From 1K to 250K: The Instagram Growth Strategy That Transformed Joy to the Food

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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 we are welcoming Maika Kinney alongside her husband Dan. Maika launched her food block Joy to the food in 2021 with the goal of building a successful brand and business. Just a few years later, Maika has left her full time job as a civil engineer. Their site has qualified for raptive and their Instagram following has soared to over 250,000. Follow I love this interview because often on the podcast we hear stories of food bloggers who've been creating content for years or even over a decade and have found success. But I think it's really important to hear stories of creators who've had success more recently because it can be particularly inspiring for those of you who are just starting out as food bloggers. This interview is also really useful because Maika shares the exact strategies that she has used to fuel her rapid growth on Instagram, including how she uses Instagram analytics to guide her decisions and how she posts real that fall into four specific buckets to help achieve certain goals. She also shares more about how they've recovered from recent helpful content Updates, including the September 2023 helpful content update that just decimated their traffic from 80,000 down to 3,000 monthly page views, and how they've recovered from that traffic and even gone beyond it in recent months. This is a really useful interview. I think you'll want to have a pen and paper nearby to take notes so I'll just let Bjork take it away.

Maika, welcome to the podcast.

Hi. Thanks for having me.

We're going to be talking about some of the themes that we've talked about on the podcast before, things like finding a niche. We're going to be talking about Instagram growth. You and your husband have had a lot of success with that and also building traffic on your site. And the great thing about your story is sometimes you'll do interviews with people and it's like when I started my blog in 2013, Da, Da Da da da. And it's like, okay, that's great. It's fun to hear about people who have been showing up for a long time. And that's often what we talk about. It's all about showing up continuously for a long time and improving things along the way. But your story is relatively recent. It's just within the last few years that you've started to work on your site to build your following and you've had some success in these early years. So when did you start and what was your mindset when you started your site and your social account?

Yeah, so we started in 2021. So we were after the COVID boom and all of that. We started it with the intent of building a brand, building a business. But when you start, no matter what, I count the first year as just a wash because you literally don't know what you're doing and you don't know what's happening. So we started that, started the socials at the same time, spent a lot of time in the first year on socials and then did nothing trying to build traffic to the site. Hit with the Kelvin content update in September of 2023 and quit my job at the same time. And now we're here.

Interesting for those two things to simultaneously happen. So before we get, before we get too far along, you had said in 2021 you started the site and social. It sounds like you focus primarily on posting to social as opposed to the site in those early years. Did I hear that right?

No, not necessarily. I think I just put time, like all of 2022, I just didn't put any time into socials at all.

Oh, no. Time into social. It was all on the site.

2021 when I first started. We started in February of 2021. I put time into both. Yeah, but very low quality stuff. Like I. We didn't have a niche at the time. We didn't do anything like that. We were just keyword chasing, essentially.

Sure. So you see you do some keyword research, you see an opportunity. Let's create a piece of content around that which it, it kind of, it can work. It can kind of work.

But I think it did work for a while.

Yeah. And what we're going to talk about is this idea of a niche and a following versus just social or just search traffic. And you can get search traffic as the main thing, or you can get search traffic as a symptom of brand building and establishing a following and being a source that people go to. And that to me is where it's really exciting because that's long lasting. It's not that you don't do keyword research with that, but we're going to get to that. It sounds like 2023 helpful content. You had been working on, building traffic. Sounds like you had built up some traffic, doing this keyword analysis, seeing opportunities, creating a recipe post for a keyword, you'd maybe get some traffic to that. Tell me about what happened, number one with helpful content and then number two, at the same time as you were leaving your full time job.

Yeah. So my husband and I are both civil engineers by trade, so we're very into numbers. So we did keyword research, we took courses, we listened to your podcast, listen to all this stuff, and had a lot of success in that. Enough for me to leave my job as an engineer. And I left in September and September helpful content update came like a week later. We didn't actually feel the full impact of that until after the holidays. Thankfully, because of Pinterest, traffic was enough to carry us at least a little bit. And then January really hit. And at the time we had no niche really. We had a couple protein recipes, we had a couple. But everything else was all over the place. And so that hit and then we just, I was like, January, the year, the word of the year is brand on the brand. And so why was that?

