426: Social Media Deep Dive: Threads, X, and AI with Andrea Balogun

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Hey there, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team and you are listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. This week on the podcast, Andrea Balogan, our social media expert, is back on the podcast for a social media deep dive into lots of hot topics and news that have been happening in the social media world lately. Bjork and Andrea will be chatting about threads and and Twitter or X and some of the new apps and social media platforms that you might want to be aware of or you might just need some more ideas of how you might share content on those platforms. As a food creator, all of the talk of new platforms turn to talk of social media strategy and how to avoid feeling overwhelmed or burnt out as a creator on social media. There are so many different social media platforms and so many different types of content that you can share and that it can easily be very overwhelming to think you have to do it all. And Andrea has a really amazing perspective on how to approach your social media strategy to avoid getting overwhelmed and how to really lean into creating the types of content that bring you joy and sharing on the platforms that you really enjoy being on the most. It's a really great conversation around thinking through your strategy and hopefully will change how you approach your social media strategy in the future. Andrea and Bjork wrap up the conversation chatting about some new tools, including some new AI tools in the social media space, and how you might want to incorporate them into your current social media workflow. It's a really awesome conversation. If you are on social media as a content creator, which I will imagine most of you are, it's really a must listen episode. I think you'll have a ton of takeaways and learn a lot, so I'm just gonna let Bjork take it away.

Andrea, welcome back to the podcast.

Hey, how are you?

Good. We're going to be talking about all things social media today. For those who are food blogger pro members, they've seen you before. And for those who are longtime podcast listeners have heard you before. We've had conversations on the podcast before a couple years ago, but we're going to be talking about social media because that's kind of the world that you live in. So for those who aren't familiar, can you talk a little bit about what it is that you do and you're the focus of your work and your agency?

Sure. So the bulk of what I do now is social media strategy. There was a time when I was a manager, but I have learned that it's a lot better when people know the strategy behind what they're doing. So I do have sessions, one on one or sometimes with groups and workshops about social media strategy. In the one on one sessions, I will do a custom plan and then, you know, my overall goal is just to help people who are overwhelmed with social media understand it a little better and kind of find their magic. You know, everybody shouldn't do it the same.

Yeah, it's such a point.

Yes. But they can learn some things that you know will work specifically for them and their niche or industry.

Love that. I think when people hear the those two things, social media and overwhelm, everybody's like nodding their head. My guess is everybody listening. One of the reasons is because it feels like in, to some degree you could just spend all of your time on any one given platform. But then there's all of these platforms and you have to make decisions on how often you should post to those, what you should post to those. So as, as we get into it, you know, I think one of the ways we could look at it is almost like Addressing some of the most recent questions around new platforms and how to treat them. One of the newest is Threads. There's kind of this peak, you know, when we're recording this is maybe like a month ago, month and a half ago, Threads comes out. You know, it's kind of connected to Instagram. Everybody flocks over there, maybe that has like dwindled a little bit. But can you talk a little bit about what Threads is and how creators could potentially be using it?

Sure. So as many of you know, Threads is a competitor for Twitter now, X in that it is totally text based. I think the big draw in the beginning was that you didn't have to start from zero when it came to your following. So a lot of people basically locked down their name that they already had with Instagram and downloaded and kind of like, you know, took a look around. I think right now where there's still as much as we are frustrated with how Twitter X is kind of falling apart in some ways. We still have mostly a core group over there. So a lot of people are still on Twitter or X, but they're kind of dipping their toe in on Threads. Threads is usually the people who are the loudest are either people who had stopped using Twitter and were like, oh, good, let's, let's go here. And then other people who are mostly like auto posting, like, oh, this is another platform. I can just spread the same information. And the rest of us are kind of just playing around with it like we used to with Twitter a decade or so ago.

Yeah, like it's kind of a new platform, getting a little bit of exposure to it, getting a feel for how it works. What have you seen from creators who are doing it well on that platform and what type of content are they posting?

To me, if you were doing well on Twitter, then Threads is for you. If you didn't like Twitter, Twitter. I don't know that Threads is going to be any different in terms of how you produce the content because it's still conversational or, you know, big events happening. We're all going to be talking about that same thing. So it's still not the same type of strategy you would have on Facebook or Instagram. It's truly text or conversational. So if that's not something you're really interested in, it wouldn't really matter if you had it. But because you it is tied to your Instagram, it will always be there because you won't have to pick a name or anything. It will always be something that you can add to Your strategy, if that's something you want to do later down the road.

