Eat Blog Talk

In episode 411, Sabrina Currie teaches us how to up our writing game by focusing on clear, concise blog writing that shows our personalities while providing accurate information about our recipes. Sabrina started her career in food right after high school by attending cooking school. After doing a few different jobs in the food industry, she went into the healthcare field. She eventually found herself needing a creative outlet so she picked up a DSLR and started photographing food and nature. After taking a Wordpress blogging course, Sabrina decided to start a food blog and after a while wanted to make it more than a hobby. She has steadily increased her web traffic by scheduling an audit by Casey Markee and using tools like RankIQ and Keysearch. Her days are spent working half time in a hospital and half time blogging and writing while enjoying being a wife and mom. In this episode, you'll learn about small tweaks you can make to your writing to make it more accessible and appealing to your readers. - Answer simple questions about your recipe to create a clear context. - Who will your recipe be great for? - Where will you enjoy eating a given recipe - use vivid visuals. - Why should they make a recipe? - Along with your step-by-step photos, answer: How do you make this? - Be descriptive but concise. - Show EAT (expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness) through your writing. - Should we use AI to help us write blog posts? Connect with Sabrina Currie Website|Instagram

In episode 410, Megan chats to Jenna Urben about what we need to do now in our businesses to be able to take a significant amount of time off later on. Jenna is the content creator of The Urben Life, a food and lifestyle blog where she shares allergy-friendly recipes and travel guides. Jenna started blogging about 5 years ago and was immediately drawn to the community aspect. Over the years, she realized there was a need for more transparency in the creator space. So she went on to create Bloggerbytes to provide bloggers and influencers with resources and tools they can use to thrive. In this episode, you'll learn how to prepare blog posts, social media and email marketing in advance so that you can take time off when you want. - Have checklists ready to check what you can do ahead of time. - Post your content now so that it works for you when you're taking time off. - Do's and don'ts for scheduling out social media. - Why is a Canva subscription life-changing? - Save money by curtailing subscriptions you don't use. - Tips for scheduling out emails ahead of time. - Use automation tools like Zapier. - Should you let people know that you're taking time for yourself? - Turn off all notifications on your phone. - Should you reply to DMs? Connect with Jenna Urben Website |Instagram

In episode 409, Laura Tobin teaches us how to treat our blogs like actual businesses, getting into the right mindset and talking about our business with confidence. In 2018, Laura's husband suddenly passed away, and she became a single mom with two teenage sons and no income. In 2019, Laura decided to focus on a food blog that she'd started previously as a hobby and turn it into a viable business. Applying her technical and business skills, Laura was successful in joining Mediavine one year later. The last 4 years, Laura has worked as a single mom of two sons, while growing a business with limited time and resources. In this episode, you'll learn how to think about your blog to develop it into a business, including being able to confidently discuss your work with other people and break down food blogger stereotypes. - How do you answer when someone asks you what you do? - Why are food bloggers underrated? - Develop an entrepreneurial mindset. - What are the 5 stages of developing a startup? - Stay true to your blog mission statement and vision (i.e. values). - It takes more or less 5 years to become profitable. - Track your time to understand how to improve your efficiency. Connect with Laura Tobin Website

In episode 408, Megan chats to Miriam Schulman about why embracing our inner uniqueness can take us from being a starving artist to a well-paid and well-known one. Miriam Schulman is an artist and founder of The Inspiration Place podcast, where she helps other artists learn how to profit from their passion or become better artists. She's helped thousands of artists around the world develop their skill sets and create more time and freedom to do what they love. Her art and story have been featured in major publications including Forbes, The New York Times and the Art of Man. The Inspiration Place podcast is in the top 1% of all podcasts and is listened to in over 100 countries. In this episode, you'll learn why you should embrace your weirdness and how it can help you become a successful artist. Miriam shares various tips from her new book with HarperCollins Leadership Arpreneur. - How can we stand out? - Let go of people-pleasing tendencies to make yourself more marketable. - Idiosyncrasies make you more relatable. - Your authenticity will make you memorable. - Don't worry about repeating yourself. - Should you share your values? - Be authentic in order to build a following. - Why is email marketing more effective than social media? Connect with Miriam Schulman Website | Instagram

In episode 407, Jazzmine Woodard teaches us about DEI (diversity, equality and inclusion) and how to create inclusive content in our niche to make as many people as possible feel included and valued. Jazzmine has balanced growing her food and travel blog, Dash of Jazz, with a corporate career in DEI for the last 8 years. In this time, Jazzmine has learned how to be inclusive in her content approach without alienating her niche audience. She has also cultivated an audience that engages with both food and travel content. In this episode, learn about DEI and how to avoid alienating your readers. Jazzmine discusses how we can position ourselves as teachers while respecting our readers' different tastes and making our content as accessible as possible. - Respect your readers' differences (i.e. in opinion and taste). - Using captions on social media videos and alt text. - Does each person have equal opportunity to enjoy your content? - People who do feel included, really feel included by the extra measures we take. - How can you make your links more inclusive? - Be aware of the language you use to describe your recipes. - How to be culturally aware on your blog. - Provide as much information as possible for recipes. Connect with Jazzmine Woodard Website | Instagram

