Branding, Blogging, and Q4: How to Stand Out Online with Madison Wetherill

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Madison, welcome back to the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be back.

Yep, you're on the other side of the mic here. You also have a podcast. You do a lot of other things. So for those who haven't either followed along with your podcast or listened to the interview we did a few years ago on the Food Blogger Pro podcast, give a quick overview of kind of what your day to day looks like and the different businesses that you're running.

Yeah, for sure. So. And I think this is even probably different than the first conversation that we've had, but basically the short and sweet. My name is Madison Weatherill. I am the founder and CEO over at Grace and Vine Studios over there. We focus on branding and website design for food bloggers specifically. And the reason we focus on food bloggers specifically is because I also am a food blogger myself. And that balance of those two businesses has had its phases over the last couple years. And I think it was 2021 that I started focusing on my food blogs again and trying to kind of find a balance between those two businesses. And honestly, doing that has just like really highlighted how important the website work and the branding work that we do is because I'm living it myself as well now. And, you know, as food blogging has kind of exploded over the last couple of years, emphasis on quality, website design, personal brand, all of that has really just become more and more important as the space has gotten more saturated, for lack of a better word. So, yeah, that's kind of my day to day is like balancing those two things and kind of living out what we're doing for our clients in my own food blogs as well. And outside of that, I'm a mom. I have three little boys. We homeschool, we live in Arizona. That's kind of the short and sweet love.

It's one of the things that I find to be super valuable with doing the Food Blogger Pro podcast is it's super helpful for Pinch of Yum. And Pinch of Yum is super helpful for doing this podcast and doing the, you know, having the conversations. Just this morning we were having a conversation or I was with somebody in the community forums and she's like, hey, I'm transferring my site over. I'm trying to figure out what to do. And it's like, it's not just an opinion. We just have this lived experience as people who are also creators where we are able to relate but also have the same curiosities, same questions, same, you know, answers that we're trying to figure out, and we're going to be talking about some of those today as we talk about Q4. So we're heading into Q4. Q4 is always this really important season because it's this influx of, I heard this phrase a couple years ago, peak baking season. So, like, people are making food for Thanksgiving, for the holidays, Christmas, like whatever it might be, but it's also peak earning potential. So brands have a budget. They're either spending that on advertising, so you can earn a lot because people are shopping in November and December. You know, these companies are spending through their budgets. And so really, November and December are critical times for food creators. Most food creators, maybe if you're like a barbecue food creator, it's going to be a little bit different. But generally speaking, November and December are really important months. And it's important that we think about optimizing and starting before it's November. So let's end that conversation a little bit. As you work with creators, as you give guidance to people who have a food site, what are some of the things they should be thinking about as we head into Q4?

Sure. And I'll say too, knowing when this episode is going to go out in just a couple of weeks, it won't be quite that peak for Q4 season yet. But. But I also want to say, like, it's not too late if you haven't done some of this prep work. Because I know for me, I start thinking about Q4 in March, but I don't actually start really doing anything until late Q3. So if that's you, that's okay. We're in the same boat there. But you kind of painted the picture already, which is that we have this just natural. We don't even have to do any extra effort necessarily to get these new people and this influx of traffic to our site because of the natural behavior that people already have during this holiday season, people are looking for more recipes, they're spending more time in their kitchens. And so because of that, we have this opportunity to take that and essentially capitalize on it, but in a really authentic way to your brand. And I think a lot of the times creators focus around, I gotta make sure my content's ready. I have to make sure I have Thanksgiving recipes and things like that. And that is all really important. But something that I see missed a lot of the times is making sure that your website is ready for that and making sure that you are capitalizing on that traffic. Not just in the sense that I want to get that one time page view, that one time ad earning. But I'm really trying to bring these people into my world and make them become, or help them to become a loyal part of my brand. And so there's a lot of elements of that that are often missed because we're focused a lot on like, I gotta make sure I have my pumpkin pie recipe ready cause that's gonna go crazy. Or you know, the specific type of content that we have. And so I encourage people to look at that. Yes. But also a little bit more holistically around like, is my website and my brand positioned to make a good first impression? Because I have an increased opportunity to do that in the quarter four season with all of these new people coming to my blog and hopefully I want them to stick around. I don't want them to just make my recipe once and bounce. I really want it to be apparent what my site is about and how these people can benefit from being a part of that long term.

Yeah. So let's talk about how you do that and maybe a lead into that would be, we've talked about brand and we've talked about website. How are those different and how are those the same?

