132: Perfecting Your Story and Your Brand with Laurie Buckle

Hey, hey, look at this.

Bjork Ostrom here you're listening to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast.

And today we have a new format, some new music.

I'm going to be talking about Pinterest SEO. And then we're going to be interviewing Laurie Buckle about the importance of story.

Can't wait to share this podcast episode with you. This episode of the Food Blogger Pro Podcast is brought to you by. That's right, we have a sponsor, WP Tasty.

Now, for those of you that follow along closely with the podcast, you know that WP Tasty is a brand or.

Business that we launched last year. And the idea with WP Tasty is that we were building solutions for Pinch of Yum that we wanted to fix for our blog, and we knew that other people would be interested in using those on their site. And WP Tasty is offering those plugins that we're using on Pinch of Yum. And now hundreds of other people are using for you to download and use. And all of the WP Tasty plugins are premium plugins, which means you can't find them on WordPress. And the reason we do that is because we also want to offer support.

And make sure that we can pay.

For continued incredible development with those plugins.

So that's the idea with this sponsorship.

We're calling it the Tasty Tip. And the Tasty Tip is a short.

Little segment at the beginning of the podcast where instead of just talking about.

The product, we're gonna offer some value along with that.

And the first thing that I wanted to talk about for the first ever.

Tasty Tip is the idea of Pinterest SEO. And I'm not gonna dive deep on this, but I wanted to introduce the concept to allow you to think about that so we don't get stuck in.

One way of thinking about SEO.

Usually we think about SEO from the perspective of Google and showing up high on Google or maybe Bing as well.

If you want to be inclusive of the other search engine.

But there's other places where you can implement SEO. And one of the most important areas to do that is Pinterest. And as you're thinking about showing up high on Google, you should also be thinking about showing up high on Pinterest. And one of the best ways to do that is to have a really optimized Pinterest description for your images. Now, I'm not going to go into specifics about what an optimized Pinterest description is, but you can go to wptasty.com pinterestdescription and that will forward you to a blog post that Raquel wrote on the WP Tasty and Food Blogger Pro team, talking about an optimized image description for Pinterest and how to create that. Now, the important thing here as you're thinking about optimizing your image for Pinterest, is that you also want to optimize your image for SEO on Google. And the way that you do that is by separating out the Pinterest description and the thing called the alt text or the alt attribute. And for those of you that use WordPress, you know that there's this little area and that's called alt text or alt attribute. And usually bloggers will use that to put in a Pinterest description. But a couple months ago, Casey Marquis, who's a Food Blogger Pro expert on our team and offers massive insights and help with the SEO niche specific to food blogs, reached out and said, bjork, on Pinch of Yum, you should really look at doing your alt text differently because essentially you're doing it wrong. And we were using Pinterest text or Pinterest description in that alt area, Alt text area. And so what we did is we said, hey, let's think about this. How can we separate that out? So we worked to develop a plugin called Tasty Pins that allows you to separate the alt text and the Pinterest text. So now you can optimize your image both for Google SEO as well as Pinterest SEO. And again, we're not going to dive into specifics, but there's two posts that.

You can check out. The one is the first that I.

Mentioned, wptacey.com PinterestDescription and then the other one is talking about creating a good alt text.

And you can get that by going.

To wptacey.com alttext and those two articles together. Those two blog posts will explain how you can optimize both Pinterest and alt text for SEO on Google and SEO on Pinterest. So that's the tasty tip. I wanted to introduce that as a concept to not think about SEO just on Google, but to also think about it on Pinterest. Now, if you're into code, if you're a developer, there's ways that you can include that little Pinterest description area within an image manually. But if you want to do that a little bit easier, you can use Tastypins to do that and have that available right within WordPress.

And we'll link to those in the show notes as well.

But that's our first ever tasty tip. Hope you enjoyed it. All right, today we are talking to Laurie Buckle from Cook It Media.

And the fun thing about today's interview is that there's actually been some previous guests on on the Food Blogger Pro.

Podcast that have talked about working with Cook It Media and working with Lori to do a little bit of a.

Consulting session and branding story session to really get a better idea of who.

They are as it relates to their blog and their business. And this is these are things that aren't concrete and they're hard to work through, but they're so critically important.

And Laurie's gonna be talking about some of the things that you need to.

Consider as you're thinking about your story.

And you're thinking about your brand.

And the fun thing about the podcast today is that Lori's actually giving away.

One of the products they have, which.

Is the CookIt consulting intro. And the way to enter is to leave a comment on the show notes.

For this, which you can get to.

By going to foodbloggerpro.com podcast or if you'd like to go above and beyond, you can leave a review on the podcast and take a screenshot of that and send it to podcastoodbloggerpro.com either one of those ways will enter you into.

This giveaway to going to end at.

The end of January, so January 31st.

And that's the last day for you to enter.

And then we'll look through those and randomly pick somebody to have that consulting intro. But obviously, if you don't win that.

You can also contact Lori and her team to work with her.

If you're interested in doing one of these rebranding or consulting sessions having to do with your brand and your story, really important takeaways for you in this.

Podcast interview with Lori.

So let's go ahead and jump in. Lori, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. So happy to be here.

Yeah. So we're going to talk a lot.

