Food Blogging News Roundtable: AI-Generated Food Content, Optimizing Opt-ins, and Building A Personal Brand

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI.

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Ann Morrissey: Welcome back to another episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. This is Ann from the Food Blogger Pro team, and in this episode we’re bringing back Emily Walker, the associate General manager of Food Blogger Pro to the podcast to chat with Bjork about the latest news and updates shared in the blogging newsletter that went out last week. If you didn’t get a chance to read the newsletter, this episode covers the key blogging updates and explains why they’re important for food bloggers. Emily and Bjork will chat through topics like how to spot AI-generated food content, best practices for your email opt-in forms, and how to build a personal brand as a food blogger. Since this is still a new format for us, we’d love to hear what you think. If you enjoy this style of episode and want to hear more like it, let us know. Your feedback helps shape what we create next. And now without further ado, I’ll pass it over to Bjork and Emily.

Bjork Ostrom: Emily. Hey, we’re back. We’re back. We’re doing it again.

Emily Walker: You can’t get rid of me yet.

Bjork Ostrom: How does it feel? Number two.

Emily Walker: It’s good. I’m

Bjork Ostrom: Five seconds in. How does it feel?

Emily Walker: Good. I’m ready to log off. No, I’m happy to be back.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s good to be back. One of the things that is great about these podcasts is we are able to shine a light on some really important stuff that comes through in the email newsletter that we send out, but that many people aren’t able to get or read, or maybe the people do get it and they don’t read it because they’re podcast people. I’m like that. The way that I prefer to get news and information and learn is through a podcast. Our hope with this is to take that newsletter that we send out, which you can sign up for if you just go to food blogger pro.com, sign up for the email list. You’ll be getting this as an email along with other emails, but our thought was, Hey, let’s take one time a month to sit down and talk through some of the stuff that the team have surfaced as important conversations for people who are food creators. And that’s what we’re going to do today. So we have a handful of articles. This first one was a fun one because it was a name that I recognized. It’s always fun for me to see these people who have been creating for a decade. So this is from Carol from a Chef’s Kitchen. Do you want to cue this up a little bit and then we will talk through it?

Emily Walker: Yeah, so I actually first found this article, Dianne Jacob has an amazing newsletter for food creators, and she had sent this out a few weeks ago, and it is just kind of diving into everything you need to know about AI generated food content. And this really resonated with me because obviously I know it exists, and sometimes it’s super apparent when something is AI-generated, but more often than not, it’s hard to tell. And so this article was just based on a question that the author had received from a friend, and the question was perhaps it’s obvious and I’m just unaware, but how do you tell if a recipe is AI-generated? I’m generally fairly tech savvy, but I have to admit, I’m not sure what I’m looking for to recognize ai. And so in this article, they talk about just the prevalence of AI generated food content. It kind of blew my mind that 75% of pins on Pinterest are now AI generated. That was

Bjork Ostrom: Crazy. Yeah, I’d be interested to see statistically to look where that’s from, but point being, and it might even be like new pins coming onto Pinterest. Point being, this is where I think there’s an interesting debate. My initial thought is like, this is a problem and it’s a problem for these platforms because they are now having to deal with this AI content. And so can you talk a little bit about what Carol talks about in this article about just some of the issues that she’s seeing with AI generated content?

Emily Walker: You mean how you can tell that it’s AI-generated?

Bjork Ostrom: Or even just before getting to that why it’s an issue? I mean, we all know as creators, we don’t want that to be something that we’re dealing with, but what is the issue with the ai? Well, and I’ll maybe do some commentary and then you can jump in as well.

Emily Walker: Okay.

Bjork Ostrom: My thought with it is it’s an issue specifically in the world of food because what you are dealing with is people who are creating food related content and then the images associated with that are really appealing, but the recipes are AI-generated as well and probably aren’t as high of quality. They’re probably going to have mistakes. And so I think that’s really the issue for these platforms is that they are having this content that’s created, that’s engaging, that’s interesting that a lot of people are interacting with, but then the end result, if you are actually making that is probabilistically low, that it’s going to turn out well, at least at this point because that recipe has also AI generated. It’s not been tested, it’s not been, people haven’t done it in a real kitchen. A lot of times you’d look and it’s like she was talking in this article about being able to find where a Facebook page is originated from. And a lot of times you see consistent, it’s the area that it was within the Facebook, there’s a Facebook transparency area where you’re able to get more information about who a creator is and what kind of content the grid. And so anyways, the point with it is that, wow, suddenly we’re getting a lot of this content that’s being created on these platforms that is not somebody actually testing a recipe.

