Building Traffic and Growing Your Audience Podcasts

129: Forging Your Own Path with David Lebovitz

Alexa @ FBP
by Alexa @ FBP on Dec 19, 2017 in , ,

Welcome to episode 129 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork talks with David Lebovitz about how to develop the ability to stick with it, a lesson that helped him build his brand, and his a-typical approach to blogging analytics.

1999 was a big year for David; he left his job as a pastry chef to write his first cookbook, Room for Dessert and started a recipe blog. Little did he know that he was becoming one of the pioneers of the food blogging industry!

From there, David moved to Paris, wrote a few more cookbooks, and learned how to do what he loves while providing value to his readers. You’ll learn about his philosophy on email etiquette, his favorite social media platform, and why his blog is so important to his cookbook-writing process.

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122: Site Speed in a Mobile-First World with Lauren Gray

Alexa @ FBP
by Alexa @ FBP on Oct 31, 2017 in ,

Welcome to episode 122 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork talks with Lauren Gray from Once Coupled about mobile-first considerations, site speed recommendations, and theme frameworks.

Mobile-first, frameworks, photo size, https…you’ve probably heard these terms in the blogging space before. And the words alone are enough to make your head spin.

Developer and Food Blogger Pro Expert Lauren Gray is a pro at helping you make these tech decisions for your blog. And while they might seem like small decisions, they really will have a big impact on your site’s usability, search engine ranking, and workflow. This episode focuses on why you should start thinking about making these decisions for your business.

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117: How to Sustain a Successful Blog for 10+ Years with Maria Lichty

Alexa @ FBP
by Alexa @ FBP on Sep 26, 2017 in ,

Welcome to episode 117 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork talks with Maria Lichty from Two Peas and Their Pod about how blogging has changed in the past 10 years.

When Maria started blogging at Two Peas and Their Pod, the food blogging industry looked quite different.

Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest weren’t around, videos weren’t as popular, and the industry as a whole was much smaller.

But Maria has learned to adapt to this quick-changing world and to work to her strengths while growing her blog. She has hired a team to help her manage her social media and video work while she focuses on the work she loves like recipe testing, photography, and more.

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113: How to Gain 90K Instagram Followers in 2 Years with Ashley Walterhouse

Alexa @ FBP
by Alexa @ FBP on Aug 29, 2017 in ,

Welcome to episode 113 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork talks with Ashley Walterhouse about working with brands, building her following, and growing her Instagram account to over 90K followers in two years.

Yep, that says 90K. In two years!

If you’re anything like me, you randomly post to Instagram whenever you remember to in hopes of gaining followers and getting some click-throughs to your website.

But Ashley’s social media success is proof that it’s helpful to have a strategy when growing your social media presence. Posting at the right times every day, engaging with comments, and sharing the right recipes all play into growing your Instagram account.

Ashley has cracked the code on Instagram growth and engagement, and she’s sharing how she managed to grow her two-year-old blog, Fit Mitten Kitchen, into a full-time job.

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102: Write More, Write Better, and Write Smarter with Gabriela Pereira

Alexa @ FBP
by Alexa @ FBP on Jun 13, 2017 in ,

Welcome to episode 102 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork talks to Gabriela Pereira about becoming a better writer and building a community around your writing.

Gabriela got her MFA in 2010, and after she graduated, she realized that a lot of people don’t actually need a formal education process in order to write. If you give yourself permission to own your creativity and writing, and if you learn a few key skills along the way, you can be a writer.

She started DIY MFA to teach others how they can do exactly that.

By focusing on the work at hand, Gabriela has been able to practice, evaluate, and fine-tune her craft and teach others how to do the same. Gabriela’s strategies about finding the right writing system, tracking productivity, staying inspired, and understanding strengths and weaknesses all play into finding one’s voice and writing style.

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100: How FBP Listeners Have Used the Podcast to Grow Their Blogs and Businesses

Alexa @ FBP
by Alexa @ FBP on May 30, 2017 in , , ,

Welcome to episode 100 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, we’re celebrating our 100th episode with a special community episode!

There have been 99 Food Blogger Pro Podcast episodes before this one, and we’ve heard from a lot of amazing people. From full-time bloggers to SEO experts to social media pros, this podcast has seen no shortage of inspirational interviewees!

We’re really excited about this episode because we’re hearing from you. We asked our listeners what their favorite Food Blogger Pro Podcast episode was, and we’re so excited about the response. It’s so exciting to hear which episodes came to you at a specific point in your blogging career and how the podcast helped you overcome obstacles, become more confident, and grow your business.

We hope that this episode will help you find an episode you might have missed or remind you of an episode that you’d like to go back and listen to again. Thanks so much for a great 100 episodes!

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096: How to Create the Perfect Recipe Post with Bjork Ostrom

Alexa @ FBP
by Alexa @ FBP on May 2, 2017 in ,

Welcome to episode 96 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork talks about recipe plugins and why you need them.

Regardless of where you are in your blogging journey (just starting out to full-time), chances are you’ve heard the words recipe plugin before. These plugins are incredibly important for food bloggers to be aware of because they not only make your recipes look beautiful, but they also help your blog communicate with search engines like Google and Pinterest.

There are so many elements to consider when choosing a recipe plugin for your blog, and it’s important to choose one that checks off “all of the SEO boxes.” So when Bjork noticed the recipe plugin Pinch of Yum was using wasn’t quite keeping up with the times, he decided it was time to build one in-house.

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

Raquel
by Raquel on Apr 11, 2017 in ,

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.

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

Raquel
by Raquel on Feb 14, 2017 in , , ,

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.

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

Raquel
by Raquel on Dec 6, 2016 in , ,

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.

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