About story today, which is an awesome topic because it's such an important topic, especially for people that listen to this podcast, those being creators. So before we get into anything, before even get into your story, I would.

Love to establish why is story so important, especially for people that are building.

A blog or a digital media business?

Such a good question also happens to be my favorite topic of all time.

Perfect.

At Cook it, we like to say that story is our secret sauce. Everything we do, which is brand consulting, brand management, content creation, it all really starts with story. In my experience, it's the best communication tool you can use. It's really the way to connect with your client, whether that client is a brand, a follower, a consumer, whoever that might be. When you tell story about who you are and what you do, you. You sort of have a way of taking all that information and wrapping it up in a package that, that someone's interested in hearing as opposed to, you know, a bunch of bullet points or, or something like that. And I think it brings a personal perspective to the conversation that also grabs people and gets their attention as well.

Yeah. When you say personal, why is that an important thing? Especially if I think people get that if they were thinking about what it's like to be a blogger or, you know, an influencer, where you are the person. But I would guess that personal also is important on more of a brand level as well, where there's maybe not just one person behind it, but still it's important to be personal. And why do you think that's such an important thing?

That's such a good question. So when I say personal, I'm actually talking about the brand at that point. In many ways, I think with influencers, the sense is that, oh, I have to share my personal story. And more and more, I think as an industry, we're stepping a little bit away from that and into a more reader, you know, reader focused perspective. But that means that then you're building story around your brand and who you are as a brand and what you do, how you connect with the reader in terms of solving their problems and that sort of thing. And that's the story you're telling. And in many ways, because it is your business and it's your brand, it's very personal.

That's interesting. So to give an example or to put some maybe context around it, do you have anybody that you can think of? And it wouldn't have to be a blogger necessarily, or a small business, but even a business that's doing a good job of that, of being personal and having strong story in the content that they're creating and publishing, whether that be social media or whether that be their website or even kind of in a traditional print or traditional press way, that a brand that's doing a really good job with storytelling.

That's such a hard question to answer. I would love to just list off everyone we had ever worked with in consulting because they don't get to leave the room until they've got a really good story and it's all going on.

Yeah.

But I think I'd have to point to Gavi Dalkin as sort of the personification of building story around her brand. Her. Her whole idea is the California Girl and working on that with her and helping her really get to the root of what that was and who that was and why it existed and why it was important, like where it could go once. Once she became the California girl. And every time I talk to her, every product she creates, whether it's her new book that's coming out or it's, you know, it's something that she's doing for the site, it's always there, it's on the tip of her tongue, and she's wedded to it in such a way that I think it's really had an impact in terms of how people see her, how people understand her brand. It truly is the story around her and what she does.

Yeah. And for those that didn't listen to that episode back in October, it was episode.

She was so great.

Yeah.

118. You can go to foodbloggerpro.com 118 and that will bring you to that episode. And she talks about that and kind of discovering her brand and how important that was for informing all of the other decisions that she makes as a creator. And that's what we're gonna be talking.

About a little bit today, how people.

Can apply that idea and maybe some of the processes that they can go through as they think about intentionally developing their brand and in doing so, being able to tell a really strong story. So speaking of stories, let's go back.

I would love to hear, Laurie, your.

Story a little and how you came to be the CEO founder of Cook IT Media.

But if you could take us back.

A little bit and tell us how you got started and what brought you up to this point.

Sure. I'll keep it short if I can. It's kind of a long story. It really begins with magazines. For me, as a kid, I was determined to work on magazines. I loved them. I just always wanted to be a part of them. I read all kinds of crazy magazines and grabbed my mother's copy of Vogue before it could, you know, before it even left the mailbox kind of thing. So when I started off, you know, working to find a job in magazines, I actually ended up at Bon Appetit. And this is going way back when, when Bon Appetit was in Los Angeles and I was here, and it was an entry level job, which was great because it meant that I learned everything from the ground up. I didn't go to journalism school. I was just an English major. So I was really kind of discovering how you make magazines was funny though, because at the time I had no interest in cooking whatsoever. I couldn't cook at all. And the good news was that at Bon Appetit, you know, I got to go to cooking school, I got to do all these kinds of things. And we, we also had recipe tastings twice a day at 11:30 and at 2, I'm still hungry at 11:30 and 2 every day.

Yeah, you've been trained.

There's nothing like, you know, testing recipes, tasting them, commenting on them, learning what is supposed to taste good. There's nothing like that experience to really, you know, help you understand what tastes good, but also help you become a better cook. So that was an amazing education. So I spent a number of years at Bon Appetit and kind of worked my way up through the ranks and, oh, about 20 some odd years into that career, I had an amazing opportunity to go to a magazine called Fine Cooking, which is based in Connecticut. And this is a very long standing magazine, very popular with people who are literally obsessed with cooking. And the cool thing about the opportun was that that was the point in time at which we were really beginning to explore magazines across multiple platforms. Really looking at the digital opportunities, including the site and apps. We were doing video, we were doing all kinds of things that were, for me, really opening my eyes in terms of, yeah, I love magazines, but I also love this idea of magazines as brands and how that was taking shape. So that was starting to make sense to me. And from there I went on to Better Homes and Gardens, where I had the amazing opportunity of being able to be the director of all of their food across every platform that they touched. And Meredith is amazing for being incredibly smart about creating content and then using it in so many different ways, from, you know, video to books, to what we call one Shots, which are those individual magazines that sell on the newsstand. And it was really interesting to take a, you know, a brand with that kind of authority, that history, and figure out what is it on each of those platforms and how is that brand strategy retained in the process of doing that. So I learned so much there. And simultaneously that was also the point in time at which I was slowly but surely becoming obsessed with bloggers. Initially I was kind of hesitant, you know, coming from traditional print, I'm coming from a place where all recipes were tested seven or eight times. And I knew how difficult that was to do. I was, I don't know if you remember Martha Stewart making some awkward comment about, you know, sort of what she thought about bloggers. But I was kind of in the same camp.

