324: Building Strong Partnerships – How Bob's Red Mill Works with Content Creators on Sponsored Content

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Hello, hello, hello. You're listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. This is Bjorka Ostrom and today we are interviewing Cassidy Stockton from Bob's Red Mill. Now the interesting thing about this conversation is we're kind of flipping the script a little bit. Usually we interview creators, bloggers, publishers, people who might be experts on sponsored content in this category and we're talking about it from the perspective of the publisher or the blogger. But today we're gonna flip that and we're actually gonna talk to a brand or somebody who's representing a brand. And Cassidy's gonna be talking about what it's like for her and for her team at Bob's Red Mill to work with influencers or creators or publishers, whatever word you wanna use. But she's gonna be talking about some of the things that really help people to stand out, what it why they would work with somebody on an ongoing basis. She's going to be talking about some of the things that you want to think about if you're reaching out to brands. It was a really interesting conversation for me to hear what it's like for a brand or business as they interact with influencers and make decisions around who they're going to work with and who they're going to pay to sponsor and to promote their product. So it's a helpful conversation, especially if you're interested in focusing more or growing the work that you're doing in the sponsor content category. I think you're going to get a lot out of it. So let's go ahead and jump into the interview with Cassidy from Bob's Red Mill.

Cassidy, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me.

This will be really fun because we're going to be talking about influencer marketing, sponsored content, but usually we talk about this with people who are producing sponsored content, bloggers, creators, influencers, but, but today we're lucky because we get to talk about what it's like on the other side of the coin for brands. So can you talk a little bit about who you are and then also the brand, which I'm sure a lot of people will be familiar with?

Well, Bob's Red Mill, we are a milling company. That's the short version we've been around since 1978. We're an employee owned company based out of Portland, Oregon. We make flours, cereals, baking mixes and are moving into more ready to eat items now like oatmeal cups, bowl bars, crackers. And I've been with the company for 17 years. I've worked A lot of different, worn a lot of different hats at Bob's from the customer service, answering phones, moving into marketing and then I built my career at Bob's on social media and influencer marketing. So I started doing that about 10 years ago, maybe 11 or 12 now depending on where we're at in time. Starting just some basic influencer work then and then at this point now I'm our senior content marketing manager so I manage our social media, our influencer programs, our design, our writing, our photography and video.

What do you do you remember at what point you were like hey, there's this social thing and this maybe could be something that we. That's really important because I feel like really interesting for you to be a part of a well known established brand and to kind of have owned from start to today. A really significant thing that at the time was like kind of fringe but now it's like wow, this is really important. When was that first point that that happened and curious what that transition looked like.

I've been saying 10 years, but now I'm thinking it's more like 12. I think it was around 2008 when we started really getting into Facebook. I mean we had played around with having a blog and had a little bit of YouTube content, but that's when we started picking up and focusing efforts on what we were going to do and put out on the different platforms available at that time. And that's when also started we were looking for influencers that might mention the brand and then commenting, offering to send them free product. It wasn't as much of a pay to play space as it was is now, so.

Yep. And in terms of your day to day now, what does that look like? Like day to day, week to week? I suppose every day is a little bit different.

Yeah. I mean a lot of my job now is managing my team and making sure they have everything they need. But in terms of what we're planning and how we manage social media, we have two full time folks that develop recipes to put out recip content there. They do everything from, you know, the recipe creation to the writing and the photography and video and then we share a lot of influencer content on our channels to bring more attention to those pieces.

Yes. And when you think of sponsor content, so there's a lot of different social media. Right. Really big in terms of what that could be or even just recipe development, you're putting that on the site, you're putting that on different social channels. When you think of the relationship with bloggers or creators what, what percentage is that in terms of like, hey, Bob's red mail. Here's what we focus on from social and like 25% of that is sponsored content. Like how does that fit into the pie chart of.

I'd say more of my dollars go into influencer marketing. Like that's a big piece of our content puzzle because we usually have an agreement that works out, you know, we can share the content, we can use it on our channels. And so I think just the way that the space is like dollar wise, that's where more of the investment is time wise. On my team though, a lot of the investment is in developing our own stuff and then supporting influencers, getting them the product, making sure they have all their, all the talking points they need and that kind of thing.

So point being, part of the benefit is not just the exposure from an advertising marketing perspective, but also a lot of times it can be content that's being created that you can use and share. So it's like usually you'd have to go to an agenc, the agency would maybe produce content, but it's like there's no benefit in the agency creating it from an exposure perspective. But with a, with a blogger, with a creator, not only do you get content that you can potentially share, but then you also get the upside of exposure on their platforms to initiative, to a campaign. If you were to say, if you were to say benefit of each of those things, would it be like 50, 50, like 50% of the benefit is the content and then 50% is the exposure? I suppose it depends on the creator as well.

Yeah, it does. I'd say 75% is more about getting the exposure on their channels and then the 25% falls into like this gives us great content, it aligns our brand with these creators. It's just a good picture all around.

Yeah, that makes sense. So tell me about a campaign that you're like or creator, however you'd want to view it, where you're like, this is awesome. This went really well. And the context for that question is I think it's important for us bloggers, creators, publishers, whatever term you want to use, to know what it looks like. On the other side, when somebody says, wow, I have this and it's exactly what I want, it's really helpful. I'm able to take it and share it with my team or the people I report to and they're like, oh, that's really awesome. Can you paint the picture of what that looks like so we as creators can help the brands that we're working with.

