How Pinch of Yum Uses Instagram to Grow Their Email List

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI.

Bjork Ostrom: If you’re a food creator, chances are you’ve come across Comment for DM tools. Using that functionality within Instagram can result in some huge wins, but the tools are really complicated and they’re oftentimes built for marketers, like people who are in the tool day in and day out, not built for food bloggers or recipe creators specifically. That’s where Grocers List comes in. It’s built from the ground up for food creators. So if you’re looking to grow your email list, get more traffic to your site, or maybe earn more affiliate sales all without spending a ton of extra time or having to learn a complicated tool, then Grocers List is for you. And what’s really cool is they’re seeing some pretty impressive numbers, like 75% click-through rates, which is kind of mind blowing, and 5% opt-in rates from people who are engaging with content that is sent through the Grocers List platform. And they’re actually doing an Office hour session soon. So if you want to see the behind-the-scenes of how creators are using it, you can sign up at up at grocerslist.com and a little bonus for you as a podcast listener, if you use the promo code podcast, you’ll get your first month completely free. Again, that’s grocerslist.com promo code podcast.

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 someone you all might be pretty familiar with. It’s Lindsay from Pinch of Yum. We are also happy to kick off our mini series sponsored by Grocers List. In this conversation, Bjork and Lindsay are talking all about Pinch of Yum’s current Instagram strategy, especially when it comes to using reels and DM automation tools. Lindsay shares more about why her opinion of DM automation tools has changed over time, and she gets into the nitty gritty of how she’s been repurposing old blog content and using Grocers List as a strategic bridge to get Instagram followers into Pinch of Yum’s email ecosystem. While historically Lindsay had viewed Instagram primarily as a means to build awareness around the brand and new recipes, she’s now being more strategic about the Instagram to email pipeline, and she shares her practical tips for getting started with this mindset shift. It’s a really interesting conversation for thinking about the value of Instagram as a food creator and how you can use it to support the other aspects of your business, like your blog and your email list and make it a more valuable tool for you. We are always happy when Lindsay’s on the podcast and we know you’ll love this episode, so I’m just going to let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Lindsay, welcome to the podcast.

Lindsay Ostrom: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Bjork Ostrom: This feels like the first dedicated time that we’ve had to have a conversation maybe in months.

Lindsay Ostrom: I was going to say maybe this could be a date, kind of like five. You should

Bjork Ostrom: Start recurring podcast interview and we can just cover all the things that we need to talk about in our lives.

Lindsay Ostrom: Love it.

Bjork Ostrom: So that’ll be the first segment is reviewing the schedule for the next week, laundry. Who’s taking the kids to school? No, that won’t be what it is, but it is fun to sit down and talk with you. We’re going to talk about a really specific thing. We’re going to be talking about Instagram. We’re going to be talking a little bit about the return on investment in using Instagram and spending money with a video editor and producing video content. But specifically we’re going to be talking about the Instagram in a transactional nature. Pinch of Yum has always been showing up. You’ve always been showing up on Instagram for over a decade, and one of the things we’ve always kind of wondered is what are the best ways for us to use this platform? And historically it’s been building awareness around a certain recipe with the hopes that people eventually go to the site.

Bjork Ostrom: We’ve occasionally done things like selling meal plans on the platform, but recently we’ve made had some really cool unlocks when it comes to building the email list, getting traffic from Instagram, using Grocers List as a tool, which we’re going to be focusing on, but not just the tool. I think it’s helpful to talk about the nature of that type of transaction on Instagram because you had experimented with it maybe like a year or two ago and then kind of moved away from it a little bit. So talk about what that season was like and starting to experiment with it and maybe some of the initial reasons to hold off on it, and then we’ll talk about what it’s been like recently.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah, so I started using Manychat probably a year, two years ago. We could go back and look kind of around the time that a lot of people were using kind of a DM automation tool. So I think most people who are listening are familiar, but if you’re not familiar, it’s the idea that you could comment on a post on an Instagram post and with a trigger word, so like recipe, and then the recipe would get sent to you in a DM through an automation. And I was using Manychat to kind of give that a first run. I was excited about it because you see people with a lot of engagement, you see people with a lot of, it’s like these posts that gain a lot of traction because they’re getting a lot of this juice of people being like, I want this, I want this.

