260: Managing Sponsored Content - How Pinch of Yum Works with Brands with Jenna Arend

Foreign.

Hello, hello, wonderful listener Alexa here, and welcome to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Today we're going to be talking to Jenna from the Pinch of Yum team and she's going to be talking all about sponsored content and more specifically, how Pinch of Yum manages their sponsored content processes. So when it comes to implementing something as big and potentially fruitful as sponsored content for your own blog, I sometimes find it helpful to learn how other people are doing it and then implement the pieces that would work best in my workflow and in my day to day. So that's kind of what we're hoping that you can get out of this episode. You'll hear from Jenna about her tips for negotiating with brands, how contract review works, how the Pinch of Yam team works with a lawyer, how they can report unsponsored content, and so on. Much more. And Bjork will actually talk about an upcoming event that we have. We're not quite ready to tell you all about it just yet, but we'll give you more details for sure next week. But in the meantime, we hope you enjoy this episode with Jenna and we hope you get a lot out of it and that you can apply some of the Pinch of Yarn processes to your own sponsored content work. So, without any further ado, Bjork, take it away.

Jenna, welcome back to the podcast.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, usually you would be. We've done a couple events where you are on the other literal other side of the wall from me in the office, but Covid has has separated us further apart, but not too far apart. Do you want to give a quick update for people who haven't connected with you before or heard you on past podcast episodes or Food Blogger Pro interviews? What's your quick story, your involvement and your role at Pinch of Yum and where do you call home?

Yeah, so I have been at Pinch of Yum, I think, man, four or five years. I feel like I should know this. It was in January, but been at Pinch of Yum for what feels like quite a while now, which is awesome. And I am the community Communications manager on team, well, the communications and growth manager. So I do kind of a wide range of things, but I mostly focus in on communication with our readers and communication with our brands and then on the growth side of things, I also am kind of part of thinking through our SEO strategy and finding ways to grow our traffic and then within those things as well. Kind of related to growth and communication and is sponsored content. So I manage all of our sponsored relationships and yeah, that's another large part of my job, just in the day to day of speaking with brands and managing the editorial content for brands and the reporting kind of from A to Z kind of COVID that whole swath.

I feel like it's a great example of, you know, there are people in the world who. It's like there are different people in the world who are good at different things. And I don't think I've ever recognized that in a way that I have in doing business and working with the team and the things that you are good at, I'm so glad that you were doing those because you are so good at them and I would not be good at them. And it's funny to think back to that moment when you came and I remember interviewing, it was at the old office that we had. Yeah, super awesome office. And if anybody ever went to like a Pinch of Yum workshop to do the photography workshop, you know that it was just this like beautiful space, but it was also huge and it was really cold in the winter. And so we had kind of sectioned off this little like conference room area and we did an interview there. And I think the position that you came in at started, it was just like it was a part time position. And then quickly we were like, oh my gosh, Jenna's incredible and does incredible work. And we need to figure out how we can have you help with these areas that you're good at. Communications kind of being the broad category, but like you said, some subcategories underneath that one being sponsored content. So can you remember back to like the first time that you started to get involved with the Pinch of Yum sponsored content? What, what was that? Like early stages and curious to, to know, like, did you come into it knowing like, hey, here, here are some ideas, some things we want to do or do you feel like for you personally and then also with Lindsay, was it kind of building that as you went and building kind of the system from the ground up?

Yeah. So when I first came on the team, like you said, I was part time office manager, but my background is in communications, which is helpful. And when I first came on, we, I think maybe Pinch of Yama had been doing sponsored content for like one to two years, maybe more on the two year end of things. And we worked with a agency that actually managed all of our sponsored content that did a lot of our outreach and also just managed the campaigns and just kind of gave direction to Lindsey from the brands. They're kind of like a conduit between the Brand and their PR agency and us. And so they, for really, I think my first year, maybe a year and a half, they were the ones that we worked with. And so at first, my role was mostly just to kind of then be the communicator between this agency and Lindsey, just to make sure that she had the deadlines that she needed and that we were meeting all the requirements for the campaign. And so I had a pretty slow, small role, I would say, at first, just because this agency we worked with really did all of the heavy lifting for us, which is great. But then again, I want to say maybe like a year to a year and a half, we decided for a variety of reasons that we wanted to bring our sponsored content in house. So we wanted our team to manage it and not work with an agency. And so that was kind of the point where we had this experience, obviously working with this agency and how they did their processes. But there are some things that we may be wanting to change and just kind of do what felt like worked just best and better for our team. And so that's kind of the point where me and Lindsey sat down and I feel like it was just because I think we stopped working with the agency and at the end of the year, like in December, and we started planning to make the transition, really, I think, in the middle of summer, just to give us like almost a six month lead up to bringing it all in house. Because it is just so many moving pieces and so many things. I mean, they managed our contracts, our reporting, all of the communication with the brand, all of our pitching. They did everything. And so to move it in house was kind of a bear of a project. And so, yeah, so that was kind of our job for like those six months, was to kind of put the things in place. And thankfully, actually, a lot of the things that we put in place for that process are still alive and running today. So they've mostly. We've done some tweaks along the way, but mostly what we kind of put in place has felt like it's worked really well for us.