Yeah. And conceptually, I think it'd be helpful to talk about that. So it's closely correlated to Instagram. And so if you have a handle. I don't use Instagram, like to publish it, but I have Bjork Ostrom as my handle.

Right.

In case all the other Bjork Ostrom wanted to come for that handle, I have it locked down on Instagram. So then when I create threads, the only option I have, if I'm remembering the process right, is to use that same handle. And so it's not like somebody's going to come in and grab that handle or grab the pinch of yum handle if we already have that for Instagram, but you also can't use a different one. It's just going to be your exact same handle on Instagram. Is that right?

Yeah, that's what I'm seeing right now. I know that they're, you know, it's still kind of new and there are a lot of things are changing. In the beginning, I think you couldn't even delete threads without it deleting your Instagram account as well, which upset a lot of people. That's changed. But at this moment, I think it really is tied to your Instagram. They've really kind of got it woven, those two together.

And the benefit, I would imagine, with doing setting up a threads account sooner rather than later is the onboarding process that threads takes people through, which is kind of an auto follow for anybody that you currently follow on Instagram. And so if you were like, if you have a million followers and you waited, or a hundred thousand or whatever it is, and you waited three years before activating your threads account, even if you didn't post any content, you might miss out on a lot of people following you. Because those other people who are signing up for threads as it is right now, the onboarding says, like auto follow all of the people that are on threads that you currently follow on Instagram. So even just by setting it up, you would catch some of those people who are kind of tipping over and signing up. Not as many now as it initially was. But is that true? Yeah, I mean, maybe you probably haven't gone through the onboarding recently, but I.

Think being an early adopter to a lot of these is fun because you are there first and then when people join, they. You're easily found. I would say that as I have been on and more people have joined, I still think I'm getting Those follows, they can follow me, but if I was joining later, perhaps I wouldn't have. There's still. You can still auto follow. But I'm trying to see if people have been able to do so after the fact. But I don't think so. Of course there will be suggestions.

Sure.

That you'll be able to go through a list of. But yeah, I think it is a little different when you weren't there at the beginning. Then there's no one to follow and they don't say sometimes you get those notifications like somebody has done their first thread, something like that. Where if it's somebody you follow on Instagram, but you're correct, it would be either a suggestion but not part of that auto follow when you connect to your account to Instagram.

So point being, there's no downside other than the fact that you'll have an account and you might not be active on it. But wouldn't hurt to set that up just so you can catch any of those people who are your followers that after you set up your account they set up a threads account and would opt in to auto follow anybody that they follow on Instagram, which is, you know, one of the kind of hacks that they had a growth hack. It's maybe not the best word for it, but people will versus starting a social platform for zero and needing to get a bunch of followers and everybody over. Suddenly the perception is like oh, I have all these followers and I didn't really have to do any work because transfer people will just say I'm signing up for an account and they'll say do you want to follow all of the people who are currently on threads that have a threads account that you follow on Instagram? And oftentimes people will say yes. So one of the things that I think is worth pointing out is you talked about the difference between Twitter or X and Threads and other platforms like Instagram. And to me it seems like and you kind of said this one of the biggest differences is how what is the expected behavior when you're on one of those platforms and for or at least posting onto it. And for a platform like Threads or X it feels like the expected behavior is conversation or almost like information heavy type sharing. Like the people that seems like do really well are. Are sharing like they're like journalists or it's things that are happening in real time or it's people who have a deep industry knowledge and they're sharing insights.

Right.

Whereas like Instagram TikTok it's maybe more like Entertainment based. It's still information, but in a different way. Have you seen food creators do well in the, like, conversational text type platforms or is it just more rare to do well on those platforms given the medium of food?