Lindsay Ostrom: And those are the signals to Instagram to show that content to more people that this content is popular, people want this. So it’s using the automation to get people what they want in a quick way and to also amplify the content that you’re producing. And that kind of helped justify the time a little bit that’s going into that content and getting it to more people. So that was my hope with it when I tried it for the first time with Manychat, was, okay, hopefully this can deliver, not only deliver, give people an easy way to get what they want, but also amplify the content that we’re creating and get it to go farther. And I think it was literally one post I think I did one time, I picked one of our popular recipes. I posted it and my first reaction was like, this is amazing. My phone is, I had the app open. I don’t keep notifications on for Instagram, but I could see the little dms filling up almost immediately.

Bjork Ostrom: Everybody loves me. Me, I

Lindsay Ostrom: Know it’s the very best and worst of social media where you’re like, whoa, this is amazing. Because it’s a whole different way to use, it’s a whole different way to use it. It’s a different ballgame than just like, here’s a thing that I like. And then people may be saying something about it versus Do you want this? Here’s a shortcut to get it. And all of a sudden it feels like it’s blowing up. So I felt amazing initially with it. And then over the next couple days, maybe the next couple of weeks, I started trying to sift through the dms that I had. And a lot of what I use my dms for on Instagram is to grab people’s pictures or their comments about making a recipe. And what I found is that I couldn’t find any of the stuff I was looking for because my dms were all junked up with salmon recipe, send Salmon recipe

Bjork Ostrom: Chicken. Chicken,

Lindsay Ostrom: Right, exactly. Recipe nonsensical. Well, it wasn’t nonsensical, but it was like people trying to get the automation to work or then I’m troubleshooting people. They’re like, why isn’t this sending? And it just all of a sudden after the end and maybe after the initial 12 to 24 hours of this feels amazing. It was like, this is terrible and I can’t find, I’m publishing a new recipe. I know people have probably made it, but I can’t find their comments about it. I can’t find their pictures about it. And that’s a really valuable part of Instagram for me and how we use Instagram for Pinch of Yum. So ultimately I decided I don’t think this is worth it. I don’t think the engagement boost and the amplification of the content, I don’t think it makes sense to lose the authentic communication that I’m able to get from my dms and especially the user generated content that when people send a picture of a recipe. So ultimately it was too messy for me. I decide I didn’t like it. I didn’t think I could handle, and it wasn’t even because of how it worked for people, it was how it felt for me in my dms. It was such a mess. It became something that was taking away from one of the best parts of Instagram to me, which was kind of that communication around recipes.

Bjork Ostrom: So

Lindsay Ostrom: This is setting the stage for boo, that was a bad experience, didn’t like it.

Bjork Ostrom: And part of it too, if I remember at the time, it was purely just traffic. Like, Hey, you will comment on this thing, send a link. You can click on that link and then you can go to the site. I think this is a little bit of a teaser, not that you can’t do this within Manychat now, but I think one of the things that helped shift our opinion on it, I’ll speak for both of us, you can maybe speak for your individual thought processing with it was not only traffic, but also email and the significance of email and email has always been this thing. I think for food creators where it’s been an afterthought, partly because for a lot of us, not for all of us, but for a lot of us, we’re not necessarily selling a thing, we’re just trying to get traffic and email works, but it works really good for transactional content.

Bjork Ostrom: It was pretty good for sending traffic. But one of the things that’s changed now is the value of an email click around first party data. So not only is it traffic, but’s traffic, that’s really valuable because now you’re going to have that identifiable information from somebody that clicks over and there’s reporting that they do around how much you’re actually earning from email. And for a site like Pinch of Yum, it’s pretty substantial. Even if the traffic from email isn’t astronomical, the value of that traffic is high. And so that was one of the things too that shifted. But it seems like there was two things that was one of ’em, but another thing along the way that maybe helped in the decision making for you was understanding this area within Instagram that allowed you to access a different place where people were responding to stories that you could interact. Do you remember? And I think Gina from Skinny Taste was like, Hey, here’s a little tip on where to find that. Am I remembering that right?

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah. So I’ve got a bunch of blogger friends. I mean, everybody who is doing this knows people that are using this tool. I would say the vast majority of people are using a tool like this and for DM automation of sending a link, sending a signup. And so I messaged this group and I was like, you guys, I’m going to try it again. This is a year later, I’m going to use a new service, which is Grocers List. I’m going to try something different, try it, give it another try. But the one thing I’m still trying to figure out is how do I grab people’s pictures or when people send me a message or they tag me, I don’t want to lose that. And having it all show up in my DMs. And I knew that it’s like somebody’s doing this because for example, Gina from Skinny Taste, Gina, she, she’s getting tons of DMs that are the automation, but she’s still somehow able to go through and find.