Yeah, you know, and it's interesting. So we're doing a couple of these podcast interviews, talking with you about the process for Pinch of Yam. We're going to do another podcast interview with Bruno from Influence Kit, kind of leading up to this event that we're doing with Influence Kit to talk about sponsor content. And Bruno's gonna be talking about three really important areas and kind of the lifecycle of sponsored content. So all leading up to this event. But One of the great things is, as we get into it, we've realized, hey, there are tools, there are solutions, there are things that we can use to put together to help us build kind of our system for sponsored content. We're gonna talk about some of those things. But to fill out the picture a little bit, you had talked about working with this agency. The agency was called Sway, and still around today we don't use Sway. But at the same time where we decided, because we had the bandwidth and the ability to bring it in house, I think that was around the same time that Sway actually said they're going to wind down. I forget what the program was, but it was more of like a boutique individualized relationship with some bigger sites that they would manage those relationships into. I think what they called massive Sway, which was more large, like working with a larger number of people across a wider swath of sites. So it actually worked out really well where they were like, hey, we're winding this down. We're like, hey, actually interesting. We're taking this in house. And in doing that, though, suddenly, like you said, had to create these systems around setting that up. And it was important for us because sponsored content was a good way for us to diversify. One of the things you hear a lot in business is this idea of diversification and needing to think not only about getting revenue from one source. At the point when we started, it was really ads, but diversifying that out into other sources. So we sponsor content was a natural first place for us to do that. What were some of the first big categories of areas that. That we had to figure out systems for? So an example being, you know, a contract comes in like, oh, now suddenly we are having to look at contracts and review those. So if you can think of as it relates to sponsored content, are there. There are different kind of areas that we need to think about and have a system for in terms of our process.

Yeah, so there are a few kind of big things that we had to put in place that weren't necessarily things that Sway had done or just parts of their process that we didn't know about. The first big thing that we had to put in place was finding a way to do intake for brands and with where pinch of Viama is at at this point. And back then when we were doing this, a lot of our. We haven't had to do a lot of pitching, which is really. It's great. I'm really grateful for that. So that means we get a lot of brands that approach us and want to work with us. And we had to think of a way to just do an intake of that and what that process looked like from there. And so one of the biggest pieces we put together was an intake form. And so when someone does reach out to do sponsored content, we are able to send this form. And we thought a lot about the things that we wanted to put in the form. Things like budget, what their goals are, the timing of the campaign, and things like that. And so with that information, we're able to make more of a decision on if we're interested in continuing the conversation and moving forward. So that was one of the biggest.

Pieces, was that, if I remember right, is there a thread on Food Blogger Pro form or maybe an area within Food Blogger Pro? I should know this, but that outlines some of those questions that we ask. So essentially, like when a brand reaches out, what questions are we asking them? I think we highlight that somewhere on the forum. We'll link to it in the show, notes for pro members if needed.

Yeah.

And then use for that just like a surveying tool. We use Typeform to collect those answers. But one of the things that I love about that is it helps us to have some of the. Like to put some of the things on the table that otherwise would have been delayed to a phone call and maybe is a little bit weirder to ask, like, can you talk about some of the most important elements with that intake form and why we include those?