Like, did you just intuitively know? Had you heard people talk about that? So this is January of 2024. So this would have been at the time of the recording this, just like a year ago, Is that right? Yep.

Yeah. So I, I had always known that, like Instagram, that's where I consume my content, that's where I spend time. So I just knew inherently that that is where I was going to have success if it was going to be any social platform.

Because you knew how the platform worked and you were spending time there. It's like the party that you were hanging out at.

Yeah. And I don't know, I didn't I think I was, I was part of the crowd that was there, but I still didn't bother to figure out that there was an algorithm to it, that there was a strategy to it, that there was learning involved. That was more my husband, who was like, you spend so much time there. If you're gonna build a brand like you keep saying you are, you should learn it. Right. And so I did, and it just took off. So there was two things that happened, right is I learned Instagram, which through intuition. A lot of that is just looking at your numbers and then getting a feel for what works and what doesn't. A lot of that is posting as much content as possible initially to have enough numbers to back up what you're doing. The more data you have, the better, in my opinion. And then the other part of that is we really niched down. So we started realizing the protein stuff is taking off. Obviously that is a big trend right now for good reason. And then we realized that protein recipes without protein powder was taking off even more. And so that's where we really hyper niched down and it just exploded from there.

Yeah. So what I love about that is this idea that you are. There's a. There's waves in the world of content creation. We've talked about this before, and one of the waves is a platform wave. Like what is, what are people, where are people spending their time? And within that platform, what type of content are they producing? Example being short form video on Instagram. A lot of people are there consuming that type of content. That's a type of content that's working. It's a medium that's working. Another wave is this wave of protein which you identified and also related to. Okay, you, you are naturally. It sounds like eating this way already. What does it look like to refine that around the edges a little bit, tighten that up a lot and say, hey, we want to focus on creating content that's high protein recipes without added protein powder.

Yeah.

And you can start to see what we talk about is this idea that if somebody comes and looks at what you're doing, are they able to quickly opt in or opt out? Is this for me or is this not for me? And when you get niched down like that, people are able to say, hey, this is for me, I want to eat high protein. And I've always felt kind of weird about additional protein powders. And I don't like maybe that they're not, you know, FDA regulated in the same way. And so I want to. You say it again.

Or they just don't like the taste.

Yeah, like I just. And so I want to eat high protein, but I don't feel like, you know, protein powder is the option for me or it like makes me feel weird, you know, all of these different reasons why. And what you said is things kind of took off. That'll be kind of our, our. We'll put a pin in that and that'll be our lead, which we'll come back to. But what I want to talk about is the helpful content update. Because some people, especially if you got to this point where you just left your job and if I'm. I'm looking at your notes here and it sounds like at that time, you know, kind of September, the site was getting like 80,000 page views. You're kind of getting to that point where you are able to sign up for ad company. You're starting to play with those numbers. Like that becomes kind of full time equivalent revenue that you are producing from your site. And then you get hit with this helpful content update. Talk me through your mindset. In that season, did part of you think, hey, I need to go back and, you know, start my job again. Were there other life situations where you had said, no, I know this is right for me and I'm gonna make it work to build this company and to build this brand. How did you sort through that decision to continue to build your site and to build your following after a hard experience with helpful content?

Yeah, so. And to put numbers in perspective, we went from 80,000 page views down to like 3,000.

Oh, wow.

Like a big hit.

Yeah.

Like I said, Pinterest carried us some of that. So we didn't feel the real impact until January. And it like I.

And so when you say 80,000, is that. That's from search. 80,000. Yep. So you had 80,000 page views from search and it went down to 3,000. So. And I think a lot of people who got hit by helpful content can relate to that because it was like, you look at the graphs and it's like, like it just falls off.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so I kind of quit my job in that weird. In between where like it wasn't quite enough to match my full time. But like.

But you saw the trajectory and the trend.