In episode 406, Megan chats to Liam Smith about how food bloggers can launch their own memberships to create a new revenue stream from existing recipe content. Liam has 10+ years experience in tech, working Fortune 500 companies and growing start ups. Through a series of fortunate events, Liam was able to combine his passion for tech and desire to help people eat better to create MealPro App - a platform helping food bloggers to launch their own memberships with their existing recipe content. In this episode, you'll find out why Liam started the app, how you can set it up, why this kind of membership is beneficial for your readers and how it can earn you additional income. - Use the app to develop a new stream of income. - Repurpose the existing recipe catalog on your blog. - How easy is the app to use? - Integrate it into your existing blog domain. - Who is the end-user of the meal-prep plan? - Take back control of your content. - It's important to decide how you want to package your membership. - What is the earning potential of the app? Connect with Liam Smith Website | Instagram

In episode 405, Natasha Levai teaches us how to stay motivated as we wait for our food blogs to grow. Natasha is a half-Russian, half-Ukrainian living in Eastern Hungary with her family. Her food blog, Natasha's Home, focuses on gluten-free cooking and baking, including gluten-free sourdough recipes. Natasha is up front about being a beginner, with her blog live for a little over a year. She is in the process of learning and growing toward making this business into a full-time job. Natasha's first job was at McDonald's and, more importantly, doing much-needed work at orphanages around the world for most of her adult life. In this episode, you'll find out how to accept that you'll make mistakes, effectively explore new platforms and how to plan for blog growth when you're just starting out. - Narrow down your niche to get off to a good start. - Don't forget SEO and keyword research - are there any topics no one's written on? - Develop a system that will allow you to post ahead of schedule. - Make the most of free resources online. - Find other food bloggers who inspire you. - You learn when you do something yourself - Make an action plan to implement what you learn. - How do you deal with burn out and how do you set realistic goals? Connect with Natasha Levai Website | Instagram

In episode 404, Megan chats to Clara Cheng about achieving fitness goals and how applying a fitness mentality to your blogging business can help you grow. Clara is a content creator for the last 2 years at Fitsian Food Life, which shares macro-friendly healthy recipes that are still delicious. Fitness is a very integral part of her life and is also the key reason why she started the blog. Clara likes to stay active by training Muay Thai and powerlifting. In order to make sure she has enough energy to train well, it's essential for her to replenish her body with adequate nutrition. At the same time, Clara loves good food and she started creating recipes of her favorite dishes, tweaked to be healthy and nutritious. Throughout the past year, Clara has invested in the right tooling and education to see meaningful traction in traffic growth for her blog. In this episode, you'll find out what is meant by "fitness mentality", understanding that change and success don't happen overnight and how to adopt the same determination to achieve your fitness goals to help build your blog. - The frustrations of blogging are similar to achieving fitness goals. - Invest in tools that will help you advance in your goal. - Understand that improvement takes time. - You don't walk into the gym and start lifting heavy weights. - Line up your expectations to reality. - Take a break to help you get clarity for your goals. - How do you keep a work-life balance? - Understand what you need to prioritize and de-pioritize. - What can you control to help grow your business? Connect with Clara Cheng Website | Instagram

In episode 403, Megan chats to Jillian Leslie about which types of digital products are good for food bloggers to add to their businesses and which ones are most effective to start with. Jillian Leslie loves building businesses on the internet with her husband, David. In 2009, they started Catch My Party, one of the largest party ideas sites on the web. In 2016, Jillian and David built MiloTree, a smart pop-up app to help bloggers and creators grow their social media followers and email lists. And in 2021, they built MiloTreeCart, the easiest tool for bloggers and creators to sell digital products. It's built for non-techies. For the past 4 years, Jillian has been hosting her weekly podcast called The Blogger Genius Podcast. She interviews successful bloggers, entrepreneurs, and industry experts to break down what's working now in online business. In this episode, you'll learn about which digital products you should avoid at the beginning, understanding the psychology behind a digital product that your clients will buy and how to price products correctly. - Is it worth building a course as your first digital product? - It's about trial and error - what kind of product will people buy? - Learn from your customers and make your products better. - Find a problem to solve, be specific and go deep. - What is the best digital product to start with? - How to price your digital product effectively. - Should you give something away for free? - Aim for good work that you get published instead of unpublished perfect work. Connect with Jillian Leslie Website | Instagram

In episode 402, Megan chats to Maren Epstein about how she reached 85k page views from 5k page views in 7 months after 7 years of failing. Maren Epstein is a health supportive chef with a degree from the Natural Gourmet Institute which is a part of the Institute of Culinary Education and a bachelor's Degree from Drew University. She specializes in developing diets and recipes for gut health that are Gluten Free, which is the focus of her blog, Eating Works. She has published food pieces in The New York Daily News and The Independent along with many recipes for Mashed, Healthline, Tasting Table and more. In this episode, you'll find out that it's normal not to be an expert from the start and how to stay resilient and search for the right strategy to help you succeed in your blogging journey long-term. - Slow success is normal for bloggers. - It's natural that bloggers learn more about website hosts and SEO with time. - Do you feel frustrated at not knowing whether a strategy you're using is effective? - Consider adding articles in your field of expertise to increase page views. - Consult resources like podcasts and join masterminds. - Embrace your story. - Create supporting content for your recipes. - How to use web stories and other strategies effectively. - Be honest with yourself in terms of how much work you're willing to put in. Connect with Maren Epstein Website | Instagram