Sure. So a lot of the time I think people have one, one or two kind of conclusions of what brand means. They either think it is their visual branding, so their logo, their colors, their fonts, and you maybe have a good feeling about that, or you have kind of a like, I really don't like my logo, but it works, it's fine kind of feeling about that. And then the second part of that is really the personal brand. And the personal brand is what I've seen really coming to the surface over the last few years. As like I said, people have, you know, there's been so many more food blogs that have been started. There's been just an influx of content creators out there. And the personal brand is really what sets you apart from the other people that are in your same space. So we have to go a little bit more granular than food. In this case, we have to go into your specific niche. Maybe it's healthy recipes, maybe it's baking recipes, comfort food, whatever it is. And then within that smaller space, like how are you different? And I mean truly the reason you're different is because you're you and your audience is your audience and they have unique characteristics as well. And so it's really understanding that component and how not only do you have an understanding of it, but how do you put that forward so that somebody who is new to. You can come to your blog and be like, yes, she's a baking blog that focuses on xyz. That is totally for me. And they're ready to be a part of that. And then the website is really what houses all of that and houses all of your content. It's really the larger picture of all of that. But equally as important to make sure that that is optimized and running smoothly and that it's reflecting that brand. And that's the piece that I think people usually keep kind of those two things separate. It's like the peanut butter and jelly, and we're not making the, like, the sandwich of those two things happening cohesively together. And so it's important to take a look at both of those things because they don't operate fully independently. They really operate well together.

Yeah. So I can imagine brand as you know, and I think about it, broadly speaking, as content becomes more of a commodity, especially as you have generative content, meaning you Type something into ChatGPT and it surfaces a result using a completely different industry. Let's say it's home. You know, we're going through this kitchen edition right now. Let's say I'm trying to figure out. This morning was an example. Do you place insulation between, you know, your second floor and the main floor? If you don't need to, like, what is the recommendation there? Okay, there's an answer to that. Previously, what I would have done is I would have Googled that and I would have found the answer to that in a search result. Now what I do is I do like a quick voice thing in ChatGPT explaining the situation, and it gives me a result that's like a changed search behavior where there's transactional information that I need to get and I need to get it as quickly as possible to answer a problem. There's probably, over time that will happen more and more that people will interact with search in that way, and eventually it'll happen for food. Like just this morning, also, like, I'm trying to figure out what's the, like, best smoothie for certain macros that I want to get for lunch. And I had this long back and forth with ChatGPT to get to a point where it's like, okay, I found this optimized. It was like super basic. It's like five ingredients, but it has to do with macros. Okay, that's another example of previously, I would have maybe searched. It would have been a little bit harder because I'm trying to, like, search by Macros. So we have this like category of transactional information. Also there are people that I follow, who I follow and I'm interested in their opinion, their insight, their expert take and I go to them to get that information. An example again in a different world is MKBHD. Like he has this YouTube channel, he reviews technology, he has these long form videos. It's entertainment for me a little bit, but it's also informational. It's helpful. And I would go to him to learn what his take is as an expert on technology. And I think that paints a little bit of a picture around what's happening in the current state of content creation, which is previously 10 years ago you could have built a really strong site focusing on keywords like how long do you boil for a hard boiled egg? Like there would have been a time where you could have, you know, really dominated that search term and that probably still exists. But my guess is there's going to be an AI overview. People might use ChatGPT. So when we think about brand is that a little bit of what we're getting at is like as content changes and how we consume content and how we interact with content, the way that we as content creators are going to get attention moving forward and is less around transactional and more around, hey, I know you, I like you, I trust you, you are aligned with the things that I need and I go to you because I need to get the information or want to get the information from you as opposed to in a transactional way.

Exactly. I mean and I think the, the missing element there is like that personal brand has to be really defined and like easy for other people to understand in order for them to have that know like and trust factor. And you know, it's funny, we've, we've had these like phrases that we've talked about in the blogging space for 10 years, know like, and trust building, you know, eat all these things. And I think the stakes just got a little bit higher recently with the generative results because, or the transactional things being able to be taken care of, you know, in a, using an AI platform. Because I can go to ChatGPT and tell it, you know, I want a smoothie recipe and it can give it to me. But if I have something specific that I'm looking for, like if you had in that example like a macro blog that you followed that you really trusted them, you would have gone there instead first because you would have skipped the back and forth. And so I think what's going to happen and what is already happening is we're having to get really, really specific about who it is that we're helping and what we're helping them with. Because we're not just helping them to find recipes anymore. We're not even helping them to find high protein recipes or macro friendly recipes or you know, insert your niche here. What we're really helping them do is find those types of recipes for a very specific pain point in a very specific situation because that's how they're going to come to us for that specific situation and you know, criteria versus turning to something like ChatGPT to help them solve that problem. And again, if we are not able to make that really clear in like a split second as they're browsing our website, then we just become the transactional information like you said, instead of being like a trusted resource that someone is going to go back to for that type of information and results. Another example that comes to mind is meal plans. So many people are doing meal plans right now, which is great and it's really helpful for our readers. But if the reader doesn't understand why that meal plan is different than something that they can generate on ChatGPT, they're 1 not going to pay for it, 2 not going to go to you for it. Um, and it just becomes more of that like commoditized, you know, information versus it being like no, when I know I need something, I am going to go to this person because I trust what they're going to say and I know it's going to fit into all those queries and I'm going to save that back and forth with ChatGPT.

