253: Growth Hacking - How Yumna Jawad Got 2.2M Followers on Instagram and 200K Followers on TikTok

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Hello, hello, and welcome to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. I'm Alexa from Team fbp and we are so thrilled that you're here tuning into the podcast today. In today's episode, you'll hear from Yumna from Feel Good Foodie. And you may recognize the name or the handle because you may be one of her cool 2.2 million followers on Instagram or maybe one of her 200,000 followers on TikTok. So, as you can probably imagine, we're talking all about growing your social media audience with Yunma today. She has more or less figured out the secret sauce to growing an audience on Instagram and on TikTok, and she's sharing her strategies and tips for, quote, unquote, growth hacking during this episode. It's just a really fun episode and she is just so knowledgeable. She's an incredible blogger and we're just so thankful to have her on the show today. So we really hope you enjoy this episode. But without any further ado, Bjork, take it away.

Yumna. Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, Bjork. It's good to be on.

Yeah. So even in whenever I do one of these podcasts, we do a quick check in, we talk through stuff. I kind of explain how it'll go. And you shared a couple different things and as just little snippets that I think are going to be really exciting for people to hear about. You shared about your growth on Instagram. You have 2.2 million followers. You shared about your growth on the blog and building that. And we're also going to be talking about TikTok. And you tied it all back to this idea of really being a growth hacker. And let's start with that. What is. What is your idea of a growth hacker? And can you kind of explain to podcast listeners what that is and how you adopt that as kind of who you are in the work that you do?

Absolutely. So my background is actually in marketing. And so what I did before all of this was like 10 years of marketing and trying to figure out how to get the message out in the best way, in the most concise way, the cheapest way. So when I started on social media, the first thing I ever did was Instagram in July of 2013. And when I started there, I didn't know anything about social media marketing, but I said, well, I know all the other parts of marketing. I'm sure I can apply it to this. So it became this fun little challenging thing for me to do while I was on maternity Leave. And I took it as an opportunity to say, okay, what are people doing on here and what's working for them and what can I learn from them and how can I grow from this? And first just started out like a hobby, like most people, but I started seeing, oh, that person has 5,000 followers. I wonder if I can get 5,000 followers. I wonder if I, you know, so it kind of became this thing. And so what. What I ended up doing on Instagram, which is kind of what I've applied to different platforms, is I try to follow different accounts from different niches. So it's not just food accounts. I started following the fashion accounts. I started following, you know, makeup artists and music, and just seeing what different people were doing and just trying to learn from them and trying to just emulate those ideas. So a huge part of it is just seeing what the trendsetters themselves are doing and trying to understand what it is that. And then experimenting with different things. So just trying out, you know, if there's a new feature on Instagram, hopping on it as soon as possible. If there's a new feature that allows you to do something that you couldn't do before, Instagram is going to be pushing that and promoting that. So it's a good idea to hop on it and to give that a try.

So do you have an example of that on Instagram? What were some of the things that you did that were helpful? Like, 2.2 million is an incredible amount of people, and there's an incredible amount of people who would want to have 2.2 million followers.

Yep.

What were some of the things along the way that you did that allowed you to grow faster? It has to be good content. But there's also some of that growth hacker element that you talked about that it sounds like helped along the way.

So there were, like, I would probably break it down to three different things that I did. The first thing that I did was I realized as feelgood foodie, I was making content, I was cooking content, like three times a week, I was producing content. So it was on my iPhone. It was simple photos that I was taking and posting them on there. But I realized that the more you post, the more you grow. So what I decided to do was I actually started a second account. And by starting a second account, I was able to repurpose content. And not a lot of people were. You know, there was basically two types of people back then. There was the true bloggers who were pushing people to their. To their blog, and then there was these repost pages. And I was kind of probably one of the few people who was both of them. I decided to be both and actually have two kinds of pages. So what happened was that page was called Foodie diy. And that page basically grew to be way bigger than Feel Good Foodie. And so what I did was I kind of used that page to boost Feel Good Foodie. So anything that I was doing, I would post it on there and I would say, follow Feel Good Foodie. Follow Feel Good Foodie over and over again. And so that helped me out. So it was kind of reposting that content, liking the page alone. There was a time where Instagram, you can actually grow a page just by liking content. So my sister is a dentist, and I was able to grow help her grow her page to 200,000 followers just by liking her content in, like, 2016, 17. So that was another strategy of just liking content that it was just amazing. Like 10,000 followers per day, you can grow by using one big account and liking it from another. Sure.

Can you explain the reason behind that? Like, how that works?

Yeah. So basically what happens is, if I'm going to like a picture from Pinch of Yum, for example, what that's going to do is it's going to tell my 2.2 million followers that, like, hey, Pinch of Yum is an account that this influencer likes. And so you might like it as well. And so what happens is it ends up popping on the suggested Explore page. And Instagram was really pushing that for a while. It doesn't work as strongly now. I mean, it still works to some degree, but Instagram has kind of cracked down on that now with everyone doing these, like, pods and comment pods, you know. But back then it was really powerful because it would suggest it and continue to suggest it over and over again. And so the more I like, the more I posted, the more that it would be suggested.

With something like that, how are you discovering that that is something that's working? Are you reading marketing articles? Are you following people who are suggesting it as best practice? Is it just kind of a gut intuition thing? Like, as you use the platform, you discover that it works because that as a concept, like you said, 2016, 2017 is working really well. And then things shift with any platform pretty quickly. So how do you know the thing that is currently working well?

