337: Shifting Your Mindset – Leaning into SEO and Learning from Industry Experts with Ali Stafford

Hello. Hello, this is Bjork Ostrom. And for those of you who have been following along with the podcast for years and tune in maybe every week, maybe every month, maybe it's every couple months. But you know me, and we've maybe connected, we've maybe emailed, maybe we've connected on the Food Blogger Pro forums. We have a relationship in some way. And for those of you who are new, welcome. FoodBlocker Pro is a community of really food creators who are finding ways to create an income and oftentimes create a career by publishing content online. And it's food content, it's drink content, food recipe, kind of this broad category of food creators. And we've been doing this for years, and we've seen incredible amount of people do incredible things. And that could be people who are learning photography or learning video or learning SEO. Maybe people get into it and they get really excited about website development. But at the core, what's really exciting about what we do is it's people pursuing their passion, pursuing their interest, and figuring out ways to create an income around that. And we, we're here to help you do that. And we talk to people who are doing that themselves, or sometimes we talk to people who are supporting people who are doing that, consultants, people who have agencies, businesses that support food creators. Today we are talking with Ali Stafford from Alexander's Kitchen, and she's gonna be talking about her journey as a creator and a publisher. And she's been at this for a really long time. Since 2006, she's been thinking about and creating content online, and she's had lots of different iterations as a creator. And what's fun about this conversation is she talks about how within the past few years, she looked to really level up some of the things that she was doing. She talked about, talks about working with some of those consultants I mentioned who actually were a part of the Food Blogger Pro podcast interviews that we had done here and the resulting impact that that had for her, whether it be email optimization or SEO optimization. And, uh, what I love about the story is she continues to just keep grinding. She shows up, she creates content, she figures out how to get better and has been doing that for a really long time. So even if you are new, I think you can find inspiration from this. Even if you have been creating for a really long time, I think you can find inspiration from this interview. I know that I did for sure. So let's go ahead and jump in and welcome Ally to the podcast.

Allie, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks so much. For having me. It's so fun to be here and so fun to finally connect in real life. I was saying earlier, I. Your voice is so familiar at this point.

I've had that as well with people that I've met. I listen to their podcast. The thing that I find interesting is inevitably when I meet those people, it sounds a little bit different, because every podcast I listen to is at 1.5 speed. Do you listen on normal speed or do you listen sped up?

I actually do listen on normal speed. I like normal speed, which is good.

Because then this will seem normal, because occasionally I'll meet people who I listen to their podcast and I'll be like, you sound so familiar, and yet it sounds so strange. And it's because I'm used to listening them talk 150% faster than they usually do. So we're going to have a conversation here around your site, your experience, your business. You've been at this for a long time, and I think that's one of the really inspiring things about your story. But before we do that, I'm curious to know about kind of life as an introvert, which I can. I think I can relate to that a little bit. Sometimes people are surprised when they're like, wait, you're an introvert? You do a podcast? But you've kind of talked about this idea of, hey, your preference would not be getting on video. Uh, your preference maybe would not be getting in front of the camera. And yet here we are doing a podcast. It is video. It is some element of live. Um, what has that been like for you to kind of push through that and say, you know what? I know this needs to happen. I know I need to do it. Is that, like forever a hard thing, or do you find that it gets easier over time? Curious to know.

Yeah, it's definitely gotten easier. But still, the thought of speaking in front of people, like, my brother got married this summer, and I had to give a toast. And just the thought of, like, speaking in front of people, like, makes my hands clammy and my face red. And whether there's an audience or not, if I'm just making a video with myself and my phone, there's still, like, you know, I get the jitters. But you. I mean, something that I really have learned over these last couple of years is just that video is so important. No matter what platform, you know, whether it's Instagram or Pinterest or TikTok or YouTube or just your blog, if you want to. Video is very helpful for food, you know, People really, you know, appreciate step by step videos. And it's something that I've realized I just, I have to do. So I've done it a little bit where I mostly do not go in front of the camera still. I'm often in Instagram stories just doing step by step with my overhead. I have a tripod that mounted to my wall. I just pull it down, strap in my phone, and I do videos that way. I use those same videos for YouTube. I just flip them around and put them on YouTube. It's 4K video, so it's good quality. Occasionally I will jump in and speak to people, really only if I feel it's necessary to give them like, you know, just to kind of explain why I'm doing something so that I don't get 1 million DMs, like, well, why didn't you do it this way? It's just easier if I jump in and say, well, this is how it is. And then also the thing that I have realized over the years because like, I've hid for so many years behind the camera, is that if I do jump in, people are like, oh, it's so nice to see, you know, it's so nice to see, like, you know, so it's a way to connect on a different level that you can't when you're just showing, you know, your hands on hands videos.

So one of the, one of the things I think that's so interesting about that is, you know, as I think about your story, you had mentioned this before we hit record, but starting your site years and years ago, you've been at this for a while, maybe before, I would say like 99% of the people who are creating content online. So you said it was 2006, is that right?

2006, yes.

And so when you, just out of curiosity, did you start on WordPress or were you on like a blog spot? Or like a blog spot? Okay, yeah. When did you switch to WordPress? Do you remember?

I forget when I switched to WordPress and I switched so many times over the years. But it was, I mean, I think, I guess it was, I think it was just. Actually, I think it was just blog spot to WordPress.

I don't remember.

Maybe, maybe five years after that.