Yeah.

What they want to do.

Yeah, of course. I mean there's two types of campaigns that I run and one will be specifically around moving product, getting more eyes on fill in the blank product. And then there's others that are more socially impactful where it's about positioning the brand in the right social space for us. So we ran a really wonderful campaign this year promoting our crackers, our newly launched crackers at Sprouts, which is a chain of stores all over the country, but not in Oregon. But it was really great to help showcase. And these are my favorite campaigns right now because as a brand it's hard to close the loop between you see it online and you buy it. So having these campaigns that are telling like minded followers that this product is available at this grocery store right now. And then we can see with Swipe ups and Instagram now we can see how many people took action and added it to a cart. So that is really powerful on the side of selling my program to the executives at Bob's Red Mill, justifying the cost and why we want to keep doing it. Because I can show we may moved this many products off the shelf. And I think that campaign we, I think we moved about 600 units off a shelf, which is pretty impactful for a few weeks at a specific chain, a small, specific item. But yeah, the other campaigns that I get the most excited about and that make me feel just, I'm. The ones that really energize me are the ones that are more social causes. So we did a great campaign around Pride this year in June, having people tell stories about their families and what they look like and how Bob's Red Mill fits into that. And we've got, we've done a bunch of pieces for AAPI month and that was really neat to see how we fit into their lifestyles. And then also shows that we care, I mean we do care about diversity in this world and try to support those social causes.

Yeah. And Aapi, for those who aren't familiar, kind of around Stop Asian Hate and Asian American Pacific Islander. Is that API? Okay.

Yeah, that was a neat one this year. That was our first time delving into either of those causes in those months of recognition, trying to support.

Yeah. And one of the things that you had mentioned that I think was really interesting is Bob's Red Mill is employee owned and this is getting into kind of like business structure which I'm interested in. Maybe not podcast listeners, but so would that mean that it's a esop so got it. And can you explain just as like a fun little aside what that means and how that works in terms of an employee owned company?

Yeah, sure. And ESOP means employee stock ownership plan or program, depending on which way you want that P to go. But it's a really confusing thing to a lot of people. But it means that Bob's Red Mill. There's I think there's about 7,000 employee owned companies in this country. So it's pretty small group and they're run differently. But to be an esop, there's rules. So we as employees, we get a certain amount of shares. They were gifted to us by the company. We did not buy them and it functions as a retirement plan for us. So when somebody parts ways with the company or retires, those shares are paid out if they're fully vested. So it gives what I see on the. I've been at Bob's long enough that I saw this rollout. So I started it wasn't an employee owned company. But what we see is that people are more invested. You really genuinely have people loving their jobs, walking around talking to different people in the mill and just kind of hearing how much they love working for us and love being part of this bigger thing. And I think that is neat. So it's, it's different than some people think. There's not like we aren't making a day to day decisions on the running of the company. We have a board that does that, but we are all individually invested in it.

Yeah. The idea being that, you know, with the company there's, you have different exit options. So you could exit like selling to Google or like you could sell to General Mills or you could have an IPO or anybody could buy it. But I think what's so cool about Aesop is essentially who was it that owned it at that?

Bob Moore is the owner.

So is Bob and he. I want to sell this instead of selling it to General Mills or selling it to, you know, Land O' Lakes or Google, you know, like Google would buy it. But that idea is like, hey, I want to sell this to the employees. So which is. You don't actually have to as far as you have to buy it.

Yeah, he gave it to us on his 81st birthday and we are over the last 10 years, we are fully 100% employee owned now. So it's a process as you have founders get purchased out and then that money is turned over to goes into shares. And it's complicated, but it's a really cool thing. And what it ends up being is that you have people who are invested in the company knowing that their jobs are secure, that the company is not going to turn around and sell.

Yep, that's really cool. And here's my bridge back to the conversation we're having before. The other thing that's great about having an employee owned company is that everybody feels like they're owning the metrics in a different way than you maybe normally would because you're like, hey, this impacts the value of the company and the value of the company. I get, I get something tangible from that. Like it's, this isn't just like any company, it's like a company that I own. So yeah, when you look at the metrics around social and sponsored content you shared a little bit like hey, it's really helpful if you can do swipe up if you can have some type of purchase in a store. But how much of it is like, hey, we just know that this is going to be generally a good thing and we won't be able to track it versus we know that we need to track all of this stuff. And for creators, what are the most important things that they can be aware of that they can tell you, hey, here are the metrics, whatever it might be, clicks, impressions versus like hey, this just is a beautiful piece of content and you can use it in other places.

Sure, yeah, it's tricky. I think anywhere in social media gets into sort of in that PR world, it's really hard to measure that stuff.

Yes.

And most of our work is around brand building and product awareness. So what we look at to measure would be like impressions, engagements, click throughs. If there is that data, if somebody, you know, it depends on what level of influencer we're working on with whether they have a good tracker and then we have other resources that we pay for to give us. That's how I've handled it this year is I just pay for a membership to a tracking site. So we use Influence Kit. We've been really happy with it. It gives us a great report. So I can break it down by like the month of who's posted for us and see all the stats, how many impressions and the engagement rates versus like the year or the previous year, that month, you know, it's, it gives me something to measure against. But generally, you know, this is a feel good space. We're doing a lot of feel good brand building around telling the story of who we are and trying to emotionally connect with people. So if we get good comments, I always love to Hear those.