Lindsay Ostrom: So I’m like, somebody has figured somebody knows how to do this. And she was like, oh yeah. She was like, there’s a Gina. This just changed a game for me. So thank you so much for explaining this to me. There is a tab, I don’t know what’s the best way to explain it to people without a screenshot or something, but where it says create, it’s over on the left hand side. There’s a little symbol at least at this moment in time, and it says it’s for the create mode. And once you’re in create mode, you can swipe through, keep swiping until you get to the one that’s in mentions, and then all your mentions are in one place. I think another, so for me, that’s super useful because I can go and I can find that thing that was most valuable to me, even from a marketing perspective, that’s a really great way to market your content is to show when other people are making it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, there’s social proof that other people are making it, they like it,

Lindsay Ostrom: And I really didn’t like the idea that I was going to lose out on either just responding to people or sharing that content. So that’s an amazing resource where you can see all of those. This is getting into the weeds a little bit, but technically there’s this little circle. People will know this, people who are avid Instagram users, but kind of in your likes tab, the little heart on top, there’s the little likes and mentions. There’s a circle where you can see your mentions, but they expire after two hours. And that was my issue. I’m not going on every two hours. I need a place. And that create mode and then finding all your mentions, we’ll show you everything from the last 24 hours. And another thing that I think is a new thing since I had done it the first time is that Instagram has now segmented the dms.

Lindsay Ostrom: They’ve done this a couple different ways, and I think they’ve rolled it out differently to every account gets a different version of it as they’re trying to figure it out. But what I have right now is the primary, the general, and then the requests for a while. They even had a business. They’re helping you organize your DMs. And so I feel like vast majority of my primary are my more meaningful messages. And the general tend to be, this is Instagram’s not filtering this. There’s just basically what I’m trying to say is there’s more tools available. The app is set up better to help you categorize that stuff and make a little more meaning with it. And so the TLER is like I’m using the tool now and has been so much more useful because I’ve been able to kind of harness the power of that while still maintaining the parts of Instagram that I felt were most valuable, which is that communication, that direct communication with individual users.

Bjork Ostrom: We often talk about this idea that we being collectively on the podcast, but also a lot of it comes from the conversations that you and I are having once a month when we actually have the time to sit down and talk without our daughters asking about if we spritzed Rice the Frog. And suddenly that becomes priority number one is making sure that rice has crickets and has been spritz with the chlorinated water. But one of the conversations that we have is around this idea that you are a marketer and you are marketing the content that you are creating. And one of the things that we need to do is figure out what are the tools that we can add to our tool belt. If you think of you’re a carpenter, you’re going and building every day and you’re going to be able to build better if you have a nail gun versus just a hammer and nails. And so part of our job as creators and then as marketers of the content that we are creating is building our tool belt with the tools that we’re going to use to then market the content. But what you talked about before is you lost one of the tools

Bjork Ostrom: And you gained another tool. And that was a bummer because you couldn’t as effectively market if you didn’t have a type of marketing available to you, which is really important, which is social proof. It’s sharing with an audience around other people who have had success with the thing that you are promoting, which in our cases recipes, and that’s in all forms, in all different types of marketing, this idea of testimonials or case studies or whatever it might be. And so now you have both of these and you can use this new tool while still having access to that tool that you didn’t have before, which was the social proof and the content marketing. So can you talk a little bit about what that looks like now where I don’t know, a few months into using the DM for link or email signup and maybe some of the things that you have learned as a marketer of content now that you have this new tool in your tool belt that you’ve been using?

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah, it feels weird to have such a proper business conversation with you because it’s just like just you. But I love that you use the words learner and marketer, or I don’t know if you use those exact words, but iterations of that. How I’ve been thinking, and we’ve talked about this in just side chat or whatever, but I’ve said to you, I’ve kind of tried to take the approach for where I’m at right now as like, okay, I’m a learner in this season of Pinch of Yum and in this season of what I’m doing, which feels weird. I’ve been doing it a long time, but I think this is a good season for me to put on a learner hat and kind of see what tools are out there, see what strategies are out there, and try some different things and learn some different things. And to that point, I took a course. It’s one of those things where I bought this course, it was like a video, I don’t know, viral, some kind of embarrassing name, make your videos go viral or something like that.

Bjork Ostrom: Be popular on the internet,

Lindsay Ostrom: Right, exactly. And I bought this course a year ago, a year before I actually took it, and it just sat and I paid for it. And I thought, I’m probably never going to take that. And then I got sick this winter and there was nothing I could do except just sit and be so congested. I couldn’t taste anything. I couldn’t do anything. And I’m like, okay, well, I guess this is when I’m going to watch through this video course. And I watched through the video course, and I feel like just as speak to the learner side, I feel like I learned a lot of different things about video and about how to structure videos and anyways. And so this was just a helpful thing for me in thinking about what do Pinch of Yum videos look like as I now try to market something, which is, and the point of the video course was how to make your videos go viral, which doesn’t totally apply because what I am actually doing isn’t necessarily trying to go viral.

