipes that have been up and you think that you’re doing a good job of keyword research, go back and revisit them and check out your traffic on Google Analytics and see if it’s worth what you’re getting. Check out your keywords, what you’re ranking for.

Aleka Shunk: And the most important thing, a lot of us will be satisfied with ranking on the first page of a mediocre keyword that brings us decent traffic, but we fail to pursue that top, highest volume keyword and it’s sitting on the second page and we don’t even know, say it’s in the 11th spot. So it’s at the top of the second page and we don’t even know it’s there because we don’t analyze and track our keywords, which I talk about in my second course.

Aleka Shunk: It’s so important and something that a lot of people don’t just … I don’t know if they don’t think it’s worth it or they don’t know how to do it, but it’s so important because if that keyword is hanging out in the 11th spot, it’s so close to being on the first page. And once it’s on the first page, now it’s going to start getting exposure and hopefully move up.

Aleka Shunk: And you can do things like push it out, maybe promote it on Pinterest or push it out to social more or update it a little bit or add more links to it, to just give it a little boost. Don’t give up until that keyword is in the top spot on Google. Don’t be satisfied with just ranking mediocre keywords.

Bjork Ostrom: And I think that’s where the strategy piece comes in. And if you are thinking strategically, and even if you just layer in. If it’s not the kind of thing you’re super excited about doing, but hey, you’re going to get your favorite drink and sit down at Starbucks and look at what piece of content is on the second page of Google for a keyword.

Bjork Ostrom: And simply going through that process once a month, you’re going to be able to save a lot of energy around generating traffic by thinking strategically how you can move that from the second page to the first page. So I think that’s a great point. And one of the ways that you could use those tools is to say, hey, where is this sitting right now, when I look at where rankings are? And how do I strategically then lift that ranking? And that could be an entirely different podcast episode with all the strategies.

Aleka Shunk: Yes, I know, rather than just-

Bjork Ostrom: Strategies with that-

Aleka Shunk: … blindlessly updating. Blindlessly? That’s not a word.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Aleka Shunk: Blindly. Aimlessly. I combined-

Bjork Ostrom: Aimlessly and blindly.

Aleka Shunk: I made my own word.

Bjork Ostrom: Which I’m sure we can relate to feeling like we’re blindlessly working sometimes.

Aleka Shunk: Oh my gosh. But yeah, rather than just doing it with no strategy behind it. You’re wasting your time essentially. So yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. So you had mentioned your course a couple times. Are there places that … Or there are places. Where are the places that people can check those out? If they want to dive deep on this, how do they do that? Would love for you to be able to give a promo on that so people can find that.

Aleka Shunk: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Cooking With Keywords is basically the umbrella of the school. So I have a keyword research course that I launched a year and a half ago. And that really is for beginner bloggers, advanced bloggers, everyone in between. It’s my master course on keyword research. And you can find that on my blog. There’s a link directly to the Teachable site.

Aleka Shunk: And then I have my second course that I launched this year on rank tracking and analyzing keywords, which I think is a nice segue from the first course. After you’ve been established for a year or so, I think that course would really be perfect for you because like we said, you have to know where your rankings are sitting or else you’re putting your effort into posts that really aren’t worth it.

Aleka Shunk: And then I also offer coaching one on one to go and go through your keywords one at a time and see what’s worth putting effort in, what keywords may need a little tweaking, what keywords really are not doing it for you, and if user intent is being matched, all of that. So all of that can be found on my website, at alekasgettogether.com.

Bjork Ostrom: Great. And we’ll include it in the show notes as well. Aleka, so great to chat with you. Thanks for all the information. Really appreciate it.

Aleka Shunk: Yes. It was so great to be here. Thank you guys so much and reach out if you have any questions.

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI.

Bjork Ostrom: So here’s a funny thing on the Food Blogger Pro podcast, I don’t often talk about Food Blogger Pro membership. It’s a huge part of what we do and the reality is the majority of our time as a team is spent thinking about and working with the Food Blogger Pro members. So we wanted to take some time to remind people that if you want to take the next step, like go beyond just this podcast, you can join Food Blogger Pro. If you’re interested, all you need to do is go to foodbloggerpro.com. We’re going to tell you more about what a membership entails, and if you’re interested in signing up, you can just hit the Join Now button. What does that mean? Well, we have a community forum where there’s the food blogger pro industry experts, many names from which you probably recognize from this podcast.

We also have deals and discounts on some of the most popular and important tools for food creators and food bloggers. We have courses that dive deep on photography and video and social media applications. We do live q and as with industry experts. Like recently, we had a conversation with an SEO expert named Eddie from RIV where he talked about republishing and how to be strategic with your approach to republishing and why that’s important. We do these coaching calls where I jump on with a creator and we talk about how we can look at their business and grow their business. And the cool thing is for those of you who listen to this podcast, we actually have a members-only podcast called FBP On the Go where we take some of these video lessons that we’re doing, like these coaching calls or these Live Q&As with experts and we roll those up into a podcast. So if you don’t have time to sit down and watch those, you can actually just listen to them like you do this podcast, but it’s a members-only podcast. So if you’re interested, again, you can go to food blogger pro.com and check it out. It’s a great next step for anybody who’s been listening to the podcast for a long time and wants to dive deeper into growing and building and scaling their business.

Emily Walker: Hey, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team and you are listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. This week on the podcast, Bjork is interviewing Katie Trant from Foodie Brand Lab and the Food Blog, Hey Nutrition Lady. Katie has a master’s in nutrition and started her own food site Hey Nutrition Lady, way back in 2010. She also works full-time at brand and business consultancies, helping big companies define their brand. So it seems only natural that she decided to start Foodie Brand Lab to help food bloggers like you refine their brand strategy. In this interview, Bjork and Katie discuss everything you need to know about brand, what it is, why it matters, how to define brand, how it can influence your business strategy, and why brand is so important in this day and age. Katie also provides actionable steps that you can use to start building a stronger brand and to help you stand out in the crowded space of food blogging. Katie makes the argument that a strong brand can help withstand algorithm changes, ensures so many interesting thought exercises and ways to think about your business and your goals in a fresh way. This is a really fascinating interview that will give you a brand new perspective, pun intended, on branding and your business. We know you’ll learn a lot, and if you enjoy this episode, please take a moment to share it with your followers on email or social media. We always appreciate it. Without further ado, all at Bjork, take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Katie, welcome to the podcast.

Katie Trant: Thank you so much for having me. Bjork.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, you are tuning in late. You’re tuning in from Sweden. I don’t know if you’ve ever done a Swedish interview before, which is fun for me. If you draw the 23 and me, if I do a genetic test, it’s like that’s where my distant relatives would be. What’s the reason for you being in Sweden?

Katie Trant: So my husband got recruited for a job here back in 2010 and we thought we’d give it two years. We had a two year work visa and now we’re trapped and here you’re here we are.

Bjork Ostrom: You’ll never be able to leave.

Katie Trant: I don’t think so. I mean it’s really, especially when you have small kids, what’s provided by the government and the lifestyle here, the work-life balance, it’s just the winters are tough, but you can’t beat the lifestyle.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s what they say about Minnesota. It’s kind of similar, which are tough, but the people are great. Lifestyle is great. We’re going to be talking about all things branding today. Speaking of work, work-life balance, the work that you are doing, it sounds like for a long time has been in the world of branding and working with generally bigger companies, helping them go through the process of really tightening up their brand or going through a rebrand. Talk a little bit about what that’s looked like for you as you’ve worked in the world of the agency world, helping companies with their brands.

Katie Trant: Yeah, I want to back up a little bit before I got into the agency world, if I may, because I actually started my career path going into nutrition and I write a food blog. I’ve been writing it since 2010 called Hey Nutrition Lady. But as I mentioned, we moved to Sweden in 2010 and when we arrived here I was like, what am I going to do? Am I going to try and work as a dietitian in Swedish or navigate my way through the nutrition world in Swedish? And that just felt like an insurmountable

Bjork Ostrom: Task

Katie Trant: To do.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s complex enough if you’re doing it in your native language and then to do it when you’re trying to do it in another

Katie Trant: Culture,

Bjork Ostrom: But then also another language. Yeah,

Katie Trant: I mean organic chemistry, yes, in Swedish would’ve absolutely been of me. But prior to nutrition, I actually did a degree in creative writing back in the day, and so I decided I did a master’s degree in nutrition here in Stockholm and then I decided partway through that I wasn’t really interested in pursuing a PhD and I really needed a job and I kind of fell into the agency world. I knew a bunch of people that worked in agencies, it was pretty easy to market myself as a native English-speaking copywriter. And so I started at the first agency here in 2012 and there I worked a lot with food and nutrition brands that happened to also be working with branding. But also Electrolux is a Swedish company, so I worked on a lot of their kitchen lines and things like that. And it turned out that my background in science was a really big asset in the agency world because I had a creative role as a copywriter, but

I could go toe to toe with a strategist, I could interpret data and so on. And I just kind of fell in love with the pace of the agency world and the constantly changing clients and that. So I have for the last 12 years been in various positions from copywriter to creative director, now I’m agency director here and working with all manner of clients, big Swedish brands that have a global presence and smaller brands that are more niche in the Nordics and kind of everything in between. So it’s been a great journey and been exposed to a ton of different industries and niches as well along the way.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, and one of the exciting things is you’ve taken, it kind of feels like a Venn diagram where you have that experience with branding in the agency world, your experience with nutrition and food and then also the site that you’ve been working on

Katie Trant: And

Bjork Ostrom: You’ve kind of found the overlap of all of those and you’re now starting to work with people who have a food creator business blog or they publish content online, maybe on social platforms to help them go through the branding process to make sure it’s not always necessarily even rebranding, it’s just like establishing your brand. Is that similar to what you would do with some of these like a multinational Swedish corporation that’s going through the process? It’s just smaller company but similar

Katie Trant: Process? Definitely. I think that a lot of the work, you very rarely get a huge, working with big corporate companies, you very rarely get a huge branding or rebranding project. It’s typically refining the brand strategy, working on various components of the brand platform, sharpening up bits and pieces here and there. So a lot of it is looking at what’s already there, what needs to change, what needs to evolve, how you’re trying to expand your offering, find new markets, find a new audience, that kind of thing. So

Bjork Ostrom: There’s

Katie Trant: A lot of fine tuning.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, and it’s interesting, I have friends who do video work and they’re working with Saab, but actually there’s a subsidiary of Saab called scpa, which is they do these AI-powered boats and it’s just really incredible. But within a big company there’s companies and then and all of these different kind of considerations. So what have you, in working with companies like that and working with brands like that, what’s the realization you’ve come to around what they’re trying to do when somebody comes to you and they’re like, we need to focus on our brand, that feels almost like the what’s at the top, it’s brand, we need to figure out brand, but what’s below that? What’s actually happening or what does somebody actually want when they say, I want to have a strong brand? What does that mean?

Katie Trant: I mean, I think we need to go back even further and define what is a brand. Because I hear in food blogging in the last year, definitely the conversation has shifted dramatically to it’s time to build a brand. Everybody has to build a brand, you need a brand. And I totally agree with that statement. I think more than ever the time is now, but nobody’s talking about what that means or what a brand even is. And when I hear food bloggers particularly talk about brand, these big companies, they’ve got a brand team, they’ve got a head of brand, they’ve got all kinds of people who work under them so they understand the architecture of a brand. It’s just that part of that architecture probably needs to shift when it comes to food bloggers, I hear people talking about brand and most of the time they might be talking about one part of a brand. They might be talking about brand identity or brand personality or some aspect of this very complex ecosystem that is a brand. And I always start by telling people what a brand is not, which is kind of easier than defining what a brand actually is. And I think it’s important for people to know that a brand is not a logo, it’s not a color scheme, it’s not a name, it’s not a tagline, it’s not a visual style and it’s not even you, the business owner in most cases. And in fact a brand is, it’s about perception and it doesn’t belong to us. A brand is, it lives in the hearts and minds of the people who interact with the brand and they decide what, which is kind of scary because it’s out of your hands. But

What’s empowering about working with your brand is all of the brand building and brand strategy that you do is directed at shaping that perception. And that’s something that’s true regardless of whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or someone running your business from your kitchen in Minnesota. Those are equally true.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it feels like it’s not those you talk about, I think initially people would be like brand is the colors of your site and the font size, but it also feels like it’s not those, right, that’s included within it, but that’s not exclusively what it is. Is that what you’re looking at? Exactly.

Katie Trant: Yeah. I mean all of those are components of a brand. I mean the colors, the logo, the color scheme, the typography you choose, those are all components of your brand identity. But brand identity itself is not the brand.

Bjork Ostrom: Brand identity in that case is a sub component of broader brand. So could you break brand up into different buckets like that? So brand identity being one of them that would be like fonts, colors, what is the spacing? Lindsay’s been working with the Katie on her team to figure out how are we going to get good spacing on the print page. It’s like that’s not exclusively brand, but maybe it’s part of it. So that’s a brand identity.

Katie Trant: It’s

Bjork Ostrom: Almost like design which goes in,

Katie Trant: Yeah, that’s identity. And also, I mean the spacing on a print page is also part of brand experience because it’s how the person who’s interacting with your brand experiences it. But there’s absolutely buckets when it comes to building a brand we work with. There’s lots of different terminology depending on what agency you’re working with or who you’re working with, but call it a brand platform or a brand house or something like that. And those can be as complex or as simple as you want them to be, but it breaks it into manageable content buckets. And so brand identity is certainly one of those along with brand personality. And then you have sort of the more strategic parts of your brand, which would be your brand position, your brand purpose, your brand values, a value proposition sometimes. And then you can get into as part of the brand personality, you can get into tone of voice, how your brand sounds, how you act in different channels and so on. So those are all different modules I would say of the

Bjork Ostrom: Brand and to drive the point home further, if you worked with a designer

On redesigning, that would be some of the identity stuff, but you wouldn’t necessarily work with them on warming what your personality is with the brand, what the voice is, is it irreverent, is it serious? Is it really detail-oriented or the value proposition that is, we talk about that almost like adjacent, would you say to niche in a way where it’s like, hey, here’s special about me, here’s why it’s or the brand, here’s why you’d want to come to me versus another random site that’s posting recipes in our case. Can you talk a little bit about brand value proposition because that one is interesting.

Katie Trant: Well, I think you mentioned niche and I think that I’ve been having a lot of conversations with people about niche because you get told in the blog world you got to find a niche, you got to a niche down. And I actually think some of the most powerful brands in food blogging do not have a niche, which is a really interesting thing. But I think brand is more powerful than niche. Your niche is definitely a part of your brand and it’s a part of your brand position specifically because you’ve narrowed in on a position and your position is relevant in the market in which you act. So I do this brand mapping exercise, I’m using my hands for the people that are listening, but we have a matrix and you kind of find your quadrant of the internet. And so I write a vegetarian food blog, so I’m not competing with someone who’s writing a barbecue food blog.

So the position is amongst other vegetarian food blogs and what makes me special in that position, how can I compete and stand out amongst other players in that space? And you get kind of more and more and more granular until you find your position and then your value proposition exists. It’s one of the few parts of a brand platform that’s actually designed to be external facing. So it’s actually your messaging to your audience that you’re serving, but it’s saying, Hey, this is how I can serve you the user in my specific position or niche that I’m here to work with.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it seems like some of these things that we’re generally kind of aware of, okay, we need to make sure that from brand identity that is consistent and it looks the same and emails match with what the web experience would be and what is your voice. People talk about voice when you’re writing. I think we generally understand that and especially when it is a personal brand, and I think it’s almost, tell me if this feels off, but it almost feels easier when it’s a personal brand because it’s like who am I trying to be? And then using the medium of social platform or email or blog to express that, but it still feels helpful to solidify what specifically that is. So you are almost aware of your own tendencies. I think about it within the context of this podcast, like this podcast, everything that you do online has a brand. It is a brand, and it’s just like how intentional are you with crafting that? We could probably be more intentional with thinking about what that is with all of these different variables, but talk to me a little bit about that idea of personal brand versus kind of a traditional brand. Because we’re here in Minnesota, Target Corporate is going to have a much different opinion than Pinch of Yum, which is a personal brand as it relates to decisions around all of these different buckets and how we want to kind of project our brand within the world.

Katie Trant: Yeah, well it’s interesting that you say that Pinch of Yum is a personal brand because I used Pinch of Yum and actually Food Blogger Pro as an example when I was talking about personal versus traditional brands and brand ambassadors in the Foodie brand lab course. And at the time that I put the course content together, I actually defined Pinch of Yum as a traditional brand and Lindsay as the ambassador of that brand.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I can see that. That’s an interesting distinction. I’ve never thought about that,

Katie Trant: But I’ve actually seen in the last several months, what I have perceived as a very intentional shift towards becoming much more personal.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s accurate.

Katie Trant: And I think that that’s, as a branding expert, I’m like, I see this, see it happening and I love it. I’m here for it. And I think it’s very relevant today with the rise of AI generated recipes and everything that’s changed about the internet, making that conscious decision to shift turn the ship a little bit more intentionally into the personal brand space, I think is really intelligent.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s really interesting to hear it’s just been these shifts and nudges that have happened that result in if you nudge one or two or three degrees for three to six months or a year then and every day you’re moving forward, then after a while it’s like you’re in a much different place than you were a year ago. And so it’s interesting to hear you reflect that back because if you were to look into the conversations for Lindsay and I over breakfast or dinner or on a walk, it’s like some of those conversations around, oh, what would it look like if I was more appearing more in videos or is it the emails or from Lindsay versus just from a generic Pinch of Yum or whatever. So all that to say very interesting. Talk a little bit about that distinction, brand ambassador, like an ambassador of a brand versus personal brand versus traditional brand. So there’s almost like three kind of at play.

Katie Trant: So this was something that when I started to put Foodie brand Lab together after more than a decade deep work with traditional brands, I had to do quite a lot of research and work to get into the distinction between what is a traditional brand and what is a personal brand and what makes it special. And I mean there’s as many opinions as there are experts, but what I have come to believe is that a traditional brand can be born from any kind of inspiration, whereas a personal brand is centered around an individual. So the brand tends to encapsulate their strengths, their personalities, what makes them unique as an individual. And these businesses are not always small scale operations. I mean Oprah Winfrey has a personal brand and she’s

Bjork Ostrom: Martha Stewart.

Katie Trant: Exactly. But I think that a lot of the times when we have businesses like food bloggers where we have solopreneurs and we have small teams and so on that they tend to be personal brands because we build them. Anyone especially who’s been food blogging for a long time, we started back in the day with like blah, blah, blah, here’s a story about my life and a recipe. And I don’t think it’s going to shift quite back to where it was, but I think the personalization of content now and developing richer and more relatable personal brands I think is having a really powerful effect in this time that we’re living now with AI and search changing and a brand ambassador. On the other hand, if you have a traditional brand like Target for example, they may work with people who are the face of the brand while they are not themselves the brand. I mean, I see you very much as the brand ambassador for Food Blogger Pro, which is much more of a traditional business and brand than Pinch of Yum is in this context.

Bjork Ostrom: Can you talk more about that? Meaning there’s the business, the business is Food Blogger Pro and then there’s the ambassador, which would be

Katie Trant: Me

Bjork Ostrom: Doing the podcast maybe showing up on social with the podcast clipped, but I’m not doing blog posts for instance or sending emails. Is that kind of what you’re getting at?

Katie Trant: Exactly. I mean you’re very much the face of the brand and I don’t think that anyone thinks about Food Blogger Pro without also thinking about Bjork. So your role is to be the face of the brand and you represent the brand at conferences and in social media and maybe in a newsletter. Although I think your newsletters are written by someone else typically. And you’ve got a team behind you and Food Blogger Pro who is doing a lot of the work on the brand and they are all representatives of the brand. You want anyone who is working with you and your team to be a good fit for your business. They need to be a good representative of your brand. But I think it’s you yourself who is the face of the brand.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s interesting. And so to draw the comparison Food Blogger Pro versus Pinch of Yum, if there’s a spectrum that Spectrum is, in our case, is it a brand with a brand ambassador versus a personal brand? We would be closer to a brand with an ambassador, we being Food Blogger Pro. Lindsay would be closer to personal brand. Obviously it’s a spectrum. You’re not just either one or the other. I think of Magnolia, Joanna Gaines as an example. It’s like is it a personal brand? No, it’s like Magnolia. What do people think of when they think of Magnolia? They think of Chip and Joanna Gaines. So they’re the ambassadors of that brand, but it’s not a personal brand being like, Hey, I’m out there creating this. It’s me. It all kind of comes back to me. Whereas it would almost be, and tell me if you feel like this is true, almost celebrity would be the ultimate example of personal brand, it’s like somebody who is, they are the product to some degree celebrity is kind of all-encompassing. Yeah,

Katie Trant: I think so. But I think there’s also celebrities who, I think of the designer, Kate Spade and her name is the brand, but she died and the brand carried on without her. So it’s very much a traditional brand in that case, even though it has her name.

And I don’t think you’re absolutely right that especially in our field, there is a spectrum of are you more of a traditional brand or are you more of a personal brand? And I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer. It’s not better to be one or the other, but I think it’s interesting to understand. I get students who come into the course and one of the first units is what is a brand and traditional and personal brands? And I ask people to pop into our Slack workspace and say, are you a personal brand or are you a traditional brand? And I would say that 95% of the time people say I’m a personal brand. And then I’ll go and I’ll look at their website and I’ll say, actually, I don’t think that you are, and here are the reasons you’re not telling personal stories. You are showing very little of your own personality. You are very much operating this business like a traditional brand. And once people understand that it doesn’t change the way they operate their business, but it changes the way they think about it a little bit and helps them put together their brand strategy and their business strategy in a way that serves them a bit better.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s even interesting for me to think about it as we kind of did the real life comparison, a food blogger prop Pinch of Yum. So much of it is personal. Lindsay said, I’m not interested in working with a bunch of writers. I’m not interested in creating a team, scaling a team.

It’s her canvas. The medium that she’s producing as an artist is a blog. It’s social media and that’s what she wants to create on. For me, that’s not the same. I love doing the podcast, love being a part of that, but a huge part of my interest is business and what does that look like to have a business and a team And we’re lucky enough to have a great team for Food Blogger Pro and they they’ll put a blog post out and it’s not like I need to touch it or have every be involved in every corner of it. And so even just Lindsay and I who work on these businesses kind of together kind of separate, but our own preferences for how we approach them is reflected in the brand. And it’s interesting to hear you reflect those back and I think it’s helpful for people to go through that exercise to kind of understand

Katie Trant: What

Bjork Ostrom: That looks like for them as well. So taking a step back, why is it important? We’ve heard a lot about brand in the last year. I remember interviewing Paul Banister from Raptive and he was talking about this idea of who’s not worried about helpful content update like Disney.

Katie Trant: Or yeah, exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: These companies that have such a strong brand. And so you hear even in the world of search people talking about brand, brand, brand, but why is that important and why have people been talking about it more within the last year?

Katie Trant: Well, I think the last year has been really bumpy for food bloggers. We had this helpful content update last year that just devastated a ton of sites and pretty much simultaneously we have chat GBT coming along and we’ve got AI-generated recipes and other tools for people creating even fake images and so on. And so I think that the days of just working super hard on keyword research and trying to rank for optimizing your posts are kind of behind us and I don’t want to discount the value of SEO and doing that because I think they work hand in hand having a strong brand and being able to identify your niche and find those keywords and understanding semantic SEO and how to rank for them at the same time, I think there’s so much noise out there and the power of brand has to do a lot with eliminating decision fatigue. So I don’t know how many chocolate chip cookie recipes there are on the internet, a million maybe. And if I am searching for chocolate chip cookies and I see 10 recipes on page one, how do I know which one to click? And if I see a brand name that I remember and I remember having a good experience with that brand, I’m much more likely to click on that recipe. I think that this is true in so much of our life.

I live in a cold country, I use a lot of chapstick and I have to have chapstick brand chapstick, I will not buy anything else. I don’t think it works, but it’s also about decision fatigue. If I stand in the pharmacy and I look at 20 brands of chapstick, I don’t have time or the desire to try them all. So I keep going back to this one trusted brand. I think that that’s really a brand is very much about establishing trust and a powerful brand is always going to outperform the market. There’s some really interesting statistics and I think one of them that I reference a lot is with the power of brand Spotify versus Apple Music and Spotify, it’s a Swedish company, it’s global, huge now and in the US Spotify has an estimated 90 million monthly users, whereas Apple Music has about 38 million. And what’s interesting about that is there are 113 million iPhone users in the U.S., yet they’re not using the native software. And I have an iPhone, I get offers all the time from Apple, three months of free Apple music, this and that. And I have a good friend who is an engineer at Spotify and I was like, maybe I should switch. I keep getting these offers, I could bundle everything together. And he said, honestly, the catalog is the same. You’re going to get the same experience,

Bjork Ostrom: Same music.

Katie Trant: Yeah, the same music. The recommendations are maybe a little bit stronger in Spotify, but that’s not really how I listen to music. I’m like a repeat listener album. Yeah, exactly. Yet I stay loyal to Spotify and I just think that those numbers are mind-blowing when you think about the number of iPhone users there are, but that is the power of brand

Bjork Ostrom: That literally happened for us where I was like, if we’re paying, we do the Apple one where it’s like you can’t get everything news blogs, you get the music and you get extra storage. And so I messaged Lindsay, I was like, would you be okay? Just what if we just tried doing Apple Music and not doing Spotify and she’s like, I really don’t want to. I was like, let’s just try it. We did it. And she’s like, please, let’s please go back. This is so terrible. And it’s interesting because like you said, it’s the same music, but for whatever reason, I do think part of it was you have this decade of built up recommendations and

Katie Trant: The algorithm

Bjork Ostrom: Knows

Katie Trant: You.

Bjork Ostrom: So that’s I think part of the staying power of it as well is it knows us really well. But yeah, it’s something that I think we all want as creators is to be somebody people come back to a brand that they recognize. I think of Kate all when we interviewed and talked about Pinterest, she was like, it’s really important to start putting your logo on your Pinterest images because you want to have not only a click to your site, but you want to have brand impressions and brand is important. And it was interesting to hear her talk about that showing up within the world of Pinterest.

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But how do you do that? So I think people get the Spotify example, but if people want to be that as a person who’s creating food content online, obviously that’s a big question and it’s like you dive deep in your course talking about how to do it, but

Katie Trant: What

Bjork Ostrom: Are some of the things that we can start to think about now that help set us up for being a brand that people trust that they come back to, that they view as reliable and therefore are more likely to click on it in a search result or in Pinterest or just type it in when they’re looking for a recipe and go to that site to see if they have something? How do you become that type of brand?

Katie Trant: Yeah, I mean, let me be perfectly honest with you. Brand is not a quick fix. Brand is definitely playing the long game and Google does not care about your brand one bit. So having really nice branding or a really solid brand strategy, Google’s not going to go, oh, okay, you get to go on page one. That comes over time with establishing trust with your audience and having them come back to you over and over again and establishing authority in your niche. But I think that the most important parts of a brand strategy or a brand platform to me are purpose, position and personality. And so your purpose is all of us or most of us are running businesses with our food blogs. So of course you exist to generate an income and put food on your table, but fundamentally why are you doing this? What is your reason for adding to the internet?

The internet surely does not need another chocolate chip cookie recipe, but what is going to be so powerful about you and your brand that you should show up and be there because you’re going to provide something that nobody else is going to provide your purpose, your reason for being what gets you out of bed every morning, and then your position, which we touched on a bit earlier, which is really defining what differentiates you from other players in the same niche, in the same area of the internet. So of all, if you’re a barbecue blogger standing out amongst all the other barbecue bloggers, what is your unique position that you can take and then your personality and that’s how does your brand look sound act, how do you behave in different channels? And you may behave differently in Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, your newsletter, your actual content on your website, they may all be different iterations of your brand personality and your brand strategy. So you may develop a channel strategy that has different elements in there, but all of it should relate back to who you are as a brand and why you’re doing this.

Bjork Ostrom: I think of Dave Ramsey, the finance. So the advice he gives is pretty generic financial advice. You could look back 20 years, 30 years and people are going to have similar opinions on maybe not as aggressive with don’t have any debt. But what feels so clear to me is specific, well purpose, position I guess all of ’em specifically, I was going to say position, but the position of really strong position of all debt is bad.

Maybe not mortgage, but all debt is bad and you need to get rid of debt, you need to get rid of it as quickly as possible. Having a personality that’s kind of blunt and brah a little bit and having a purpose of helping people become debt free, I think of that it’s much different than if you had a blog and the blog was like investment terms and how to understand investing and what is compound interest. And it’s like you’re kind of having similar conversations, you’re helping people become financially educated. In his case, it’s wrapped with this really strong, really amplified purpose, position and personality agree with it or not, it’s there. And that’s almost feels like part of what it is is that there are going to be some people who don’t agree with it,

Whether his personality or position the purpose, probably everybody could gather around that, but there’s a really clear understanding of what that brand is and what it’s about. And in the food world, I think one of the things that could potentially be a vulnerability is you’ve stood up this company, which is really good at doing keyword research and seeing opportunities, but it’s the way that people find you. It’s like a search result. They come to your site, they look at it, they may or may not make that recipe, but the unique differentiator within it didn’t really exist other than you were good at search, which worked and still does to some degree. But the defensibility of that is it can only go so far because you’re reliant on an algorithm update and it didn’t really feel like a vulnerability until a year ago

Katie Trant: When

Bjork Ostrom: Suddenly a lot of that shifting sand in the algorithms happened. What happens if people no longer come via search? Are they still going to come to your site because the brand itself is bringing them in? And I think about that with a Dave Ramsey. It’s like if they had a search algorithm, they’ll probably lose traffic, but they’ll also probably have people continuing to come to the site. Is that a little bit of what you’re getting at with the reason why brand is important because it can persevere through algorithms or

Katie Trant: Definitely

Bjork Ostrom: Search changes?

Katie Trant: Definitely. I think that the concept of having a thousand true fans and that is really intertwined very carefully or very closely with having a strong brand. I think if you have a strong brand, even if my search function goes down or something and I know I can rely on Pinch of Yum for a great recipe for, I don’t know, quick and easy air fryer, tofu, I’m going to go there because I know I can trust it. And I do think that Dave Ramsey is a good example. He has a very strong brand, he serves a particular type of person. I think, and I follow a lot of financial influencers, it’s kind of like a rabbit hole have gone down in the last year

And I follow, so a lot of women in personal finance and the community that they’re serving and the stories that they’re telling are so different than Dave Ramsey to me, much more appealing and human and approachable forgiving. And they are doling out very similar advice. Not everything is the same. I mean Dave Ramsey says, if you have debt, the only way you should see the inside of a restaurant is if you’re working at it. And this is they’re telling a different story. So when I want to go back for financial advice, I’m going to the ones who I trust. And I think with all the algorithmic activity we’ve seen, if I had a, people are inherently lazy so they’re not printing out cookbooks of their favorite recipes and so on, and they’ll typically search the same thing over and over again. And if I search chocolate chip cookie and the recipe that I loved that was on page one is no longer there, I’m going to find it.

I actually had this experience with a recipe for apple waffles, apple cinnamon waffles that I’ve been making for years. And it used to be on page one and it disappeared and I had to comb through the way back time machine. It took me a significant amount of effort to locate this recipe because it had been so decimated by the algorithm. But I remembered it and it wasn’t a brand I was super loyal to. I was loyal to this specific recipe, but I had needed enough times that I wanted to go back to it. And I think that having a powerful brand that people remember, first of all, it’s not necessarily that they have to relate to it. I don’t like Dave Ramsey, but I still understand and relate to his content and you bring him up, I know what we’re talking about, but brand recognition and brand memorability are so important for us as food bloggers. If my recipe drops off, I have a recipe that’s been number one, the number one income generator on my website for six years and I’m terrified that it’s going to drop one day. But I just hope that if and when it does, because all good things come to an end that someone would say, oh, I remember that recipe on hay nutrition lady, I’m going to go back there and find it. So it is that memorability that we’re hoping to achieve.

Bjork Ostrom: And in a world where to use the finance example, Dave Ramsey would’ve 15 years ago, 20 years whenever he started what he was starting, just created a content business where they’re just pumping out content and figuring out how to get people there versus a brand that people understand and they gather around. It’s almost like you create a community of people with shared belief. And if you draw that out over 20 years and you’re like, what’s the bet on what business becomes more successful? My bet would be like, oh, it’s the company that has invested in clarity around these things. Like you talked about the idea of purpose or really understanding your position, your personality and making that also clear for sure. And so for us as creators, it feels like the call to action is, Hey, as you think about creating for the next five or 10 years, it’s important to understand keyword research. It’s important to understand how the algorithm works. It’s important to understand how to optimize for search and Pinterest and Instagram. But within

Katie Trant: That,

Bjork Ostrom: It almost seems like what’s more important it that you are creating a business that stands apart by considering these things that we are talking about. And the hard part is it’s what your course covers, but there’s so many different things that we could get into. It’s not like there’s these little quick actionable takeaways, but if there were, what would those things be that people could start to work on today that they could even from this interview start to fit into their process If they’re currently doing keyword research and figuring out how to get something viral on Instagram, if they also want to think about their brand and how to create a compelling brand that draws people in

Katie Trant: So

Bjork Ostrom: Over the next 10 years people can start to become search traffic changes to direct traffic. And the last piece with that is just yesterday I was looking at for Pinch of Yum kind of doing some analysis and saying, what if all of our search traffic went away? And what was reassuring when I did that is I looked at the last year, I was like, oh, we’d be fine with just direct traffic. And obviously that would tail off over time and there’d be a huge downside to not have search traffic, but to get to that point was a huge sense of relief because we know that people are just coming back now.

Katie Trant: And I think that is because Pinch of Yum is an incredibly strong brand. I mean, Lindsay posted a recipe last spring or last year in February I think, which was basically a package of instant noodles with butter and honey added to it. That’s not even, you know what it was? I went, when I was in the us I went and I bought those specific noodles so I could make the recipe. I saw it and I was like, yes, I want that. I want recipe. That’s not even a recipe. And Deb from Smitten Kitchen, she posted a recipe for butter pasta, literally butter tossed with hot pasta. And I think that Lindsay and Deb can get away with those things because they’re incredibly powerful brands and beloved brand ambassadors. And so it takes a ton of work to get to the point that you can post a recipe for butter pasta and you’re going to get return visitors. Nobody needs a recipe for butter pasta, but they do it. And I think that that’s incredible. It’s a testament to the brand.

Bjork Ostrom: Well, and I think the other piece, and this goes, it’s almost goes against that a little bit is Lindsay will say, I really don’t want to put something into the internet that doesn’t need to be on the internet.

Bjork Ostrom: So you’ll look at when we’re recording this at the time of the recording, it’s like October 15th, she posted something, last time was the eighth, last time was the first. So she’s posting once a week and the process that she’ll go through is like, Hey, is this something that I feel like for the next week for the two weeks that I can, or the next 10 years that I can come back to and promote as this is the feature of right now. And so I think if you were to do all quick and easy, it might’ve been part of the SOS series, I don’t know if it was, but that specific recipe like, Hey, if you’re limited on time, here’s some things that you can do. But part of it is antithetical to this idea of how do you figure out a search keyword that’s going to rank and then produce a lot of content at scale. And instead it’s like, I’m going to publish when I feel like something should be published so people know that I’m not just publishing this to try and get a keyword. I’m just publishing this because I think it’s going to be something that’s helpful for people.

And the other piece with it is to start to view content and recipes as similar like we talked about within the context of Starbucks. And it’s like pumpkin spice latte. They’re not coming up with a new drink every year.

Bjork Ostrom: They’re saying, Hey, this is our catalog. We might shift and change and adjust things. But as the internet starts to become saturated with all sorts of content, especially as content becomes AI-generated, how do you become the source for people to come back and say like, Hey, pumpkin Spice Latte Starbucks, great. What is the equivalent for us as food creators to look at that and say, every year we are creating a piece of content that we can maybe refresh a little bit, but it’s kind of part of a catalog that we can shine a light on. That’s one of the changing rhythms of content now as well, which is you become a catalog and you have your greatest hits and you reference those greatest hits every year as opposed to being a content warehouse where you are just pumping out a manufacturing line of content. Do you feel like that ties into the conversation of brand and even Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte as an example?

Katie Trant: Yeah, I think it definitely does. I mean, I think that inherently people trust people more than they trust big corporations. So when you have someone like Lindsay making a recipe that’s so easy, but it’s so good and that’s relatable. It’s like, I’ve got kids, I’m tired, I don’t have a lot of time to cook dinner and I just want to eat something that tastes good. And it’s that established trust, the Starbucks pumpkin Spice latte, it’s like every year they come out, they taste reliably the same. It’s going to come, you understand the experience you’re going to have and that’s that repeatability. And food blogs may not serve up repeatable experiences in that the recipes are constantly changing, but the experience of interacting with the brand is what should be repeatable and understanding that I’m going to spend my time and my money making this recipe.

I want to know that it’s going to work and I want to know that it’s going to work for me because I think they say there’s someone out there for every weirdo in the world, but there’s also a food blog out there for every person. I’m not going to love recipes from every site. So I need to know as a user that this is a site and this is a brand that’s going to work for me specifically as well. And I think that the way search is changing. I’ve seen some snippets of Google the way they’re changing and pulling up recipes specifically based on not just the top 10, but serving up based on, you can search based on the ingredients that you have at home and based on the type of event that you’re serving and so on. And I think it’s really going to change.

Search is going to continue to change in the next few years. And if we as food bloggers are going to stand still and just do the same keyword research in the same optimization that we’ve always done, you’re going to get left behind. I think those things are shifting as well, and as they should. And as I said before, they’re as very much as important as brand, but it is the powerful brands. Like you said, Disney isn’t concerned. Not many of us are as big as Disney, but I think if the fact that you see that you have enough return traffic that you could lose all your search and still be okay, that’s a testament to the power of the brand.

Bjork Ostrom: And it’s also an unfair advantage of producing content for 14 years

Katie Trant: Certainly. But I’ve been producing content for just as long and I’m nowhere near in the same position. So I think it is a testament to the brand.

Bjork Ostrom: So to me it feels like there is no downside. It’s not like a opinion, do I want to build a brand or not everybody’s building a brand. It’s just a matter of clarifying the elements that are within your brand. And it sounds like that’s a lot of what your course does. So can you talk a little bit about Foodie Brand Lab, the premise of it? You can talk about where people can sign up because my guess is some folks will hear about it and be interested

Katie Trant: In

Bjork Ostrom: Checking

Katie Trant: It out. So Foodie Brand Lab was actually born from, I’m part of a mastermind group of bloggers that meets, we meet once a month and we have been doing so for almost two years, and we have different topics we go over. And last year I said, I don’t know if anyone is interested in hearing about brand, but this is what I work with in my day jobs, so I’d be happy to talk about it. And when you’re presenting on Zoom and you’ve got those tiny squares, you can’t really tell whether people are actually, I didn’t know if they were working in the background or doing something else or totally tuned out. And I did this 20 minutes super high level presentation. What is a brand? What is a brand, not these are the elements of a brand platform. Here’s how you do a brand mapping exercise. And I finished and they were like, oh my God, why are you not doing this? Why are you not doing this for food bloggers? And I

Don’t think I slept for a week. I was like, why am I not doing this and put my head down and built Foodie Brand Lab? And I built it because this conversation of the time to build a brand is now keeps happening, but I’m not seeing a lot of conversation about what that means. And so I thought that there was a gap in the market that needed to be filled. And I think that brand support, after many years of working with a brand agency, you work on these big projects with these big global corporations and they are so long and so slow and so expensive. You sit in a room with 15 different stakeholders arguing about the wording of a brand purpose statement or something like that. And it’s frustratingly slow at times. And I thought if there’s a need to serve food bloggers with brand and to make brand strategy and brand support accessible, because I talked to Dwayne from Cultivate, and I’m not going to name any names, but he told me about a big, big food blogger who they had built a custom site for. And he said that that business behind that blogger had spent six figures working with a brand strategy agency before they came to them to do the redesign, which is absolutely the correct order. You should do it, you need

Get the brand house in order and then you do the redesign. And I don’t think that brand strategy or brand support needs to cost six figures for the average food blogger. So I took everything that I know from more than a decade of working in branding agencies and more than a decade of writing a food blog and going through all the algorithm updates and doing the keyword research, it’s sort of bringing these worlds together. And I packaged it into a digital course for food bloggers called Foodie Brand Lab, and that’s our entry-level. It’s a self-paced digital course, and they get access to a Slack workspace to ask questions and monthly office hours. And then we have some premium levels of services. Well for people who either don’t have the time or the bandwidth to go through the course on their own, if they have a bigger site with a bigger team and they just want someone to do it for them, then we also have offerings to do that as well.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. And what it feels like it does is build a really incredible foundation that then you can build off of. And my guess is some of it is new information that you’re having to make decisions on and think about, but my assumption is probably a lot of it is just pulling the information out that’s already there and defining it and saying, here’s what it is. It’s helping you clarify some of the things you already know but have never clarified.

Katie Trant: Yes. And I’ll give you a really good example of that. My friend Jess, she writes a wonderful food blog called Inquiring Chef, and she’s in my mastermind group. So she was a beta tester for the chorus as well. And she is been working really hard on expanding both her brand and her business strategy. So she’s got the site Inquiring Chef, and then she started teaching cooking camps for kids called Inquiring Chef Academy. She’s got a cookbook coming out. And she was like, I just don’t understand how to work with my brand across all these different touchpoints. And I said to her, and I think this also circles back to the question you asked earlier that we never answered about that one thing that people can do.