Yes. It's an art and a science. It feels like it's both of those things. It's not just science, but helpful if it is. And it's not just art, but helpful if it is. And a solution like influence Kit. My friend Bruno.

Oh, yeah, they're so great.

We were having lunch at breakfast at Keys Cafe in Roseville, Minnesota, or St. Paul. It's right on the line. I think it's Roseville. This was. It must have been, like, four years ago. He's like, I'm thinking of building this tool that, like, will help creators with metrics. I was like, oh, that sounds awesome. We would use it. So fun to be at the beginning of that and then fun to, like, be on a podcast interview.

Yeah. And I remember seeing those. We'd get those reports from people. And so finally I reached out to Bruno and was like, how can we get access to this platform as a brand? So I think we were one of the first brands that started working with them.

That's really cool. And so you then will tell any creator you work with to say, hey, we have this tool that we use and that helps us hook into social to get an understanding of, like, how this pin is performing or how this Instagram post is performing. And you. It's not like you need to log into their account. You just need URL.

Yeah, they set up an account. We just pay for it.

Yep. Cool.

And it allows us to compare apples to apples, you know, to see, okay, well, and I know this person's at this point, this level of following, their engagement is here. This person's a little lower. Their engagement might be here. That helps me normalize the program.

Yeah, that's cool and fun to make that connection. So how about creators, where you're like, man, I just want to continue to work with this creator. They're great, they're consistent, they deliver good results. What are the other variables that you would consider to be important for creators when they're. When they're wanting to do their best in terms of working with the brand?

Well, I think, at least for us, my most important piece is that they authentically love the brand. I'm looking for people who are already fans and use the products.

Yeah.

So that's the first step, because we are a lucky brand in that regard. Like, I don't know what it's like to work for some of the harder sell brands where they have to find people to talk about it. But in the recipe influencer space, we have a lot of. A lot of people Reach out. So we're looking for people who communicate well and in a timely manner, who have beautiful content, you know, beautiful photography and videos or the recipes fit the niche we're trying to hit.

Sure.

So we'll take a little bit. If the photos aren't quite as good, but that content is really, really good, we'll be more interested. But generally the content is really good.

Meaning if it aligns with an initiative that you're interested in pushing at that point. Like, right.

Yeah.

So point being, like, if you're doing, like, made. Sorry, what was the phrase that you used? Like the new initiatives that you're having now with.

Oh, like more around social causes or.

No, like, not just ingredients.

Ready to eat.

Ready to eat. Thank you. I was like, what is that phrase? But if you have somebody who's maybe not like a recipe creator, but they talk a lot about, like, having a busy family life.

Yeah.

They might be a better fit for somebody to talk to, talk about ready to eat, even. Even if they don't check some of those other boxes, but they're just like, content aligned. Is that kind of what you're getting at?

Yeah. And we've been, as we do more retailer focused campaigns. We look for people who say they shop at Walmart and post about that a lot. So we're looking for that kind of angle and then the other types of things. If we have a real special. Because our products fit almost every type of diet that you can follow. Sometimes we'll promote with like a keto focused person or there's a couple other, like, smaller diets that we might just pick one influencer to promote our products in that space for the year, but we'll get more dialed in on. Maybe their photography isn't as good, but those recipes meet that special need.

One of the things that you had said was they communicate well. What is that? What does that mean and what does that look like?

Well, just in a timely manner. And, you know, sometimes I've had creators in the past where it'll take them a month to get back to me, or they'll just, you know, either they drop the ball and they don't communicate about it, or they switch gears and switch to a totally different product and don't communicate it about it. But we've worked through a lot of those kinks as we've worked our program over the years, and how to get people paid on time and how to get all the tax forms done on time, because those are other pieces to that puzzle that nobody thinks about too much.

It's amazing to me how much of an advantage something as simple as, like, clear, consistent and timely communication can be. And it. That's such a rare thing. And if you can have somebody or. And it doesn't even have to be, you know, for people listening, this doesn't necessarily have to be you, but somebody on your team who is always, like, proactive or, like, will actually follow up. When they say they do all of those things, it seems like a low bar, but my guess is it goes a long way to. For you to make your job easier if you don't. If you know that you're not having to kind of manage somebody. But instead they're always going to be following up and they're always going to be communicating clearly. They're going to be getting you what you need when you need it. So you're not having to, like, be like, hey, where is it? So, yeah, maybe as a. As another angle to look at it. How about some of the examples of working with certain creators where you're like, I don't think I'm going to renew this relationship again because it's just too difficult.

There's a couple instances. A couple ways that it happens will be because we prefer to ship all of our products so that you have the right package with the newest packaging that looks beautiful, versus sending someone to the store. So a few times we've had it where the person would request it and want it like, the next day. And that just gets really frustrating. After six months of that, saying, like, well, it takes us five business days. You know, it takes that long to get it to them. I mean, we will ship overnight. It's just when it becomes like a chronic habit, it starts to lose its appeal. And the same goes for any of those things, like invoicing. If you're always late on an invoice, or you send it to me and need it, want to check on it, like, three days later, it's like, okay, we are going to pay you. But we are a big company. And I realize, you know, and I realize that people are getting paid by us. A lot of them are small business owners. Like, we are talking about people who care about each check and are maybe working another job on top of that. So it's important to us, but it's because we're busy. The longer a request takes and the more often you make the same request, it just starts to wear us down.

Yeah, yeah, totally.

And then.

Go ahead. Yeah, finish that last thought.