Yeah, yep, for sure. One of the things that is kind of an obvious one is talking about their budget, which is kind of an awkward conversation of who kind of approaches who first about it. And so the nice thing about having a forum and we don't have like a blank space for them to put what their campaign budget is, but we have some ranges of some rates. And then we also have an option to say, this is outside of my budget. And so it's nice to be able to just get a feel for where they're at. And it's never been like, oh, if they only have this much, then it's a definite no. But that's just something we take into consideration. There's so many different elements that we think about when we decide to work with the brand. So that's one big one that felt really essential is the budget. And then I would say another one is the timing of the campaign, because they might say it might be, it's July 1st, as we're recording this today. And they could say we're looking at July 15, and in that case we need to Know that, because that would either mean we can't make that happen so quick or we have to charge more or kind of whatever that looks like. So that's another big one. And then I would say maybe the third one is just getting a sense of, like, what products they're looking to have us use in the recipe or in our content. Because we could get approached by a huge brand, has so many products, but we want to know exactly what products they're looking for. And so those are kind of the really specifics we obviously ask about, like, what are your goals? Or how did you hear about pinch of YAML? And those are super helpful as well. But having those specifics, the budget, the timing, the products, those are kind of big ones for us to have to kind of start considering whether we want to keep moving forward.

Yeah. Can you talk about what that phone conversation looks like? Because let's say we look at trade some emails back and forth. It seems like, hey, this might be a potential fit. I think that's kind of a scary thing for people in general. Maybe they have done it before and it always is a little bit weird and awkward, especially if we're used to, like, communicating via email and social media and blog posts to jump on a call and they talk about these really, like, things that we normally don't talk about, like money and how much somebody's going to spend.

Yeah.

How do you have those conversations in a way that feels natural and. And not only feels natural, but also communicates to the brand, like, hey, we have your best interest as well. It's not just us saying. It's not just us doing an interview and saying, do we want you or do you not? But also us trying to say, are we going to be the best fit for you? Any advice that you'd have for people who are maybe a little bit nervous about doing that or tips or tricks that you might give them to have those conversations?

Yeah. Yep. I would say it's not every brand that wants to jump on a call, but I would say there's quite a few that usually want to kind of take you through a brief or they have specific questions. And one, the biggest tip I would have, and this is something I did at first, and I do still actually use it as a reference when I do have calls with brands, is I created like a sponsored call sheet. And so it basically outlines all the things that I would want to hit and ask about when I'm on a call with them. And so that would include just asking about their goals, like, do they want exposure, do they want engagement, direct sales or signups or something like that. And then kind of talking to them also about how they've worked with influencers in the past for doing recipe development and what that process looks like, whether it's very collaborative or more independent.

And.

And so it's kind of an opportunity to hear from them, but also kind of tell them also what our process is and also just some clarifying questions about like key messaging and what their timeline might be. And then on this call sheet at the end, I typically have what is your budget? So not leading the call with how much money do you have to spend here? But kind of leaving that, like talk about the big picture goals and what that looks like. And then with talking about budget too, I've always found that it's helpful to just talk about or ask them what is a range of rate that you feel comfortable with? And also asking what's a cap that you can't go over?

Sure.

So it's not like throw out a number to us, but it's like what is just getting a feel for what the range is and also gives you an opportunity, if you have a rate sheet and a media kit to just kind of go over that and talk about how it's structured and what that would look like.

Yeah. Can you talk about the difference between a rate sheet and a media kit and maybe how people can create kind of a basic version of each one of those?

Yeah. Yep. So for us, our media kit and our rate sheet are combined into one. And part of that is kind of just for simplicity. And so it's combined so that we can just send one file to the brand. And the first page of it is just. It's kind of like a letter from Lindsay, which I would definitely recommend for anyone creating one. Just kind of a welcome to Pinch of Yum in a way and talk about how the brand got started and. Or the blog got started and kind of where it is today and why we enjoy working with brands. And then that part of the media kit also includes some of just kind of the stats of Pinch of Yum. Like our monthly page views, our Instagram followers and followers on other social media platforms, as well as email subscribers. So that is what I'd consider like the media kit portion is like, this is who we are included. Like we have a picture of Lindsay on it. So that's kind of the media kit portion. And then separate from that is I would say like a rate sheet. And so our, our rate sheet is rate sheets because we have three different categories because we work with brands on blog posts, but also doing recipe videos and then also with Instagram stories. And so we have kind of a separate sheet for each of those. And the way that we have it broken down is you can buy packages. And so basically like the more videos you decide to do in a campaign, the cheaper each of those individual videos will be. And that's. And that's kind of where we landed at the beginning of creating these. And also consulting with Danielle Liss, who is our legal expert, but also has a lot of experience working with influencers. And it's served us pretty well of being able to offer like a discount if they do a longer term campaign, because that's really in our best interest too, is to work with less brands for a longer period of time. So it's kind of an incentive that also serves us and our readers well too, since there's just consistent brands that appear on the blog rather than a smattering of so many throughout the year.