Emily Walker: I think I mean, obviously there’s a big difference between on Tailwind you can use AI to help generate a pin. What it’s doing is using your images, your photographs of your recipe, and then adding text and a caption. And that’s very different from what she’s talking about in this article, which is fully AI generated photos, like going in and saying, I want a photograph of a bowl of oatmeal with berries on top and almond butter and a spoon. And I think then that, or people who are having AI create the photographs and then sending to a completely AI-generated website where you’re saying the recipes are unreliable, there’s not even a human behind any of this. And so I think the reason for this article is to point out, okay, we need to be aware of this because these are now competitors in this space. And also to know, okay, if this is what AI-generated content looks like, if this is what AI-generated food photography looks like, how can I look different than that? How can I make sure when someone sees my photos or my pins on Pinterest or comes to my site that they immediately know, oh, there’s a human here. And I think it’s really interesting because often on the forum we’ll see people asking, can I start a food blog and not show my face? Can I create content without me being in the reels? And we used to say, yeah, yeah, of course. As long as you’re creating good recipes and writing good content, you don’t need to be there. And after reading this article, and I mean, I just think more and more that my answer now is probably not, which I hate to say I totally understand not wanting to have your face be everywhere, but yeah, because I mean, one of the things she says, especially, I mean she talks about how to identify an AI generated food blog. And one of the things is well, looking out for a super high volume of recipe production, also just generic looking even they use AI-generated photos of humans on the about page, but you can just kind of tell when something’s a little off with them. But yeah, just lacking that personality is how you can tell that something is an AI-generated food blog. And I just thought that was really interesting.

Bjork Ostrom: I think one of the things that’s important to point out, you can create a business and you don’t have to be the subject of it. You can have massive success and you don’t need to be doing short form videos, but if you are interested in being a content creator where you create content and from that content, you are monetizing it with a brand partnership with ads on a website, with even selling your own product because you have a personal brand more and more your own humanity is going to be the differentiator as the landscape around content changes and as content can be artificially generated. And so I think that’s an important reminder here is like it’s not about creating a business. It’s not about do I have to show up in videos or have my face everywhere on my site? Because there’s lots of ways you can create a business and you don’t need to be the center of it, but if you’re going to create a content business and you’re going to be monetizing that content, you have to differentiate yourself today because it’s really easy to create content that is faceless or nameless or that sometimes has a face and has a name, but that too is artificially generated. And so really leaning into your own story, creating compelling content that people can relate to, having a unique angle or message for that content that you are creating, having it be purpose driven, why are you creating that content? How does that relate to your story? All of this stuff is becoming more important as we see more and more of this AI slop people call it, but increasingly it won’t be slop.

Emily Walker: Yeah, it’s not going to be slop for long.

Bjork Ostrom: It’ll be like AI polish. In two years a post. This will have to be updated because it’ll become increasingly harder to see if a piece of content, like a photo for sure, but eventually video as well, is something that is AI generated or not. And so I think the answer for me is always like, how do you differentiate yourself from that? And I think you do that through story, through your own humanity, through showing up consistently, through engaging, making actual connections with readers on a one-to-one, one to many level. It might be sending dms, it might be replying back in comments, it might be sending video messages back to somebody who sends you something. All of these are ways that we can think strategically around doing things that at this point, it’s harder for AI to do so.

Emily Walker: And just that was obviously big picture, but just to quickly kind of throw out some of the things she suggests looking for when you’re online. At some of these photographs, you want to look for strange shapes or edges to foods. The textures are often a little off. So things that appear, sauces that appear too smooth or glossy, you can check shadows and reflections of food to make sure that they’re in the correct direction. Look at the background and props and see if anything looks like it’s floating or is missing a chair leg or something like that. Symmetrical plating of food that looks unnatural or garnishes that don’t match the cuisine that they’re eating.

Bjork Ostrom: She had this great example of that one where it’s like you zoom into this eggplant and it’s actually little four-leaf clovers.

Emily Walker: Yum.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s what it’s garnished with,

Emily Walker: Which is great. Just go out to your front yard, clip some grass, and scatter it over your brownies or something. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. But I think even for me, there’s been times where I’m scrolling Facebook, I’m looking at Pinterest, I’m like, I don’t know at this point for the best, there’s some that are poor quality or there may be use, they’re using some free AI tool and you can tell, but I don’t know at this point if it’s the best AI tool creating an image if I would be able to reliably tell a difference between ’em. Yeah,