The last thing I was going to say is just when they switch gears on a product too, like, say, we've agreed that you're going to promote almond flour, and all of a sudden the post comes out and it's about oats. Well, that's fine, but I would prefer to know that ahead of time. And I could say, oh, well, make sure you do this. Or this is the talking point there.

Yeah, that makes sense. Can you explain what that looks like on the back end when somebody sends an invoice? Number one, I'm just curious, what is your preferred way to get that? And then just for those who aren't familiar working with a bigger company, what does that have to go through in order to actually get paid and what's a realistic expectation there?

Sure. Now, we have really refined our process over the years because it was really bumpy when we started and it was trying to pay people by check and pay them as soon as the invoice came in. But now we have it set up as we pay on a monthly cadence. So you have to have your invoice by that date to get paid at the end of the month. We pay by direct deposit. Now, because a single check request requires. I mean, it. I have to make. Submit a request. I have to provide all of the paperwork. The W9 and. Or W2, no W9. And we have some other vendor forms that we have to have at Bob's. And because we. We are often paying big companies for the products we ordered or getting money for the things people ordered that these little smaller checks are harder to get through. So that's why we built this process. And the way I prefer to get them, I don't really care. It just needs to be an invoice. It can be a PDF, it can be through one of the QuickBooks options. I do get them sometimes where they're just typed in an email and I have to send it back and be like, can you make this into a thing?

Yeah.

And the way to keep something important to keep in mind that I think I didn't know. But invoices, numbers are really important when you're working with a bigger brand and they're paying you over and over again. Because I learned the hard way, if your number is the same, they just don't pay you.

Yes, yes.

Because they already paid that.

One point being, if you are creating those in, like, Word or, you know, pages or whatever it might be, and sometimes people just use the same invoice, the accounting department will look at that and be like, oh, this is just a duplicate. It's invoice one, which we already paid. So, like, now we're good. Yeah.

Now will I catch it? Because I'll check all that ahead of time before I submit it after learning the hard way a few times. But it's tough, and I think I just. Just empathize so much with small business owners and how hard it is to not know when your money's coming or. No, you put out all this effort and now you have to wait a month to get the money for it. We try to make it easy.

Pretty common for businesses to have, let's say, net 30, net 60, net 90. Like this idea of, hey, the invoice is due in 30 days, and sometimes you'll get invoices and we get these where it's like, due upon receivable, and.

It'S like, well, all the time.

Okay, great. But like, I'm not gonna be able to pay this today. And we're smaller and more nimble, and still it's just not how our system works.

Yeah.

And even more so than with a bigger company.

Yeah.

So how about on the. The process, on the. On the front end of things, what does it look like when you are starting a relationship with somebody? You know, what do some of those initial connections look like? And then at what point you're like, hey, this makes sense. We want to work with this person. And how do you kind of formalize that connection with somebody if you decide to move forward with working them?

We're pretty personal at Bob's. We run it pretty scrappy and lean. So either you're going to talk to me or my coworker Serena. And typically what we do is we get requests all day, every day, all year long for, like, they want to work with us. So usually what we do is about this time of year, we start looking over who's in our program now, evaluating, and then start looking at who's reached out and who might be a good fit. And if it's somebody that's reached out to us, that conversation is a little different because it's like, oh, it's great to hear from you. What are your rates? Like, what is, you know, what products do you love? Tell us a little bit more. And then what we do on our side is we do a big dive into what is the content? Who are they? Do they align with our brand values, their social channels? Are they strong? Are they posting regularly? Because sometimes you'll find that they haven't posted on Instagram in, like, six months.

Right, right.

And that stuff matters. So. And then these Days. We also are looking for video. So that's another, like, key point. If they haven't reached out to us. I just do a general, like, nice, you know, like, it's really nice to meet you. Big fan of your brand, curious if you're familiar with us, curious if you'd be open to working with us next year. And, you know, we have brands that are amazing that decide to stop or I'm calling them brands. I'm sorry, the person. Bloggers stop doing branded content. And so sometimes those relationships just end naturally that way.

Yeah.

Other times we've either, you know, that's the harder side, is the ending. A relationship is a lot harder. Everybody wants to take money for work.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. So can you. You mean, like if there's somebody you're working with and you say, hey, actually did. Decided not to work with you this next year, your point is that's, that's like, not easy.

I hate having those conversations with you.

Totally.

And it's. It's a true test of people's professional strength and how they take those conversations too.

Yes. And what, what does that look like for you, for somebody who. Where you come out of it and you're like, hey, that was super professional how that person handled it.

You know, usually they're really grateful for the relationship. They thank us for the work. They're open to future conversations. Because with me, the door is never fully closed. At Bob's, like, we will go back. It just depends on our goals for the year and what we're trying to promote in alignment. So we've gone back after time and picked up somebody we used to work with before. But, you know, I've had. I mean, I'm sure you can imagine how when people are fired, how people react. And it's not like that, but it's. People react poorly sometimes.

Sure. Yeah.

And that kind of just, that kind.

Of ends it usually totally like that. It's. It's not a great way to leave a door open. It doesn't. Yeah. Like, it doesn't. It's not like, oh, great, like, but it's hard again. Yeah.

This work is super personal. I get that. You know, we're each creator we work with is very invested with what they make in their channel and who they align with. So. Yeah, I understand how it can be a hard thing.

Yeah. Can you talk about. You had mentioned video. How important is that? And maybe within that conversation talk about different platforms. Sure. And where you see content being a priority across different platforms.