Yeah, so I think that was one of the things as we have evolved little by little, this, the process for Pinch of Yum a learning for me was this idea of a brand. This isn't. I don't think this is always how it works, but a version of this existing for Pinch of Yama brand saying, here's our budget and us saying, here's the deliverables that we can match up to that versus I think what I had always imagined was somebody saying, I want this, a blog post. How much is it? And. And us as a brand or us as a blog kind of guiding brands and saying, yep, what are you trying to accomplish? What are your goals? Which I heard you say some of those things. What is your budget? And then us coming to them and saying, here's how we think we can help you accomplish that. Would you be able to break it down in terms of like 50, 50, 60, 40 percentage wise? How often does a brand come to pitch a VAM and say, here's exactly what I want. A blog post and a video on Instagram versus a brand coming and saying, I kind of want to partner with Pinch of Yum. What would be the best way to do that? If we want to achieve this goal and it being a little bit more ambiguous and essentially asking us to advise on it?

Yeah, I would say probably it is kind of a 60, 40 split with 60 being brands coming with an exact idea of what type of content they want to do and how many they want to do. And then 40 being the brands that Approach us and just say, we really enjoy Pinch of Yum and we would love to work with you. What would you recommend? And of course, the kind of 40% is really the sweet spot, because I think it's really awesome to see when a brand knows that you know your blog best and you know your readers the best. And so you know, based on the information they give you about their goals and their products and their budget, kind of what the best fit is. Because there might be someone approaching us who doesn't have a huge budget, but their product is, like, perfect for Instagram stories. And so being able to kind of steer them in that direction, that's a lower rate to kind of create a package and kind of, like, have that, I guess, kind of trust from a brand of, like, you know your readers the best, you know your recipes and your brand the best. So, like, you. You tell us what you can make happen with this rate. That's like the perfect, like, it's just the sweet spot, really, in creating a package for someone.

Is there. Can you talk through, like, if something isn't sweet spot or even quite a bit outside of sweet spot, whether it be a request for the type of content or even the product, not that it's necessarily bad product, but maybe not a fit for Pinch of Yam as a brand or the audience. How do you know? And what is that conversation like for you and Lindsey as you think through, like, hey, this proposal came through, this brand is interested, they have a budget, and obviously there's a luxury involved in even being able to say no, Acknowledging that. But I also think that there's strategy in protecting your brand and not just taking anything that comes in from. From a revenue perspective, it's like, great to have that, but then you are in some ways trading that for your brand reputation. How does Pinch of Yum go about those conversations and assuming, like, it's kind of you and Lindsey thinking through that, talking through that, what are the primary considerations and how do you communicate that back to the brand?

Yeah, this. I mean, it's definitely something that does happen quite a bit. And I feel like this has been. There's been such an evolution of this for us over the past three years, really, since we started this, where I feel like maybe at the beginning we were just kind of more like, yeah, sure, that sounds good, like, not really realizing the fact that, like, oh, no, we can, I hate to say push back, but kind of and make a recommendation that feels more in line with our brand. And I feel like especially even into this year, I feel like we really found our footing in that one. Again, it is a luxury, but being okay with saying no to something if it's not a good fit and also being okay with pushing back. I mean, I can't find a better phrase to say than that right now. But being willing to say, you know what, we actually don't think that product in your portfolio will be a great fit on the site, but we really think that this one will. And we found this also on your website. Or saying, you know, we don't think that that'll be a great fit on a blog post. These are the reasons why. And this is why we think it would make for a great Instagram video with Instagram stories. And so I feel like it's taken us some time to realize that, yeah, like we are kind of like the protectors of the brand of Pinch of Yum. And so being okay with either just walking away, which is really, really hard. It's very hard, or being willing to kind of see if you can find a compromise. And I would say like, yeah, maybe like 50% of the time we're able to find that compromise with the brand of saying, we think this might be a good fit. And they say, okay, yeah, let's do that. So the worst they can do is say no.

Right, right.

And it's, and it's, I think it can feel like maybe like you're being pushy or being like ungrateful or something. But you also like know your brand the best and so you have every right to, to make recommendations outside of their initial brief that they sent over.