Emily Walker: It reminds me of the, did you ever see the Paul Rudd? I think it was back on when Buzzfeed was king, and it was like Paul Rudd at a million different ages and you had to guess which was older and it was nearly impossible. That’s kind how I feel like this would be.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, for sure. It’s impossible to do. Well, it’s not impossible. It’s really hard to do hard. It’ll become increasingly hard as these engines become better and better. I think in the recipe world, the advantage that we have still is if somebody goes to this site, if they make it, if it doesn’t turn out well, then it’s like, well, you’re probably not going to go back there. You’re not going to trust. We’re going to talk about this idea of trust and transparency and notoriety in a little bit here, but all of it is like it’ll increasingly get better. The recipes themselves will get better. It’ll be easier for people to create this type of content. And so the answer if you want to be a content creator is to think about ways that you are novel, unique, that you are different, that you are more reliable. Those are the tools that we have, especially if some of these platforms like Pinterest or Facebook don’t have an incentive to decrease the reach that this content has, which is another big question. If they find that actually people are engaging with AI content, people are using it a lot. There probably isn’t a huge incentive for some of these platforms to disincentivize people to create AI content because these platforms just want more users. They want more engagement. And so it’s our job to figure out how do we as creators have a strategic advantage? And again, last time I’ll say it, our humanity, I think our storytelling that is kind of the through line within all of it, our connection, our relationships

Bjork Ostrom: As opposed to transactional content.

Emily Walker: The last thing I would say about it is that obviously you want your food photography to be beautiful. That’s what brings people in. It captures them, makes them want to make your recipe. But I think this is also a good reminder that you want people to be able to replicate your food photographs too. So I think something about a lot of these AI images is that they’re perfect in a way. And I think maybe just a reminder that your food photography doesn’t need to be perfect. It needs to be relatable and doable, and people will feel proud when they make your recipe and it looks vaguely like the finished product. So maybe just something to keep in mind too as you’re photographing your recipes,

Bjork Ostrom: And I think there are ways that you can brand your images, you can have your kitchen or certain dishes or even maybe your dog is in the background, and all of those can help create a unique story within the images that you are sharing as well that I think can draw people in. So great article from a familiar creator. Carol, great job. With that, thanks for sharing it. Let’s talk about opt-ins here from our friends at Kit. Email’s really important. A lot of people are talking about email and the importance of email. Tell us a little bit about this and we can talk through some of the takeaways here.

Emily Walker: I feel like this is a great kind of resource just to keep bookmarked about how to create opt-ins from beginning to end, what opt-ins are the best practices, and even some really useful examples from creators including some food bloggers. So the articles on kit again, and some of the main takeaways of just things to keep in mind as you’re creating email opt-ins to put on your site that you should always customize them with your brand colors and fonts so that it looks cohesive as someone is scrolling through your site. You want to keep the copy in the little opt-in block, short and sweet. It shouldn’t be like paragraphs, but use it really wisely. Remind people why they should sign up for your email list, like the benefits of becoming a subscriber, what they’ll get, maybe how often you send out emails, convey your personality, and this was one I hadn’t heard of or really thought of, but to include social proof. So you could even say, join 10,000 other subscribers and get my email list or a short quote from a subscriber. This is their email is the highlight of my week. Or just anything that would let someone know like, oh, I want to join this party, I want to be a part of this. Other people are enjoying it. I imagine I will too. But yeah, just some kind of good reminders about even if you’re looking to refresh your opt-ins or maybe increase your conversion rates, what you can do.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. One of the things I think of with email opt-ins or collecting email outages, number one, you just have to have a strong deliverable for you as a business after. You don’t want to just get emails to get emails. And in the world of commerce, you have an e-commerce company makes sense why they want to get emails so they can send you a bunch of emails after and be like, Hey, buy this new frog enclosure. So it’s the world that we are in. We have frogs. We found four frogs this morning and a mouse.

Emily Walker: Oh my God.