Lindsay Ostrom: I’m trying to get people to have something that will help them or solve a problem for them. It might be a recipe, it might be a set of recipes. So as I am now approaching it as a marketer, I’m thinking, okay, how can I set up this? It’s both of those things together. It’s the video, it’s the production, it’s the flow, it’s the hooks, it’s the multiple levels of hooks. And then it’s also on the marketing side. What is it that I’m trying to get them to do? What will make this an easier process for them? And what’s going to be most beneficial official for us and for me as a business? And it might not just be a click to the website, it might be getting people to sign up for an email list. And one of the great things about using Grocers List now is that’s automatically folded in to the process.

Lindsay Ostrom: So people get a little DM card, whether I’m sending an individual recipe like, Hey, here’s, I’m trying to think of one I did recently. Here’s a chicken recipe with a pistachio avocado sauce if you want this recipe to respond. And in the DM card, there’s a direct opt-in for email. But I think even more powerfully than that, and something that I’ve had a lot of fun thinking about is almost like, how do I expand from the little hamster wheel of an individual recipe? Here’s the link, come to my website, individual recipe. I’ve been doing this long enough now where almost one of the most valuable things I can provide, and I take a lot of creators would be in the same boat, is I can provide you with a set of recipes or I can provide you with a resource that I’ve spent time building based on years of not only my experience, but other people’s reviews. I can tell you what’s most popular. I can tell you what’s going to be good for summer, I can help you with freezer meals. I’ve got a lot of stuff I can pull from. So it’s almost like the best value I can provide for some of these things besides the individual recipe are more around the organization and the packaging of a thing and then figuring out how to use the tools, how do I use groceries list, how to use a good well-structured video

Bjork Ostrom: And

Lindsay Ostrom: Well-structured wording and

Bjork Ostrom: Email

Lindsay Ostrom: Thoughtful hooks to combine those things together. And if I can loop that in so people are getting that via email, they’re getting value. I’m adding into my email list. It’s just been a really fun thing to play around with this year and a new focus for me as I think about Instagram. What is the point of Instagram? What am I really doing there? Is it enough? Is there enough value for Pinch of Yum to just get the clicks for the individual recipe? Maybe, but how could we amplify it even further? How could we put a multiplier on it to make it even more valuable to our business? And I think email and delivering things to people via email and using catchy videos and good organization of recipes to do that has been a winning combination. That’s kind of wordy. Sorry.

Bjork Ostrom: No, that’s great. I was talking to Madison. She has a podcast. She has a company called Grace and Vine and a podcast associated with it was talking to her yesterday and she was asking about, Hey, what does it look like for you? This idea of we talk about tiny bit better every day, forever 1% infinity. Do you have examples of that? And what I talked about was just adding little things into the system or process that you repeatedly do. And this is a great example of that where you are consistently creating videos, publishing videos, showing up on Instagram, creating content. And so the word that you used is like a multiplier. What does it look like to create one and a half more value from that two x more value by introducing something that will allow you to get more traffic, get more email signups, reach more people?

Bjork Ostrom: And I think so much of, especially if you’ve been grading for five plus years and you have that bank of content, so much of what we can do is start to think strategically around, okay, not only how do we syndicate that content as opposed to just create new content, but in doing that, how do we add in something that’s going to make it even more valuable or make it more helpful for us to go through that process of pressing publish and to find opportunities along the way that we fold in and that are just forever a part of what we’re doing? Another example would be adding an email to your welcome sequence, and maybe it’s not an email in one week, you send out five emails, so then you send out a sixth email, but maybe it’s two weeks after you send out your most popular pieces of content, and that becomes something that then everybody just gets naturally after they sign up.

Bjork Ostrom: You might send out a broadcast email, which is great, but then you have to go and write another broadcast email a week later. But if you add one to your email sequence, people are going to continue to get those and it’s going to continue to add value, or maybe it’s an affiliate email, things like that. So it’s one of the really fun things like you said, that we can do, which is look for ways that we can creatively add to our process or a system that’s going to make our content more valuable. Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors.