I think if there is something that is happening in the industry, if you have a following that you've kind of grown on Instagram or Pinterest, that you want to move over to Twitter, if there is something like a popular cooking show that's coming on because there's something that you can talk about that's within the niche but maybe popular enough for other people that aren't watching it, a lot of those shows will have those hashtags where you're joining a conversation. I have always found that there is an advantage enjoying these conversations because there are a good amount of people looking at hashtags. If you're watching MasterChef, people get really into those shelves and, you know, have favorites. Having and sharing that conversation on Twitter is good in terms of conversation and then a trending topic at that night. So those are things I've seen. Q and A's. If you're. If their favorite somebody in the industry is having a Q and A because they're part of something, some journalist or some other huge platform decides they want to do Q and A, they're still doing those on Twitter. People are still going to Twitter for new stuff. Even though, you know, we have to wade through ads, it's still, I think, a good platform if that is something that you can keep up with. I find that still some people will start okay, and then they just kind of like, oh, like, I don't want to keep up with this.

So yeah, and part of it is you don't really see a return. And there's a handful of folks that I follow on Twitter and they're kind of in like the finance space. There's some people who do real estate. And one like the real estate example, like what this guy does, the account is called strip mall guy. And it's like an anonymous guy who talks about what it's like to own strip malls.

And.

But what he does is he raises money from investors. And so it's a great. It. My understanding is it's a great platform for him because he shares like all of his knowledge and insights and then grows a following and then from that following can engage with those people who want to become investors and what he's doing and he's kind of like validating his knowledge through that. And I would imagine it's a Better platform than Instagram for somebody like that.

Even though it's text. Text based, you can still share those videos or pictures and stuff. And the advantage is still that you can use links. That's still something that Instagram is not allowing us to do in the comments. So there's still something to where even if you were auto posting links to your blog, you still run the advantage or risk.

Yeah.

Of someone clicking those links. So it's still something that I think people should add in terms of this is a way I can get traffic if I'm just kind of auto doing something. But I think a way to specifically grow an audience is to have those conversations.

Yeah, yeah.

And then hopefully people stay around for those blogs or recipe videos.

That's great. Another category that I found really helpful on Twitter or X. What. What do you. I feel like it's such a weird purgatory period. It doesn't feel right to call it X. It doesn't. We'll call it Twitter for the sake of this conversation. It's still twitter.com when I pull it up. So. Right. For now, as soon as that. As soon as it switches to X.com I wonder if X.com. no, it just redirects. So as. As soon as that change happens, that's when I'll use that as my marker for calling it X. But like search SEO professionals. So like an example of one that I just recently came across again is this guy who goes by Viper Chill. I don't know the background behind it, but his name is Glenn. But he does a lot of breakdowns of public companies that are content companies and what they're doing in the world of search. So like, hey, this company IAC is this really big company, they release their quarterly results and he reads through them. And part of what that has to do is like search trends. And so it's also good for kind of industry knowledge like that I've noticed as well. And different in a way again than a blog because it's not long form, it's not like.

Right.

Photo based. And so I would imagine for people in the food space, if you can come up with something text based like that that also allows you to converse. It can be a great platform for that. So how about order of operation? So we talk about overwhelm. People are inevitably overwhelmed by all they have to do. Not only. And this I think would be especially true for solopreneurs. And I think one of the first things that starts to happen as you start to get some momentum and you have Some revenue to reinvest back into your business or if you just are early on and you are investing into your business with maybe some disposable income that you have. A lot of times one of the first hires that people will make is like somebody a few hours a week to help post to other platforms just to take off the burden of that kind of operations process. But let's say it's somebody in that solopreneur stage. We need to prioritize the actual content creation and then going onto a platform to post. What would you recommend for people who are overwhelmed and saying, man, there's all these platforms, I know they all have opportunities. It kind of is like becomes analysis paralysis. I don't know which one is the priority. Should I do them all? Should I just do one? How would you recommend people step into it and maybe even become self aware around where they are, where you know, you talked about, make sure you're crafting it for you like your best platform. How do you, how do you do that? How do you understand where you are and then build a plan to not be overwhelmed but to, to post.

