093: How Finding a Niche Transformed a Business with Meggan Hill from Culinary Hill

Welcome to episode 93 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! In this episode, Bjork chats with Meggan Hill from Culinary Hill about how finding a niche transformed her business.

As an internet entrepreneur, it can be tempting to try to appeal to everyone. You don’t want to send potential traffic away from your website, right?

However, successful bloggers have said time and again that a big contributor to success is finding a specific audience and sharing only content that fits that audience perfectly. In other words, finding a niche.

Meggan Hill started her blog, Culinary Hill, with an aim of pleasing everyone. And… it didn’t work out so well. Her blog did okay, but she ended up feeling discouraged and gave it up for a while. A couple years ago, though, she decided it was time to make some changes and make this blogging thing work for her. With the help of a branding agency, she was able to find a niche, free up her creativity by sticking to that niche, and nearly triple her traffic in just one year. Today, she’s here to tell us all about it.

Keep Reading

085: 9 million visitors & 450 contributors: the Story of Her View From Home with Leslie Means

Welcome to episode 85 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork chats with Leslie Means, cofounder of Her View From Home, about scaling her website to over 450 contributors and 9 million visitors per month.

Leslie Means started her website just like many of us did – with a passion and a dream. However, instead of the typical create-publish-promote-repeat agenda, she took a bit of a different path: she wanted to publish articles from contributors and pay those authors based on article performance.

Today, Her View From Home has over 9 million monthly visitors and pulls from a pool of 450 contributors. The business is thriving, and Leslie is here to tell us all about it.

Keep Reading

076: Using Analytics to Build Your Blog with Jeff Sauer from Jeffalytics

Welcome to episode 76 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork chats with Jeff Saur from Jeffalytics.com about how you can use Analytics to increase your chances for blog success.

Oftentimes, when new bloggers start blogging, the only stat they really care about is whether or not their content is being seen by someone.It’s satisfying to see the first day we get 50 pageviews, or 100, or even 1,000. We check our analytics to make sure our content is getting seen.

However, Analytics can be much more powerful than this. Used correctly, they can help you generate ideas for content, show you what’s really working, and help you guide your business overall. In short, proper use of Analytics can really help you accelerate your blog and business.

Jeff Sauer has made his career out of helping people use Google Analytics. Today, he’s here to give us some of his best tips.

Keep Reading

073: How to Publish Consistent and Quality Content with Jessica Merchant from How Sweet It Is

Welcome to episode 73 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork chats with Jessica Merchant from the blog How Sweet It Is about consistently creating great content.

In blogging, content is huge. It’s not the only important thing, but it’s the foundation of your business. Creating great content is really important.

Just as important is creating content often. A blog needs fresh, exciting ideas to thrive. new content is what your existing readers want to see.

However, doing both those things – creating really great content on a consistent basis – can be really tough. It definitely involves dedication and skill to do right. Jessica Merchant from How Sweet It Is definitely has that dedication and skill, and today she’s here to tell us just how she manages to make consistent and quality content every single week.

Keep Reading

072: FBP Member Spotlight: Sam Turnbull from It Doesn’t Taste Like Chicken

Welcome to episode 72 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork is talking with Sam Turnbull from It Doesn’t Taste Like Chicken in our first ever Member Spotlight episode!

Many FBP members dream of leaving their full-time jobs in order to put all of their time and effort into their blog; Sam was able to do that very thing.

Since leaving her job last year, Sam has experienced some great successes with her blog – including landing a book deal. In order to get there, however, Sam had to learn how to relate to her readers and publish content they love.

Keep Reading

071: Finding your Raving Fans through Facebook Live with Amanda Rettke from I Am Baker

Welcome to episode 71 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork interviews Amanda Rettke from I Am Baker about her success with Facebook Live and how it has helped connect her with her audience.

They say you only need 1,000 raving fans to create a successful business. Just 1,000! However, raving fans can be hard to come by. Where do you get them? How do you know they love you and the work you are doing?

Amanda struggled with this a bit for the first few years she was in business. She knew she had great fans, but she didn’t feel like she really connected with them. And then she decided to try Facebook Live. Her raving fans loved being able to see and interact with her live, and she loved being able to connect with them. Facebook Live has been the experience Amanda needed to feel connected with her readers, and today she is here to tell us how she did it.

Keep Reading

069: Building a Brand on National TV with Jocelyn Delk Adams from Grandbaby Cakes

Welcome to episode 69 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork chats with Jocelyn Delk Adams from Grandbaby Cakes about growing her audience and building her brand by way of National TV.

If you’ve ever dreamed of being a TV star, starting a food blog probably wasn’t your first idea for how to get there. However, for Jocelyn Delk Adams of the popular blog Grandbaby Cakes, her food blog was just the ticket she needed.

Jocelyn started her TV career with her local TV channels, then slowly moved up to the big networks. She’s now been seen on National shows such as Rachel Ray and the Today Show. She loves where her experiences have taken her and attributes much of her blog’s success to her effort to get her blog in front of new faces via TV appearances.

Keep Reading

067: Scaling a Business by Building a Team with Amy Roskelley from Super Healthy Kids

Welcome to episode 67 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! In this episode, Bjork talks with Amy Roskelley from Super Healthy Kids about scaling her small business into a thriving brand by building a team.

So many bloggers dream of building a team to help them run their blog. However, it often gets put off in the name of waiting to find success. Unfortunately, putting off on growing a team can hamper your ability to find “success,” while choosing to grow your team can really propel your forward.

Amy from Super Healthy Kids plodded along quite well with her blog for many years before starting to build a team. However, after she joined a partnership with her now-co-owner Natalie, she found herself free to pursue more of the things that she was really good at. Each subsequent hire has allowed Amy to fine-tune her skillset in certain areas while letting others do the work she wasn’t as passionate about, but they were.

Since building a team, Super Healthy Kids has grown in amazing ways, and today Amy is here to tell us all about it.

Keep Reading

061: Our Very First Community Podcast: Advice and Insight from the FBP Community

Welcome to episode 61 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! We have a special episode today – our first ever community podcast! In this episode, we hear from members of the Food Blogger Pro community talk about what’s working for them right now.

The only bummer about the FBP Podcast is that we just can’t interview everyone. There are so many bloggers out there who we would love to hear from, though!

So, the idea for a community podcast episode was born. Listeners from all over the globe called in to share their tips, tricks, and techniques that are working for them to grow their blog. Ranging from tips to help manage social media to techniques for staying on top of things, this episode has a little bit of everything. Enjoy!

Keep Reading

060: 8 Food Blog SEO Tips

Welcome to episode 60 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! In this episode, Bjork finishes off the solo trio with some fantastic advice on SEO for food bloggers.

SEO can seem mysterious and scary for bloggers. There’s so much information on it out there, but it can be confusing and difficult to read. Moz, an popular and well-regarded SEO site, published once upon a time a blog post called the Beginner’s Guide to SEO. Bjork read through this whole post (it’s so long it has chapters!) and pulled out a bunch of things he learned from the post.

In today’s podcast, Bjork talks about these things and relates them specifically to food blogging. He talks about what the purpose of SEO is and how people use it, as well as how you can improve the SEO of your website.

Keep Reading