Yeah, I think it's, you know, it's, it's interesting to think about other professionals and if I think of what we are doing, we are professionals in, especially you and Lindsay, professionals in speaking to a group of people about a certain thing. In our case, it's recipes, it's food content. And we know from 10 years of doing that what will go well and what won't go well and not perfectly, but have a pretty good sense of that. And I think of the other professionals in my life and a doctor, for instance, I might come in and kind of have my Google researched idea and kind of present that, hey, here's why I think I have knee pain. He's like, well, yes, let me hear what you're saying and give you some feedback on that. I'm not going to take that as the ultimate answer of what would be best. I'll evolve that a little bit. Or like go into a store and if I say, hey, I know these. I want these running shoes. And they're like, hey, those are good shoes. But let me hear a little bit about what your overall goal is, and maybe we'll refine that a little bit. I can imagine for a brand coming to a publisher and doing the same thing, presenting what they think would potentially be the best idea for a blogger or a publisher to come back to them and say, hey, what's your overall goal? Let me propose to you something that I actually think will help you accomplish that better and will fit in to what we do better as well. I think that's really valuable. Like, that in and of itself offers value to the brand without an official relationship. And I think it's helpful to develop that skill and to be confident in doing that. So I think that's a great point. Let's say that it moves. Moves to the point where we say, yeah, this works out. The brand is interested in working with us, and we go into the next phase, which is probably some sort of contract. Can you talk about what that looks like? Is it always the brand sending a contract? Are we ever sending a contract to them? And how do we go about looking through that and making sure that we're not also including our dog Sage, in the agreement as a part of the.

Exchange, as a part of the compensation or something?

Exactly.

Yeah. I feel like this is maybe the part that we started out knowing absolutely nothing, and we still know absolutely nothing, but we were able to find a way to make it work by bringing someone else into the fold. And so at first, when we were doing contracts, and again, Sway, the agency used to do all of our contracts. And so this was completely new. And so at first, and to answer one of your questions in it, I'd say 99.9% of the time, it's a brand sending the contract to us and not us sending one to them. I can literally only think of one instance we have ever sent a contract to a brand. And so we were receiving these contracts and understanding maybe 50% of it because we are not lawyers or legal experts. And so a lot of it was done by Googling or just really making our best judgment based on what we thought we understood about it. And so it definitely works. And, like, understanding like that, that was just the resources we had at the time, and that was what worked for us. And overall, like, it was totally fine. It worked. And I think it was maybe a little over a year ago that we got connected with Danielle Liss, who's the legal expert on food Blogger Pro. And we decided to start just outsourcing that. And so now the process is, instead of it coming in and me and Lindsey kind of scratching our heads and making our best judgment, I'm able to kind of do a first pass and look at the things that are most important to us from kind of a big picture stance. But then I'm able to pass that off to Danielle and have her look at really the second half of the contract, which is all of the legalese and the jargon that we don't necessarily understand. And so that has been. I feel like that was one of our best decisions that we made because it's also. It's a lot of pressure on yourself to make sure you're fully understanding what you are signing and committing to. Especially if it's a long term contract for a year, you just sign. It's a lot to process and a lot to do. And so it's been helpful to have her. One of the other things that we have done is kind of create a checklist for ourselves of things that we need to see on a contract. And so instead of looking at a contract and feeling kind of dazed, we know going into it exactly what we need to look at. And so we can kind of take that first pass and know. And even if we weren't using Danielle and it was still just us doing it internally, it was so helpful to have kind of a checklist to go through whenever a contract came in. So we had some sense of direction and like, we knew like at least these big things that are most important to us are covered. So that was also really helpful as well.

Yeah, it makes such a big difference when you can start to bring those people in. And it's part of the business growth process where inevitably there will be a stage where you're in the early stages, you're doing it all on your own, and you're reviewing a contract and maybe the contract isn't enough to justify having a lawyer review it. So you're kind of trying to do it on your own and Google it. And we've definitely been there and get that. But it is one of those great feelings to once you have grown to the point where you can justify paying somebody to help out, it's super helpful to take that weight off, to take that burden off of whether it be you or Lindsey or me. None of us really looked forward to doing that. And also none of us really had the background to understand a lot of what the contract was saying and therefore had to do a lot of Work to fill in those, to fill in the picture for that. So I think also of the example. I love doing, like, IT support type stuff, and that's my background and what I did in a previous life. But realize, like, okay, we have a team, 13 people, 13 computers. There are issues that come up. And so we hired an IT company that can help out with that and do that remotely. So over time, you start to realize these are the different functions and components that you can outsource. But another thing that you can do is this isn't related to contracts, but it's related to systems and trying to figure out ways to alleviate work. And one of the ways that we're able to do that in a pretty significant way is on the reporting side of things and using Influence Kit. We're going to have a conversation with Bruno from Influence Kit to talk about that. Obviously, we have that event coming up as well. Can you talk about why reports are important and then what we used to do and then what we do now for how we communicate with brands?