Yeah, yeah, the, that long form understanding of you within the context of Claude or ChatGPT is also one of these like strategic advantages that generative content in that regard has. You know, I think of the, one of the hard things I think for people who are food creators is there's a lot of anti examples of this that exist and it's because there are, there are still sites out there that are doing really well that are largely like search based sites. They're getting millions of page views and, and it's very high volume keywords. Uh, and I think sometimes we look at those and we think that would be awesome. I want to do that. And I think what we're talking about today, let me know if this feels accurate, is less of people who have been creating food content for 10 years, 15 years. They have this large bank of content. They have establish traffic to, you know, popular keywords. And it's more of, hey, I'm a food creator, I've started within the last five years. How do I turn this into something that is sustainable income? And to me, the answer isn't by doing keyword research and trying to rank for a specific keyword that you get traffic to your site. The answer is by forming a strong opinion on who you are, who you're serving, building a strong social following, and following best practice for putting together a site that targets people in that specific area that you're focusing on. So can you speak a little bit to your opinion on, you know, seeing some of these established sites that have a bunch of this traffic? You know, it's, it's high volume, but maybe how that will change over time and if you're getting started today, how that looks different.

Yeah, for sure. And it does look different. I think that's, that's kind of the reality we all have to kind of grapple with. And, you know, there's always been conversations and a lot of them are around Pinch of Yum, to be honest, or like other big brands like Pinch of Yum, where it's like, well, I see them doing it this way and I want to do it that way. And yeah, the answer usually is like, well, the rules are different for brands that are established in that way. And however, at the same time, what you see a lot of brands like Pinch of Yum doing really, really well is. I mean, Lindsey's personal brand is all over Pinch of Yum. Like, you cannot separate Pinch of Yum from Lindsey. Like, they are one in the same. And it's very evident that that's like, who's behind the blog. And what I see a lot of bloggers doing, both bloggers who have been established for a long time, it's, it's definitely an area of something that those people struggle with. But it's also newer bloggers who are trying to blend in by doing the same thing. And what I'm finding just across the board, whether it's website, you know, traffic, social media, YouTube, whatever, is the more that you just kind of look the same and do the same things, follow the same trends that everybody else is doing, the more that you're going to find that your results aren't anything, like, extraordinary. On the other hand, when you're willing to say, step into a space that is so uniquely yours, that people are attracted to that because it's so clear what that is, that's where you're going to see the success. And again, that can be in Your content in your email list, in social media, YouTube, whatever it is that you're doing. But to your original question, I absolutely think that's where everything is moving is. We've got to be able to be creating something that is unique. And in order to do that, in the noise that is the content world, we have to be doing something that is memorable. And I think a lot of the times we're trying to do the same things that other people are doing. And you might have that virality for a little bit, but it's not going to be something that's sustained when it's just following trend after trend after trend and not kind of creating your own trend of like, this is what my brand is all about. Because, you know, where there's one person who maybe benefits from you doing something unique like that, there's a hundred other people, thousands of other people who are in that same boat. And so oftentimes it just takes getting really clear on who that is. And then once you do that, you're going to find that people are so attracted to it because it's exactly what they were looking for. The macro smoothie, that was exactly what you were looking for. And if you had found that, you would have been like, all right, every time I need that, I'm going to this guy. So I think it doesn't really matter what platform we're talking about here. I think it's going to happen across all of them, maybe in different time stamps. But from a blogger perspective, it's definitely like the stakes are higher if you're not creating that unique personal brand anymore, higher than they were five years ago. And certainly as we go further and further, as we're talking about generative search actually linking to brands, if the generative search can't figure out what your brand is about, they're not going to be linking to you either. So you're going to miss out on that traffic too. So I think it all, it's just this big, you know, web that I see happening where it's all really connected to that central point, which is that personal brand.

Yeah. And so much of it is that people want to connect with people. There are certain categories where people want information, they need information, they need to get that quickly. That is solved like today, that is solved. Like if somebody needs to figure out how to, you know, how long to boil a hard boiled egg, like there's low probability that you are going to be able to create a piece of content on your website and that you're going to like Be able to build substantial income by building that type of content. Okay, we've put that away. So then what do you do? Like, what are the opportunities? I would make the case, like, you know, agree, super saturated. And also the opportunities that exist today are probably greater than 10 years ago because there is more of a market and there's more of a market, I think, because there's more people who are being able to do this as a career. And the reason that is happening is because there's more attention being placed on social platforms. Brands and companies who want some of that attention are allocating some of their marketing dollars to that. And so there's these opportunities. So more saturated, there's more people there. But I also think more opportunities exist as it becomes more of an established market. The question then is how do you stand out? To which you were talking about personal brand being one of the most important kind of components of it as the transactional information has been solved. So then how do you do that? Like, what does that actually look like? And what is your advice for people on how to establish a strong brand? Brand? We've kind of talked around it, but like, specifically what does that actually mean? Like, what are the things that we should be thinking about and how should we be using intentional kind of guideposts on what we do create based on the decisions we've made about our brand?