Sure.

But then everything started to change for me, and I was real. What I was seeing happening in the digital space was so much more interesting than what I was seeing elsewhere. And I started cooking from sites. Oh, remember this One recipe from 101 Cookbooks and Cooking From. I think it was. I think it's actually one of her books, like, one of her first books. It had just been kind of left lying around the office, and I grabbed it one night and I thought, oh, I'm just gonna. I'm make something here. And the dish just blew my mind. And it was the kind of dish where I would have questioned what she had in the recipe that I made. Like, I would have said, that's way too much of this or that's way too that. And it was so great to be proven wrong and to really kind of understand that that whole space, in other words, that just really began to take off with me. And I started thinking about, all right, I really understand all this brand strategy now. And I'm really in love with influencers. And I'm looking at influencers and what they're doing and thinking, yes, they're great, but I think they could be better businesses. I think they could be smarter about, you know, their brand position in the marketplace. I think they need to better understand who their target audience is and how to go for that. I think they better, you know, they should know more about brand voice and content strategy. Like, in other words, I kind of wanted to just teach them everything that I knew about brand strategy and how that created a great business model. Yeah, that's kind of the impetus of Cook it.

That's really interesting. So around the time that you're starting to look at that, blogs were kind of in there. It sounds like had enough time to be established as, okay, these are some credibility along with people questioning that credibility. Right. With the example of Martha Stewart saying whatever it was she said, but kind of on the cusp of like, okay, it was the rise of influencer marketing and sponsored content and individuals with a following and a voice being able to have strong influence. And from what I hear you saying, I was kind of looking at that and saying, this is really interesting. I can see that this is going to be something. And also I feel like I have skills and abilities that I've developed from my time not only in media, but specifically food media, to be able to apply that against some of the gaps.

Yeah. So I want to Go back to.

Your story and pull out a couple different things before we move too far on. One of the things you had talked about was Meredith. And for those that aren't familiar, Meredith isn't a person. Or maybe Meredith was a person that I don't know about, but it's kind of this massive brand umbrella company that oversees all these different brands. Eating well, Allrecipes, a lot of the parenting magazines, Rachael Ray every day. And.

And has they just bought Time Inc. Too?

Yeah. So it's like, yes, you know, these tiny media companies. And isn't Meredith headquartered out of Iowa? Is that right?

Yes, Des Moines, Iowa.

Which makes me. It's. So anytime I hear, like, a really big company out of the Midwest, I'm like, yes, thank you. Another one. So it's fun. It's fun to hear that.

But also.

Okay, good. Where, where are you from originally?

I grew up in Kansas City.

Okay, nice. Yep, Great city. And one of the things that I love about it is that a lot of their companies are in the food industry. And oftentimes I'll look at these different sites to get inspiration and get ideas for what significant sites, like All Recipes is doing in regards to how they're producing their content.

And you had mentioned that they're really.

Good at repurposing their content, which I know it was kind of a little bit of a passing comment, but it stuck out to me as something that was kind of interesting and didn't want to get too far away from it.

Before.

So I wanted to call back on it.

And can you, can you explain that a little bit?

And is that something that you think digital media creators can apply to what they're doing?

100%. And actually, we do talk about that a lot during the consulting process. Is that when you create a piece of content? Well, first of all, it has multiple pieces. If you think about a story in a magazine and how you have sort of the main text and then you have a sidebar, you have a title, you have probably a little intro, you know, chunk of explanation underneath your title. You may have a guide that gets, you know, kind of a cut this out and take it with you. In other words, you have all these pieces that help the story become that much bigger and better. So we talk about sort of all of these ways of thinking about sort of how print used to use content and how it can still be really relevant in the digital space and repurposing content. I mean, a lot of people think about, I'm going to pull my old Content up, I'm going to reshoot it, I'm going to do some work to it and refresh it. And especially if it's content that's performed well for them in the past and the benefits of that, it's like, okay, all the search comes with it and you kind of get a second chance at it. But above and beyond that, if you think about all the products that are sort of, that can be created, everything from ebooks to actual cookbooks to video strategy, if you think about content for video, why create new content there? Why not use content that you know has been successful in the, the past that does have so much sort of opportunity around it? You think about all kinds of guides and challenges and events that people could be doing. This is definitely that thing where we really get into, let's think really smart about all this content that we have and that we create and ways to use it so that you're constantly out there in front of the reader, you know, sort of bringing them in and at the same time giving them this experience across multiple platforms.