Yeah, so back then, because I was starting these different accounts, I was actually talking to people in different niches. So I actually even started a makeup account because I said, well, if I can grow a Food page to be this much. What if I can do it, can I do it with another vertical? And I did and I grew with another vertical, something I know nothing about. And so what I ended up starting to do was communicating with people in different verticals and then watching them really closely. So I didn't get my information outside the app. It was literally all on the app. It was these like 14 year old kids who were like, oh my gosh, if you do tag your picture today to say Singapore, it's going to hit the popular page and you'll get double the amount of likes that you normally get. So I literally did that. So it's just these random things that would happen and they would find out about something that would work. And so I kind of became part of these like circles of people who would share this information. And so, but it wasn't even, it wasn't even food bloggers. It was these random people who are probably 15 years old and they're so young and they're just, they're basically so passionate about the app and on the app so much that they were finding these little tweaks of things that were happening and sharing them with everyone.

And are these like groups that you're. I'm so fascinated by it, number one, just because of the growth around it. Number two, because of the creativity and like the hustle involved with you saying, hey, I'm just gonna go on this and learn from this. And if it's a 15 year old kid who's telling me no different than like a, you know, consultant who's 30 years old and has done marketing for 20 years. But number three, what's interesting to me and why I love it is because I feel like there's something to do with tapping into, for lack of a better word, like youth culture. And, and that's what we're going to be talking about a little bit as we get into discussing TikTok and that being kind of a demographically speaking, a younger skewing audience, but also really exciting because it's a, it's a new platform. Inevitably what happens is that trickles up and suddenly my 30 something year old friends are using it. So we're going to talk about that in a little bit. But how are you discovering these groups of people, whether young or old, regardless, these experienced and knowledgeable people on a certain platform to inform some of the things that are happening and that are working well?

A lot of it is just really geeking out over a platform, whatever it is that you're on so when I started on Instagram, I basically would just look at the Explore page. Explore Page was such a powerful tool just to see what is trending, because Instagram is putting on there what they think is popular. So if accounts were showing up there over and over and over again, I'm like, this. This person knows what they're doing. They're always on. And so I would just start chatting with them and just say, hey, I love your content and what are you doing? And, you know, kind of. And this is the kind of stuff that I actually don't have time to do anymore. But back then when I was on maternity leave, I didn't have a blog or Pinterest account or any of that. I was. So I was just obsessed with the app of Instagram and just learning how these different things were happening. So the Explore page was the biggest wait for me to do research, like what is hitting on there and why. And so I think it was January 2017 when Instagram first introduced video. All of a sudden, we started seeing a couple videos in our Explore page. I'm like, oh, my goodness, there's something going on here with video. But nobody was really making video yet. I wasn't able to make video. Maybe it was 2016, actually. So what I discovered is I said, well, even though Feel Good Foodie is my content, I don't want to share anyone's content on there. What if I shared something helpful that doesn't compete with my content but actually supplements it? So I found a video of how to wash your pans. I'm like, I'm not going to do this tutorial. Somebody did this tutorial and ruined six pans probably to do this tutorial. And so I reposted. I think it was from Food Network or one of those types of pages. So I reposted it, and just from that one video, I was able to grow like 15, 20,000 followers in a day. And so then the next day I'm like, all right, let me find another video. And there weren't a lot of people doing videos. So it was really hard, few and far between, trying to find them. So that was another huge growth tactic for me was reposting these people's videos of fun ideas that didn't really compete with the food content that I was making, but actually was interesting because the people followed me were curious about that stuff. So then eventually I made my own videos, and that's been a huge growth, quote unquote hack for me as well.

Yeah. And when you say, let's Say you find this video, reposting it, meaning taking that crediting back to whoever the original person was within the app itself? Or is that like taking the video, uploading it, and then crediting back and reaching out and saying, like, hey, is that all right? We have that with Pinch of Yum. Sometimes people will be like, hey, can we share your video and credit you back?

Yeah. So basically it would be. There's these download apps, so you would download it and then repost it onto. Not repost it, basically, but share it as a new video to your video, crediting the account. And originally I had reached out to a couple people and I asked them to do it. What's funny is I actually got in trouble with BuzzFeed because BuzzFeed was one of the first people doing that. And I permission from three or four different people, everyone said, yeah, yeah, do it. We don't care. Then buzzfeed found me doing. They said, we do not want you to share this content. And what's funny now is everyone shares BuzzFeed's content and it's so popular. But when I first did it, they said, please, you can't share our videos. We don't want anyone sharing these. So, yeah, so there was a little bit of that where I got comfortable, and I said, well, everyone said yes, so I'll just continue it. But yeah, so those are the different kinds of things that I look at whenever something new is introduced. Like when video was introduced, when carousels were introduced, when stories first came up, the kids, what they were doing. The kids, they're literally just these kids who are so smart. But one of the things that they would do is they realized that if you can get 200 comments on your post within 15 minutes, that Instagram would actually push that up in the algorithm and show it to more people. So they would go on live and they would say, I'm going to Follow the first 200 people who comment on my post. And so all these people, like, would. And just all you have to do is comment. Pizza word, letter by letter. So all of a sudden, within minutes, you have 200 comments, and they're all just P I, Z Z A. But all of a sudden, you've got 200 comments and you beat the algorithm and your content is showing up before other people's content is. So just all these. And I never did that personally because I thought it was cheesy and weird. I would never try something like did kind of one time just go on and say, hey, guys, you know, it means a lot to me, if you can, you know, like my stuff or comment within the first 15 minutes, it really helps. And it was just. It felt kind of weird. So I tried it once. It worked, and then I just didn't do it anymore because the idea of going live every single time you post content and you beg your followers to go, but it worked, you know, and so it's all these little things. And then what's funny is, whenever I tried something that would work, it would work for sometimes weeks, sometimes months, sometimes, like, hours, and then it would just die down. You know, Instagram is constantly tweaking those algorithms because people take advantage of them. You know, there was that day with Singapore, everybody was in Singapore. Like 50% of the content, like, everything was in Singapore.