Bjork Ostrom: If you’re a food creator, chances are you’ve come across Comment for DM tools. Using that functionality within Instagram can result in some huge wins, but the tools are really complicated and they’re oftentimes built for marketers, like people who are in the tool day in and day out, not built for food bloggers or recipe creators specifically. That’s where Grocers List comes in. It’s built from the ground up for food creators. So if you’re looking to grow your email list, get more traffic to your site, or maybe earn more affiliate sales all without spending a ton of extra time or having to learn a complicated tool, then Grocers List is for you. And what’s really cool is they’re seeing some pretty impressive numbers, like 75% click-through rates, which is kind of mind blowing, and 5% opt-in rates from people who are engaging with content that is sent through the Grocers List platform. And they’re actually doing an Office hour session soon. So if you want to see the behind the scenes of how creators are using it, you can sign up at grocerslist.com and a little bonus for you as a podcast listener, if you use the promo code podcast, you’ll get your first month completely free. Again, that’s grocerslist.com promo code podcast.

Bjork Ostrom: How do you view right now specifically to Instagram? How do you view that in terms of the why behind it for the business? So you publish a reel to Instagram, what is kind of the purpose or the return on the effort from creating that piece of content and publishing it?

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah, that was a good

Bjork Ostrom: Question. Thanks.

Lindsay Ostrom: Because really

Bjork Ostrom: That what I do, people know what you do. You might not know what I do, but my job is literally to sit here and ask questions to creators on the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Please follow along and listen. ABA already, Lindsay.

Lindsay Ostrom: Okay, now, I can’t remember what your good question was. It was something about Instagram. What’s your why?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s like what’s the what do you imagine the return on that time and effort being as a creator and business owner, the effort that you’re putting in, which is a lot. There’s a team and we have a video, somebody who comes and shoots video and edits video. Sometimes it’s just you, but usually it’s somebody who’s coming and shooting. We have somebody coming and helping in the kitchen, and there’s a team, there’s money, there’s time. What’s the return on that?

Lindsay Ostrom: I really view what’s happening on Instagram with video and with some of these, I mean with the singular new tool, a groceries list, and using DM automation to do some things differently. I really view Instagram and what we’re doing there as a bridge to connect what’s happening on the website and what’s happening in email. It’s almost like if all of them are big blocks and big pillars and they’re kind of all connected, but it’s a little floaty and you do a little of this and then you do a little of this and you kind of do it all. It’s like the website for us is the base pinch of yum com is the base of that. And maybe I used to kind of feel like and view Instagram as kind of the next pillar in that building of the structure, maybe like a pyramid. And now I would say my view of email is kind of flip flopped.

Lindsay Ostrom: It’s like that’s almost my secondary focus. We’re thinking about the value that we’re giving via email. We’re thinking about the resources that we’re giving, and then we’re thinking about Instagram as a tool to connect people to both of those things. And I don’t just mean by way of a click, but to let them know what we have, what value we have there, what they might want, what might be helpful. And I kind of spoke to that before about the organization of things, but I feel like Instagram is a place where those people might not know what we have going over here in our most important place. And so how can we, maybe the bridge is groceries list. We’re over here, we’re on Instagram, and all these people have no idea that we have a freezer meal resource that’s a really great resource, and it has a printable and it has all these labels, and it’s a very clear system.

Lindsay Ostrom: And it’s like if I can create a video that shows people the resource in a way that’s catchy and catches on, and for people to be like, oh, that would be a really helpful thing, and then I can use the tool of G list as a bridge to get people to the email to the website. I mean, right now a lot of what we’re focusing on is email and kind of viewing that as the ultimate goal, getting people into our email ecosystem so that we can continue to provide more value that way and have a little bit more control over the relationship that way. But that’s kind of how I’m viewing it, rather than viewing Instagram as second tier. I’m almost viewing it now as a separate place where those people, there is a disconnect. It’s like we’ve had that freezer meals resource, this is a real example. We did a video for freezer meals. It kind of went bonkers. It was one of the most, I mean by far and away the most engaged with posts that we’ve ever done on Instagram. And it’s like none of that was new. That wasn’t a new resource. We’ve had that for years.

Bjork Ostrom: We’ve

Lindsay Ostrom: Been updating

Bjork Ostrom: It. It’s so crazy.