Yep. Which is kind of, you know, Pinch of YM started on Tumblr and I think it was like two to three years after we switched to WordPress. And obviously there's a lot of different platforms now that are really awesome. I was just thinking about this the other day. And, but WordPress is still, especially for food and recipe sites, just like the place where you need to be. Because it's such a great search cms. But I'm curious to know, have you had to adopt kind of a certain mindset in regards to reinventing yourself and, you know, starting at zero in a lot of ways, I think of this when we kind of circle around this idea of like, man, for pitch of yum, do we do TikTok? How do we do that? What does that look like? It feels like this new platform, are we going to know what to do? Are we, you know, is everybody going to look at us and be like, wait, nobody invited you to the party. But like, I feel like when you've been creating for a long period of time, there's. And the way that the Internet cycles, it's a relatively short in terms of lifespan of things. And so you have these reinventions that have to happen along the way. Do you feel like that's been true for you and would you be able to kind of stake along the way where those checkpoints would have been for your journey?

Yeah, I mean, I feel like I was very late with sort of all of the sort of social media trends in particular. So like, I remember I, a friend was like, you should we really need to have a Facebook page for your blog? And I was like, why? Like, why do I need to do that? And then of course I realized, you know, way, you know, I feel like years after I should have started it, it was such a good way to again build community and get people to your blog. So I started a Facebook page and I remember really focusing on that and then it wasn't growing and I was like, what's happening? And it was like, oh, because everybody's already on Instagram. And then I was like late to get to Instagram and I actually have only recently just started doing TikTok as well. And I felt the same way. I was a little bit like, I never did Snapchat and I was kind of happy when Snapchat didn't really go anywhere.

But like you feel justified in not putting in the effort to do the thing because it's like, hey, that actually didn't end up being significant in the way that a lot of people thought it might be for a platform like yours.

Right. And I was a little bit hoping that would be true with TikTok, but doesn't seem to be. I still, I do feel like a little bit old for TikTok, but I, you know, Instagram announced Recently that reels is what is going to be, you know, important and going to like, you know, be what they're going to like, favor. Exactly. I don't know. I didn't really totally pay attention. I just know that I should be doing reels. And I was like, well, if I'm gonna be making reels, I may as well be doing. Throwing it on TikTok and see what happens. And it really is also just a lesson in being, you know, willing to adapt. And I have, you know, with reels, some of them you get some engagement and some of them you don't. Same thing with TikTok. Every so often, like nobody will view and then somehow they blow up and you just have to try things and it's. It was. It's help you. I mean, not everyone you put out there is going to be a home run. And it's like with everything, you have to kind of test, test, test one thing's going to work and then you get glean something from that and you put that into the next one. Yeah, I'm interested. Sorry, go ahead.

Yeah, I'm interested here. In regards to that, do you feel like you've always had that mindset of being kind of nimble and willing to test, experiment, or do you feel like you've had to develop that over time to say, you know what, if I'm going to continue to create over 15 years, I need to be comfortable being new at something and that needs to be an okay thing?

I would say that was not how I've always been. I think I was really stuck for a long time. I think maybe especially because I started blogging so long, even though I didn't really, again, care. Like, I wasn't. I was just publishing posts and putting them out there. And I often didn't know if people had commented. I didn't check. I wasn't. I was very, you know, it was just. It was just sort of almost like a personal journal and, you know, like a record of recipes. But over time, I feel like. So I feel like actually that was almost like a detriment in some ways because I just was stuck in this. You blog, you put it out, you blog, you put it out. And I was late to adopt all the changes. And I would say it would be like in the last couple of years where I've again, I mean, I think, like, things have changed so quickly. I mean, I feel like one of, you know, one of the biggest changes is like, seeing how like Pinterest for years was driving traffic to Food blogs. And all of a sudden it's not anymore. And that I would say is maybe one of the biggest, was one of the one point that I could pinpoint that was like, okay, you really need to, you have to be nimble. You can't rely on Pinterest, you can't rely on just two of your blog posts to drive traffic. You talk about that egg carton analogy a lot. You have to kind of be diversified in your traffic and where you. And just what you're doing to.

Yeah. Create revenue or.

Yeah.

Yep. And for those who aren't familiar, there's a blog post on this and talk about it in the podcast occasionally. But the egg carton method essentially is just this visualization of you have an egg carton and you have all of these different places where you know you could create revenue for your business. Right. So there's ads, there's affiliate, there's you can write, you could freelance, there's sponsor content. And thinking about all those pieces. And sometimes I think we get stuck in this idea of thinking about, hey, I want to create a full time income from my website. And in order to do that, I need to make enough from ads. And so I know that I get whatever $20 per 1000 page views. And so in order to get there, I need to make sure that I have, you know, the equivalent of whatever full time salary would be for that person. So you kind of play the numbers game. You're like, I need to get here from a traffic perspective. But what you're saying is like, hey, you need to think about diversifying and saying like, okay, maybe it's not just ads, maybe it's also thinking about, you know, video in certain places or email, which we're going to talk about in a little bit. So was there a specific point that you can look back on where you, where you can say like, hey, you.

Had been doing this.

It's kind of like one off a little bit here and there. Haven't been taking it super seriously. It sounds like maybe some things change where Pinterest traffic changed a little bit and then you're like, oh, maybe I need to like take this more seriously or what? What was that moment? And then what did you do for out of that?