Yeah. These days, video is Pretty essential. It's hard. It's rare for us to work with somebody who does not do video.

Why is that?

We, I mean, I think it's pretty, pretty normal knowledge now that like Instagram prefers video, so they promote the videos and then as we're trying to build more content that can go out onto different channels. So we wanted something that could go on reels and TikTok and it's great like especially we've had a lot of live sessions this year on Instagram, you know, with a co creator teaching along with our internal person and those have gone really well. So we're really looking for people who are open to that. But we also realize like it's not everybody's strong suit and that's not a real deal breaker, but it's just a more important content need. So really where we're trying to fill the need is on our own content calendar with video.

Yeah, yeah. And so helpful to go back to that earlier conversation. Helpful from an exposure perspective because the creator will publish it to their Instagram. It might get, get exposure there. But what I hear you saying is it's also helpful because then you can take that on Bob's side and do use Bob's for shorthand. Does that.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, that's what we call it.

Make sure that's okay.

Yeah.

And publish it to your different platforms and have it live in different places where you want to be publishing video.

Sure. And it totally depends on the agreement that we have with somebody. Like we don't ever steal content, we.

Only ever share it outlined as part of the agreement. Yeah. You had mentioned TikTok. Is that tell me from a behind the scenes brand. Are you just as like for us, we're like, do we do TikTok? How much?

Yeah, that's sort of where we're at. I mean what we're seeing is like.

Or any platform for that matter.

Yeah, right. And you know, really have worked here. I've watched a lot of platforms come and go.

Yeah.

I mean like Google is just barely hanging on at all anymore. But it's like we, we want to try them. If it's going to be a space for us, we'll usually test it out. But TikTok is a tricky one. It's super fun. It's an incredible algorithm. But do people want to see videos from Bob's Red Mill?

Sure.

Not sure. So we've been testing it out with more influencer content, like branded influencer content that we can share on our TikTok channel and then A few pieces. Right now our primary focus is just to be there.

Sure.

We're not focused real heavily on creating content just for TikTok, but it's a space that we want to have our, you know, we want to have our account, we want to be able to be tagged, we want to see what stuff is happening on those channels. And we're seeing a lot of really fun stuff with our, our products. I think where we struggle is that we're kind of an old fashioned brand and that is a real cheeky platform. So it's hard, it's a harder sell on the cheeky content.

Yeah. Right. There's maybe more of a gap between perception of the brand as this like established, reliable, trustworthy, well known and like kind of fritzy teenager.

Yeah.

And how do you recognize those things? Yeah, it's an interesting kind of branding exercise.

Yeah, it's fun. It's a really fun platform. But when it gets into how do we make this do something, it's right. We're just testing it out.

Yeah. We have platforms like that as well, which it's like, we don't want to not publish there. And we want people, when people go there, whether it be a brand or a reader, whatever it might be a customer, depending on which site it is, to look and say like, oh, they're showing up every day, or almost every day, they're publishing content, they're here. And that's kind of like for us, the checkbox of like, hey, they're here, they're showing up, they're relevant in a way that they're publishing content. Like it'd be kind of like if somebody went to Bob's Red Mill Instagram and like you hadn't published for eight months, it'd be like, oh, yeah, that's weird. Even if you only had, you know, 72 followers, there's still something about just seeing somebody's actually showing up and publishing content.

Yeah. And that's how we do tweet, tweeter. That's how I treat Twitter is. It's definitely like we post a few times a week just to have a presence still. But it's not a great place to learn about our brand. It's just not the right fit for us as a brand. Whereas Pinterest, we crush it on Pinterest.

Yeah. And it's a great fit for that. So talk about, you know, you'd shared a little bit about touch points and creators reaching out and saying, hey, be interested in working together. How do you do that in an elegant way where you're authentically reaching out and making that connection, but not tipping over into the like, wait, this is getting kind of annoying category. How do people do that?

Well, it's tough, I think, folks. I mean, typically when I. If I respond to you, it's usually often I'm interested. If you're getting a response directly from the brand, we're often interested in the. In you. And I'll usually tell you to check back in a few months. The people who I have turned down, who were now two years into them checking in with me every month, it's. It gets tough to keep hearing them and trying to be kind and polite because sometimes it's just not a good fit for the brand or there's some other reason and we're being professional and not sharing directly. Why?

Why?

Yeah, because it could be something else or it could be that the rates are just way too out of our range and no matter. No how matter how much we negotiate, we're never going to hit our budget. So.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I think the best, I mean, what I like the best is to get an introductory email, why you love the brand, some examples of your work, and then depending on how they come back to you, check back in three months. And if you check back three or four times and you're still not getting anywhere, it's probably not the right fit for you.

Yeah, that makes sense. Versus not the right time. You kind of covered a year. You've made connections, they know you're there, which is helpful. So how about on the. This is the one that everybody has questions about the pricing side of things.

Oh, sure.

How doggers come to the table with something that a brand would look at and say, hey, this is a realistic price that we can work within. It's not, you know, too cheap, where the blogger's not getting paid for their work in the exposure that they get. But it's also not so expensive that you'd look at it and be like, no, there's no way we could do this. What is that?