Lindsay Ostrom: I literally didn’t create anything new. I just made a video to show people what we have. Hey, we have this. You might not know about it. It’s super useful. A lot of people do who follow, they do. But the beautiful thing about Instagram and Instagram reels is that if you create a video that has some of those viral marketing techniques that will be appealing to people and reach people, and then you use a tool like Grocers List to amplify the engagement on that and to connect, it’s win-win all around, you’re sending that out into all these untouched places, these audiences that you’ve never reached before through the power of social media. That’s what social media does best. And you’re kind of saying, Hey, I’ve got this great thing. Do you want to come over here? This is where I’m delivering that value and would love to give that to you. So that’s kind of like how I’m viewing, I guess those as two separate but connected things.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s one of the things I always like to do is think about, okay, what if everything froze? You never had more traffic. You never were able to create new content on the site, but you had the availability of these platforms and tools and your own creativity. What would you do in order to continue to create a thriving business? And what you just shared is such a great example of that where, okay, we have this thing that already exists. What does it look like to remix that in a certain way, syndicate it to a platform where you haven’t really talked about it before? And this idea of, I think there’s three ways that you could look at it, creation, syndication, and optimization. And I think for a lot of us, we focus on creation. Okay, 80% of our time is on creating a new thing.

Bjork Ostrom: But if we distributed that more evenly and looked at syndication and optimization, there’d be, especially if you’ve been creating for a long time, there’d be some really great opportunities to syndicate to new places or to just optimize what you’re doing in order to remove friction, to get people information in an easier way, which is fun to think about because sometimes the actual creation process of a new thing start to finish can be a grind. And it’s not to say that you don’t do it at all anymore, but I would imagine you’re doing the creating, but I would imagine it’s refreshing to not have to do something from zero to one, but to take something that’s already existing and to look at it from a different angle feels like it could

Lindsay Ostrom: Be. Yeah, I like those buckets. And I think it’s almost like what I’m creating isn’t the thing, it’s the marketing of the thing. I have this thing, maybe it’s not even a collection of recipes yet, but it’s like I know which recipe, I know which summer desserts I have that are most popular. I know which ones are going to be a hit for people, and that’s valuable. And a lot of that for us as creators, I think just lives in our head, oh yeah, I know I have this thing over here, but as much as possible, I think people don’t know a lot of times what’s out there. And one of the most helpful things, I do think, to your point, creators get stuck. Or I’ll say for myself, I get stuck. This is what you do. You create a new thing, you’re excited about new things, so you’re always trying new things. But I’ve felt myself working so much smarter, even in these last few months as I think about how can I not, can I get outside of just the single recipe loop to really provide value? And a lot of times that correlates with where we’re delivering the value, which is email. And so directing people to that pipeline, it feels much more strategic than I’ve ever thought before about what we’re doing on Instagram.

Bjork Ostrom: And I think there’s something to be said around this is broadly speaking, starting to look at the different platforms that we’re creating on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. A lot of people have a really significant following on TikTok and saying, how do we generally just transact on that? And that sounds so non-relational transact, but how do we not try and pull people out of that place, but instead as much as possible, interact is maybe a better way to say it on that platform. And it’s not to say that people don’t eventually come back to the site, but I think what you’ll find more and more over the next 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 years is that that type of creators, influencers, people who have a large following, more and more will be interacting on the platform. And that’s where the value exchange will actually happen as opposed to needing to get somebody somewhere else in order for the value exchange to happen.

Bjork Ostrom: And so I think this would be a question, I guess, do you feel like a little bit of that is what’s happening where suddenly you, within the last few months have been able to interact and create value on the platform as opposed to something that was felt a little bit more nebulous where it still is valuable, it’s valuable, but maybe not in the same concrete way that you’d usually be able to track and say, SEO we know is valuable because we can look and see, here’s traffic from Google. Whereas Instagram, we know it’s valuable, people are talking about it, they’re aware of it, but it’s harder to track other than just a view because you’re not getting paid for that view directly. Whereas now there’s something that you’re able to look to a little bit more concretely and say, okay, we knew that that piece of content resulted in 5,000 additional email signups or whatever it may.

Lindsay Ostrom: That one wasn’t as great of a Just kidding. So main question being what, clarify it for a little bit for me. Do people ever ask you this? Do people ever say,

Bjork Ostrom: Well, I don’t think people, I think I do this a lot. People just aren’t as comfortable as you are to call me out on a statement question?

Lindsay Ostrom: No, I was tracking with everything you were saying. I just lost what the question was in the middle of it.

Bjork Ostrom: The question was, do you feel like part of what you’re gaining or have gained in these last few months is the ability to interact and create value on the platform in a way that you are able to understand and track. It’s almost like there’s a new game and the game is email signups, or even to me, it feels like that’s primarily what it is. Hey, we produce this piece of content. What did emails signups look like from it? It’s also beneficial to get traffic, but to now be able to have something that allows you to pretty easily increase your EM emails.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah. Yes, yes. Is the answer to the question. I think to clarify value on the, because I think when you say that term value on the platform, I imagine that as people get their recipes right on the or, they get, it’s putting your valuable stuff on the platform. And how I understand if I’m understanding correctly with what you’re saying, it’s like making that platform and our involvement specifically with Instagram, making that more valuable to the business, making that the return of it basically. And the answer is yes to that question. Yeah, that’s just how I’m thinking about it. Now. I’m not thinking about views and I’m not really, I mean, great, I hope that we get a lot of views, but I’m on videos or whatever. And it also is different on each part of the platform on Instagram stories. I feel like a lot of the value is, it’s almost like a mini version of email very, my face is there, I’m talking to people.