Yeah, it's really interesting. And you. And you hear that a lot with this idea of. Of growth hacking, and there's kind of this constant learning about what's working. If you are. If you use, like, lean into the hack side of it, what is the thing that is an area that is. There's exponential room for growth. And I feel like the hard part with it is always finding, like, what is the thing that's on the cusp of unlocking growth. Video being an example, without it leaning too far into the hack side of it. Because on some of those platforms, you know, maybe using Pinterest as an example, it might be a platform where if you lean in too far into the hack side of things, search optimization would be a great example of this, and it falls on something that would be a flag, then there's going to be detrimental impact that happens to your account, whether that be banned or whatever it might be.

Yeah, exactly. And there's. There's a fine line between being spammy, for example, and you still want to produce, you want to be quality. Yeah, but.

But it's also, I think a through line that I hear in stories of startups who have. Have grown exponentially fast is that they're looking for creative ways to do things and that allow them to grow quickly. And it has to do with really understanding and playing the game at a level where you're passionate about. And I think that what you said earlier, it really makes a lot of sense where you almost become obsessed with the platform and you say, what are the things that I can be doing that are unique, that are different, that are a new feature that they just launched, the example of repurposing content. Okay, so if somebody else shares something, obviously you want to go out and say, like, hey, like, people do with pinch of yam. Are you okay if we share this on our account and credit you back? So you want to connect with that person, you want to get permission. But there are people and there are accounts, the Feed Feed, I think, as an example, who have built a substantial following by giving exposure to other people's content at scale, they get more followers because of it, but they're not actually creating the content. So they're a platform where, and I'm not saying any specific platform, but there are platforms that kind of are aggregate platforms that surface up the best of, like, I think of these animal accounts that, that we follow, Lindsay and I, and at the end of the day, when our brains are completely drained, we're like, let's watch some inspirational animal rescue videos. And it's like, yeah, some of those might be original, but some of those might be stories that they've seen that they want to surface. But point being, it's thinking creatively around, hey, it's not just about showing up and posting a photo at the same time every day along with a caption. There are, there are creative ways that you can be lifting this content, but then also knowing that inevitably you need to be aware of how much of the algorithm hacking are you doing to play the game as, as clean as possible? So do you have feedback or ideas or thoughts around how to know when you're pushing things too far and how to pull back on that and how do you make decisions around that in regards to the growth hacking side of things?

Well, I think it's a, it's a good idea to, you know, learn about all the different ideas that are out there. There's so much right now too, especially with these platforms being as old as they Instagram being, you know, almost probably a decade old. I think 2011, it started so almost a decade old. So there's so many different ideas out there all the time. So I think the first thing is it has to feel good in your gut. It has to feel like it makes sense to you. It makes, it's part, you know, just has a good gut feeling. It's ethical, I think too, some part of it has to be ethical. And I think you have to think about your audience too. How is your audience going to react by seeing something like this? One thing I tried four years ago that I'm not even proud of, but I tried it because people were growing crazy. Like, this was these giveaway loops. And so I don't know if you've heard of giveaway loops, but they're basically like, we're giving away this $2,000 Mac package. And so what you have to do is you have to follow these 10 accounts in this, and every person you follow, you end up, you know, you grow that way. And so everybody who's seeing it is following all these accounts, and you end up growing this way. So people were growing, like, massive. And it was. There was food bloggers who were doing it as well. I'm like, you know, I'm going to try this. Why not? So I tried it. I tried it once or twice, and I literally grew 30,000 followers a day. It was intense. But then I said, okay, then all those people who are following me now are following me in order to get a new Mac. And okay, now that they didn't win, what are they going to do? Guess what? The next day, I lost 90% of those followers. And so for me being so interested in growth hacks, I wanted to try it. I thought it was a really cool experiment to try it. And I did put my audience through that trial. And I look back at it and I hate the fact that I did that. But I learned so much from that experience. And I learned to, you know, sometimes it's just not worth it. Sometimes the kind of followers you get, it's just not worth it. So I go back to that now, and if something doesn't feel right, if me getting on live, begging people to like my content and comment on it within 15 minutes feels really weird and cheesy, I'm not going to do it. So some part of it has to be that. And I think you have to think about the audience you're serving and making sure that they're actually going to gain something from what you're doing.

Yeah, it's interesting to think, you know, what is the ultimate goal in pursuit of this. And I think some people stop a little bit early where the ultimate goal is the number. But if you're building your brand as a business, the ultimate goal would be attention. It would be impact. And that's a little bit harder to track. And it's also, you know, maybe not as you can't like check a box and say, like, hey, I hit the impact level of xyz or I hit the. You could do engagement versions of engagement.

Right.

But really like Instagram for an example, if you're building that as a brand, it's either to promote internally your own personal brand or products that you have. If you're thinking of like the Kardashians, like they build billion dollar businesses selling their own product or it's selling somebody else's product through sponsored content. And the best way to do that that isn't necessarily through, you know, hundreds of thousands of followers, but hundred thousands of or millions of engaged followers, which is what I hear you saying. Like, hey, you could add 30,000 people. But if they're not going to be engaged with the content that you're creating, if they're not going to care about it, then if you're building your brand as a business, then it's not really going to matter. You've also done some of the growth related obsession hacking with your blog itself and we haven't even gotten to the meat and potatoes of what we're going to talk about, which is TikTok. But I'd be interested to hear how you went about doing that with your blog. You've grown it to multiple millions of page views and kind of with the same mindset of a marketer and trying to learn the things that are working and how you apply those. Can you talk about some of the things that were most helpful on the growth of your blog?