It's tough. I mean, it really depends on where everybody's at. And as you know, because you've been in the space so long, the rates sort of have inflated over time. And so what we might have paid five years ago for a post is different now. So typically, I think if you were just getting started and you didn't know where to start with what rates to ask, might start asking other influencers in your space, like people that you don't feel like you're in competition With. Because if you come to me without a rate in mind, I'm going to get a rate from our agency based on averages. And then that gives me some idea of where to start from. Yeah, yeah, it's easier for me. And I prefer to start with your rates. At Bob's Red Mill, we have, we don't negotiate under 20% of asking price. If we can't make it work within that 20%, then we will let you know. And then it's your choice to go beyond that.

So you're. So when somebody brings you a rate, you have an internal kind of rule that if somebody says, hey, it's $10,000 for this, you wouldn't come back to them and say, ah, we can only do 5,000. The lowest you would go would be eight.

Eight, okay. And if, if I couldn't do eight, I would just let them know it's out of our budget, we can't do this. But. And then sometimes, you know, they'll come back and they say, well, would you do it for this? And then we've negotiated it. But because we've been doing it so long, I've had a lot of back and forth and been in situations where people felt we weren't getting, we weren't offering enough money, like we were undercutting and it wasn't our brand, but it was somebody representing our brand for us. And so we've just had to put those rules in place because we don't. We value the work that creators do.

Yeah, it's hard. That's really cool. And I've never heard of. Or maybe it's happened, I just haven't been aware of it, but just, it's almost like in order to communicate respect for somebody, if they. You're not going to come back and say, oh, that's great, but we'll only do this for 2000 when they quoted 10, because that doesn't feel great. You would just say, it's outside of our range, we can't do that. Or if it was close, you'd say, hey, you know, the best we can do is 8,000.

Yeah. And typically, yeah, it's great. And I think it's been a good move for us as a brand because both myself and my partner Serena on the team, we come from a space of really. We are big fans of the work that's happening out there. We understand how much work goes into it. Not just the recipe or the photography, but like how much stress of running your own business, having to figure out your taxes and all. Like Your insurance. There's a lot that goes into running these businesses and I think sometimes when we're only talking about the budget, we forget like all the pieces that it takes to make this piece happen to be available, to create the content.

That's really cool. One of the things you mentioned was an agency. Does Bob sort of mill work with an agency kind of to help? Yeah, we are. Okay. Can you talk about what that relationship looks like and how that works?

Yeah. So I manage two agencies that work for us that do influencer work. One is our digital firm called Power Digital Marketing. They're based out of San Diego and they do most of our monthly campaigns and product campaigns and retailer focused campaigns. So they do what I consider our big blast campaigns where we'll have 50 creators posting about a certain thing and they, they do them a lot more on one offs. So you might get a job from us in January, but then maybe not again until May.

Yep.

And then we work with a local company called Maxwell PR which we do more lifestyle type influencers with them. Registered dietitians, nutritionist, sports figures. And we're focused more heavily on the nutrition aspects of our brand whereas the other ones are more recipe and lifestyle focused for like, like I'm going to take my kid to Target and get the oatmeal packets.

Yep.

So and it's.

It sounds like with the kind of more nutrition based lifestyle creators, would that be more ongoing relationships?

Yes, those are usually year long partnerships.

Got it. And the idea with that is they have followers who are following them for information about nutrition and health and potentially the significance of the information that's communicated. It would be like, hey, this is more important because you got to hear it a few times.

Yeah.

In order to know these are trusted connections. Whereas the other types of creators would be more like one off. Like hey, we want to do a campaign for the month of January for this healthy granola that we're really in the month of January. So we're going to kind of blast it out to as many people as can to just try and get a push for this in one single season. Is that broadly speaking how those are divided up and views?

Yeah, that's pretty accurate. And then the internal program that we run is we usually have about 50 folks that we keep on all year and it's a year long program. We usually do not more than every other month posting though. And that'll be a variety of products. It's a lot more free because we have a personal relationship with them by now. So it'll Be like, pick the products that most appeal to you from this list. Talk about the recipe that you think will do the best.

Got it.

So that's sort of how we divide it up. But I still, I approve all influencers. I approve all of our rates. So all of that still flows through my office. I'm just not doing the contracts on that side.

That's a lot for you to manage. I feel like it is. Yeah.

But it's good. I love what I do and I love working with influencers. They're so fun.

It feels like if you wanted to, you could work 18 hours a day.

Yeah, I sure could.

Maybe. And maybe sometimes you. So the. The are all people that are doing sponsored content through Bob's Mermaid Red Mill coming through you, and then you're saying, hey, connect with this agency. I think that's one of. And I'm even personally still learning, like, how much of this is the brand versus an agency just moving forward with this. And. And it's obviously different for every brand, but I feel like it's important for creators to know there are these different worlds. You could work with the brand directly or you could work with an agency who's kind of in the middle space between the brand and the creator. Can you explain how those work?

Yeah, it's definitely tricky. And it has taken us years to get to this mix where it's working because you'll get creators reaching out to all three of us and then a mess there. So typically when we get a lot of inbound requests, either through Instagram DMs or through our contact form on our site, most of those go over to the digital agency to vet for us and they'll respond and they'll let you know whether you're hitting the category or not. If I catch one that looks really cool, I might save them aside for me later. But most of them go over to the agencies depending on whether you fall into recipe creation or lifestyle. That depends on which one you go to. But we've worked with them to make sure that you're always getting a communication back and that you're getting the same situation. We work so closely with them. I know a lot of people get feel like they're not going to work with the brand or they're getting passed off when they go to an agency. But we work so closely with both of them that it's sort of like an extension of my team that allows us to do more. My 2 cents would be that I feel like an agency is a great route to go because there's an opportunity for more work. I only have one brand to offer you. Agencies often have a lot, especially if it's a food agency.