So the one thing that we did in her case was answer the question, who is the inquiring chef? And I said, is the inquiring chef you Jess Smith? Or is your purpose serving a community of inquiring chefs? Is your user the inquiring chef? Because if it’s the latter, that opens up your brand world and your business strategy. You have inquiring Chef Academy, you can create a line of spices or baking mixes or whatever for inquiring chefs. She was like, oh my God, that’s it. That’s the one thing. So figuring out that she herself was not the inquiring chef changed everything.

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, interesting. Yeah. And then it becomes like you have content for kids who are inquiring chefs.

Katie Trant: Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I love that. So we’ll link to it in the show notes, but people can also find it by going to foodie brand lab.com. I know that you do courses a group that will go through at the same time. Is that right? Or can people sign up at any time?

Katie Trant: So we had the first cohort go through or sign up, and then we close the cart to make sure that that group could get through in a good way. But we’re actually going to open the cart in the next couple of weeks and then leave it open because part of our brand position as Foodie brand lab is making branding accessible to food bloggers, to all levels of food bloggers. And so it actually didn’t sit right with me to have it closed and inaccessible at times. So that’s a change we decided to make. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. And then is there a specific URL that listeners should use or just go to the homepage?

Katie Trant: What you guys, they can just go to foodie brand lab.com, but we will put in a discount code for podcast listeners so they could just put in the discount code food blogger pro and that’ll knock $50 off of the course.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. Cool. Katie, really fun to talk to you about this. I think it’s super important conversation to be happening always, but especially now as the landscape shifts and people approach content creation differently where they’re thinking not just about how can I rank for this keyword, but how can I be a company or a brand that people think about and come to. So super helpful, excited for people who are able to go through the course and love to have another conversation here in the future. Thanks for coming

Katie Trant: Down. Yes, definitely. Thank you so much for having me.

Emily Walker: Hey there. This is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team and thank you so much for listening to that episode. We really appreciate it. If you liked this episode or enjoy the show, we would really appreciate you leaving a review or rating wherever you listen to your podcast. Episodes, ratings and reviews, help get the show in front of new listeners and help us grow our little show into something even bigger. Reread each and every review and it makes us so happy to hear when you’re enjoying the podcast or what you would like us to improve or change in upcoming episodes. All you have to do is find the Food Blogger Pope Podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts, whether it’s on Apple or Spotify or another player, and enter a rating and review. While you’re there, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss a new episode. We really appreciate it so much and it makes such a huge difference for our show. So thanks in advance and that’s all we have for you today. So have a great week.

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI.

Bjork Ostrom: This episode is sponsored by Member Kitchens. Imagine your kitchen. It’s more than just a place to cook. It’s where your creativity comes to life. It’s where you nourish your family, your friends, and yourself with food and conversation. Now imagine sharing that kitchen with the world. Imagine inviting people in to experience your unique flavors, your personal touch, your passion for food. At Member Kitchens, they believe that every food creator has a special kitchen to share, and their job is to help you swing the doors wide open. Their white-label meal planning platform is your virtual Kitchen. It’s fully equipped with everything you need to showcase your recipes and brand, build a loyal community, and earn a sustainable income. As one customer said, recurring revenue is life-changing. Your kitchen will integrate with tools you already use like Zapier and WordPress, and it’s fully configurable putting you in complete control of your brand and your business, all in an easy-to-use interface. Backed up with stellar one-on-one support. So if you’re ready to share your kitchen with the world, set up your own Member Kitchen, visit MemberKitchens.com today to learn more and start your free trial and use the code Food Blogger Pro for 50% off your first two months of any plan.

Emily Walker: Hey there, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team and you are listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. This week on the podcast, we are welcoming back Nathan Berry from ConvertKit soon-to-be Kit to chat about all things email marketing strategy. Nathan first started ConvertKit back in 2013 and has been very intentional about growing his business and growing an email marketing platform designed specifically for creators like you. He has a great perspective on email marketing strategy, but also what it takes to grow a successful business. This podcast episode dives into the importance of optimizing your emails for the reader, consistency, and driving revenue with your emails and how that can be increasingly important with the demise of third-party cookies to use your email list to help increase your ad revenue. Nathan and Bjork talk about strategies for increasing email list signups and other tips for growing your email list.

They also discuss the magic of flywheels and how to apply that concept to your email list and growing your business, and Nathan walks through the journey of ConvertKit over the years and the decision to rebrand as Kit and what that will mean for you as creators as it becomes increasingly important to diversify your traffic sources. This is a must-listen episode and we know you’ll get a lot out of it. If you enjoy this podcast episode, we would so appreciate it if you would take the time to share the episode with your community, whether you share it on social media or perhaps with your email list, it means the world to us when you help get the word out about our podcast. Thanks so much for listening and without further ado, I’ll let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Nathan, welcome back to the podcast. Thanks for having me on.

Yeah, we’re going to talk about all things email. This is actually perfect timing because 44 minutes before we jumped on this call, an email actually came through from Raptive or ad provider and subject is Unlock new revenue streams with ConvertKit plus Raptive. Now, it’s almost like I’m doing an ad read here, which this is not an ad read. It is just organic editorial content and what Raptive says in the emails. Over the years, we’ve collaborated with many email service providers and understand how challenging it can be to find the perfect partner. However, there is one ESP email service provider that stands out for its seamless integration and ability to maximize reader engagement effortlessly. Wow, look at that. That’s kind of fun.

Nathan Barry: That’s some great copy. Thanks.

Bjork Ostrom: Perfect timing too for this conversation. So talk a little bit about that. We talk about email strategies with email, why it’s important. One of the things that we’ve found within our world of food publishers is they don’t necessarily approach it from the same mindset that somebody would if they’re really strategic with affiliate or especially if you have a product, it makes a ton of sense to have email, but I think in our world sometimes it becomes an afterthought because people are so focused on SEO and search traffic or maybe Pinterest traffic, but now you’re starting to see people talk more about email, the importance of email, talk about why that is, and just this idea of unlocking new revenue and it looks like there’s a webinar coming up on the 26th for Raptive folks that they can tune into, but maybe we can talk through some of those things here now today.

Nathan Barry: Yeah, the first thing with email is it’s the platform that you control the relationship with the audience, and so there’s so many of these. If anyone’s gone viral in any way and you didn’t capture that relationship with the reader, then you realize like, oh, I was missing out there. Or even if you had search rankings that dominated for a long time and then Google at some point decided actually we’re going to give that slot to someone else, and you’re like, hold on, my article is just as relevant as always, and they’re like, yeah, well, times have changed. And so with email you have that ability to push content to the reader and you can build up that relationship over time, and so it’s been fun to see in the food space and all across the blogging world, people really rely on email to go from a sort of a drive-by interaction of someone who might come across your content from social or from search into someone saying, oh, no, I want to stick around to get the great recipes to get the meal plan, to build that long-term relationship and say, oh, I come to you for all this content.

I think about my wife is a really big fan of Shay Elliot, the Elliot Homestead, and there’s a bunch of things that we’re cooking at home that are from Shay, and so probably 30% of all of the recipes that we cook are from Shea because we’re such a big fan of her content, her story. We also have a small homestead and her style and everything, and so you get that deep connection that you can really build and foster over email, even though it starts from distribution on a social channel or search

Bjork Ostrom: In some ways, you can view any of those interactions, whether it’s search, whether it’s social, as kind of this transactional interaction. Somebody finds you, they’re looking for a certain thing, a certain recipe, especially if it’s a not let’s say on search, it’s a non-branded search. They’re just searching chocolate chip cookies and they come across you. The goal is then to establish that relationship so then you can have that ongoing as opposed to that person coming once and leaving. It’s kind of like in the world of product, they talk about recurring revenue versus product revenue, like transactional revenue or it’s one time and the allure of recurring revenue is that you have somebody sign up once and then your goal is like, Hey, convince them to stick around as opposed to finding a new person and having them sign up. Similar in our world when it’s attention, if you can get one person to sign on in this case, sign onto your email list, then what you need to do is prove your value over time and encourage them to stick around as opposed to finding another person, encouraging them to come and find you and kind of having a one-off interaction again.

But let’s say in that case of something going viral, let’s say you have something on Instagram and the algorithm picks it up. What are you seeing in terms of strategy around people encouraging somebody to sign up for an email list or to capture some of that attention in an ongoing way when you do have something that goes viral, how do you do that? Well,

Nathan Barry: Yeah, I think the biggest thing is having a lead magnet of some kind where you’re saying, here is some package to offering that you’re going to want to download and saying, then you put it on landing page and put in your email address and I’ll send it to you. An example of that is there’s a creator on Instagram, I think he goes by the lifestyle diet and he’s got about a million followers. He’s a Kit customer and he talks a lot about macro based eating, so how to hit your protein macros and all of that, and he’s grown a huge portion of his list with this protein heavy ice creams to make in your ninja creamy, right? It’s very specific, but he’s like, here’s 20 recipes, and he can talk about that a lot on Instagram in different ways, and so probably one in five of his reels, maybe one in 10 actively promotes that, but he’s mentioning it in stories, he is mentioning it in other things, and he’s found that because it feels so specific and actionable, a lot of people are really downloading that and that drives so much. The other thing that I love is taking that similar content and putting it in an email sequence, so you are actually sending that out timed to that subscriber, and that way you’re training them that, Hey, it’s not that you give me an email out and then you give me your email address and then over here I give you something else.

It’s the value that you came for is in the emails, and so it gets you continually reading

Nathan Barry: You could do it, yeah, go ahead. You could do it two different ways. You could put all the content in the email or you could have the email drive back to the site and then you’ll get more ad revenue or other. That makes sense.

Bjork Ostrom: This is really specific, but what are you seeing as the best way to include that call to action? Let’s say you do have a lead magnet. Is it like mentioning it, mention the URL? I’ve even thought about in different instances, is there any way that you could do a QR code, which I don’t really know if there’s a great way to do that. Most people are viewing on their phone,

Nathan Barry: On their phones, you can’t,

Bjork Ostrom: But I think there’s something there or there will be eventually. A lot of people will say, comment protein smoothie to get the link to this download. Do you have any thoughts on

Nathan Barry: That? The main ways would be in either dropping the link directly or putting the link in your Instagram stories. If we’re talking about Instagram in particular, that’s common. People will say, Hey, check out the link in bio. The reason that the comment to get this thing is so popular is that Instagram is viewing that as an engagement, as a boost, like an engagement signal, and so when you have a whole bunch of people commenting protein smoothie or whatever, then that is not only creating a one-to-one interaction between you and the creator, right? It pulls it into your dms, but then also it’s got that signal to the Instagram algorithm like, oh, this is worth paying attention to that. It

Bjork Ostrom: Always to me felt a little bit like, it’s like it bends the system a little bit way, a little bit towards like hack and I always a little bit hesitant towards any type of hack. I know it’s getting into a different space. We’re now talking about social media, but you have any thoughts on that? Even just from a marketing perspective? We’ve tried it with Pinch of Yum a little bit. We’ve experimented with it and I’m trying to figure out there’s something there. It works. I don’t know if it’s dms, if it’s comments, what the best approach to it is, but I’d be curious from your perspective, what thoughts you have on that. Even the marketing thing that is working that might not work for a long period of time. It feels like it might fall into that category, but maybe not.

Nathan Barry: Well, so the way that I think about it, the algorithms change all the time, and if we think about it from a hub and spoke perspective, so the hub of our content is, or the hub of our relationship with our audience is going to be the email list. That’s the thing that you can segment off of. You can build a long-term relationship and you’re not subject to any algorithm. Now, email does not have a distribution method. Emails themselves don’t go viral. If they do go viral, it’s usually because, I don’t know, some bad news story happened like Apple and Samsung were colluding and there’s a

Bjork Ostrom: Bunch of articles that are written about it. Yeah,

Nathan Barry: It’s never good if email goes viral, whereas on social, a post can go viral, all this distribution, so you really want to have your hub of email and then a few spokes that you focus on in your business that are how you’re going to get distribution search, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, et cetera, and you don’t want to focus on every spoke. You’ll delete your efforts, but if you have a few, what I like about the comment to get this thing is even if that dies out, you’re not reliant on that as your method because in each case you were getting people’s email addresses, it’s a means to get them back to your email addresses. So if that flavor of the week stops working next week or next year, it doesn’t matter. We built that long-term relationship, whereas if we were saying like, oh, we’re going to build an audience on this new platform that then dies off in some way,

That’s a different thing. The other thing is if you can do it in a way that gets personal connection, if someone comments to get access to something, why not start a conversation with them from there? Sure. A lot of people do it with ManyChat and then have a bot conversation, but I know more creators. There’s one, her name’s Bonnie Christine, and she makes all this great content around surface pattern design, so how to design fabrics and all of that. And for a lot of her programs, she just has conversations with her audience directly in Instagram DMs, and she’s actually sold a lot of courses and coaching and things like that directly in Instagram DMs. So I like it because it starts a conversation. Now at the same time, I do sometimes think it is weird when people are commenting, I understand the hack feel to it, but one other thing, the ways that you can get engagement without it feeling like a hack. I saw there’s one that I see different creators post fairly often, and that’s like, I think Jenna Kutcher posted it most recently, and that was if you are a woman under 35 years old, post a question, and if you’re a woman over 35 years old, reply in the thread and post an answer

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, that’s so cool.

Nathan Barry: It doesn’t feel like a hack at all, right? Because there’s great, there’s probably a thousand comments of great extra.

Bjork Ostrom: It feels like strategic content.

Nathan Barry: But Instagram, all they see is like, wow, this Reel got a thousand comments. We should probably show it to more people.

Nathan Barry: And so that’s the high quality version.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome.

Nathan Barry: Of comments, breed engagement.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. Love that. So going back to this email, Raptive sends this out, what is happening there? Why is it important from an advertiser perspective? Obviously Raptive is invested in this. I know you have a partnership with Mediavine as well. Most of the people in our space who are using ads or probably using one of those two ad partners, why is email important other than just sending traffic? And the lead up to this is for a long time it was like first-party identifier, third-party cookies are going away. This is really important for us to get information about who your users are, and there’s an integration built-in now with ConvertKit in order to do this, a button click that allows people, you can talk about how that works, but is that still important now that the third party cookies thing has gotten punted once again down the line? And if so, why is it important?

Nathan Barry: So as you look at some of the browser wars that are happening, Apple and Google, and they’re going around taking different focuses on privacy, apple takes this very strong privacy-first approach, which on one hand is very, very noble and I appreciate, on the other hand, they’re selling a huge amount of their own advertising. So you have to keep in mind that it’s very self-serving for Apple

Bjork Ostrom: Because they have that information, they, they’re not brokering it, but they’re still transacting. Is that within their own ad network? What does that look like? Yes. Okay. On Safari.

Nathan Barry: On Safari, but very heavily on mobile.

Bjork Ostrom: Oh sure, so they…

Nathan Barry: Have their ad network. Yeah, mobile apps, they run huge amounts, but for them it’s first party data, and so they’re like, oh, see, it’s safe with us, but they’re saying that third party data is this, that is bad in some way. So what’s happening is for various reasons, those cookies data is shared a lot less than it used to be. Even with third party cookies, as you said, that’s being punted, but you’re still seeing this, that the number of visitors to your site who are seeing those Raptive or Mediavine ads, they’re getting much less targeted ads.

Nathan Barry: Often Raptive or Mediavine doesn’t know who that person is. They came in in their Safari browser and the cookies aren’t held. They aren’t stored for the same length of the time that they were before. So basically Raptive and Mediavine want to serve the most relevant ad they can because it’s the most likely to get clicked on, it’s going to drive the most revenue for their advertiser. And so personalization’s very important. So what’s interesting is that as a food creator with an email list, you have that data of who the subscriber is. And so every time you link out to your own content, you can pass through who the subscriber is, rapid Mediavine will be like, oh, that’s who it is. And then they will display relevant ads for that person. And then even if the browser clears the cookies or something goes away, you can get these re-engagement points that happen over and over again.

You can identify the users, serve relevant ads and earn more money. So what ended up happening probably over the last year is that rapid media bind were saying, Hey, as a content creator, you should be coding in these identifiers into your emails that you send out so that every click passes through who it was that clicked, and then your website can know and you can earn more from it. And then the spring Raptive came to us and said, Hey, why don’t you build this in to ConvertKit as a core feature? Even though it was making creators a lot more money, they would do it for a while or they’d have their virtual assistant do it for a while and then it would eventually drop off

Nathan Barry: There’s just so much work. And so now what we just announced is that it’s a core feature, so now you turn it on inside your account once and then without doing anything else, you forever have your email list and your visitors to your website in sync so that Raptive can target much more relevant ads and it’s a better experience for the visitor and run much more as the publisher.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it. And true for a Mediavine as well.

Nathan Barry: Yeah, true for Mediavine too.

Bjork Ostrom: So let me see if I can, one of the prompts I’ve been using a lot on ChatGPT is explain this to me. I’m a fifth grader. I’m going to try and explain it back to you as if you are a fifth grader and you can tell me if your opinion would be that a fifth grader would understand it, maybe not a fifth grader, maybe like a junior in high school who’s smart? Sounds good. So previously we had this thing called third-party cookies. Third-party cookies allowed people to get tracked across the web. We can all imagine the scenario where we look at a new basketball or a backpack or some type of product on Amazon or any other site, and then we go to our favorite food blog and then we see an ad for that. That’s because there was a cookie that went into our browser and some advertiser set it up in a way that it would track us across the web.

People would pay more money for that. Brands companies would pay more money for that because that would allow them to have more targeted ads. So that was really valuable. It was an effective way to run ads, but people were concerned about privacy. And so browsers and companies that have browsers start to respond to that Safari with Apple being an early one, and when they start to disable the ability for cookies to track people, suddenly the ads become less effective. And Google Chrome was going to do this for a long time. They still probably will at some point, but they’re having issues I think with European Union, and so they’ve delayed that for now. But one of the ways that you can get back to having ads that are more targeted is by using your email list strategically and using that in a way where when somebody clicks on a link, it has to be the click.

That is the thing that is going to allow people to track. Somebody has to click on the link, but once that happens, now they have that information and they can bring targeted ads towards that user. Previously you had a hard coded, in our case, we asked our developer, he worked on it, he integrated it, but now there’s this one click button. You can turn that on and you’ll have the ability to have that kind of closer look or better information about who that person is within your email list as long as they click over and then go to your site, meaning you’ll earn more from that. Do you know number one, accurate? Does that feel like a

Nathan Barry: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay. That is accurate. You think the average junior in high school could understand that conceptually?

Nathan Barry: So as long as the junior in high school is, it’s this world of marketing. Yeah,

Bjork Ostrom: Totally. If they know, if they have complete understanding of this arena that we’re talking about, if they just want to play Fortnite, then no. Yeah. Okay, fair. So my follow-up question is do you know if it’s still valuable outside of the context of Google not having third party cookies go away anymore? Are you still earning more from those clicks that are coming through when you have this enabled?

Nathan Barry: Yeah, the data from Raptive is even today that it’s, the earnings are about 40% more. So it’s substantial. To give you an idea of how important it is for, so Raptive only makes money as the creator makes money. It’s very much that rev share model. So the incentives are very aligned, both Raptive and Mediavine, the same thing. They pay their internal employees to go and set this up for creators manually go into the creator site and do it all for them, even though it’s a huge amount of work because it increases earnings by that much.

Bjork Ostrom: They’re dedicating resources time to

Nathan Barry: This because they’re having their

Bjork Ostrom: Account managers return.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. First they’re saying, Hey, you should set this up, and the credit are like, yeah, yeah, I’ll do it. And then they’re like, okay, well give us access to your account and we will do it for you

Nathan Barry: It’s that valuable,

Bjork Ostrom: Which probably doesn’t have to happen now because it’s just a button. Previously there was this process involved and now there’s not. So it also sounds like it’s important then to get the click. So to go back to what you were saying before, as you think about as a creator sending out an email, do you include all the content, do you not? Obviously there’s a lot of considerations that go into that, but one of them, if you’re trying to maximize ad revenue probably would be around encouraging people to click to get to your site. So that first party identify information would be included in that interaction with the customer. Is that accurate?

Nathan Barry: So the most important thing is optimize for the reader experience, make it a good experience for them. Second, yeah. The second is consistency with whatever they’re expecting. So if you set this expectation from the beginning, Hey, I put all of the content in the email, that’s where all the value is. And then all at once you started only linking to your site and the emails became super short, that would be weird. Now, if you had the expectation before that you’re just linking to your site and maybe there’s a quick story or something, that wouldn’t be a weird transition. So I would just think about that consistency. And then third, you should be thinking about what drives revenue, and you’ll absolutely see higher revenue on your site if your banner ads and others are displayed in a way that can be targeted to that user. And I just continue to reiterate, it’s a much better experience for the reader to get targeted ads. There are times where you get an ad and you’re like, whoa, that’s very targeted. And it might be a little off-putting,

Nathan Barry: Nine times out of 10 you’re just like, yeah, these are ads for things that I care about instead of being completely different and totally not relevant.

Bjork Ostrom: In our case, it’d be like some really specific frog terrarium that we’ve been researching because our daughter’s really into frogs right now. Have you been looking at frog terrariums every morning and are you pulling your hair out? Now? All of my ads, you don’t know what frog terrarium to get for a bioactive enclosure. But yeah, generally speaking, and people might say, obviously there are people on the other side who’d say, I’d rather have more privacy than targeted ads. But from an experiential standpoint, if you see stuff that’s a better fit versus not, it’s going to be a better experience. So that makes sense. The

Nathan Barry: Other thing, not that we need to make this whole episode about why ads should be targeted versus not, but if you think about it from a reader’s perspective, I’m consuming content from a publisher, whether it’s an individual food blog or a major publication, and in order for that publisher to invest a lot into high-quality content, it costs money, whether it’s my time as the content creator or the team of editors working on it or whatever else. And so as a reader, I want the highest quality content, which means I want them to earn a substantial amount of money, which means them offering targeted ads means they earn more money, which means they can invest more in content and provide me with a better quality product as the reader, even though I’m not paying anything. Do

Bjork Ostrom: I think about it now? You want the best for the people that you care about who are making your life easier. Obviously there’s always going to be those people who are like, I can’t believe you put an ad on here. And it’s like, this is literally free content. You’re paying nothing for it. But generally speaking, people want the best for their creator. And especially if it means seeing an ad that’s more targeted versus less targeted, it feels like a very small, right. I think it’s a better experience all around.

Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors. This episode is sponsored by Raptive. You may have heard of Raptive, formerly AdThrive as an ad provider for over 4,000 of the world’s top digital content creators. Pinch of Yum included, but they’re not just an ad provider. They’re a strategic partner that helps creators build their businesses with the resources they need to grow and monetize their audiences. They offer customized industry-leading solutions like an engagement suite called SlickStream resources on email, strategy assistance, HR guidance, and more. So creators can focus on what they want, be focusing on creating great content. If your blog has at least a hundred thousand monthly page views, a hundred percent original content, and the majority of traffic from the us, Canada, the UK, Australia, or New Zealand, you can apply to become a Raptive creator by going to Raptive.com and clicking the Apply Now button. And even if you’re not quite at the point of being able to apply to Raptive, they can support you in your traffic growing goals through an 11-week email series. Head to foodbloggerpro.com/raptive to get access to this free series. Everything Raptive does is in support of creators like you, whether you’re just starting out or bringing hundreds of thousands of visitors to your site each week. Thanks again to Raptive for sponsoring this episode.

All of this is within the context of how do we think strategically as business owners to increase the value of our business? And some of us look at it as cash flow, right? Like, hey, we want to get to the point where we’re making just as much from our site, our following our email list as we are with our W2 job, kind of this break-even point. But also what we’re doing is we’re thinking about how do we create a valuable business? That’s something that you’ve done. You’ve talked about this, I think publicly, but ConvertKit has raised multiple, it’s not raised rounds. I dunno how you’d describe it, but it’s kind of a unique form of allowing people to buy in to ConvertKit soon-to-be Kit. Do you refer to it as Kit at this point?

Nathan Barry: At this point, let’s see, we’re three and a half weeks from when we officially rebrands. Yeah, I’m pretty much it solidly in the

Bjork Ostrom: Kit. Okay, I’ll call it Kit. Yeah. Okay, I’ll convert over. We have a really good friend who we grew up with, and he always went by Joe, and then he moved to LA and he’s like, I go by Joey now. And Lindsay and I are literally the last friends that still call him Joey, Joey, Joey, Joey. So I’ll do my best to transition over, but I just am nostalgic for those things. So Kit and Kit is a valuable company, and one of the things that we talk about on this podcast a lot is we’re not just building cash flow, but we’re also building things that are valuable in the world. And part of that is thinking strategically about like, okay, how do we increase revenue here? Okay, we can earn 40% more from traffic that we get from email if we’re switching literally just by checking a checkbox. And so the first question is, is the number that you’ve raised most recently at with Kit is that public information, not

Nathan Barry: Public? So what we’ve done, we’re public and transparent with all of the Kit revenue numbers. So we’re at 42 million in annual working revenue. Then what we’ve done is done these secondary rounds. So not we’ve raised capital from VCs, but basically enabled team members who have equity and want to sell and partnered them up with friends of the company who are founders, angel investors, a lot of content creators. So a lot of our customers have come in and basically just had a marketplace where they could buy shares from each other. So we’ve done this twice now. We did it in 2021 actually after we had an offer, Spotify offered to buy the company for 200 million, and we turned that down and then team members were like, okay, cool, but how do I sell some of my shares? So we did that in 2021. I think it was about 6 million of shares that transacted, and then again in 23 where I think it was 9 million that people bought from each other. So it’s kind of interesting of a publicly traded company, but only these little windows every couple of years,

Bjork Ostrom: And it allows people to be liquid who maybe have equity and have some of that ownership. Do you talk about what the value of the company was at those times?

Nathan Barry: Yeah, we did 200 million in 2021 and then 320 million in 2023.

Bjork Ostrom: So my point within all of this is I also remember when then ConvertKit now Kit was starting and you’re talking about your journey and it was like a thousand dollars in monthly revenue and then 2000 and then 5,000. And we talk about this idea of people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in a decade. And I feel like Kit is a really good example of that where you have created something that is along with an incredible team worth $300 million. And for anybody listening to the podcast, you might not be wanting to create a $300 million company, but through the intentional effort of multiple small things over a long period of time, there’s the potential to build a really valuable thing in the world. And I feel like it’s important for people to hear that because I think sometimes we maybe have some artificial cap on what it is that we can do.

And I feel like Kit is a great example, having seen it from the outside of that happening. And it feels like a lot of that probably comes from, there’s a hundred different variables in that equation, but one of them is, I would assume and want you to validate this, it’s showing up every day and finding opportunities to grow, to build, to create more revenue, to create a better company to work for. And it feels like this idea of flywheels, which I know you’ve talked about before, probably fits into that mindset of building a really valuable company over a long period of time. So can you speak to what that’s been like for you through the years and how flywheels have fit into that?

Nathan Barry: Yeah, so first is everyone listening are content creators in some way, and to get to where you are, it probably took consistent execution over a long period of time where you had very little traction. At first, maybe you’re talking to 10 people and then later 50 and a thousand, and then at some point you get to the level where you’re like, wait a second, my list grew by more today or this month than it did the first year that I was working on this. And so I think the trait that has served me really well is that idea of creating every day and showing up consistently for a long period of time. So I’m 11 years into this company now, 11 and a half. So it’s been quite a long time going, and it’s really just been those steady compounding gains rather than, oh, this happened and then we took off, and then that happened and it went exponential from there. So yeah, I would say the first thing is figure out how to stay consistent on it for a long period of time, what you’re talking

Bjork Ostrom: About. What has that been like for you to put a pin in the second thing you’re going to say, how have you found that you’re able to do that?

Nathan Barry: It’s a good question. Part of it’s just personality of I can focus and keep working on it for a very long time. Having those steady wins and having the team when you’re really clear on what you’re doing. So it wasn’t ever like, oh, let’s just chase revenue. Our mission as a company is we exist to help creators earn a living. And so we get those steady wins and stories and all those examples of like, oh, we implemented this functionality or we onboarded this customer and then they were able to create this outcome. So I think from a flywheel perspective, there’s a really nice virtuous cycle of just being encouraged every day by the wins that we get to hear. One role that we have that I think we added when we were maybe 40 team members, we’re 90 now, but people were like, wait a second, you have that. How does this company of your size have a dedicated storyteller? What even is the storyteller?

And that’s Issa on our team who her entire job is interviewing our creators and telling their story and then bringing that into two places back to our team to say, Hey, here’s what we need to improve in the product. Here’s what we need to do, but then also here’s the impact that we’re having, and then broadly to use in our marketing outward facing of here’s the impact that we’re having. More people should sign up as customers. And so I think that’s had the effect of constantly seeing those wins. And so I guess you’d think about where do you get your hits of dopamine…

Nathan Barry: Keep things going there. And so I’ve set up a feedback loop or a flywheel where I get a lot of hits of dopamine on a regular basis from hearing a creator say, I was doing this before and then I implemented this Kit feature and now I have this outcome. Thank you so much. It’s like, great, let’s keep chasing those customer wins and then the company growth will take care of itself.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, we talk about it within the context of defining the game that you’re playing and the metrics within that game. And there’s all different sorts of income. There’s relational income, there’s kind of story income, there’s outcome income, there’s income, income, revenue, income, all of these different types of income that we can have within the work that we do. And it depends on who you are and where you get that, like you said, that dopamine hit, but it really requires you to be clear on what the game is that you’re playing. And you saying that that story is a great example. For some people, they might be really revenue driven, they might be really outcome driven. They might want to sell a company for a bunch of money, which is great, but for a lot of people, it’s not that you still need that revenue. Simon Sinek says it’s the fuel to make the car go, but it’s not the destination necessarily. So I love that. I think that’s great. It’s finding what that is for you. It’s like the stories, it’s the outcomes, it’s the success that creators see. That’s the fuel that keeps you going. So for anybody out there to figure out what that is for you, what is the thing that’s going to be able to keep you going every day? You were saying a second part. Do you remember what that was?

Nathan Barry: Yeah. Well, getting into flywheels as a concept, this is something that I’ve used a lot before. I knew how to articulate it, and then now that I know how to articulate it, what a flywheel is and really how to define it, I’ve talked about it a lot more, especially the last year. A flywheel is really just this virtuous cycle that the more something happens, the better it gets. I have three laws of a flywheel. The first is that you put each step in your process one after another, so they flow smoothly from one to the next, and then it comes around and closes that loop. So the last step connects into the first step. The second is that each flywheel or it gets easier with each rotation, and the third is that it produces more with each rotation. So a really simple example that I think any creator could relate to is what are you going to publish to your newsletter or to your blog post this week? How do you get enough ideas?

And so a very simple flywheel is just, here’s one around content ideas. And what you do is as you have content on your blog and then people are subscribing to that for some reason you’re saying, Hey, subscribe my newsletter to get more content like this. Then in that email sequence, you have a question. So you say maybe it’s email three. After someone signs up, it goes out automatically just says, Hey, what’s your biggest struggle related to my background with teaching software design? So learning how to design iPhone applications in the food space. It could be something much more specific. What’s your biggest struggle related to cooking this type of dish? Or as you’ve been cooking through our recipes or anything like that, hit reply and let me know. And so then you get this steady feed of people saying, oh, I’m frustrated by this. I didn’t understand that. Just replying into your inbox. You capture all those responses and then every week when it comes time when you realize like, oh, I don’t have anything to send tomorrow at 10:00 AM my newsletters supposed to go out, you just go through those responses and say, oh, what are people struggling with?

Oh, Nathan’s struggling with this thing. I can answer that. And you write something just to that one person, then make it slightly generic so it works for everybody, and that’s the content that you send out. And so what ends up happening is the more people who join your list, the more ideas you get for content. So that gives you more that you can write about, which gets you more content out there, which will then result in more people who join your list. So it hits all three laws of every step flows smoothly, like the loop closes over time, it gets easier because you’re going to have this process refined and then it generates more and more results because responses from 10 people versus responses from a thousand will give you more reach and higher quality options to choose from.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. It feels like one version of that. Maybe we could workshop this as an example, and why I like this so much is it feels like it’s maybe adjacent to or kind of Venn diagram overlap of, we talked a lot about this idea of tiny bit, a tiny bit better every day forever. And I think one of the ways that you can get a tiny bit better is not just checking something off of your list, but aiming to check something off of your list that is going to be in place and make your life or your business better over a long period of time. So processes, systems, maybe Flywheels then is also within that world. And to zoom back to the conversation we were having before about hey, adding a call to action on social media, my guess is for the example that you gave about the creator who talks about working with macros, he’s created this lead magnet and by him then introducing the call to action in his social media around this lead magnet, there is now something always collecting or capturing some of the value that exists with the content he’s publishing that he would’ve missed out on in a massive way if he hadn’t done that and was just churning out content to grow followers and that will pay dividends over time.

So would something like that apply within or work within the flywheel context?

Nathan Barry: Yeah, it absolutely would. And I feel like a lot of what I’m trying to convince people to do is to go from the wide range of things you could do and instead find a few things that work and just do them over and over again. I think a lot of the magic of flywheels is to get you to just stay focused and consistent. The 1% better idea,

Nathan Barry: Just every rotation we improve a little bit and you realize like, oh, if I use this call to action, if I make this other tweak, then it will keep getting better. An example of this is early on when growing ConvertKit, I guess two years in, I had very little traction and the thing that I decided to try was direct sales. I said, okay, I’m going to directly outreach to professional bloggers and try to understand their pain points with email and convince them to sign up for ConvertKit.

And so I didn’t know to call it a flywheel then, but I effectively made a flywheel, which was like identify new leads. So go into a niche and okay, professional paleo recipe bloggers like, all right, let’s list all of them out. And then I would send an outreach to them. So either a social media DM or usually an email asking, Hey, I noticed you’re using MailChimp. Do you have any frustrations with MailChimp? The reason I ask is I made this tool for content creators. Here’s what it does, super short email, try to get them on a call. Then from the call I’d follow up, we’d offer to do their whole migration for them for free. And then at the end, for everyone who got through it, I’d get a testimonial and ask, Hey, do you know of any other creators? What found is those first five were ridiculously hard to get because I didn’t have any social proof, I didn’t have. People would be like, cool, who else uses the platform? And I’d be like, well,

Nathan Barry: I do. Yeah, right, you’d be the first. But over time I noticed that it would get easier and easier because the social proof would get better. My sales pitch would get better. I take the money that we made, invest it in the product that would get better. And so I ended up taking the company from 2000 a month in revenue to a hundred thousand a month in one year pretty much just without Flywheel because they just did that same thing over and over and over again. And that got to the point where we had really a lot of traction,

Nathan Barry: It was focusing in on something that worked and repeating it. Whereas the mistake that I’ve made, I don’t know a hundred times and then I watch so many creators make is they say, I figured out something that worked and now I’m going to figure out the next thing that works and keep this running and now figure out the next thing that works. And then before it, things one and two stopped working and they’re like, why isn’t the business growing? It should, and you moved away from what was working.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s like if you’re drilling and you find oil, you just keep drilling. You don’t pick up and go somewhere else. But I think it’s so easy, shiny object, even just like we get bored. But we had that conversation with our team recently where we were kind of like, oh, we tried this marketing thing and it didn’t work. It was something within emailing our list about this is for clarity, our software tool. And what I said coming out of it was like, oh, it’s just reps. We haven’t gotten enough reps with it and we need reps and we need to stick with it. We need to figure out what’s wrong and make it better because it will work eventually. It’s just a matter of continuing to figure out how to make it work. And there was a spark there. It was working a little bit, but it’s not realistic to expect everything to turn into a raging fire within the first week.

That takes years a lot of times. Last thing I want to talk about, we’ve touched on a little bit, but ConvertKit will soon be Kit that my guess is not just a rebrand, but also something that encapsulates more of what the future of Kit will be. So we’ve talked about strategy, we’ve talked about some of the growth that Kit has had through the years. What does it look like moving forward? The landscape is changing, things look different, and you’re expanding the Kit Universe to include more than email because creators need more than email or you can just offer more than that. So talk a little bit about what that looks like moving forward.

Nathan Barry: Yeah, we got kind of lucky that the name of the company as we shortened it includes the word Kit

And that really drives so much of the direction of where we’re going because what we found is that there were all these all-in-one tools to serve creators over time and none of them really work. They check a whole bunch of feature boxes, basically they go like a mile wide and an inch deep. So it says it has all these features, but then you go to use it and you’re like, yeah, but it doesn’t actually solve the business need. And so we’ve always stayed away from that all in one model, do the things that we do really well and integrate with everyone else. But then people were also, a lot of our customers love that. And then they’d also say, but we want the All-in-one. And I sat with this problem for a long time, for years of how do you have both the depth of the depth and user experience of a focused product and the deeply integrated nature of an all-in-one?

And then I realized that this problem has actually been solved plenty of times before, just not in the creator space, but WordPress and Shopify, which are both tools that either creators use or they’re adjacent. They solved it with this app store model of have a very deep focus product that’s very good at what it does at its core and then have a thriving ecosystem of everyone else building on top of it. So that’s the pivot that we’ve made with Kit and someone was giving us a hard time on, I think it’s probably Instagram dms the other day where they’re like, if you’re going to drop one part of your word or you should have dropped Kit and just been convert.com, it’s like, no, no, the Kit is actually the key part of it because what we want is because what

Bjork Ostrom: You’re doing is acquiring a Kit that is going to help you as a creator.

Nathan Barry: Yeah, exactly. And so you can come in and say, Hey, I’m migrating a Kit when I have 10,000 email subscribers and I’ve got traction. It’s an established business, but it’s just me. And then over time is that 10,000 grows to 50,000 or a hundred thousand and it goes from just you to an assistant to a full-time team member to a few team members, and you’re trying out different things. You need a full Kit more than one platform could provide it for you. And so that’s the model that we’re going to is you can install these apps. One example is we’ve had a lot of people asking us for CRM functionality for sales tracking. Think of people who run agencies or coaches where you might talk one to many to a few thousand people on your email list, but then you actually need to track individual leads for someone who wants to sign up for your coaching program. And that’s sort of these two different worlds that have never worked well together. And so we had this pitch, people are like Build a CRM where I can have Trello style move leads across log notes and build that as a core part of Kit. And we’re just like, I don’t think we’d ever do. That’s a big product

Footprint increase. I don’t know that we’ll ever be the best in the business of that. And instead we found a developer who wanted to build that. We built all the APIs so that they could build it and then launched it as Kit board, which is its own standalone app on top of Kit. So it’s a seamless experience, but it extends the functionality. And so we’ve seen all kinds of AI tools, like a testimonial management tool. There’s a bunch of things coming calendar booking that you’d want as core functionality, but now you just browse the app store and install. So it’s still early, but that’s the model that we’re going to.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. And it makes a lot of sense. You think about the engine that will be Kit and all of the different ways that creators need to or want to use that list and how different it is the you gave, if you have a coach, maybe it’s more like one-to-one type interactions they have. There’s a thousand different ways that you’d use it, but you don’t want to build a thousand different features into your platform. And then somebody comes in and like you said, it’s a mile wide and an inch deep, but to partner with creators, kind of this app store idea, Apple’s done it, Shopify’s dominant WordPress with plugins. Everybody who listens to this very familiar with you set up a food blog, it’s going to look different even though WordPress is powering it because of all of these kind of aftermarket arts that you’re installing that augment or shape how it’s used.

So very exciting that transition will have happened by the time this podcast comes out. So people can check out Kit.com if people want to sign up, if they want to become a subscriber. Can you talk about the best way for people to do that? I know for lists that are a little bit bigger, at least at a certain period of time, you’re doing those transitions. And then also do a little shout out for the studio. Anybody who’s seeing the visual for this, it’s like you’re in this incredible beautiful studio and I know those that’s available for creators as well. So give a little plug for all things Kit.

Nathan Barry: Yeah, we’re doing a lot of fun things. So first we changed our free plan. It used to be a thousand subscribers for free. We made it 10,000 subscribers for free because we’re just like, I think in this world of prices are going up everywhere.

And people were saying like, oh, with this rebrand of Kit, that domain was probably expensive. A rebrand is expenses, now comes the price increase. And so we’re like, actually we’re going to do the opposite where we’re going to go and say our free plan is now 10,000 subscribers. We’re just trying to make it as wide open of an ecosystem as possible. Also because that’s necessary. All the designers and developers building email templates and ops, they need a huge ecosystem. So I guess we want that flywheel of more creators to serve, which means more developers will see an opportunity there which make a better product, bring more creators to serve. So yeah, if you go to Kit.com, you can sign up free plans now, 10,000 subscribers. What else is in there? I guess you mentioned the studio. This is another thing that I’ve wanted to do actually since 2018 is when I first pitched the team on it, but I was thinking about high quality content and how hard it is to produce and setting up your home studio and dialing it in.

And there’s just so much to know. So what we ended up doing is the summer we launched Kit Studios, the first location is in Boise, so that’s where I’m recording from right now. But it’s five studios set up for super high-End podcast and video recording. So I’m talking to you now looking through a teleprompter with a dslr. It’s beautiful, it’s inspiring, and it’s just available for free for Kit customers to come in and book the space and record whatever they want. So there’s five studios here in Boise. And then we’re looking at expanding to future cities. We’ve got to learn a few more things, but hopefully over the next year or two we’ll expand to New York, Austin, la. There’s a campaign from Minneapolis.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep, I’ll join it. We’ll pick it from Minneapolis in front of the Boise headquarters.

Nathan Barry: Yeah, exactly. But it’s fun to take the resources that we like, the scale we’ve gotten the company to and just figure out, okay, how can we pour this back into creators? And I don’t think anyone expected us to launch professional quality video studios, but I mean, it’s just when you see what people create in the space, I see it now popping up on my Instagram and Twitter feeds all the time, and I’m just like, I love it. I’m through to play a part.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s beautiful migrations. Is that something that’s still happening for creators of a certain size?