Yeah, I mean, I would say so a couple years ago. And I mean this was, this would change. Everything was like focusing on SEO. And Leanne from Foodie Digital reached out to me. This was before her company was even a thing. And she was like, what are some. And I get people reach out I'm sure you get people all the time. People reach out all the time. I have this thing. I expected to hang up the phone for the conversation and just be like, well, that was fine, but I'm fine with my blogging. I've got my responsibilities under control. And she was like, well, as a thank you for your time, here are seven things you can do for your posts that could potentially improve. And I was like, okay, sure. And I had never done anything like this. I had never changed a title of a blog post. I didn't care about the, the meta description or anything. And it was like one post in particular, like a post I don't even care about. I never looked at data, I never looked at analytics. I hate that kind of stuff. But she did, and she was like an instant pot, soft boiled egg post. And she was like, people are searching for what the time is in the, you know, in the, like, how long you should cook them. And so I put that in the meta description and like, boom. Within a month, that post started performing better. And I was like, oh, wow. I had, I didn't realize that there was, that I could do this, that this was, it was kind of like, there's so much I can do with like my existing content. So working with them changed everything because they also kind of. I also realized that my site was in like a terrible shape, kind of just from like a. Sure, like broken links, unnecessary plugins, all that kind of stuff. So they kind of got my site structurally sound. And then they also helped me, like, figure out like I was, I was not strategic at all with my, with my post. I would go back to old posts that I, you know, maybe barely anybody was viewing and I would try to, you know, tidy them up because it was a post that I personally liked.

Sure.

But they were like, you need to focus on these top, you know, 10 or 15 or 20 posts. Get those in better shape. So that was a huge change for me. I was. And I feel like I was, you know, lots of bloggers figured out that SEO is important years ago. And I feel like I was, I was late to game with that. But they, you know, I would say the last two years working with them has been the biggest, you know, the biggest change in my, you know, it's.

Almost like, so finish that last thought. Change in your.

Well, I would just, I would say change in my growth. I mean, my, you know, I had been really steady and I. In my page views and I was fine. I was actually kind of fine with it because I didn't think there was actually much I could do. And then when I saw with just little tweaks that I could actually really grow my traffic significantly, it kind of opened up my. My world.

Yeah. That's awesome. Um, do you have like, do you know you're not a data person, so maybe you wouldn't know, but like percentage wise or like number wise, what that looks like once you did start to work with somebody who was kind of strategic minded in terms of the content.

Yeah, no, I think my page views, when I started working with Foodie Digital, they were somewhere around like 500,000, something like that.

They.

I mean, it's also the pandemic year got really crazy, but I would.

Sure, it's hard to parse that out.

Yeah, Yeah, I feel like a year, like a year after I remember my organic traffic had something I want to say like doubled in the time working for them and working with them and. And then, I mean, the pandemic year, my page views were. It was off the charts because it was bread and everything. And then they, you know, they came.

Back down and leveled because, like, that's all that anybody was doing was like, everybody was just like, what do we do? Let's just bake bread.

Yeah, totally, totally. And then it leveled and then they were steady for a while. Like, I mean, I was like, it was good. It was like over a million a month. And then this past summer, the Google Algorithm update in June and July knocked two of my bread posts out of featured snippets. So it's come down a bit. It's like recovering a little bit. I'm still not back up to where I would like to be, but that's fine.

Yeah, that's, that's great. And thanks for sharing that. And it's awesome as well. Like, what a testament to your work and the things that you're putting out into the world and just in general, but also a gift to people during a global pandemic. So what were some of those things that, that you actually did? So you mentioned a few of those. You know, starting to think about the meta description. So for those who aren't familiar, can you explain meta description and some of the changes that you made? Like what, what is that? And what did you change within the meta descriptions of your post?

Sure. Yeah. So it's. I think most people use like the Yoast SEO plugin. So that's what I use. And so it's just the title. So so often the title of my. What I had in the Yoast or first of all, sometimes I didn't even put a title in there. So that was one thing, just making sure every post had a title. Second, making sure the title matched the title, the recipe title and the post title. So there was consistency. So often I would have them be all three different things and then making sure the description were what people were. Again, back to the instant pot, soft boiled egg example. People are searching like how long to cook it and it was like for perfect soft boiled eggs, three minutes at high pressure. That's it. So they can see that right there. Sort of answering questions that people. And you can't do it for every post. Every post. It's not going to be, but kind of being like, these are going to be, you know, flaky, buttery biscuits, like a holiday staple. You know, just give them a little nugget that's going to entice them to click through.

So that makes sense. We actually just went through the process. This will be another podcast episode that we do coming up in the future. We'll figure out when it is. But we actually. So Tiny Bit is our parent company, that's the company over Pinterest on Food Blogger, probably, you know, Clarity, wptasty and nutrifox. And usually what we've done is started companies, but we're also starting to look at acquiring companies. And one of the companies that we brands websites that we recently acquired was a site called Curbly. My good friend Bruno, who started Influence Kit, had that as a content site. He sold that, we bought it. And one of the things that we're right in the middle of is going through and doing a lot of these things that you're saying, which is we're looking at the content and saying, all right, does this content have a good meta description? And the site has a lot of content on it. But what we're realizing is like, you have to take some time to write a good meta description. And to your point, there has to be. It has to be enticing. It has to have kind of a, maybe a matching keyword. And the reason is because if somebody searches like instant pot. What did you say it was?

Instant pot, soft boiled eggs.

Yeah. So instant pot, soft boiled eggs. And if you have that term in the meta description, it's a small little thing, but it will bold that phrase. And so all of these little things play into search optimization. And so you make that change, you optimize it. It's not always going to include the meta description, but it's usually going to default to trying to do that.

And so we're in the middle of.