Right. I think as a food blogger, you're already a maker. You're already doing something when you are producing content. And I am still a big champion of repurposing. So if you are planning to, even if it's a written blog, there will probably be pictures. And if it's something as simple as putting a phone to the side and just documenting everything that you're doing, no rhyme or reason, just documenting that period of time. You take that content and then, you know, split it up for what you think might be a good reel. You use that one reel and put it to all of the places they could go. YouTube, shorts, TikTok, yeah, Instagram, Facebook. That one piece of content can be in all those different places. You don't have to change anything up unless you want to. Maybe with in TikTok you want to change the little cover or something. But I, I'm real big on just documenting the things that you're already doing because that won't be overwhelming. You won't be having to think, let me create content. You're really just repurposing things that you have already done. And then once you determine, you know, this is something I can handle, maybe after that you pick up something else. I think we talked about those first ones would be Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest. If you're really into video, then YouTube obviously. But I think a lot of people can still take advantage of YouTube shorts, even if they're not doing full length videos. And I think what's great about starting out in the beginning is you can kind of see what your audience likes. It's a great time to kind of see what gained traction. What got traffic to my blog, what time of day was it? The length? You know, you'll have a wealth of information over a first month or 30 days to kind of see what sticks. And then don't do those other things that you think are working or that somebody told you to do. You just look at your own data, insights and kind of go from there. Because then you will feel like you're actually getting some return from these things that are actually driving traffic to your website.

Yeah, it's such a balance with gaining knowledge and information from other people and not just doing what other people are doing. Like I think of if I saw somebody who was like a gymnast and they were like, here's how I got really athletic. And I'm like, I want to be athletic. And they're like, I would always, I'm really flexible and I would work on my flexibility and like I would try and get flexible. And I was just like, I'm not a flexible person, like I can't touch my toes. And it's kind of a kind of craft who I am into who somebody else is. And but at the same time there are best practices and things that are working well in certain categories. And so it's almost this like art and science of understanding who you are, how you best create, where you have a natural tendency getting really good at that. So to use the like athletic analogy, maybe it's like I get into it and I'm like, actually I really like tennis. I can kind of play tennis well. So then I'm going to listen to people around what's working within tennis as opposed to just listening to anybody who's athletic and being like, oh, this person lifted weights for two hours a day. I'm going to do that. It's like, no, like you need to approach it differently based on your self awareness around how you create as a creator. Does that feel accurate and kind of reflect.

Yeah, we know. I think what's just outside of the realm of things that we can keep up with. It's cool if you think, you know, there's this trend, I'm going to try this this once. But being consistent sometimes, you know, that's the greatest way to in burning out because you're trying to keep up with people who may have more resources, you know, There are bloggers that have people that come in every week to take new pictures of them. If I have that, great. I can post every day, twice a day. If I don't have that, I need to be more strategic on posting the stronger content. And maybe it's only two or three times a week, but it's going to be the best content. And there will be no filler content because you're focusing on what you know is going to work versus trying to keep up with other people who are just. Yeah, thinking about posting every day overwhelms me right away.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And an example of that is like right now, like on the other side of the wall here, Lindsay's shooting video with her friend Landon, who's the video editor we work with and also a good friend of ours. He comes in once a week, once every two weeks. They shoot, they edit. And then we also have Krista, who's, you know, awesome member of our team who helps out like getting stuff ready and preparing and. And so it's like it's a team and they're all working on it together to produce this content. But when you look at it from the outside, you're like, oh, wow, all of this stuff is happening. You know, they're launching a new product and producing a video and there's a blog post that comes out. It kind of seems like, how's all this happening? And oftentimes it's happening because either A, somebody's working an incredible amount of hours, which does happen, or B, somebody's working with a team. So still an incredible amount of hours just dispersed among multiple people, or sometimes see both. Like an individual's working it done and you're working with the team. And so the output that you have is just more than normal. And that feels also like a self awareness thing. What's the capacity you have? And then making decisions around both time and money, and then making decisions around what's the best way to deploy that. And that's kind of what we do as entrepreneurs is figuring out. It's like resource allocation, time and money, resource allocation. Do you have any thoughts or reflections on how people can do that? Like, how do you, how do you reflect on where you should spend most of your time as a creator?