Lindsay Ostrom: It’s like a very direct connection. I’m responding to dms, I’m showing what other people are saying. It has a conversational nature. But with real specifically, I’ve really shifted my view of the value of those videos and their potential reach to be specifically honed in on how can we bring people back to our main ecosystem, maybe the website, but really ideally email should they choose to collect value with whatever we’re offering from email. That would be the new focus, and I think the most valuable thing for us that we could be doing with Instagram right now.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, there’s an interesting balance that we have or you have collectively both where we’re creating content content. In the case of Pinch of Yum, the majority of that content is free. 99% of it will occasionally do meal plans, but the majority of it is free. And so as a business, our job is to think about how do you, because in the extreme example, if there’s a spectrum and it’s way in the left side, you never work with a brand, you never work with a sponsor, you never charge, you have any ads. On the other extreme, it’s like everything is pay walled and you can only access the content by paying. And we’re probably in the lower quartile of a content business on that left to right spectrum where we aren’t usually asking people to pay for a thing, but we’re asking for something on the site.

Bjork Ostrom: What we’re asking for is them to have some level of a reduced user experience through ads being present on the site in order to justify the value that we are creating and then capturing. And so then the question is on social platforms, what is that? Is it everything is completely free? And you give all of that regardless, great. But at some point you have to think about what is the way that you are going to ask that person to commit something on their end. It’s not money, but commit something in their end in order to, for the business, create income. And there is no point in that other than there’s all of these decisions that we have to make as content creators around to what level are we going to ask people to commit to a thing in order to create value for ourselves. So all that to say, agree with what you’re saying around as a business owner, how are you offering value, but then also what is the value that you are asking readers or followers to give back to you in exchange for the thing that you were creating? If it’s not money directly.

Lindsay Ostrom: And this is a little bit of a mindset shift on that. I think it’s true everything you said, but I don’t really think of it as asking for something from people. I think of it as it’s a service we can offer you if you’re interested. It’s a offering. It’s not an ask, even though I know what you’re saying. It’s like anytime you’re asking someone for email, email

Bjork Ostrom: Address, address, or

Lindsay Ostrom: For my mindset, that’s how I think of it. And especially if you take the example of a DM that sends an individual recipe, for example. So let’s say it’s like, Hey, I made these chicken bowls. They were great. If you want the recipe and people comment, they get the DM card and it says they have an option. It says, take me to the recipe. If you don’t want to give your email or you don’t want to get this delivered to your email, you can go right to the recipe or email me the recipe. And I think it’s, I went into it with the mindset of ask people for their email address, but it’s like, actually it’s a service to people. A lot of people opt in and I don’t think they’re doing that because they’re like, oh, I should help and give. It’s like because it’s a helpful thing, it’s because then they get the recipe emailed to them or they get whatever that resource is emailed to them. So just like a slight iteration on that thought that’s helpful to me to think about is as long as whatever you’re offering is valuable and people want into the degree that people aren’t going to sign up if they don’t want the thing that you’re offering. And so that’s just a thing that I think about is

Lindsay Ostrom: Feeling confident in the value that we’re offering, including looping people into our email world, because what we have there is going to be helpful to them and valuable to them.

Bjork Ostrom: It seems like an obvious point, but I think it’s really important because what can happen sometimes with something like this type of interaction on the internet is the process can work and it can work really well. You create a real, it goes viral. And I saw somebody commenting on this, not in the world of food, but in the world. It was like an ai, believe it or not. It was like an AI resource around this person who built 30 AI agents. Is it like an AI agent org chart or something like that? And I’ll give you this org chart to help you build your own, I’ll give you the playbook or something like that. And this person’s comment on it was essentially, it wasn’t the actual processes and how to do it, it was just a picture of the org chart or something like that.

Bjork Ostrom: And I think what happened was there was a promise and that person in this case signed up for it. They got delivered the thing, but in getting the thing delivered, it actually didn’t fulfill what their hopes or expectations were. And I think when you just look at the numbers, that campaign probably worked pretty well. That person probably built their email list up, but probably what didn’t happen was on the backend, it didn’t create a relationship where somebody was like, oh my goodness, this is awesome. I’m going to continue to come back to this person. And so I think a lot of times we talk about everything from the start, Hey, what does it look like to create a reel that goes viral? And then a lot of people dm, and then you get your email list and your email list grows. But the point that you just made I think is just as important because that’s only half of the story.