Thinking about that in this new space, which is kind of like home diy and it's a really important thing. And all of these things aren't going to necessarily double your traffic, but cumulatively, they're multipliers that result in best practice that have an impact on traffic and the performance of different pieces of content. And it's like that content is pretty similar to what it was before, but you're making these small tweaks and adjustments. What were some of the other things that you remember changing that had an impact?

Well, with certain blog posts in particular, again, I wouldn't answer the questions that people would ask. So the questions might be answered in the comments, like, can you make this ahead? Can you freeze it? But it wasn't in the post itself. So making sure all of that important information is in the post itself, like adding H2s that you know to answer those questions. Can you freeze this? Everybody wants to know if you can freeze it.

Yeah. Whatever it is.

Yeah, everybody wants to know if you can make it ahead of time. I get a lot of questions with bread, like can you use whole wheat flour in this? So try to anticipating those questions, but really calling it out in the post. And I did also have a lot of. Again, originally my blog was mostly a personal journal, so I had a lot of personal stories. And you don't have to take those stories out, but you can, you know, you kind of rearrange the post so that the important stuff is first and maybe the story is at the end or looking back. I do go back and I'm like, nobody needs to know about this story. This one isn't important to me. Some stories are important and I keep them. I have a Thanksgiving and Vermont post that I will never change and it won't be SEO friendly, but I don't care because it's important to me. But in terms of. Yeah, another change and mind shift in regard to SEO is that going through the effort and making all of these changes is more important than putting out a new blog post over time. Getting these posts to do better is probably more important than cranking out another random post that might never rank for whatever.

Yeah, we were talking with an SEO consultant and when we were talking to them, they said they've never seen. It was a pretty strong statement. I think about it a lot and I don't know if it's like a hundred percent all the time. True. But he's. He said he's never seen a situation where the roi, which business term like, you know, your return on your time invested is greater for new content versus old content that you enhance, improve. And I think there's a lot of variables that go into that. So it's not true all the time, but to your point, aligns with that. Has that shifted how you create content, whether like enhancing old content or publishing new content?

It has, yeah. I mean, I do. There have been times over the, like, I would say the last couple of years when things are busy and normally like prior to working with foodie Digital, I would have just been like, I gotta get out this blog post where I am like, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to spend the little bit of time I have, like repairing these old posts or tweaking these little things or not even doing that, but just focusing on my newsletter and just maybe staying consistent with getting my newsletter out and just putting some of those old posts in the newsletter. Because I never thought that I really for so many years was in the mindset of I've just got to get out another blog post. And it's actually really nice in some ways to have had that change in mind shift because it's a little, you know, it's a lot of work to put out a new blog post and if it's not really going to do anything in the long run, you know, why do it? But it's, it's nice because you can. I mean, it's actually I do, I feel like I'm finally a little bit working smarter, not harder.

Yeah, yeah. Which is a really good feeling when you feel like, hey, I've locked this in, I'm working the same amount but maybe getting a little bit more reward or return for that time spent. One of the things that you had mentioned was Google algorithm change, you know, things shifting a little bit. Can you talk a little bit about what happened there and what that was like for you to go through that? I'm guessing there's like a tactical business side of it, but there's also this emotional side of it that ties into it.

Well, totally, yeah. And I think probably for so many bloggers too, like it was really fun seeing these like, you know, off the charts traffics during the pandemic. Even if it didn't necessarily equate to a ton more money because RPM ad revenue. Yeah, yeah, it's still fun. You're like, wow, this many people are on my site every day. You know, that's, that's cool. Um, and then I, you know, even though you I knew it was going to happen. I, you know, the traffic would come down, but you watch it slowly, slowly, and then it leveled. And that's like, that was like a really good feeling. It felt really great actually, to see it level and be like, okay, we're back to normal. But yeah, that was a little. It was hard. So, like, the two posts that I got knocked out of, it was one for Focaccia and one for Sourdough, and they're two of my biggest drivers of traffic. And it was like a little bit crushing because you're like, I did work hard on those posts. At the same time, it's again, same thing. You can't rely. It was a lesson. And not that I have relied, like, I wasn't relying on those two for all of my traffic, but sure, you can't be. You can't rely on just two posts for, you know, your income or, you know, and two, I mean, something that I always think about. And I like, when I ever. I'm asked, like, so I have, I have four kids, and whenever I'm at like a baby shower, people are like, well, what advice do you have for like, the new parents?

Yeah, you have four kids. What are the answers?

Yeah, yeah, the new, the new, the new parents. I'm like, well, don't ever be too happy about any phase your child is in and don't ever be too totally. Don't ever be too sad because, like, you know, one minute they're, you know, they're sleeping through the night like three days in a row, and you think you've got bedtime figured out, and then their next, they don't sleep for two weeks and vice versa. One minute they're eating everything, and then the next minute they're not eating anything. So you can't be too happy or too sad about anything. And I feel like it's totally the same with blogging. Like, one minute, you know, some of your posts are driving traffic, one minute they're not. Sometimes Pinterest is driving traffic, sometimes it's not. Sometimes Google Web stories work, sometimes they don't. Sometimes Amazon affiliates is great. Sometimes it's not. Like, it just, it changes so quickly. And I mean, even within app, like within Instagram, all of a sudden, everybody has to do reels. You don't have to. You don't have to do anything. But it's. If you want to kind of continue, you do have to kind of adapt and just not get too worked up about any of the changes.