Yeah, that's great. I see that happen with a couple different creators. One of the podcasts that I listen to, they'll, they'll do recaps of, of interviews from the week and, and it's repurposed so it's not just publishing the interview, but it's recaps and highlighting certain tips or takeaways from each one of those interviews. Or I've thought about that a lot with the podcast that we do. And then how can we repurpose these into maybe, you know, one minute video that we published to Instagram that is just a text video, but highlights some of the interesting parts of a, of a podcast interview. So smart. Yeah, I love that idea of thinking about not just creating content but also critically thinking about how can I repurpose that. Because I think so often it's easy to get stuck in the, on the treadmill of content creation as opposed to strategy around content.

And not just for people who are, for influencers who have really been brought up to do this one thing and do it well. It's hard to kind of step out of that and think to themselves, oh, but wait, what are these other opportunities here? One of the other things I wanted to mention about sort of this multi platform strategy is that those products tend to bring in different audiences too. So that it's such a great way to expand, diversify and grow your audience as well. If you think about who's reading an ebook or who's purchasing a print product or who's watching your video. And when you combine that with how much noise there is out there and, and how little control you have, you know, whether it's social control in terms of what platform is going to put your content in front of, you know, which reader kind of thing, it's like, that's the point at which you're just. You're fishing with a very wide net for these people that you know are really going to love your brand.

Yeah, for sure. So wanted to touch on that real quick. Cause I thought it would be something interesting. But I want to go back now and talk about story specifically. And we heard a little bit of your story, but now I want to talk about story in the context of how creators and influencers and bloggers can think about story as it relates to them and their brand. And we talked about why story is so important. So now we have this understanding and context around the importance of story. But how do we go about crafting our story or understanding what the story is that we are going to be telling people? Where do you. Where do you even begin with that?

For us, that is actually the process of consulting, which is such an interesting thing. It's working with an individual who has. Who is creating something that I think is truly amazing. I'm stunned by blogs all the time. They're so great. There's so much in them. There's so much work that goes into them. These people are so talented and adept, you know, sort of being the jack of all trades and everything. But oftentimes they haven't really focused in on who are they and why are they and what do they do, what do they do well, what makes them unique and all of that. These are the pieces of story. This helps you get to what we would call your brand position, which really does outline exactly who you are. But for us in the consulting work, it's often the advantage of remove, if you know what I mean. It's like we aren't deep into that story the way that individual is. I'm reminded of a conversation I was having with Megan Hill of Culinary Hill way back when, way back when. She was kind of just, I don't know, a couple of years into her blog and doing amazingly well, but feeling like she didn't kind of know what direction she was going to take on any given day. Like she'd sort of check her social feeds and say, okay, well, everybody's making unicorn ice cream or whatever, whatever it might be. So I'm going to make unicorn ice cream. Today, too, because that's. I'm going to follow the path. And when we went through the consulting process with her and we were able to, like, tease out of her the things that are so unique about her experiences, her interests, her passions, the kind of food that just for her is the world is all about that kind of food. And realizing that, you know, she has this amazing background, this Midwestern background where she grew up in these. The parties that she talks about, they still make me laugh. These kinds of crazy tailgating parties they do and foods they serve. And I'm like, megan, this is who you are. Do you know what I mean? You make this incredible Midwestern food and you give it a modern twist. And it was just kind of a light bulb moment for her. Of course, it's there all along, but it's just someone who's outside of, I think, the experience, who's able to point to it and say, this is it. This is your story. Now let's build strategy around your story.

Yeah. So if people are trying to. They're in the early trade stages of kind of trying to suss that out and get a feel for who they are, what do you feel like are some of the most important questions that they should be asking themselves? And in that process of kind of brand or story discovery.

That's a really good question. What do you do? Who do you do it for? Let me see. I think the other one that I like, there, there's. There's. We usually go through three or four to get people to really kind of hunker down and commit to what their story is. But I think the one I like the best is why do you do it? In other words, what. What is the outcome that you aspire to when you create this content, you connect with this particular reader and something happens. What do you mean? In what way does the world get increasingly better? Because. Because of that experience. And I think when people are able to really answer those questions, it's like, who you are. A digital destination for women who really need help getting dinner on the table. Something like that. Who do you do it for? Women who are really challenged by the nightly ritual of feeding their family, but aspire to the ability to do that. Night in, night out. How do you help them? Basically, you provide. At that point, you're talking about the kind of content you provide and how that really gets to the pain points of your reader. And then, you know, sort of what's the reason for doing this? And that's really about helping someone achieve this aspiration. That they have, which is life changing for them if you think about it. If, if what they really want is, you know, a calm hour at the end of their day with their family at the table, with a meal that, you know, everyone is, is so happy with. And if, if this blogger can make that happen night in and night out, that's it all comes together. That is the brand position, that is the brand story, that's the reason the brand is there. And that ultimately becomes that connection with the reader that creates that, that very loyal individual who will, you know, be loyal to you throughout the, you know, throughout your extent of your career, basically.

So a couple questions regarding that. I think a lot of people that listen to this podcast would be individual creators or maybe they have a small team in a, in a personality driven business, meaning that they're talking in the first person. It's them, it's not necessarily a team of people. And in that discovery process, are they trying to figure out who they are.

Or are they trying to figure out.

Who they are when they're online or.

Are they trying to figure out who.