Sure. I think the first, really. Well, there's two parts that are. They're equally as important in my mind, which is your niche and your audience. And I'm gonna talk about niche first because I feel like this is such an underrated component of your brand that people are often like, yeah, I know my niche, it's food. And like, well, it's not really food. Like, we've gotta go deeper. Like I was saying earlier, um, I usually with our clients, what we do is it's kind of a three step process. So obviously you've got your, your food is your main category. Beyond that maybe it's healthy food. And then beyond that it's like within healthy food. Like what are the things that make you unique from Whole 30 or another healthy food brand? Really get extremely specific about that. Probably more specific than you think you need to get because you're always going to have these wheels outside of that that maybe people are coming in and they're attracted to something that's a little bit more specific than what they're looking for or something like that. But if we go really broad like healthy food, then how do I know how your healthy Food is different than this person's healthy food, and it just gets really muddy. Healthy food's actually a really good example because it's so specific to each person what that, what that means and how you define that. And so that niche part is really important. And I see a lot of sites and people on social media, too, just kind of sticking in, like, food, I'm going to share a little bit of everything and, like, hope that something sticks. And whereas if you get really, like, specific about the type of food you're sharing, you're going to find that people are going to remember that and come back to you for those specific things that they're looking for. And then within that, like I said, equally as important is really that audience. And I think a lot of the times when we think audience, we're thinking like, mom, 50 years old, has three kids, you know, lives in Texas. Like, we're thinking kind of demographically and what we really need to be thinking about. Those demographics are helpful from a visual perspective or just like mentally picturing that person. But what I really want to know is, like, what does her average Tuesday evening look like and what are the things that she's struggling with on that Tuesday night to get dinner on the table? And because that type of honestly, like, intimate relationship that I can have with this audience is how I'm going to solve those problems for them and how I'm going to create things for them, whether that's content, freebies, membership sites, like, all of these things. If I don't know what those intimate struggles are, I'm just creating that transactional information for them. And I'm not really solving a pain point. And so again, for a lot of people, I see them kind of staying a little bit high level with this, where they're like, yeah, I've got these demographics. Or a lot of the times it's like my age range is 25 to 70. It's like those are very, very different extremes of that. And I encourage people to just pick something within that range because again, the more I can visualize who this person is and what her Tuesday evening struggles are, the more I can help them. A lot of the time it ends up being somebody that is in your real life. So definitely think about, is there someone in my real life who's constantly asking me questions about, you know, what I'm making for dinner or how I'm doing this? For me, it's my best friend and social often, like, send me little things that she's, like, trying to figure out and I'm like, I would have never thought of that. But now that I have as a.

Problem that somebody's trying to figure out.

Yeah, yeah. She. What did she ask me the other day? She's like, I really want to make salads, but, like, I always get the bagged lettuce, and it always goes bad within 24 hours. And I'm like, well, don't buy the bagged lettuce. Like, get the head of lettuce and cut it yourself. And then problem solved. But there's, like, these little tiny things that our audience, like, doesn't know because this isn't their expertise that we can help them with. But I wouldn't know that unless I knew her and I knew her struggles and knew what that Tuesday afternoon looks like. So once you have.

Do you have advice for people how they can figure that out? Like, if they don't have that best friend, like, what are the best ways to figure out what those problems are?

Yeah, there's definitely two camps for this, because it's very much depends on your existing audience and how vocal that audience is. Because oftentimes we might ask our audience, what do you need from me? What kind of recipes are you looking for? And we get crickets or we get really generic answers. That's why I think the niche part really helps you to get to that place first, because then I at least have things I want to ask. So what does a healthy dinner look like to you? What are you struggling with with meal planning? What are you struggling with with xyz? But it really comes down to just having those conversations in any place that you can get people to give you feedback. So whether that is your email list, social media, talking to people that you know in real life, because you might find that it is a common struggle. A lot of the time, your audience is you, but a few years behind you. And so you might have people around you who, you know, every time you bring something to a potluck, they're like, oh, my gosh, that looks so good. I could never make that. Ask them why is that? Why don't you think you could make this? And they're going to open up to you and give you all kinds of nuggets. But I think a lot of the time we're kind of stuck in our, like, digital world where we want to find, you know, we want to have those conversations online. And sometimes maybe you don't have that audience yet. It really comes down to just asking people, getting curious about what they're struggling with, asking, probing, Questions. And a lot of the time we try to just get our audience to, you know, share anything with us. But in doing that, we kind of miss the opportunity to really build those, like, deeper connections.