Yes, absolutely. So the first most helpful thing I ever did was that I signed up for Food Blogger Pro. And I didn't even tell you this before, but honestly, I literally walked through the first tutorial where you show me how to purchase the domain and go through the whole bluehost thing. So I did all of that. And what I did was I basically bought the whole membership and I binged watched for two months. I said, I'm not creating any content for two months. I'm just watching everything. I learned how to take photographs from Lindsey, I learned all about Google Analytics from you. I learned everything that I needed to know to get started. And so that was a huge help getting started. And then, and then what happened was I use my Instagram platform to kind of, kind of pivot the whole blog. And so from day one or month one, I had 30,000 page views, which is amazing. Like to start from day one, having 30,000 page views is such a good feeling, you know, So I thought, oh, this number is just going to continue to grow and grow and grow. And what happened was two years later, it didn't continue to grow and grow and it just kind of hung out 60,000, 80,000, which was fine, it was doing well, but I just wasn't getting the traction that I thought I would get. I thought, you know, after two years I should be much bigger than this. I should be growing, you know, and it's a very long game, is What I'm learning now. But what ended up starting to help me was going to different conferences, you know, going to conferences, meeting with people who were experts in different things. And sometimes too, it wasn't just about the keynote speaker who was speaking or that really interesting presentation about how to do your videos better, but it was more of these, you know, hallway conversations with friends and the coffee talks and things like that. I remember one of the first ones I went to, I was really interested in like the final keynote speaker and this one of the bloggers was like, hey, do you want to skip it and just have coffee instead? And I'm like, what do you mean skip it? Because like, I'm this like a student who's there at this conference. And she said, yeah, let's just have coffee. And I'm like, oh, okay. Well, I guess, are you sure? And so we just sat there, had coffee in that 20, 30 minute conversation with her. Just so impactful. Just introducing me to this person who can audit my website or introduce me to this person who can help me create graphic design so that I can free up my time to do this. And so the networking for me has been huge. It's been just a huge amount of help because every single person that I've met, there's just, everyone's just kind of helping along the way, you know, and just like, oh, have you talked, have you talked to this person and have you met this person and try this new thing? And so all of that has been really helpful. And now, you know, having these Facebook groups and having, you know, listening to podcasts like yours, where you're, where you're interviewing experts in different fields and learning about new things has been really helpful as well. But I think the biggest thing is like getting an audit, making sure, you know, getting things started, having good content, you know, having having an audit that kind of tells you where you're doing right and what you're doing wrong, you.

Know, and all of that, it's something that we. So two pieces to pull from that. Number one, I think both with talking about some of the things with Instagram growth and then your blog. One of the things that is a through line there is learning from other people. And it sounds like, well, yeah, of course you need to learn from other people. But it's one of the things that I need to consistently remind myself is I need to put myself in places where I'm able to interact with, rub shoulders with, ask questions to, and not just intention, not just like passively, but intentionally asking questions around how we can be doing things better. And even within our own businesses, we've just shifted into a new season of kind of remembering that. So we're starting to reach out and we're having conversations with people where we just went through a podcast audit and we said, hey, we connected with an expert who's a podcast expert. We said, can you do a complete rundown, you know, look in the nooks and crannies of our podcast and tell us what we could be doing better? We connected with a friend of mine who is really good at search, and we said, you know, once a month, can we do a one hour phone call with you that we'll pay you for as we build out our plan and keyword research for Pinch of Yum and design decisions that we can just ask you questions. And so we're kind of building like a board of advisors, so to speak, that we can reach out to and ask questions to. And we wouldn't have been able to do that if we didn't have this networking that we had done. So I think that's a super important piece that you talk about. And the other piece that I think is so important is continual learning. And you talked about that with Food Blogger Pro, which I super appreciate the plug there. But wherever that is, if it's listening to the podcast, if it's taking Linda courses, I've been thinking about that lately for accounting and me understanding QuickBooks better as that becomes a more important piece of our business. So not ever giving up on the learning because sometimes we can get swallowed up in the content creation or the grind, but to know that you need to level up consistently and that goes back to kind of that, that 1% infinity getting a tiny bit better every day that we talk about so often. So what does that look like? You remove conferences now, right? In this unique season that we're in, it's Facebook groups, it's connections that you have personally. It's reaching out to people organically, like, hey, finding a site that you like, sending them an email. Any other advice for connecting with people who can be peers as you, as you grow what you're doing?

I think those are probably the major ones. I think for me, what's worked really well too is just different types of podcasts. So we all know there's different food blogging niche podcasts that we listen to. And obviously this is my favorite one. But I also try to listen to different podcasts outside of that. And then sometimes when you email those people who create the podcast and ask them A question. It just kind of like goes into this whole other thing that you didn't even expect, so don't worry about doing something like that. And I always thought, oh, I would. I could never email this person. And, you know, they. They host the podcast and whatever, but it's. You shouldn't be too intimidated about reaching out to someone. I was recently on the. Gary Vaynerchuk, you know, his podcast, and I asked him a question. Yeah, I asked him a question and he said, you know what? That's such a good question. We want to have you on the podcast and we want you to ask it live on this. You know, I'm like, oh, my goodness, this is amazing. The question was, it was right at the time of the quarantine, and it was basically like, this is a time where my blog is booming more than ever, but it's a time that I'm working with less brands more than ever, and nobody's reaching out. And it basically died. Where I used to do four to five to six sponsored content a month. I'm doing zero right now, the last two months. And so I said, how do I get brands to work with me more? And Gary, of course, threw a couple of, like, swear words and then said, you don't, you don't. Yumna yelled at me, but basically told me, no, you don't get the brands to work with you right now. This is not the time to make money. This is the time to connect. And those really powerful. I love Gary. And so. So, yeah, I. So I tried to listen to different podcasts outside of just the food blogging niche. I also listened to one, you know, it's more for, like, people in design and beauty, and they give excellent advice. That's not about food at all, but it kind of transcends into this, you know, part as well. I do an SEO one like all 100% super nerdy SEO podcast.