Their the online thing is and how much of what you end up at can be you creating something that isn't actually you. Does that make sense?

That makes total sense. Actually. One of the things that surprised me most when cook it first got up and running was the fact that basically influencers were doing what they were doing without knowing who they were doing it for, that they were the mirror was faced with towards them, that the story was about them, that the content was about them, that the whole sort of reason for the site, for the blog was about them. And almost always the first thing I would say is let's turn that mirror the other way. Let's look out to your audience, let's figure out who they are now and let's figure out what they need. Let's get a sense of where you are helping them now and how you can be even more helpful. How your content can really become about what they need, not what you want to tell them. It's interesting. I used to teach food writing and one of the first things I ever said at the beginning of every class was none of you can write in the first person until the last exercise because very few people in the sort of publishing world, if you think about it, write in the first person. Not too many people are interesting enough to always have it be about them. And true brands are not necessarily that first person perspective. There are some exceptions to that rule, definitely. But when you create a brand that you Know your heart and soul is in it. It really can't exist without you. You are its beating heart, but you are doing it for someone else. It really changes your perspective.

Yeah. Lindsay talks about. She uses this phrase where she says, it's the difference between here I am and there you are.

And she says, that's really good.

Yeah. She says as much as possible. I try and think about there you are versus, like, here I am, which is hard, which is a hard understanding to have, especially in certain niches. Like fashion is an example where you're creating a lot of seemingly, here I am content. But I think people that do that at the highest level are successfully thinking about or intentionally thinking about how they can produce that in a there you are way.

I think so too.

Yeah. So let's say that you go through this process and. And you start to get a better understanding. Well, let's say here, Here's a question.

How do you understand who those people are?

Are you asking, are you doing surveys? Do you just kind of try and craft an idea of who that person is based on comments or interactions?

How do you start to understand who.

Your people are and what they want?

Yes. So that's an excellent question. And I'm coming at that question as an editor, not a marketer. And there are two different things. On the marketing side of that question, there's all kinds of data and research and analysis, which I always find interesting. I've always had the opportunity to work with those people and kind of begin to understand how they do what they do. And that. That information has always incredibly valuable to me. But I also feel like editors, they work on a lot of gut instinct. They are. They're really smart about kind of getting a sense of who their audience is based on the comments, the questions, the conversations they're having. It's. It's so great. I think social, that's one of the things that social makes it possible in a way that it never was in print. It was very, you know, you get letters from your readers and that sort of thing. But I used to do ridiculous stuff like stand at a newsstand in an airport and watch somebody take my magazine off the shelf and flip through it and ask them, do you like that magazine? What do you like about that magazine? I would have real conversations with people and we'd have focus groups and all kinds of things. But I think in terms of what you can do sort of on your own, use that gut. Use what you know about what people are liking. Use your Google Analytics. It's amazing. I'll talk to people about, okay, so how old are they? Where do they live? What's their gender? Do they have kids? Do they have kids at home? And a lot of that is actually in your analytics and that's really kind of crucial to always know, to always stay on top of that. But there's a couple of other things in terms of setting a target audience that you want to think about. So you know who your readers are to a certain degree, but you also know your brand well enough to begin to have a sense of who do I think is going to really consider this content valuable. And when you take that perspective and you add in sort of the work that you want to be doing on the brand side, because we all know that in the advertising world, it's the millennials that are still the focus of most brands and their target audience. So when you kind of look at, you look at that and you realize, all right, I need to incorporate that component into my brand strategy if I want to have a lot of opportunities on the brand side. But I also know that this content is going to be really valuable for this person in this particular situation. So I want more of that person. I want to basically create a brand story that's going to go out there and really focus on those people who maybe I don't have them right now simply because they haven't discovered me, but maybe I haven't done a good enough job of really talking about how I can help them solve their problems either. So you set your target audience sort of based on that. All right, yes, I'm a combat validating the brand expectations here, but I'm also really delivering this content that I know is going to appeal to an audience that I want more of. And that's where it becomes very editorial. It's like, as you decide who are you after, who do you think is the audience that's most going to appreciate what you do?

Yeah, and that was going to be a follow up question that I had was when you are getting that point of kind of creating this key demographic or this target market, or maybe, maybe you'd go so far as to say kind of this avatar of this person that you're targeting, how much of that is you creating an ideal avatar for advertising? Like you talked about the millennial being somebody who's really sought after demographic versus creating content that you know that you'll love to create and will really connect with a certain group. So maybe it's not, it won't connect well with millennials, but it'll connect really well with retired men. But then there's a split there where it's like, well, maybe that's not a great thing to focus on. So how do you go about balancing the kind of business strategy with the passion interest strategy?