Sure.

The partners we work with at Maxwell, they primarily focus on fruit food brands. So if you get a relationship there, you might get other opportunities that come out interesting.

Yeah. So advantage in that scenario is these people might say, hey, this is great. You're a really good influencer, you're a really good creator, whatever you want to use for the term. We're going to actually keep you on our list to potentially work with another brand or another campaign that we have that if the match. Yeah, that's interesting. How about on the media kit side of things? So a lot of people are like, what do I put in my media kit? And what is actually helpful? Is that like a resume where it's like nobody's really looking at resumes anymore or is that different in that, like, oh, this is actually an important thing.

I can't speak for everyone, but they're really. We really prefer them if we like to get a kit that will showcase like three or four of your favorite pieces of content that either performed well or you're the most proud of other brands that you've maybe worked with. And then your basic stats. I think the problem is to keep it updated is you're always having to update. And then personally really also like getting a price list at the same time. But I understand sometimes that's not the same document and sometimes people don't prefer to send them that way. But I will usually ask for it right away because it helps.

Yeah, yeah. On the price list side, you know, even for Pinch of Yum, we've talked a lot about how do we structure this like, and I think how we have it right now is like we have blog posts and then you can do like 1, 2, 3, 4 and then we have video and you can do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or whatever it is, 6 plus or I don't know what the numbers are. And then we kind of have this a la carte area where it's like you can do retain ownership and it costs this much. You can do like share to all social and here's how much that would cost on your side. From. From a brand perspective, when have you looked at rate sheets or a price list and been like, oh, this is really helpful. It's easy to understand versus I'm sure you look at some and you're like, wait, what? I don't know how to navigate this. And what I'm actually looking at.

Yeah, I think they're the most helpful when they're set in tiers like you just described, where it's like, this is the rate for whether it's a blog post or you're putting them in. It doesn't matter to me as much how you put your tiers, although I prefer them if it's bundled content. So if it's a blog post plus social plus, then then it's like a little bit more. If you want to add video, sure. And then like, I'm always looking for discounts. Is there. If I do four, do I get 10% off? And so I prefer it when it's bundled. It's really hard when it gets to be a la carte. And then you start talking about making bundles out of the a la carte stuff. So if you like. If you have like a package A and then package B is everything in A plus video, like, those are helpful for us to look at. And that's just from the marketing side. And you're probably real familiar with this, but for other people who are not working in marketing as much, that's how most proposals come. You get tiers with different budget dollars. And so it's really helpful. It just gives you something like, okay, well, I don't feel good about that money. But this, like, it just helps you make a choice.

Yeah, for sure. And the more choices there are, sometimes the harder it is to make a choice. And so if you can limit it.

Simple.

Yeah. So on the package side of things, how much are you saying, here's what we need versus the creator saying, here's what I think would be most impactful and would be most helpful. Like who's kind of making the decisions on those. And again, I know part of this is speaking about Bob specifically, but also part of it is curious if you thoughts on this just in general from a brand perspective, but any thoughts on that?

I think it's. I really like it when people bring ideas to me. I really like it if people have. This is what I think would be the most impactful. Because nobody knows your followers or readers like you do. I mean, it's great. I have an idea of what I like. One piece that surprises people that I still really like a blog post because it's an evergreen touch point online.

Yeah. Can you tell me why that's valuable? The evergreen part specifically?

Well, because it stays. It stays forever. So if, if an article, especially people who are more savvy and they're focused on SEO, you know, if they're building in those key terms. That post will continue to garner traffic and grow and be found over time. And, you know, at some point it'll stop being relevant. But if for say, five years, Bob's Red Mill is part of this article that keeps coming up. It's really great for us. Whereas an Instagram post is here and gone. Nobody's coming back to that three years later.

See, Fruit of Content, it's like, so for us, really strong for a period of time. And then it.

Yeah, that helps us hold onto that space longer.

And are you going back and looking at that? Like, are you checking in on those older pieces?

No, not too often. But with Influence, with Influence Kit, though now I can start to track that better so I can look back at posts and see. And it's not mostly that comes up when I'm looking at renewing. I'll start looking at your past performance, but I know I'll still see on either it'll hit like a Google Alert or something will come through for old posts. And so I just, like, anecdotally, from doing it so long, know that that's valuable.

Yeah. One of the requests, this will be my public feature request for Bruno on Influence Kit would be this. Like, you could set the option to have somebody emailed, obviously unsubscribed as a bit, as an option, but like, every six months to say, like, here's an update. Or you could just email the creator and the creator could reach out to the brand and say, like, hey, a year later, just want to let you know, like, piece of content is still getting 50,000 page views, you know, over the last year, or whatever it might be. To me, that feels like a really great way to maintain a relationship with the product.

Absolutely. And I have influencers that do that. They will Send me reports 6 months, a year down the line on their content. And like, I think if you have those pieces on your blog or your content channel that are still performing really well, there's no harm in just sending that to the person that sponsored it and saying, look, I just wanted you to know it's still doing great.

Yes. Right. And sometimes we'll even like update a piece of content or republish it. Another great opportunity to say, hey, those are great too. Push this to the front of the blog. It's getting more exposure and we'll sponsor.

Those sometimes if it wasn't our recipe previously, but it's performing really well. You know, it's getting lots of traction, but you really want to reshoot it. It will come in and sponsor for a lower price than a normal post. Sometimes.