What are those? Can you share? Like, if you were to share the top three for people who listen to the Food Blogger Pro podcast, complimentary podcasts. So, like, if you think of the color wheel, not the. Not the same shade, but like it complimentary in that it fits in, but it maybe looks a little bit different, like the beauty one or the SEO, what would the top three be?

So my top three would be search news you can use with Marie Haynes, and she's an expert in SEO. It gets really into it, but I think it's fascinating. The second one would be video Creators with Tim Schmoyer. I'm obsessing over YouTube right now. And so I've been listening a lot to that. And when I start a podcast, I go back to the beginning because I feel like I don't want to miss anything. If I listen to a couple and I like it, I go way back. And the other one is called A Drink with James. Drink with James. He basically has an influencer network called 4CO, and most of the people in that network do beauty and lifestyle. But his advice is impeccable and it's timely and interesting, and there's a lot of Instagram advice in there.

Awesome. That's great. We'll link to those in the show notes to make sure that people can check those out. So let's jump into the topic that we originally kind of bounced some ideas back and forth on TikTok. It's something that we've been talking about as a team. We're kind of like. We feel like we're going to, like, a high school party. How do we dress? What do we wear? Is it dumb if we say something's hip or, you know, totally cool? Like, just trying to figure out the language, what it looks like. When did you start on. On TikTok and what has that experience.

Been like, okay, so somebody from TikTok reached out to me in September 2018, and that day, or they reached out, they said, we want you to get on TikTok. It's this amazing platform, blah, blah, blah, we'll help you. We'll help you grow all this stuff. And I said, sounds good. And I ignored them. And a week later, they said, I can hop on the phone with you. I can help you. And I said, I don't really have time right now. I'm working on SEO. So I just kept ignoring this person and then. But I said, you know what? This is. This is getting a little bit of buzz. Let me at least grab the feel good foodie handle just so I have it, because I lost it out on Pinterest, for example. So I grabbed that and then I didn't do anything for a year, for 12, 13 months. And then I was listening to A Drink with James and there was a beauty influencer talking about how she posted a video of her Manhattan view and was able to grow to more followers than she had on Instagram within, like, two months of being on the platform. That's crazy. That's insane to think that someone can grow that much from one video going viral. So I got on the platform and I just said, you know what? I'm just going to Experiment with it. And I had a friend who started out with me at the same time, and we basically made a pact and said, we will post every single day. Just something. We're just going to try things out. And so the fact that I had this friend with me, she's also a food blogger, it kind of helped to make it a little bit less intimidating. So we got on there together and we would try things and we'd say, oh, my gosh, did you know there's this feature and that feature? And we danced, we sang, we tried all the hip things, and eventually we figured out where we belong. Eventually we figured out the kind of content that our audience was looking for and that TikTok was craving, and we kind of settled back into food tutorials. And it's funny because we started out doing something so crazy and so out of our comfort zone because we thought that's what the platform needed. And in the end, the food content that we're making for Instagram, for Facebook, it's the same idea just kind of repurposed in just a much snazzier way.

Yeah. So can you talk about that? I think that's one of the intimidating things with TikTok is you pull it up and it's like, you know, the rock doing, like, dance in his weight room, and it's like, whoa, how do I fit into this? You know? Or like some kid doing a, like, prank. Or like, there's one Lindsay. And I listened to where it was like that. The. The. The Run. Like, there's that. I don't know what the song is or who the artist is, but it's like, run.

Oh, yeah.

And it's like when you're shutting the lights off at the end of the night and you get to the last light and you have to shut it off and then run up the stairs anyways. I just like, well, what is. How does food content fit into this? But it sounds like what happened was you started on that kind of extreme end of, like, hey, let's get on the trendy side of some of these TikTok, like, skits, essentially, that are happening, but eventually just moved towards what was most familiar and comfortable, which is recipe tutorial videos. Did you not have traction with some of the, like, trendier stuff? And can you talk about what those are? And for people who aren't familiar with TikTok, like, kind of explain the different genres of content that you can produce?