Yes, I got that. I think I got that one. I think there's one other piece of this that will help make sense of kind of establishing who you are and who your audience is. And way back at the beginning in the process, what you're going to want to do is better understand the world you live in, the world your brand lives in. We call this competitive set. In other words, who's out there doing something similar to what you're doing? And maybe they're doing it at a very large scale, or maybe they're, you know, they're kind of starting out, but they're, they're in your territory a little bit and being very familiar with that sort of reading them regularly, subscribing to their newsletter, letters, stalking them on social, all those things that, you know, helping you get to know them. Because in the process of doing that, what you're going to discover is that what you do may be similar to this, this blogger in this way or this one in this way. But wait, when you take that entire group, I mean, you may be watching 25 different blogs at that point in time, when you take that entire group and you look at what you do and you see something about you that, that's different. In Megan Hill's case, that would have been this sort of Midwestern perspective, I think, that she brought to the subject matter. And you say to yourself, ah, this is where I can own that real estate because it's so unique to my brand. So I think that really helps you. We call that gap analysis, really looking at the big picture, understanding your potential there, using that to shape and inform your identity, and then going for that real estate that really nobody else has. So a lot of that kind of goes into this really picking out. You're not picking out, but really kind of defining your target audience at the same time, because you want to use what you know about your competition, what your opportunity is, obviously what, what it is that you do so well, what's unique about you, and fold that into the target audience strategy as well. And when you do that, it's. It's really easy to kind of say to yourself, great, I understand. My current audience is this particular age group, this particular gender. They may or may not have K. But at the same time, I'm going to create Content in such a way that it's appealing at both ends of that spectrum. So let's say it's appealing to the retired gentleman, but it's also appealing to the guy who maybe just got married, maybe just has a couple of young kids. And you find that place in the content where it's serving both of those people. So you can grow both of those audiences. And it may be that you come up with different strategies in terms of how are you going to reach the guy with the young kids as opposed to how are you going to reach the retired guy? And you're kind of working those two strategies all the time. But your brand strategy, your story, doesn't change.

Yeah, that's interesting to think about.

So once you get to that point.

Where you have an understanding of maybe who you're targeting and a little bit about the messaging that would go into it, how do you craft your brand? Like, how do you pick out colors? Or do you decide, like, I'm always going to write in this certain way and have this certain style when I write. How do you kind of put skin on it once you've figured out what the outline or the kind of the basic skeleton is?

Well, so once you really figure out who you are, everything else is impacted by that, whether that's on the design side, whether that's kind of the look and feel of your brand, or whether it's on your content side. We go. When we, you know, when we sort of go through this process and we've been through brand positioning and voice and audience, we go into content and we really build out a content strategy that obligates every piece of content the influencer creates to that brand position, to that brand story. And the great thing about that is once you have the actual story, once you know sort of what your content is, how that's going to change your site, how you're going to create content sort of in different vertical buckets that tell a wider story than just a straightforward blog, then you begin to get the kind of the meat of the matter, as it were, and then you move into site structure and you really begin to get a sense of the design. And that's where all the pieces come together in terms of what do we look and feel like now, and how is that different than it was before, and how is that reflective of the bigger picture that we're trying to get across here.

Yeah, can you go back? You had talked about the. Into different buckets. What was that analogy that you're using? I'd be interested to Hear you talk a little bit more about that.

Yes, absolutely. So this, it's probably a bigger conversation, but I'm, I'm sort of working on the premise now that, that blogs have run their course, that they were, you know, they were very interesting and unique for a long time. If you think about it in the publishing world, that would have been a long time to me. But I think what's happening now is that, that people have, you know, there's so much more competition, there's so much noise out there. You need to be more interesting. You need to be something that kind of shines above everybody else. You need to have a reason for your readers to, you know, to kind of be exploratory about. You figure out, you know, okay, what do you got for me? And I think one of the ways to do that is to be, is to basically be a, a broader brand that, that to kind of step away from the block, the blog space where you're just sort of doing a recipe day in and day out. I don't mean to be dismissive of that. I know there's still a lot of great blogs out there, but I think it's much more interesting to take a concept and turn it into what is kind of the equivalent of a digital magazine, if you think about it. So that your content strategy isn't just recipes, videos and about or something like that, that your content strategy is actually focused on the kinds of content that you can be creat within your brand strategy. So maybe you have, you know, maybe one of those vertical buckets is everyday cooking because you know that your reader, you know, whoever you're talking to, she's going to need help getting dinner on the table. And maybe another bucket is a party concept like a gather section or something where, oh, wait, now we're shifting into the kind of cooking that's going to yield celebratory food. You know, sort of party platters and beautiful classic main dishes that you get out when it's a celebratory moment and cakes and things like that. And then maybe there's a section of your site where as the influencer, you really want to help people kind of figure out how to live the brand, the brand story that you're telling. And maybe there's a how to component to it. And maybe that how to is helping them stock a pantry that actually, you know, makes all of this easier for them or helping them really kind of understand some of the basis of technique that go into some of your recipes. So I could go on yeah, got it.

So essentially it's saying, as you're thinking about building your site, don't think about it just as a blog role where you have this constant content that you're producing, but think about it as an umbrella brand. And underneath that, what are the. I don't know if this would be the right word, but like the mini brands that would live under your umbrella brand. And, and this would be kind of a broad example, but for Pinch of Yum, we have Pinch of Yum. And it primarily still is just a section of. It's a live feed of blogs or posts that we publish. But we also have this category of when we're doing reports on growing the blog business. So, like, that's not. It's kind of its own section. It lives in its own place. And while we did publish those as posts, we saw them as kind of a different category. Or food photography would be another example of that. So what you're saying is breaking out your brand or your website into different areas. So it's not just acting as a blog, but it has kind of, like you said, a magazine feel to it, not just posts that are published twice a week.