Bjork Ostrom: The other half and maybe the most important half is then actually establishing trust to delivering value on the backend and making sure that that person, then what’s happening is their view of you as a resource, as a creator, as a website is, this is really helpful and this is somebody I want to go back to and visit the site again, have. And that’s where you see direct traffic or increase in followers. So I think it’s a really important point because what will happen if you lose trust is the engagement that you’ll get on those moving forward will be lower because people will start to see a pattern and they’ll start to recognize that pattern. So really important point. You’re smart and thank you. It’s one of the reasons why I did feel so honored and grateful to be able to work with you. Thanks for coming on the podcast lens and having a more formal conversation work stuff.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yes. Do I have time to say something else?

Bjork Ostrom: You do.

Lindsay Ostrom: Okay. Sometimes I think it’s helpful to have some very practical, logistical look at what this looks like for someone else in order to get it started for yourself. And maybe if someone’s listening to this and they’re listening this far, maybe you’re in the camp of like, you want to try this, but you haven’t before. So this is what’s been working for me. I came up with a list of five ideas that were more collections or curated value. So an example could be like 10 budget dinners or my most popular summer desserts or the high protein family recipes that my kids will actually eat or stuff like that. So come up with your idea of a couple different things is what I did, and I did this based on other videos I had seen, things I knew that are popular on our website, what people ask me about, and then just build a little list for yourself.

Lindsay Ostrom: So just like you would do a content calendar for the blog or for social, I have been doing one per month and I found the freezer meal one took me a long time to make that video, prep that video, get that stuff ready. So that one was a one month project, but some of them are quick and easy. If we’re talking about our most popular recipes, we already have those videos done. We can just pull a clip from each, or we could even just take the pictures from the website and create a carousel, like literally something that simple. You have those recipes already. You know that they’re popular and they target this group of people. Just grab each of the images, put it in a carousel, and try using a DM automation to get people what they’re looking for with the option of getting it to them via email. And so that’s what has been helpful for me is kind of slotting those in one per month. Having the idea of one per month helps it for me not feel so overwhelming. It just helps me feel like I have a plan. I don’t have to be doing this every week, but I generally am working on this thing. Goal is email signups. What value can I deliver to people that’s different from what I’m doing? Maybe with a standard recipe blog post that can be delivered to them via email and will make their lives better.

Bjork Ostrom: Love it. Hey, we’ll have to have you back on the podcast sometimes.

Lindsay Ostrom: I’ll go. I’ll go.

Bjork Ostrom: Really appreciate it. Thanks for coming on. Follow along. Pinch of yum, everything that you have going on there. Anything else that you want to say as we close out?

Lindsay Ostrom: No, I could talk about this for too long. No, let’s just, I’ll see you at kindergarten graduation in a little bit today,

Bjork Ostrom: Right around the corner. All right. Thanks for coming on. Love you.

Lindsay Ostrom: Talk to

Bjork Ostrom: You later. Love

Lindsay Ostrom: You too. Bye bye.

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. As always, if you enjoyed that episode, we would really appreciate it if you could share it with your community or leave a review. It really helps get the word out about our podcast. As most of you may know, in addition to the podcast, we also have a Food Blogger Pro membership. As part of the membership, we have hundreds of course lessons, Live Q&As, coaching calls, and a members-only forum, and lots of tools and deals that are available exclusively for our Food Blogger Pro members. Since we are in a new month, I wanted to share a little bit about what will be going on inside the membership this month. We have already released a brand new coaching call that went live on June 5th with Joey from the blog, Joey Cooks Foods.

You can watch the video replay at foodbloggerpro.com in the membership or listen to the audio replay in our members-only podcast. Next up this Thursday, we have a live q and a. This q and a will be all about growing on Instagram and is with our social media expert, Andrea, if you are a Food Blogger Pro member, don’t miss this q and a. It’ll be a great companion to this week’s podcast episode. Next up, while we usually have a new course or a course update that goes live at the end of the month, we are working behind the scenes on a course organization system that will help organize all of our incredible courses into tiers for beginners, intermediate, and advanced food bloggers, so it’s easier for everyone to navigate within the membership. That’s it for this month. We’re looking forward to seeing you within the membership, and if you aren’t yet a Food Blogger Pro member, head to food blogger pro.com/membership to learn more and join us.