Yeah, it's like, okay, we're going to go for it. But I also had the luxury that I work for clients writing and so I had that to fall back on so I could ramp that up. So it's interesting that I never once was like, oh, I'M going to go back to my job. Like, it always. Even though I did love my engineering job, I. In my head, I was like, well, now I've developed new skills, so if anything, I'll do more writing, I'll do more short film, video, I'll do things like that. And I expanded on my knowledge base in that. Those areas. And then in January, like, I'm big into goal setting and things like that. I just. We sat down and we had our annual retreats, just me and my husband. We said, watch tv.

Yep.

But we. I was like, I just know that if I can build this, like, I know it's possible with Instagram, I know I can get people to the site, things like that. And like the protein thing, we've always ate like that. And back in 2022 or something, we were using rank IQ and we actually asked them to create a protein category with this. Like, okay, maybe we should do this, maybe we should go in that direction. But we never could commit because the mental block of, like, the more niche you are, the harder it is you think to get people. When in reality, like you said, that gives people a reason to be there. Um, so we just doubled down and I'm like, what do we have to lose? Right. So after that, we just took off. But yeah, helpful content update. Mental block was really just getting, like, committing to the niche.

Yeah. Great. So let's go back. We're gonna take that pin out and we're gonna look at the Instagram growth. Uh. Cause I think that's a really interesting case study. So January of 2024, you had 1300 Instagram followers. As of today, I looked and you are almost to 260,000. Uh, so that's like in one year, a quarter of a million new followers that you've added just on Instagram. And so what has that been like? And what would you attribute that growth to? And then we're going to also talk about the correlating page views on your site that have come along the way.

Yeah. So in January, I started posting consistently. I started posting every day to Instagram. Did a couple protein recipes. They did well. Did some more lifestyle. So Instagram reels. What I have learned over the time is that they fall into different buckets. Right. So you have one that's for reach, and that gets people to see you. And then you have one that's for your current followers, and then one that's for sales that gets people to your site. So at the time, I was working, working on the reach ones. Um, So I had a couple reels take off and then one in particular that had text overlay explaining what I do that really started to skyrocket. So, you know, you gain like 10,000 people in a day and then 20,000, then 30,000. So this all happened.

And this was views on a piece of content. Or when you say, yeah, so you get 10,000 followers after you have this piece of content. Yeah, that gets a lot of reach.

Yep, exactly. And it also gives them a reason to follow. Because what I found for my account in particular recipe videos do not give me a lot of followers because it's a one off. A lot of people are like, oh, that's cool, I'm gonna save that. I'm gonna ask for recipe. But I'm not actually gonna go to your page or your account. Whereas if it shows me and it shows a little bit about what I do, people are more likely to go there and get the breadth of recipes.

Go there, meaning to your profile on Instagram.

Profile. Yep. And then be a follower and then in turn go to the site.

Yep. So the. I think it's worth talking about each one of those. And you know, there's. We think of Instagram as an example and we think, okay, it's this platform and you produce content on Instagram. But to your point, there's all of these different ways that you can produce content, all of these different mindsets you can have going into it. And so really you need to understand what type of content you're creating and what the purpose of is. And you said three different things. Reach, audience and sales. Can you talk about each one of those and how you view those differently when you are creating content? And maybe like an example of what each one of those would be.

Yeah. So reach videos. And I should say, when I started this, I didn't know any of this until you start to try different videos. So to me, reach is something that you're gonna use like a trending audio. It's typically a very short video that's less than seven seconds. So it increases your watch time because people are like, wait, did I watch the whole thing? So it's a little bit of a trick. And then for me anyways, it works well if I have text overlay. And it always has the term like protein recipes without protein powder. So that is what triggers essentially a viral video for me. And then in the caption, what I've figured out for my account. And it does vary. Cause, you know, I'm in the space a lot of other bloggers for Me, I need to have a long caption that has a lot of keywords. I don't actually use hashtags that often and if I do, I use them in line. Um, but it'll have like a story, right? Like, here's why I eat protein without protein powder. Here's my son who likes to eat like this so I don't have to worry about it. Here's what this means. Like, we're going to have hemp seeds, we're going to have Greek yogurt, we're going to have other things, right? So when I explain that that's a reach for me that is getting to people who wouldn't see me otherwise, it's using the algorithm to my advantage. With trending audio, short videos, things that cause you to watch it again and again.