Week.

Exactly. And it's very magazine y in. In the reader's experience as well. So if you, if you create one post is, let's say this is in the everyday cooking section and you want to go over and say, you know, want to do a version of that in, in the celebratory section. And maybe in the celebratory part, it's about a menu and how that recipe, it may be easy, but it actually fits in this menu really well because it can be done ahead. You can get it done, you know, before the guests get there. And then maybe you want to actually also talk about a how to technique in that rec that a reader wasn't aware of. Maybe it was an easy way to peel garlic or something like that. So what happens on the site then is that each of these posts has a different perspective, but then you're linking throughout the site and from one piece to the next. So you're creating this really immersive, engaging experience for your reader. That's so much more. It's better. Let's see, what's the best way to say that? If you think about your reader and let's say she just comes to cook, chances are she's going to skip all of that content that you worked so hard to create that came before the recipe. She's going to jump to the recipe, basically. But you lost that content opportunity at that point in time. But if you. If she comes for the recipe, you give her the recipe and then she comes back because she really liked that, you know, that recipe, Then she begins to realize, oh, wait, there was more to this story, because now I'm searching this and I'm seeing this. So you're kind of creating this really unique experience that I think is far more satisfying than just reading a blog post and then kind of jumping back off the site. It creates engagement. It creates that opportunity to really connect with somebody.

Got it. And it's interesting to hear you talk about that. And at the beginning, you had also talked about being less personal and more brand oriented. Does that tie into your view of content as well?

Very much so. Your content has to be about your reader. It has to be sort of of, you know, obviously through the lens of your brand positioning, which is based in, you know, your true north kind of thing. But it's really got to be about her pain points, what she needs you to do, what's going to inspire her. You know, that equation between inspire and inform, that's where the magic happens. It's like you give her a recipe that she's just like, oh, my God, I don't know if I can make this. It's beautiful. I just don't think I have the confidence or whatever it might be. But then you give her all the tools to feel like she can do it. And that can be how to. It can be video, it can be a tip, it can be all these other things that you're able to do in a content strategy like this that basically, you know, elevates the opportunity. And all of a sudden you have somebody who's. Who's really trying what you're giving her and coming back very satisfied and signing up for your email and buying your ebooks and, you know, she is your loyal customer. Definitely.

Yeah. And focusing as much as possible on that person versus just focusing on yourself. Kind of like we went back to before that phrase of here I am.

Versus there you are versus there you.

Are, there you are. And how can I help you?

Yeah, so it's interesting to hear you talk about that. I want to make sure that I'm fully understanding it because I feel like one of the strongest advantages for content.

Creators.

Is the personality behind who they are and their willingness to connect with people and to be personable. And it sounds like in a little bit that you would say, remove some of that and focus on the things that the reader would be interested in. The recipe or a certain cooking practice or something like that, which, if that is totally great, but would be interested to hear a little bit more about.

It because I don't know if I will.

Would be. If it would come from the same, same place for that.

In the way I look at it, it's actually the personal part of this process, which, if you think about it, the personal part is what you love about what you do. It's what your expertise is. It's your sort of your special gift. It's kind of coming back to that gap analysis. It's that thing about you that makes you so unique that doesn't go away. It actually becomes even more important. But if you think about it, think about it like a magazine for a second. The editor in chief of that magazine. You do not see her on every page. You don't see her writing. You don't see her doing the photography, you don't see her doing the recipe development. You may see her in a letter from the editor or not. You may not even see that either. But you know that every single piece of content in that magazine that she has basically curated and selected and overseen and tweaked and done all of these things to it because it is her brand. It is her opportunity to present this vision she has for her content in this particular sort of brand strategy, for lack of a better way to describe it. But it's really taking the influencer in the equation and, and giving her sort of a promotion. She is now the person at the top who's going to make all these decisions. Who's going to decide exactly what is the right thing for her reader exactly sort of how is she going to present it? That's going to be really useful. So I think in many ways it's there in spades. It's just there a little differently. It isn't so much about sort of her coming out and telling you that, it's her giving it to you.

Got it. And so in some ways it's thinking about, about taking a influencer or creator, somebody who is on their own and transitioning them from being an individual that is producing that content to thinking about themselves more as a brand. And not just a single person creating the content, but like, what is my brand? What is this thing that I am managing? Not just how am I doing this and creating the content. Content.

You just nailed that. Exactly.

Got it.

And I, and I think in the, in the way we're sort of morphing now, it's actually really important because I think, I think so many influencers are getting to that place where they can't do it all anymore. They know that they need to be everywhere, all the time. Content creator, photographer, recipe developer, cookbook author, all these things. And, you know, they. They want to be all of that, but they can't if they're actually doing it all. So I. I watch everybody sort of trying to figure out, okay, I can't do the video. I'm going to have to work with somebody else on the video. Or, you know what? I don't like the photography part of this. Like Gabi, who, you know, works with Matt and Adam all the time now. She. She basically, my photography isn't good enough to be, you know, for my brand to be as good as I want it to be. So I think people are making those choices. And when you choose to step up sort of in the equation and become this kind of editor in chief of your own brand, that enables you to bring in other talents, other content creators that are basically doing what you tell them to do, because you don't have time to do it.