Those two things, I think are so Essential the ability to adapt, to let go of something that was working when it doesn't work anymore and then within that to start doing something that you think might work, that you're maybe not good at. And I think that's something. Personally. I remember having this conversation with Lindsay a couple years ago as I felt like we were moving into a new phase of our business, which is like, I feel like I was good at like a handful of different things and now I'm. For me, what the reflection was, it was like, now I have to become good at something that I've never really had experience, with. Which my reflection at that point is like, I need to be thinking about what is it like to have a team and to build a team and to like recruit and to set up the company and. And previously it was like I really loved the tactical things of like whether it be Google Analytics or ad optimization and kind of having to let those things go and something that I felt like I was interested in and good at in favor of something that I didn't really know much about and had to start over. And I think there's something really true about that. Whether you are business building and looking to like expand a team or as a creator just wanting to continue to get reach and in front of people, you're always having to evolve your skills and abilities. A lot of it carries over, but some of it is like brand new and you have to learn it and.

Go along the way.

Are there any things where you draw the line and say, you know what? I just don't do that. Like it's, it could be an opportunity and I just, I know that it's not going to be a fit for me.

I'm trying to think. I feel like I'm not like, I don't and I. And I could. I've never like gotten into the habit of like posting like five times on Instagram. Like I know if you put the more you post kind of thing, I just, I just can't. I don't know. I think for Instagram, it's an interesting space. It's. It does seem to be of all that, like the social media platforms, the most personal, it's the one that I like kind of connect with the most people like through DMs or stories and I guess the post itself. But I just, Yeah, I just haven't. But that doesn't. I don't know. I could get there one day. I don't know. You know, I don't know. I can't think of Anything that I would draw the line in.

And, um, how about on the opposite side? Like, what are the things that you are. Like, hey, this is what I do. And I have found success with this and I'm going to go deep here.

Yeah, I mean, I think the things that I focused on the past two years, again, as I already said, SEO and then my newsletter, I just being consistent with my newsletter. And I said this earlier, but I used two people that you featured here. I have to give them shout outs. Ali Grommer, she helped me create my welcome and what she calls her nurture sequence. So when somebody signs up, they get an email three days in a row that just kind of gives you an overview of Alexandra's kitchen. And then they get an email every Wednesday for like 10 weeks. And I'm still. I want to, like, build, you know, build that out. And it's been so nice to have that happening in the background. I know that for new people coming, you know, they're getting an email from me like once a week, if not twice. And then Matt Mullen helped me create what he calls these quick start guides to help people, entice people to sign up for your newsletter. So for me, one was on yeast bread baking and one was on sourdough bread baking. And it really helped grow my email list. And he gives you a framework that you can use again and again. And I basically used it this spring. I did a farm Share newsletter. So for people who sign up for CSAs, I just did this thing and I did it in real time. I didn't have it ahead of time, but every Tuesday, people got a farm share newsletter. So being consistent, like, really trying to show up and kind of. I don't do it exactly on the same day, but I try, like, either, like, they'll get my Wednesday newsletter and then I try to send a newsletter out either Saturday or Sunday morning. And I've just found that being really consistent, like, sticking to that, like, really being like, this is something you have to do. It helps if you don't. When you don't send an email for a long time, I feel like you get a lot of unsubscribes as soon as you send an email, because people are like, where have you been? You know? And they're like, you know, I don't. I don't need this. So, yeah, I just. I think email is really important. They do. I follow the guy from ConvertKit, Nathan Barry. I get his newsletter and he just posted something from. I forget the guy's name, but Email is kind of the thing that's the most consistent. It's the thing you can control. You're not like at the whim of some algorithm change. You, you know, if you post consistently, if you get. Sorry, if you send consistently, if you get rid of the people who are not. I'm very good about dumping my cold subscribers. People who don't open up an email for whatever ConvertKit you know, says, I just, I just delete them. I don't. I know you can like re. Engage them, but I don't sure idea.

Being if somebody you know is not opening is not engaging, then you clean up your email list by removing them. Not only is it helpful because then you're not paying for these extra subscribers, but also your email address has a higher open rate. Like in general, it's a healthier list. It's just kind of like email list hygiene.

Yeah, totally. Exactly. And it does make a difference. I really find and resend, like, I'll say if I send out a newsletter and you know, convert gives you that option to resend to unopened. And every time I send a newsletter, I get, I mean, you know, a ton of people unsubscribe. And it's great. I've like changed my mentality with that too. Like it's, you know, you don't want the people. If they don't want to be there, there's no point in them being there. So.

Yeah, yeah, totally. One of the things that I love about some of these elements that you've talked about is, you know, at this point where you said, hey, you know what, I want to start thinking about this maybe more intentionally. Is that a fair way to assess it where you're like, hey, I want to think strategically about this or how can I grow it? That you started to think about a phrase that I've been thinking about a lot, which is who not how. And so okay, great. You want to improve SEO and be strategic about that. One way to do that would be figuring out thinking like, how do I do this? Like, and you're not a Google Analytics person and that's not where you. What you like to do. And so you could like bend your own like self to like fit in that box. Or you could say, who's somebody that loves that and how do you bring them in to partner with you? Maybe same thing with email. It's not figuring out how do I do this? What are the specific things I need to do? You know, going through a bunch of articles, whatever it might be, you're saying, who. Who do I bring in to help with this? And it feels like those have unlocked some kind of cool things. Are there other ways that you're thinking about doing that? And to what extent are you just partnering with somebody and then saying, like, hey, you can take it and run versus partnering with somebody, maybe learning along the way and then adopting that system as your own to kind of run off of?