Bjork Ostrom: In our window. Well, so that’s going to be the activity after school. Solvi, our daughter, was so excited to come back and to catch and release the mouse and the frogs. So if you are a frog company and you’re selling frog products, you get people on your email list so you can sell them more. In our world as creators, you are selling content, so you want to get people back to your content. Sometimes you’ll have a cookbook, you maybe have meal plans that you’d sell, all of which would be great reasons to have email. But also then you need to have a compelling reason for people to originally sign up. And I think that’s the thing that we sometimes forget about. We know in theory like, okay, we need to have one of these opt-in forms, whether it’s a popup or an inline form that is within your content and it’s like, great, we get emails and we’re getting people to sign up, but if we think really strategically about it, the reason that people are signing up is because they want something. And the example that I always give the spectrum is like you could go from sign up for our email list and you pay $100. So that’s on the left side all the way on the right side. Sign up for our email list and we’ll give you $100. Okay, so neither one of those is bad nor good. It just depends what is the benefit to you over the period of that person joining. And if the benefit is that you were able to send people back to your blog or maybe you have a product, you can get closer to that, we will give you $100 point if email is your primary thing and you need it as a way to be the main source of income, and Substack would be an example, you probably want to be on the end of asking people to pay. But I think what happens is so often we land right in the middle. It’s kind of like neutral. It’s like sign up for our email list and we’ll send you emails. And it’s like, well, some people want that. They want to follow along and they want emails from people that they are interested in getting emails from. But if we can spend a little bit of time thinking about how to get closer to that psychological, we’ll give you a hundred dollars. Maybe it’s not that, but maybe it’s something that’s a huge pain point. It’s something really beneficial. It’s something that makes somebody’s life easier and it’s for a really specific thing that somebody is trying to search. So maybe somebody on an instant pot, 10 ways to use your new Instant pot post, you have an offer that’s like my best instant pot and email opt-in, offer my best instant pot recipes. So suddenly that’s very value aligned. And so my big thing with email to remind people of is there’s the technical piece. Okay, are you going to do an inline, if it’s inline, does it fade out the site and focus in on the form when you’re scrolling? Is there a popup? All of those are technical considerations that could increase or decrease email signups, gated print. So if somebody clicks print, do they have to put their email address in order to print a recipe? All of those are technical. But then to think really strategically around what is the offering within that? In the gated print example, it’s obvious you get to print the recipe and you have to pay for that way by giving your email address. But in the other examples where somebody is just stumbling across an opt-in, the more compelling that you can make that the higher sign up, that the email that somebody is going to enter their email. And then you just need to make sure that you are delivering on that promise once people sign up over a long period of time and continuing to offer good emails that are compelling and helpful. And then also we do this with all of our businesses, removing people after a period of time, if they’re not using it, it’s going to help it be more affordable, but it’s also going to make sure that you have a clean list. So it’s kind of email hygiene as well.

Emily Walker: And I think it was a interview or a live q and a we did with Molly, from what Molly made where she said, the more your opt-ins can solve problems for people, the more likely they are to sign up. So more of like, are you struggling to get dinner on the table? Here are my 15 favorite dinner recipes in under 20 minutes versus here are my 10 favorite desserts kind of thing. I mean, it’s the same when you go online, you’re shopping at Gap.com and they’re like, sign up for our email list, get 15% off. They know you’re there to shop, and then they know you’d like a discount. That’s a great example. Yeah, it’s that same mindset. If someone comes to your website for a 15 minute dinner, they’re there for an easy dinner, give them do something that they want. They want already

Bjork Ostrom: That’s aligned,

Emily Walker: Already aligned.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great.

Emily Walker: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. That’s a great one to check out. Our friends at Kit. And that’s linked in the email. This is a longer one. It’s a little bit, and it adds on. So there’s this phrase, eat expertise, authority, trustworthiness, and then it was like EEAT, right? So it expanded. And then EEAT. This is all around Google. What is Google looking for? So it’s expertise, authority, trustworthiness, EAT, and then it’s like actually it’s EEAT experience, expertise, authority, trustworthiness. This article from Search Engine Land takes it from EEAT Eat to NEATT.

Emily Walker: With a double

Bjork Ostrom: T, the N, it adds an N and a T, which is just this is the Jumping the shark moment.

Emily Walker: I think we need to find a new acronym at this point,

Bjork Ostrom: But I think the spirit of this is really good because it’s a reminder of what these search engines are trying to do. So let’s talk about, maybe you can share what the new additions are in Jason’s opinion from search engine land, and then we can talk more about what this means for creators.

Emily Walker: Yeah, sure. So this is an article that is talking through what we’ve been chatting through ad nauseum lately. It’s the SEO and the age of ai. And it explains in great detail how AI assistive engines are answering questions. So I think at this point, I view this article as a nice to know type thing. I’m not sure they’re really practical takeaways or steps that are immediately going to change how you create content, but I think it is useful to be aware of how increasingly, how Google is sourcing information and what it’s prioritizing and putting in AI answers and all that kind of stuff. But in the article, they say that the most important thing you can do is to educate AI engines with clarity, credibility, and consistency, build algorithmic trust and become the brand they consistently recommend. So really the clearest description I found of it was that you should provide relevant content in the right format to become the trusted entity on a specific topic. So I feel like the thing that kind of changed a smidge in this article for me was the increasing importance of formatting in your blog posts and structuring your site in a way that is easy to navigate and makes logical topical sense.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. This is me commenting on me setting this up. I was looking at an article that was linked to within this article, which is maybe why you were like, wait, why is he talking about, and