Yeah, there's this book that I haven't actually read, but apparently I bought it in 2015 that maybe I did read, read it and forgot. But it's just called Ask Ryan Levesque I think is his name, or I think that's how you pronounce his last name. That'd be a great one for people to check out who want to learn more about this. And it's the. The sub text is like the counterintuitive online formula to discover exactly what your customers want to buy. Create a massive raving fans. But the basic idea is like, as we do customer research, that's one of the best ways to understand what we should be creating content about is by hearing what the questions are that people have. We've talked about that before in kind of different ways in the podcast, but it's a good reminder, like, that's what we are doing is we are trying to be helpful online. There are some people who are trying to be, like, entertaining. Like, that's their goal. But for most people listening to this podcast, we're trying to be helpful. We're trying to solve a problem. And in order to do that, we need to have a clear understanding of what the problems are that people have and then do our best to help them solve that in the easiest way we can. And the more specific we can get to that, the better, as long as the market is big enough for us to address it now, within that, we can have different products that we are packaging for a market. So if you have a really small market, like I remember hearing this story about somebody who had this passion and expertise around billing, like insurance billing for people who had private medical practice. That's a super small audience. But the price tag she had on it was like 25,000 a year to work with her as a consultant. And so she had, I don't know, it was like 40 people that she worked with. And it's like, man, that's an awesome business. On the opposite side of it, the larger your market gets, like, the higher that that number is. Oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes what's going to happen is the. In our space, at least, the transaction is going to look a little bit different. You know, for Pinch of Yam, we're primarily earning money through advertising, some brand partnerships and the like value per impression on that is pretty small, but you have more ability to reach a bigger audience. And so there's all different mixes and matches within that. But it's something that we can think about. All of it comes back to this idea of asking, so let's talk about the website side of things.

Yeah.

Let's say you. You start to get a better understanding of your brand, your focus, your niche, who you're serving, the problems from, those people. What does it look like then, to incorporate that into your website and to tie it back to what we started about before as we think about Q4, like, when do we start to make those changes and how do we think about that in the context of this important time of the year?

Yeah. So I would say on your website, like, pretty much every page has an opportunity to, like, have this page personal brand shine. And I actually find that most people focus on it everywhere except for their blog post, which is ironic because the blog post is really our, like, number one place that people are coming to our site. They're typically. I mean, yes, we have a small percentage of people that might come into our homepage who probably already know your personal brand in that case. But on your blog post itself, this is like one of the most underutilized areas that I see. People, you know, kind of forgetting to include that personal brand. And I actually just did a, like a live audit with a mastermind group a couple weeks ago. I think it was six bloggers. And one of the things I did beyond just looking at it from like a, you know, technical optimization perspective is I tried to look and see, like, if I was brand new to your site, which I was brand new to. A lot of them, would I know what your blog is about by this one post. And I didn't really. I just had them give me a post so they could pick whatever they wanted. A lot of them picked maybe like a popular post. Some picked like something new so they could kind of know what their, like, current template was like. And I'll be honest, most of them, I couldn't tell. I couldn't really make a good judgment call on what their site was about from that one post.

And probably especially on mobile.

Yes, yes, even more on mobile, which.

Is 80% of how people are interacting with our content.

Exactly. That's another just like, side tip, is that a lot of us do a lot of this review type of work and auditing work on desktop and we forget or we know, but like, we just don't like to use our phones for that, I guess. But yeah, I mean, if you, once you get really clear on like who it is that you help for help, who it is that you help and what you help them with, then it's really important to put that everywhere. Because if we only have one opportunity for people to see what our brand is about, we need to make sure that that's happening on every single page. And it's not that you have to put the exact same thing on every page or be like obnoxious about it. All it takes is a one to two sentence, you know, little blurb or doing something like what Lindsey does, where it's like kind of her notes on the recipe, like within that section she is sharing her personal brand and you are getting to connect with her in a unique way. So I like to recommend that people have some little blurb or some little basically like a POV that ties in the recipe to your brand. Like why is it relevant that you have a creamy Mac and cheese recipe on your site? Why does that matter? And why is it not a chocolate cake recipe that makes sense within your brand holistically? And so kind of making sure that you're connecting the dots with that, which I will give a plug for using AI for this. Once you really determine what what your brand is, this is a really great thing that you can basically put this in to like a chatgpt or a Claude and say like, here's my brand, you know, here's my brand statement and here's the post I'm writing and here's two little nuggets of like why I want to share this recipe and it will help you to create like a concise way to share that. You know, for me, I'm usually highlighting something about the recipe being kid friendly or family friendly. Maybe it's like a little spot specific tip on like encouraging picky eaters to eat this food or something like that. Because I want to make sure that I'm constantly like reinforcing that brand messaging into what I'm doing. And that can be again it can just be one small paragraph that like sticks out in a specific way on your site and you just do that on every single post and then you can enforce the rest of, you know, the brand messaging within the rest of the website.

Does that mean not necessarily even saying that it's the same snippet or paragraph. It's just intentionally thinking if somebody comes to this post and they're reading through it, is there a way that I can signal to them what I'm about and what's important to me? In. In service of helping them. Like, is that kind of what you're getting at?