All.

Right. And it allows you to have a framework for that that you're able to speak to that makes sense, for sure. And I think video is a great example of that. We work with Alana, who's on our team and does incredible video. And Lindsay doesn't shoot the video, she doesn't edit the video, but she has a clear understanding of what she wants that to look like. And so she works alongside Alana to figure out out how do we craft this in a way that fits not only the recipe itself, but also the brand of Pinch of Yum without Lindsey having to edit or shoot, or me for that matter, either.

That's an excellent example.

Yeah, great. Um, so we're coming to the end here, and before we do, I want to talk a little bit about the different things that Cook IT Media offers, because I know that you. There's a couple different things. And also, if you'd be up for talking about the. We're doing a giveaway, which I talked about on the intro of the podcast. Podcast.

So exciting.

Yeah. But the cookie consulting intro would love if you would talk about that a little bit as well.

Absolutely. So Cook Consulting is really where the business started. And that was the point at which I. I jumped out of magazines and I kept thinking, all right, I really want to become. I want influencers. I want to help them become better businesses. And that, to me, felt like a basis for a consulting business that has since grown to an agency and A content studio as well. But it's still the consulting part is really our beating heart, is it is the thing that we take us all the way through. We always pride ourselves on being here, answering questions, helping you with your growth and your evolution and all the places that you're going, and always interested in hearing from people who are just getting started on that path. We were talking earlier, Bjork, about how, oh my gosh, here comes January. I think we're all going to wake up on January 1st and say to ourselves, okay, I'm going to eat better this year and I'm going to be a better business this year, too. So this just seems like a great opportunity to, to give our introductory package away. We call this the Cook It Consulting intro. And it is, it's really a taste of what we do. I mean, you can probably tell from listening to me that this isn't typical consulting. It's really consulting from this unique perspective of coming from print, coming from this sort of editorial understanding of how content works and how to bring that into a brand strategy that's going to elevate your brand and help it grow and become its next iteration of itself. And the consulting intro is it kind of takes you through the basics of that and it's, you know, it gets you a little bit into brand positioning. It helps you understand some of your competitive set. It takes you into target audience so we can really think together about who that would be and how that would work, how that would change your content. And it also, it also, it does a review of your site too, Right. Looking at what your site is right now and how to think about that in a bigger, broader way.

Great. And so what we'll do for this, in order to enter in the giveaway, there's two different ways that you can do that. Number one would be leaving a comment on the podcast Show Notes. So if you go to foodbloggerpro.com podcast that will redirect you to the.

Blog.

Page where we have all the podcasts. So you can find this and leave a comment on this episode for the show notes for this. Or you could leave a review for the podcast. You just need to take a screenshot of that and then send it to me. You can email podcastoodbloggerpro.com and we will compile those and then do a drawing and we'll have a cutoff date of January 31st. So if you're listening to this after, sorry, but most of you listen in real time to the podcast and you'll be able to enter again, either you can leave a review review or leave a comment on the show notes for this. So I wanted to make sure that we get a chance to talk about that.

But also can you talk a little.

Bit about if people are interested in working with you, Laurie, outside of maybe that giveaway, what are the other ways that people could connect with you and work with Cooked?

Of course. Of course, yes. The Consulting Intro is also a product that's available to anybody who'd like to reach out and talk to us in addition to the Consulting Intro. So that's an interesting product in that some people take it and they have this eye opening experience and they go off and they, they do. They basically sort of follow the rules and get everything done. Other people, they go through the Consulting Intro process and they come back and they're like, okay, now I need you to go with me through this process. I need you to take me through every step of the way, which we love to do. And we call that, that's basically our boot camp. That's consulting boot camp. And that is a step by step all the way through. It takes two to three months usually. And we go through everything from brand statement to brand voice to audience. We go through those just like in a very kind of intimate, deep way, which is, it's just one of my favorite things ever to work with people in that capacity. But there is our website, which is cookit-media.com there's more information about us, there's more information about the products, and there's a place to email us there too and sign up for our newsletter if you want.

Great.

And we'll link to that in the show notes as well. Lori, thanks so much for coming on. Super fun to talk to you.

You too, Bjork. Thanks so much.

Hey everyone, Alexa here, the community and event specialist here at Food Blogger Pro. I'm really excited to jump in and end this episode today because I am here sharing a listener review from itunes and this review comes from Alyssa Kramer and it says, I stumbled across Food Blogger Pro podcasts recently while researching how to start a food blog. Many of the podcasts were extreme helpful and help me start on the right foot even before writing my first post. We are so thrilled that the Food Blogger Pro podcast has had such a positive impact on you, Alyssa. Thank you so much for sharing and if you want to share your thoughts about the Food Blogger Pro podcast and how it has helped you and your vlog, we would love to hear from you. So all you have to do is go to the purple podcast app on your phone or iPad and click Search in the bottom right hand corner. Then you'll just search for the Food Blogger Pro podcast, click the podcast art and then scroll down to the bottom where you see the review section. So you can either leave a star review, or you can leave a full review with text by clicking the Write a Review button. Once you write your review, be sure to put your blog name and URL in the review so that we can include it in our show notes if we feature your review in an upcoming episode. Thank you so much for tuning in, you guys. As Bjork always says, make it a great week.