Emily Walker: They do talk about it, but yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, he was talking about this neat signal and then within that he was talking about the importance of, so it’s two different articles. We can link to both of those. So one of the articles he links to within this is that NEAT article, but this idea that there are SEO tactics and then there’s, I almost think about it as the spirit of SEO or GEO, generative experience optimization or generative engine optimization. There’s the spirit of what’s happening and then there’s the specifics of what’s happening. And specifics would be advice like, hey, always include metadata, have clear structure. Here’s what clear structure means. Here’s how you can organize a post. The spirit of something is like the EAT as an example, or N-E-E-A-T-T is like Google or these other search engines are trying to figure out who are trusted sources and also trying to figure out what is content that’s easy to consume and that’s helpful to scan through that is marked up in a way that is easy to understand what section is what if there’s an FAQ section. And so I think it’s important for us as creators to differentiate the spirit of something versus the specifics of something. And I think the spirit of what we’re doing will generally be unchanged. It’s important for us to be an expert. It’s important for us to write clearly. It’s important for us to be as helpful as possible. It’s important to create a good experience. All of those are the spirit. The specifics will occasionally change what is best practice as it relates to structuring a blog post or metadata or navigation on a website. Those things will shift and evolve. And the nice thing is those are a little bit more concrete, like, hey, here’s some specific advice on what that could look like. Whereas the spirit of something is a little bit more the art side of it. How do I as a creator craft something that is artistic in the way that it is helpful in interesting, engaging? That’s the content side of it versus the science side of it. So What do you feel like for creators were the most important takeaways from this that we should at least be aware of and maybe something that we talk about this idea of a back pocket piece of information, read it, be aware of it, put it in your back pocket, anything that you’d point out as important takeaways within this. Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors, what if your content could earn more and do more for your business audience and your future? You might know Raptive as the ad management platform behind thousands of the world’s top creators, including Pinch of Yum. But today, Raptive is so much more than ads. They’re a true business partner for creators helping you grow your traffic, increase your revenue, and protect your content In an AI driven world, unlike one size fits all platforms, Raptive, customizes strategies for each creator, whether you’re growing a niche food blog or running a multi-site business, they offer expert support in SEO email and monetization strategy. And they’re leading the charge on AI advocacy to protect the future of creator owned content. And the best part, Raptive supports creators at every stage from Rise, their entry level program for growing sites to their top tier Luminary level, their offering scale with you so you can get the right support when you need it the most. Apply now at Raptive.com to get a personalized growth strategy and join a creator community that’s shaping the future of the open web. Thanks again to Raptive for sponsoring this episode.

Emily Walker: Yeah, I think maybe one of the things I thought was that defining your niche and the topic that you actually want to be the expert on seems to be increasingly important, I think. And I think that there’s a reason that a lot of creators are turning to email or substack to have their more personal posts where they share their book recommendations and travel and that kind of thing, because I think that would more and more confuse Google or these AI engines as to what you are offering. So I think my understanding of it is like, okay, my niche is gluten-free baked goods, and that is what I do on my site and that is the information that is what I have an expertise in and focusing on that will be helpful if your end goal is to show up highly in Google or to be in these AI answers. And maybe your goal is not that and that’s totally fine, but if that is your goal, I think that that is becoming more and more important.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, we’ve had multiple interviews with people. I know Lindsay’s talked about this as well, where she’s finding ways to not have her sight be the everything place. It’s not where she’s talking about travel. And there was a season of time where it was was talking a lot about lifestyle stuff. None of that is bad, but if you want to do your best to establish yourself as an authority on a certain topic in service of higher probability of ranking well within search engines, one of the ideas that exists, which is generally proven out is that you need to make sure that you’re not talking about frogs and frog care alongside strawberry shortcake because that’s confusing. Are you the expert on frogs? Well, over time we’re becoming that

Emily Walker: Google is going to think that this is the Frog Blogger Pro podcast is at this rate.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, totally. It’s our new focus. It’s our new niche,

Emily Walker: Our new niche. You heard it here first,

Bjork Ostrom: New course coming out soon, but you could talk about that. But it would be within the context of like you said, maybe a Substack account or maybe you’re posting on stories about it as a quick aside. But if you are thinking a lot about search optimization, you want to be intentional about the focus, the niche, the type of content that you’re creating around that. So yeah, great article to that in the show notes as well. Talking about keywords here, this is actually from our friends at Clariti. Jen wrote this article around this idea of just keywords not being the end all be all, and it kind of talks about the idea of the importance of structure as well. So relates a little bit to the previous conversation that we’re having.

Emily Walker: Yeah, I feel like this is the antidote to the previous article in that it is very concrete guidebook, it even has a checklist that you can print out for how to structure a blog post. And I feel like everyone is always asking this. Again, I don’t think it’s a huge shift, but a good reminder as you’re writing posts what you want to include, I can highlight a few things to make sure that your title tag is short, clear and keyword aligned and that your H1 matches the title, but naturally it doesn’t have to be an exact duplicate.