Exactly. And I think actually not having it be the same is more effective. Because if I go to a post and it says, you know, welcome to blah, blah, blah, I share easy recipes for every. For weeknights, it's like, okay, cool. But if instead I'm like, you know, this one pot chicken orzo dish is the thing that saves me. Every Tuesday night when my kids have soccer practice now, people are like, oh my gosh, me too. Like, I need that recipe that saves you on soccer night. You know, and so it's, I think the specificity there is actually what makes it so valuable. Getting really crystal clear on why that recipe is relevant. And for a lot of us, that can be hard because some, some of our old recipes maybe aren't relevant anymore. And so when we're going and updating things, it's a little hard to kind of connect those dots. But especially for people, because I do see this quite often where maybe you have like a niche like weeknight dinner recipes, and then every once in a while you throw in like a dessert or a breakfast or something else that's kind of outside of that. It's really important then to connect those. Because if someone comes to your site that's called something dinner recipes and it's a French toast casserole, they're going to be a little confused or they're just not going to like, quite think this is your expertise. But if I can explain it and I can connect those dots and maybe say something like, you know, usually around here I share weeknight dinners that help, blah, blah, blah. But, you know, tonight we're sharing breakfast casserole because of X. It's that like, quick little snippet that just connects those dots and helps people understand. I think it's what is going to help people in the future make those brand connections and have those trusted resources to go back to. Because you made it really clear to them, like why it's relevant to them.

Yeah, it's, I think about different, like a podcast that podcasts that I listen to that do this well. You know, I think speakers who do this well, where it's this reminder of, here's my story, here's what I'm about. Like, and it's not necessarily, to your point, the same phrase, but it's. I think the reality is we feel like we're saying something all the time, but our audience number one, in order for something to register, people have to hear it multiple times. You know, I think people, there's all these different, seven, 13 times, whatever it is, my feelings, like, multiple times, whatever that looks like. And we are so close to our content, it feels like, oh, we're just saying this all the time. But so many people who come to our site are seeing it for the first time and it's important for them. And if people are coming back, if it's done in an organic way that's folded into the content, then it doesn't feel like this redundant thing that you're kind of coming back to all the time. So I can see how it's important. And you could do that on a post level, but also with content that you're producing on social. Like, how do you call back to the problem that you're trying to solve? You know, if it is putting food on the table for helping people put food on the table for families, there's a hundred different ways that you could say that's what's important to you and that's why you create content. But to make a point of saying that so when people do hear it, they can make that decision around like, oh, is this for me or is this not for me? Based on, you know, seeing a recipe, which, a recipe is a. You know, there's millions of them. And just because somebody has a good recipe doesn't mean that somebody's gonna follow you. But if you have a really great recipe and it fits into the needs and it solves a problem that somebody has, then suddenly there's going to be peak interest and the higher likelihood that somebody's going to follow you if you reference that within the context of the video or description or the writing on a blog post. So how do you go about doing this?

I wanted to add one quick nugget to that. This is what is going to stop people from scrolling, really. I think about it, when you see Instagram series, video series that people are doing and they have the same, same hook every single time, I'm going to pay attention because I'm like, oh yeah, this is the so and so's, like snack series or whatever, versus if I don't hear that or don't see it, I may just keep scrolling because I don't know what it is. And so that that hook really is what we're talking about here. And I mean, I think you're about to ask, like, how do you, how do you do that? And again, like, first you have to know what it is. Like, I can't, you know, tell you what is important about this recipe, if I don't know what's important or I don't know how it ties into my brand. And so that foundational branding work is really, really important. And I mentioned earlier, you know, usually the logo is part of what you're thinking of when it comes to brand. But if you don't do that foundational branding work first, you can end up with like visual branding or a website that just doesn't even reflect what you're really building. So that brand messaging, knowing who you're talking to, how you help them, what those pain points are, and being able to have it in kind of a concise, you know, referable document that you can go back and forth to is really, really important. And then from there I think it's really thinking about, like, if I was explaining this recipe to somebody and I wanted to make sure they understood why I created it for them, what would I say or how would I say it? It's kind of the, like, why we love this section that a lot of people had still have. But it's that in like a conversational way. Like if I'm explaining to a friend over coffee, like, why I created, you know, oh my gosh, you're going to love this lasagna recipe I created. And that's where I think, again, we're like bringing this personal brand thing back in because we're just trying to talk to people like they're humans and like other people. And especially in this world of like AI content, like, we want it to feel like I'm talking to another human, not talking to a robot. But a lot of the times we're writing like we're robots.

Yeah. And to have that personal element to go back to what you were saying before is a strategic advantage. Because, you know, if you are writing in this really transactional way, I think not only is it not engaging, but people are finding that information in other places. So you had referenced, like individual posts as important to look at. Talking about it from the perspective of mobile, I think is always a good reminder. So you're pulling it up on mobile, you're looking through it, you're trying to kind of audit your own content and saying, if people came to this, would they have an understanding of what it is that I do? You know, the problem that I'm trying to help people solve, making adjustments to the content. If you feel like it lacks that. Are there other pages that you would consider looking at and tweaking or adjusting from a brand messaging perspective?