Yeah. I have not, like, really gotten to the point where somebody. I've kind of totally. Actually, I think the only place I've done that is with Google Web Stories, but I've kind of slowed down with that. There was at the start of the year, so I had a virtual assistant, and she was wonderful. Azia Bike. She's still helping me with other things, but we've kind of slowed down on the Google Web stories because they just. They just weren't working for me, and we gave it a go. And if they. The good thing is if they. If they start, you know, the trend comes. If people are like, okay, you've got to do them again. She knows how to do it, and I have tons of video that she can use. But that was very freeing. I was like, I don't know how to do this, and I don't ever want to learn how to do this. And I'm so happy to have somebody else do this for. For me because I probably do too many things. I edit, you know, I do all. I do the video on myself, and I. They're very, you know, simple videos. They're not, you know, they're good quality, but they're not, you know, I'm not adding music or lots of effects, but I don't. I mean, again, I don't think that should deter people from doing video. I think you. If you haven't started doing video, you should give it a go. There are lots of easy. I use Inshot to edit and. And it's easy. I've totally gotten off that.

No, that's.

That's good. It's actually something that would be helpful to talk about in shot. It's an app. So it's an app that you use on your phone, is that right?

Yes.

Got it. And the other thing that I love about what you're saying with video that I think is freeing for a lot of people, especially people who maybe would prefer not to be, you know, in front of the camera, would be that it doesn't have to be, like, you performing or it doesn't have to be you saying funny jokes or thinking about things off the cuff. Like, the purpose is to help people get the thing they want to. And if what they want to get is a successful sourdough and you can put together a video that helps explain that, that's going to be a win. And maybe it's just a video of you like, mixing in yeast at some point, like in. In a specific way. And it could be 15 seconds. Like, it doesn't have to be long either.

No, absolutely. And actually I. It's funny, I hadn't even read some of the comments on my. Some of my videos that I put on YouTube. I just posted them, like, with a recipe, and I was reading some of them recently. I think I got like a notification and somebody was like, thank you for not starting this sourdough tutorial with 10 minutes of like, explanation preamble. Yeah, yeah. And just. And I actually get that a lot. And again, like, Some people follow YouTube people for the entertainment and that's great. But I do get a lot of comments. People are very appreciative that it's kind of quick and to the point and they learn something. I think as long as you're being useful or if you're entertaining, I'm not funny. I don't ever try to be funny. So that's not my thing. But I. If I can, I know if I'm giving people useful information, I don't. If I'm not wasting their time, they'll. They'll come back and they'll be appreciative of it.

Yeah. Yeah, that's great. So what do you feel like the things that are. You're doing right now that are the most impactful? Like the things that, you know, hey, if I spend my time doing this, we talked about that a little bit before, like the ROI and your time and kind of refining what those things are. You have four kids, you have a successful site being pulled in a lot of different directions. You have limited time. What are you spending that time on? And you know what? It has that shifted in terms of prioritization of those tasks and things you're doing.

Yeah, I feel like whenever I am feeling pressed for time and especially around the holidays, and I'm starting to feel it now, I do. I focus more on the blog as opposed to social media. So there are times where I feel like I spend so much time on Instagram stories and it really. That drives no traffic to the blog. It's just for community and engaging with people. So focusing on the blog, like giving people around the holidays, they're planning Thanksgiving. So just being as helpful as possible with Thanksgiving, providing Thanksgiving content, being consistent with my newsletter and like a relevant information in regard to Thanksgiving and planning for the holidays and gift guides and things like that. That's like my focus between now and I'd say the end of the year. I'm still. I really try to. With Foodie Digital. I repair two posts a month. That's it. And that's enough. That's. That's like plenty in terms of what I.

And real quick on that. Cause I think I'd like to double click on that tech term because I think a lot of people will hear that and they'll be a little bit curious. Can you talk about what you do when you, when you talk about repairing or updating a post? What actually happens within that process?

Yeah, so a lot of it goes back to again, making sure the title. Sometimes it's a totally new title, like a more descriptive title. So like maybe like something that I always think of is I have this post called Ronnie Hollingsworth's Most Excellent Squash Pie. Nobody is searching for Ronnie Hollingworth's Excellent Squash Pie. They're searching for maybe a roasted butternut squash pie, something like that. So changing the title. And this isn't actually a post. I've prepared this. I'm just saying it as an example. But making the post Roasted Butternut Squash Pie as opposed to Ronnie Holling or that excellent squash pie title, the title and the recipe card, the meta description. So those are sort of the basics. Maybe updating the photos if they're really old or if there aren't enough, maybe adding a video, adding the relevant like H2S and the. And at the like, maybe above the first image, always having a description of like. So what are people searching for? Making sure when people are getting to the site, they know in like three sentences. Because unless you are like a dedicated reader of my blog and you search Google and you come across, chances are you are not going to read the post. You're going to. You want to know what it is and then you're going to jump to the recipe. So making sure at the very top there are like two sentences that just kind of succinctly sum up what the recipe is. Those are the big things.

Got it. That makes sense. So really focusing in on the blog as opposed to a lot of time on social, when time is limited, making sure that you're continuing to update content, making sure that you're continuing to push out the newsletter. What does the newsletter do for you? What do you see as the return on that traffic engagement. Are you working with sponsors?

Yeah, I'm not working with sponsors. I do find that it always. Whenever I send out a newsletter, I get a bump in traffic. So even if I look at the numbers of how many people clicked through to the site, it's a bigger, much bigger jump for whatever reason. Maybe they click on two pages or something once they get there, But I always see a bump in traffic every time I send a newsletter. So it's really just that. And for the purpose of staying consistent. There was a period when, I guess also, like, there was a period I was doing the virtual classes during, you know, the pandemic and so letting people know about a virtual class. But now I'm not doing those right now. So it's really just getting people to the blog.