Bjork Ostrom: And real quick for people who aren’t familiar, title is like what shows up if you bookmark? I know nobody really bookmarks things anymore, but if you were to bookmark a post or usually not always, but usually if you were searching in a search result that’s going to show the title. And in the recipe world, usually, not always, but the title tag matches the H1, which would show up at the top of the blog post. Sometimes what you’ll find is people will include little prompts within the title tag. So it’ll be fluffy pancakes, super easy or three ingredients, like a little bit of an extra prompt within the title tag to include increased click-through rate in a search result. So, just a real quick differentiator, keep going there, but title tag and then H1 naturally matches the title tag.

Emily Walker: Make sure that in your intro paragraph you hook the reader within the first three lines similar to the importance of having a hook on a reel or something that you want people to that probably that may be the only thing they read on the post until they jump to recipes. So you want to make it worth their while. Use subheadings to break the content into clear sections. Include at least two to three internal links and external links to credible sources. Include all texts in your images, we know this, and a clear call to action tied to the reader’s goal and then a conclusion that reinforces the takeaway. So I think most creators probably know these things, but I think it’s a good reminder and I feel like a few things too, especially the hook and the subheadings that are more and more necessary.

Bjork Ostrom: I know Mr. Beast and YouTube also Feastables, he’s in the food world, he talks about that with YouTube And he talks about the importance of the title and then the initial hook. And then once you have people like the title on a thumbnail, the title of the image or the video itself, and then making sure you get right into it, you hook people right away and then actually deliver throughout the video. And I think that’s kind of general best practice for content, create something really compelling that’s interesting, that actually pays off right away when people click into it and then make sure that you are delivering on that through the piece of content. And so just all really great reminders, nice to have that little checklist from the Clarity team, and that’s a blog post that folks can check out as well. Let’s talk about AI mode ai. A lot of people talking about AI seems like that’s the only thing people are talking about. It’s usually with doom and gloom, a little bit of fear, but this one has some positive pieces to it, which is encouraging people to actually click to the website.

Emily Walker: Yeah, so I felt like this was a good news for content creators. And in the article they show that it appears to be that Google is listening to feedback about AI mode and how it currently exists and trying to make it better for obviously for users but also for creators. The main takeaway from this is that they’re going to be adding links in a few different places in AI mode, so that in the carousels, in AI mode, inline links, and then also in the web guide. To be totally honest, I’m not a big user of AI mode or web guide or anything like that, so I can’t tell you exactly what this looks like, just that it means more links to the original sources,

Bjork Ostrom: Which has got to be good. It’s interesting. One of the things that I remember learning about within the last few years that’s kind of cool is so if you are on desktop, I think it’s easier to see visually with desktop and you search for something, the menu bar of options changes based on the search. An example, we’ll do a couple different examples. If you search for let’s say French toast on my search here, it’s it lands on all the tab and then next is images, then shopping, then videos, then short videos, then forums, and then more, which would be maps, web news, books and tools, which would be kind of filtering. And then on the left of that is AI mode. Now let’s say I searched for Northern Leopard Frog, it would be, it’s actually exactly the same. So it’s not as cool. Again, it’s all images, videos, shopping, news, short pages, which I think is the same. But let’s say it’s

Emily Walker: What if we ask a question?

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, great, what are the ingredients in French toast? So if I do that, it switches things up a little bit, it’ll give me an AI overview, it’ll give me, people also ask, it’ll give me the recipe itself, which is from our friends that tastes better from scratch. But then the navigation is all images, short videos, videos, forums, shopping, more tools. So anyways, all that to say, one of the really important things to understand about Google is based on the search, they’re always shifting and adjusting not only what’s presented within the search result on the all tab, but they’re also changing where you land when the actual search happens. And one of the questions is always like, is there going to be a point, or to what degree does AI mode play into things where right now you pull up ChatGPT, you do a search, you look for something, you ask a question, it’s essentially just a thread of you having a conversation with ChatGPT. But Google is different in that they need to make money and they make money by sponsored links. And those sponsored links, it’s one of the primary ways that they make money. Those sponsored links need to show up within a search result. And so there is still reliance for Google to have some of the traditional type of search behavior, but what we’re seeing is some of the experiments that they’re doing with putting people into AI mode, or maybe it’s not putting people into AI mode, but it’s essentially having an AI overview that shows when you do a search and within that, then the question is always like, to what degree are they going to be including links to your content or sponsored links ads essentially. And so anytime that we see Google starting to include more links is a good thing. The more that links show up, the more beneficial it is going to be for us. One of the things that I found interesting was there was a thread, a tweet thread, we won’t read through it, but it was the VP of search at Google saying in some of their experiments they’ve started to realize people actually clicking on links, which is kind of interesting. Anything else that you feel like is important from this article that we should point out for creators?