Yeah, so when I first started, I did, you know, you would take different soundtracks. Like, there was one where it sounded like your oven was creaking, you know, and so it's like. And then you start dancing at the end of it. So I'm like, well, this kind of relates. And I always wanted to kind of stay in the food realm. So I took my oven and I kind of creaked it a little bit, and then I started dancing in the end. So I did things like that for just, you know, just for fun or, you know, there was a soundtrack where, like, you come into a room and everyone starts to, like, you know, clap and cheer for you. And I came into a room with, like, sweets for Christmas, and I was like, oh, you know, when you show up to a party with, like, baked goods, this is what happens. And so I did those kind of fun things where it's like taking a soundtrack and thinking about how it applies to a foodie and what would make sense to somebody who enjoys food and doing some of that stuff. And so I did, you know, some of those did really well, and I used my kids in some of them. The biggest one that went viral, and some of that stuff does work. We did one. It was called Uno in real life. So if you were playing Uno, like the reverse wild card, whatever, in real life, what would it be like? So I did with my daughter where I made her eat celery, and then she doubled it, and then I did the wild card and turned it into broccoli, and we got 4 million views on that. And so just something, like, really creative and fun, still dealing with food, bringing my daughter into it, and just having fun with it. But then one time, what I did was I basically just showed breakfast, lunch, dinner, couple snacks throughout the day, and I just picked whatever trending song was on TikTok, and that exploded and got 5 million views as well. So I was like, oh, people want the food stuff. And then another time, I actually showed. And it's a real tutorial. It was actually something that I filmed for Instagram Stories. You know how Lindsay films them ahead of time. She has somebody filming them for her. It's basically the same thing. I took that and I made it shorter. Much. Just much more crisp and much more interesting than a long Instagram story. Put it into 30 seconds, and I made energy bites, and that got millions of page views of views. So it's just really interesting to kind of. So I'm like, oh, well, this works, this works, and this works, but what do I enjoy doing the most? So I kind of fell into, oh. And when I first. First started, I thought, oh, I'll Just take my square Instagram videos and throw them on TikTok and we'll be great. And so what happened was some of them did really well and I was like, this is perfect. I don't have to do anything and I can just grow on this platform. And then pretty soon they stopped working. Because what happens is, you know, you have to embrace that vertical format. People don't want to see the square videos. It feels foreign to TikTok. So, yeah, so I tried a bunch of different things and I'm still experimenting now as well. But I think what's working for me is, you know, showing my face like, hey, I'm going to teach you how to make this really quick recipe. Then boom, boom, boom. How do you make the recipe look how beautiful the recipe looks? And so trying to do that in like 30 seconds, 60 seconds max is what you have. It's kind of challenging and it doesn't work for every single recipe. So, yeah, so that's kind of where I've landed. But it's just interesting. My biggest video ever was 12 million views and all it was was vacuum sealing cranberries because I. It was a four second video. And what happened was it just kept looping, I think, and so people would just watch it so fascinated.

There's kind of those weird like, like power washing your back deck. And it's like, how does this have 10 million views? But there's something satisfying about seeing that. And I would imagine that kind of falls into that category.

Yes, the power washing guy became really popular on. There's a. There's literally a power washing guy on TikTok. That's what he's known for. He was Power Washington.

So to recap a couple of things that you talked about. It's interesting to hear you say, hey, essentially, like food content at its core can work on TikTok. It's maybe gonna feel a little bit different, but you can go, you can go ahead and create a recipe. It's just then delivering that in a way that feels organic to TikTok. So is the footage that you're taking for TikTok, do you repurpose that anywhere else? Are you going in and saying, I'm gonna create this just for TikTok, and if so, what are you doing that's different for it?

Okay, so I, I basically started doing. I basically started taking footage from my Instagram stories and repurposing them for TikTok. Just like what Lindsey does, you know, she shows those behind the scenes. She's not taking photos. She's not doing an Instagram video. She's just in her kitchen doing that. And so I do a lot of those in my stories as well. And so I was taking those using a video editing app and just piecing all of that together and just trying to make it as quick as possible and sometimes just doing a big voiceover, the whole thing just to re. Explain it well. Yeah. So you can kind of see. But then I realized people love the sizzle sounds. There was one time I did just cooking salmon and that sizzle sound like really got to people. So what I'm doing currently is I'm actually recording it in the app and I'm not showing that footage anywhere else. It's just living on TikTok. But what's cool is that it's recipes that I've made before. So I photographed them. I've done videos of them, I've done Instagram stories of them. And it's like a fourth time doing or fifth time doing this recipe. So.

Yeah.

And so you can make it quicker. You can do it pretty, you know, nice and simple. And it's just another way of showing the same content in a different vertical.

Got it.

I think you can still take that video and share it on Instagram Story.

Sure.

I do know some people share them on like blog lates. She does like Pilates blog. Her name is Bloggly. She's really big on TikTok and she basically, if you look at her Instagram account, I think the last three months is all 100% TikTok videos. So they're super polished, beautiful lighting, she has a beautiful studio. And if you look at them, you can tell from the text they're all 100% TikTok videos.

Sure.

That are living on her Instagram.

Yep. So she's TikTok first and then putting it onto Instagram.

Yep. And she obviously was Instagram before and she's really. She's really big on all the platforms and she was able to do that. And there is another food blogger who does that. She takes. Takes the TikTok videos and she adds them to her Instagram feed as well.

It's interesting that that switch. You'd think it'd be the other way, but I guess that people are starting to notice the benefit of TikTok growth. So you kind of pivot and say like, okay, if I'm going to get more out of this on a certain platform, I'm going to focus on that first. And then secondary benefit will be Instagram because prioritizing the thing that is, that is the most beneficial. Which obviously in that case, at least for those creators, it is TikTok. So a couple like nitty gritty questions. The videos that you're creating, are you putting your phone on a tripod? Like how do you, how do you get the, you know, you mentioned Lindsey.

Yeah.

We have somebody on our team who comes in Rita and so it's kind of like following her. It's still a phone, but we have the luxury of having somebody on our team. Are you putting that on a tripod? Is somebody holding it for you? And then what is the video editing app that you're using?

I, I have my first ever tripod that I used to use for my camera. So it's a very cheap thin one. So the legs are pretty thin and I'm using that. It's a manfrotto. So it's one of those like 30, 40, $50 ones. They're not super expensive. That's what I'm using. And it basically comes with a phone screw on kind of hook. And so I can put my phone on there and I can tilt it 360 degrees so I can have it facing me or I can have it facing right horizontal on top of the fruit. So that's been working pretty well for me. Sometimes you can see the legs when it's horizontal because it doesn't have a long neck for it. I would recommend, especially if you're shooting after hours getting one of those ring lights because they come with the iPhone, it comes with a tripod inside of it. It's built in. It's like 50 bucks. You have a ring light with the tripod built in and you can put your phone in there.