Nathan Barry: So if you have at least 5,000 subscribers and you’re coming over on a paid plan, then we’ll migrate you totally for free. And then my last question

Bjork Ostrom: Was Kit.com expensive?

Nathan Barry: It was expensive. I am transparent with everything. And that is the one thing that I was

Bjork Ostrom: Trying to buy on their side. Did they ask not to

Nathan Barry: On their side? And I was like, I got the contract. And it said, you can’t disclose anything. And I was like, yeah, well, I remove that. And they were like, we had this whole back and forth and the broker was like if you want this deal to happen, you cannot remove the NDA. I was like,

Bjork Ostrom: I won’t push for that. But just broadly speaking, my guess is that it was expensive. Yeah, obviously a valuable company and the reason is because you guys do really good work and we’ve seen that through the decade that you’ve built Kit. Excited for the next decade to come and more conversations on the podcast as well. So Nathan, thanks so much for coming on.

Nathan Barry: Yeah, thank you for having me.

Emily Walker: Hey there, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team and thank you so much for listening to that episode. We really appreciate it. If you liked this episode or enjoy the show, we would really appreciate you leaving a review or rating wherever you listen to your podcast. Episodes, ratings and reviews help get the show in front of new listeners and help us grow our little show into something even bigger. We read each and every review and it makes us so happy to hear when you’re enjoying the podcast or what you would like us to improve or change in upcoming episodes. All you have to do is find the Food Blogger Pro Podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts, whether it’s on Apple or Spotify or another player, and enter a rating and review. While you’re there, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss a new episode. We really appreciate it so much and it makes such a huge difference for our show. So thanks in advance and that’s all we have for you today. So have a great week.

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Ann Morrissey: Hey, there. Thanks for tuning in to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. My name is Ann. And in today’s episode we’re sitting down with Ewen Finser from Venture 4th Media. In this episode, Bjork and Ewen discuss the evolving landscape of digital content creation. With algorithm changes impacting traffic, Ewen emphasizes the importance of going beyond Google and looking for an alternative recipe for your traffic. He shares insights on building a strong presence on Reddit while also highlighting the power of community building as a cornerstone for long-term success. This was a really interesting episode because I’ve definitely seen Reddit discussions pop up in search results, but I never considered leveraging the platform to drive traffic. It was definitely an eye-opener for me, and it’s certainly something to consider for your business as Google starts to treat Reddit as a publisher. If you enjoy the episode, we would really appreciate it if you would leave a review anywhere you listen to podcasts, or share the episode with your community. And now, without further ado, I’ll let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Ewen, welcome back to the podcast.

Ewen Finser: It’s good to be here, Bjork.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. We’re going to be talking about all things search, SEO, traffic. Because, as we’re going to be talking about, the world of search has changed a lot. A lot of people listening have felt that. You’ve felt that as you’ve built sites, and have built these really incredible sites through the years, doing all of the different things that Google has told you to do, and doing a really good job with those. And now the hard part is, we’re in the season where a lot of these really incredible sites that had traffic that was growing, expanding, gaining traction through the years, there’s this thing called helpful content update. And that impacted a lot of those. So, can you share a little bit about the sites that you’ve built through the years, for people who haven’t heard the past interviews that you’ve done, and then what happened with helpful content?

Ewen Finser: Yeah. So, our context is for the last 10 years really has been starting as a lifestyle through bootstrapping my first couple of sites on my own. Basically riding the Google train, that Google needed a lot of information to populate the web with quality content. And starting off blogging myself, then hiring a team, then creating this concept around incubating sites at scale. So, coming up with a concept for there’s a gap in the market in, I don’t know, subscription box reviews or something, and then creating a site that’s dedicated to that. Or more recently launching a big gaming portfolio with specific blogs and communities around certain types of games or titles. And that worked really well for a really long time with Google, to the point where we had millions of page views a month, every year was up and to the right. And so, that’s my context, is basically building more niche down focused content sites really around enthusiast groups. But then the primary traffic and distribution model being Google search, we have some other traffic mixed in, but that was always the golden goose for us. And so, with the helpful content update, the way I describe it is currently it’s like Google took the web and said, okay, content sites, straight content sites, you’re not going to get as much real estate. You’re going to get less prevalence in search, in the first page of search. And so, that’s really been a huge disruption to our business model, and to many other indie publishers, and even big publishers are taking a little bit of a haircut on some of their properties. And what you’ve seen rise in its place is user generated content. A lot of e-commerce. If you’re a brand or a product owner, you can get away with ranking AI generated content. And so, it’s like this big paradigm shift. There’s a lot of flux, there’s a lot of uncertainty in the market. We’ve slowed down our publishing cadence, at least in relation to Google, and said, “You know what? We don’t know if Google’s going to figure it out.” And so, we’re not going to pump any more money into that playbook until we really have that understood and revalidated.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And correct me if I’m wrong on this, but it felt like your expertise was really, broadly speaking, in two areas. You had a really good understanding of how to look at the web using tools, whether that be Ahrefs, Semrush, many other tools, that allow you to get a sense for what people are talking about. And like you said, I think you said this, maybe gaps where, hey, we know that there are people who are interested in guitar and learning guitar, and we feel like, this is you saying it, there’s an opportunity to create quality content in that space. So, understanding macro, hey, there’s an opportunity here. Or video games, like you talked about. And then once getting into that, then seeing like, okay, here’s the specific things we can talk about within the context of video games, or this specific video game. Here are the articles that we can write. So, that’s one. Maybe it’s keyword research, but it’s also general research about the web, having the ability to use some of these tools, understand the web, understand these opportunities. And then the second piece felt like was another strong skill set of yours and your team is then building processes around working with the team to create that content. So, you aren’t necessarily going to be the ultimate expert personally in guitar and video games and subscription box reviews, but there are people who love talking about that stuff and have a deep interest in it. And so, then finding those people to come onto the team and create content about it. And like you said, for the past 10 years you continue to do more of it, you see the opportunities, you have the ability to scale a team, you grow, grow, grow, and then there’s this change. And you didn’t change anything you were doing, you continued to create good content. Your team continued to create good content. It was like Google made a decision around what type of content they wanted to share and display, and that has massive implications for many people, yourselves included. Can you talk about what that was like to navigate that, and at what point did you step back and were you like, oh, something changed here? Was it the day of an update? How quickly did you realize something had changed?

Ewen Finser: Well, I remember, actually when we were both going to Rhodium this last year, it had just dropped. And so, it’s fresh in my mind. This was October of ’23. Going into it being like, okay, here’s a Google update. But we’d been through updates before, and in fact, we had various sites that were impacted. And so, the first initial period of a couple of months is like, okay, what’s the damage? Don’t overreact. The standard stuff. Let’s see how it shakes out. And then it was like, okay, this is a big hit, but it wasn’t terrible. But then there was successive hits, even in Q1 of this year where-

Bjork Ostrom: Additional releases coming out.

Ewen Finser: Yes. They kept turning the dial in the same direction. So, whatever we initially saw, got worse. And [inaudible 00:09:09] skated through the first two that were ultimately hit. So, the cumulative effect was a huge shot across the bow to our business model. And so, then by, I would say early Q1, I was like, okay, we’ve got to change our… Our default has to be alive. We cannot keep just continuing on and hoping that Google figures it out. And so, we had to cut back a lot. We realized that we need to cut back our content production, because new content was being published and it wasn’t ranking. It wasn’t ranking on the first page, it wasn’t ranking on the second page. And so, that’s just step one, stop the bleeding. And then step two is like, okay, we can take a minute and figure out what does this really mean? And so, there was part of me, and part of me still is, a very small part of me is on the fence of Google’s going to have to figure this out. And if we talk to people, like our mutual friend Jeff Coyle from MarketMuse, he’s like, “They have to figure this out.” And it’s like they’re going to. And part of me is like, yeah, okay, you’re right. They have to. And then part of me is like, but we can’t build a business model around-

Bjork Ostrom: The potential of them figuring it out. Yeah.

Ewen Finser: Yeah. What’s right? Almost like they have this, in today’s digital world, they’re almost like a public utility in some regards. They want to get the benefits of that, but not the downsides of that. But we’re waiting around for them to figure it out, because what we see in searches like this cannot be the future, right? This cannot be what we’re faced with as core results in Reddit, and age domain spam, and e-commerce sites ranking with AI that are not actually e-commerce sites. There’s all sorts of problems with Google specifically. I don’t say the internet, with Google.

Bjork Ostrom: And the reason when you say that they need to figure it out and they need to fix it, that’s because that belief is the results aren’t as good as they should be. These are not the things that people want to see. Is that the basic premise with it?

Ewen Finser: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Ewen Finser: Even the AI overviews, how that has been bungled and there’s all sorts of examples of incorrect information or blatant plagiarism. There’s all sorts of issues. And so, yeah, is this ethical? It should be. It should be this is not ethical, but then there’s this other element because in there is self-interest, right? At a certain point users are going to start finding other ways to access information if their queries are not being satisfied. And we’re starting to see that a little bit. I monitor the search dominance rankings and Google’s had like 90% for years, and they’re starting to dip down a couple of points each month. Not huge, but there’s Bing, there’s alternative search. There’s other platforms that are not search engines, but TikTok has a similar function. And so, they’re under pressure and their challenge is they’re trying to ride this AI effect and they want to be upfront with their AI technology where they’re going to surface the answer engine in a different way. But they also have this legacy business model that’s really dependent on the Google search we know. Which is people contributing, creators or publishers, contributing information to the open web for free without any expectation of getting compensation other than, okay, we can monetize with display ads, or affiliate links, or acquiring customers, or billing lists or whatever. We can use that free traffic. And that has been a very opening effect, I think, honestly to the economy. People want to share information, but now it’s almost like, because I know, it’s like, nope, we got to lock it down. This contract is broken. Even if it wasn’t an official contract, it’s broken.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. We give you content, you display it, and then we get traffic from it. And that relationship worked. A small portion of the people that use Google would then click on ads. That’s how they make their money. The majority of people who use Google click on the organic search and you make money from affiliate, or you make money from ads. And like you said, when that contract is broken, then you step back and you say, okay, maybe I need to figure out a different way to approach this. And additionally, it feels like the relationship has maybe fractured when there’s these recent Google leaks. Can you talk about what that was and then what information that included in it?

Ewen Finser: Yeah. So, I’m by no means the expert on Google leaks. There’s some really great Twitter follows, or X follows. But from my understanding, basically this was an insider fed, or someone with knowledge had access to all the documentation around how they basically engineer search results. And this was leaked to the public at various stages and now it’s accessible to anyone. And a lot of it, almost can’t even summarize it in just a couple of words or even a couple of minutes, but there was a lot of information there that came out that people suspected, but Google had publicly said, “Oh, no, we don’t do that.”

Bjork Ostrom: Do you have an example?

Ewen Finser: Yeah. Like click through data. They say, “Well, we don’t really measure clicks on a link.” Say if there’s 10 results in Google search and users 9 times out of 10 are not clicking the first result, they’re clicking the third result, then that will inform their algorithm to rank the third result higher maybe than that first result over time. And they said, “It’s not really how it works.” And so, there’s all this gaslighting around people with theories on the internet. And turns out that, yeah, it’s a real thing. And so much to the point of today, I saw some agencies that are actually offering services where it’s like we will, from anonymized locations, click your result, we’ll enter as [inaudible 00:15:11]. And it’s the growth hack that’s really working right now. So, it’s all of these types of things, the manipulation is laid bare. It’s like the emperor has no clothes and a lot of the stuff that we all suspected was true.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. It’s interesting, you can understand from Google’s perspective why they would say that’s not true, because the response then is you share… Then these agencies was like, okay, if that’s what happens, we’re going to figure out some way to hack this. And then suddenly it doesn’t work as a variable in the algorithm because you can’t really trust that the clicks are the clicks. And so, it’s almost like a weird relationship where Google is forced to say things publicly in maybe these shadowy ways where it’s like, ah, it’s not exactly what we do. And then there’s this leak that comes out and it’s like, oh, that is actually something you do. And it’s easy to understand why they would say that, but it also then feels dishonest to be like, well, so then how do we trust what you’re saying?

Ewen Finser: Well, I think that it gets at the core of it, which is Google can’t really assess quality content. They’re trying to look at… Or they can’t do it affordably. And so, they’re looking at these different attributes to approximate backlinks historically had been people voting for your site. And so, even things like offer profiles, it turns out, oh, just having an offer profile but there’s certain tag… I guess there was tags where it’s in the documentation. I don’t know how, again, it was phrased, but it was something like whatever signal author bio, or it would be small site classifier. And so, all these things-

Bjork Ostrom: Or expertise on science would categorize people as having certain expertise, or sites, as expertise in certain areas. And the idea being sites were tagged as being-

Ewen Finser: Yeah. And Google said, “No, we don’t do that.” And there’s no difference between a small publisher and a big publisher, but oh, by the way, they have these tags that’s like you’re a small publisher. Which basically said you’re going to get different treatment. Is there a smoking gun that says just because they have these tags or modifiers doesn’t necessarily mean they’re measuring it or doesn’t tell us how important they are? But it just goes to show these are things that they had come up with a name for it, they did come up with a classifier, so they probably were using it in some way.

Bjork Ostrom: Some way. Yeah. So, does the information from the Google leaks, haven’t spent a ton of time with it, would you say it still is relevant to understand from somebody who’s interested in how search works in a post helpful content world? Or is it more of just the general sentiment around some of the information is helpful to know?

Ewen Finser: Yeah. I think there are certainly tactics that, it’s probably a small window, where you could probably do like the click manipulation. But Google now is under pressure. They’re going to have to change, they’re going to have to counteract that because otherwise they’re going to be in a sea of spam because everyone’s going to be just, oh, here’s the playbook. We’re going to follow it. So, they’re going to have to adjust it and prevent the exploits. So, I would probably encourage most of the audience here as like, yes, I wouldn’t necessarily arbitrage the short-term here, but I think in terms of the long-term play, I would just keep it in mind that I think there’s this public messaging that Google gives around just create great content and we’re going to rank you. To me, that is misleading and false. Given the current environment, given the leaks that have come out, given just the treatment of sites that have quality content that have been caught up in this whole impact of helpful content. And that’s where my… Just don’t take Google’s word for it anymore. Because there’s all this evidence to suggest that there’s something else at play.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Evidence through best practice that people have learned with experiments on their own. But then also something like this comes out and it’s like actual documentation to some degree.

Ewen Finser: And I think overall, if I were to zoom out, what’s my takeaway? I have an end goal I want to go to now, which is acquiring users or building a community that is, what I call, within my moat, within my walled garden. And so, having [inaudible 00:19:56], in my newsletter I talk about this raising the drawbridge, which is the old internet we talked about, you just publish great content, other people consume it. Yeah, you have to see an ad, but you get high quality content maybe where all you have to do is view an ad. And that is the cost for anyone to access uncommon knowledge. And so, I think actually in the long-term thing, particularly with AI and how easy it is now to create mediocre content with AI, or boilerplate knowledge with AI, that uncommon knowledge, having an ability to raise your drawbridge and say, you know what? I want to actually not share this information widely. And that has a chilling effect I think on the internet as a whole right now. But being able to build in those mechanisms to our businesses where we’re not just dependent on what kind of traffic Google is sending me today. We’re actually building a recurring, even if it’s 3% or 2% or half a percent of the traffic you receive gets on an email list, those are the types of things I’m thinking about long term.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. And I love that phrase uncommon knowledge. That I feel like is maybe a better way to define niche or niche expertise. It’s like you have uncommon knowledge, and I think especially in a post artificial intelligence, post GenAI world, that is really valuable. Because the common knowledge is going to become easier to access and there’s going to be more competition against open web content if it’s something that is common knowledge. But insofar as you have uncommon knowledge and want to be strategic about building a content-based business, that idea of raising the drawbridge is really compelling. By that, what I understand you to mean is you have the ability to say, this is my closed off area, this is my membership site, this is my newsletter, this is my group. It could even be an in-person meeting or an in-person meetup. That is going to be the thing that you potentially as a creator moving forward can be strategic about as opposed to how do I publish everything for free and make it available for free and then monetize through ads and affiliate? Is that accurate?

Ewen Finser: Correct.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Ewen Finser: Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: So, then the question is, what does that look like to actually get discovered? Because you have to have, you said, that 2, 3, 4, 5%, whatever it might be, that eventually becomes part of that closed off community. For us we have our podcast, and on the podcast we occasionally talk about the membership site of Food Blogger Pro, but I know that if I publish this podcast, there’s a very good chance the transcripts are going to be ingested into some AI, GenAI, OpenAI like Gemini with Google, and that will then potentially give people answers. But for us it’s worth it at this point because we think, hey, a number of those people are going to convert over. But we are able to deliver that through a podcast app, through other places that people are listening to the podcast. How do you do that? How do you get there? In your case, you have a site that’s impacted by helpful content, so what does it look like then to acquire that traffic, those people that you’re going to bring into your community if it’s hard to get them through search?

Ewen Finser: Yeah. So, I think it takes this back to basics mentality of trying to imagine yourself operating in a Google free world. Of course, a lot of our sites still do get traffic. But this kind of reimagine, looking at all the… I’ve started installing different traffic, Google Analytics alternatives, because they do a better job of servicing alternative traffic streams.

Bjork Ostrom: Mm. What do you mean by that?

Ewen Finser: And understanding how… Plausible IO, there’s a couple of others. I’m blanking on the names, but there’s a whole slew of analytics first, it’s not an afterthought that Google threw in there. It’s easy to use. And you start to understand how are people finding us? And just by doing that, if you start visualizing your traffic and you’re like, oh, you go down the rabbit hole, this random forum is sending me traffic. Let me figure out how that’s happening. Or Facebook, I’m getting shared. Someone is sharing my post somewhere even if I don’t have a community. And then you start to put the pieces together of what could an alternative recipe for your traffic look like? And where Google has been the golden goose. So, we reimagine, okay, there’s Pinterest, there’s Facebook, there’s talk about Reddit, Reddit’s the thing I think that’s really working, but there’s a bunch of different alternative traffic sources that we can analyze. And I’ve started to create little hypotheses around each of our sites. And when you think about the value of your site that was reliant maybe a lot on Google traffic, there’s the immediate reality that, okay, it’s not that Google business is broken, but it doesn’t mean your content doesn’t have value. And so, part of the exercise is figuring out what is the intrinsic value of your content. If it really is high quality content, could you put a drawbridge in front of it, or could you redistribute that on a different platform? And so, some of the things that are hot right now are Facebook pages now doing these… Facebook’s become a viral traffic source. It’s interesting and obscure rabbit holes that you can go down.

Bjork Ostrom: What do you by that? Viral traffic source, meaning it can send viral traffic or Facebook has picked up speed with content creators as a traffic source? As a platform has to become viral or-

Ewen Finser: Yeah. For creators.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay. Yeah.

Ewen Finser: Yeah. And so, what’s working. Again, we’ve only had limited success here so far, but there are people that are having success with boosting their fan pages above 4 or 5,000 likes or members. And then distributing traffic that engages that audience. And they come directly from Facebook to your website. And the nice thing about those strategies is you don’t have to change your monetization infrastructure. So, you can keep the ads. In fact, the ads are often higher coming from Facebook than coming from Google right now. And so, you can keep that flywheel turning. Or Pinterest is another example. Execute a Pinterest strategy where all your recipes are getting distributed on Pinterest and that has this organic mechanism to it where things are getting shared and ranking in Pinterest, and then that becomes a traffic stream. And that, again, that doesn’t rely on you changing, if you have display ads, you can keep using those display ads. I think where it gets challenging is if you are selling maybe products or you have affiliate based business and you have to change your monetization model and your traffic model at the same time. Or you can choose one or the other. And so, it’s figuring out putting those pieces together. And YouTube’s another one where people are investing in that. And I look at all of these as these are traffic arbitrages, but then I connect it to what we talked about earlier, which is, and then what? Okay, we need to get those people converted into something that allows me to have a conversation to re-engage them that is less intermediated by these tech companies.

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it’s interesting. Just as a real quick aside, you had mentioned these different traffic sources can be more or less valuable. And this is for Pinch of Yum, ad stacks are always going to be different, but Pinterest, RPM, $78.

Ewen Finser: Wow.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s a really valuable traffic source. Direct, 54. Facebook, like you said, 42,22. Google search for us, 41,58. But you can start to see, okay, if you had a site that had 75% of the traffic, but the majority of it was from Pinterest, it probably would be earning more than a site that would just have traffic from Google. And so, you can start to be strategic about what that looks like to get traffic from different sources. And so much of this world, I don’t know if you can relate to this, it feels like it’s this never ending balance between what is the tactic that’s working and what does content that actually help people look like? And how do you dance with those two realities? Because you can’t go heads down and just say, I’m going to just create extremely compelling content, because there’s always going to be variables that are like, here’s what’s working on YouTube right now, here’s best practices as it relates to SEO. It’s this balance between tactics, what’s working, what’s not working, and how do you create content that’s really good content that helps people with the thing that they’re trying to do. I’m curious to know what does that balance look like for you and your team as you think about that dance?

Ewen Finser: It’s incredibly challenging in some ways because we’re… Again, if you could publish the most comprehensive guide to whatever, in your vertical, the best recipe, publish it, and maybe recipe is the wrong example, but let’s say the best frying pans or something. And it would be better than consumer reports even. It would be more firsthand. You could test all the frying pans. You could publish that. And if you are not in the favorite view, that article’s not getting visibility in Google. And so, it gets to your point. Which is the distribution method versus the content quality, those are separate conversations. And as online marketers we’re constantly navigating what is the best distribution method for our content. And sometimes, we’ve created content for Google for years and years and years, and maybe creating content for Pinterest is similar, but different. What if quality for that platform marries both objective quality with what goes viral, what gets picked up by that platform, what gets ranked. And who is that person using that platform? For Pinterest it’s a certain demographic, and so maybe your content is actually going to be a little bit different than what it was for Google, or YouTube, or Facebook. So, it’s a constant challenge for us. And I think, again, what I try to keep in mind is these are… What I’ve reminded ourselves, we like to think of ourselves as a media company. We’re like, oh, we’re a media company. And when I really thought, after this update, when we really thought about it, I was like, okay, yeah, but we’re actually a Google company.

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm. Yeah, totally.

Ewen Finser: And so, as much as I want to be, I’m a media entrepreneur, like I’m like, I don’t know, like Walt Disney or something, no, no, no. We’re a Google satellite team.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, sure. Yeah, we are creating content-

Ewen Finser: And so, how do I change that dynamic long-term? It’s going to be a lot of work. I have to get really good at these traffic arbitrages and understanding distribution in this new environment, in this ever-changing environment. But again, if on the back end I have this way to capture users to have conversations on my own terms, that I think is the end goal. Which could be in our own community, like you talked about your Food Blogger community, or with an email list, whatever it is. Or in-person events. Having that conversation on my own terms, or more on my own terms than not. Right?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Ewen Finser: So, Google is still-

Bjork Ostrom: It’s not exclusively on your own terms, but more often than not.

Ewen Finser: Exactly. And there’s still things to navigate, but I think of my community is the end goal I think for where I’m trying to go with some of these verticals. And then being, we can play a different game. We don’t have to play this musical chairs game. Or at least it’s more valuable because we’re capturing X percent of those users. If something changes, hey, we have 10,000 members of our community, it’s not going to rock the boat as much.

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm. Yeah. You have a community and that community shows up every day. They go directly to the site, they log in, wherever that might be. Maybe it’s on a subdomain of your URL, or maybe it’s within another platform. But that community is in and of itself the solution as opposed to in another world that might be like, hey, you’re getting traffic and people are coming to your site, but it’s kind of transactional. They have something they’re thinking about doing, they’re wanting to buy a frying pan and learn about it, or they’re wanting a Reuben recipe and they find you as opposed to a community which can persevere through algorithm updates and platform changes because that is the thing. That’s where people are going. That’s the solution.

Ewen Finser: Yeah. And as an intermediate step too, because sometimes that’s overwhelming. When I think about, oh, I have to create a community. Wow, that sounds difficult. An intermediate step for me is either become a customer or somehow get their email list, or get them engaged on different platforms. And so, you have this ability to, once you figure out what community is, you can market it to people, even if you don’t have it quite figured it out just yet.

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Can you talk a little bit, I know one of the strategies that you’re starting to look at and use is Reddit as a place to launch a community. Just this morning I was thinking about this, outside of the conversation that we’re having today, just on my own, I was thinking there’s such incredible information on Reddit. I don’t love going to Reddit and spending time in Reddit, but I want to be intentional to tap into some of the communities I’m interested in. So, even noticing in my own psyche thinking about community-based information and getting that information for myself, but I know that there’s also an opportunity for somebody who wants to build a thing online to use that, as a broad pursuit that we’re all doing, to leverage pre-existing platforms to build a version of that community, or to tap into pre-existing communities. So, can you talk about some of your early thoughts as you’ve explored Reddit as a platform?

Ewen Finser: Yeah. So, I’ll start with why did I even stumble on Reddit. So, as I was thinking about all of our traffic losses and starting to analyze the search results for like, okay, well, who’s even replacing us? I noticed that some of the e-commerce sites were ranking for their own stuff. The best frying pans would be the frying pan company all of a sudden. And so, I was like, well, I can’t really be the frying pan company. Other things I noticed were user-generated content. So, when I say that I mean forums, but most prominently Reddit. And Reddit, one way to think about it is it’s like the granddaddy of forums. It’s basically a huge platform where anyone can create a subreddit on anything. People can participate. There’s some rules about it, but it’s decentralization of the internet. They want to be the front page of the internet where people can explore their passions. So, on its surface it’s a very good match for what we’re trying to do, which is these very niche… There might be 3,000 people that are into underwater basket weaving, but there’s a passionate community on Reddit about that. And so, there’s that natural affinity that you are getting to. And the way I’ve come to think about Reddit is it’s actually two different things. And this was a revelation to me a little bit. There is Reddit as a platform, like a Facebook, it’s a social community with its own kind of currency. There’s karma, there’s all sorts of little nuances to how it works, and etiquette. And each subreddit has its own rules. And there’s a homepage. And stuff that goes viral gets featured on the homepage. And then there’s categories and things on certain groups can go viral. So, there’s a whole little algorithm and a way of operating, interacting with Reddit as a platform. But then there’s Reddit as a search proxy. And what I mean by that is it’s basically like Reddit and Google are synonymous in that sense. Because Google is sometimes giving Reddit such precedence, even ranking them first. Even to describe that, what that picture looks like. If you’ve noticed, maybe your verticals, there’ll be a Reddit answer. And that may be on the first page somewhere it’ll be that blue link that maybe a website used to get. But then there’s four related subreddits or threads, if you will, that are also… And their pack is bigger. So, they’re not getting the standard website pack. They’re getting maybe 1.5 times the real estate just for their normal results. Right? So, there’s five opportunities to rank in that pack that tends to be featured prominently. Then there’s this new search feature called discussions and forums, which is almost like it’s the news category. It’s like a new thing that Google has added as a tab. So, if you just wanted to search discussion forums, you could just search Google that way. But even if you’re not, they’re going to have that pack, usually it’s going to have that title discussions and forums, and there’s going to be three or four separate links below that too. And oftentimes they’ll be on the same page. So, Reddit will get treated like a publisher with that box I described, and it’s going to have discussions and forums of which two of the three are Reddit. Maybe Quora is in there, maybe some other random forum is in there. But sometimes when I’m finding search queries, 40 to 50% of the page ends up kind of being Reddit. And so, if you’re looking at how to replace your Google traffic, that’s a very immediate place to start. Step one. Step two, it’s like operating on the world’s most powerful domain. It’s like DR 100. And by creating a subreddit, or a community within Reddit, and then you get that URL descriptors. So, it would be like reddit/pinchofyum. And that would be your community. What was a light bulb moment for me is we published three posts on Reddit on, I think we have newsletter stacks. Just like out of curiosity I created a little community. And it was a ConvertKit versus Beehive. And we ranked on the first page within three days. And we were ranking, it was above Neil Patel and Niche Pursuits. And so, that was a light bulb moment for me. I was like, wait a second. This is basically a super high-powered publishing platform to get that Google real estate. So, that’s a long way of saying there’s two versions of Reddit. And you can optimize for both. And oftentimes just by optimizing for Google search you end up getting interactions and that viral boost as well internally in Reddit.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s interesting. I was thinking about there’s this personal finance app we use, Monarch Money, and I’ve noticed myself using the Monarch Money Reddit to see how people are using it, but also to get answers. And I didn’t until this moment think about the fact that they as a company potentially set that up as a solution for their users. Maybe they didn’t, maybe it was somebody else who just had set it up, but I do notice they’re in it responding, giving thorough responses. They almost view it as a support channel, similarly to what they would support.monarchmoney.com.

Ewen Finser: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: And it’s interesting, this change that you see with, and I just Googled just out of curiosity, best frying pan, I have the Search Labs AI overview activated, so that’s the first thing that you see is Google’s generative AI response to it. There are, in this case, a handful of affiliate type sites. U.S. News & Reports, New York Magazine, Serious Eats, Consumer Reports. But then it’s Reddit. And then towards the bottom they have that discussions and forums area, and it’s frying pan recommendations on Reddit, and then two Quora links as well. So, one of the questions that I would have is, I know the spirit of Reddit, pretty quickly a Reddit community can sniff out self-promotion. To what degree do you have to be aware of that as you’re interacting with the community? Because it feels like the purest form of Reddit is, hey, I’m a guy out in the world, a girl out in the world, chatting about this thing that I like. And as soon as it gets into the category of, hey, I’m kind of marketing my thing, that very quickly there could be maybe pushback against that. So, what does that look like to walk that line well within the context of a Reddit community?

Ewen Finser: I would say yes. Yes, your assessment is correct in some ways. And I think that’s one of the things I had to get past. I tried to use Reddit years ago and it felt like anytime I posted anything that was vaguely promotional, it would just get shut down. I think that was true of Reddit 5, 10 years ago. Right? So, one, we have to revisit our-

Bjork Ostrom: Assumptions.

Ewen Finser: … pre-conceived notions about what Reddit is today. Partially because they’ve had an influx of users, and because Google’s surfacing Reddit in a way that there’s a whole different influx of different types of users. There’s the hardcore Redditors, the crunchy, angry people that everything, any kind of commercial, anything was bad. But I think of most people it’s actually not the case. That’s a trope, I think, with Reddit. Partially because any place you land on Reddit you’re generally landing on a subreddit. And each subreddit is governed by different rules. And, oh, by the way, Bjork, you can create a subreddit Pinch of Yum, or whatever, Food Blogger Pro, and you’re the king. You can create all the rules.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Ewen Finser: So, what this really means is that Reddit can be anything. It’s like the internet. It’s like you can create a bad site or a bad community, not using those superlatives, but you can create different rules, right? And there’s different nuances that I’m seeing emerging. There’s as moderators, the people that are generally moderators of the old Reddit, these are unpaid volunteers and a lot of them have intrinsic motivation to do that, but that is not a scalable model. There’s even been talk with, if you follow Reddit’s IPO, how are they going to compensate these moderators and are they going to get that preferred stock and all that kind of stuff? It’s a problem to scale that. And so, you end up with some communities they come up with their own rules like you have to have 10 karma to comment. Once you see one community, you’ve just seen one community. There is a universal Reddit algorithm where if you create an account and blast it with affiliate links, your account’s going to be banned. But that’s more of an algorithmic thing just picks up on the pattern. It’s like, okay, no. So, I guess, so what? It’s like, okay, so how I am finding success engaging with Reddit is one, experimenting. Because there is no rule around how many profiles you can have. In fact, there’s a subculture within Reddit of having multiple profiles for different purposes and not necessarily having just one profile, or even one community. You can create tens of communities around different subjects you’re passionate about. So, one is there’s no real enforcement mechanism. And if we look at Reddit compared with Google, there’s no web spam team at Reddit. They have a fraction of the resources, but their implicit guidance from Google basically is like, you are now in charge of the internet effectively.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Because of-

Ewen Finser: Well, they don’t have the resources.

Bjork Ostrom: … the amount of traffic that they’re getting now because of Google search. Suddenly there’s this influx of people consuming the content, but also then creating the content on Reddit.

Ewen Finser: Yes. And so, Google’s kind of devolved that responsibility to Reddit. And from Google’s perspective, well, we find a lot of users really prefer Reddit. And there was this phenomenon where someone would search Food Blogger Pro Reddit. The problem there was Reddit’s internal search was really bad.

Bjork Ostrom: So they would go to Google to get the…

Ewen Finser: To get the right answer in Reddit. And so, Google interpret that, well, people want Reddit. And so, that’s part of, I think, the reason why they… But the other idea being that there’s moderators. There’s this filter, right?

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, interesting. Sure. Yeah. Like a built-in moderator which was an issue that Google’s having was moderating content.

Ewen Finser: Yeah. And so, the reality is it’s kind of the Wild West right now. And at the very least what I’m telling everyone I know is set up your white hat, your above board profile, and it could just be a Food Blogger Pro subreddit. And to your point about people will bring consumer complaints maybe to that forum. And by the way, those complaints happen anyway. And if you don’t register your community, someone else might, or you might get mentioned in a different blogging community being like, hey, that Bjork guy, he’s terrible. But you don’t have a way to really address it. And so, just by having a venue on Reddit that’s like, oh, here’s where you can go to talk about us. That will have some intrinsic benefits. But then just distributing your content on Reddit, even if it’s content you’ve already created, just like you might with Facebook and Pinterest and whatever, create your Reddit post. And some brands just put their naked link in there. And I get into that in the course I created. But what I found success doing is providing context. Like, hey, here’s a product I reviewed. I found that it was great for this, this and this, it really sucks for this. Here’s the link to check out the full review for my full analysis and all my images. And so, it’s almost like, if you remember Digg, back in the day, it’s like that’s a similar era and genre and vibe that Reddit has. And so, just by doing a little bit of adjustment to your distribution strategy you can get that traffic that will… There’s the viral traffic, and by the way, a lot of times that keyword you might be targeting on your article that you publish on your blog that isn’t ranking in Google is getting picked up by Reddit. And so, it’s an extra step that someone goes from Google to Reddit to your post, but it’s a way to recapture some of that traffic.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s interesting. And with the Monarch Money example, it was a good thing when I look back to it. It’s like they were able to have these customer support, I don’t know how they feel about it, but have these customer support interactions in a way where they probably surfaced easier on Google, it was easier for people to find them, they had access to this community. So, almost in a good way it was like they had access to their customers maybe in a way that they wouldn’t have otherwise. And what I hear you saying is the search part made sense where you previously, in your example of Beehive versus ConvertKit, could maybe have created an article that would get onto the first page and you could have gotten traffic to that keyword. In the current state of Google, much harder to do that. But if you create that on Reddit you might be able to get search traffic to that. So, conceptually it’s like, okay, that makes sense, where you’re finding a way to still get access to that audience. But the thing that I hadn’t really considered is this idea of just you are building a community that you can then speak directly to. And I think about that within the context of a brand, like Pinch of Yum, not currently actively doing this, but for a while had this Pinch of Yum VIP group, and it’s like that was the group that we would talk to when we’re like, hey, we’re thinking of tweaking the logo, which one of these do you like best? A, B, or C? It was just a place to interact with the community and the natural platform to do that. And it’s almost like you could even think about leading with that, especially for people that are listening to this podcast who are brand forward type creators, not necessarily product forward, but they have a brand and their brand is their site and they create content on that site. But a way to interact with your community and let them know stuff that’s happening, things that are going on. Additional benefit of potentially capturing search traffic related to some of the things that you’re creating content about. What does it look like? Talk to me about the drawbridge idea. Is that a hop after you have search traffic that you might be getting, it might come straight to your site, you have search traffic that maybe comes to Reddit, that eventually comes to your site. Maybe you have people on Reddit who are seeing something you post and come to your site. At what point do you imagine that drawbridge scenario happening where you try and build that audience of 3% of your traffic that comes into your community, whether it’s a newsletter or a paid community like we have with Food Blogger Pro, where does that happen in that process? Or do you view that as Reddit, that community?

Ewen Finser: Yeah. So, it’s interesting because I think Reddit has a couple of different ways. There’s a intermediate step of someone joins your community on Reddit. And so, then what that basically means it’s like someone liking your Facebook page. When you publish something where some activity happens in your group, that gets surfaced and prefaced in your feed when you log into Reddit. So, if I subscribe to Food Blogger Pro, if you post something today, I’ll probably see that next time I log in. Not every time, there’s an algorithm, it’s not perfect. But there’s that additional sticky layer. Where with Google, I guess they have if you visited a site before they might preface it, but you couldn’t have a membership through Google with a site, really. And so, there’s that element. And that’s a huge advantage, have that additional stickiness. And then, yeah, then it’s getting people, if they can come to your site to capture them that way, just like you would with Google. But I’ve even seen, it’s a wide open playbook, I’ve seen people getting users then to go to Discord as an example, or going to an email list, but to Discord as something that’s a little bit more sticky. Because Discord is something that you have a little bit more control over, even more so than Reddit. In theory, Reddit could take away your community from you if you do something nefarious or whatever. There’s even a, I cover this in the course, but it’s like this place I didn’t know that existed where you can claim lost Reddits. Where someone stopped moderating or there’s a lot of spam and you basically say, hey, I want to take this over, here’s the process. I want to manage it actively. And I was in there and found one example was container homes that subreddit was being taken across some spam. But there are people that had questions and there was real engagement happening. And there’s a process you could go through. There’s 27,000 members. And this person was like, hey, can I have this community to moderate? And, yeah, here you go. There’s a process to go through, but yeah, you have access now to 27,000 subscribers. And anyway, you can get people off of Reddit. There’s also, it’s like a landing page almost in the sense of you can sticky post at the top and say, one example I give, it’s welcome to our page, follow us on Discord. Also follow us here. And then you get everyone that sees that homepage over to Discord. Then there’s also a sidebar, just like you would have on a website, where you can have rules, you can have outbound links to an email list, to your YouTube channel, to your website, to other subreddits that you recommend. And so, there’s all sorts of, if you really get into it, building the spider web of related communities like food bloggers and bloggers and recipe book creators. You can create this web of related communities that refer traffic to each other, and then also have places where they can offshoot to either become a customer or a subscriber that it’s off channel, off Reddit. And so, that’s how I think about it. The world is your oyster in the sense of there’s like a million different places and ways you can get people off of Reddit. But, yeah, it’s similar to any other platform, but I think Reddit gives you more real estate that you can work. I’ve even seen some subreddits that almost look like landing pages or squeeze funnels.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s interesting even to use that Monarch example, I just pulled it up now. I’ve never even looked at the homepage, the subreddit homepage, but they have a little blurb here. “Extend your trial. 50% off now through July 10th. Use the link below to get an extended 30-day trial. 50% off an annual subscription. Useful links. Monarch website, Monarch help center, feature request, product roadmap.” It’s like, oh, okay. You can pretty easily see-

Ewen Finser: Here’s the business.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, exactly. How they’re using it. And they have the rules, but it’s interesting. Or even pinned to the top is “Monarch is hiring. Join our team. As you may know, this subreddit experiencing a lot of growth, do hard work, join our team as a community manager.” All of this is me learning this from you in real time. I need to go through the course to learn more, but you can start to see very quickly, oh, this makes a lot of sense. And if you have the bandwidth to be a part of it, and maybe that’s a good question to round out our conversation is, people are trying to keep up with their site, updates, maybe doing keyword research, doing all the content production, if they’re doing it on their own, maybe on some social platforms. But what does it look like from a time perspective when you think about folding this in as a part of what you’re doing?

Ewen Finser: Yeah. So, that’s a great question. It’s going to vary a little bit. Obviously depending on what you got going on. But for me, I’ve realized it’s… When I look at all of the alternatives, and I’m trying everything, some of it’s working, like Pinterest is working, but it’s slow. It’s a slog. It’s like 6 to 12 months, and then finally you get enough outbound clicks for it to make a difference. With Reddit, the ROI is quick, often within 24 hours we’re showing up on the first page. And to have that push button effect gives me a lot of confidence that it’s a good place to invest resources. So, I’d just like to caveat this whole thing. Reddit now has the same brand visibility, digital visibility as amazon.com. And it’s happened in six months. And so, I think there’s this opportunity now that, again, the human brain is so bad at exponentials.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Right.