Emily Walker: Yeah, I mean I think just echoing what you just said, this is not, we have been trained to use Google to click out and not as a search box. And so I think that they are trying to in a way kind of go back to their roots a little bit like swerving back. So anyways, really nothing that a creator would change or do based on this, but just don’t despair

Bjork Ostrom: For sure. It’s like some good news. It’s also the hard acknowledging the hard thing right now, which is we don’t really know how this is playing out and what it will look like when it’ll never actually settle on a now it is this and it will be this forever. It’s ever evolving. And it’s hard because do we block try and block Google’s like Gemini, do we not? There is no clear answer. And one of the things that I come back to is just thinking in bets and we’re not trying to figure out what’s a hundred percent guarantee this way or that way. We’re placing a bet, and some of this stuff is a 50/50 bet, and our bet might be it’s better for us to block all chatbots we haven’t done, but we know a lot of really smart people who have, and they’re just placing a different bet than we are at this point. We might change our bet later down the line if we have different information, but one of the things that’s helpful to do is to continually gather information to be informed because the more informed you are, probably the better you are going to get at betting. But I think the important thing to point out is we are often going to bet wrong, and in the world of business, you’ll never have a hundred percent information and you’ll never have a hundred percent guarantee. And so if you have bet wrong on something in the past or acknowledging you will bet wrong on something in the future to not get too down on yourself because that’s just what it means to do business. You’re placing bets based on the best information that you have and sometimes it’s helpful to know how other people are betting, but sometimes not. Maybe you just have a gut intuition around a thing and you place a bet and that bet might be wrong or it might be right. And as things unfold, we will get better at placing bets, but especially in the early stages, a lot of us are just kind trying to figure it out. We don’t have complete information. And so point being, don’t be too hard on yourself And don’t despair if you feel like you don’t know because nobody does. And

Emily Walker: Also too, even just knowing when you are logging into Google Analytics and you’re seeing these shifts, it might not be anything that you’re doing. It is just the search landscape figuring itself out right now and when this kind of thing you can say, oh, maybe my traffic is going up because there are more links in AI overviews or it’s going down because of this. Just kind of having an awareness that stuff is out of your control and there you’re not doing necessarily anything wrong, but just kind of being aware of it and adjusting as needed but not freaking out and that’s

Bjork Ostrom: Great.

Emily Walker: Changing everything. Yeah,

Bjork Ostrom: I love that. And I think a lot of that goes back to that idea of the spirit of what we are doing versus the specifics. If you know that you are every day getting better at creating in our world good recipes, compelling content, engaging content, content that you’re proud of, and you continue to show up and do that, you get tiny bit better at that every day forever as you move closer to being a really skilled creator, which means connecting with people, solving a problem, helping people get from point A to point B. If you are able to figure out how to do that, once you get the momentum with solving for a problem for people, the question then just becomes, what do you do with the attention that people have given you because you’ve helped them do that thing. Maybe it might be entertainment. For a lot of people it’s just pure entertainment, but a lot of times it’s helping people solve a problem. In our world. Often that’s the version of the content that we are creating is you want to get a recipe you don’t know how to do it, we’re going to help you do that. And as you get better at doing that, then the question is how do you want to capture some of the value that you’re creating? Some people might be good with just creating and they don’t want to capture value, but for those who want to create a business out of it, then it’s like, okay, am I going to have my own product? Am I going to work with a brand to promote their product? Am I going to use ads on my website and try and get people back to my website? Am I going to be exclusively on YouTube and try and get ad revenue? All of those are the options that come once you get good at getting that attention. Great. Closing out with the Food Blogger Pro article here. So all about personal brand kind of encompasses all of the conversations that we’ve had today just around the importance of being a creator, but being a creator that is personality forward.

Emily Walker: And we don’t have to spend a ton of time on it, but I do feel like it’s a good blog post to read all about how to build a personal brand as a food blogger and just reminding us all that your unique perspective, your stories, your values, your voice are things that AI can’t replicate and just leaning into that and actually connecting with your audience, not as a perfect human being, but as you is really valuable and worthwhile and probably the thing that will keep your brand chugging along for years, decades to come.