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And this is again, kind of a big thing that has evolved since the beginning. I feel like I started the same. Most of it's the same since when we started. But as I'm talking, I realize. And I feel like that's.

Yeah, in spirit, it's the same, but it's kind of like Pokemon, where it's like you get a. Have you ever done the Pokemon game?

Like Pokemon Go?

Yeah, like the iOS game. Like the app, I think.

I don't know if I have, actually, but I know what it is.

So the neighborhood that you're in. We used to live in the same neighborhood, is a great Pokemon neighborhood. So my. I have one piece of advice for you, Jenna, coming out of this call. It's to play Pokemon. Pokemon. But I feel like it's the Pokemon that we picked for our sponsor content team. All of those. This is a terrible analogy. I just want to call myself out on it. All of those. It's the same things. It's just like they have evolved into stronger, better, more capable versions of the original things that we have picked.

Yes, for sure. And I feel like so much of it. I don't know if this also goes along with your analogy or not, because I have not played the game.

Continue to build on it. Yes, please do.

But I also feel like. And I was thinking about this and we're talking about like the sponsored content checklist, like for the contract is that that was really built from, like trial and error. Like we would Realize halfway through a contract, oh, we didn't realize this was in there and we don't want to do this again. And so it got added to the checklist so that next time we go through a contract, this does not happen again.

Do you have an example of. I think people would be curious to know, like, one or two of what those things maybe were.

Yeah, definitely. I feel like I have. It just pulled up right now. And one of the biggest things that we didn't think about at first was being very explicit about editorial control. And so the thing we were running into was we would start on a campaign with a brand and realize that they had a very different idea of the control that they would have over the writing and the photos and the videos. And so we shifted to kind of create a list of all the language that needs to be included to say that it will be in the Pinch of Young style in writing. Like, they can't make any changes beyond factual or like grammatical changes. The voice of Pinch of Young stays intact. And then even just like some of the editorial control, as far as being completely specific about the number of concepts that we send, the number of rounds of edits, the number of photos that will have the product in it, we just found that the contract is what you can fall back on. And so we needed to be so explicit about things. And so I feel like our list started with maybe like 10 things. And it's grown to. I'm looking at it. It's like 20 to 30 items that we slowly added based on, like I said, trial and error, where we get through a contract and say, oh, like this. It would be really nice if this was made more clear.

Yeah, that's great. I think it would be worth gathering those and posting those. We can work with Alexa to post those forums. Obviously kind of boring to read through all of them, but worth pointing out the ones that are generic enough to apply to everybody. Here are some of the things that we've learned along the way. So, yeah, we'll work on demand for Food Blogger Pro members. Anyways, we diverted from our Pokemon Go conversation around.

Yes. Yep. So again, this is something that's changed quite a bit over time. And so at first we kind of created like a templated report that we would send each brand. And I have also a design background which is really helpful. And so we created this, like, really cool PDF design that we could kind of just plug in the numbers and plug in the photos and the brand's name. And that worked really well for quite a while. It Was kind of tedious to have to do that each time just working within like a design frame instead of like a spreadsheet. That was pretty simple, but we wanted it to be really visually appealing. And so we would send the PDF usually like a week or two after the campaign ended, and then we would send another one at the conclusion of like the full year long campaign. And so those were kind of our two touch points when we would send reporting to brands. And I think it was maybe last fall or later last year we did get in touch with Bruno at Influence Kit and we transitioned our reporting over to there. And that I feel like was another excellent decision because it saves us so much time. I'm able to just take out the Instagram photo link and plug it in and it populates all of the stats that I need, which is just amazing. The time saving for us was amazing. But I think honestly the biggest thing was that the stats are all updated in real time. And so when I send the link to the report to a brand, it's not like when I used to just send the PDF, it was like a snapshot in time and it wasn't like a long term view of how the post was doing. And so now they can reference it anytime and they can see how many likes the Instagram post has or how many views the video has. And so it's able to take in and even more than we were able to share before, like we can connect our, our email campaign or our email service and our web notification service and we're kind of able to bring it all together. So it ended up being a really good fit for us because it saved us a lot of time and it just, yeah, it gives a fuller picture view to brands for and it just has more longevity to it. So that's just, yeah, it's been really, really helpful to be able to manage it in that way. And I feel like the brands have been really excited by it too because sometimes they would contact us a month after we sent the PDF report and say, can we get an update? And so we'd have to like go back in and change the PDF and send it again. So it just, it created a really smooth process for us.