I usually start that type of conversation with what do you like to do when it comes to social media? What is it that you like to do when you are thinking of creating content? And then I try to go from there, build something from there. A lot of times it could be like I like writing things, but not all the time. And so one of the things I always say is when you are feeling creative, create a lot, and then you have a bank of things that you can do, because I guarantee by Thursday you're not going to want to create, but you have a bank of things that you can go to and pull from. I'm always writing lists. If I'm reading an article or maybe I saw something on social media, I add it to a list like, this is something I want to create content about later, when it is creation time. So finding those little hacks in terms of your own productivity, knowing, like, this is what I like to do, and maybe I only want to create stuff on Sundays and then schedule it out for the next two weeks. It's really about one deciding this is what I like to do, and then also looking like, this is what people like for me to do. This is what people are asking that I'd share. Or you're seeing people ask these type of questions and, you know, you can answer it. So you're creating content to, you know, fill a need. That's where I would start, you know, because whenever we do get overwhelmed or frustrated with social media, we just stopped.

Yeah.

And then you'll. You'll never see results from that. So.

Yeah. Yeah. It reminds me, I've. I've. I think I've mentioned this quote on the podcast before, and I feel like it's attributed. It's one of those classic quotes. It's attributed to different people, but I think it's Frederick Buechner, but he has this quote called or that says the place God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet. And I think the more that we can think about that, like, where's that intersection? And how do we figure out how to get as close as possible to that intersection of the world's deep hunger? Like, what do people need? And your deep gladness? And like, wow, what an incredible thing. If we can find where that is and spend the majority of our time in at that intersection.

Yeah.

And it's probably a forever thing. Like, you're always looking for it.

Yes, that's what I was going to say. Sometimes it just takes I need a couple of hours to just sit with myself, to kind of map through that. And probably once a quarter, that might change. After seeing what you've done for those three months, you were like, okay, let's stick with this. We're throwing this out and trying something new. So, yeah, I Think there's a cycle of doing that because, again, you don't want to burn out and just stop.

So, yeah, it's. I made a note to do this, and I actually was going to ask Lindsay. We haven't had for a long season of life. We had date night where we had a nanny and she'd come and we'd be able to go out. And then like, our life got disrupted and we haven't had it. Now we're starting it back up again. Anyways, one of the things I've been thinking about is like, thinking ahead on the conversations that we can have when we go out on date night. And one of the things I've Creating a list around is, which is like, either depending on how you look at it, thoughtful or incredibly unromantic to like, create a list. Create a list of things to talk about. It's like, I hope Lindsay didn't hear me talk about it. She'd be rolling her eyes. But one of the things was there's this company, Michael Hyatt.

Do you know the name Michael Hyatt?

That name sounds familiar because I'm in Nashville and I feel like I've.

Yes, totally. So if you're in Nashville, he's. It's now called, I think Full Focus. But they have this assessment that they do. There's a journal. But one of the assessments they have, I think they call it like a life score. But I've been thinking about that in the context both of work and life and figuring out how. And I've talked about this before too, but like, how we can kind of be. We can design our own video game. And part of that is like designing what we're working on. Part of that is designing how much we work. Part of it is, you know, prioritizing all of those different components within our life. And I feel like our lives ebb and flow in a way where sometimes we can do a lot of that. We do have a lot of autonomy. Other times we don't have a lot of autonomy. And we just have to, you know, like yesterday our daughter is sick and we just have to be home with her. And it's like, I'm not designing my life.

I have been there.

But what I love about what you're saying from the self reflection standpoint is to not just hear somebody's being successful on YouTube and then you run out and do it, or to not just hear that, like this hack is working on Facebook and you run out and do it. That stuff can work. But to really look inward and say, like, what are my priorities? What do I want to do? And then to have some way to, like, measure that. And so the reason that I mentioned the life score thing and going through that and then talking about it on date night with Lindsay is because that's something that I've been thinking a lot about. And I think it ties into what you're saying, which is really prioritizing, crafting a vision for what you're building. I don't know, is there a better way to say it? Or how would you.

I.

Yes. When you're. I always think of strategy. Building strategy, like, you know, build the building blocks of your own strategy is, you know, different than another person. So I am agreeing with you. And I think assessments are actually really good. There are assessments out there everywhere now. I recently took one and I cannot think of what it is about personality and also things I do. And one of the things that came out was, you will be a good coach. You are affirming. And then I was like, coach sounds like a long term. I like doing the sessions because it's kind of one and done. And I've had people say, really? You know, you make me feel empowered to do. And I'm like, that's great. And, you know, it was kind of affirming. But I think having an assessment, having some time to kind of self reflect is really important, I guess, in all things. But those personality things do tie into how you would do business or how you create content, how you feel confident in this space that we're in. So I think that all goes together.