And my guess is, does this play into it? If you have a longer description, does that play into watch time? The idea that people then read through the description, there's a compelling story. So you're pairing your ability to create compelling, really short form videos with compelling text that maybe has a story. It keeps people around. And the idea with that is it plays into the algorithm by increasing watch time. Hey, people are sticking around. They're looking at this. And therefore the theory is that Instagram is going to display that to more people. Because it's like, hey, people who watch this stick around. Instagram wants people to stick around, have more compelling content. And so you're breaking beyond your, your audience. And they talk about that with Instagram a lot, that it's not a social media application anymore, it's an algorithmic media application and it's driven by an algorithm more than social components. And you're saying those are some of the pieces that are important that you've seen with creating a video that gets broad reach. Does that feel accurate?

Yep. Yeah. And some people say that it also. Another key factor is the saves. I have not found that to be true. But again, it does vary slightly from account, account to account. So like, I have a friend who, she never puts a long caption and she just says short and sweet. And it does really well. So it is going to vary.

And what you've said that I think is important is you are looking at the numbers and every account's going to be different. You might have, you know, you're creating food content, but the, the theme is for busy parents who don't have time to make a meal. And it's like that type of content is probably going to have different variables that you need to be aware of versus people who are creating content around slow cooking and how to take your time in the kitchen. And you know, just as one example of a hundred different examples, can you talk really brief briefly before we talk about the other two where you are looking at those numbers and if there's a process you're using to analyze those or if it's more of just exploration of the numbers and extracting kind of common themes a little bit more subjectively as you look at the numbers.

Yeah. So Instagram is a real beast when you try and look at numbers. Their analytics platform is not uber helpful. It shows things in like 30 day increments or you just scroll through because you can't sort by like, give me the video that has the top reach, the top likes and the top comments. You can't sort by all three. Right. You have to pick one or the other. So you end up clicking through each one within your insights in your profile and then get a feel for like, okay, this brownie one did had really good reach. This lifestyle one had good follow count and this. But this brownie one had good likes. So I'm gonna try more brownies. The other thing that I look at is when a viral video takes off, there's multiple reasons why it could take off. Right. It could be the music, it could be your hook, it could be that it's a brownie recipe. So there are multiple things. So what I typically do is if I get a hunch now I have a better idea of what's going to do well. Like chocolate always does well. Right. So like I'm just going to do chocolate. But initially, like I had a brownie batter recipe that went wild and so I did an entire brownie series of that. So every day I posted a new brownie batter recipe to see if brownie was the thing that took off. And it did okay, but not like superb. And so testing those sort of things too. So it's a little bit of intuition, it's a little bit of look, a lot of looking at the numbers and then a lot of trial and error.

Yeah. Part of it is developing the craft and the skill around starting to understand the numbers. This is, this is a call out for anybody who's seen the show Severance. Do you know, I've heard of it. Okay, this is great. It's like my all time favorite. The last episode of season one is maybe my like favorite episode of all time of any TV show. But Lindsay and I are rewatching it because they're going to come out with season two. This is only for people who watch Severance, so it's not going to be super helpful. But they work in this department called Microdata Refinement. And one of the things nobody really knows, they don't even really know what it is that they're doing. But there's a bunch of numbers on the screen, and what they say is, like, when you know, you know. And then they. They are kind of categorizing those numbers. And then there's this new girl, and eventually she's like, wait, then I see it. Point being, it feels like what. What is happening for them is like they're looking at the numbers a lot, and they're like, what am I looking at? What am I doing? And they're like, you'll just know eventually. And I think part of what we do is a version of that where you don't even. When you get started, you don't even really. What's the process? What am I doing? You kind of are figuring it out as you go. But eventually you start to get some intuition around, wait, I can start to see a pattern. Like our brains naturally start to do pattern recognition. And one of the things that you said is you start to understand how a certain piece of content performs and in what way it's performing well. And you talked about reach. My guess is reach means, hey, you're getting a lot of views on this piece of content. It's shorter. There's a longer description you said that works well for you. And so you start to see, okay, in this bucket, getting more views on this type of content. It sounds like in another bucket, there's this audience growth, and that's looking to say, hey, did I create a piece of content that a lot of people ended up following me because of that content. Is that what that audience bucket is?