Bjork Ostrom: I think it’s important to point out this has always kind of been true, but it’s never been more true. And you could create a really strong business eight years ago based on tactics in the kitchen. How long do you boil an egg? How do you wash a whisk? How long does a chicken stay good for all of these types of transactional pieces of content? That answer, really specific question, you could have gotten really good, and I know lots of people who did get really good at creating that type of content and they created, you work with a writer, you have a writer team, you do keyword research, you build out a huge process and funnel and you assign articles to people or maybe you’re writing the articles and you build out an authoritative site all around how long food lasts or maybe it’s a section within your site, how long food lasts. And so there’s hundreds of thousands of people doing all different search queries around that each day. That doesn’t really exist today in the way that it did 7, 8, 9, 10 years ago or even like 6, 7, 5, 6, 7, 8 years ago. And so I think it’s helpful to give some context around why we talk about this idea of personal brand unique voice humanity. And the reason is because some of those older ways of creating a content business are no longer as viable because there’s been a more seamless, efficient way to get that information. It’s AI overviews, it’s ChatGPT, it’s asking your home device, whether it be an Echo or a Google Home or whatever it might be, and that will give you those answers in a way that we had to use 10 blue links before. And so sometimes I think what can happen is we can have these conversations where we’re just thinking like, Hey, be personality forward. I got to show up. But it’s helpful to step back and say, why is that? The reason that’s true is because we are in a world where the web is different than it was five years ago, and if you want to create a content business, it’s going to be more about you than just strictly information.

Emily Walker: And I think after the last few articles we chatted through about, oh, here’s how you structure your blog post and internal links and blah blah, blah. Yes, super important, but also with your voice, with your stories, with your experiences, how you created the recipe, why you created the recipe, where it came from, your background. I mean, I think that is maybe not why people will click on the recipe, but once they get to your site, that is why they will join your email list or come back for more recipes or next time do a branded search for Pinch of Yum chocolate chip cookies. Yeah, I just felt like this was a good article to end it with, kind of a fun one. It’s fun to be yourself. It is back in the original blogging days, it is a brain dump word vomit. This is me. And that is how people connect and why people come back.

Bjork Ostrom: And I think all within, maybe the needle to thread here is how do you do that in a way, speaking specifically on a blog, how do you be personality forward? How do you show your humanity within the content that you’re creating on your blog, which is maybe like, and then be interested in your thoughts on this. It’s not necessarily personality light, but it’s very sharp in delivering the content. So I’m talking to the world of recipes. You have a recipe, you go personality light. An example is Lindsay’s been doing this for a long time. You’re starting to see other instances of creators doing this where she has a little note from Lindsay around why she likes these single serve cottage cheese pancakes, right? So what she’s not talking about is the trip we went on to New York recently and why that was so great, and so there’s personality sprinkled in, but it’s personality as it relates to the recipe, it’s

Emily Walker: Relevant. Whereas

Bjork Ostrom: As, yeah, there might be other platforms like Instagram stories or Substack or even just an email that’s sent out that is personality heavy where it doesn’t need to be optimized or doesn’t have to be a clear focus. It can be like, Hey, I went on this trip. Here’s the different outfits I wore, and three cool things that I found this week on Amazon. Like, okay, that’s kind of random. It’s all over the place, but it might be really interesting. Great place for that is email. So part of, I feel like what we’re having to do as creators is think about how do we be a hundred percent of our personality on the different platforms respective to the personality max on those platforms, and a hundred percent of personality in a recipe blog post is probably going to be 25% of how your personality and humanity might show up on an email that you send out recapping your last week and why it was a great week or a hard week or whatever it might be.

Emily Walker: Does that feel accurate or would you add anything to that based on the things that we’ve talked about?

Emily Walker: I totally agree and I think and did a really great job in this blog post of talking about staying consistent across platforms. And that doesn’t mean, like you said, being 100% on all of them, but it does mean like, okay, what is my voice? Is it warm, nurturing? Let me hold your hand and help you make this recipe. Then figure out how to convey that on each platform. Yeah, that’s great. Yeah, that’s all I would add.

Bjork Ostrom: Love that. Great article, Ann. Props to Ann and props to you and the team for putting together these emails. It’s super helpful. Even for me, we work, we have a newsletter channel in Slack where we’re all, if we ever come across something, we’ll drop it in there and then we surface all those in the newsletter, but oftentimes there’ll be articles that I haven’t seen, and so it’s super helpful for me to read through those and to talk through those as well. So thanks everybody for tuning in. I will say maybe this would be a fun thing if people have articles that they come across that they feel like are helpful. What’s the best way to loop our team in on those? Emily?

Emily Walker: Yeah, I was just going to say that I think it’d be fun. If you have anything you would like us to discuss, you can just email me [email protected]. We would love to chat through other articles because like Bjork said, we cannot surface everything, so we welcome anything you guys would like to chat about from frogs to food blogging. We are all yours.

Bjork Ostrom: We’ll have to give an update on how our frog rescue went here.

Emily Walker: Please do.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay. Sounds good, Emily. You’re the best. Thanks for doing this. Thanks everybody for listening, and we’ll see you next week.

Emily Walker: Bye. 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 helped 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.