Ewen Finser: Even me, I’ve been used to doing things with Google for 10 years and it’s like, oh, here’s the Google strategy and everyone now knows about SEO where maybe five years ago it was still an emerging thing. But this is early, early days for this Reddit phenomenon. And I think about it in… Because there’s a risk here with investing time in another platform and them pulling the rug on you. Right? So, I think about this in two cases. The bear case and the bull case. The bear case, worst case scenario, Google stops prefacing Reddit. They’re like, we made a mistake. We’re not going to feature you so highly. Okay, there’s still going to be some residual traffic from Google. But Google has added so many users to Reddit, and every minute they’re adding more users. So, at a certain point the plane is big enough to fly on its own. And Reddit can take off and they can call their own shots if enough people sign up and become part of those communities that are very sticky, and very engaging, and get a notification every time someone posts something. It has this network effect that takes over. But that’s the bear case. Reddit is another Facebook. The bull case is that, that is true, and Google still continues to give them all this free traffic, and there’s still this search arbitrage. And so, I look at it relative to these other places where I invest my time and energy. And I really like that, that range of outcomes. I’m very comfortable investing. What I recommend everyone start with is just get your brand presence on Reddit. Even if you’re just distributing your content and providing a little blurb. Just like you would for Facebook. I think most of us, and most of your audience probably, has a publication cadence or here’s what we do when something goes live. You share the link on here, here, and here. Oh, add Reddit to it. Maybe prioritize Reddit a little bit more. But that’s minimal investment. It’s probably like if you’re doing that, or your VA is doing it, your editor is doing it, just have them add it to the list. And just see what happens over three months. It’s maybe going to add a couple of minutes maybe, but it’s not going to be this huge investment. I think if you see some signs of progress there and you want to dig in, then it’s like that traffic leak or engagement strategy of really investing into the platform, commenting on other subreddits. And then there’s a whole strategy around even just attaching yourself to an preexisting subreddit. It could be like gluten-free recipes. There’s a subreddit and you just start engaging with that community and over time you develop a relationship, you’re allowed to share stuff, you figure out the rules and you can get traffic either directly from that community, or if that’s a no-go, you can get traffic from gluten-free recipes to your Pinch of Yum subreddit. And there’s this funnel effect. So, we’re approaching it as marketers, but it has a very natural, you’re providing value, you’re developing relationship, but you’re actually spending time just like you would on Instagram or Facebook actually engaging with the platform in a deeper way. And so, that’s another level of investment. And then the crazy investment strategy, I’ve explored it all because I really want to understand the platform regardless if I want to pursue these tactics, is there’s a whole underground market for acquiring community subreddits, acquiring user accounts with high karma, buying upvotes, buying downvotes. There’s the whole, I call it black hat SEO operations around Reddit. So, that would involve spending money to acquire accounts and things like that. That’s a whole buyer beware approach. But I would say you can start small, start with just treating it another platform to distribute your content and then see if that resonates, if that works. And then take it from there.

Bjork Ostrom: And I think the majority of people who are listening to this have some brand and the way that they, whether it’s a personal brand or just a brand that’s maybe not them personally, but a brand that they curate. And so, I think that the biggest takeaway is what does it look like to have a brand presence in a place that’s somewhere you haven’t thought about before, at least for a lot of people, and how do you curate that and treat that well? I think a lot of people listening would think about Instagram and then there may be like… And TikTok is also one of those things. But as you’ve talked about, and it’s interesting even to look up on a keyword research app like Reddit, it’s helpful content update and then it’s up and to the right.

Ewen Finser: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: And it’s just bonkers. I don’t remember what it was but it’s like, I can pull it up here, 600 million organic traffic and it’s 10 X what it was less than a year ago, or a year ago essentially. Exactly a year ago. So, it’s like 10 X primarily I would assume due to search traffic plus then the flywheel that happens when you sign up for an account, you get notices and notifications, you’re linking to it more and things like that. So, it’s important for anybody who’s creating content on the internet to at least be aware of it. And then for us to make the decision around how do we approach that from a brand strategy perspective I think is super smart. So, I know that you have a course that you talked about, and I think it’s a great way to quickly accelerate our learning anytime that we can draft off of all of the work that somebody else has done and then has compiled that into an easy to consume course. It’s a big win. I know you have that on Reddit. Can you talk a little bit about that if anybody wants to check it out or look into it?

Ewen Finser: Yeah. And so, I’m not a course creator. You know me, I’ve really never had anything to sell, but what I stumbled on with Reddit was like, oh, my God, no one’s talking about this. I couldn’t go anywhere and find some information. It was like, you know what? Why don’t I just give it a shot? And I’m not the world’s… I don’t even describe myself as a Reddit expert. I want to engage with the community and learn. And so, maybe I’m a few steps ahead maybe of some people, but that’s really valuable at this point in the game to have someone that’s just a little bit further down the tunnel. And that’s how I created this. It’s called Reddit Leverage, and it’s a course that walks you through basic orientation. And then I talk about these three main strategies. The one being the brand strategy of you just want to get your brand exposure, do it above board. Then there’s this middle tier strategy which is called the traffic leaks. Which is, okay, you’re taking a more growth hacky… It’s not really gray hat, but maybe that would be the best analogy. It’s like, okay, how do I reverse engineer what’s working? That’s a lot of keyword research. You can even plug subreddits into Ahrefs or Semrush and understand what they’re ranking for. And a lot of these are successful niche sites in terms of the community traffic they’re getting. So, that’s the other one. And then the last one is the direct monetization. You can literally sometimes get affiliate links into posts. You can be very mercenary. I always recommend providing value with whatever you’re doing, but there’s all sorts of strategies. And there’s even, if you’re a brand, like your Pinch of Yum or your Food Blogger Pro, even if there are no links allowed, just by dropping your brand mention in a subreddit, that’ll drive, it will be hard to tie out with analytics, but you’ll see a spike in search traffic then from it went viral in some subreddit and someone dropped Monarch Money. And there’s a whole strategy around that too. So, I walk through these different strategies. And then on the more black hat, like, okay, you want to invest a lot, you can go out and buy accounts. And I cover that just as context if people want to do that. And then what I’m adding, it’s a real time evolving document. Every week I’m adding more modules. I’m trying to add case studies. Last week I added this module on how I discovered how you can claim Reddits, subreddits. And so, I added that module. And today I got some feedback. Somebody was like, “Can you actually show me how you create a community?” I was like, “Okay, I’m uploading that now.” And then I find different interesting ways people are leveraging Reddit and I add a case study. And so, it’s this course that is actionable now, you can get traction now with it, and there’s this implicit I’m adding, I envision eventually having a community around this where it’s an evolving course, but also a community that we can share best practices. So, that’s the course in a nutshell.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great.

Ewen Finser: I think it’s the first of its kind.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s really interesting. And like you said, kind of covers the full spectrum. I think for anybody listening to really think about what does that look like to own your brand conversation, like you said, that being a really important step. Encourage people to check that out. And so much of what we do is showing up in different places on the web and being, like we talked about, strategic about that in knowing where most people are showing up. If we did a podcast about Myspace, it might be interesting. There might be some really curious ways that you could be using Myspace, but not a lot of people are using it. And so, tactically, even though you could create really compelling, really good content that is super helpful for people, if you’re doing it on Myspace, it’s going to be tough to build a business. And so, there’s this balance for us as creators to say, where’s our content going to be multiplied? Where’s it going to be most strategic? How do we understand how to best create within the context of that platform? Reddit is different than Instagram, is different than TikTok, is different than a blog, is different than Pinterest. And then what does it look like for us to create something that’s truly compelling, helpful for that community, something that is going to hopefully make a difference. You talked about gluten-free. If you are somebody who understands gluten-free and you’re going to be able to help people, you can make the world a better place by figuring out where a lot of people are trying to get help eating gluten-free and help those people in a way that’s going to make a difference for them. And that balance of finding the tactics, finding the platform that works, and then finding out how you can best help on that given platform, I think if we can become really good at that, and it takes a long time to figure out how to do that, that’s where you can have some of these really incredible breakthroughs. So, super fun. All new information for me that I haven’t thought about or an angle that we haven’t really considered. So, really appreciate it, Ewen. Can you talk about if people want to check out that course, we’ll include it in the show notes, but how do people get there?

Ewen Finser: Yeah. It’s a teachable course, but I’ll add a link and a discount obviously for the audience. And it’ll just be, here’s a link, here’s your sign up. And, yeah, it’s fairly straightforward. It’s not going to be too complicated. And I imagine, again, evolving that and adding materials, and communities, and resources, and even part of one of the value adds, and including a list of other user generated content platforms that are like Reddit that you can leverage. It’s a resource list, and I’m adding to that daily. Like there’s Quora out there, there’s niche forum, like the Shopify forum where you can have a presence there and get traffic. And so, yeah, it’s just a simple resource and it’s probably going to evolve over time, but it’s a link. You sign up and enroll in the course.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. And are you active online, Ewen? If people want to follow along with what you’re doing and what you’re up to, what would be the best way to do that?

Ewen Finser: Yeah. So, I have my newsletter, which is a weekly take on what’s happening in the niche media publishing world. It’s nichemediapublishing.com. I’ll include that in the show notes too. And that’s my thoughts, current thoughts. And then, yeah, LinkedIn, Twitter, kind of active on X, I guess. But I’ll include that in the show notes. That’s a great way to follow along too. But yeah, those are my channels.

Bjork Ostrom: Well, Ewen, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Really appreciate it.

Ewen Finser: Thanks, Bjork.

Ann Morrissey: Hey, there. This is Ann from the Food Blogger Pro team. We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Since we’re kicking off a new month, we wanted to give you a behind the scenes look at what you can expect in the Food Blogger Pro membership this September. Later this week we’ll be publishing a coaching call with Sri and Manny from Vidhya’s Vegetarian Kitchen. In this coaching call they discuss the strategy behind reaching a broader audience with a niche blog, being intentional about protecting your business against a future with AI, and how to use clarity to its maximum potential when updating and republishing old blog content. Next up is our September live Q&A. We were so interested in the topic of leveraging Reddit as a traffic source that we asked Ewen to come back on to host a live Q&A for the Food Blogger Pro community. So, if you enjoyed this episode and would like to learn more about how to approach Reddit as a traffic driver, be sure to join us on Thursday, September 12th and submit any burning questions you may have about Reddit beforehand. We’re rounding out the month with a brand new course all about creating vertical short form videos. This will be a deep dive into creating those eye catching videos that we all see on Instagram and TikTok. So, if you’ve been wanting to learn more about how to create those for your blog, you won’t want to miss this course. It’s going to be a great month, and we really hope that you can join us for some of these new pieces of content. If you are not yet a Food Blogger Pro member and would like to join us, just head to foodbloggerpro.com/membership to learn more about our membership and how you can join us on Food Blogger Pro. We would love to have you. And we’ll see you back here next week for another podcast episode. Make it a great week.

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Ann Morrissey: Hey there. Thanks for tuning in to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. My name is Ann. In today’s episode, we’re welcoming Allea Grummert from Duett back to the podcast. Allea started her email marketing agency in 2018 with the goal of helping content creators take their email marketing to the next level. She’s been an invaluable resource for the Food Blogger Pro and Pinch of Yum teams and is also an industry expert in the Food Blogger Pro community. So you may have seen her around the forum. In this interview, Allea discusses why creators and publishers should prioritize email in their businesses and some of the strategies you can implement to grow your email list. She also shares her perspective on the importance of building human connections through email and how to create a high quality welcome sequence. Hearing her take on how you can relate to your audience on a personal level through a digital medium was really an eye-opener for me. Allea has such a great energy about her, which always makes for a fun interview, so we’re excited for you to dive in. If you enjoy the episode, we would really appreciate it if you would leave a review anywhere you listen to podcasts or share the episode with your community. And now without further ado, I’ll let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Allea, welcome back to the podcast.

Allea Grummert: Thanks. So good to see you again.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s one of the great joys that I have is being able to say that more now. Welcome back to the podcast. You’re somebody who I get to say that too often, welcome back to the podcast, but at this point it’s a blur because it’s like we work with you within different businesses. You’re on the podcast, you do Food Blogger Pro, live Q&As with the team. So this is more than anything, just another chance for you and I to connect to talk about business and to talk about business specifically within the context of email. It’s one of the really important things that we need to think about as people who are building businesses online, really any business online, it’s important to think of email, but especially in this world, for people who are publishing content, whether it be on a social platform or on a blog, we need to be thinking about email. My guess is this is something that you think about all the time insofar that you’re like five layers deep on it. But if you can go to the first layer of just establishing baseline, why is it important for us to be aware of email and to prioritize email as creators and as publishers?

Allea Grummert: Yeah, baseline, I would say I treat it like business insurance because there are so many other fluctuating parts of having an online business that if you put all of your eggs in one basket, whether it be social media or largely social media or ad costs or whatnot, there’s so many variables when in reality, if you can have your people on an email list, it’s a lot… Yeah, if anything happens, those other platforms, you can send an email and it will go out to all of your thousands of subscribers. And then beyond that, there’s just so much you can leverage when it comes to actually communicating with your list or launching products or boosting revenue with email once you have something created. So at the very minimum, it’s a way for you to actually capture your audience in case you lose them anywhere else.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. I think of, you and I have both been in the world of online content for a long time and so have experienced a lot of these kind of ups and downs. I think of the idea of Facebook algorithm changing and we knew people who were really good at directing traffic to a site from a Facebook page, and it’s like overnight Facebook changes something, there’s a flip that’s switched and you can’t reach those people. Same with Pinterest. It wasn’t quite as drastic. It was more of a gradual decline, but maybe you got really good at Pinterest and that goes away over time. And it almost seems like part of what we need to do isn’t necessarily think about how do we take our Instagram following and only direct them to email. But it’s like, how do we at least share that spotlight? And if the spotlight is always on a link, like go to this page, how do we 25% of the time, 50% of the time, start to direct people to our email list as well? Starting there, do you have examples or do you have stories of people that you’ve seen take their social media following or even take their website traffic and start to capture some of that traffic or capture some of that following into an email list? And how do you do that well?

Allea Grummert: Yeah, I was just talking with a client about this today. ManyChat is a tool that a lot of folks use when it comes to capturing Instagram interest. And I know some folks will use ManyChat to direct them back to a blog post. That is the pitch. We are not even getting them on your email list. But I think also incorporating blog posts and stories that promote your freebies or whatever incentive there is for being on your email list to get content or exclusive insights behind the scenes, whatever that you can’t get anywhere else. Getting those freebies out in front of your audience, having them comment on the post, the link to the landing page lands in their inbox. So just incorporating that into your content strategy is one thing. And then of course, capturing your website traffic. It could look like pop-ups. It could look like embedded forms. There are a ton of different strategies. And any good marketer, I will say, just test them all out. See how your audience responds. Some people might not have as good luck with inline forms for one freebie, but maybe it works for another one. You’ve got tools like Grow from Mediavine or the Highlighter from Raptive. I know a lot of folks have been playing around with different ideas with that, but as much as I get hired to look at people’s email marketing strategy and I’m like, I tried finding your freebie and I can’t find it.

Bjork Ostrom: Had to work for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Allea Grummert: I have to work for it. So yeah, sometimes what feels really obvious to us is not really obvious to a user. And yeah, there’s a difference between “spamming” them with all of these things all over your website versus saying, “Hey, I have this really valuable resource, I want to make sure you know about it.” So I don’t know if anybody has hesitations around putting forms on their site, but it’s the best way for you to continue to connect with your subscriber. And if they are the right fit, they’re going to stick around. And so yeah, we would definitely want to get them on your list.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay. So I want to play a game. This will be live, first time we’ve ever done this. It’ll be every other, we’ll go three rounds. And so we talked about the technical considerations, ManyChat if you’re using social, we don’t have to go deep into what that looks like. It’s just a back and forth automated bot that could potentially sign people up to an email list and then send them an email, a pop-up on your site, maybe an inline form, meaning you scroll through the content and it’s within your blog post. There’s a prompt to sign up for it. Now let’s talk about, this is what the game is. We’re going to come up with three ideas for you, three ideas for me around what that can actually be. So let’s say that you are a food creator and you have recipes that you publish. Those recipes are free, and that’s your top of funnel. If the next step down is actually getting people to sign up for your email list, a lot of times the incentive has to be stronger than or a more compelling offer than, “Hey, just get all my email updates.” Sometimes that will get people, but the chances are there’s going to be something that converts a little bit better. So I want to have a back and forth to see if we can come up with six examples of what that could actually be. Do you want to go first or do you want me to go first?

Allea Grummert: Oh, I have so many ideas. Yeah. One could be video tutorials. I know Ali from Alexander Cooks did this years ago. She has a knife tutorial, how to actually cut up things in the kitchen. And I’m like, oh, that’s so unique. And if I’m going to be following her recipes, I opt in for a three-minute training.

Bjork Ostrom: Love it. So you have the recipe and the recipe maybe involves cutting. The opt in can be learn how to do these knife skills, which is adjacent to the piece of content.

Allea Grummert: Right. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. All right. So I’ll do one. My example is, for me, I’m somebody who really likes gear. Just today I searched… I would say once a month, I do the search best gear 2023. And so I think about that in the equivalent of the food world. And one of the things that we often hear from is people who are interested in certain things like, “Hey, what air fryer are you using?” Or what’s PFS? PFA? I don’t know the abbreviation. Chemical free products. So something that’s a complete kitchen gear guide. See all of the different things that I’m using in my kitchen that could also potentially be affiliate if you have Amazon or Target or whatever it might be. So that’s mine. Back to you for your number two.

Allea Grummert: On that, did you know that Amazon’s allowing affiliate links in their emails now?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. For a long time, so there was this, for anybody who is in the world of Amazon Associates and Affiliate, they had this rule around you couldn’t use Amazon affiliate links and emails. Pinch of Yum six years ago, somehow got ahold of somebody at Amazon and we had signed a secondary contract, so we’ve been able to do it for a long time. Everybody’s always like, how did you do this? We’re like, we just randomly came across this person who’s like, here’s what you need to do in order to do it. But it sounds like now they’ve opened that up to essentially anybody can do that.

Allea Grummert: So if you had gated content at all, get this list of Amazon favorites. You couldn’t technically use Amazon Affiliates for those, but you can now.

Bjork Ostrom: Do you know sort of something that you need to do or is it just within your regular account that you can use it?

Allea Grummert: Yup, just your regular account. And somebody was like, “Oh, I didn’t know. Why didn’t they tell us?” I’m like, “Why do you think they didn’t tell us?Because they were like, whatever.” So now-

Bjork Ostrom: What do you mean, they’re like, whatever?

Allea Grummert: I don’t know. They’re just like, are they losing money from it? It just seems like a very corporatey thing. They’re like, we changed the terms and conditions and somebody just happened to read it at the beginning of March, but it’s not being broadcast. So another opt-in, one that could be cool. Like a quiz. What kind of entertainer are you? What kind of appetizers or drinks? Are you a sports enthusiast, sports event type entertainment food person or fancy dinner? That could be really fun. People love learning about themselves.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s interesting in the world of marketers, I have some groups that I’m a part of and one of those groups is marketer people and quizzes is like, oh, that’s like a thing. Getting leads through quizzes. Is there a software that you’d use for that or is it like a tool?

Allea Grummert: Yeah, I was just at Craft & Commerce last week and they had a session put on by Interact.

Bjork Ostrom: Conference. Conference.

Allea Grummert: Yeah, the ConvertKit conference. So Interact, so it’s tryinteract.com, and I sat through this workshop, but if you do tryinteract.com/ai there’s a quiz for finding out what kind of quiz you should do.

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, funny.

Allea Grummert: And I was like, this is the most meta thing.

Bjork Ostrom: Instructions. Yeah.

Allea Grummert: And so that was really cool. And it did. It did a really good job. So in my case, it was like, what kind of email marketing person are you? Or how would you best use email marketing? And I was really surprised. I was like, what do they know about my business? I’m such a snowflake, so unique. And then I was like, holy crap, AI figured it out.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah. Okay, I have one. This was actually, I just listened to a podcast recently. It was actually my two worlds colliding because it was, I’m interested in real estate and I listened to the nerdiest podcast in all of podcasts, and it’s called the Tax Smart Real Estate Podcast. Tax Smart Real Estate Investor podcast where they talk about, it’s so bad where they talk about real estate taxes.

Allea Grummert: I wasn’t expecting that.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay. So Tax Smart Real Estate podcast. But on that podcast, they had Sam Parr who, he had a huge newsletter called The Hustle that eventually sold to HubSpot. And he came on because he’s starting a new business called Sam’s List, which is Angie’s list for accountants. But anyway, so it was real estate and email and digital business, and they came together and it was my perfect podcast. But he was talking about this third business that he has called Hampton. And one of the things that they had was they did a survey of their members and they had information about those members, and they compiled that up and they offered it as like a PDF download. And I think it was like, what is the average spend, personal spend for these… It’s finance related. How do these people allocate their investments? And it’s like, oh, that’s really intriguing. I want to see how a business owner, what their personal family spend looks like on a month to month basis on average. And I think about in the world of food, I think you could probably do similar things, like do a survey of your audience, and then you could say, see what the average grocery bill is for a Pinch of Yum user. Or what are the top three things, the top three items that people keep in stock in their pantry? Or even from our audience, here’s the top 10 recipes that they consider to be the easiest go-to recipes on a weeknight for their family. What niche and genre are you in? And then how do you get an inside look to scratch that curiosity itch for people around your audience or your people? So that’ll be my second. Do you have a third?

Allea Grummert: I like that. And I want to riff off that too, is that especially when we think… Let’s see. Years ago somebody had said that kind of first party data that you could put out in the world is so unique. That’s not something that AI can just do for you. Nobody’s out there competing for that exact same information, so it’s something that you definitely have an edge on. So yeah, that first party we’ve generated this report data is really cool.

Bjork Ostrom: And it’s not something that somebody can easily replicate.

Allea Grummert: Yeah. I think another one that’s really simple that I often talk about when I’m writing welcome sequences with clients is like, what does everyone who’s joining your list need to know or have in their pantry, have in their freezer in order to make your recipes? And often it’s just like, I don’t know. What do I need for Guatemalan food? As somebody who maybe is trying to get in, try these recipes, oh, here are some things I can pick up at the store that’s going to make it easier for me to make the recipes that she’s sending over email.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. I’ll do a last one here to round it out. So one of the things we’ve been thinking a lot about is as we create content, instead of extending the gap between us as creators and people who are consuming the content, meaning, oh, that person is really different from us. Their life is different, their lifestyle is different. I think it’s in some ways, maybe social media at its worse. How do we shorten the gap? How do we show people and X-ray into our life in a way that feels authentic and genuine and helpful? And it came from last night, Lindsay’s finished up. She was working on some things and she came in and I was like, “I want to show you this. It was called a Hub’s Life. H-U-B-S-L-I-F-E. It was a YouTube account.” I was like, “I want to show you this guy’s content. I love it.” He’s this 29-year-old guy who works in insurance and it’s all around this normalizing a nine to five job and how great that can be. And it’s like him getting up at 6:30 and getting ready. And so all of that to say, one of the things that we’ve been thinking about is how do we give people a look inside of our lives to be like, “Hey, things are chaotic at our house and there’s toys all over the place.” And it’s a little bit of an invitation in, and I think about that within the context of social media, but also within the context of email to say, “Hey, what would it look like to do the equivalent of inviting somebody into your house, into your life?” It’s a little bit of like, “Hey, I’d like to meet you. I’m not going to broadcast this necessarily on the blog, but if you’re interested in getting to know me a little bit better, sign up and I’ll give you a little bit. We’ll do a house tour. You can see our house.” Or some people, if you want to be a little bit more private, maybe it’s like an introduction into the hardest things about my day and how I approach those and try and combat those. But essentially it’s like you meet somebody and then what’s the next step? You get to know them a little bit better within the context of email. How could you have the same prompt? And for anybody who wants to get to know you better, then they can go through that process. It’s probably not the most tantalizing thing like, ooh, I’m going to do this. But if you do go through it, you have that trust and that connection just like you would in a normal relationship.

Allea Grummert: Yeah. Well, and I think it’s not even so much, we don’t want to give people whiplash of, oh wait, just remember I’m also a real person. It’s like, how do we weave that in? I’m even thinking about, so coming back from this ConvertKit conference, I looked like I got hit by a truck. I also, my flight got delayed from Denver back to Lincoln so I ended up having to spend the night at a Denver airport-

Bjork Ostrom: Love it.

Allea Grummert: … hotel for four hours. I’m glad I got the hotel, but it was $180 for three hours and 59 minutes of sleep according to my Fitbit. And they didn’t lose my luggage, but my luggage was being sent to Lincoln. I would’ve had to wait until 1:00 in the morning to get this luggage. It’s being sent to Lincoln. I had to fly out to Omaha. I’m wearing the same clothes I wore on Saturday that I slept in on my flight into Omaha where I had to have a friend come and get me, take me to the Lincoln airport to get my bag in my car. And I’m just like, I’m a disaster. And that’s not typically stuff you put in an email, but here I am in the midst of just a long travel flurry and just being like, what would it look like for me to present this to my email list of… Somebody had mentioned that Gen Z calls it rotting. I just want to have a rot day. And I was like, oh my gosh, it’s me. And so what happens when you still want to have a connection with your list, but you also want to have a rot day? And I was thinking about what if that was the story I told? Because you can have a rot day. Part of being a content creator is you have so much great content already. It doesn’t always have to be new. What if I just gave my list permission that, yeah, have a rot day and send them back to three popular blog posts?

Bjork Ostrom: Totally

Allea Grummert: Call it a day, shut the laptop and go back to watching, downloading.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great.

Allea Grummert: But I don’t typically talk like that. I tend to just be really pragmatic in my emails, which people love. They’re like, you really just get down to it. But let me bring you in on the fact that life doesn’t always look like my brand new website from a year ago. I have a picture of me in second day close at 4:00 in the morning that I sent my best friend, and I’m like, yeah, that’s going in there. This is me with my eyes closed.

Bjork Ostrom: I love that.

Allea Grummert: About to sleep with my mouth open in the Denver airport for the next hour.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s so great. That’s so great.

Allea Grummert: Not cute. But how much do people just need to hear that? It’s okay. I remember, I think you had shared in our Slack group and tell me if you don’t want me to share this.

Bjork Ostrom: Go for it.

Allea Grummert: But it was so funny because you’re like, here’s Lindsay making just grilled chicken on the stove top, just warming up some chicken. Whereas everyone thinks, oh, she’s probably out here making these miraculous meals every night.

Bjork Ostrom: Totally.

Allea Grummert: And it’s like, you know what? Sometimes a girl just needs to survive and she has small children. And I just thought that was so endearing of, even Lindsay.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, and I think that’s the point is one of the things that we can do as creators, we can build businesses, we can build impactful businesses, we can build revenue producing businesses. Another one of the things that we can do is we can connect with people. And both of those things are really valuable. And the most, Lindsay just said this the other night, the most valuable feedback that we get, or the most I think meaningful feedback that we get is the other day she got a message from somebody who was like, “Hey, I have two hours between when I pick the kids up and when they have to go down for bed. And I was able to…” It was like these green beans and air fryer chicken, and she was like, “I was able to make a meal that my kids ate and that was super impactful.” So all of that to say, I think as we think about all of this stuff, the way that we’re going to frame it up is from the business perspective just because that’s what we focus on. But I think we always think about the additional benefit of what we’re doing. And a lot of times there is impact within it and really meaningful impact. And so the human connection piece is important. And I think that is a good lead in to one of the things that’s really valuable about email is the ability to connect with people on a human level, especially in a world where the transactional information is going to get solved through generative AI. It’s a chat interface and you need information. You’re going to get that information. Right now, it’s not great at recipes. It might be eventually who knows what’s to come with that, but more and more the way that those questions are going to be solved is through a chat interface. And so our job as creators, publishers, people who are earning income through producing content online is to figure out how to evolve. And one of the ways that we need to evolve is to do content production that is harder for an AI chatbot to replace. So can you talk about why email is good at that and how we can be aware of that as creators?

Allea Grummert: Yes, we can talk about that. I think I am really into systems and smoothing as much as you can out of the hurdles that it takes to send emails to your list. I promise I will get back to your question, but part of it is-

Bjork Ostrom: Here for the journey.

Allea Grummert: … as much as you can smooth out the process, it means you’re one step closer to helping your reader. If you are telling yourself, this email has to have 16 links in it where I have to share this massive whatever, because it feels super valuable to share a lot of content or that it has to be perfect, this has to have the perfect hook, the perfect subject line. I would rather you just send the email without it being perfect, or I’d rather have you send a simpler email. So if we smooth out that process, you’re getting the content that you’ve created that is super valuable into the hands of the people who’ve said that they want it. And you don’t need to be spending… I know I had a friend who would spend four hours writing up a newsletter and I’m like, “I’m sorry, you feel like you have to do that. Can we find another way to do it? Can you send a video update with this content or an audio, how-to file versus feeling like you have to type it up?” So whatever ways you can get the wonderful valuable content that you have into people’s hands, the better. And then, so that being said, I think there is a time and a place for an RSS feed. There is a time and a place for… ConvertKit’s coming out with an app that works with their tool that takes a video from YouTube and creates an AI-generated email. Awesome, because the video is what’s most important. Because we want to drive them back there because that’s where the value is. But when it comes to revealing yourself and having relationships with your readers, there are other ways you can do that to compliment these quick fast system type, I don’t know, broadcast emails you might want to send out. So what does it look like? I specialize in welcome and nurture sequences, but especially that welcome sequence. How are you introducing yourself to people? So that’s the kind of stuff where you really want to share who you are, how you want to help them, what they’re going to get from you. Because if you can frame it in that, you are already more human than an AI bot trying to write that out. So while you’re competing with other types of content, the way that you package up the content and deliberate is what’s going to make that person feel known, feel heard, feel supported. That recipe from Lindsay could have come from anyone with the green beans and chicken, but because she’s on Lindsay’s list, Lindsay has created this community to where people want to open her emails and her recipes and have their problem solved by Lindsay and the Pinch of Yum team. Does that make sense?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, for sure. It’s almost like part of what we’re doing as creators is we’re thinking about what does it look like for us to establish a connection, establish a relationship. And the best way to do that is to think about what does that look like in real life? And the people that I feel most connected to most quickly are willing to tell stories, share about their life with me, and in a real relationship outside of the context of publishing emails, it’s like there’s a back and forth to that. You send something, somebody will send something back. I think that does exist online in some ways. There’s one-to-one. Generally speaking in a relationship where it’s one to many, you need to think strategically around what does it look like to introduce yourself to the degree that you want to be known. It doesn’t mean that you have to share everything, but to the degree that you want to be known, what does it look like to introduce yourself well? And what you talked about was a welcome sequence or a nurture sequence. Within that, it’s a way to either introduce yourself if you are personal brand creator, or introduce your brand in a way that somebody can go from being aware of you to by the end, what is the goal to know you, to feel comfortable with you? Maybe all the above.

Allea Grummert: Yes. Yep.

Bjork Ostrom: Period.

Allea Grummert: Okay. Well, sorry, I was definitely also already thinking about something else, Bjork, I apologize. But you had me think… I’m sorry, you just got my brain spinning in and out.

Bjork Ostrom: No, go for it. What were you thinking about?

Allea Grummert: Thinking about… Yeah, that’s a vulnerable moment. I’m sorry. But I think about relationships and how the difference between sending a text message, making plans for, oh, we’re going to do something this weekend, or can you pick up milk at the grocery store? Those communications are really helpful, but so is sitting down at dinner without your phone and making eye contact. So I guess what I’m saying is that both matter, and if you can craft some emails with great intention, you’re not belittling that because you also have content that goes out a little bit more straightforward. So what does it mean to tell those stories or to bring them in? I think about the way that we write our introductions for clients to their list. We always think about Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle. So there’s some of you want to have some sort of emotion. You want to have some sort of credibility. And so I often will, like clients, I’ll ask them, “Do you have a photo of you baking as a child?” Or, “You started baking because of your grandma. Can we include that photo?” That builds that uniqueness. What’s so cool is that everyone who joins your email list will have that same introduction to your story.

Bjork Ostrom: Can you talk about that? The Aristotle’s triangle of?

Allea Grummert: Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle.

Bjork Ostrom: Rhetorical triangle, yeah.

Allea Grummert: Yeah. I used to work in video production and we do a lot with storytelling, and those were always the three elements that we wanted to include in the video in their story. Now I always have to Google it. I should never bring up Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle without having it memorized. I need to have it just plastered on my wall. But there’s one around emotional connection.

Bjork Ostrom: Emotional, logic and reason, and then ethics credibility.

Allea Grummert: Yes. So some of that is-

Bjork Ostrom: Ethos, Pathos, Logos

Allea Grummert: Logos. I think it’s Latin. So fancy.

Bjork Ostrom: Logic reason. Yeah.

Allea Grummert: Yeah. So part of it is it clear to understand, do I feel a connection to this person and are they a credible source? So sometimes that’s just your backstory. Your backstory can be like, yeah, I started baking in the kitchen when I was 12, or I started learning to cook last year and I’m learning and you’re learning along with me. Either way, it fills in the gap for the reader so they know that you’re human.

Bjork Ostrom: Yup. Yup. That makes sense. That’s great. And that is my first exposure to Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle. So I’ll be doing some deep dives on that. That’s great. So you go through this process, we’re walking through start to finish. You have the content that you’re creating. We’re not talking about that, which is Instagram, it’s TikTok, it’s social media, it’s blog posts. From there, you’re creating some type of compelling offer. It’s going to depend on who you are, what you’re creating, who your audience is. But eventually you have the ability then to connect with people. You can use a nurture sequence, a welcome sequence. You’re establishing your credibility, your emotional connection, using that triangle, providing some logic and reason, maybe facts, evidence around why you’re a good person to follow. Then what does it look like? Because I think there’s a handful of people, maybe the majority of people who are listening to this who then are like, okay, now what? And it’s not like it’s an e-commerce business where you’re then selling a thing, or maybe there’s some people who are really strategic with affiliate marketing, but I think there’s a lot of people in this genre who are collecting email addresses but not really doing much with it. If you have this email list, what does it look like to really tap the full potential of that?

Allea Grummert: Yeah, well, the potential grows with wherever your next step is. There’s so many different directions you can take an email marketing strategy, so you don’t have to do it all at once. Just pick the next right thing. So when I talk about the three strategies I recommend for creators, it’s having a couple automated sequences, one to welcome subscribers, one to nurture them a little bit long term, and those are evergreen. They’re running all the time. And the other is this live consistent content. So it could be new blog posts, it could be a roundup or whatnot, but those are just being sent out to everyone. So it’s a little bit of a mix of older content and new content. And you as a creator know my older content is going to have eyeballs on it. At some point, at some way, people are going to get those emails, which I think gives us a lot of peace of mind. They’re like, yeah, and everyone will know I have a cookbook because I told them multiple times in these automated emails. There’s a peace of mind there. Can you remind me of what the question was?

Bjork Ostrom: Well, and I think real quick on that point, I think one of the things that you’re able to do is you’re able to build a little bit of a flywheel. And so if you have a thing that you want to make sure that people know about, one of the great ways to do that is to make sure that there’s an automated way that people are seeing that within your email list is a great example of how that would work. If you have your top 10 pieces of content, you want to make sure that you include those in a sequence, or maybe it’s even just in a single email. That’s like my top 10 most popular recipes in our world. So people can see those. I think sometimes we feel like we’re inundating people with this content, but it’s like people are so scattered, they’re looking in all these different places. Even if they do hear about something five different times in five different places, it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Allea Grummert: Well, and not everybody is following our content as closely as we are following our content.

Bjork Ostrom: Nobody is. There’s nobody in the world.

Allea Grummert: Nobody is. Nobody is opening 100% of your emails most likely. So part of what makes a really simple next step, once you have… Even if you don’t have any automated emails and you just want to start sending out live broadcasts, campaigns, whatever they’re called, depending on your platform, and you’re sending out newsletters, maybe we’ll call it that or new content, what really helps is to create a schedule for yourself. And the reason why I say this is because we used to do this thing when people would join through Mailchimp or whatever, and you’re like, and five days later they get this and two days later they get this and then you’re like, I don’t actually know what days of the week people are getting emails. And then you worry about sending out a new email because they’re going to get a double email and not a good double coupon kind of way. Like a, oh, no, they’re going to unsubscribe anyway. So what does it look like just to say, these are the types of emails I send out on Thursdays. These are the types of emails I send out on Mondays to allow your brain to say, to create those parameters gives you so much more freedom as a creator. You’re like, I know that my automated emails go out Tuesdays and Fridays, great. I will send out my other emails the other days of the week. Create a theme for those. I have a client, she’s like, my Friday email is where I share all my personal stuff and people love it. She goes, they won’t find it anywhere else. So while everything else, the rest of the week is business and recipes or whatever, the Friday email is that personal touch and nobody’s asking her to tell a personal story with every email she sends every day of the week. So it’s also there’s a space for that so that people still feel connected to you as well.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. That’s great. Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors. This episode is sponsored by Clariti. You spend a lot of time on your blog content. From planning to recipe testing to writing to promoting, but do you know if each of your posts are bringing you the most traffic they possibly can? With Clariti, you can see information about each and every post, which is automatically synced from WordPress, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console so that you can make well-educated decisions about where your existing content may need a little attention, think broken links or broken images, no internal links or missing alt text. You can also use information that Clariti pulls about sessions, page views, and users to fuel the creation of new content because you’ll be able to see which types of posts are performing best for you. Get access to keyword ranking, click-through rate impressions and optimization data for all of your posts today with Clariti. Listeners to the Food Blogger Pro podcast get 50% off of their first month of Clariti after signing up. To sign up, simply go to clariti.com/food. That’s C-L-A-R-I-T-I .com/food. Thanks again to Clariti for sponsoring this episode. And so the other question or part of it is you have this email list. Let’s say you have 10,000 subscribers or a hundred thousand subscribers, whatever the number is. What value does that inherently represent for you? Just from, we talked about the softer side of connection. This is almost the extreme other side tangibly from a revenue perspective. Tell me about what that means for me as a creator. What does the value of growing my list in translating that into revenue?

Allea Grummert: Yeah. So part of it is look at the number of people who are clicking through from each email. What does that turn into for your RPM? And if it’s low, that’s okay because you’re going to grow it. Or the other alternative is to send more emails.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Allea Grummert: I have a client who last summer just started sending a daily email and each one had a different theme. We created a newsletter template for each one, like duplicate, replace, send, because the numbers were like, oh, this is a lot of traffic that I have control over. Sure, the click-through rate is like three point a half percent, but the open rate is still pretty good. People have options to opt out of things. We’re allowing that, but we are almost like a media company in a sense of here’s the new content and then when they go back to the site, you get ad traffic from there. And I’m not saying you need to send seven emails a week. If you’re like, “Oh my gosh, my audience would kill me, Allea.” I get it. I hear that often. But that’s where we can allow different preferences. Either it’s types of content or days of the week. You can usually set that up within your email service provider. But yeah, part of it is it’s your livelihood. It’s a big part of your business. And so you also don’t want to snooze on that because you think people might have their feelings hurt or they have to delete an email. We often think that we send more emails that we’re annoying people when our readers are not thinking that in most cases. And if you want to be hospitable, which I always recommend, I sound harsh. I’m like, “Just send the emails.” But I’m like, “Give your people room to be able to also, I have an automated email that goes out on Tuesdays at the very bottom, it just says, if you want to be removed from the best of Duett emails, just click here. You’ll still get everything else.” And I think maybe four out of 1,800 people have unsubscribed, but it’s there. It gives me peace of mind that I’m caring for them and I’m not just shoving stuff in their face when they don’t want it.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s options that they can remove. And it’s interesting, I look at our dashboard for Pinch of Yum, and RPMs, depending on the ad platform you’re working with, you might be able to see the earnings based on where people are coming from and direct, meaning people are just coming straight to the website. I don’t know if direct would also include an email click or not. That might be something I’d have to dig into. But direct is like a RPM. And so direct might also be just like if they’re typing it in, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that also includes referral from email. I’d have to look into that. But point being, you can play the numbers game. And what was interesting on this podcast interview with Sam Parr on that real estate podcast, we can link to it in the show notes if anybody wants to check it out, but he was talking about his early stage of raising money for The Hustle. And he talked about there’s this VC that he went to that he really respected, and he was going into this meeting and the guy literally laughed at him. And he’s like, “I would never fund a company like this because it just makes no sense.” And he was like, “But you can play the numbers game.” And in his case, he was working with direct advertisers within email, which I’d be interested to talk to you about. And he was saying for his type of newsletter, they could get $50 per thousand subscribers. And if you worked with a company that would then pay to be a sponsor, not a subscriber, but a sponsor for that email, you can play the numbers game and you can say like, okay, if you’re sending out five emails a week and you have a hundred thousand subscribers, and you can multiply then and see. Okay, so I know then inherently every email subscriber is worth this amount. But what I’d be interested to hear is do you see any creators working with brands in that way where we will get a sponsorship on Instagram or we’ll get a sponsorship on a blog post. I think there’s a huge opportunity for us, and we haven’t done a good job of this, of getting a sponsor for an email. If you have-

Allea Grummert: 100%.

Bjork Ostrom: … a big list, it’s no different than getting a bunch of eyeballs on a blog post.

Allea Grummert: I think we get a little bit precious about our email subscribers because we don’t want to offend people. Will they sign up for free things? I don’t want them to see an ad. But the reality is you have created this awesome sweet audience that other people have content related to that they would like to get in front of. And yes, I have seen this done with newsletter sponsors. So what would it look like for you to have this sponsor deal? This is a real question. Can you counter and say, would you also like to be an exclusive newsletter sponsor for our Friday emails for the next four weeks? Because it would up the contract. If you’re going to do it-

Bjork Ostrom: Totally. Totally.

Allea Grummert: … go for it. And I would say do it in bundles like that. I will do it once a month for the next six months. Make it easier for yourself. You’re not just doing one-off sales.

Bjork Ostrom: And this is what we’ve found for the podcast. We’ve started to do sponsorships for the podcast for the Food Blogger Pro podcast. One of the things that’s really nice about that type of sponsorship is that I’m doing this interview with you. I don’t know whether this podcast itself will have ads within it or not. I think it probably will, but that doesn’t change this interview at all. It just we’re opening up a spot in this medium for somebody that we consider to be a good brand for the people that we are working with to be aware of. And I’m not really having to change anything about how I’m operating. It’s much different. Let’s say if Pinch of Yum signs a deal with a food brand and we work in partnership to develop a recipe and for that recipe to then have the ingredients in it, that’s still great. We love doing that, but it’s harder than if we send out a newsletter once a week or twice a week and then we sign a sponsorship deal that then gets included at the top of the email, that suddenly is much less work and potentially a similar value exchange where that brand gets in front of an audience in a similar way, but it’s less of a lift from a effort perspective. So I think it’s an untapped area for a lot of creators.