Yep. And I think one thing I want to come back to, especially around conversations within social media, is that there are a lot of people who have successful online businesses and they don't use social media primarily as their main thing. Like, maybe it's a supportive thing where they. I feel like Food Blocker Pro is a good example of that. We post to social media. Our team does, but it's not me actively using Instagram as a tool or a platform.

Right.

And my avenue is a podcast. Like, I love having conversations with people and talking through things, but, like, don't spend as much of my time on social. Whereas Lindsay spends a lot of time on Instagram. It's a good fit for her. She enjoys the process of connecting with people there. And you could see that, like, in the growth of her account and what that looks like. So how about. Yeah, go ahead.

Oh, well, I was going to say that speaks to kind of two things. I think one different people are going to gravitate to different types of content. So like you said, you like to do podcasts and Lindsay likes to do Instagram. So I think, you know, choosing that platform is one thing and then the other thing is kind of like the season you're in. I talked to somebody about that this week. You know, like the summer might be kind of where we slow down or I'm in building season or I'm in just. Just taking a moment. I know when I started I was doing a lot of promotion. A lot of promotion. I also develop websites and so I don't talk about that as much anymore. I'm mostly talking about social media. But because I have built so many websites and my name is in the footer, I'm still getting referrals. So I, I'm not in the mode of promoting, promoting, promoting about the websites because it's kind of doing something on its own. So I'm not, I'm in a kind of a lower impact season because I'm not having to show up all the time about things that are. I'm not focused on. So that I think those are the two things. Personality is one thing, but also it may be being in a slower season or maybe in a building season. So you just kind of have to, I guess be overwhelmed where you are. So.

Yep. And I haven't done it yet, but I'd be interested to see how much of that surfaces with something like this. Life score assessment. Yeah, Focus. We can link to that. Where you can kind of see like, oh, this is a good reflection of the season I'm in. Where like, you know, it maybe it's work heavy or family heavy or whatever it might be. Which. Yeah. So transitioning. One of the things that I've noticed in the world of social is a lot of tools coming out and there's a lot of people who build tools for social media. You know, there's the obvious ones like social scheduling, like buffer or you know, there's lot, lots of those kind of tools. But I'm also starting to notice some tools come out. Like, I think of these are really new ones. I don't think a lot of people are using them. Clap app. It's K L a P dot A pp or I don't know even how to pronounce this. I think it's dummy. I don't know if that's actually what it is. Dume d u m m e dummy.com but, but it's, it's. It's kind of built around shorts and We've the reason I mentioned these two specifically is because we've kind of thought about doing this type of content or I've thought about doing this type of content for the podcast and essentially it's AI based where you feed in a video and then it supposedly surfaces the section that's going to be the highest engagement and then creates a short clip around it. Yeah, I think there's a lot of opportunities in the world of AI, maybe kind of early stage now, but more so down the line even like, you know, using ChatGPT to help formulate descriptions and things like that. So from a tool perspective, what are some of the things that you're seeing that are enabling people to maybe create at scale or create differently or have some help creating to alleviate some of that burden?

This is another one of my favorite topics right now. So I am a big tool automation tech person. So I have used a tool kind of like that called Opus Clips where you put in your YouTube link and then it does spit out seven or eight clips for you. It does the captions. I love these tools as something where if you don't have money for a videographer or working with a copywriter, because I there still is something about the human touch on these types of things when it comes to copy or editing. But if you don't have that, these tools work really well and it's sometimes scary how well they're working. I think with things like ChatGPT, I always tell people it's really good to get good ideas, but you still need to inject your personality and your spice on it because you don't want to just copy and paste. You might, you lose some of your personality and then it's just, you can kind of tell sometimes when it's just copy your face, I can just say that.

Yep.