Yeah, that's super smart because, you know, there's a track record. It's a little bit of a guarantee for the blogger. It's not potentially not as much work. Probably not as much work. So they go in, they're going to reshoot a piece of content and they would reach out to you and say, or any brand this could be, hey, here's what it's looked like over the past six months. Would you be interested in me reshooting this? If I have some product placement, if I include whatever it is as an ingredient, Is that kind of generally what it looks like?

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's great. I think those kinds of pitches work really well if you have a past. And even if the brand that you are going after declines, I think there's usually try a few different ones that might work within that recipe or whatever piece of content it is.

Cool. How about this kind of. As we close out here, Cassidy, what would be one thing that you wish bloggers or publishers or creators would know about the sponsor content process? If you're like, that would be really helpful if they actually knew this thing, what would that be?

Well, I think for my team, just that we're really, really busy and so if you don't hear back from us right away, it's usually because we're really busy and not because we're ignoring you, but we try to be really timely. But I think, I don't know, the space is so great. I just really love when people are authentic and are just kind of come and be themselves in their emails. We get to know each other a little and learn what. That's good.

Yes, totally. It's one of the things I'm constantly reminded of is like, oh, it's people on every side of this. And those people could be your neighbors and they could be, you know, your friends that you meet at a barbecue. Like, it's. It's not companies, it's people. And people are groups of com or. But companies are groups of people and it's a good reminder.

It is. And on every side of this, we all know what it feels like to be not treated like a person through social media. So it's. So remember, there are people on the other side of that reading it.

Yeah, that's great. So here's the thing, Cassidy. I feel like a lot of people will be like, Bob thread mill, Cassidy, awesome. I want to work with them. I want to keep you from getting inundated with, with requests, but also give you the opportunity for those who might be a good fit to reach out. So if. What would be the sweet spot where creators who would. Or you like, hey, maybe don't reach out. We're at capacity. What would your preference be in terms of having folks reach out to you, if at all?

Well, I mean, I think it's truly, I think your best bet is to come through our website or through Instagram DMs. Those will cut straight to us. It's a great time to reach out. If you're thinking about working for us for next year, you're really interested because this is, we're planning right now for next year. But yeah, the sweet spot, it's. I don't know, man, it's just so like we're take each of them individually and there's no, it's just always a wild, messy space.

Yep.

So I don't, I don't know, people could just be nice and come out and talk to us and we'll go from there.

It's so relatable and so understandable in terms of, hey, here's the deal. We're figuring this out day by day, week by week. If there's one thing that's true in social, I think it's the thing that was true yesterday is not going to be the same today, that you need to potentially look at every opportunity kind of individually because to the point of art and science, it's like there's no hard and fast rules. It's not like, hey, if you have a hundred thousand followers, we're for sure going to work with you because some accounts might have that it might not be a great fit at all. And so totally understand that idea of like, hey, no hard and fast rules. No necessarily sweet spot, but reach out, make a connection and maybe kind of a good, good takeaway there in general. So really appreciate you coming on, Cassidy. I know that we have a lot of people that we know who work with Bob's Red Mill and obviously a huge amount of respect for that company and the people who make up that company. And well, next time we're out at the grocery store, as a thank you, I would encourage all podcast listeners what would be the best thing for people to buy in the next month? Month. That's my. That'll be my last.

Oh, man. If you haven't tried our oatmeal cups, we also have just came out with oatmeal packets. But I mean, it's fall. Those are really good. We're about to launch a peanut butter granola. So that's super delicious coming out, but you know, won't be on store shelves for a bit. Takes time for sure.

Sure. We'll keep our eyes sealed for it and make sure to pick some up. So Cassidy, thanks so much for coming on. Really appreciate it.

Thank you so much for having me.

That's a wrap for this episode. Thanks again to Cassidy for coming on. The big takeaway for me in this conversation is how important it is not only to have incredible content, not only how important it is to have beautiful photos or beautiful videos, to be capable of all of kind of the tactical things like that, but also how important it is to be professional, to deliver the things that you say you're going to deliver, when you're going to deliver them, to follow up, to communicate. Well, those things go a really long way when you have a brand that you're working with and you have a relationship in a sponsored content capacity. So for those of you who are interested in thinking about growing that area of your business or really leaning into that a little bit bit more, I hope that you're able to take away a few little nuggets or action items from the interview that we had today with Cassidy. A big thank you to Cassidy for coming on and sharing those insights. It's easier for brand not to do that, so if you have a moment, give her a little shout out. Maybe you want to tag Bob's Redmill and tell them thank you and hopefully she will see that. As a reminder, if you want to check out any of the other podcasts we do, you can go go to foodbloggerpro.com podcast. We have a great searching kind of tool there that allows you to see different topics or interviews that we've done. So be sure to check that out. If you want to learn more about Food Blogger Pro and just what a membership entails, you can just go to foodbloggerpro.com there's an easy way to sign up for a list where we talk through what's included, what you can learn who it's for. So if you're kind of on the fence, if you're wondering, that would be a good, good next step is just going to foodbloggerpro.com to learn a little bit more. Thanks for listening as always. We hope you enjoyed the episode, but not only that, we hope that you got some actionable items from it. We will be back here same time next Tuesday. Until then, make it a great week and hope that you can get a tiny bit better every day. And we hope that this podcast helps you do that. We'll see you next week.

Sam.