Yeah. So idea being that it's artificial light that wraps around the phone so it gives it a n nice kind of basic simple lighting structure. Yep.

Yes it does. Because lighting is very important on TikTok. When you're scrolling through and you're seeing something super dark, you're less likely to hang out and watch it. And if something. But on the other hand, if something looks super polished, then people kind of gravitate away from that. So if something looks like there's a.

Fine line between like, is this a studio? Because you see that even in TikTok's advertising they say like real people, real footage, real. So there is an element of, you know, to go back to that, what do you wear to the party? Like you don't want a suit. Like you're going to want to wear something that's doesn't look like you just rolled out of bed, but also doesn't look like you're going to the Grammys. It's kind of that in between of what is just the right. Right amount of polish. Where it is interesting, it feels good. You know, you've tried, you've showed up, you've tried, but you're not disconnected from what the actual spirit of it is. We should say this. So your account right now, you have 180,000 followers. I forget when we first started talking, but you're like 140,000. And I feel like that was just a few weeks ago. Is there a number that you're seeing in terms of how quickly your account's growing?

I think it's doing 2,000 per day now. So that's pretty cool. Yeah, it is pretty incredible. The cool thing about it is that what happens with TikTok, that's really unique. One of my favorite reasons for using the platform is when you post a video and it does really well, it basically boosts everything else on your account. So what happens is if one video gets a million views, all those people who. The million people who saw like, oh, what's feel good foodie. I like food. I wonder if I would like her. I mean, your name has to be interesting. Or the content they saw on the Explore page, which is called the for you page, has to be interesting enough for them to check you out. But if they like you, they come to your page, they're like, oh, my gosh, this is so cool. And what TikTok does is it's a square. It's, you know, it's still a grid format, but it kind of shows those little numbers at the bottom that says, hey, you know, watch out. This video actually has a million views. That one has 50,000 views. And so people are like, oh, why does that one have a million views? I want to watch that one. And so people kind of get interested and start peeking at your account versus Instagram. What happens is people who come to your account just see, oh, my God, what a beautiful photo. They start clicking on what looks beautiful. But on TikTok, they click on the numbers that are high. And the more they click on those numbers and the more they absorb that content, the more likely it is for that content to go viral again so you can have content wake up months later. And so if I look at my top nine videos, I think six of the nine are from February or February or March. They're videos that went viral in February and March, and they're still Bringing me people today. So the people who are gaining today are from videos that I shot months ago, which is so interesting and very different from the way Instagram works.

Yeah. Idea being that one of the ways people seek out quality content or interesting content is by looking at the view number. And you could have something that's three months old. But if you go back, people be like, wait a minute, why does this video have 3 million views? It must be interesting. I'm going to click on it. So it can potentially have a longer lifespan than, let's say Instagram, where if somebody comments on a Instagram that's three months old, you're like, whoa, like, what are you digging around in my feed for? And going back this far, like, it's a little bit weird, right?

When somebody goes, it would be creepy to like something from three months ago.

But it's almost like, you know, somebody's doing some deep diving on your account. So what are the other things when you're, when you're creating a piece of content? There's the text overlay, you put a description along with it. There's hashtags. Can you talk about everything that goes into the different parts and pieces of piece of content that you're posting to TikTok?

Yeah. So I'm currently experimenting with filming everything through the app because I think it's a lot less work doing it through the app than filming what I was doing before was taking 10 things and aggregating them and cutting them. And you could still do that. And I might go back to that one day. But right now, I love the way it works in the app. So what happens in the app is that you can set a timer so that you can start within three seconds and then you can kind of pause that. So you can basically film different parts of something. Like I'm putting together the wet ingredients and you film something really quickly and the timer goes off. So once you have all of that film, the TikTok video editing app is actually really high quality and they're constantly working on it to improve it and add extra features to it within their app. You can go in and you can speed it up. You could add special effects to it. You can make some parts shorter. If I dragged on before I said, and here it is out of the oven. Maybe I want to cut off some of that where I wasn't seeing anything. So it's a little bit more sharp and more quick. There's different things that you can do within the app. You can also, you know, there's they have a lot of fun things that you can do that I don't really get into, like the different filters and the green screen where you can. The green screen is actually really cool if you're demonstrating something you can pull up. Like, people pull up their accounts or they'll pull up something on Amazon, like, this is the one I bought. And basically it's just something you're sharing from your computer or from your phone. So there's all of these, like, really cool things to play around with. And I remember the first video I ever did. I, like, added all the effect.

Sure. I feel like that's the standard for any. Any first time you're using an app. You like effects. Effects on everything.

Effects on it. I was spiralizing butternut squash, and I thought, oh, this is a really cool video. So I was spiralizing. Then I added a twirl, then I added bling to it, and then I added, like, a slow motion part. I mean, it was just like, so many special effects that it would. It was dizzying. But I thought, this is what's popular on TikTok. This is what people do on here. So play around with them. And I think there is a time and place for different effects to use in there so you can have fun with them. Another thing, too, what's cool is when you're creating a video just like you would in Adobe Premiere or Final Cut, you can time that text so that it appears at certain parts when you're adding ingredients in. For example, you can say flower, and you can time it so that the flower goes in when you're pouring the flower in, it's a little tedious to do in the app. That's not as fast as doing it in Adobe Premiere, for example, but. But it's still kind of cool. Way to just make your video more interesting.

Yep, for sure.

And then there's something fun where you basically pick a cover shot. And so that cover shot has to be another thing. Also part of, like, clickbait, you know, so people are gonna click on it based on the number of views, but also based on when that cover shot is, you know. And so I used to do a lot of. Oh, I'm mixing something. This will be intriguing. But I realized that didn't work very well. So now I'm doing color, like, lots of color. And, ooh, look at this. It's raspberries in the sink. She's washing the raspberries. Like, I want to see this. So I'm making it less, you know, mysterious and more to the point, like, okay, it's a. It's a video about raspberries. Like, we don't have to guess what's under the. What's under the towel. It doesn't have to be so sneaky.