Yeah. Were those classes that you would charge for? And what was that? What was that like?

Um, it was really fun. It was great. I. I loved it. It was more. I did charge them. It was all. I was donating most all of the money basically for. So it wasn't like, part of, like, my. I wasn't doing it for them. It was just to, like, kind of during the pandemic, to engage people and have something to do. It just got to be like, when the world opened up and I just. All of my kids were in activities. It was, like, so stressful trying to figure out, I'm, like, trying to teach a class. I'm like, how are my kids going to get to sports?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? You can only do so much. How did you. What did you do that through? Was it through just, like, zoom or.

It was through air subs. You had Tomas on. Yeah, he was wonderful. It was. Yeah, it was. It was great.

I would.

I would like to do it again on, like, a more spontaneous basis. And that's how I actually started. It was a very spontaneous thing. Then it became very consistent twice a month and. And then the world opened up and I was totally overwhelmed.

Yep, that makes sense. And that's a great example of why it's beneficial to have an email list is because if you are doing something like that, one of the greatest ways to get people to sign up for it would be by sending them an email. They know who you are, they're familiar, They've had touch points. We've noticed the same thing as we've been launching. Launching Clarity, which is the newest kind of startup that we've been working on. It's like. It's an email list, like, that's what's been really helpful, email us and podcasts. Like, that's what we use to kind of build off of. So anything that you've learned on the. In regards to like building an email list, knowing that, that it seems like kind of the focus is if I'm able to pull them out, are like SEO optimizations, kind of best practices, proactive improvements for older content and email list building and consistency as kind of two themes. Anything that you'd be able to pull out from your experience in building your email list that's been really helpful that you'd advise other people to do as well?

Well, one thing I would say, like, a couple things. So one thing I learned. Matt Mullen, he was so, he was really funny. He was like, people don't read anymore. So sure, you have to. You have to be like, he would structure. I would write something and then he would restructure it. Like, almost like a block. Like, almost like H2 is like kind of some bigger text to kind of break up the email or use bullet points. And I. And it was very effective. I think there's a time and a place for it. Like, I think on those, like, quick start guides where it's like this thread course, like, that kind of writing is very effective. And then I would also say, though, every so often I'll write like a really personal sort of like, post where it looks almost just like a blog post, but without any pictures, just maybe one picture at the top. And people really actually respond. Like, if you. When you put your heart into something, like, it really is amazing. People will write and respond in a heartfelt way. They appreciate it when it's not just so I think it's a time and a place, you know, depending on what you're doing. But I think kind of making that distinction and. And then structuring your post to, you know, you know. Yeah, what's going.

There's something about stylistic writing and the type of writing it is. Like, if you're trying to communicate dry information, I think there's something to be said about structuring it in a way to most easily communicate it, which includes H2S bullet points, short paragraph. To your point, if you're telling a.

Really personal story, people are going to.

Be engaged in that in a way where they're maybe not looking to, like, how do I get what I need as quickly as possible by breezing through this, but saying, like, how do I engage with this story? It's almost like, I almost see a difference in like, story versus, like, CTA Information like next steps, which I think I've never really thought about that until you pointed that out. But I think it's a really powerful point that writing and media can look different depending on what you're trying to communicate.

Totally. Yeah. And I think the other thing that's kind of nice about the newsletter format is that you don't have to worry about SEO. You know, you don't. You can just write your post or, sorry, your email newsletter how you want and you don't. You're not worried if it's like, you know, if you're getting the yo. Screen light. I know you're not actually supposed to worry about, you know, think about that. But you're, you know, you're not worried about. You just, you just write it how you would want to write it. And people, you know, people are. They're either reading on their phone or they're reading, you know, in their inbox. And they don't care about SEO. You know, they're just, they just want. They want something nice to read. I mean, sometimes, again, sometimes they just want the information. But it is. That is something I found that's nice about the newsletters. Like, I can kind of write something heartfelt, maybe there and then push people to the like, SEO written blog post.

Yeah, it's. It's interesting because I think it's not either. Or. And I think sometimes as creators, we think, oh, you either have to just focus on SEO and optimize and figure out Pinterest and social media.

Right.

Or you are, you know, in the camp of personal stories. And. That's.

Right.

You're including that. And I think it's both. And like, totally. Lindsay does on pitch of Yamcha will occasionally do like a coffee. She calls them coffee day posts.

Yeah.

But it's essentially just like, it's like an update on like, here's what she's been up to or we've been up to. Um, and for a small subset of people, it's like, I'm really interested to hear what you've been up to. Yeah. Um, but it's not going to rank well. And it also probably wouldn't be great to put a ton of that information in a recipe post. But you can do both of those things. Like, and I think it's important. Yeah. Point that you bring up and a good reminder that it doesn't have to be a hard line, which is great.

Yeah, totally.

I'm curious to know, like, if you. Everything were to go away. Right. So at that moment, in 2006 where you're like, I'm going to start a blog. You actually didn't start a blog, but then today you thought, oh, maybe I should start a blog. I should start a website and publish content. What are the things that you would do right away that you think would have the most impact?