So I think it's really great when in terms of ChatGPT for ideas, you can ask it things like what kind of content should I do for this? And then it spits out ideas. So you might even get things from there. You just might get ideas instead of content. And then there are, outside of video editing, there are some other tools where it's tech, it's text based, where if you put in a video, you look for your particular section that you want and that's just helping you edit a video, not really throwing out the clips, but just kind of like I know I talked about this here, let's take this part because it's doing the transcribing for you. So yeah, those are some Good tools. I'm trying to think of something else. Every tool that I use has now added AI. I use Notion. I use Notion as a tool to keep. It's kind of like a database of all my ideas or blogs or whatever. And now they have AI in there that will, like, finish the sentence for you. If you have started this thought and you're like, hey, I need a little help, click the button. It will finish the sentence or paragraph for you, which is helpful. Again, I go back and kind of like, okay, I would actually say this, but again, it's a great helper. And I, of course, don't want to diminish anybody's professional work when it comes to being a copywriter or video editor. But it is helpful to have these tools when you really don't have the budget to go big. And you can tell that a lot of people are using these tools because everybody has fancy captions and. And things now. So I think they're a real great help as long as you know that it's a help and that you should still inject your personality into the output.

It's kind of like, you know, I always think it's easier to personally, like, edit versus create from the ground up and.

Yeah.

And if there's something that does the initial heavy lifting of generation of a thing, and I say that, like, I haven't used it a ton for different things, like, we'll use it as a tool internally, as a team, to kind of brainstorm, like you said. It's almost like it's. It's like. Almost like somebody who has industry knowledge and you're asking them questions as you're trying to think of a solution.

It's the second brain.

Yeah. Almost always what I found is like. And in our conversations with our team, what we've learned is, like, we end up landing on something that we fully craft. Like an example being podcast titles. I was talking with our team, Emily and Alexa, and I was like, hey, I have an idea, like, use AI to come up with podcast titles. And they're like, oh, yeah, we already do that. Like, and what. What they're saying is, like, it's helpful to have some ideas, but we always end up using one or oftentimes end up using one that we craft just because they know the audience and they know historically what is done well. And. And so. But it's still helpful to have that kind of sounding board. And I've talked to other creators who will be able to say, like, write a Instagram description in the voice of and then they'll link to their, their site and it. Especially if you're at a point where you're just like super tired or you don't have any like mental juice left, it's helpful to have something that's like, okay, that's good and maybe even change 50% of it. But to have something just to help a little bit.

The thing with AI is the output is only as good as the prompt. So that's the thing about getting the right or the best information you can. You have to be really good at prompting it because it is a computer. So we have to be very specific. Or feed it something like your bio. This is what you need to know about this. Okay. Now create some brand statement for this. Or if you want it to have somebody's voice, you can actually put like a famous person's voice. I find sometimes Chat GPT always adds a lot of emojis. And I'm like, I don't know, like, let's tone it down. Or if they give me like five paragraphs, I'm like, okay, condense that into one paragraph. So it's really. Once I got good at prompting it the right way, then it made sense. But before that I'm just like, I don't know what I'm doing. It really matters how you prompt it.

Yeah, that's great. And I think worth calling out for anybody who's interested in that. The idea of prompt engineering. Yeah, and, and what? That's the practice of becoming an engineer. Not like an official engineer, but just like getting good at figuring out how to prompt AI and all of the different ways that you can do that. Like an example would be pretend to be a copywriter who is fun and light hearted and write a 100 word email that is sales, that is about a sale for a new spatula. Like yeah, and then that spits it out. You know the example I was trying to convince a non profit that I work with to potentially use it or just like, it's just fun for me. Anytime anybody like starts that I, that I get to like introduce somebody to a new thing. And so I was trying to tell them like, hey, you gotta use Chat GPT. I think you'd find it really interesting. And the example that I used was write a, the notice for an upcoming event in one month and use cat puns. Because the person I was trying to convince to use it like really likes cats. And so it was this like nonprofit fundraising email invitation with a bunch of cat puns. And it was like, it's so bizarre and so weird and so awesome. But all of that comes from prompt engineering like you said.

Yeah, that one little twist makes it like, oh yeah, this is fun.

Yep, that's great. And for those who aren't familiar, ChatGPT, if you haven't signed up for an account, try it. There's a free version and a paid version version you can Also use Bard. Google.com is one that I've been using a decent amount.

I've seen that one.