I think the other two that Kind of stick out the most. I mean, they're all important pages, but it's. It comes down to your homepage and your about page, because I think those are the pages that people are going to when they're curious about, like, what is this place that I'm on? You know, maybe you made that quick connection within that paragraph and they're like, okay, I want to see, like, what else this person has. They might go to your about page because they want to know, like, who the blogger is behind this. So that's a really great place to really weave in that brand messaging and get a little bit deeper too, of, like, this is why this is the story behind it. When someone goes to that page, they're really looking for two things. Again, who's behind this blog? And also, how do I fit into this? Is this the place for me? And I think oftentimes we think of the about page as just like the resume. It's like, these are all my credentials and this is how long I've been blogging and blah, blah, blah. But it's really the place to be able to say, this is what this space that I've created is. And allowing people to be like, yes, this is exactly what I'm looking for. Thank you so much for creating this type of thing. So that's huge. That's a huge. It's a page that bloggers do not like to work on. I think they don't want to talk about themselves. But if you really shift your perspective to, like, it's an About Us page, in terms of, like, about my community that I'm building, about this blog that I'm building for people that might help you to feel a little bit better about maybe being braggy about what you do and how you help people. And in a similar vein, the homepage does a similar thing as well. The homepage does it in more of a content way, because your homepage should be built in a way where people can easily understand, like, what the content is. You know, what are the main categories of recipes that you create? A little bit of that brand messaging too. Like, what about your niche is unique to you? I want to be able to see that really clearly on the homepage. And your categories should also reinforce that. I think of my sourdough clients a lot. We've worked with quite a few sourdough bloggers over the years. And, you know, it would seem like sourdough is just sourdough, like, right, there's not a lot of things to break away from that. But Every single sourdough client that I have worked with has a very different approach to sourdough, a very different perspective method, all of those things. And I know that because of like the deep work that I've done with them. But it also needs to be really evident on the front end when someone comes to their homepage or whatever post you're going to. Because I want to know like, why should I trust this sourdough blogger versus another sourdough blogger? Well, it's because her method works for moms who work a full time job and they're doing sourdough in the fringe in between those hours at work, that type of thing. So the homepage should really reflect that and get kind of more granular with like what type of content is it on the site, what are you known for? Or what do you want to be known for? And is that showcased really clearly on the homepage in a way that helps people to like I always describe it as like, we want people to find these little pathways in your site. Like they're going to get lost in like your dinner content because they just cannot stop like drooling over your dinner recipes or your dessert recipes or whatever it is. But you're just creating these pathways for people to go down. And then in each of those pathways, you know, each of those category pages and things like that, you're hopefully reinforcing like what the brand value and mission is.

Yeah, that's great. So we have this understanding of shaping what your brand is, the impact that you want to have. The problem solution, like even with Pinch of Yum, we talk about that a lot. How are we framing things up in a problem solution type way where here's the issue, okay, you're busy. You know, fall is starting school, back to school, people are super busy. That's the problem. What's the solution? Well, it's figuring out or it's working with us to figure out how to easily put a meal on the table that you're going to know is tested and you're going to have a high likelihood of it being a successful recipe. Okay, great. Problem solution. So we start to shape that. We start to understand who our audience is. We start to integrate that into our site and our content. Really. It's our reels, it's its descriptions, it's homepage, it's about page, it's within the content itself on a post. And then the result of that is people will be able to know, hey, is this somebody that I want to follow along with on social? It's going to be easy because the action is, okay, I'm going to follow or subscribe to this person within your site. It's a little bit different because we have a lot of different calls, like a CTA call to action that we could ask people to take if they do decide that they want to follow along with us. So that, to me, feels like kind of the final step with this is figuring out how we want to invite people to join us along the journey of us figuring stuff out and then coming up with a solution to the problems that we collectively and also the individual has. So what would you recommend for that third piece? Once we've done the branding work, once we've started to integrate that from a messaging perspective, specifically on the website, then how do you have a strong call to action to bring people in to your world to continue that conversation if they do decide that they want to be a part of it?