Yep. Yeah, it's. It's kind of telling people, like, it's showing the finished dish, for instance, versus.

Yes.

You know, cutting a tomato, like.

Yes, exactly.

This is what you're gonna get if you watch it.

Yes, exactly. And so I'm doing more of that versus before, I used to kind of show more of the process shots, which I. I like to pause it on the process shots when I do Instagram. I still think that works best on Instagram, but on TikTok, it's. I'm, you know, I'm still constantly experimenting because it's still such a new platform.

Yeah.

When it comes to hashtag, too, a lot of people, there's something called the for you page, which is like the Explore page. And so people will tag hashtag for you page or FYP or for your page. And there was a big common misconception that if you tag it that it's going to get on that page, but that actually doesn't work. And, you know, what TikTok recommends is instead, use the hashtags to kind of tell TikTok what your video is about. So if you are targeting moms, you know, hashtag like, moms be like. Or, you know, moms over 40. Because what's going to happen is those moms over 30 or 40, they're looking for those videos as well, and they're going to find you, you know, or food blogger. Like, if you hashtag food blogger, I think I might be the top number one for that, because not a lot of people are using it. But if you were looking for food bloggers, you're going to find me, because I've used that hashtag multiple times. So. And that's. Those are the people I want to find me. I want the food bloggers, the people who are interested in that, to find me. So when you're looking at hashtags, think about your audience and think about, you know, use a couple for your audience. Use a couple for what, what you're actually doing, you know, and don't. Don't go overboard. And there's no need to hashtag for your page. It doesn't work.

That's one of the. To go back to the hack conversation. That's maybe one of those. That doesn't actually work.

Yes, it doesn't actually work. Yeah. Exactly. So, yeah.

Well, it's interesting to look through here. You know, I have your account pulled up and I'm looking through and it's like to see videos that have a million views or 3 million views, it's incredible to think about what that actually represents. When you think about people around the world consuming a piece of content. And that being in the millions is really, really incredible and a testament to you jumping in and doing it. And I feel like when you look back at the conversation we've had, the through line with all of this is a willingness to jump in, to experiment, to learn, to put yourself out there, which isn't an easy thing to do. I love that you had the story of having an accountability partner. You and your friends say, hey, we're gonna post every single day. But the result of that, if you do it over a long period of time, it's getting a substantial amount of followers, whether it be on Instagram or on TikTok or on your blog, and. And able to impact a lot of people's lives. And I know that you've also done that through this podcast. I'm sure that people will come out of this inspired and excited to jump in, whether it be with content that they've been producing for a long time or trying a new platform like TikTok. And I also know a lot of people will be interested in connecting with you. So, Yumna, can you share a little bit about where people can find you, the best way to reach out if they want to pick up the conversation of how they can do that? Obviously, feel good Foodie is your brand, but what are the best places for people to connect with you? Are there DMs on TikTok? I don't even know.

Yeah, so there are. There are DMs. So I'm feel good Foodie everywhere except for Pinterest because I didn't get there early enough. But I don't think anyone contacts you through Pinterest, so we're okay. But yeah, I'm my. My favorite platform is Instagram. Slowly, TikTok is starting to take over. But I answer DMS on. On Instagram daily. I do a habit of, you know, watching TV and I answer all of my DMs. It's a thing that I do. So if anybody ever wants to reach out, that's the best way to reach me or via email as well.

Awesome. That's great. And we'll be sure to link up to all the resources you mentioned in the podcast, Show Notes. But really great to connect. Super fun. It's a space that we're excited about, so you've inspired us as well. Yuna, really appreciate you coming on the podcast and sharing your story.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Bjork. And one last piece of. I know you're trying to end it.

But one really, I love when there's a ps. So please share it.

The ps. The PS in all of this is okay. There aren't I'm making $0 on TikTok today. The reason to get on TikTok is not necessarily to make money today. Our blogs usually make us more money. Our Instagrams are making us more money. The reason to get on there is the potential for growth right now as it's starting is exponential. Any video can go viral and there is actually a person who started on March 6th who now has 2.5 million followers and just got picked up by the agency that represents Ariana Grande. She was a nobody before this.

Yeah.

So the potential is amazing and I hope that everybody, you know, takes a chance and just explores it and just tries something out with it.

Ah, that's awesome. I love that. As a, as a, as a closing note, and I think the point about delaying gratification, like doing the work early on before you see, you know, the immediate rewards for that is so important for what we do. You see that with a blog, right? It takes years to build up and get traction, as you talked about. Also true for social platforms. Even if you're able to grow quickly, there's still an element of doing the work for a long period of time before you see some of the fruit of that labor. So great note to end on. Yumna, thanks so much for coming on. Really appreciate it.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Bjork.

And that's a wrap on this week's episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Thanks again for tuning in today. Now, I want to know who doesn't have a TikTok account but is thinking about starting one because of this episode, My hand is way, way up. Yumna shared so many insights during this episode and we hope you are to able able to implement some of her strategies. If you're looking to level up your social media game this year, we hope you're doing well and staying safe. And as always, if you have any recommendations on ways that we could be making this podcast better and more helpful for you, you can just let us know by emailing us@podcastoodbloggerpro.com or by leaving us review on Apple Podcasts. Any review helps the podcast so, so much. So we'll see you next week for another Bjork solo podcast episode. We call them Solo sodes and from all of us here at fbphq, make it a great week.