038: 7 Strategies to Build Traffic

Welcome to episode 38 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! In this episode, Bjork talks about 7 strategies to build traffic for your for blog.

When it comes to making a business out of your blog, there is one thing that can have a really big impact: traffic.

We get asked all the time about things that you can do to help grow your traffic. There are the easy, well-known tips, like putting each post on social media and submitting your recipes to FoodGawker. But there are also some things you can do that aren’t as simple or intuitive that can make a really big difference, and that’s what Bjork is talking about today.

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035: How to 10x Your Facebook Following in One Year with Stephanie from Spaceships & Laser Beams

Welcome to episode 35 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! Today, Bjork is talking about Facebook with Stephanie Keeping from Spaceships and Laser Beams (i.e. the coolest blog name ever).

I know… that title seems really outrageous and like a big, fat lie. But Stephanie actually did that in 2015. At the beginning of the year, she had a Facebook following of ~50,000 people, and by December she was up to 500k – a 10x increase.

This exponential gain in followers didn’t just happen. Instead, Stephanie made the conscious decision to focus on Facebook and use it to leverage her blog. Her dedication to this one goal has massively grown her blog traffic, her income, and her ability to do what she loves full time.

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031: Rebranding Your Blog with Erin Clarke from Well Plated

Welcome to episode 31 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork talks with Erin Clarke from Well Plated about rebranding her food blog.

Back when Erin started her blog, it wasn’t called Well Plated. Instead, it was called The Law Student’s Wife – and that’s because 1) she was a law student’s wife, and 2) it wasn’t necessarily about food.

But after blogging under that name for a while, she decided that she loved posting recipes. And unfortunately, the name of her blog just didn’t fit any more.

So, she made the really tough decision to rebrand her blog, and she did it! But it wasn’t all rainbows and unicorns, though. There wasn’t much info about the process of rebranding out there, so she had to go at it all on her own.

In this episode, Erin shares what she learned along the way, and her #1 resource for learning what it takes to rebrand your blog.

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029: The Phases of Pinch of Yum with Bjork & Lindsay Ostrom

Welcome to episode 29 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This is a special edition of the FBP podcast featuring… you guessed it! Bjork and Lindsay Ostrom.

It’s always so interesting to hear about the stories people have with their blogs – when they started, how they got going, what keeps them inspired.

However, it’s pretty rare to get a full breakdown of all the phases that the blog and the blogger(s) went through from day 1. Usually the stories talk about the beginning, and then the present.

But today, Bjork and Lindsay sit down together (literally) and talk about the 4 distinct stages Pinch of Yum went through up until today. It’s just so interesting. And if you listen alllll they way through to the end, they also have some cutesy married-couple moments that I distinctly decided not to edit out. It’s adorbs.

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028: How to Boost Your Blog’s SEO with Casey Markee from Media Wyse

Welcome to episode 28 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! We are starting the new year off strong with a podcast all about optimizing your blog so that you can show up higher in search results.

SEO can sound like a really scary acronym – what does it even mean, and how can I make it work for me?! But fear not, because even though it can be pretty complex to master, it can also be pretty easy to get started with.

Casey Markee from Media Wyse specializes in boosting SEO for food blogs. He kind of fell into this niche by accident, and by now has worked with 50+ bloggers to help them rank higher in search. In this interview, he and Bjork talk about some of the really quick and easy things you can do to improve your blog’s SEO, as well as some of the higher-level stuff that can give you an extra SEO boost.

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026: How Pinterest Analytics can Boost your Blog with Kate Ahl from Simple Pin Media

Welcome to episode 26 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week marks the 6th month anniversary of the FBP podcast – so exciting! We’ve learned so much in the last 6 months, and we’ve really loved sharing it with all of you. Thank you thank you for being our loyal subscriber!

This week on the podcast, Bjork is talking with Kate Ahl from Simple Pin Media about Pinterest!

For most bloggers (myself included), Pinterest Analytics are really just used as a comparison tool – how the blog did this week versus last week. However, Kate from Simple Pin Media specializes in digging deep into Pinterest Analytics to really see what works – and then she coaches her clients on how to use that information to grow their blogs.

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025: How to Connect with Influencers with John Corcoran from Smart Business Revolution

Welcome to episode 25 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork talks with John Corcoran from Smart Business Revolution about connecting with influencers.

Growing your blog can be tough – aside from all the cooking, photographing, and writing, you also have to figure out how to get your name out there. John Corcoran argues that connecting with influencers and growing your relationships with them can be one of the best ways to get your name out there.

So how do you do it? Listen in as John shares his personal experiences with networking, his best tips to meet influencers, and why you should rank peoples’ importance from a business standpoint.

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019: How to Master Pinterest for your Food Blog with Susan Wenner Jackson from Ahalogy

Welcome back to the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork interviews Susan from Ahalogy, a Pinterest marketing Partner.

As food bloggers, we’ve all heard it: Pinterest can, and should, be a major driving force for your blog. Get Pinterest figured out and you’ll be set with all the traffic your little blogging heart desires.

Unfortunately, mastering Pinterest isn’t that easy. Deciding what size images to use, whether or not you should make a compilation of images, and if you should be adding text are all tough questions. Thankfully, Susan Wenner Jackson from Ahalogy, a Pinterest Marketing Partner, is here to help us out!

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018: How to Build an Online Business Without Blogging with Jadah Sellner from Simple Green Smoothies

Welcome back to the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork interviews the cofounder of Simple Green Smoothies, Jadah Sellner about building a successful online business without blogging.

Wait a minute here. We’re Food Blogger Pro. What is this "business without blogging" stuff all about?

Well, our main goal here at FBP is to help people create a business at the intersection of food and the web. While blogging is a common, even well-defined, path to that, we also realize it’s possible to build a business doing less blogging and more of everything else.

Take, for example, Jadah Sellner and Jen Hansard, the cofounders of Simple Green Smoothies. They tried blogging at first, but found success when the started to focus on one specific idea and sharing that idea freely on Instagram. They now run a successful business (with a website and an occasionally-updated blog) and have a massive tribe of followers who love their microblogged content on social media.

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How Elise Bauer Built Simply Recipes and Recovered from a 70% Drop in Traffic – FBP016

Welcome back, friends! On this episode of the Food Blogger Pro Podcast, Bjork interviews the maker of one of the most popular food blogs in the world – Elise Bauer from Simply Recipes.

There are people who have been blogging for a long time. And then there are people who have been blogging since before blogging was a thing. Elise is one of those people, and you could definitely say she was at the forefront of the food blogging tidal wave. Today, she runs one of the most popular food blogs in the world, and is here to tell us about the journey.

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