Well, I think I would do research. You know, I think for so many years I didn't do research. I just was like, this is, this is a. This is my hobby. This is my side thing. I don't care. And I think I actually, it was a defense mechanism in some ways. I think I was afraid to really dive in that I was. I not even just from a monetarily. Like, I don't think I was like, I don't think I even care. Like, I think I worried a little bit of like, what if I try this and nobody reads my book and nobody comes and it's like easier for me to just pretend like I don't care about it. So who cares if people come? But like, deep down I think I always did care about it. And I kind of wish that. I think as soon as again I started doing. I think there was a period where I was like, my blog isn't growing. I knew people were reading and people were commenting, but I, you know, it was. I would see other blogs just kind of who started after me and just kind of. I could tell they were just, you know, killing it. And I was, you know, once I again started working with an SEO company like Foodie Digital, and once I started like enlisting experts like Ali Grommer, Matt Mullen, like, once I started like listening to podcasts and joining things like Food Blogger Pro and like actually doing research, it worked. You know, it's not. You do like, you know, so I wish, I think if I would, if I were starting now, I would do a ton of research before I started and yeah, I think I would. I don't know. I think try to. I always knew food was a passion that wasn't an issue. Like, I worked in restaurants after college. I thought like, I wanted to open up a restaurant, but I just kind of wished I had like, really gone after it earlier. So I think if you're passionate, you know, you should go after it.

It's interesting when you talk about kind of the protecting yourself or wanting to not get too invested into it in case it didn't work out. I think it's really relatable in the sense that I can see in myself that occasionally where I say or will think to Myself, I think how it manifests for me is if I become invested in the success of this and it's not successful, will that then make me not feel good? And not wanting to not feel good is what I'm ultimately trying to avoid. And so when you say that, I can relate to that and there's something about just saying like, hey, you know what, I'm going to go for this. And there is a chance that, that it doesn't lead to success in the way that you want. But you don't know really how you handle that or what it's like to process through that until you engage in it. Inevitably you'll get better at the things that you are scared of experiencing if you experience those and figure out how to work through them. But I appreciate you sharing that and can find myself relating to that as well. And I'm sure a lot of other people do as well. We've shared a lot, we've covered a lot and I know that a lot of people will be interested in following with your story. We'll talk a little bit obviously about your site in the intro and do a little shout out for that. But Ali, can you share with folks where they can find you, where they can follow along and then maybe as kind of a send off, one last piece of advice that you'd give to anybody who's listening?

Sure. Yeah. So my blog is Alexandra's Kitchen and you can get there by alexandracooks.com or alexandraskitchen.com Instagram is the social media platform that I'm most active on. I'm lexandracooks and okay, my advice, I don't know, I guess again back to just don't get ride out all the waves you can because things are changing and they're changing faster than ever. And if you're passionate about it, just keep at it and focus on what you can control. Don't worry too much about these things you can't control.

I love that my parents introduced this concept to me. This was years ago. I was in college, I think at some point, I think my mom had been reading a book, but she talked about sphere of influence and the sphere of concern. Yeah. Are you familiar with this concept? And like when your sphere of concern gets bigger than your sphere of influence, that's a problem. And it feels like that's so relatable to the world that we live in because I think sometimes we are more concerned or if you imagine a circle, the circle of what we're concerned with is bigger than the circle of what we can actually influence. And what I hear you saying is, like, try and shrink that concern circle so it fits within the influence circle. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

I love that. Yeah, that's great. Allie, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Really appreciate it. Really great to connect, and I know folks will get a lot out of it, so thank you.

Thanks so much for having me. It's such an honor, truly.

Thanks.

Another big thank you to Ali for coming on.

As always, you can check out the.

Show notes for the podcast. We talk a lot about show notes.

What is that? And, like, what does that actually mean? And why is it helpful?

Essentially, show notes are just the links. It's the recap. It's a link to the actual podcast. So an example would be like today, if I go to foodblockerpro.com podcast, that's where we have all of the different podcasts. And I can click on the most recent episode, which is December 7th. So obviously I'm recording this in the future.

So what I'm looking at is going.

To be old by the time that.

This podcast comes out.

But it's all about the pitching. So for those of you who follow along each week, you know that we had Janice on, and she talked about crafting the perfect pitch and how you can do that. And when you scroll through, there's. There's this section called Resources, and it's all of the different places that she referenced or potentially that I referenced on the podcast. And it's a fun way to dig a little bit deeper on the podcast and see the different places that somebody's mentioning something. So if you're at your computer or if you're on your phone and you're sitting down, maybe what you can do is pull up foodbloggerpro.com podcast, you can click on this podcast. That would probably be the easiest one. And you can scroll through and see what does the. What do the show notes actually offer? You can click and you can see it kind of adds another element to just audio and gives you some more kind of context around the things we're talking about. So in that episode with Chandice, we talk about Marco Polo. She talks about how that's a app that she uses. I talk about Growth University, she talks about mediavine, and we talk about Influence Kit. So there's all of these different links that are shared there that make it easier for you to say, hey, I heard this on the podcast. I just want to go and check that out. You can click to check that out the other thing that we do with the podcast is we include a transcript. And some people actually like to just read the podcast. So maybe you're not somebody who learns through listening. You learn through reading. You can go and read through the back and forth transcript that we have. And there's a handful of people who actually prefer to consume the podcast in that way. So just wanted to point that out as a resource that's available and again, that's free, so you can just check it out on foodbloggerpro.com podcast thanks so much for tuning in. We appreciate you and we couldn't do this without you and we hope that over this, these next couple weeks that you get time to reset and hang out with family and friends. And the hope for this podcast, as always, is that we help you get a tiny bit better every day forever. So as you are doing that, maybe it's casually setting things up around the house or getting ready to have family or friends over. My hope is that this podcast in the background can be helping you get.

A tiny bit better.

Thanks so much for tuning in. Make it a great week.

Thanks.

Sam.