Allea Grummert: 100%. And a couple of things, if I can remember them. I need to take notes while we talk because my brain is-

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, totally.

Allea Grummert: One, I heard someone talk about last week at Craft & Commerce that you can also include an option that’s like don’t want ads in your emails, click here for $5 a month to contribute to the newsletter. And they get more from the people who don’t want ads than they actually do from the ads-

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, interesting.

Allea Grummert: … which is really interesting. But you can just add, and then you use conditional content to exclude anybody who’s already paid just does not see the ad, which is great. They have a great experience. Oh, the other thing I was going to mention is because brands are going to have different expectations too. So Pinch of Yum, my guess is that people are going to want to tap into that newsletter largely for exposure, which what we called in when I got my degree in advertising, we call it just general awareness, and that is a worthy campaign, paying money to have Mountain Dew on a billboards that you are thinking of Mountain Dew 16 times a week on your commute or whatever.

Bjork Ostrom: Code red specifically.

Allea Grummert: That’s awareness. And you’re like, well, there’s no conversion. And it’s like, yeah, that’s a whole other realm of advertising. Versus you might have other advertisers who want to include a link to an opt-in form and they actually want to be able to track those. So you might have different… Then the price of it might be different, but just so you know there’s a difference. It’s like, yeah, do you just want to show up? Great. But yeah, I think, I don’t know if advertisers would say it, and only if I get a certain number of subscribers. That’s not on you, whether they’ve picked the right audience and they’re trusting you with that, but they still need to pay.

Bjork Ostrom: And I think part of it too is one of the things, so I’m doing a lot of the calls for the brands that we’re working with now for Pinch of Yum, and one of the things I’m just always trying to do is understand what success looks like for that brand. And that’s super helpful to go into the conversation if they’re like, success for us is getting a thousand people to use this coupon code. It’s like, okay, we’re probably going to approach it differently than we would if what they said was success for us is we just want people to know about this type of noodle. And it’s like, oh, okay, that’s different. And therefore how you approach working with them is different. In some cases, we’ve said, this just happened the other day where we got on a call and they’re like, the brand is like, “Yeah, we really want to get more link clicks or links or something like that.” I was like, “It’s probably not a good fit. We’re going to be really good at getting you in front of people and for people to be aware of that and for it to happen in a genuine authentic way. We’re probably not going to be great at converting on your food product for your new e-commerce site.” That’s just not how people are transacting with the content we’re creating. So I think your point is really good around understanding if you are going into some type of relationship where you’re working with a brand or advertising to know what they consider to be success for them.

Allea Grummert: 100%. Well, and then ConvertKit now has programmatic ads that you can put into your newsletters as well, so you don’t have to-

Bjork Ostrom: Can you explain what that means? Programmatic, the idea behind that?

Allea Grummert: You’re asking questions. No, I’m just kidding. So being these dynamic ads, I had to ask what that question was. Yes. Years ago. And so instead of you are picking out the sponsor and putting it in the newsletter and you’re manning that relationship, you get to hand pick this sponsor for this audience or this product and you get to say no or whatnot. ConvertKit now has an ads program where they will just inject the ads in different parts of your email just like they would through an ad network on your website. And so however, you do still have a lot of control over these brands, not these brands. It’s a children’s thing, but I am marketing to the elderly. Maybe not. You can still pick and choose. And what’s cool about that is there’s really no minimum number of subscribers in order to be able to do that. I don’t really know what the cost benefit of that is, but especially if you’re in that in-between where you’re like, I have people on my list and I would just want to test it out, that’s an option as well.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s one of those things we often talk about this idea of what’s your motivator, and I think we tested out some of the programmatic ads with ConvertKit. It was like, okay. But I think for people who maybe are working with a Raptive or Mediavine and are used to those types of numbers, it’s not going to be that and might be different for different creators and how they include the content. I think the approach for us would be if we end up going in the direction of working with brands within emails, it’s like direct to brand type deals. But one of the things that we’ve always said is it can be really motivating in the early stages if you have a hundred subscribers to see that you’re making $3. $3 becomes six becomes 12, and just to see that you’re getting some traction from that in the early stages as a brand scales up, you have 10,000, 50,000, a hundred thousand subscribers. That gets to the point where you can start to work more directly with a company, have a more holistic maybe relationship where it’s like, hey, we’re going to do something on Instagram, the blog and in the email, and this package then looks like this X, $10,000, $20,000 or you can start to roll those up. Can you talk a little bit about the speaking of advertising and the connection to email, some of the changes that are happening with clicks and first party data within emails as it relates to the traffic to your blog? Why that’s important? What we should be aware of with that?

Allea Grummert: Yeah. So I’ll tell you, I don’t know all of the technical reasons.

Bjork Ostrom: Specifically, how it’s working technically within-

Allea Grummert: Technically, your next question.

Bjork Ostrom: … the server infrastructure.

Allea Grummert: I keep using things that I’m like, I don’t know all the words for that. But basically because third party cookies have gone away, Raptive and Mediavine in particular, because they’re the most common ad networks in our industry, they have created ways for you and them to capture subscriber data through all their clicks to your website. But in a way, I believe it’s called hashed, just follow everything with a question mark for the next minute. Is this how it works? So the data itself is still protected somehow it’s encoded or decrypted, I don’t know, question marks. But basically what’s happening is that because you’re tracking the user’s data, and that’s going back to Raptive or back to Mediavine, they are able to be able to serve better ads to your audience because they know where that subscriber is also engaging with other brands. And so basically what it does is it leverages that information or to get you better ads for your audience, which makes you more money in the long run. Raptive, it is called Newsletter Identity Capture. Mediavine, they call it Email Connect. Either way, what it’s doing is it’s adding a query to the end of your URLs in-

Bjork Ostrom: Meaning, like additional-

Allea Grummert: Code.

Bjork Ostrom: … Characters on the URL. Yep.

Allea Grummert: Yep. And so it reports back to Mediavine and to Raptive, like this person’s data, but it’s still protecting their data. So it’s not like there’s a list of, Melissa went to all these sites, it’s still protected, but the more data you can give them, it’s like working like a team with all the other folks. And you can use that within your podcasts. You can go back and add some of that code to sequences. Raptive actually has a integrated way with ConvertKit to add it automatically just pretty slick. Whereas Mediavine, you need to use their Email Connect tool.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. Idea being generally speaking at a high level, if you are able to identify who somebody is, you can target those ads better. The more targeted ads can be, the more beneficial they are to advertisers, especially with third-party cookies eventually going away because then now you can’t identify people as much because you don’t have these third-party cookies tracking people. So then it’s like, well, how do we do that? Email being one of them. So in the conversations I’ve seen people talk a lot about that, “Hey, make sure to turn this on, make sure you have this in place.” Because that’s going to allow you to add on a little multiplier to the value of that traffic if they understand that third-party or first-party identifier information for them. That’s great. And for anybody with those respective ad networks, you can follow up with your ad rep to figure out how to turn it on or my guess is they have support as well, or they can connect with an expert of which you are one. Allea, you work with clients and you work with us and our team, and we’ve partnered for a long time, work with other bloggers and publishers. So can you talk about just how you work with creators, publishers, anybody in this world who’s interested in leveling up their marketing?

Allea Grummert: Yeah, so my business is almost six years old. I think I worked with you guys maybe a year two, so it’s been a while. So my company is called Duett for a couple of reasons. One is that a lot of creators come to me and they’re like, this thing that I haven’t done with email for four years, can you do it? And I’m like, I will do it. We’ll do it together.

Bjork Ostrom: We will do it. Together, we will do it.

Allea Grummert: Exactly. I know. I cheese out at my own puns. But the idea is also you are an expert in what you’re doing. You don’t have to become an expert in email marketing. I could get that set up for you. So we do project-based work mostly. I do have some one-on-one coaching as well, but it’s like how do we get you from where you’re at now to feeling like, okay, I know that when people join my list, they’re having a really great experience, they’re learning about me, they’re getting segmented if needed. Some automated emails are going out, sending them to my best content or my best affiliates, giving them a breadth of understanding of the type of content I create. All those things we talked about like, oh, wouldn’t it be nice if everybody knew you had a cookbook? Wouldn’t it be nice if everybody knew you had a YouTube channel or a podcast or whatever? We build all that out for you and make it really easy for you just to then focus on growing your list and emailing your list. Because if you know that people are going to have a really good experience, it makes it that much easier to actually go and get subscribers because so many people are like, I want to grab my list because they’re not getting whatever, or it’s outdated or it’s not representative of me anymore. And so yeah, I’ve been blessed with an awesome team. I used to do all of this by myself. I have people now. And yeah, we’ve got a process for figuring out your brand. We do audience research, we figure out what your readers want, and then we use that to really fuel part of that strategy along with whatever’s most important to your business. And so I get pretty excited about it. We do all the tech set up for you, so you really just like we turn it on and then you just go and focus on connecting with your audience.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. And I think as much as possible as we are building a business, it’s important for us to think about who, not how. It’s one of the, I think it’s a Dan Sullivan book actually, the title of a Dan Sullivan book, but just this idea of there’s a thousand different things that we can be doing, and in so far as we have the resources financially to bring somebody in to help us with that, that’s going to be the thing that’s going to be the differentiator for us is finding those people who are good at what they do to come in and do the thing that needs to be done. And we don’t have to figure out how to do it. We need to be aware of it, but we don’t necessarily need to know how specifically. And then the key is finding who. And so for people who are interested in email, I think working with Duett D-U-E-T-T .co is a great solution for connecting with you and your team there. So good next step would be to go to the site, is that right?

Allea Grummert: Yeah. And then I’ve got a fancy link for you all, so just duett.co/foodbloggerpro.

Bjork Ostrom: Love it.

Allea Grummert: And I’ve got some free resources there and a way to connect with me.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. And you are also an expert in the Food Blogger Pro community, which you’re super appreciative of. And so Food Blogger Pro members might see you around there as well. We do live Q&As, obviously active in the forum when email stuff comes up, and so appreciate all your help and insight there and on this podcast as well. So Allea, thanks so much for coming on.

Allea Grummert: Thank you for having me.

Emily Walker: Hey there, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team, and thank you so much for listening to that episode. We really appreciate it. If you liked this episode or enjoy the show, we would really appreciate you leaving a review or rating wherever you listen to your podcast episodes. Ratings and reviews help get the show in front of new listeners and help us grow our little show into something even bigger. We read each and every review and it makes us so happy to hear when you’re enjoying the podcast or what you would like us to improve or change in upcoming episodes. All you have to do is find the Food Blogger Pro podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, whether it’s on Apple or Spotify or another player, and enter a rating and review. While you’re there, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss a new episode. We really appreciate it so much and it makes such a huge difference for our show. So thanks in advance. And that’s all we have for you today. So have a great week.

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Ann Morrissey: Hey there. Thanks for tuning into the Food Blogger Pro podcast. My name is Ann. In today’s episode, we’re sitting down with Andrew Wilder and Colin Devroe from NerdPress. Andrew is the CEO of NerdPress and one of our Food Blogger Pro experts. So you may have seen him around the forum breaking down all things WordPress for our members. Colin is also on the NerdPress team. He’s a senior product manager currently working on tools like Save This and Hubbub, NerdPress’ social sharing plugin. In this interview, Bjork, Andrew and Colin discussed the ever-shifting social media landscape and how you can break free from dependence on the larger social media platforms by exploring what’s called the fediverse and diversifying your traffic sources. You’ll also learn how to use powerful tools like Hubbub, Save This and Flipboard to build a loyal community and grow your email list, ensuring your content thrives in the long run. This episode confirmed for us that if you want to keep your content flourishing, you’ll want to dig deep to build a community and form lasting relationships with your readers. If you enjoy the episode, we would really appreciate it if you would leave a review anywhere you listen to podcasts or share the episode with your community. And now without further ado, I’ll let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: I’m going to do a double welcome here because we have Andrew. Andrew, people are going to be familiar with you. You’ve been on the podcast many a times here. So welcome, Andrew, to the podcast. And we also have Colin. Colin is joining us for the first time, and this is a joint call because you are working together. We’re going to be talking about some of the specifics of what it’s been like for you to work on this project called Hubbub and what the Hubbub is all about. But before we do that, let’s do some quick background here to establish who we are and what we’re all about. Andrew, you’ve been on the podcast before, part of the Food Blogger Pro community. You’re an expert. People are generally familiar with who you are, what you’re about, but for those who aren’t, can you give a quick background on who you’re and what you do?

Andrew Wilder: Sure. Well, I’m glad to be back and it’s been a little while, so it’s nice to reconnect with-

Bjork Ostrom: Too long.

Andrew Wilder: Too long. I’m the founder and CEO of NerdPress, and we’re a WordPress maintenance and support company. So I like to say we keep websites running smoothly. The majority of our clients happen to be food bloggers because I started as a food blogger myself and it kind of grew from there. And so we’re deeply embedded and invested in the food blogging community and we want to be here to support everybody.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. You understand the WordPress space really well, which is a little bit of a tease into where we’re going next. And Colin, you also know the WordPress world well given your background, but give us a quick overview of who you are, what you’re about, and then maybe what it looked like to connect with Andrew as you guys started to work on this project.

Colin Devroe: I am now the senior product manager for Hubbub, which is a product that NerdPress offers, and I’ve been involved with blogging since I was 14, which is in 1994 before the word blog existed.

Bjork Ostrom: Love it.

Colin Devroe: So yeah, I have a lot of experience in publishing on the web, and so when I joined NerdPress last year, the timing was perfect, right when we acquired Grow Social Pro from Mediavine and turned it into Hubbub. So it’s been a match made in heaven really.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome.

Andrew Wilder:Aw.

Bjork Ostrom: Collective aw from everybody. One of the things that we learned for people who are familiar with our story, we had WP Tasty for a long time. Eventually sold that company. It was a few years ago now. But one of the things that I remember Daniel, who led the development with those products, talking about is when you have a WordPress company, you really have a support company. And one of the great things is I feel like a lot of people back into support because they launch a WordPress plugin and then they realize, “Oh my gosh, there’s a ton of support that has to happen with this.” It was one of the realizations we had, which is we’re not a WordPress company. Pinch of Yum is our primary thing. Food Blogger Pro and now Clariti are the things that we focus on, but WordPress is this entire world and we wanted to make sure that it landed in the hands of somebody who knew WordPress, lived in WordPress, could keep that going. It sounds like, Andrew, that was kind of a similar story with what happened with this set of plugins was Mediavine had these plugins, they wanted to make sure that they were maintained well with a group of people that would support them well moving forward. You had a literal support company already in place, so you had the infrastructure for it. Was that the thinking in the transaction was Mediavine said, “Hey, we want to prioritize finding a good home for these,” knowing that you had a decade I think, of experience supporting WordPress sites and plugins and just understood the world really well. So they put them in front of you to say, “Hey, is this something that you’d be interested in?” To which it sounds like you said yes.

Andrew Wilder: Hey, that’s exactly what happened. Yeah. I think it was last summer, Mediavine reached out to me and they’re like, “Hey, we’ve got this thing we want to talk to you about.” And we partner with them and collaborate with them a lot, so we’ve already got a great working relationship. And they basically said, “Hey, we’re pivoting a little bit. This is no longer something we think should be part of our core offering and we want to make sure it goes to a good home and takes good care of our clients. Many of your clients are already using this.” We’re talking about the Grow Social Pro WordPress plugin at this point. So they bought that plugin in, I think it was 2019. It was originally called Social Pug. And I’ve known this plugin for a long time. So we’ve supported that. We worked with Mihai, the original developer, so we know the plugin really well. And so they said, “Hey, we think you would be the best company to take this over and really take it to the next level and continue to support everybody.” And it was such an obvious win-win that I think by the end of the conversation I was like, “Yes. Done.” It was such a perfect fit that it was great. And then I got really lucky with Colin appearing at the exact right time. So you have to leave some stuff up to serendipity in the universe.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, totally.

Andrew Wilder: So we actually happened to have a position open for something else about a month before, a month and a half before, and Colin applied for that job and as I’m reading his resume and we’re doing the pre-interview stuff and we’re on the interview, I’m like, “He’s not right for this job, but I’ve got this other thing.” And when I floated that idea to Colin in our interview on Zoom, his body language changed dramatically. He lit up and I was like, “Okay. We’ve got a good fit.” And then he was supposed to start two weeks later and he started that night. I couldn’t stop him.

Bjork Ostrom: Very quick turnaround.

Andrew Wilder: I feel like you have to be available and show up and let things happen sometimes and be open to things happening and then opportunities will work out.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. I love the idea of luck wears overalls and this idea of that’s not going to happen unless you’re having those phone calls and you’re putting that job description out and you’re hustling and you’re working hard. And a lot of times that’s where you find I think serendipity coming through is you are hustling and that feels like a situation where it’s like luck wears overalls. I didn’t actually realize that. Now that you explained that story of Social Pug acquired by Mediavine and then making this decision, “Hey, probably not a good fit for us.” Then it goes outside of Mediavine and now it’s Hubbub. Morehubbub.com. Colin, can you talk about at a high level, what does this plugin do and how do people interact with it? And then what we’re going to do is we’re going to talk about some strategies around email and list growth as well as traffic growth in post helpful content update world. But at a high level, when we’re talking about this plugin specifically, what does it do?

Colin Devroe: Yeah. I’ll give you a short version, then we can dive into whatever you’d like. Hubbub adds social sharing buttons to your website. When we purchased it, that’s what it did. And it would let you share to any social network, whether that was the publisher that was sharing to the social network or even just the visitor to your website could say, “I really like this thing I’m looking at. Let me put it on my Facebook group or onto X or wherever.” And in addition to that, it would give you some statistics for the platforms that let you gather some statistics for that so you could see what was working, what was not. So you could see how many shares you have on Facebook or Pinterest. In addition to that, it really made it fine-tuned options for sharing. So not just sending a link to Pinterest and that’s it, but choosing what the images look like when it gets there, choosing what the title is and the excerpt is that shows up on those platforms. So the publisher could kind of steer the visitor to sharing their content the way they want it to be seen. So that’s what we inherited. There has been new social networks since we acquired it. Some of them have taken off dramatically like Threads and other things like the fediverse have come along and really taken hold in 2024. And so we have already made adjustments to the plugin to support those new platforms or change them just a little bit to work with the fediverse in different ways. And now that the whole world is changing with AI and search and other things, some of the social network traffic is not as what it used to be and so we’re adjusting and we’re going to continue to adjust as the world changes around us. But we’re now changing Hubbub into less of a sharing … Not less. The same sharing tools are there, but adding growth tools. Save This as our first one, which is a form that lets people send themselves an email when they see something. So rather than sharing it to X, they would send it to their own email address so that maybe they’re at work, they see a recipe that they like, they want to make it later when they get home. They can just save it really quickly to their own inbox. And then when they do that, they’re added to a mailing list on MailChimp or MailerLite or Flodesk. So the publisher gets a benefit from this as well. You’ve probably seen these forms all over the place. They are able to be done in other ways, but ours is really coming along. We only launched it about a month ago or maybe a little bit around there, and it’s got a lot of different customization features and we are already collecting analytics behind the scenes, which we haven’t exposed yet so that’s a little teaser for your audience is that we are going to be exposing some of these analytics to people so they can see how are people saving these things. And we have a lot of plans going forward to continue to add new features to Hubbub that will help people grow their traffic apart from search, apart from social and in a variety of different ways.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s cool. You had mentioned the fediverse. What is the fediverse? I don’t think I’ve ever heard that word. And I feel like maybe I’m becoming archaic in my understanding of the internet, but inform me.

Colin Devroe: I’m not sure if I’m jealous of you or not because it’s probably a good thing that you … It shows that you touch grass every now and then, I’m sure. The fediverse is … Imagine a social network that could talk to a completely different social network. So if your Facebook account could follow an X account or your Flickr account from back in the day could follow your Pinterest account. The fediverse is a set of protocols that allows that to happen so that no longer do you need to be on Threads, although it’s an advantage to be there no longer do you need to be on X. You can have one or some of those and then they all can communicate. It also means that from a publishing perspective, the content can flow between them all. Someone on Mastodon can share something and people on Threads, the 200 million people that are there can see that or follow that or share that or boost that. So that’s kind of the high level what the fediverse is. It’s an open source, open protocol way of sharing social posts, but then it also goes one step further, which is you can move. So if you have a Facebook account or a Facebook page and it gets mad popular, which many of your listeners probably have that, and you want to move that Facebook page and all of the people and your profile and your content and everything to Facebook number two when that thing comes out, you can’t do that. With the fediverse, you can take an account and move it to a completely different platform and take everything, your followers, your content, your bio, all of your media and take it with you. So it’s why Meta, which is what Facebook’s name is now, it’s why they’ve built Threads. They want to beat X at their own game, but they also have this fediverse layer that allows threads to connect with all these other platforms.

Bjork Ostrom: Interesting. Yeah. And I see the March post from Meta, Threads has entered the fediverse. So the idea would be that it allows you, in the case of Threads, if you were to sign up for another platform that was a part of the fediverse, you could do a direct export of the content that you had previously produced to build a portfolio. Or not the portfolio, but to build an account on another site that then would have all that information pre-populated?

Colin Devroe: Yeah, it’s kind of like that, but it’s-

Bjork Ostrom: In theory.

Colin Devroe: You might be imagining that you’re downloading a file and then you’re uploading a file. Like, oh, I’m going to download all my content and then upload it over here. It doesn’t actually need to even work that way. The platforms literally can sync the data in between the two of them. You go over to Platform Y, you give it your platform X’s credentials and it will pull everything over for you. But in the old world, you would be able to do stuff like that. You could move your photos from one thing to another. You could do different things. But your following graph, your social graph would not follow you. It would not go with you. Colin is not on Facebook, so he won’t be able to follow me anymore. Andrew’s not on Flickr, so he won’t be able to follow me anymore. Well, when you make these adjustments on the fediverse, the followers stay intact, so they’re just following this new account now. So you don’t lose juice essentially. You don’t lose all that hard work that you did, and that’s why it’s really attractive to publishers that invest so much time and effort in growing their audiences on Instagram. If Instagram went out tomorrow and they wanted to move to the new Instagram, whatever that may be, they lose all of that hard work that they did, not just in the content, but in the engagement and in the audience that they built there. But with the fediverse, you’d be able to move all of that.

Bjork Ostrom: Is there practical implications for people who are building a following right now? Is it hey, you should be aware of this, or is it like, hey, there are some strategies you should be implementing right now because of this? I know this is a little bit of a rabbit trail.

Colin Devroe: Yeah, no. Well, I could talk about this for a while, so you might have to do some of that live editing you were talking about.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. I’ll cut you off.

Colin Devroe: So I would say today, what should a food blogger do today to future proof themselves a little bit? First thing I would do is educate yourself a little bit. Recently we did a webinar with Flipboard. Flipboard is investing heavily into the fediverse. So if you’re listening to this and you’re a publisher on Flipboard already, go look and see what Flipboard is already doing with the fediverse. Your account that’s on Flipboard right now may already be syndicating into the fediverse and you don’t know it yet. So go there. They have some really great videos and one-on-one information that will catch you up to speed on what Flipboard themselves is doing in the fediverse. The other thing to do is look at what Meta and Threads is doing. Threads is going to look very familiar to you. It’s going to look like Twitter. It has a following area, you have followers. It doesn’t look very different to you, and yet that content optionally can be federated into the wide web. Just educate yourself on that first. I think that would be step number one. The next step might be that you learn what these other platforms are that are outside of these large tech companies. So look away from Facebook, look away from Google, look away from some of these larger tech companies to see what is out there that’s on the open web that’s not owned by anybody. As an example, Mastodon is one of many that are just like another social network, just like another X or a Twitter, but they’re not owned by anybody. They’re open source and you can run one right on your website if you wanted to, or you could join a server that already exists that’s out there. They’re usually free. Some of them are five bucks a month or something like that to help take care of hosting costs. As an example, the Dutch government has already said for all of their government agencies, they’re setting up Mastodon. For all of them. They did a year experiment. So now you can imagine something like the Dutch government is no longer beholden to Facebook to be able to get their news out. They could do it this way, and yet it can still be shared on Facebook, it can still be shared on Threads, it could still be shared on Instagram, but they now control … Just like email. A government entity would very likely never let someone else control completely their email. This is the same thing now. You can control social in the same way that you control email.

Bjork Ostrom: Really interesting. Yeah. Both of those I feel like, to your point, Colin, we could probably deep dive on that for a whole podcast episode. Good things to earmark and to come back to. One of the things I’m really interested in, I think within the context of Hubbub, it sounds like the considerations that you’re making are around diversification. And Andrew, I know that you’ve been at this a long time and you’ve seen a lot of ups and downs with a lot of different platforms including Google, and you work with a large base of creators and publishers who have seen a lot of those ups and downs. Can you talk about why you as a group NerdPress, but also just as best practice are starting to have conversations around the importance of diversification as it relates to traffic and maybe some of the things that you’re seeing as you work with different blogs and sites?

Andrew Wilder: Yeah. I think people for a long time have known they should diversify. I’ve been saying for 20 years grow your email list. There’s nothing really new in this concept. But with the helpful content update last fall and then the spring core update that didn’t correct for a lot of people, there’s been a lot of collateral damage and I think that’s been a big wake-up call for people. Because it was really easy and sexy and great to get lots of search traffic and make tons of money from display ads. Display ads are paying and they’re still paying high even though traffic is down, or maybe because traffic is down. Supply and demand. RPMs are amazing still. So it’s very easy to get lulled into complacency because you’re raking it in. The problem is you’re beholden to one entity and that one entity changes an algorithm. And the people at Google don’t even know the algorithm. It’s AI driven now internally. And they say do this, but the algorithm seems to think otherwise at times. So if I were running my business based purely on Google traffic, I’d be terrified because it’s one source of traffic, and if all of your revenue comes from that traffic … So you still need to get traffic and Google search is one of those sources, but then once you do that traffic, instead of just getting a page and a half or 1.1 page views for that traffic and then they’re gone forever, it’s now becoming more about how can you build community, bring that person into your ecosystem, get them to love you and your content and keep coming back for more. So once you have that, once you’ve built this community, you can then bring them back in and you’re going to be much more stable longterm.

Bjork Ostrom: And that would be the idea with being sure to capture email. Once somebody’s there, that’s going to be kind of the low hanging fruit for taking the next step in a relationship with a reader is to have their email address to be able to communicate with them. It’s kind of like we did this trip with Travel Wisconsin for Pinch of Yum, and one of the things they had scheduled for us was a boat tour and we were sitting on benches that faced so people faced us on this boat on the top and we saw this girl and this guy sitting next to each other. The guy was with his parents, and the girl was just on her own. And it’s the first time I’ve seen a live chatting. They’re kind of getting along and then she was like … I don’t know what she said, and she handed her phone over to him and then tapped numbers in and then handed it back, which is like, that’s something that’s never happened to me. The only time I dated was pre phones. But I feel like it’s kind of that version of a relationship where it’s like somebody saying, “Hey, I kind of like this. I want to put my email address in to get to know you as a creator a little bit better.” But what that requires is a clear path to do that. You have to be intentional with it. Maybe in the example that we had before, it’s the difference between the person just remembering the numbers versus having them stored away. It’s like somebody’s not going to remember to come back. You need to have some action that establishes that connection. So that makes a lot of sense. And I think doing that while you do have traffic and implementing it as just a standard thing that exists in your site is super smart. I think the thing that’s interesting to think about is what does diversification look like and how do you start that process as early as possible. Colin, can you talk a little bit more about that conversation that you had with Flipboard and maybe some of the practical takeaways for people who are looking to diversify? Specifically with Flipboard. What is it and how do you use it as a creator?

Colin Devroe: Yeah. So Flipboard, you can think of it … I’m not sure if they would love me saying this, but you can think of it like Pinterest and Pinterest boards except on Flipboard, it’s magazines instead of boards. The difference probably is Pinterest seems kind of indifferent to curation. They’re using a lot of different algorithms. They’re using a lot of different ways to enhance search and things so that people find what they’re looking for when they’re doing home improvement projects or looking up recipes. But Flipboard really values curation. It’s been something that has been a core principle … Human curation. A core principle to them from the very beginning. So they have magazines. You can have your own. You can have a magazine for your publication that you share all of your content into that one magazine. And then from there, people that read on Flipboard, which is an app on the iPad, it’s an app on your phone, it’s a website. They can share that, they can boost it, they can like it, they can put it in other magazines then just like you can take a Pinterest pin and put it in another board. But what they’re seeing is because they care so much about curation is that they have some very, very popular publications on there. Flipboard has been around a long time. They’re pretty OG of the internet and they have tens of millions of daily active readers that are constantly moving stuff and they also have people that are just on there to curate. They’re curating travel stuff, they’re curating food stuff, and those people are popular. So it’s kind of like having magazine editors and they have editors that are in there and curating for not only Flipboard, which has their own magazines, but also these curators do too. So I think that’s what it is. And what should a publisher do? Flipboard has some really great information. They really do try. I mean, they have a lot of documentation. They put a lot of stuff on LinkedIn, they put a lot of stuff on their own website. They have a blog. They have a YouTube channel. Trying to tell people, here’s what the features are and here’s how you use them.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Colin Devroe: I would say the key takeaways from our webinar was that to share to Flipboard the very moment you publish is really going to help quite a bit in getting your recipe or whatever it is that you’re sharing to be noticed by the people that are picking it up. And Flipboard does have some algorithmic pages. They have a for you page and stuff that you’ve liked informs that and other things. And then also they have a thing that’s like stories, but Andrew, do you remember the name of that feature?

Andrew Wilder: Oh, I’m just blanking.

Colin Devroe: It works like Instagram.

Andrew Wilder: Storyboards.

Colin Devroe: Storyboards. Thank you. So it works like Instagram stories kind of where you can kind of build. So you could take your evergreen content, the content you published a year ago, but you’re keeping it up to date because it’s very popular. It’s a pancake recipe that everybody loves. You can then put those into storyboards to say, “Oh, well it’s winter time now and don’t we like to make pancakes in the morning? And here’s the top five pancake recipes.” And those get very, very viral and they move a lot of traffic. We actually worked very closely with the Flipboard engineering team, and Hubbub now supports some of the latest article tags and things like that that Flipboard has. And we’ve had some Hubbub customers that have dug in a little bit with Flipboard and tried to get a little bit of return on investment and they are seeing a huge amount of growth out of there. I don’t want to give away specific numbers, but it’s in the tens of thousands of clicks per month that they’re getting off of just getting engaged in that platform. So Flipboard is like … It’s not a sibling of Pinterest but a peer of Pinterest and it kind of asks for an audience to be more engaged. They care a little bit more perhaps. Pinterest might be a little bit more ephemeral. They might just go there, grab what they need and leave. They don’t really know the people. But on Flipboard you kind of get to know the people. I follow it for photography topics because I’m really into film photography and darkroom printing and things like that. And it surfaces stuff that I would’ve never found on my own on the web. So it’s been really great for that.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. It sounds like the evolution is social platforms where over time it’s like a social algorithm is where it starts, where you have these connections, you have these people you follow, you see their content, and now it’s very much like a content algorithm where you are surfaced content not necessarily based on who you follow, but based on an algorithm that’s deciding what content is going to be stickiest based on the other content that you’ve already viewed. It sounds like Flipboard maybe anchors a little bit more towards a social algorithm, which is you choose who you’re going to follow, you choose the … Not that it doesn’t have any of the content algorithm considerations, but it’s still anchored around you curating the type of content that you want to see and then surfacing that curated content. Does that feel accurate?

Colin Devroe: But even their staff is curating. So they are saying, oh, this publication gets a little bit more weight. These publishers that they pre-qualify have a publisher and creator program. They call publishers things like the New York Times. They call creators things like food bloggers. So if you’re in the creator program, your stuff gets weighted a little bit heavier in addition to the fact that they actually have humans at Flipboard that push things into the food area or into the travel area. So when I say they’re into curation, they’re into curation the old school way where you can imagine the editor of Vogue is sitting down with people and saying, “Tell me the stories you got. We’re going to build a magazine this month.” That’s kind of what they do.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it. And you can see that on Flipboard. It says for creators, build your presence and it looks like maybe apply to have-

Colin Devroe: Yeah, they have a long list. I mean it’s popular. They have a long list.

Andrew Wilder: That’s one of the challenges is because they’re doing so much manual curation, it’s hard to scale. So you do need to be an active contributor. One of the big takeaways from when we did our webinar with them was they don’t want it to be a you drop a link and you go kind of thing like everybody does with Pinterest. They want it to be an engagement platform. So some takeaways for me were like when you flip something, the platform does favor recency. So as soon as you publish, flip it, but when you flip it, add a caption. Say why you like to make this recipe. They were really big on that. Jessica made that point very clear. Add why you want that. And then you can have comments on every flipped article. So when somebody leaves a comment, you’ve got to engage. Have a conversation with your audience and build community with them on Flipboard. But the really cool thing is it’s going to send the traffic back to your site because they’re not doing anything shady like pulling in your recipe and showing it on Flipboard. They want to send you the traffic, but in exchange, you need to have people engaging. You need to spend time engaging on their platform in return. So there’s sort of that quid pro quo. I don’t know if-

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Andrew Wilder: Look at it that way. But you can’t just be like, “I’m going to share to this and move on,” because you’re not going to get the results you want from that.

Bjork Ostrom: The idea being that as a creator, you are looking at the piece of content that you’ve published almost as a thing to comment and interact with. That goes on Flipboard. You put a description in, you interact with that, but it’s not like it lives on Flipboard in its entirety. It’s not going to take the entire blog post or recipe. But you do have to treat it as an interesting piece of content that you interact with in order for Flipboard to then treat you as a valuable creator on the platform. Is that what you’re saying, Andrew?

Andrew Wilder: Yeah, I think so. And then you can bring it full circle then. If people ask you questions in those comments, you can then take those questions and update your content and put those questions in there. So you can use it also as a feedback loop to make your content even better.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. And I see on the-

Colin Devroe: I didn’t mean to interrupt you, but-

Bjork Ostrom: No. Go for it.

Colin Devroe: If you wanted to get to the front of the line of that creator list, you can become a … Don’t tell anybody though. Don’t tell anybody this. You can become a NerdPress client and we can help to move you up in that list. However, there’s no way we can help … Whether they’ll let you into the program or not is completely on the merits of your content and the merits of your engagement and the merits of your account there. But as far as getting on the list, they have helped us to help our NerdPress clients move to that list. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. And I think all of this is under this umbrella of strategic diversification. And like you said, Andrew, Google works really well. You get a ton of traffic from it. But also it can go away at any moment. And to build in these tools, whether it be an additional traffic source or an email list, that you have to then give more time to in a situation where it’s like, “Hey, Google traffic changes. Okay, I’m going to change my strategy. I’m going to focus on Flipboard a little bit more.” Or I know people who were impacted by helpful content update and they’ve looked at Reddit as a strategy and how do I get traffic from Reddit? But going from zero to one is often the hard thing just to get up and running. So if you can start something, it’s not like you abandon … If Google’s working, it’s not like you abandon it and say like, “I’m now going to focus on Flipboard.” But to take it from zero to one and maybe from one to two, so you have some of the traction you need in a scenario where you need to take it from two to 10 is really smart and really strategic so you have that as a fallback option. And especially if you can start to get some success with it, that can add up if you get … In the world that we live in, if a thousand page views is equal to 30, 40, 50, $60, however aggressive you are with your ads, all of that can add up pretty quickly.

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Let’s talk about email a little bit. We talked about how important it is to build your email list. I think one of the things that people struggle with, Andrew, is “Great. I can build my email list, but then what?” You talk about the Save This functionality within Hubbub, and there’s some great testimonials from people who increased … Sam from It Doesn’t Taste like Chicken who’s been on the podcast before, talked about increasing signups by 49% in just five days, which is awesome. But what do you do once you get those email subscribers? How should people treat those and how can you be strategic in continuing to connect with those people and make those email subscribers a valuable part of your business?

Andrew Wilder: Well, you’ve got to email them.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. Startup 101. Start with that.

Andrew Wilder: Start with sending emails. I say that as the worst email marketer on the planet for my own business. Colin’s always like, “We’ve got to get an email out.” I’m like, “When?” So there are ways to-

Bjork Ostrom: Now.

Andrew Wilder: The most important thing is to email them in a way that you’re providing value. That’s my big thing, is you have to provide value to your readers. If so, they will love you. And you may not win everybody over, but that’s okay. You just need to win enough people over. So you need to be thinking about how you can provide value. Often that’s just your latest blog post. So it can be pretty easy to set up an automated system even where it pulls your latest blog post from your RSS feed and sends that out once a week. That’s sort of like the bare minimum automation. And you can have your email marketing tool do that automatically. If you can curate more information, even better. If you do that manually, it’s more work, but you can do a little write-up about why you did the blog post and here, click through. Then you can curate like, here are two other posts. Let’s say you’re doing a how to make pasta recipe. Like you’re making farfalle and you happen to have a recipe for kasha varnishke. Maybe you can then link to both. You can tie things together and make those connections. And so you can use that to highlight other content you already have, and then you can use that to engage with your audience. People can reply and say, “Well, what about this?” It becomes a lot more work and at scale, that can be a lot of emails. But that can be incredibly valuable feedback to find out what your audience actually wants. Other things I see people doing that aren’t just content are emailing and sending out a survey to their readers saying, “What do you want me to write about?” That is huge. “What do you think of my website? What’s working for you? Do you want to see more how-to posts or roundups? Are the ads bugging you or are you cool with the ads so that I can pay for my hosting?” Stuff like that. So I think engaging with your audience at a meta level of like, “Hey, what do you think about what I’m doing?”, can be … You’re pulling people in and sort of a little peek behind the curtain too, which I think people really appreciate. So you have to get a little creative with that.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And I think one of the things that we’ve found is for a long time we had an email list. We were building an email list. We would email people recipes, things like that. But it was once we had, in our case, it was meal plans like a product or for other people it might be a cookbook, suddenly it’s like, oh yeah, this is why you have an email list. And so I think it is beneficial to have the sending traffic back to your site. And like you said, we have surveys that we do. Those are really beneficial. And almost just even for the sake of maintaining a connection with those followers and people who have signed up. And I feel like where it becomes really valuable is you sign a cookbook deal and then you launch your cookbook and you have a direct line to people in a way where maybe you don’t in the same kind of guaranteed fashion with a blog post or with a post on social. It might get a lot of people or it might not because of that content algorithm as opposed to the social algorithm. So even if you don’t have anything to sell right now, someday if you continue to build a business online, you will eventually, even if it’s like Amazon Prime Deal Day and you want to send out some emails about it.

Andrew Wilder: It doesn’t have to be your product.

Bjork Ostrom: Right, right, right. That’s great. So Colin, can you talk a little bit about best practices that you’ve seen for building that list? Obviously with what you’ve built with Hubbub and the Save This functionality just out of the box, my guess is that it helps increase email signups. But if people want to start getting strategic about increasing the number or the percentage of people who sign up for their email list, if a hundred people come right now, maybe people get … Or a thousand people come, maybe people get one person who signs up for their email list. If they want to increase that to 10 people, 15 people for every thousand, what does that look like and how can you be strategic about increasing that percentage?

Colin Devroe: Yeah. It’s very early days with Save This, so we are seeing some amazing engagement numbers. The conversion rates are, I would say, higher than I expected them to be. But it is giving someone something in that signup. So the Save This feature specifically is you fill out this thing and you’re going to get something that you already wanted, which is the link back to this recipe for later. So save this is in a category all its own. But there’s other things like creating a white paper or a downloadable PDF or some other digital good that if they give you your email address, you get this thing. That’s one of the leading ways that mailing lists are being grown is by giving something for what you’re getting, which is the email address. And Save This fits into that category. It obviously serves a very specific purpose. But if you have a form somewhere else on your site that is doing a similar thing like trying to grow your newsletter, I would say just having one hanging out in your footer may not convert that much because what is the person going to get for that? So there are others that are far more experienced than anybody on the Hubbub team, although we’re working with them and we have partners and other people that we work with expertise in this. But there are workflows campaigns that you can put together that if someone were to sign up, what do they get? What do they get today? What do they get three days from now? What do they get 10 days from now? And you can plan all of that out with these services that we already support like ConvertKit that if you get a sign-up, you can say, “Well, what do I want the first seven days of experience for this person to be?” I really view the email list as your first step towards growing a relationship with the person. It’s not about driving traffic anymore. Sending a link to social media or making sure that your content goes viral or is publishable on all these different platforms, that’s definitely traffic generation. But relationship generation is that first step of you now have their email, you already have a captive audience. They’ve asked for something, they got something, and now you have that email address. So I would say every time that you correspond, whether that be automated or manual, it should be, how am I deepening this relationship with this person? To your point, you might be telling them about the book that you’re writing and filling them in behind the scenes so that they’re getting geared up for when that book drops or giving them something that people that didn’t give the email address aren’t getting. So if you’re publishing something specific, like let’s say you’re in a vegan category or something, if you’re giving content, videos, audio is big, just to the people that are on the email list, well, now you’ve created an exclusive segment of your audience. And I’m sure that maybe you yourself have covered on your podcast Kevin Kelly’s 1,000 True Fans. But if you can get to your point where you have 1,000 true fans, that’s the ballgame. Because when we were in Chicago at Tastemaker Conference, we would be talking about Save This because we didn’t have it yet. But we would be talking to publishers that have eight million unique a month, but they only have an email list of 800 people and that they haven’t emailed in three years. If you can shift that to having 1,000 true fans that pay you for something, whether that’s a product or a subscription … Maybe the subscription comes without ads for your website. There’s a lot of things that you can begin to do that can build those other legs of your revenue chair that you’re trying to build instead of just being … I’m going to lose the analogy pretty quickly, but-

Bjork Ostrom: Stick with it. Stick with it. We stick with it till the end.