Yeah, that's great. And Bruno actually talked about, you know, I recorded earlier today the session that we're going to do for this event. So it's fun to be recording these two things on the same day. And he talks about with the reports, you know, to go back to that rate sheet, one of the things that he had mentioned Was like, hey, that's a value add. If you are going above and beyond just a report, like, if you're doing it once a quarter or multiple times, to say, like, hey, we can continually send you updated reports. Here's the line item for that, which is one of the things that we didn't talk about, but is worth mentioning is for those rate sheets for Pinch of Yam, we kind of have this a la carte area, and I feel like that's been important development for us too, where it's not like we just say one blog post and then we assume like, hey, that also means a post to Pinterest and Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and an email, like building those out as a la carte items that people can add, there's an additional cost for that because there's additional value that comes with it. And even the potential, we don't do this, but even the potential as a, as a place of, for creators to think about adding in the report as a way to kind of add an a la carte item or additional reports.

Yeah, definitely.

We covered a lot and there's a lot more that we could cover. And obviously, you know, as you talked about at the beginning, Jenna, this is like one area of the many things that you do for Pinch of Yum, of which you do such a great job. We're so lucky to have you on the team. You're active in the Food Blogger Pro forums when questions come up. So if there's any members, they can, they can leave a question there and we'll see if Jenna can jump in and answer that question. Jenna, I want to end by asking you a couple questions. Number one, when the world isn't in a state of shutdown and somebody comes to the Twin Cities, what restaurant would you point them to? Where should they go if they're going to be in the Twin Cities? In a restaurant that they should check out.

Okay, so of course I can't just mention one. I'm going to mention two. Yes. So, like a classic which if anyone listening has come to a workshop you've maybe gone to is a restaurant called Bar La Grassa.

Love it.

In Minneapolis in the North Loop. It's Italian. It's pasta and bruschetta, and it's just so good. So that would be one that's kind of like it's been there a long time. But a new restaurant across the river in St. Paul is a restaurant called Estelle. And we actually, during these Covid times, my husband and I have been getting takeout from there. So we've gotten takeout from there like three or four times. And I forget what kind of. I want to say it's kind of South American influence, but they also have like amazing pasta and it's just. And when it's not Covid times, they have like an amazing bar, a cute little tucked away bar to sit at. So. So both of them are pasta, which.

Is pretty predictable for Lindsey and I. You are like our like restaurant review editor writer. Like, not that you're actually. It's just for our team internally. I feel like you're so well researched around where to go. We just come to you to figure out where that is. So I trust your opinion and insight on that entirely. Jenna, thanks so much for coming on for talking through this stuff. Thanks for all that you do.

Yeah.

And thanks for having me. Maybe have you back on here in the near future.

All right, sounds good.

And that's a wrap on this episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in this week. We appreciate you listening. Whether this is your first episode or your 260th episode, we just love that you're here and we love connecting with with you in this way over the podcast. If you have any questions for us or for Jenna or for the Pinja Vom team about their sponsored content processes or, you know, just kind of some of the things that Jenna talked about today, you can head over to the show notes for this episode actually and drop a comment in the comments area and you can find that@foodbloggerpro.com 2, 6, 0. Those are all numbers, the 2, the 6 and the 0. And we'd love to have some conversations with you. Sponsored content can be such a great way to diversify your income as a blogger. And it's just, it's fun to connect with brands that you really love and share recipes using those brands products. It's just, it's great. I love sponsored content. It's the main way that I make money on my food blog and it's just a very valuable way that Vincehip Yum monetizes their blog as well. So we hope that you learned a lot from this episode. We'll see you next time. And until then, make it a great week.