Yeah. So. And like, with the reach. So, like, an example of one that did well but didn't follow into the audience bucket would be, I have, like, a chicken salad recipe. And it literally is just like dipping the chip into the chicken salad. And that's the whole video. Right? And then a long caption. So that's a reach, but it didn't result in followers. Followers. Audience video to me. And this can be taken two ways. So some people would say the audience is to get the followers. The other people would say it's to make your current audience happy. So those are two separate things. Right.

Can you say that again?

Audience could be taken as people who you're getting to follow. You so new people, it could also be making your current audience happy. So once they get people to follow you, it typically is a compilation video or a lifestyle video. So an example is you didn't understand the cottage cheese trend until you found me. That would be an example of something that would get people to follow you because it's giving them enough of a teaser with multiple recipe videos that they're like, oh, I should follow and see what else there is. Right. Single one off. Recipe videos don't typically do that unless it's like hyperviral. So like smash Brussels sprouts for somebody who went really viral and they gained a lot of followers because it had like 30 million views. Right. So that's a different sort of thing. The other side of the audience making your current audience happy is polling your current audience, figuring out what it is that they want and then getting ones that have putting out videos that really have a lot of engagement. So like for me, dessert stuff and breakfast typically do really well. But people don't tell me that they want. That they want like dinners and stuff. And so when I do dinners, it has a way lower reach, but the engagement is much higher.

Engagement meaning what do you. When you say engagement, what is that?

The amount of comments, likes, people going to the site from it, Things like that.

Sure.

People interacting with the actual content. So engagement, you can track in your insights and Instagram pretty easily per video. Again, you can't look at it all together, but you can look at each one. So say a video has only 40,000 views versus another one has a hundred thousand, but one has 2,000. The 40,000 has 2,000 likes and 2,000 thousand comments. And the a hundred thousand has a thousand likes and 500 comments. Right. So you start to look at those numbers audience wise and you can see what is resonating with your current audience. So I guess maybe you'd have four buckets. But the reach is kind of. I like to try and combine reach videos with ones that will also give followers.

Sure. It's almost like it's not even so much something is exclusively in one bucket or another. It's almost like, you know, I think of my nephews were over. Nephews and nieces were over this last weekend and they really like to play Madden Football and like they can create their own players. And it's like, okay, are they going to be really strong or really fast or are they going to, you know, be really good at catching the ball or throwing the ball and you have these. But if you use all of it on Strength, then they probably aren't going to be very fast. And so it's kind of a similar approach when you are, it sounds like creating content, it's not exclusively one bucket the other. But if you're really going to go after reach, then you might sacrifice some of the audience. But the goal is to get all of those as high as possible. So we have reach, we have audience. When you said there is four, what was the. Like, if there's a soft fourth, what would the fourth be?

Yeah, so soft fourth would be. Oh, sales. So the, the fourth one would be sales. So that actually get conversions, whether that be to your site or like we also have a paid meal plan. Getting people there to your email list, things like that. Sales can sometimes happen in videos and reels and short form videos. A lot of times the sales portion happens in stories. So it can be kind of both. Because videos are entertaining. It's really hard to get people to click out of Instagram with the advancements of automated chats, like many chats and groceries list, it makes a lot easier, but it's still really hard to get people to click out or go search. So some people too, when they're doing that with their sales videos, that's typically where you're going to have a full length of video that's like, here, watch me make this. I'm going to give you tips about it. Like we're going to sear our salmon skin side down, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. Long form video that is like, oh, this looks really easy to make. I'm going to go comment and I'm going to get the recipe.

Yep, got it. So we have reach, we have audience, we have sales. When you said fourth, what was the one within there where you're like, there could be four technically buckets of audience.