Colin Devroe: If you have a share with only one leg, it’s not going to work. So if you can engage this audience … And I view email as that first step. Social media is good because you have followers, but now with the algorithms it gets much more difficult. You can have 300,000 Instagram followers. Congratulations. Four people are going to see it when you post there now. Unfortunately, that’s just the way it’s going right now because the algorithm is choosing what these people are seeing and if this person’s not totally into a vegan recipe on their Instagram, they’re just not going to see it. But when you send them an email and it’s giving them something they either asked for or they want more of or now they’re exclusive, then that is going to be content that you can guarantee is going to be consumed. It’s going to be reacted upon in a way that none of the other social platforms can compete with.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Go ahead, Andrew.

Andrew Wilder: I want to just take a quick step back. We’ve talked about a whole bunch of stuff and I don’t want everybody to feel like they have to do all of it. I was just reading Nathan Berry’s email newsletter. He’s the founder of ConvertKit. And he was basically like, don’t copy everybody. If you see somebody who has a million followers on Instagram, you shouldn’t think, “Oh, oh. That’s going to be good. I can do that too.” And then on X, if you chase people who are successful in each platform and try to do all of them, you’re going to fail at all of them. And his big takeaway was pick the one you enjoy. And I totally agree, because you’re going to enjoy it and that will come through and it won’t feel like work. So we just talked about a bunch of different things. I definitely encourage people to give Flipboard a try. Especially in this moment, I think it’s worth it, but if you don’t like it, don’t use it. And to your question about what email opt-in form, I would say if you have some forms that are working great, give Save This a try and see if it performs better. But if you don’t have all of them, if you sit down and go, “Okay. I have to create a lead gen thing, an opt-in thing, and I have to do it per category like, oh, all my barbecue recipes need to have a barbecue and my pizza recipes need to have a pizza opt-in.” Which that is the ideal maybe, but that’s so much work. Start small. And the reason why I love Save This is because it’s built into the feature. It’s just inherent in they’re on the post and they want the post later. So you’re literally giving them what they want by the nature of where the form is at the moment in time, so you don’t have to do any extra work. So if you don’t have an email opt-in right now, hands down, I would say Save This, whether it’s Hubbub’s or another provider’s, is by far the most effective opt-in and easiest to do because you’re giving them something of value that you don’t have to create more to do it. You don’t have to build another thing.

Bjork Ostrom: Point being, if you have a thousand blog posts, recipes, and it’s not like you’re going to come up with a thousand individual call to actions for each of those, the next closest thing that’s going to get to that is like, “Hey, you want this recipe? You can save this by emailing it to yourself.” That’s going to get closest to the problem that person’s trying to solve, which is I want to make this recipe. Whereas you can’t create something individual at scale, even though it would probably be more effective.

Andrew Wilder: I don’t know if it would be, actually. I get goosebumps about this because it’s so elegantly simple and so effective, and it’s so surgical with the least amount of effort and huge props to Bill Erickson and Matt Mullen for basically popularizing this. I think Bill was the first one to do it. Because one of our mutual clients was like, “Hey, I’d like to be able to do this.” And they built that form and it’s kind of taken off because it’s so successful. So I get excited because it’s such a huge win, and it’s so easy. And then you can build on it. We’re already gaining feature requests to customize the email that’s sent. We built a version one that’s very functional. It’ll do the job and it’ll be customized. It’ll focus on your site. But it doesn’t give you the opportunity to do a lot of messaging yet. Top of our feature list on the next release, we’re going to have more customization. So we’ll add a recommendation engine to that so it’s like, here are three more posts that you may like. And they can be in the same category automatically. So we can do programmatic work to make this automatic and very valuable for people. And then they can still get into that email sequence from ConvertKit or wherever. You can do both things.

Bjork Ostrom: And one thing that we didn’t touch on, and maybe we can talk about it as we round out here, just the value of email in the world of a cookie-less future. They talk about this idea of first party identifiers, and ConvertKit specifically has the functionality to automatically add some of this identifier information onto the URL anytime that somebody clicks. So all of that just generally compounds, and it’s one of the reasons why email is going to be even more valuable in the years to come. Colin, you’re a natural. We’ve got to have you back on. Really fun to talk to you. You could start a podcast. That’s what you guys can do. Now you can have a NerdPress Hubbub podcast.

Colin Devroe: That’s what Andrew needs is more things to do, I’m sure.

Bjork Ostrom: More things to do.

Andrew Wilder: We like talking though.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Andrew, really good to have you back on. Colin, can you talk about, being that you oversee Hubbub stuff, where people can learn more about that and then Andrew, you can give a shout-out for NerdPress.

Colin Devroe: Yeah, sure. So morehubbub.com. There’s a lot of Bs in there. Morehubbub.com. Our website has a lot of help documentation on it. The Save This feature has a landing page specifically to it. You can see some of the testimonials there. You can see a demo of how it works, and the sharing buttons are also there on most, if not every single page so you can click them and see does it share things. There is a free version of the plugin that only has a certain number of social networks in it, which is available through the WordPress directory. So you can just type the word hubbub into your ad plugins page on your WordPress admin, and you can get the free version just to toy around with it, see if that’s what you’d like to use. Or if you go to morehubbub.com, you can get the pro version which gives you all the social networks and all the options and everything there. And then just a reminder that the Save This feature is only available through the Pro Plus tier. So if you go to the website and you look at our pricing page, you’ll see that Save This is for Pro Plus tier users. So if you’re listening to this and you’re really interested in that engagement piece, be sure that you pick up that tier.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. That’s great. And then how about NerdPress? We didn’t spend a ton of time talking about NerdPress, but it’s a great service. One of those no-brainers for somebody who has the resources to bring in some help with all things technical. Can you do a little shout-out to WordPress Andrew?

Andrew Wilder: Sure. Yeah. I had a publisher who’s been a long time client pulled me aside during the Tastemaker conference, said, “I just assume everybody’s with NerdPress because I don’t know how you’d have a blog without NerdPress.”

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, totally.

Andrew Wilder: I was like, “Aw, bless you.” We want to be a partner in your success. We try not to be just any old vendor who’s providing a thing, but we’re really vested in all of our clients’ success. And besides keeping things running smoothly, we want to be a expert partner and resource and sounding board. So people are emailing us all day long for advice of like, “Hey, what tool should I do this? Is this thing the best practice?” It’s a lot of the stuff we talk about in the Food Blogger Pro forums. People are asking questions there. We’re just at a higher level. We’ve got a whole team of folks working on it. And then we really just want to help our clients grow and spend a lot less time struggling with the tech stuff. That’s our job now, and we love it. We love solving those problems and tinkering, but most of our clients don’t and we’d rather take that on and be part of your team for that and then let you focus on your zone of genius and what you’d rather be doing, which is I assume developing recipes and taking pictures and writing about it and flipping.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. Cool. And nerdpress.net.

Andrew Wilder: Yes. You can reach us at nerdpress.net. Thank you.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. That’s great. Colin and Andrew, thanks so much for coming on. Really appreciate it.

Andrew Wilder: Thanks.

Colin Devroe: Thank you.

Andrew Wilder: Always a pleasure.

Emily Walker: Hey there. This is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team. We hope you enjoyed that episode of the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. Since we are kicking off a new month, we wanted to give you a peek behind the scenes as to what you can expect in the Food Blogger Pro membership this month of August. Last week, on August 1st, we published a coaching call with Laureen King from the food blog Art and the Kitchen. In this coaching call, Bjork and Laureen chat about lots of really interesting topics, but they focus on how to approach rank dropping of posts that used to perform well, how to get good backlinks, and then how to update old posts that aren’t ranking as high as you would like them to. Next up on Thursday, August 15th, we will have a live Q&A call all about increasing engagement on Instagram with apps. We’ll be chatting with Ben from Grocers List, which is a platform that helps drive traffic from your Instagram platform back to your website. We are rounding out the month with a brand new course all about a keyword research tool, and we’ll be focusing on KeySearch. This course will be a real deep dive into KeySearch. Why to use it, how to use it, and just everything you need to know to get started with KeySearch as a food creator. It’s going to be a great month. We really hope you can join us for some of these new pieces of content. If you are not yet a Food Blogger Pro member and would like to join us, just head to FoodBloggerPro.com/membership to learn more about our membership and how you can join us on Food Blogger Pro. We would love to have you. And we’ll see you back here next week for another podcast episode. Make it a great week.

Bjork Ostrom: This episode is sponsored by Memberful. With Google updates impacting programmatic revenue and uncertainty looming over social media platforms like TikTok, food bloggers and creators need a way to monetize their content and earn sustainable revenue. Look no further than Memberful. Memberful is the best way to sell subscription memberships to your loyal followers and control who has access to your recipes, cooking tutorials, lessons, podcasts, and more.

It’s easy to get your membership business up and running with features like content gating, in-house newsletters, private podcast feeds, and exclusive community spaces. I wish this was around when we started Food Blogger Pro. It would’ve made it so much easier. Plus, you can seamlessly integrate with tools you already use like WordPress, MailChimp, LearnDash, and Discord.

So there’s no need to migrate platforms or change your workflow. And by using Memberful, you’ll have access to a world-class support team ready to help you set up your membership and grow your revenue. They’re passionate about your success, and you’ll always have access to a real human when you need help, which is so critical.

Some of the biggest creators in the culinary scene are already using Memberful to foster community with their audience and monetize their content. And listeners to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast can go to Memberful.com/food to learn more about Memberful’s solutions for food creators and create an account for free. That’s memberful.com/food. Thanks again to Memberful for sponsoring this episode.

Emily Walker: Hey there. This is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team and you are listening to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. This episode kicks off what we are calling our summer membership spotlight the last week of each month this summer. So for June, July, and August, we will be highlighting a piece of content that is normally a members-only piece of content for Food Blogger Pro members. We host monthly live Q and As for our food Blogger Pro members, and Bjork also conducts monthly coaching calls with Food Blogger Pro members to help them work through two or three of their current questions and concerns when it comes to being a food creator. Like I said, normally these things are only available for Food Blogger Pro members to either watch live, tune into the video replay on our site or to listen to on Food Blogger Pro On the Go, which is our members-only podcast.

But we’re going to be highlighting three pieces of this content for all of our podcast listeners this summer, just to give you an idea of what goes on inside the Food Blogger Pro membership in hopes that maybe you’ll decide you would like to join us. We’re kicking off the series with a replay of our live Q and A with Kate Ahl who is the Food Blogger Pro Pinterest expert, and also the owner of Simple Pin Media. In this Q and A, Bjork and Kate chat about all things Pinterest strategy in 2024, including what constitutes a fresh pin, the difference in performance between video pins and static pins, scheduling on Pinterest, the importance of branding, and just really everything you need to know about Pinterest and how to have success on Pinterest in this day and age. It’s an awesome live Q and A. We really enjoyed attending it live. Members submitted tons of interesting questions and we’re excited to share it with you today. So without further ado, I’ll let Bjork and Kate take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: We are officially live. We’ll start to see people trickling in here and joining us as we’re going to have a conversation today around all things Pinterest. Super excited to be talking to Kate from Simple Pin Media. We see Annette’s here, Jennifer’s here. Katy’s coming in. Katy Keck, good to see you. Jocelyn is joining, and yeah, the focus today is going to be on Pinterest. The exciting thing here, Kate, you and I were just talking about this interesting evolution of a platform. And for you and I, we’ve been in the world of content creation and social media platforms. For you, obviously a focus on Pinterest. And once you are in it for a decade or a decade plus, you see the ebbs and flows.

And one of the things that’s really interesting with Pinterest is there is this season where it was a mega traffic source generator, and it was like you’d see it right up there with Google Search, and then some things happened and it shifted and it became less effective as a traffic source. And now we’re seeing people as Google becomes a little bit more unstable and people see the risk of going all in on a single platform saying, “Hey, what does it look like to come back to Pinterest and be strategic with that as a platform?” So tell me, just from a timeline perspective, as long as you’ve been in Pinterest, could you pinpoint some significant changes along the way and what that’s been like to track with those?

Kate Ahl: Yeah, a hundred percent. And you’re right on as you talk about it, it’s like 2014, we had the Smart Feed. 2017, we had a big rise in traffic, but then we had this introduction of a few shopping integrations, some ads. So you saw a dip in traffic, then you see it go back up in 2019, and then 2020 we get this explosion in users, like doubling users, people are at home. And 2020, it was like people were getting traffic who hadn’t even used Pinterest before. They’re like, “Where is this coming from?” And then late 2020 or probably early ’21, they see the introduction of Idea Pins and Story Pins and content creators are like, “Wait, these don’t link,” which is a main frustration of the Pinterest user. So you see a lot of creators leave, but you also see user frustration. And then early 2022, they say, “Okay, we’re going to link, we’re going to do away with a creator program that we had, and we are going to introduce just this pin format that’s like video.”

Right? It’s not going to be called Idea Pin, it’s just you pin a pin. It’s either static image or a video. And I think at that point we saw, I guess, traffic stagnated and you had the switch in the CEO. They moved away from their old one into a new one in summer of 2022, which was actually really great because he is a little more aggressive and now we see traffic going back up for people. And I think we’re not the way we saw in 2020, and I think that’s the way it goes, right? What we saw in 2017, 2019, those numbers are gone, right? They’re gone for everybody. It’s not like we can go back to that. So yeah, definitely the wave. And you’re right, people are nervous about Google, so they’re going, “What feels like Google?” Well, Pinterest, right? So let’s invest in it again.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. It’s interesting to hear a platform try a thing. You see this often and then step back from it. The Idea Pins, what did that look like? And then now there’s video pins. What does a clickable link look like within the context of Pinterest now? And then if you could also talk about what were they trying to do during that stage where they were testing out some of these more almost like Instagram Reels type content?

Kate Ahl: Yeah, I think what they were seeing too, it was right at the height of 2020. So they saw this massive user growth and they saw the massive growth on TikTok and they said, “How do we keep people on the platform longer? Because that will bring advertisers to our platform and we can show them the time spent on platform.” But the problem that Pinterest has was that their users were used to clicking on something and going away from the platform, and their biggest frustration was a broken link. So now you’ve added in an element of frustration to the user and the creator, and it just wasn’t working. It was meant to be this thing that was a hybrid of a reel/story/TikTok, right? Well, once they got a year in, they realized, “Oh, we’re trying to pay creators to do this. We’re trying to also make it work and it’s just not working.”

So then they added the link at that point with the hope of, “Okay, now we’re going to remove the frustration, but still what we want is this way for people to create on the platform. We want everybody to be able to express themselves, and this is a great way to do it without a website.” I think that’s what they are originally thinking without the link. But then they realized that just wasn’t going to work, so they still have short form video. That’s what we’re leaning towards. And they’ve been super indecisive this year. I lost Idea Pins a year ago, and then I had them back like three months ago and now I don’t have them.

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, interesting.

Kate Ahl: Because of that discrepancy, we tell people, “Just think of it as short form video. Don’t assign the term idea pin anymore. You might see it, you might not see it.” Pinterest also introduced collages, so these collages were a way, let’s say you’re designing a kitchen, it was a way for you to take cutouts and pictures and put them into a static image collage. And so that’s really more of a user tool, not so much like a marketing tool, but you’ll see that now today it says, “Do you want to add a pin, a collage or a board?” Those are your only three options.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. The pin for a user, they would say pin, collage, or board. Yep.

Kate Ahl: A board. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. And then one last question on my end before we jump into some of the questions from folks who have submitted these ahead of time, what are you seeing that’s working well now on Pinterest? So if you are a publisher, you’re creating content, you’re putting it onto your site, there’s a lot of things that have worked well. Do those same things still work well? Are there new things that we should be considering as publishers or creators that are working well on Pinterest? And by work well, I guess it could either mean it helps you grow your Pinterest followers, or it could also mean that you’re getting traffic to your site from it.

Kate Ahl: Right. Well, I’ll say first, one of the biggest metrics is saves. Pinterest really looks to those to say, “Okay, the more saves something gets, the more we distribute it, the more you have an opportunity to get traffic.” So as far as what’s working well, I’ll say even for me, our traffic has dipped a lot in the last couple months, so we’re trying a lot of different things. But one of the clients we looked at, they’re side-by-side the same niche. Creating content probably weekly or bi-weekly is the best. We’ve noticed that content creators, which makes so much sense, who slow down on content and maybe create one piece of content a month or every six weeks, they are slowing in their traffic. So keeping up that content creation on your website is important. I think a lot of people, which I saw this question come through, create fresh pins, I’ll talk about that when we get to that question, and assume it will replace content. It’s not. That is just not really working well.

Bjork Ostrom: Point being the difference between a new pin versus a new actual piece of content on your sites.

Kate Ahl: Correct. Yes, exactly. Those people’s numbers are doing really well. I’ll say too, updating some for keywords. Pinterest does do updates on their keywords just like Google does. So if you have not changed up the name of a board, if you haven’t searched it to see like, “Oh, is this vegan breakfast board still really good or do I need to change the name?” At a conference I just went to, there’s a lot of conversation around vegan plant-based. Are people searching plant-based or are they searching vegan now? So pay attention to the differences in that and people who are changing up their board names, making them refreshing them are definitely seeing growth. And then video’s hit or miss right now. Video was doing really good. I think post the change from Idea Pins to short form video, but I don’t know, some were doing great before and now they’re not doing as well. So I think static pins for sure, just a static image, they call them standard pins. Those are still doing well for people. So I would say those are the three things that we’re seeing.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. So we have a handful of people who are tuning in live. It’s always fun to have some folks who are tuning in live. If you have questions as we go through this stuff for Kate, you can go ahead and ask it in the questions area For Zoom, I would also be interested for anybody who’s listening in live and at their keyboard, sometimes people have it on in the background and they’re doing something, but who you are, where you’re tuning in from, maybe what your site is.

And then I’d also be interested in how long you’ve been a creator? How long have you been publishing content? All of us have been at this for a different amount of time. It could be decades, it could be months. So it’s always just interesting to hear from folks who have been in it for a long time and also from folks who are just new to this and learning as they go. So you can go ahead and do that in the chat area, make sure you switch it over to everyone as opposed to the hosts and panelists, so everybody can see that as we kick things off here. And let’s start with the one that you had referenced, Kate, where you said Laura is asking what constitutes a fresh pin?

Kate Ahl: Yeah. Okay. When Pinterest used this word first or phrase first it was in 2019, and what they were trying to get people to consider was that looking at an image in a new way. So one of the examples that I use is taking a new image from an event or a holiday. Let’s say you have a cinnamon roll recipe and you’ve had it on Pinterest forever. Creating a new image for it with maybe something that is not just a different angle or moving a line. We heard from a lot of people recently that were like, “Well, I just swapped the image.” Think of it as changing up the text even, making this for your next Mother’s Day or making this for Sunday brunch, trying to really create something that is different and new and using keywords that are different on that image.

That is what we see as a totally new fresh image. And you don’t have to go crazy, you don’t have to create 25 of them. But we did and looking at our clients and seeing the side-by-side and the same niche, one of the clients was definitely optimizing seasonally for her images. So she had her standard ones, but she was getting crafty and creative to spin the image towards a holiday, whether it’s colors or adding certain things. A lot of the things I saw with food images that I was reviewing a couple of weeks ago was that they are all looking kind of similar, so look around and look different like at a border around the outside.

I was actually thinking about this the other day when Lindsay created different images for Pinch of Yum years ago, and I think it was the stack, it was the longer one, and people were like, “That’s so cool.” And she was getting great engagement. It was because she thought outside the box. And so I really want people to be encouraged to think about fresh images, not just as moving a line or flipping your image. Think about how to really optimize it. You’re taking the time to do it, do it actually different, and search some keywords too as well that you might add to it.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. Yeah, I think of this idea of it’s always drilled down to what is the reason why it’s working. It’s not working because you move a block of text and then you trick Pinterest into thinking, hey, this is like a fresh image. The reason it’s working is because it’s a new novel, unique thing. And what it as a platform, my guess is what Pinterest is always trying to get at is this idea that we want new, fresh, novel pieces of content. Like you said before, the best way to do that is to actually publish a new piece of content on your site, create a really engaging image from that. But if not that, what I’m hearing you saying is another really great thing you can do is off of that piece of content, create a new, unique, interesting image that links back to that piece of content, second best to just creating an actual new piece of content with a great image that goes with it. Does that feel accurate?

Kate Ahl: Yeah, a hundred percent accurate. And I think one of the things that people got caught up in is you play to the algorithm instead of play to the people. Play to the people, and you also hit the algorithm. And so if you need new Pinterest templates, go grab them from somebody, go buy them, there’s tons of them out there. Change up what you’re doing. Get out of the rut that you’ve been in. Instead, I heard a trick, it was a really interesting hack that somebody was uploading everything to Tailwind and then moving a line and I was like, “Wait a minute, you’re missing it.”

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, you missed the point.

Kate Ahl: Yeah, missed the point. And I think it’s almost like you are getting more power, more bang for your buck when you do take that 15 to 20 minutes and look at those keywords change up to make it seasonal. And that could come back for you next year too. And I think that’s just something that people are definitely, they’re missing the boat on that.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. With any of the things that we do. The best place to start is always with the user because any of these platforms, what they’re trying to do is create the best experience for the user. And so as much as possible, when you first are thinking about it, skip the platform, think of the user and then think of the platform and these are some of the conversations that we’re having today, like what are the technical elements to consider? What’s working well now? What are the considerations I should make? What’s not working well? And then take those into consideration, but always starting with the user as opposed to the platform.

Kate Ahl: Yeah. One of the tips I gave somebody there that I was meeting with, I’m like, “Think about it. The cook at home probably has their iPad open, they have the recipe out, they’re cooking back and forth. Why don’t you take a picture or a flat lay, have your iPad on the counter and then put the image of your recipe in that?” That’s different, but it’s connecting. That’s how I cook from Pinterest is I’m looking at the recipe right there, do that.

Bjork Ostrom: And being creative. It’s what we do. We’re creators. How do you be creative and unique and novel. That’s great. It’s fun to hear from some folks. Shannon at The Recipe Necessity, Carole Yu. Good to see you, Carole. She says she’s been blogging since 2018, off and on. Now focused on blogging in-person teaching, cozymeal.com food classes. Jocelyn from JOZmahal in Chicago has been blogging for five years. Shannon’s been a member since 2022, started in 2020. We also have some folks who’ve been at it for a while here. Lauren’s been blogging since 2012. Marissa has been publishing for 10 years. Katy Keck, good to see you. Lots of folks tuning in. A lot of good questions here and we’re going to keep moving through them. So Rachel is asking, “Are hashtags still relevant on Pinterest?” What are your thoughts on that?

Kate Ahl: This is a funny one because it’s like a hill I want to die on, but I’m sure that the moment I die on this hill, Pinterest is going to change. So they have been a no for a long time, but there’s been a recent introduction and I think Pinterest is using the ChatGPT API to start to add automated suggestions for your Pinterest description. Now it’s not available for everybody. We have a few clients that have it, but I don’t have it yet. You start typing and all of a sudden it will populate a description for you and it includes hashtags. This led some people to believe, “Oh, Pinterest is using hashtags.” But we think because of the API that’s connected, Chat GPT does use hashtags still when you write Pinterest descriptions, when you ask it to. So what I would say is I go back to the user never searches with a hashtag.

The user never clicks on a hashtag, it is just not the way that they use it. And if anybody here is a Pinterest user, the same thing. You don’t put hashtag… You put a phrase or you put a word. So in that sense, we tell people, “Leave them off.” There really is no value that we see that a hashtag holds greater importance than an actual keyword. So our suggestion is just ignore them for now because Pinterest, we’ve been asking them too in so many places, “Will you please just tell us what your belief is?” And they just haven’t. So I’ll die in that hill today, don’t use them.

Bjork Ostrom: All right. And what you’re saying is if you get this automated description generator, they’re including hashtags, which probably led some people to believe, “Wait, Pinterest thinks we should include these.” But what you’re saying is chances are they’re using a tool and that tool is trained on previous existing datasets and those previous existing datasets had hashtags. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s best practice today. It just means the tool was trained on old content, which maybe had hashtags, therefore it then uses those. But as a user of Pinterest, most people aren’t using hashtags as a part of their strategy.

Kate Ahl: Right. And also I’ll note too, I don’t know if I would trust it totally yet to give me the right keywords as well. So if you want to test and play around with it, how it works is if you just simply upload an image, it will give you a description automatically. That’s how we’ve seen it work. So do that and then pin it to a secret board. Nobody sees it and then go double check. Are those keywords even matching up in the search bar on Pinterest as search prediction? I don’t know. I don’t quite trust it yet.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep, that makes sense. Great. You alluded to this a little bit, but Sarah’s asking, “Have you seen any difference in performance between video versus static pins?” So just maybe a real quick recap of the difference between those two and then if you’ve seen a performance difference between video and static.

Kate Ahl: Yeah, we have actually as of late, video seemed to do really well in 2023, but the first couple months of ’24, we really see it lagging. In fact, my team was like, “Have you guys seen video getting less views than it was before?” So it seems to be there’s a big switch. So basically video on Pinterest, less than a minute, very buzzy kind of just ad like if you will for whatever you want them to go to. And those were doing pretty well when they would show maybe a recipe, here’s the five things that you need, here’s a quick buzz through, go learn more. But as of late, I don’t know, they seem to be getting not as many views as a standard static image. So we tell people, “If you are seeing that, go back to 80% of standard images, make that the bulk of what you’re pinning to Pinterest, but keep leaking out videos, keep trying that and see if they come back up.”

Bjork Ostrom: And that’s one of the interesting things with Pinterest, I was having a conversation with somebody who’s in the gardening space and he was saying they did this huge Pinterest initiative and tried all this stuff and they’re like, “Ah, we’re just not seeing traction there.” And then a year later is when they started to really see the benefit of it. So can you speak to the difference? Maybe relates to search a little bit too, but it’s so different than a platform like Facebook or Instagram in terms of the immediacy of it. It takes a while for stuff to come around and it has a different life than other social platforms. So can you talk to that a little bit?

Kate Ahl: Yeah, they say the shelf life is four months, but I actually think it’s even longer than that because when you get on Pinterest, a common thing that we’ve heard too, we’re not just seeing any movement, but we tell people when they’re new to Pinterest to give it six to nine months to really see the growth. It is a platform that does not have any dopamine hits, so you’re going to feel like it’s not working. But because it takes a while for Pinterest to recognize the keywords, recognize the engagement, it takes time. Plus seasonality is a big, big deal. So if this person who’s in gardening starts at in the fall, that’s when people are closing up their gardens. They’re not really searching. But if they were to start this time of year, then people might have been searching more for that type of content.

But even if they didn’t, now this year they’re seeing those results, that growth. And a lot of people will tell me, “Man, that old Pinterest pin, it’s still bringing me traffic.” That’s amazing. Make sure that that post is optimized. That’s where you want to create new fresh images is for the post that’s doing really well. Spin it to be seasonal, spin it to be any keywords that are new. So yeah, it is going to take time. And I saw there were some people in the comments that said they were new and it felt confusing. That is totally normal at the beginning of starting to figure out Pinterest marketing. One of the best things is just to open up your app and play around with it, see how you respond to pins or how it affects you that makes you a better marketer. So testing and trying. But yeah, it does take a while, but once it gets going, I mean it keeps delivering traffic.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. What changed? You talked about the history of Pinterest. What changed from the time when, let’s say, it was peak traffic to now? Is there a way that they’re linking differently? Does the URL show up in a different place? How did that shift happen? Because it’s still an important traffic source in terms of social media platforms. It’s like Instagram and Pinterest for Pinch of Yum are the two important platforms for us. But at one point it was like, I don’t know what it would be, but it was Google and then Pinterest really close behind from a traffic source. Now there’s a wider gap for us. It’s not true for everybody, but was there something that changed about the interface or how they linked? What did that look like?

Kate Ahl: Yeah, I think the height was really 2017, ’18, ’19. It was just doing really great. And then with 2020, when they made all those changes with Idea Pins not having links, with really trying to figure out how to keep a people on the platform longer shopping integrations, I think all of that came together and Pinterest said, “We need to be profitable and the way to be profitable is to drive advertisers towards us.” The problem was is their organic side and their ad side, it was like the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing. So even when we were leaning into, “Okay, let’s try ads,” the ads, people didn’t really understand the ecosystem of how the organic works. So I think they had a little bit of a sales problem too. And I think what we saw with Facebook in 2013 when they went into ads, they were like, “Pull the lever, we’re done.” I think Pinterest-

Bjork Ostrom: We’re done with sending organic traffic or pages. So you had a page, it had 500,000 followers, you could post an update and get tens of thousands of people visiting that day just from that post. And it was literally I think a switch that went on and people were waiting for it and then it happened and then they’re like, “Shoot, now I can no longer send traffic.”

Kate Ahl: Totally. And it was like overnight and in all the communities, people were like, “Did yours get shut off? Did yours get shut off?” I think Pinterest went a little slower on that spigot and that’s what we’ve seen over the last couple of years. And I think the pandemic threw them for a loop. I think the previous CEO moved really slowly. This new CEO is from Google, Venmo, PayPal, really into shopping integrations. So I think Pinterest is still going to hold steady. We’re still going to see this current traffic piece, but that’s when I just think they haven’t been as aggressive with turning off the organic piece. And also they’re not a platform that people think, well, one, they’re not considered a social media platform. Two, people don’t get rid of it when they’re doing a social media detox. And three, people don’t do doom scrolling. They only visit the platform maybe once a day or every other day. So their user behavior is so different. So I think Pinterest is real hesitant to turn a lot of that off.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And it’s such an important platform. Well, it seems like for people in our space like food creators, the way that they are transacting with Pinterest is we will feed content and the hope is that we get traffic from that. The expectation for that never existed for a platform like Instagram. And so the transaction there is we will give content to Instagram in exchange for selling a product, doing sponsored content, maybe directing people to an email sign up. And so the exchange looks different. And my guess is Pinterest probably has some incentive to keep that there, that being traffic, in order to continue to appease people who are creators, a really important piece of the puzzle for them to get new content onto their platform.

Kate Ahl: Yeah, for sure.

Bjork Ostrom: So this question is coming in from Cam, says, “Hi, Kate. Should we limit the number of pins that link back to a single blog post or URL?”

Kate Ahl: No, we’ve never actually had that issue or worry because if you think about it, if you get a lot of people coming to your site one day and they all want to save it for later, you could have a super viral posts and tons of people save it. That’s actually not a problem. And Pinterest likes that, actually. But don’t do it yourself. Don’t take that as like, “Okay, I’ll pin a ton.” Let the people pin for you, but just know that that could… You don’t want to do your pinning back to back to back to back. But Pinterest recognizes a user behavior different than coming from the same IP.

Bjork Ostrom: So let’s say it’s somebody posting, like Pinch of Yum publishes a new recipe, how many pins should we as the Pinch of Yum Pinterest account create that point back to that recipe?

Kate Ahl: Yeah. So we recommend, especially for food, you can do a little bit more because you have different shots, you have different process. So you can do five or six if you really need to. You don’t have to put those all in your post, but you can do different angles, test different things out. For me, in B2B, I only do one to two for each of mine just because you can’t really angle that up differently. So you can do probably five to 10 if you really want to. And then you can drip those out onto different boards over time and then just let them sit, don’t share them again, just see what they do out there once they get out.

Bjork Ostrom: Great. Margot’s asking, “How do I turn high engagement into followers?” So let’s say you have some pins, they’re getting a lot of traction, but you want to make sure that the traction an individual pin gets converts into Pinterest followers. And maybe a second question after that is how valuable is it to have Pinterest followers?

Kate Ahl: Yeah, it’s not valuable at all. I would say it’s probably one of the metrics that we were just actually doing a deep dive on this. We were getting kind of geeky about it, looking at does the number of followers translate to that monthly view number? Now for a long time I would throw out that monthly view number, but I actually am getting more curious about it. What is it telling me? It definitely is not telling me about a conversion, but what it is telling me is that people with a low number of followers can get a really good level of engagement.

That’s what that monthly viewer number, it’s like a melting pot of all the numbers and people with a higher number of followers can get a lower number of engagement. So we don’t see any correlation that says more followers equals more traffic, more engagement, more saves. What we see is individual pins carrying the majority of the weight. That is where we want to put most of our energy because Pinterest, you don’t get calls to action to follow people very often. And like I said, it does not translate into a good health of an account. I’ve seen people with 200, 300,000 followers that have a lower monthly view number than somebody with 6,000 followers who has a hire. So that being said, I don’t focus on followers at all.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And there’s been a shift in every platform, social platform, and would be interested if this resonates with you as you think about Pinterest away from a social algorithm, I follow you and therefore I’ll show you more of this content to a content algorithm which says, “I think that you’re interested in this based on your behavior. And so regardless if you follow this person or not, I’m going to show you what I believe,” this is the algorithm talking, “I’m going to show you what I believe to be the best piece of content for you at this given moment. Doesn’t matter if you follow somebody or not, this is what I’m going to surface for you.” Does that feel accurate as to what Pinterest is doing?

Kate Ahl: Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, that’s what they call their Smart Feed. So what everybody should do is go into Pinterest and search something. So my daughter’s going to Europe in the fall and we’re searching for this particular country in Europe. The moment I search that and I go back to my home feed, it’s filled, it’s peppered, not filled, but it is peppered with those pieces. So search and just see what happens because that’s what Pinterest is interested in. Like, “Oh, Bjork, you’re looking up barbecue recipes? Let me show you some.” But you might not follow that person, but they’re looking at what’s already getting the most engagement and what matches up with your search term.

Maybe you search brisket, they’re not interested in showing you ribs, they’re now going to show you brisket. And that’s where these key indicators come from and why we use keywords and why we play around with new keywords on our fresh pin images because that’s what Pinterest is taking into consideration. Oh, where is it that I can find something that serves this user that then keeps them around longer because they don’t want to create a Smart Feed that’s boring. And they have this cool feature too that let’s say you had a wedding and you’re married and you’re not planning your wedding anymore. You can go into your settings as a user and turn off, “I don’t want to see anything more about weddings.”

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, interesting.

Kate Ahl: That’s a pretty cool thing that they have for people. I like that feature. So yeah, that’s why followers don’t really matter.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. And I think for anybody just starting out, it’s reassuring because then what does matter is the solid individual piece of content that you’re creating, it’s compelling. Is it interesting? Like you said, is it unique, new and novel? Does it capture somebody’s interest and do they click on it? Do they save it? All of those being things that are important in the equation as opposed to you have hundreds of thousands of followers.

Kate Ahl: Yeah. Can I give this quick tip really quick?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, great.

Kate Ahl: I was going to mention it earlier and I forgot. So Pinterest has what are called Pinterest Predicts. It’s like Pinterest Predicts 2024.

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, sure.

Kate Ahl: And what they do is they try to predict what will trend. It is very important for every creator, whether you’re in food or not food, to go look through that because you not only get great content ideas, but this is what’s telling you Pinterest is going to prioritize this year because they “think” it will trend. And so they are also doing Pinterest Predicts weekly where they’re giving you updates to say… I just looked at one about Coachella because Coachella is happening and it says the search for bows, like hair bows, is up like 2,800%. And so this’ll give you some ideas as to what people, and they had a lot of food related content too. So check that out as well and see if some of the new recipes you’re creating can go along with some of these predictions that they’re putting out there.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool, that’s great. And Emily dropped in the chat a link to the area. Thanks, Emily, for passing that along. We will keep working through some of these questions here. Vanessa says, “Currently, I use Tasty Pins. For context, we previously owned a business called WP Tasty. We sold that there’s new ownership, but that was a plugin that we had created, focused on Pinterest.” And so Vanessa’s saying, “I use Tasty Pins on my posts to allow readers to pin photos within the post, and I also include two or three hidden pins. Would it be better to just set one forced pin instead?” So can you talk about what a hidden pin is, what a forced pin is, and then what best practices today with those two things?

Kate Ahl: So best practices really goes along with people visiting our site and we wonder, “Okay, if they’re coming to our website and they want to save for later, I want to make sure that they’ve forced to pin the right thing and it’s not just some sidebar image or something like that.” I still think that’s a good practice to have set up something that you know if they hit the pin it button, it goes to the right pin that you want to have pinned. Because we have seen examples where wrong things get pinned, it’s just not going to work.

But I think if you just have one, and my assumption is that that forced pin is the hidden image, I would make those the same thing. I wouldn’t make them any different. I would say if you have one main image, this is the one that you want everybody to pin, just choose that. What we are seeing is that less and less people when they come from Pinterest to your website, which is their most common behavior, they’re already within the app. And the app has a save button that’s right there at the top. And from what I understand, it should pull that forced pin. So that one is right there. So as long as you know that the people are pinning those right things, that’s most important. I think two or three might be a little overkill.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. And one of the things that we try and do is we try and include code. There’s no pin code that you can include within the image text or within the image code. And so an example being, and we did it because we started to see, “Hey, we’re getting a bunch of traffic to this post from Pinterest. Let’s see what the pin is.” And it was like a picture of Lindsay and I that somebody had posted from the sidebar and is like, “Shoot, that probably would be double the amount of traffic if it wasn’t some random picture of us and then a recipe.” And so what we started to do is include this no pin code anytime that we have an image that shouldn’t be included when somebody clicks to pin.

For example, it could be comment images from people that are leaving comments, or maybe you have also recommend area where you have some images of other recipes and you want to add no pin code to that or everything in your sidebar. And so while we’re not forcing any one single image, what we are doing is we’re removing any of the images that are definitely not related to the singular piece of content that somebody’s looking at. And then letting people from there decide which one they want to pin. But the forced pin, interesting to hear about that being something within the app itself. And a good reminder for me even to use the app and specifically to use mobile. Is your assumption at this point 90% of people who are using Pinterest or-

Kate Ahl: 95.

Bjork Ostrom: They’re not going onto their desktop computer and using it?

Kate Ahl: No, no, no. And I think that’s why you can look in your audience insights or maybe it’s called Conversion Insights. You can see what the majority of your traffic is using, whether it’s tablet, mobile, web, whatever. I think most people use either an iPad or a tablet and their phone to look things up.

Bjork Ostrom: Great. Kelly’s asking this, “I’d like to know more about packages and services Kate offers. This is great to help Pinterest accounts and what exactly do they take over?” So making pins, pinning, cleaning up boards, and then this is maybe a hard question to answer, but how much growth can I realistically see? What is the average return on investment for hiring that out? So if you can talk about, usually at the end we get a little shout-out, but we can do it midway through here. Just a chance to talk about Simple Pin Media. And I know it’s multifaceted. Pinch of Yum uses Simple Pin and we’ve also used Simple Pin when we’ve tested out some advertising. And so I know there’s a lot of different things that you can do, but let’s say it’s a food publisher who’s publishing recipes to a site. What would be some of the main services they might look at at Simple Pin?

Kate Ahl: Yeah, it’s a great question. So I’ll say right off the bat, one of the best things is just to book a discovery call. Our team wants to look at your account and do all these things. So that’s on our site, simplepinmedia.com. I would say one of the things first that we look at is we want to say, “Where are you at in your Pinterest journey?” So if you’re totally new, you don’t have an account set up, you’re going to want to make sure everything’s set up. We have an Accelerator package that does that, but I would say even more so getting to the growth piece. Pinterest is so seasonal, especially with food, and we’re in Q2. And Q2 is notoriously the lowest traffic time. And even in Pinterest like investor reports, they’ll say the same thing too. So when you start, depends on your growth rate.

And from a study we did a while ago, it was like one to 3% per month. And that’s being very conservative because I don’t want to promise somebody that they’re going to get 10 to 15% growth and then they’re like, “Wait a minute, it’s at three.” So it all depends on to how often you’re creating content. So if somebody came to us and said, “I haven’t created content for a year, but I’ve been doing a ton of images.” Well, your growth is going to look different. It’s been stagnated for a while, that might take a little while to kickstart. So I would say when anybody hires anybody, whether it’s hiring us or somebody else, you want to ask those questions about what they’re going to tackle for you. Are they going to tackle new images with new templates? Do you get editing rights to those images?

Like feedback on that and ads too, like you said, are they experimenting with ads? Where do they get their levels of education? So not just even hiring Simple Pin, but overall when you think of hiring out, I also tell people, “If you really like Pinterest, it is your jam, you geek out about it, you like to schedule and do all those things, hiring might not be the best, but a consulting call might be the best, a strategy call because then you can ask questions.” But we get a lot of people who are like, “I hate Pinterest. It’s confusing to me.” That’s the best when you want to outsource it completely. So knowing that part about yourself really sets you up for success when it comes to hiring somebody to take this off your plate or just consult with you.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. And as a creator, there’s all of these considerations, like how much bandwidth do you have from a time perspective? How much bandwidth do you have from a finance perspective? If you’re willing to invest in your business and you’re just starting out, that looks different. If you’re strapped for time, but it’s something you want to build. Even maybe you’ve been creating for a long time and haven’t focused on Pinterest, it’s going to be easier to get a return in that realm versus if you’re just starting out everywhere. I love the idea of the discovery call. One of the things that I’ve found is whenever I do one of those, I also learn a lot. You are discovering not only what your needs are, but also opportunities that exist and somebody just to be able to talk to you about what your hopes are. And that’s on your site, just on Simple Pin Media and book a discovery call.