I think first it really comes down to what is your main call to action? Because to your point, there are so many. And I, I think we often forget all of the calls to action that aren't really even an action that you want someone to take. But it's like all the noise that's on your site, noise to the reader, not necessarily noise to you or to like, you know, search crawlers or anything like that. But from a reader's perspective, there's a lot of stuff outside of, like the recipe card, which is really what they care about. So once you can kind of say, like, all right, my goal right now is to grow my Instagram following. I want everyone who comes to my blog to funnel there, to follow me there, because that's where I'm really focusing on maybe connecting with my audience, or maybe it's your email list, whatever it is. And then it's really just, I think, weaving that branding into what you're asking people to do. A lot of the times it's like leave a comment or leave a rating or follow me on Instagram. But if instead I said, hey, did you know over on Instagram every Monday I share how I'm meal planning for my week and blah, blah, blah, blah, like, whatever that thing is, go connect with me over there, you've now made that connection and you've pushed them over to a place where they're going to, you know, naturally see your content becoming up at the more that they engage with you. Same thing with email. If you were able to clearly describe, like, what the value is for somebody over there, or it could be in you know, a freebie or something like that. But I think as a lot of people move more towards these like personal style newsletters on substack and things like that, like you have to make that, you know, personal reason that someone should take their time to go and follow you there. When you're able to do that again, you're just inviting people to come along for the journey that you've already proved to them is something that they struggle with, something that you can help them with, that type of thing. And from a logistics perspective, putting that like really as close to your recipe card as you can is a really beneficial way to just see that convert more. We see that really the top like fold of the rest of the post and then close to the recipe card are really the places where you're going to grab people the most. If you bury it in the middle of your blog post, it's going to be buried and people probably won't see it. But if instead you kind of put it in those like higher traffic areas, you'll see that that will definitely convert better. But yeah, I think whichever one it is, don't be generic about it. Be really specific about like what is the value of someone taking that action. Because we're really, you know, people's attention is going in a million different directions all of the time and we have to basically prove that it's worth their attention to come and do this thing. Especially when we' asking them to like leave one platform to another. You know, we see that with Instagram and trying to get people to leave Instagram or Pinterest or wherever to go to your website. There's friction there, right? And so we want to take away as much of that friction by just really showcasing like this is worth your time and you're going to get so much value by being here. So you should go do this thing.

Yeah, that's awesome. Anything else that you feel like would be important to talk about. I know that you do a ton of this work. You've seen a lot of case studies of people who have been really successful with their site. Anything else that you'd point out for people to be aware of, whether generally or as we head into quarter four, that they can be optimizing or improving. Just kind of a open ended question to see if there's anything else that you feel like would be important for us to talk about.

I think what I said earlier, which is just that the stakes are higher now and I don't say that to be doom and gloom or like super negative negative or anything like that. I'm not a negative person at all. But I think if, if you want to see your blog be successful and continue to grow and you have felt a little bit, like, shaky in all of the changes that have happened in the last couple of years with AI, with core updates, with Pinterest changes, all the things, this is the one thing that you can control and the one thing that you really can take hold of and like, put forth, and that's your personal brand. And I know a lot of bloggers really fear this. They don't want to get on camera, they don't want to put maybe even like an updated photo of themselves on their website and all of those types of things. And I would just really encourage you to kind of double down on whatever it is that you can do within this personal brand world that we're talking about. You know, stay in your comfort zone a little bit, but just know that the more you double down on what's working and the more that you can double down on that, like, human connection, the more that you're going to be able to create things that don't necessarily weather because of all of the changes in the industry. Like, this is really the thing that we have control over what our personal brand is, how we connect with our audience and how we help them. And so focusing on this is definitely not something that maybe feels as shiny as, like, going viral on TikTok or something like that, but it is the foundational work that is going to make your brand sustainable for the years and years to come. And I've had so many clients that have come to us recently and said, like, I've been needing to work on this, I've been needing to redesign my website for years, but I've just been putting it off because I was busy with whatever SEO, content, Pinterest, anything. And I know that it's time because I know this is what my brand needs to be able to take it to the next level. That take it to the next level phrase is something I've heard over and over and over again from clients. And I think it has so many intangible things too, that when you work on this, your confidence increases, your ability to connect with people authentically increases on top of all of the other, like, monetary things that can come from it too. So I just say that to encourage people that like, yes, Quarter four is busy and you have a lot on your plate, but don't neglect the thing that is going to make that lasting connection with people, because it could Be the thing that really changes your business.

Yeah, that's great. The Grace and Vine Studios tagline websites designed for bloggers that stand out from the crowd conversation that we had today. If people are interested in connecting with you, Madison, working with you and your team, what's the best way to do that? I know that you also have some resources that people could check out as well.

Yes, for sure. So, yeah, the website is graysonvine studios.com There's a services tab there that kind of shows the different ways that we work with clients. We have branding packages if you kind of want to focus on the brand messaging, brand, you know, visuals. And then we also have all the way up to like our web design packages, which we have semi custom and custom web design packages to kind of meet you wherever you're at. Apart from that, I have my podcast, the vine podcast, which Bjork was just on a couple weeks ago, I think. So that's a great place to kind of dig in and just get some handy resources around these topics as well. And then we're also going to share a kind of like a mini branding and website audit that's specifically designed for quarter four. Knowing, you know, you're limited on time, we want to kind of make like, what are the easiest things we can do that are gonna make the highest impact. So I'll have that for you guys@graceandvinestudios.com FoodBloggerPro It's a lot of words, but I'm sure it'll be in the show notes as well. So that's a great place to start if you just kind of want a checklist of what do I do to make sure that things are ironed out for quarter four while still being able to focus on your content and making those connections with your audience as well.

Cool. Madison, thanks so much for coming on. Really appreciate it.

Thanks for having me again, Sam.