So if you have one of your followers and one to make your current audience happy.

Yeah, got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Audience, new followers, audience, current followers. Got it. That makes sense. But basic idea being, hey, these really viral videos, that's reach. Then you have videos for your audience growth and then videos for audience satisfaction. That could potentially be too. And then if you have a thing, are you selling that thing? Your point is it actually works really well within stories because it's a little bit of a different medium. People consume content differently. Maybe even just the ability to put links in looks a little bit different. You can also do that within reels, but that type of reel is probably going to look different. And to the building a, you know, football player analogy, you're probably going to sacrifice reach for sure. And maybe some of those audience buckets if you're going to increase on the sales side of things. Are you using manychat groceries list? What does that look like for you from a strategy perspective with some of those automated bots?

Yeah, I use grocer's list. For me it helps. Like there's just no way I could get that many people to the site. Its biggest help is within stories. So one of the biggest, I don't know if you call it a hack or trick or whatever is when you let your story expire and then you post like for me, I'll post like a iPhone photo of a recipe. So while I'm testing it, maybe and it's like. And then a review of it and say like, here's an easy dinner reply to the story with chocolate. I don't know. Sure, maybe it's not a dinner, but you reply to this and then I'll send you the recipe and it increases, you know, story views from like 2000 to like 60,000. So having the groceries list for that or automated chat is huge for stories for me anyways. I also use it on reels too. I don't. There's no way I could keep up with comments. But it also takes training your audience. Like, I think Lindsey doesn't use it right. Or she.

Correct. We used. Yeah, we used ManyChat for a little bit. Um, but then we decided not to. It was more of like it. It. There was two things that really stood out. One was just like the mass influx of DMs. Yeah, that then resulted in. Which was kind of the point. But what was hard then is to like actually respond to people. And then there's a little bit of like black magic question around what. What does. Yeah, what is hooking into this due to the Instagram, it's like zero based in zero science or numbers. But like, hey, if we're using this to like lift a reel in terms of engagement, does that have an impact kind of long term? So that. That was more of like, is. Is there a way where eventually this stops working for some reason? I think that's zero. That's proven in zero fact. And I think it's probably something we would revisit at some point if we just wanted to be a little bit more thoughtful in terms of how we used it. But I think to your point, like, I see people using it and I think there are ways that when you plug it in becomes a really great referral engine for traffic to Your site and also a great resource for people who don't want to go through the process of like looking something up or Googling. That's actually the third piece that we thought about is, is there some inherent benefit in people in like branded search? And so the fact that people would leave to do a search would be beneficial as opposed to just getting the link. But again, none of it is. It's all kind of squishy in terms of whether that's true or not.

Yeah, no, I would agree with that. And some people in there caption, you know, like, I think it's Crowded Kitchen. They go both ways. So they put the recipe in the caption, but then they also have the manychat set up for groceries list. And then they also say, go Google Crowded Kitchen, whatever, salad recipe. Right. And so I know a lot of people who can see, you know, look in search console and see people searching the branded term. And it, I can't imagine it, it wouldn't help. But I think because our growth is so new, we needed something that would quickly get people there because they were not, you know, like Lindsay's followers a long time, you know, very established following. And so I think because we were really new, we needed an easy way to get rid of that barrier to entry for people because now they're starting to search it. Now they're starting to search our name, branded, things like that. But initially it wasn't. And at this point, if I don't put the thing or put the automation, they're like, yeah, they expect. Right. So now it's like, I have to.