Kate Ahl: Yeah, it’s like 25 minutes and yeah, ask us. That’s so fun for us especially to just ask you like, “Are you coming back to Pinterest? Do you like Pinterest? Do you not like Pinterest? What are your goals?” A lot of the conversation we’re hearing right now is people saying, “I gave up on it in 2019, 2020. I focused on Google, and now that Google’s changing, I need to focus back on Pinterest, but I’m tired.” We’re all tired as creators kind of on this hamster wheel. So those are things we take into consideration. I’m with you. I’m a big discovery call person. I’m like, “I want to know the person. I want to know the company and ask a lot of questions.”

Bjork Ostrom: Great. Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors.

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Here’s a specific question from Vanessa. Is it still useful to have a blog board, for example, a board that is named after your site and just has all of your pins on that board?

Kate Ahl: Yeah, I like to have one just for search purposes so we know the board name, the board description, and then pins within that board hold all the weight together. So I like just ours is just Simple Pin Media, but we also have one for our podcast, so Simple Pin Podcast. And I really only do that to make sure the search algorithm knows that we are on the platform and we’re there and all these pins have the same Simple Pin Media are a part of it. But if you don’t, it’s not a deal breaker, but I suggest it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. This is a question from somebody who met you at Tastemaker. Carole Yu. She says purple hair.

Kate Ahl: Yes. Okay.

Bjork Ostrom: I just met at Tastemaker and some of the other bloggers told me it’s a long game. Two to three years before you see growth from Pinterest, why would I spend the time now and how could I make that timeframe shorter? And then some additional context, she says, “I have no Pinterest experience, so want to know the time investment I would need to spend to start things out to start our business.”

Kate Ahl: Yeah, that’s a great question. I don’t think it takes two to three years. I think it takes six to nine months. It’s all about how you frame up where it fits in your marketing plan. I look at it and I say, “Okay, I want Google, YouTube, and Pinterest as my workhorses. They’re the things that are going to drive search traffic. Google and YouTube are together, and then I want those to be working for me all the time.” And those are cold audiences, so I assign cold over there. Then when I put Instagram TikTok, whatever it is, then I’m assigning a warm engagement. And so a lot of people will look and they’ll say, “Okay, well I don’t know if I want to invest in Pinterest, but I will invest in Instagram. I feel like it’s moving, but there’s less conversions.”

So I always tell people, “Where do you want it to fit in your whole marketing suite of options and why?” I just made a decision to really not focus on Facebook this year because, well, I’m just not. I am choosing to leave that one off. But I am choosing to invest now in YouTube, because I see the power of Google, Pinterest, YouTube, and I say, “This is what I want long term.” And so if you are investing in a platform six to nine months, one to two years, whatever it is, that’s why you do it and that’s how you can frame it up.

As far as time investment, the beginning’s going to be a little bit more because you have to get some boards created, you have to optimize your profile. Looking at keywords, that’s probably going to take you anywhere from five to eight hours in itself, just building out your infrastructure, your templates. But once you get into this groove of creating images, which the hardest part is creating the post, creating a big blog post and all these images is really tough. The Pinterest part is like a 30-minute adjacent piece, and then you could pin it to your infrastructure you’ve already set up. So that can take less than two hours a week once you really get going. It just feels like a mountain to get to that point.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. That’s great. And like you said, it’s these little things that over time you have maybe one sprint, it’s like five to eight hours, you get all that in place. After you do that, then you have the marathon of creating content on a platform, which is the cumulative effort over a long period of time. And here’s a question about pin comments. So this person is asking, “Some of my pins have comments disabled, and I’m unable to turn them on. Why is that?”

Kate Ahl: Yeah, I don’t know actually. That’s interesting. I know that you can disable it when you pin it. And I know there’s been a lot of changes with editing after something has been pinned. So I wonder if they’re not allowing you to edit the existing one because originally when it was pinned, the comments was turned off. That would be my guess at this point because we just see that they’re cutting back on that. You can’t edit something after it’s gone out.

Bjork Ostrom: Interesting. Jocelyn is asking from JOZMahal, “Is branding very important when creating pins?” And what she means by that is colors and fonts always being the same or is it better to change things up a bit?

Kate Ahl: Yeah, no, a hundred percent branding. I would say go making sure you have your colors, your font. Your font should be super easy to read. If it’s not, you can change it up a little bit. Your logo on there, we saw a lot of people putting at the bottom simplepinmedia.com. One, you don’t need the dot com because it doesn’t matter. But two, start to be your logo in places around your pin image that start to build that brand recognition that like, “Oh, this is a Pinch of Yum recipe. Oh, I like theirs.” Right? Because they’re not following you, chances are, and they’re seeing you cold in different places. So branding, a hundred percent. And then when you want create those fresh images I was talking about earlier where you want to optimize for maybe a holiday and that holiday, let’s say we just had Easter, put an Easter egg on it, but don’t change up your whole branding. You can add elements that facilitate people recognizing, “Oh, this is holiday specific.”

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. The idea being maybe you have an individual piece of content that does really well, and one of the ways to benefit even more from that is having your brand being associated with that piece of content. Because one thing is you get traffic, but the other thing is for every click that you get, there’s probably a hundred, I don’t know, you’d know the conversion rate better than I would. But a hundred people who view it and see it, and if they’re just looking at an image that’s much different than if they’re looking at an image with your logo on it. And that kind of brand awareness can be a really positive, meaningful thing.

Kate Ahl: Yeah, that’s your impression number. So look at your impressions. Those are people who really didn’t do anything with your pin, but they saw them. And so those impressions hold weight. It’s what most brands want. That’s the number they care about the most. Why? Because it’s brand recognition. Think like a brand. How do I get brand recognition for my content?

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. Yep. Almost like I think of Target Center here where the Minnesota Timberwolves play, it’s like nobody’s clicking or transacting in any way. It’s just the number of times that Target is said that they do a flyover and they see the Target logo. All of those impressions are valuable, which is why they pay tens of millions of dollars to be the premier sponsor. And we can be thinking about that as creators and publishers as well. That’s great.

Kate Ahl: And don’t put your logo in the bottom right, because that’s where it gets covered up with the visual search tool. You can’t see it.

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, interesting. That’s great. How about scheduling tool? So what is best scheduling in Pinterest? The native scheduler or Tailwind or both?

Kate Ahl: Yeah, my team has tested them all. And here’s what we’ve come back to. We still do prefer Tailwind first functionality. It is the only one that has interval pinning. We finally figured out that that’s a proprietary tool to them, so that’s why nobody else has it. So you have, we’ve tried Planoly, it’s been great, but it’s really doesn’t feel very productive. Later, Buffer, Hootsuite, tried them all and we keep coming back to Tailwind. Pinterest scheduler can only go 30 days. A lot of people do like it if they don’t want to pay for it, and they don’t have a lot of content. So that is my suggestion to you. If you’re new to blogging, you’re new to starting out with Pinterest, just use the Pinterest scheduler. It is free. So yeah, go that direction.

Bjork Ostrom: And then if you are interested in paying for a tool, Tailwind would be the one that would be good.

Kate Ahl: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Another question From Jocelyn from JOZMahal, “Are auto postings ranking higher than manually posting on Pinterest? If auto-posting, which tools do you recommend?” Which we just talked about.

Kate Ahl: Right. No, they’re not ranking any higher. We haven’t seen any difference. There are claims out there that they do rank higher. We’ve tried it multiple times. We can’t force any difference. We can’t see it in any of our studies, but there’ll always be urban legends out there. This is one of them.

Bjork Ostrom: Totally. Yep. Let’s see here, a couple other questions. I think we can hit all of these to wrap it up. Vanessa says, “What ratio is best these days for Pinterest images? Like a two by three or long chains?”

Kate Ahl: Two by three.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay. Two by three. So like two wide-

Kate Ahl: 1,000 by 1,500. Yep.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it. And what about a really long pin? Is that a thing of the past? Is that still work-

Kate Ahl: Yeah, a thing of the past. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Great. Why is that? Because they’re not showing, they’re getting cut off.

Kate Ahl: Yeah, they’re getting cut off too. We saw somebody who had a really long old infographic and it just cuts it off. Some auto-adjust. They really left a lot of freedom for them to choose which ones they cut off and which ones they auto-adjust. So if you don’t want to mess with it, just stick with the two to three.

Bjork Ostrom: Great. We talked about a scheduler, so we’ll skip that one. How about auditing boards? So Sylvia is saying, “What is the best way to audit boards?” So maybe talk about what that is and why it’s important.

Kate Ahl: Yeah, super important.

Bjork Ostrom: How to do it. It’s a big question.

Kate Ahl: Yeah. We have a profile audit cleanup guide in our shop, simplepinshop.com, so there’s that. It’s pretty cheap, but I’ll say right away you’re going to know that Pinterest is going to change the keywords that they prioritize, I say once a year, every eight months or something like that. So just recently I did this on my account and we searched some boards that we had, board names, and they weren’t really coming up. And so we changed up the keyword and said, “We are going to change up just Pinterest marketing…” Whatever it is. I recommend auditing one time per year, and that means looking at the boards that are getting the most engagement and looking at the boards that are getting the least engagement. Fix the ones that have the least engagement first and then also pay attention. Are you creating content around that particular board?

If you are not, then you need to decide what to do with it. Maybe it’s one that you have a bunch of personal stuff on, you can audit it and move that to secret if you’re not using it for anything business-wise. I always say just do it at night when you’re watching TV, it’s easy enough to go back and forth between the search bar. You can change up the names of your boards and it auto-redirect. So if you have your board linked anywhere on your site or anything, don’t worry about it breaking a link. It’ll just automatically redirect.

Bjork Ostrom: Great. Two more questions. Is it better to update an old existing pin or just create a new pin that leads back to the same place on our site?

Kate Ahl: Create a new pin. Because of what I said earlier about Pinterest limiting the editing functions, you’re not going to be able to do that as much anymore, so just create something new.

Bjork Ostrom: Great. Then last question here, if I have 15 to 20 group boards that aren’t mine, can I share the same pin to all of these boards or do I need to make a new pin for all of these boards?

Kate Ahl: I think I’d back up a little bit from that and say, “Why do you have 15 to 20 group boards?” And if you don’t have those boards yourself, then I would create those first and you can share the same image to all of them, but I wouldn’t do it back to back to back because when people go to your profile, they see your activity. And if you’ve pinned that same pin over and over again, that’s what will be there.

Bjork Ostrom: And it will look kind of spammy.

Kate Ahl: Yeah, totally.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. Great. Kate, this is awesome. We were able to get through all the questions. Two things that I’m going to ask here for anybody tuning in live, would be interested to hear one takeaway that you had, and it’s valuable for us to see it, Kate and I to see it, but also for anybody who’s listening live and following along with the chat, to also see somebody else talk about the thing that they learned or that was new to them. So maybe if you had a question that Kate answered, you can talk about what your takeaway was. If you were just listening and tuning in, you can share one of the things that you learned, kind of that gold nugget, and I think it also helps us as continual learners reflect on anytime that we join in on something like this to say, “Hey, here’s the thing that I learned. Here’s the takeaway that I had,” and solidify that moving forward.

The great thing is when we learn one of these things, it can be with us forever. It can be something that we take with us, makes our business better, and it’s all about that compounding. One of the things that I loved that you talked about, Kate, was this idea of like, “Hey, one to 3%,” and it might not sound like that much, but if you draw that out over a decade and we all are figuring out collectively how to get better by 3%, that can really add up and it can have a profound impact. And so excited to see some of these responses coming in. Catherine is talking about doing a board audit once a year. Heidi says, “Glad to hear Pinterest is such a strong search tool.” M Fallon says, “The idea to tweak or rework pins.” Creating a brand board for Jocelyn.

Lot of really good comments coming in. “So excited to see that the process for setup and starting shouldn’t be as laborious as I thought it would be,” says Carole. “The branding piece,” Katy Keck says, “Adding logos and the importance of that.” Sydney says, “Pinterest takes time. Like starting a garden, you need to put the time in to cultivate and plant the seeds.” So a lot of really great pieces of information here that people are taking with them, Kate, from you sharing your knowledge. Thank you for that. Do you want to do one more quick? You talked about it about halfway through, but just if people are interested in working with you, it sounds like the discovery call is the best way to go, and then maybe you can do a little shout-out to the places that you’re producing content because you also produce content all about Pinterest and people can learn from you ongoing. It’s not just in these little sessions that we do, but where else can people follow along with you?

Kate Ahl: Yeah, the Simple Pin Podcast is a big one, and then we’re really ramping up YouTube, producing one video per week, really getting into the nitty-gritty. A lot of times with the podcast, you can’t always show somebody how to do something, so that’s what we’re doing on YouTube is being able to show people and answer some questions. So go check that out too. Yes, discovery call is the best. Our team over there, we’re constantly trying to get better and better at how we serve people, but we have a blog at simplepinmedia.com, products. We’ve tried to create this whole suite of Pinterest options for every budget, so you can find us there.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. It takes a team to pull these off. So Emily’s been sharing links. Katie went through the process of setting up a lot of this on our team. Kate, obviously, your expertise and knowledge is hugely valuable. So in the chat, we can do the virtual round of applause, the applause emoji, or you could just type in hands if you don’t know where the emojis are.

Kate Ahl: Jazz hands.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. “Clap, clap, clap,” Shannon says. But thanks, Kate. It’s always a great joy to talk to you and to learn from you. It’s benefited us and I know it’s benefited many other people as well, so I’ll hang up this Zoom call and it actually disconnects. We have a little waiting room when we start it, but it just closes out at the end here. So thanks, Kate. Thanks for everybody for tuning in.

Kate Ahl: Thank you.

Bjork Ostrom: Thanks to all the team members to pull it off. We’ll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.

Kate Ahl: Bye.

Emily Walker: Hey there, Emily here from the Food Blogger Pro team. We hope you enjoyed this week’s podcast episode and really appreciate you taking the time to tune in and listen. In case you didn’t know, in addition to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast, we also have the Food Blogger Pro membership, which is where we teach our members how to start, grow, and monetize their food blog. We have lots of incredible resources to help you on your food blogging journey, including our courses, our community forum, our member-only live Q and As, our deals and discounts page, and so much more.

You’ll get instant access to all of this when you sign up for a Food Blogger Pro membership. We have two awesome membership options available to you, our yearly membership or our quarterly membership, which is just $99 a quarter and allows for some more flexibility if you want to try the membership out and see if it’s a good fit for you. If you’re interested and want to learn more or to sign up, head to foodbloggerpro.com/join. We are so grateful for our Food Blogger Pro community and we would love to have you join us. Thanks so much for tuning in this week, and we’ll see you back here next week for another episode. Have a great week everybody.

Bjork Ostrom: This episode is sponsored by Clariti. If you’ve been frustrated trying to discover actionable insights from different analytics and keyword platforms, Clariti is your solution. Clariti helps you manage your blog content all in one place, so you can find actionable insights that improve the quality of your content. Not only does it automatically sync your WordPress post data, so you can find insights about broken images, broken links and more. It can also sync with your Google Analytics and Google Search Console data, so you can see keyword session, page view and user data for each and every post.

One of our favorite ways to use it? We can easily filter and see which of our posts have had a decrease in sessions or page views over a set period of time, and give a little extra attention to those recipes. This is a especially helpful when there are Google updates or changes in search algorithms, so that we can easily tell which of our recipes have been impacted the most. Listeners to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast get 50% off of their first month of Clariti after signing up. To sign up, simply go to clariti.com/food. That’s C-L-A-R-I-T-I.com/food. Thanks again to Clariti for sponsoring this episode.

Emily Walker: Hey, there. This is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team and you are listening to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. This week on the podcast, Bjork is interviewing Jason Norris from the food blog Recipe Teacher. In this episode, Jason shares more about his first two websites, one of which was WindyCityFishing, and the second of which was a food blog all about George Foreman Grill recipes. He sold both of those websites and then went on to start Recipe Teacher, which is a how-to site featuring recipes from things like Instant Pot to pork chops, all sorts of easy, approachable recipes.

In the early days of Recipe Teacher, he actually listed the site to sell for $1000 and go no takers. Since that time, he has grown his website to a site that is worth well over $1 million. In this interview, he shares more about the importance of evolving your business and being adaptable. He chats about how he’s grown his team of recipe developers and why he outsources certain tasks. He worked with Allea, who is our email marketing expert at Food Blogger Pro and who runs Duett, to help grow his email list from 1000 subscribers to over 75,000 subscribers in three years. As part of that process, learned more about his demographic, which happens to be a lot of senior citizens. This is a really great interview about adapting to your audience, growing your site, and just leaning in to the quality of your content above all else. I’ll just let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Jason, welcome to the podcast.

Jason Norris: Hello, and thank you so much for having me, Bjork.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. It was really fun. You put together, or had this bio that you sent over and I read through this. It’s your story, which to not bury the led, maybe that’s the best way to put it, we’re going to be talking about Recipe Teacher, the site that you’ve built, has millions of page views, very successful. But, a little teaser, at one point you put it up for sale for $1000.

Jason Norris: I did.

Bjork Ostrom: And nobody bought it.

Jason Norris: Nobody bought it. There were no offers on it. I thought, “Wow, this is a lemon.”

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jason Norris: Eventually, we made lemonade out of it. But yeah, it did not sell.

Bjork Ostrom: We’re going to talk about that. One of the things that so great about it is it’s literally 1000X story. You think of this company that you tried to sell for $1000, nobody wanted to buy it. Now it’s at the point where, as a company, it’s worth a million, million plus, millions of dollars.

Jason Norris: Sure.

Bjork Ostrom: Based on how you’d value a website in the world of content and advertising earnings.

Jason Norris: Right.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s a story of 1000X, in terms of business growth.

Jason Norris: Right. That’s unfathomable to me, but it’s cool to think about it. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: But let’s take it back to your story. This is really fun for me because you go way back into … Any time you start to mention AOL in somebody’s story, that’s where it gets really fun and nostalgic.

Jason Norris: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: But you had started a website … The reason that we do this, you talk about this, all of this stuff stacks on top. You learn this thing, and then you learn that thing. Eventually you get to a point now, where you have this successful site. But it all stacks, like many careers do over time. For you, it was back in 1998 it sounds like.

Jason Norris: Yeah, yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: That you started a fishing website. Tell us about that.

Jason Norris: I did. I did. Back in the summer of 1998, I think it was, I was on my way to a new lake in the Chicago area to go fishing, one that I’d never been to before and I got lost. When I got there, it was a little different than I expected. A little bit after that, about a week later, I started thinking, “There should be a source on this new internet thing that talks about fishing, specifically in the Chicago area.” I got to work and I started learning what I could, and I put together a website which, at the time, was called Jason’s Chicago Area Outdoor and Fishing Page.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s incredible!

Jason Norris: Right. Great name, right? It lived on AOL. It was like members.aol.com, whatever it was at the time, because AOL was huge.

A couple of years later, I actually was able to get the domain name windycityfishing.com. I learned that whole process and I built a website that included message boards. Then the straight HTML pages, which would have the information at all the various lakes and rivers in the area.

Bjork Ostrom: You had these static pages-

Jason Norris: That’s exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: That was in the Chicago area.

Jason Norris: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: With every lake. Then you had a message board functionality for people to interact and talk about fishing in the Chicago area.

Jason Norris: Exactly. When I would see somebody would join, I would get all excited. At first, there were just a couple of dozen people. Then that grew and grew, to over 5000 people as part of the message boards. It really became the stepping stone for what would wind up being Recipe Teacher all these years later. And also, my full-time career, which I had for 23 plus years in graphic arts.

Bjork Ostrom: When you say stepping stone, it’s not like WindyCityFishing evolved into Recipe Teacher. What you’re saying is you’re learning these core, fundamental things-

Jason Norris: Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: You’re building an HTML page. Even the community aspect of bringing people around. You also used that, it sounds like, to spin into a career around graphic design.

Jason Norris: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Web based design? Or was it every type of design?

Jason Norris: It was both print and web based.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay.

Jason Norris: Because not only was I interested in fishing, I’ve also always been a fan of the band Phish.

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, nice.

Jason Norris: With a P-H.

Bjork Ostrom: Totally.

Jason Norris: Yeah. Years ago, I had started a fan zine, a printable fan zine about the band Phish.

Bjork Ostrom: Wow.

Jason Norris: This was also in the mid-’90s.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jason Norris: Doing the fishing with an F and the Phish with a P-H, to of my biggest hobbies, I learned the graphic arts both online and in print, which led to my full-time job then as a graphic artist.

Bjork Ostrom: I think that’s one of the things that we don’t give enough credit to, when we’re hustling to learn a thing. Oftentimes, I think we get caught up in traffic or working with a sponsor and getting money, and earning income. All of that’s really important because it’s fuel that drives the car forward.

Jason Norris: Right.

Bjork Ostrom: But I think another really tangible benefit that it’s less tangible but it’s still impactful, are the skills that we’re developing as we’re working on a thing.

If you’re able to pair something you’re passionate about, like in your case fishing, along with something you’re interested in learning, graphic design in your case, that can be a really wonderful thing even if your bet on turning it into a business doesn’t pan out. You can still come away with-

Jason Norris: 100%.

Bjork Ostrom: Really valuable things, and it sounds like that’s part of your story. But even with WindyCityFishing, you eventually sold that. That was something that was valuable, you had built it up.

Jason Norris: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: What was that like? Somebody reach out, cold email and say, “Hey, can we buy this from you?”

Jason Norris: That’s exactly what happened. I ignored it at first because it was … This was before we got spammed every single day with people wanting to buy our websites and all that. But someone had reached out to me and I ignored it. They reached out again, maybe a month later. They said, “We just want to let you know, we are a real, legitimate company.” I researched them.

I was ready to turn the page on WindyCityFishing at that time anyways. I felt that I had taken it to a place where I was very pleased where it was. I was ready to start the next chapter. I was still incredibly interested in fishing, which I still am. It’s the weirdest thing, because when I look back on it now, I think I didn’t realize it at the time, I had no ideas I was going to be getting into the whole recipe thing. But I was ready for a new challenge. I know that sounds cliché.

But yeah, they came to me and they made me an offer. I was blown away by it. Of course, I had to make a counteroffer.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Jason Norris: That went on a little bit. But yeah, they bought it for a sum that, at that point, was a windfall to me.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jason Norris: I didn’t even know that people bought and sold websites, to be honest, so it was really cool.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s cool to see it’s still active. You pull it up and you still see, 14 hours ago, somebody posted, “Slow but kind of fun after work,” and it’s a picture of them catching this fish. It’s like oh, that’s so cool.

Jason Norris: What’s funny about that too is all of my pages and all of my likeness remained on WindyCityFishing until just a few months ago, when they completely redid the message boards and the static pages.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Jason Norris: I’m still listed as a member of the site. I don’t post on it quite as often as I used to. But yeah, they left all my stuff up there for a really long time. I’m super glad it’s still successful.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. That’s really fun. That’s a cool thing to see exist.

Jason Norris: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: People will continue to get value from it. What was that like for you, to go through the process of somebody reaching out and then it actually happening? The day that you get a wire amount and it’s a substantial amount. It’s like, “Wow, I just built a thing and sold it.” Did that change your mindset, even as you started to think about what your next thing would be?

Jason Norris: The thing that I felt most was, “Oh my goodness, this is my baby.”

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jason Norris: “Now I have to let my baby go.” That was rewarding and a little difficult at the same time, because I think about all the nights that I stayed up late, working on this thing.

You had mentioned too, when I would work on some of the colors or fonts, or whatever I was working on, and whenever I would come across a problem, for some reason I always thought, “I’m glad I have this problem because I’m then going to learn how to overcome it. I know this is going to be useful to me.” I’m not like that regularly. For whatever reason that I was doing that, it set the stage for overcoming something, small obstacles.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jason Norris: Don’t let those obstacles get in the way.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. Is what you’re saying that, in the process of selling it, then one of the things that you missed was having that opportunity to have a problem and solve a problem, and there was suddenly a gap there?

Jason Norris: Yes, there was. More so I really enjoyed the creative process of it. Now as a graphic artist, that was my creative outlet for many years. Creating brochures and websites for nursing homes, which is what I did, and I also did a lot of freelance work. But I missed the creative aspect of it. I missed looking at the analytics every day, seeing the numbers and seeing, “Wow, this is something I built.” Yeah, that was a little hard to let go of. But it did create a new opportunity for me, because I realized all those things.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. There’s a friend that I know, he had a finance blog, this was years ago, and he sold it. It was a life-changing amount of money. He said the two years after that were the most depressing two years of his life.

Jason Norris: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Which I think it’s important for us to hear it. That’s not always the case for sure, but I think it’s important for us to reflect the value that we get from the things that we do each and every day outside of just the fact that it’s earning income for us. There’s a ton of value that we get from showing up and solving problems, and proactively working on a thing. What did that look like for you? How quickly did you get back into … After selling WindyCityFishing, how quickly did you get into another side hustle? Where did Recipe Teacher come into it?

Jason Norris: Recipe Teacher came in a few years later. After WindyCityFishing, I had had a health issue that ran up some hospital bills, so that was a little bit unexpected. When the money from WindyCityFishing came in, it really helped for that.

When I had the health issues, I needed to start having a better diet. It was some cardiac issues. I bought a George Foreman Grill. Just the regular George Foreman Grill.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jason Norris: You see it Target, Walmart, whatever.

Bjork Ostrom: Classic.

Jason Norris: I started learning how to make recipes for it, but I could not find a lot of recipes online. Which at the time, that had become where people go to find recipes. I thought, “Let me make a website for George Foreman Grill recipes.” That’s exactly what I did.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jason Norris: WordPress was around at the time, but it was still very much like a personal blogging type of thing. There were other content management systems. But I just made straight HTML pages. There were no recipe cards.

Bjork Ostrom: Love it.

Jason Norris: I started doing that and I kept at it. Somebody made me an offer on that.

Bjork Ostrom: How long had you been working on it?

Jason Norris: Maybe two or three years, I would say.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay.

Jason Norris: Just very much a side thing.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, a side hustle kind of thing.

Jason Norris: Not putting a whole lot of effort into it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jason Norris: I did put effort into it, but I had my full-time job, I had everything else I was doing so it was very much a side project.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. How many recipes about did you have on it?

Jason Norris: Oh, about probably only 30 or 40.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay. It was a niche site-

Jason Norris: Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: With George Foreman Grill content.

Jason Norris: With George Foreman Grill content, right. I never had any communication with them. It wasn’t about that. Even with WindyCityFishing-

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. With George, that company.

Jason Norris: Right, right.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jason Norris: I never talked to George and I did speak to the company either.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jason Norris: But doing WindyCityFishing was a total labor of love. It was never about making any money. When it did make a few dollars, and it was just a few, it was like, “Wow, this is the icing on the cake.” It was the same with the Foreman Grill recipe site. But when someone came to me and wanted to buy that, it was again, mind-blowing. It’s like, “Wow. I just sold my second website.”

It was couple of years later then, that I got the idea for Recipe Teacher. It was going to be a very simple how to make this, how to make that type of website. How to make French toast, how to make pork chops, how to make corn-on-the-cob. I put it together. I put up maybe a couple dozen recipes and it went nowhere. But I kept at it because I enjoyed it. I was learning WordPress at the time, too. I was learning some more CSS and some other aspects of it, and it was fun. Then I put it up for sale because it was just doing nothing. I thought, “Well, let me make a few dollars from this.”

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jason Norris: Nobody bought it. That’s the lineage and the history that came up to-

Bjork Ostrom: Recipe Teacher.

Jason Norris: Starting Recipe Teacher, yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: You’d gone through this process of you had built a site, WindyCityFishing. It’s this passion project, you were able to sell it. It’s not like you sell it and then you retire, but it’s enough money where it’s like, “Hey, this is a substantial amount of money coming in, helps with hospital bills,” things like that. It’s like, “Wow, what a great thing.” Then it’s like, “Hey, I’m learning George Foreman recipes, I want to start eating a little bit differently,” you go through the process of building that thing. Somebody reaches out, you build that. My guess is similarly, it’s not like it’s this life-changing money, but it’s still amount where it’s like, “Hey, I was paid for a thing that I built.”

Jason Norris: Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: Then you have Recipe Teacher. You play with it a little bit, and then you put it up for sale, $1000. Was it on a marketplace?

Jason Norris: Yeah. I think it was-

Bjork Ostrom: A Flippa?

Jason Norris: Flippa. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: For those who aren’t familiar, there’s brokers, like Quiet Light Broker. We’ve had some of the brokers on the podcast before who work for Quiet Light. It’s more of they’re selling stuff, 100,000, 200,000, five million, six million.

Jason Norris: Right.

Bjork Ostrom: You can have some of those higher priced things on a marketplace like Flippa, but you could also sell something for 1000 or $2000. Or even if you have a domain and you want to get rid of it, Flippa would be a place where you could do that. You put it up and then people could bid on it, nobody bids on it.

Jason Norris: Nobody bid on it. I didn’t get one bid on that.

Bjork Ostrom: Then you take it down. And then what? You’re like, “Actually, I do want to do this thing?” What was the decision making process and about when was it that this was happening?

Jason Norris: This would have been probably 2017 or thereabouts.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay.

Jason Norris: I didn’t want to completely give up on it because I enjoyed creating recipes. I enjoyed photographing them. I enjoyed write … I liked the whole aspect of it. What changed was I heard about this new kitchen appliance called the Instant Pot. That literally changed my life. The Instant Pot changed my life.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome.

Jason Norris: I went out and got one, and I learned as much about this. I bought every book, I bought every magazine. I looked at every website. I learned all about this. My kitchen was a mess, I had stuff everywhere. Once I started doing Instant Pot recipes, the traffic started to go up.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s interesting. One of the things that I think is important to understand in the world of content creation is there’s all of these different variables at play. One of the variables, the obvious one is the quality of the content that you’re creating, that’s super important. Another variable at play is what type of content are you … What is the content about? If you’re able to produce really quality content consistently, and you’re able to produce content around a thing that is itself rising, like in the case of an Instant Pot, more people are using it, more people are talking about it. We talk about it in terms of waves. If you’re able to catch a wave, that’s a really incredible thing. Even better if you’re then also a good surfer.

What’s cool to hear about your story is you had all this experience from your career, but also from going through having built multiple sites, where you had learned surfing. Then what happened, it sounds like, is you were able to catch a wave around a type of appliance in this case.

Jason Norris: Right.

Bjork Ostrom: That other people were starting to use more and talk more about. Does that feel accurate as a reflection of what happened?

Jason Norris: Completely. That’s totally what happened. It was also something I learned with WindyCityFishing, is that it’s important to be adaptable. Because I had had a little bit of different vision when I started WindyCity, or Jason’s Chicago Area Outdoor and Fishing Page.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, .co.uk.

Jason Norris: I was going to have golf courses. Yeah, right. I was going to have all this other outdoor stuff. But I found that people wanted the message boards. I found that people wanted the fishing information, the firsthand fishing information.

Fast-forward to Recipe Teacher, once I started the Instant Pot recipes, I realized, “Oh, people don’t want just how to make this, how to make that. Here’s Instant Pot pork chops, here’s Instant Pot chicken,” heres whatever. I went with that flow. I think being adaptable, not just in an online business, but any business, is important.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s a great point. I think one of the things that we need to make a decision on, as creators, is what is the purpose of us creating? An example, in your case, WindyCityFishing, it sounds like the main thing was, “I’m passionate about this, I’m interested in it. I want to create a thing because it’s interesting for me.”

Jason Norris: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: I think 100% as people in the world create around the thing that you are inspired to create around, that’s one path. It’s a worthwhile and worthy pursuit.

Jason Norris: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Another one could be, “I’m interested in building a thing. I want to get traffic, I want to get followers.”

Jason Norris: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: If that’s the avenue, what I hear you saying is be open to seeing where there’s a market pull, because it’s a lot easier to get pulled into something than to push something on people. If you can be open to adapting and saying, “Hey, this thing, there’s a lot of people talking about this.” Or, “I produced this type of content and people really responded to it.” It’s almost like you’re doing market research a little bit, and seeing where there’s opportunities. And then being adaptable enough to say, “I’m going to continue to do this,” and then continue to create in this way or this genre of content.

Jason Norris: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: And adapt as you see stuff happening. Did that feel like what you were doing in that time? You were also interested in it, in this case, which works out really well.

Jason Norris: Yeah, yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: But then you say, “Hey, there’s an opportunity here, I’m going to continue to create content specifically around Instant Pots.”

Jason Norris: Right. Well, exactly. Here’s the thing, too. I’m not a chef by trade. I’ve always been interested in cooking. I find cooking part of the creative process and I want everything to be just right. But when I started doing those Instant Pot recipes, I thought, “I can do this. This is an appliance that’s geared for people just like me,” who are looking to make these delicious, fast recipes, if you will. I was very comfortable in that learning space.

That then led to, about a year later, the air fryer recipes, which was another appliance that I started hearing about more and more. I went out and got one. Actually, I got a couple. I’ve got this little tiny kitchen, you can see behind me. I’ve got a small house here. I had air fryers, Instant Pots, and just stuff all over the place.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jason Norris: I loved learning it. Yeah, that was catching another wave that was, again, finding a niche in cooking with the countertop appliances. I rode that wave.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Tell me about the moment … I haven’t surfed ever, but my guess is that-

Jason Norris: Either have I.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, okay. My guess is, for somebody whose learning how to surf, there’s a moment where you catch a wave and it’s like, “Oh, that’s awesome. That feels really good.” Did you have a similar moment with Recipe Teacher where you’d gotten out of the stage of, “I’m just going to list this on Flippa for $1000,” and it was like, “Oh, this is working?” It sounds like it was the stage of you’re starting to do Instant Pot recipes. Maybe it’s the moment where you had a check deposited from Ad Thrive, now Raptive.

Jason Norris: Yeah, yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Could you look to a specific moment and say, “This was the moment where I caught the wave?”

Jason Norris: Yeah, it was the first time I was able to pay my rent with the money I made from the website. Now, this is even before Ad Thrive. I was using just Google AdSense. I would look at that every single day I would log in. At first, I would make $1 or $2. I would do all the math in my head and try to figure out, “Wow, that’s $300 a year, that’s $800 a year,” and so on.

Now my rent at the time was I think $950 a month. I remember that first month where I made $1000. I thought, “Oh my goodness, this is actually a real thing. I’m making money to pay my rent. I can’t believe it.” I was ecstatic about it!

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jason Norris: That was the moment of, “Wow, this is something.”

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. From there, you’ve continued to do the continual level-up, figuring out … Now you’re going out and you’re surfing. Every day, you’re catching waves.

Jason Norris: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: That $1000 turns into 10,000, turns into multiple tens of thousands.

Jason Norris: Right. I had learned … Go ahead, I’m sorry.

Bjork Ostrom: Well, share what you’re going to share. But then also, what has that journey been like, to build this into a substantial business that now pays for much more than your rent?

Jason Norris: Yeah. After I made the money monthly to be able to pay my rent, I had seen that other recipes websites had ads that looked much more professional and substantial than the AdSense ads. I did some research and I discovered Ad Thrive. I contacted them. You had to have, I believe it was 100,000 page views a month to be accepted into their network. I didn’t quite have it at the time, but I kept working. At that point, now I was really striving to get to that 100,000 page views.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, you had a marker and a goal that you were-

Jason Norris: I sure did, yeah. When I got to that a couple of months later and they accepted me, the feeling in my stomach and the feeling in my heart of excitement of what was to come. I went from making $10 a day, $10, $12 a day to $40, $50, $60 a day when I hooked on with Ad Thrive. I just could not believe it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jason Norris: Here was some real money coming in. As the months went on, I just kept watching that go up and up. It still to this day, I’m in disbelief.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jason Norris: When I log in at 9:00 AM every single morning and look at what that number is, knock on wood, it’s life-changing, and it’s very rewarding and very cool.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. I think to go back to what we had talked about before, or one of the things that’s worth pointing out is it’s the culmination of a lot of work.

Jason Norris: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: You look back to 1998 and you’re learning HTML, and building a site with a billboard and you can post to it. I think, as much as possible for all of us who are on this journey of building and creating, and business and entrepreneurship, my encouragement to everybody listening is to think about the journey that you are on, not in one year or two years, but decades. And thinking about how do you continue to show up? It’s the same of our company, Tiny Bit. How do you continue to show up every day, get a tiny bit better in pursuit of your goals?

What can happen is that can stack and that can build, and you can develop these skills, and expertise and insights, and have a story like this.

Jason Norris: Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: Which is really cool to even reflect on that and look back on that.

I know one of the things you’ve also done along the way is built a team. You have people that are supporting you. What did that look like, as you started to make more from the site, to start to think strategically about working with other people so you’re not doing it all on your own?

Jason Norris: Right. That’s still very much a work in progress. But I was able to find a couple of really good recipe developers. A couple of friends, a couple of people that I’ve found off of freelancer sites, such as Upwork. I’ve tried a handful over the years and I’ve settled into a couple now, who I know I can trust to make recipes that will resonate with my audience and who can help me in that process. Because as you know, with Pinch of Yum, it starts with an idea for a recipe, and then you have to test it and build it, and do the whole nine yards. Being able to find a couple of good recipe developers has been incredibly rewarding.

That’s something I really want to continue to build this, because right now it’s still me in my little house here. My girlfriend helps when she can. But I’m really hoping in the next year to build a team, especially a team that’s close to home where I can have videographers and photographers come in, and I’m doing more of a directing than having my hands right in everything. Because that does get tough.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Yeah, it’s long days, a lot of work. There’s a lot of things to be doing and you’re doing it all.

Jason Norris: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: You’re the content director and dishwasher.

Jason Norris: Exactly. That’s the biggest challenge because that little sink you see behind me overflows very quickly.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, quickly.

Jason Norris: Especially when you say, “This chicken does not look good with this plate.”

Bjork Ostrom: Right.

Jason Norris: “Let’s try another plate.”

Bjork Ostrom: “Another one.”

Jason Norris: “Let’s try this kind of silverware instead,” and it all piles up very quickly.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. What does a day look like for you now? You get up. Are you straight into recipe development, do you do keyword research? What are the things that you’re doing on a day-to-day or a week-to-week basis?

Jason Norris: Basically, I reserve the mornings are my computer time with Recipe Teacher. Like I said, I get up and look at the numbers, the earnings and everything. But then, it’s getting to my emails. Then a lot of it is research of how can I update some old recipes? That’s been a real big part of it for the last year, is that when I look back at some of these older recipes, I’ll try to identify some that have opportunities for growth. Maybe the images need to be updated, maybe the copy needs to be updated and I’ll work on that. I’ll usually do that until around noon.

Then it’s time to go and play. By noon, unless I’m doing a sheet that day, I go out, there’s where I do my fishing, that’s where I enjoy the outdoors.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome.

Jason Norris: Then in the evening times, usually between 9:00 and midnight, I’ll have a baseball game in the background or something like that. It’s at night where I do a lot of the keyword research and looking at the SEO stuff. That took a while for that whole process to develop.

Bjork Ostrom: You mean that whole process being your day?

Jason Norris: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: To refine your day into what feels good?

Jason Norris: Yes, because I didn’t know at first, my first day of freedom from a full-time job, my first day of having my own business, I didn’t know how to do that.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jason Norris: Should it be nine to five? Should I take specific breaks? Different people do it different ways.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jason Norris: I found a workflow that works. I’m up fairly early, I’m up very late at night. Those were the times I really liked to work.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. That’s great.

Jason Norris: That’s how that developed, yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s one of the wonderful things that we have in being an entrepreneur, is to some degree, you can control your day and figure out what you want it to look like.

Jason Norris: Right.

Bjork Ostrom: Now obviously, there’s always considerations where you start to grow a team, and then you want to be available for that team in certain times. There’s all of the considerations that go with building a business. But to some degree, it can be one of the most valuable things that you have, which is autonomy and the ability to craft what you want your day to look like. For everybody, it’s a little bit different.

I’m curious to know, as you’ve been … Well, one of the questions that I had was when was that first day when you worked on … It was just like now you’re done with your job and you’re working on your site full-time.

Jason Norris: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: What was that transition like?

Jason Norris: That was very bizarre and very surreal. What had happened was, in 2019, I had started to look at some of the numbers that I was making with Recipe Teacher. I remember at the beginning of the year I started thinking, “You know, I’m making this. If this went up a little bit, I could actually start to entertain the notion of maybe doing this full-time.” I’m calculating all the numbers in my head. As 2019 went on and the numbers continued to get better and better, it became more and more a reality. But leaving a full-time job with benefits, with security is a tough thing to do.

But it was the day after Christmas, it was December 26th, 2019. We had a 60-degree day here in Chicago. I thought, “Wonderful. I can take my kayak out and go fishing today,” and I did. I remember exactly where I was on the Des Plaines River, I remember the exactly lure I used and I caught a pretty nice Northern pike.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jason Norris: I was just thrilled. Here we are in December, I don’t get to do a lot of fishing in December. I caught this fish, I release him back in the water. Then I thought, “Oh man, the weather’s going to be nice for the next couple days but I have to go back to work.”

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jason Norris: It was at that moment where I decided, “It’s time.”

Bjork Ostrom: That’s so cool.

Jason Norris: Yeah. I think that was a Thursday or something like that, the weekend was coming on. On Monday, I asked my boss if we could talk and I said, “My business is taking off. I’m going to make January 30th my last day.” I gave them a little more than a month’s notice. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, yeah.

Jason Norris: When that finally came around, that very first day, I’m sitting here just in disbelief that I can sleep in a little bit.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jason Norris: Time to start cooking.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s awesome. It’s one of the things … Lindsay’s actually in today, she’s cooking. She’s like, “These are my favorite days.” It’s the day where she’s just in the kitchen, making recipes, testing recipes.

Jason Norris: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s just such a wonderful thing.

Jason Norris: I love that.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jason Norris: I love doing that.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, which is so cool.

Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors. This episode is sponsored by Raptive. When it comes to monetizing a blog or a site, display ads are a fantastic passive way to generate income on the content you’re already producing. In fact, Raptive display ads are one of our biggest revenue generators at Pinch of Yum. They make up nearly 80% of our overall monthly income.

Raptive, which is formerly Ad Thrive, is on a mission to empower independent creators like you, and to-date Raptive has paid out more than $2 billion to creators. Not only do they help creators generate ad revenue, they also offer creators many other benefits to help support them with their audience, revenue and business goals. For example, Raptive creators get access to industry leading tools like Topic, which helps creators discover opportunities to improve their content and plan the structure of their blog posts. They also get access to resources on HR and recruiting, SEO, email marketing, customized AB ad layout testing and more as a Raptive creator. You can learn more about Raptive’s creator levels and what’s all included in each level at raptive.com/creator-levels. Then when you’re ready to apply, head to raptive.com and click the Apply Now button.

Working with an ad network has had a profound impact on the way Pinch of Yum monetizes our business. By being a Raptive creator, you’re getting access to results-based solutions that can really impact the way your business runs and grows. Learn more at raptive.com. Thanks again to Raptive for sponsoring this episode.

How about in your day-to-day, week-to-week, what are the tools that you have found to be most helpful? Is there something that you are using as you look to do keyword research or project management? Your digital toolset, what are the things that have been helpful as you’ve worked through continuing to build your site?

Jason Norris: I’ve probably been a little unorthodox with that. One of the things early on, going all the way back to WindyCityFishing, was obviously learning what SEO is, search engine optimization. When I started doing Recipe Teacher, I wanted it to be another labor of love like WindyCityFishing and some of the others were. But obviously, now it was a business. I didn’t want to chase SEO. I wanted that to come naturally and organically.

Now I would still use tools. Keysearch was one that I really liked. It was very affordable, laid out very nicely. I still have it. I’ve got Semrush. I’ve used some of the others. Obviously, Google Search Console and Google Trends, and all that. I look at all of these to stay up-to-date on everything. I don’t think there’s ever been a night where I’ve actually said, “I need to find keyword opportunities.”

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jason Norris: Because I have an idea what’s going to work, what can become an evergreen recipe, what maybe isn’t going to become an evergreen recipe.

I just did a recipe, and my girlfriend and I love it. It’s gnocchi with butternut squash and sage butter sauce. It’s absolutely delicious. I know that that recipe is probably not going to wind up being an evergreen recipe, just by the very nature of it. Gnocchi and sage butter sauce, and all that stuff, isn’t hugely popular. But it’s important to have recipes on the site that aren’t going to be evergreen. You have to have a little bit of everything because somebody finds a gnocchi recipe, they’re going to start looking at other recipes, too.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jason Norris: I’ve always tried not to chase SEO. I try to let it happen organically with what I’ve learned along the way. A lot of that includes reading a lot of sites about the current state of search engine and search engine results, and all that sort of thing.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jason Norris: I also have a developer who I absolutely love and trust 100%. Because having to mess around with plugins or color changes, or anything like that, I don’t want to do any of that anymore. I stopped doing that several years ago. That was probably the first really big tool that I used, was getting a developer and taking all of that off of my plate. If ever I needed a change to something, I’d call her up or text her, email her and say, “Hey, Kathy, can you put this plugin in? Or let’s do that.” That was probably one of the most important early decisions I made in getting people and tools in place.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Just to be able to have those things, where you have somebody who’s an expert, a deep expert on a thing.

Jason Norris: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: I think about this a lot. As we start to scale businesses, one of the things that we need to get good at is routing. Meaning you have an idea, a task, something that needs to get done. Where does that go?

Jason Norris: Right.

Bjork Ostrom: Who’s the person that you assign it to? I think about that even within … Lindsay always gives me a had time about this. But even within the context of our personal life. If we have a plumbing issue, it’s like do we have a a plumber in our black book that we go to?

Jason Norris: Yeah!

Bjork Ostrom: There’s the equivalent in the business world where it’s if you have an issue, in your case talking about the recipe and development of the site, where do you go for that? If you have somebody, and you want to bring them in and have help with photography, who do you go for that? Over time, as much as possible, if we can become routers for the things that we don’t want to do or aren’t best to do them, even if we do want to do them, there’s somebody else that’s maybe better at it, in order to, as much as possible, focus on and work on the thing that we are uniquely skilled for.

Jason Norris: That’s exactly right.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Part of your evolution has been saying okay, you did build sites in HTML, you understood how to do that. You still probably could. But that means that you’d spend two to three hours working on that, instead of developing a new recipe, or testing a recipe, or working on content on the site.

Jason Norris: That’s exactly right. A prime example of that came up the other day. I was having a Zoom meeting with a graphic artist for a project that we’re working on. I’ve used her for a couple of things in the past. Now I hired this graphic artist when that was my job for 23 years was a graphic artist.

Bjork Ostrom: Right.

Jason Norris: But I’m a few years removed from it. I haven’t been flexing that graphic artist muscle a lot with the print stuff. I wanted to reach out to somebody who was the best. I’ve made that a point for several aspects of the business over the last couple of years. I think I learned that from my time in the corporate world. Because I remember the business owners that I worked with, they wanted the very best people around them. I learned early on that I wanted the very best people around me.

Another really good example of that came from one of your podcasts I was listening to on the way home from fishing one night. You had Allea from Duett on, talking about email marketing. I remember that interview and I remember thinking, “She sounds like the best. I have to work with her.” I reached out to her shortly thereafter. That was one of the best decisions I ever made too, was working with her and getting that whole thing established.

Yeah. Being able to find the right people to work with, making sure you don’t take it all on yourself, even though you think you can. It’s super important to get the right people to do it. That investment’s going to pay off.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. Yeah, that’s a perfect example. Allea is a Food Blogger Pro expert, she’s been on the podcast before. Her company, Duett, D-U-E-T-T.co, if people want to check that out.

Can you talk about how you approach email? What does that look like for you? Is that an important piece? It sounds like an important piece of the puzzle as you continue to grow the different areas of Recipe Teacher.

Jason Norris: Yeah, yeah. It wasn’t important early on, only because I was trying to take on every aspect of the business myself. I did set up a very rudimentary … I had some emails that would go out once in a while. I think it wasn’t ConvertKit, it might have been Constant Contact.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Jason Norris: It was one of those. I kept hearing about the importance of building an email base. When I heard Allea on your podcast, that was when it really dawned on me, “I have to do this.” Working with her, my email list was maybe 1000 or so when we started working together three years ago. It’s now 75,000 and a very integral part of the whole Recipe Teacher experience.

A big thing we learned from that whole thing too was that I have a demographic of senior citizens that I had no idea I had. Because once I started really going hard with the emails, I would start getting a lot of response from visitors to the site. There’s so many times where I would get an email from Mildred, who is so thankful she found Recipe Teacher. Her and her husband are retired, and they’re 82 years old. Their daughter got them an air fryer and they didn’t know what to do with it. Then they found my site, and they love pork chops, and blah, blah, blah. Every time I get one of those emails, I share it with my girlfriend and that brightens her day also.

Bjork Ostrom: Totally, yeah.

Jason Norris: I never expected that that was going to be part of this whole thing.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jason Norris: Doing the emails has really helped me learn my demographic along the way.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. It’s such an important piece to understand.

Jason Norris: It really is.

Bjork Ostrom: It almost personifies those people. As you start to do that, you start to get a better understanding, like oh, Mildred, and you think about her as you’re creating content then.

Jason Norris: 100%, yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. Now you’re sending out emails every time you have a new recipe. What does that look like?

Jason Norris: Yeah. Every time I have a new recipe, I send one out. Everybody’s got slightly different approaches to emails. I’ve tried it a couple of different ways. I’ve tried having a long little story before I get right into the recipe. I tried getting right to the recipe. Not all that different from the recipe posts themselves. We all obviously have the story that goes along with the recipe. Those have changed over the years. I think the approach of that with email has changed a little bit, too.

I try to make them personal. I try to make them all from me. I want the reader to understand that this is actually me sending these out.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jason Norris: Aside from several of the templated ones, the sequences that Ally has put together. Every time I have a new recipe, I make the email for it and I put it together. It gives me the opportunity, maybe something happened that day, maybe I caught a nice fish or maybe I got back from vacation or something, it’s nice to be able to share that little bit of my personality with the readers through the email.

I’ll say, “I’m really excited, I’ve got this new recipe for gnocchi with butternut squash and sage butter sauce. I hope you love it.” I basically do keep them short and sweet. I like to have a nice picture of it. The response has been great.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. That’s awesome. There’s something to be said, it’s not quantifiable but it’s significant, the personality connection to content. I think especially in this-

Jason Norris: Absolutely.

Bjork Ostrom: Post helpful content world, I think one of the things that we’re finding is the importance of a connection to your audience.

Jason Norris: Yes, yes.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s hard because it’s also not scalable in a way where it would be if you were just producing content en masse. But it’s also a little bit of a moat. It’s something that differentiates you from another site that’s doing recipes, which is its you, that’s the differentiator. It’s people who follow along with you and know you.

Jason Norris: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s such an important piece. Email is such a great format to do that. It’s cool to hear about your story and growing that in such a significant way.

What have been the things that have helped grow that list the most? Is there something that changed that really helped with growth?

Jason Norris: I just think the natural growth of the website.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Jason Norris: I think the content itself. As Recipe Teacher continued to grow and I started to learn the demographic a little bit more, and I start to learn what recipes really work, and I can keep generating that content. The feedback that I would get from the emails saying, “We love that you use simple ingredients. We love the way you explain it.”

I didn’t invent this. There’s a lot of websites that have easy recipes with pantry-friendly ingredients.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Jason Norris: As you know. But there’s room for your own personality in this. I think that’s where it was a combination of hard work, and I think luck that my style of writing has resonated with people enough that there’s been this natural growth to the site.

Like I said, in the era of the content updates and AI, and everything else, I think it is imperative more than ever to have that personal connection with your content, with your audience, and you can do that through email in a great way. Yeah, I think that’s really important.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Incredible success story. You put it up for Flippa, $1000, people are, “No, we’re not going to buy that.”

Jason Norris: Right.

Bjork Ostrom: Take it down, decide to work on it, grow it to this great success. Do you ever think about, “Hey, what is the value of this thing now,” having been through selling a website multiple times? Selling now, is that ever on the table?

Jason Norris: Well, like you talked about earlier, there are formulas that are generally used for the value of websites. As time has gone on, I’ve always known in the back of my head what a general value is of the site. If someone were to come to me now with that number, I would not sell it. It’s far too valuable to me personally.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jason Norris: In terms of growth. But yes, I have thought about that number. When I think about those numbers, like this whole process, it’s surreal and it blows my mind.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, yeah.

Jason Norris: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. It’s funny how, in a short matter of time relatively, if you were building a business and if you consider that to be part of your collective net worth is the value of the business, there’s some really crazy stories of people having an idea, whether it’s a recipe site or not. It could be really any business. But if something takes off, that could have such a substantial impact not only on your day-to-day, like you’re able to go out and kayak at noon, that’s a really wonderful thing. But also, we are creating these really valuable companies. That’s what they are, they’re companies. I think it’s important that we think about that as well as maybe a certain type of freedom that it gives you, or cash flow that it could potentially create. In and of itself, it’s also valuable.

Last question for you.

Jason Norris: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: As you think about people who are listening, maybe they’re in that stage of saying they have the site they would list on Flippa for $1000 and maybe nobody would buy it. What would your advice be for those listeners?

Jason Norris: I’ve had people ask me before, “How do you start a website?” I’ll hear people say, “Well, I’ve got recipes and I can start a website, too.” What I tell them now is go to Food Blogger Pro.

Bjork Ostrom: Right, thank you.

Jason Norris: If you want to get all the tips on how to start, yeah. That’s the truth. But basically, I tell people don’t get hung up on what’s the color of my website going to look like, what are the fonts going to look like. None of that matters.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jason Norris: What matters is your content. If you have an idea for something, just do it. Open a Word document and start typing. Whether it’s a recipe, whether it’s the review of a restaurant or a golf course, or something like that. Content is king, start working on your content. Because without it, you don’t have anything.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I love that. So much of it isn’t learning the new trick or tool.

Jason Norris: Correct.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s just getting into it.

Jason Norris: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: I played tennis in high school and I loved tennis. I’ve just recently started to pick it back up. I know it’s not about watching a bunch of YouTube videos, it’s getting out and actually hitting, and then watching YouTube videos.

Jason Norris: Right, right. Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: Both of those things in tandem. But the important thing is, like in your case, without the content, you don’t have anything to work with, and to analyze and to think about. The first part is always create the thing, and then you can step back and look at it, and say, “How do I improve the thing now that I’ve created it?”

Jason Norris: Right.

Bjork Ostrom: I think that’s such great advice.

Jason Norris: Especially today. There’s so many tools available at all of our disposals, with WordPress and everything else, that it makes it a lot easier. But you can’t do anything without content.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. Jason, if people want to follow along with you, connect with you, what’s the best way to do that?

Jason Norris: Go right to recipeteacher.com and you’ll see the address for all of our different socials. For Instagram, for Pinterest, for Facebook. You can email me at mango@recipeteacher.com. I don’t particularly love mangoes or dislike them, it’s just a song-

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, what’s the story with that?

Jason Norris: I like the song The Mango Song by Phish yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay.

Jason Norris: I had to come up with something and that’s what I did.

Bjork Ostrom: I love it. That was going to be one of the questions, I’m glad you mentioned it because I saw on the calendar invite it was mango@recipeteacher.com. That’s great.

Jason Norris: Yeah. That’s my little nod to Phish, yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. Well, Jason, thanks so much for coming on and sharing your story.

Jason Norris: Hey, thank you so much, Bjork. This has been great. It’s a pleasure to talk to you.

Emily Walker: Hey there, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team. We hope you enjoyed that episode of the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. Since it is the first week of a new month, I wanted to take some time to highlight what will be going on in the Food Blogger Pro membership this month.

For the month of June, we have a few great things scheduled. We’re going to kick it off with a coaching call. In June’s coaching call, Tara Smithson from the food blog Simply Made Eats joined Bjork to talk about how to develop, stick with and revise goals in the first few years of blogging, how to manage your time when you’re feeling overwhelmed, and how to approach building back links for your site. It’s an awesome coaching call so make sure to watch the video replay on Food Blogger Pro or catch the audio version on our members-only podcast, Food Blogger Pro On the Go. That will be live on June 6th.

Next up, we have a live Q&A on June 13th, all about creating systems. Chris from the business Creative Biz Launch will be joining us to chat all about how to create systems, which systems are most important and how systems can transform your business. That will be on Thursday, June 13th at 2:00 PM Eastern Time, 1:00 PM Central Time. We look forward to seeing you there. Remember that you can submit questions in advance if you have anything you know that you would like Chris and Bjork to cover.

To round out the month, we’re going to be doing what we’re calling our Summer Lesson Cleanup. We’re going to be doing lots of small edits and tweaks to a lot of our existing lessons. Just as we always talk about the importance of updating and republishing old content, we’re going to be doing the same over on Food Blogger Pro. You might notice some updates or changes to existing courses, just to make them more current and useful for our members. If you are not yet a Food Blogger Pro member, you can head to foodbloggerpro.com/membership to learn more and join us. We would love to have you. If you’re already a member, we look forward to seeing you next month in the forum and at our live Q&A. That’s it for this week. Make it a great week.

Bjork Ostrom: This episode is sponsored by Clariti. You spend a lot of time on your blog content from planning to recipe testing, to writing, to promoting, but do you know if each of your posts are bringing you the most traffic they possibly can? With Clariti, you can see information about each and every post, which is automatically synced from WordPress, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console so that you can make well-educated decisions about where your existing content may need a little attention. Think broken links or broken images, no internal links or missing alt text. You can also use information that Clariti pulls about sessions, page views, and users to fuel the creation of new content because you’ll be able to see which types of posts are performing best for you.

Get access to keyword ranking, click-through rate impressions, and optimization data for all of your posts today with Clariti. Listeners to The Food Blogger Pro Podcast get 50% off of their first month of Clariti after signing up. To sign up, simply go to clariti.com/food. That’s C-L-A-R-I-T-I, .com/food. Thanks again to Clariti for sponsoring this episode.

Emily Walker: Hey there. This is Emily from Food Blogger Pro team and you are listening to Food Blogger Pro Podcast. This week on the podcast, Bjork is interviewing Yasmin Henley from the food blog, By The Forkfulful. Yasmin has a super interesting blogging journey that I think a lot of you will relate to. She first started her blog in 2019 and was quickly able to qualify for an ad network. But after she learned she was pregnant with her first child and decided to go back to work full-time, her blog kind of fell by the wayside.

In this interview, she explains to Bjork how she recommitted to her blog, why she decided to reprioritize it, and how she has rebuilt her following to over 85,000 monthly sessions as of last month, and of course re-qualified for an ad network. She explains more about why she prioritizes getting traffic from social media and what sort of SEO updates she’s made to help rebuild her blog. It’s a super interesting interview. We really enjoyed hearing more about Yasmin’s story and know you Will as well. So without further ado, I’ll let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Yasmin, welcome to the podcast.

Yasmin Henley: Thank you. Hi.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, thanks for staying up late with us. Nine o’clock there for you.

Yasmin Henley: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: So I still have coffee that I’m sipping on and you’re kind of entering the stage of night, maybe a little tea, a little bit of wine. It’s the wine down-

Yasmin Henley: Yeah. Although we have just had the clock change, so at least it’s kind of 8pm here.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay. Yeah. You have a week or two of being able to kind of have that as like bonus time when the time changes.

Yasmin Henley: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: We’re going to talk about your story. You have an interesting journey where you built your site up until the point where you were able to apply and got accepted to Mediavine. Obviously, for a lot of people who are starting out who are in the early stages, that’s a really pivotal moment because you’re able to monetize in a way that’s hard to do before you get accepted to an ad network. Tell me about what that process was like to start and what it was like to build up to that point, what worked well, and maybe what that felt like once you were accepted.

Yasmin Henley: So I started my food blog in 2019. And it was actually my second blog that I started. The first one was kind of more of a frugal living lifestyle blog. Learned a lot of lessons that then I could apply more quickly to By The Forkful. And I knew that getting my first blog into Mediavine was like a big goal. It helped me bring in a steady income. So I knew that that was one of my main goals for my food blog.

Mostly at that point, SEO really wasn’t on my radar. I thought I knew what it was, but I really… Looking back, I’m like, I didn’t know what I was doing. So I was just doing bits and bobs and kind of got to the point where… And at that point, Mediavine would let you put a site onto their network, a second site at 10K sessions a month. So quite a low bar, which I think I mostly got through Pinterest traffic. And then getting it to that point was great because I was like, okay, now I’m in, can start making some stable income. And at that point, you’re not making like a big amount.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Yasmin Henley: It’s maybe $100, $200 a month. Then neglected my site for maybe a year, 18 months. Just started working on it. My traffic could fall into maybe 5K sessions and then Mediavine tell me that they’re actually removing me from their network.

Bjork Ostrom: Like it wasn’t enough traffic for them to justify it being on there? Yeah.

Yasmin Henley: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: And so you had this other site, and had that site been the first site that had been accepted into Mediavine? So is that right? So had that, whatever the qualifications were at the time, was it 50,000 page views?

Yasmin Henley: It was 25,000 at that point. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it. So you have 25,000 there, you have 10,000 with this other site. You’re making multiple hundreds of dollars, which is great. It’s like this proof of concept, and in the early stages it’s enough to justify like, “Okay, if I can double this or triple this, then it starts to become pretty meaningful.” It’s like a mortgage payment essentially.

Yasmin Henley: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: And when you’re able to see those numbers, that’s when it kind of gets really exciting. It sounds like what happened was you had worked on this one site and then kind of said, “You know what? I want to focus on food,” and so you start to focus on food as this kind of path forward and the type of content that you want to create. You got some momentum with it, and then you paused in this period, traffic fell back down. Tell me about that period. What was that like when you went into this season of kind of not focusing on the site? And then we’re going to talk about turning that around and what it looked like on the other side.

Yasmin Henley: Yeah. So I got into Mediavine, I think the start of 2020 maybe just before the pandemic sort of became a thing. And I think a lot of food bloggers have a kind of different story to mine, whereas that’s when they really leaned into growing their food blogs and traffic kind of exploded. But for me, I think I got about four or five months down the line where I’d been monetized and then found out I was pregnant with my daughter, who’s now almost three.

And for me, I’d been freelancing for a good few years. So I was living my life, but definitely wasn’t living the life for a baby to come on the scene. So I pivoted and went back into full-time work to build up savings. So my food blog got pushed to the side. And obviously hindsight is a really beautiful thing because I’m like, oh, maybe if I had led into the food blog, I could be in a different place, but that’s not the route that I went down. And then, yeah, probably it wasn’t until she was maybe a year, 18 months plus that I was like, okay, now I’m in the Headspace to refocus on this old project.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And it’s one of the great things about your experience is for two years, three years, four years, you’ve kind of been working both with the frugal living site or with the food site, you’d been getting experience, you’ve been building skills, you’ve been building expertise. And one of the things I love to think about in our world is that we are CEOs of our life. And what our job is to make wise decisions for you Inc. Right? And my affirmation for you is like making the right decision for you and your family. And did you say, is it that your daughter or son or-

Yasmin Henley: Yeah, yeah, a girl.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay. Yeah. So for your daughter and the right decision in that moment was to say, “Hey, you know what? I’m going to get a full-time gig. I know it’s going to be guaranteed in a way that building a site for passive income or advertising income isn’t guaranteed.” But what you didn’t lose is the skills and abilities that you had developed. And for so many of us, one of the things that this can be is a really great safety net for us if we ever need it, or a really great opportunity for a season where we don’t need the same type of guaranteed income. And there’s no… The type of work you’re doing is it’s only good or bad within the context of what you’re doing.

And so I want to affirm you in the decision that you made and saying like, “Hey, that was a great decision because it was right for your family, for your daughter.” And it’s always easy to look back and be like, “Well, if I would’ve worked on it, then it could have been in this place.” But also there’s times where you work on something for a really long time and then you don’t get anything from it. And so there’s that side of the coin as well. But it sounds like in your case, what happened is once you did revisit this opportunity, apply some of those skills and expertise that you had, you were able to benefit from seeing some substantial growth, not only from your social accounts, but also just traffic to your site, and then eventually got back into Mediavine. And now it sounds like you’re at a point where you’re getting more traffic than you ever did before. So take us back to the point where you made the decision to focus more on it, and why did you make that decision?

Yasmin Henley: Yeah. So I think even when I was kind of neglecting my blog, it still… I think I’m an inherently creative person, so I still loved taking photographs of the food that I created, sharing here and there, especially on my social accounts. And then I think I got to a point where I was like, “Okay, I’ve got more time, this is something I’m really passionate about,” like you were saying about. And started that first blog, then realized I wanted to go into food. So By The Forkful was always been like… I was always like, even if it’s not a business, it’s going to be more like my passion project.

So I started sharing still fairly inconsistently recipes on the blog, on my social accounts, and then just started getting into more and more of a role doing videos on TikTok and Instagram Reels. So I was kind of… My traffic on my blog wasn’t necessarily going up. It was still kind of like 5, 6K sessions a month, but I was enjoying it, kind of feeling like I was getting my groove. And then I think it was August last year, Mediavine said, “We’re taking you off our network,” which to be fair to them, I was maybe earning $20 a month at that point. So it wasn’t like a huge financial hit. It was more of just a like a, “Now I’ve got to…

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. 10 bucks, kind of-

Yasmin Henley: … my income.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Right.

Yasmin Henley: And then that same month, a TikTok video went viral. So it was literally within the span of maybe three weeks I was demonetized on my website, and then a video got… I think it now sits at like 6 million views. But within a week, it got maybe 3 million views. And my TikTok followers went from like 300 followers to 40,000 in five days. And it was just this crazy like, “Oh, okay, my blog traffic is maybe not monetized instantly, but clearly there’s something here that people are enjoying.” And it really lit a fire under me that like, oh, this still could be something.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. It’s validation that the things that you are creating resonate with people and that it can get attention, it can get traction. And sometimes all that it takes is seeing that happen once to say, “Okay, I did this start to finish, created a video, came up with a concept and it got 6 million views.” That can be kind of that motivation to say like, “Hey, I can be somebody who creates in the world content that people consume and they like and they enjoy.”

Can you talk about any… And at this point, you have 110,000 followers on TikTok. That’s obviously a really important platform. Can you talk about what it was like to build the traffic back up on your site? So demonetized, you didn’t have the traffic, but then you have this video that goes viral, you maybe catch some traffic from that video going viral. To an extent you can talk about that. And then what does it look like from there to start to build up and to gain that momentum again and what do things look like now?

Yasmin Henley: Yeah. So I think even before that happened, like I said, I’d been working on the blog behind the scenes. Not much traffic was going on, but I’d been still putting in the work, doing the posts, and I think I was kind of at a breaking point where I was like, “I’m putting in so much work and not getting anything back,” that if it hadn’t been for that video going viral, I could have well just shut it all down just being like-

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. It’s too much. Yeah.

Yasmin Henley: Yeah. Especially with like a young kid and working a full-time job. I was like, “This is a lot.” So yeah, that video went viral. I think, yeah, traffic immediately went up because I post all the links to my recipes on the blog, so I don’t post the recipe in the caption on social media or anything. So yeah, definitely got a kickback in traffic. So I was like, okay-

Bjork Ostrom: And was that through people seeing the video and then going to the link in your TikTok?

Yasmin Henley: Yeah. And actually when I posted that video, because I hadn’t really been focusing on driving traffic, I hadn’t posted the recipe yet, so I was in this mad rush to-

Bjork Ostrom: Get the recipe out. Got it.

Yasmin Henley: … [inaudible 00:14:05] the recipe. So yeah, that happened. So then I was kind of like, “Okay, I’m going to focus on creating similar videos, similar recipes to get that social traffic,” but was also focusing on more long-term SEO recipes. So I just kept on doing a mix of both. And it just slowly but surely started going up and up. And as my pages have gotten naturally bigger, quicker, I think you kind of seem to reach this milestone on social media where people were like, “Oh, they’ve got X amount of followers,” so they’re more likely to follow you-

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. Yeah.

Yasmin Henley: … and it just seems to grow and grow more naturally. So the traffic just really started snowballing. And now I think last month was about 85,000 sessions a month, which is the most traffic I’ve had in the whole history of having the blog.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And that’s at the point, I feel like once you get to that realm of a hundred thousand page views, you’re using an ad network, that’s where it starts to be meaningful.

Yasmin Henley: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: And it’s obviously different for everybody. And meaningful could even be a hundred dollars a month in some situations. I guess what I mean by that is it starts to be enough where you can start to, and obviously our mortgage payments are all different and our ad network amounts that we’re earning are all different, but it’s like, “Oh, this could make a substantial difference in the day-to-day lives of what we’re doing.” And if you think of working a side hustle, if you work at a coffee shop or a grocery store or maybe you do Uber, that’s where I feel like the equivalent of a hundred thousand page views, it starts to look kind of similar to those side hustle jobs.

But the difference is you have this autonomy, you have control over when you work on it. It’s not the rigidity of some of those normal side hustles. And that’s a really good feeling. So could you talk about that a little bit just for you as a creator, what that felt like to go through the process of rebuilding this thing after being in this transitory, almost blog purgatory period of like, “Where am I, where am I going to go,” and then eventually saying, “Hey, I’m going to focus on this and grow it,” what did that feel like?

Yasmin Henley: Yeah. It really feels like some validation that the work was worth it because I was, for a long time, this is a really expensive hobby that I’m doing. I was doing it because I was passionate about it and enjoyed creating, but I was definitely at a point where I was like, I’m spending a lot of money on the blog and spending money on ingredients and time just creating recipes, photographing them, filming them. And now it’s like, actually, now this is a business and it’s bringing in income. And yeah, it’s massively validating that you put in the work and you actually get something back for it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors.

This episode is sponsored by Raptive. You may be like the many other Food Blogger Pro members and podcast listeners who are working towards increasing their traffic to be able to apply to an ad network. Raptive, which is formerly AdThrive for instance, requires a minimum of 100,000 page views and brand safe content to join the community. These qualifiers attract premium advertisers and ensure creators like you benefit from Raptive’s expansive solutions and services. But if you’re not quite there yet and you want to be, Raptive can still help. Raptive put together a comprehensive email series, it’s 11 emails in total, that will help optimize your content, understand your audience, grow your email list, and grow your traffic to help you reach your ad network goals.

Pinch of Yum works with Raptive to bring in passive income each month. The ads show up on each Pinch of Yum post, and when that ad loads on someone’s screen or somebody interacts with that ad, Pinch of Yum earns money. So more page views equals more money. And it can really add up over time. That’s why so many Food Blogger Pro community members are interested in getting their page view numbers up so that they’ll be able to apply to an ad network and make money on display ads. So if you’re in the same boat and are interested in getting some traffic tips delivered to you for free, head to foodbloggerpro.com/raptive. The 11 weekly emails you’ll receive are designed for creators who have a working knowledge of SEO, keyword research, and email lists, but haven’t yet been able to crack that 100,000 page view mark. Go to foodbloggerpro.com/raptive to opt into this free newsletter series. Thanks again to Raptive for sponsoring this episode.

What does it look like the traffic profile now for you, because I know that SEO is a consideration, but you’ve also been intentional to focus on social media platforms and you’ve grown a substantial following over a relatively short period of time. And I think in, as we were kind of trading notes, you had talked about growing from 3,000 to 135,000 total. It’s probably more today. And so you’ve been focusing on a lot of different areas and it’s not a full-time gig for you. So what does the traffic look like now to your site? Where’s that traffic coming from? And then the next question after that, to seed the question, is how do you balance that with a full-time gig and a family?

Yasmin Henley: Yeah. So traffic sources… Yeah, SEO is definitely a big one, but it’s quite well-balanced with social traffic. So Facebook has become a really big traffic driver for me, which I wasn’t expecting at all. So I post my reels on TikTok, Instagram, and then just cross-post it over to Facebook. Instagram just has that feature that just lets you automatically share it on Facebook as well. And I started seeing really good traction on there. My page grew really quickly. And then I started posting Beyond Reels on Facebook, just posts with links to the recipes, and that’s become a major traffic driver. And then TikTok and Instagram can be big traffic drivers for me, but it’s definitely if I get a slightly more viral posts, then I’ll see a spike, but it fluctuates a lot more. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Can you talk about the traffic on Facebook? What has worked well to get traffic from Facebook?

Yasmin Henley: I think I definitely wouldn’t say I’m a pro at it. I’m still definitely dabbling, but for me, for my blog, it’s potatoes. Anything potato related just blows up on my page. But just sharing literally a photo of the recipe, a really quick like… A more personal comment rather than being like a description of the recipe, but something actually from me and just sharing a link. I did that last month and just one post got 6,000 views in a day just from that one blog post, which for me was the most traffic I’ve seen in a long time. So I was buzzing. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And when you say 6,000 views, 6,000 people from Facebook came to your page after sharing that? Yeah.

Yasmin Henley: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: And it’s interesting in our world, you can start to kind of crunch the numbers on that and say like, okay, if you have 6,000 people and just conservatively, let’s say you have a $30 RPM, you’ve just created a transaction of $180, maybe $200 just by creating this singular piece of content. So then if you can start to get strategic and say, “Okay, what are the variables that existed within this and how do I potentially replicate that in these ingredients, maybe it’s this specific type of recipe or sharing it in this way or this medium,” that’s where you get the compounding in this world and you can start to build off of that and say, “Okay, great. Let’s try that next week again and do something kind of similar, but just different enough. Can we repeat that?” That results in another $150, $200.

And so from a business standpoint, what we’re doing as content creators is being curious as to what’s working and then trying to replicate that in a way that doesn’t feel like an exact copy of something we did before, but also has some of those same elements. So were you able to distill down? I mean, you talked about the ingredient being one of them with your audience, but was it also the post type? You talked about it being photos, right? It wasn’t a video. And for some reason it just seemed to work well and kind of was viral.

Yasmin Henley: So the first ever video that went viral for me was like a potatoes and whipped feta one. And then this post again was a slightly different potatoes and whipped feta one. So I’m definitely… I feel like social media does have the potential to niche you down a lot, but I think you can either try to shrug that off and go wider or you can lean into it. And I kind of am trying to do a bit of both. I’m kind of leaning into what obviously hits well with my audience and those are the recipes that they really like. And every kind of one that I do similar to that hits really well. So in my books, if there’s a demand for it, then I’m going to meet it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, totally. And there’s all different ways that you can do that from the ingredients to the type of content that it is, how you’re maybe structuring the description. So what about your day-to-day, because you have a three-year-old, that’s obviously very time-consuming, and you also work in a full-time, like in the US we’d say a W2 job, but a full-time salaried position, or is it a contractor position and then you have this as well?

Yasmin Henley: Yeah. Well, so that was the case until last November, and then I moved to be fully freelance. My employer just were very accommodating to me growing my businesses and just let me basically switch to freelancing. So that’s been great because I can be a lot more flexible. So for example, now I can film recipes in the day and then do my normal work in the evenings sort of thing.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. How do you decide? Because my guess is there’s a lot of people who are in a similar position and they’re trying to balance these important things. We are all passionate about our businesses and want to figure out how do we grow those and invest in those. We also know that there’s great security in having a salaried position or a contract freelance position where we’re able to, on any given week, any given month, say, “We’re going to work this much and we’re going to get paid this much.” That’s a really good thing as well.

And then we have our family, and that’s something that we want to invest in and be present to. So when you look at the landscape of everything that you have in front of you, how do you make decisions around, “Hey, I’m not going to do this freelance work in service of focusing on my business, or I’m not going to do this business work in service of focusing on family”? What does that look like for you? And the context for it is I think it’s helpful for us to hear other people and how they process these decisions.

Yasmin Henley: Yeah. It definitely is tough at the moment because I find myself, if I am short on time for childcare reasons or something, it’s definitely my businesses that get sacrificed still at the moment. Obviously prioritizing clients first. I try to be a lot more rigid about my schedule. I’ll literally list out all the things I need to get done. I’ll set a timer on my phone and be like, right, you need to get this task done in 45 minutes, because rime is so important, especially when you want to make time to have with your children and balance everything together.

And yeah, I think it is a lot of sacrifices and just having that social free time to sit and watch TV in the evenings or something. But my reasoning is that I’m working hard now so that next year my life looks different. And already it looks so different to what it was a year ago. And I’m just slowly, slowly tipping that scale to where I’m like, “Okay, this evening you don’t open your laptop and work all evening, this evening you actually take some time to do something that’s not work related.”

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. I think a lot about this idea of part of how we can look at the work that we’re doing is making deposits. So you’re building a business, you’re making deposits, and I think we should also be aware of the potential that we can make withdrawals from our business as well. And that might look like taking time away to visit family or going on a trip or whatever it might be. And it’s less of this perfect equilibrium on a day-to-day week-to-week basis, but more of thinking about it as maybe seasons, and you have a season of maybe working more than you would ideally work in service of a future season where you’re maybe working less than you would if you had a normal salary job. So when you think of forecasting out, just out of curiosity, what would your ideal be? What are you working towards?

Yasmin Henley: For me, so obviously my daughter’s three, so in my head I’m like, “Okay, she’s going to go to school in a year, two years.” So I’d like to be in a position where when she goes to school, I can pick her up at 3:00, school holidays aren’t an issue. I can be flexible because I just manage my own businesses. So even though it is difficult to build a business when you’ve got young children, I’m also like, I’m working on it. So when she gets to the school years, I’ve got that freedom.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. That flexibility and the time. And so much of it comes down to that. I think for a lot of us, we want a successful business. We want something that is monetarily successful. But if you really drill down to what that means, it’s like it covers our needs in order to allow us to have autonomy and flexibility to some degree. And that is such an intangible, valuable thing that’s really hard to quantify, but it’s important in so many different ways, especially in the context of family.

And that’s where you can… In the world of startups, there’s this startup incubator called Y Combinator, I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, but the founder of that talks about… Or startups, which are different than what we’re doing, but he talks about compressing your career into five years, which is like, I don’t think that’s what any of us are trying to do, but you can imagine a 20-year or 30-year career for normal people. And he talks about, for a lot of startups, it’s like you take that and you smush it into this five, six-year period. Obviously it looks different for everybody in terms of how they approach it, but it does take a lot of time and energy and work to get to a point where you have something then that allows for that flexibility and autonomy later on. What have you found to be the most valuable things to do right now? Where’s the greatest return on your time knowing that time is this really valuable resource?

Yasmin Henley: That’s a good question. I think for one thing, for me, updating old posts has been really valuable. So every post I do, whether it’s new or old, I do the blog content, I take photographs, and I film a video for it. So I do it all in one. So looking back at old posts that have a bit of potential but have less work to do on them, maybe just need some new photos and a video filming and then I can just literally link straight to that old post, that’s been a really great way to save time, but also get some good returns both in social media and SEO traffic.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. Yeah. And it’s looking for those things that you can do in that limited amount of time. Maybe if you do that one hour, you set a one-hour timer and you say, “Okay, here’s how much time I have.” In that amount of time, what is going to be the thing that for your business is going to give you the greatest return? Oftentimes it’s not creating something from the ground up. It’s saying like, “Hey, what do I have that is pre-existing there that I can further double down on the success of that,” and a lot of times that ends up being updating an older piece of content, not with the attempt of taking something from zero to position one, but maybe it’s in position five or six and you want to kind of try and improve that a little bit.

Or a lot of times you see people who know that there’s a certain piece of content, for whatever reason, that monetizes really well, so you’re able to earn a lot from it, and then being strategic in saying, “I’m going to create content and point people to this piece of content because I know that it earns really well as a post for whatever reason from an advertising perspective.” So as a last question, Yasmin, when you look back to that season when you had just been kind of demonetized, for lack of a better word, and it was kind like, ugh, a little bit of a bummer, my guess is gut punch, what would your advice have been to yourself knowing that one of these kind of future unlocks was coming down the line where you have this video that goes viral and it puts you in a place today where you’re able to scale back on your regular work and kind of adjust your life schedule? So what would your advice be to your past self?

Yasmin Henley: I guess keep going, but also don’t get so bogged down in the immediate to focus on not just the next month, but focus on the next six months and the work that you are doing to put yourself in a better position in the future. I think it’s really easy to take the hits that come day to day and not take a step back and see the bigger picture and actually see how far you’ve come. And even though that was a big hit to my business, now it’s just a little blip in what is already growing into something bigger than it’s ever been.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, there’s so much to be said about staying the course, and we’re in this season as creators where it could probably be said of any stretch, but there’s a lot that’s happening right now and a lot that’s changing. And I get every week an email or talked to somebody who’s like, “Gosh, I’ve just got,” or not even just, but, “I’ve been hit with this Google algorithm update and I’m not able to get the traction that I could before. Super discouraging,” or, “I was able to grow really quickly for this stretch on Instagram and now I can’t. And that’s super discouraging.” And if nothing else for people to know, it’s a really common thing. It’s happening to everybody in different forms. And if it hasn’t happened to you, it will eventually if you stay with it long enough. And if you have the ability to stick with it and to continue to create inspired content, there will be those opportunities that come and it’s the right person, it’s the right time, it’s the right algorithm change. Something happens where you’re able to be in good favor again.

But so much of it is just staying the course, which is really hard to do. And your story is a good example of staying the course, and you have these moments and these opportunities. It’s this idea of like luck wears overalls. Like, it’s hard work. Luck is hard work. And part of the reason why you got “lucky” with a viral video is because you had been producing good content over a long period of time and continually showing up to do that. So I think it’s a great reminder for us as creators in a season where there’s a lot of shifting sand and the foundation doesn’t feel super strong to say, stay the course, continually show up and create good content. So really fun to hear your story, Yasmin. For anybody who wants to follow along with you to check out what you’re up to, where’s the best place to do that, and we’ll include those in the show notes.

Yasmin Henley: Yeah. So, bytheforkful.com. @bytheforkful on TikTok. I think it’s @bytheforkful_ in Instagram. I haven’t managed to snag the original.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. You’ll get it. You’ll get it.

Yasmin Henley: Yeah. But yeah, probably on Instagram if anyone wants to DM me or anything, I’m an open book.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. That’s awesome. Yasmin, thanks so much for coming on. Really appreciate it.

Yasmin Henley: Thank you.

Emily Walker: Hey there. This is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast. I am popping in today to share a little update for our Food Blogger Pro members on what you can expect to see in the membership in the month of May. We kicked off the month publishing a coaching call with Cameron and Sarah from the blog, Plantbaes. This is an awesome coaching call. It’s a long one, but we just really enjoyed hearing more about their story. And as a small teaser, we enjoyed this coaching call so much that we decided to make it into a podcast episode for everyone to hear. So just stay tuned for that later this summer.

Next up on Thursday, May 9th, we’ll be having our live Q&A all about republishing content. This Q&A will be with Eddie Mercado from Raptive and will be a great opportunity for you to bring all of your questions about what content should be updated and republished, how to do it, what the importance is for SEO, all sorts of good topics like that.

Last but not least, on May 23rd, we will be publishing a course all about video editing on CapCut. Capcut is a really user-friendly program for editing videos. And this will be a helpful course for those of you looking to get started or level up your video editing. And Natalie is taking the lead on that, and we’re so excited to share it with you.

So that’s what we have in store for May. As always, there will be lots of goodness going on in the forum and elsewhere in the membership. So if you’re interested in learning more about Food Blogger Pro membership, just head to foodbloggerpro.com/membership to learn more. We would love to have you. Make it a great month, and thanks again for listening. We’ll see you next week.