Just Google's version of it which has more real time information versus chat GPT. So AI feels a little bit like buzzwordy, but it's because it is so common and there's so many cool things.

Very helpful. Yeah.

Yes, totally. How about, you know, any other news that you feel like is relevant or anything else in the social world that folks should be aware of? Changes that are happening, industry trends, there's always this constant evolution towards video which feels like it will continue to become important. But as we close out, any last considerations or thoughts around things that are happening in the world of social?

Well, one thing I always say, especially because we're seeing all of these platforms change, Twitter or X wanted to limit DMS or limit tweets or things like that. And I, as much as I love social media, I always tell people to remember that it's really a driver to where you want them to go if it's an email list or a website, anything like that, to kind of remember where social media's place is in your marketing. I think you said earlier about where people spend the most time and I still always suggest that social media should be an arm of your marketing strategy, not where you do everything because again, Twitter, Instagram, it could completely turn off and then you've lost your database or your audience of people. So I still suggest trying to get people into a email list and as much as people be like email list, what am I going to talk? You would literally talk about the same things you talked on social media email list. If, if you are doing a roundup of your top five recipes, that's an easy email because you're really just pulling links or talking about content you've already done. So if it's something as simple as like a once a month thing where you are recapping, catching people up or sharing some of your favorite things, I would still look into having an email list for that and kind of treat it like a social media platform. That's what's made it the easiest for me. Kind of like talk about those same Things maybe link it to Instagram or Pinterest or something. If you are wanting to have that loop of social media to email list to social media or whatever. That's kind of my thing. I love social media, but we don't own that space. There's a reason why it's free for the most part. So I. My big thing is to suggest, you know, while you're looking at all these platforms pop up or die, that you have people on an email list or people know where to find you on a website or something like that.

That's great. And I think it's so often overlooked, like we just get in this content wheel where it's like we're producing more content to get more followers to what?

Like, yeah, and they're more guaranteed, but like, yeah, yeah, you're more guaranteed to get an email in someone's inbo than hoping and praying somebody sees a social media post or something. You have to get really good at making sure people will see your content. But you're, you know, for sure people are getting an email.

Yeah, yeah, that's great.

So, yeah, I would say look at, you know, if you can, whichever platform you're on. WordPress, Squarespace, Webflow, there's so many now that should give you those analytics about where your traffic is coming from. And I think it would be helpful to kind of funnel those people, wherever it is, into an email list and just share the same information you would on social media.

That's great, Andrew, if people want to sit down with you, you know, we talked about how important it is to kind of craft your own journey, your own idea of what success looks like. And my guess is a lot of that comes in these sessions that you do with creators. What would that look like? How can somebody reach out and connect with you to have a conversation around potentially working together?

Sure. I do probably spend the most time on Instagram, so I am there. I am at Andrea Baligan, my name. I'm sure you'll see it on the this Cover podcast cover. And from there I usually talk people on that platform. I have a Facebook group that's free. I'm revamping. And then from there, if you like the free content, we can move forward. To me just doing a quick audit of your account and then the next step is usually a full fledged social media strategy plan. So those are usually the steps. There's a lot of free stuff and I'd like to do Q&As in my group when I can. So you. We usually start there and Then if you want something more custom, we can do this one on one session.

Cool. We'll link to that in the show notes. Andrea, thanks so much for coming on.

No problem. Thanks for having me. Hello.

Hello Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team here. Before we sign off for the day, I wanted to pop in and chat a little bit about a resource that all Food Blogger Pro members have access to and it's called our Tools Page. The Tools page is home to tons of different tools and downloadable resources that can help you stay organized and working towards your blogging goals. So a little sneak peek at some of the resources that are available to you on the Tools page. We have an amazing SEO checklist, a social media checklist, we have a brand email template for pitching yourself to companies for sponsored content, and an email marketing workbook. We also have a great super handy image size checklist and even more resources available to you so you can download any of these resources right to your computer and reference them whenever you need them. If you're not yet a Food Blogger Pro member and you want to join to get immediate access to these resources, head to foodbloggerpro.com join to learn more about the membership and community and get started today. We hope you enjoyed this episode of the podcast and we can't wait to bring you another good one next week. But in the meantime, hope you have a great week.

Sam.