Yeah, well. And I think what's great about what you just said is understanding that when we. On this podcast, when you see best practices, when you watch somebody do a, you know, a growth hack on Instagram, they teach you about what to do. All of it is these are all tools. And what we need to do is we need to decide for our business, for our stage, for how we are approaching growth, for the type of relationship we want to have with our audience, what's the decision that we are going to make. And the tool is a tool. And similar to, you know, you walk into Home Depot, there's a thousand different tools and they all have a different use and they're all probably pretty great. But if you are, you know, building a bathroom remodeling business, you're not going to go in and buy all the tools just because they're awesome. You're going to have some tools that you learn about and you're like, I'm going to pick these up because these are perfect and they make my job easier. And then there's going to be other tools like a hacksaw. I don't know, maybe bathroom remodelers use hacksaws. They probably do. But you might look at it and be like, I don't actually need this tool, but I do need a tile cutter or whatever. And I think what you're saying is, hey, we realized for the type of business that we had, for the stage that we were at, for how we wanted to be in relationship with our followers, this is a really, really important thing for us to do. And it's proven to be helpful and useful. The thing that I want to go back to that I thought was interesting was the what you were talking about with stories. So you were talking about when your story expires, then you keep it and then you refer back to it with an image that is in Stories or an image that is in your feed. Can you talk through that again? I want to make sure I understand.

Yeah. And again, it will vary based on your account. So if you have a very established account, who people really want you, which I think food bloggers tend to lean towards, people just want the food. They don't necessarily care about you. But if you. For me and for a lot of other food accounts, I've heard you let the story expire, whatever you've had, give it like an hour or so. And then I post an iPhone photo of the recipe on Stories. Sometimes I will do the video for it, not as a reel, but just the actual video into stories. But it has to be at least like 15 seconds so people have time to read it. So an image tends to do better. An image of it, very homemade image. Right. Not one of our hero shots. And then explain a little bit about the recipe, like, why do you need to make this. Are there these good reviews, like give user feedback, things like that, and then say, reply to this with recipe or whatever it is. So people reply to that. An automation comes in and sends them the recipe. It's really great because it increases your overall engagement of your account because you are getting your most loyal followers, who are typically the ones on stories actually, to see more of your content because it's always a constant struggle to get Instagram to show your content to all of your people. Because if you think about it as a consumer and stories like say I follow a thousand people, I'm not going to scroll through a thousand stories to see those top 10 or whatever.

And is the link that you are sending them when they send you the dm, the link to the story, or.

Is it the recipe?

And then how does, how does that increase the story?

So the algorithm thing again, where Instagram's seeing more engagement on that story, so it's going to start pushing it and it starts showing your story at the front.

Oh, got it. And, and the story is the actual, just the image itself. Okay. And then can you talk about why you need to let this story, the first story, expire?

That one's a little bit of black magic. I don't know what it is with Instagram and that, but that is something that's been talked about in a lot of food, blogger or Facebook groups. People have realized this, things like that. For me, it particularly works well on the weekends, which works well because I say I don't post content on the weekends. Like I don't post short form videos. So instead I just use stories. And you know, it spikes like thousands of people to our site just from these stories because that's where your most.

Loyal people are interesting. And so, because normally what you'd think is like, hey, you are posting a video with this recipe in stories where you talk about it, that you would just do it there and say, hey, DM me. But what you're saying is you post a sequence, it's a video, it's maybe explaining about the recipe that expires. You produce another piece of content that says, hey, if you want this recipe, here's where you go. And it's the image. Maybe there's something to do. It's always interesting to think like the, the psyche of the user. Maybe it's something to do with. People see it, they look through it, they have kind of familiarity with it. It's almost like pre selling somebody on something and then it's telling them, hey, if you want to check out, if you want to actually get this, here's where you can do it. So I, I see what you're saying now that makes sense. And, and to your point, it's like, we don't really know why, but what you're saying is there's been evidence in your content creation process that it's something that has worked. So, so you've gone through this journey of starting with thousand Instagram followers in a year ago, essentially to 260,000 Instagram followers. Tell me about what that has looked like for your business. Like, what has your mindset been as it relates to building this following, getting this engagement. Are you thinking about, hey, how do I Direct people to the site. Is that still the main focus or are you starting to think about how do I partner with brands? It sounds like you've also develop some products. So as our reach to an audience increases, so do our options in terms of what we do with that, what decisions have you made around deciding how to monetize a following with your brand?

Yeah, so in, I guess last summer, I hit, I don't know, like 80,000 followers or 60,000. And so at that point I started to have brands reach out to me and I started doing some brand work. I realized how lucrative it can be. And so that became another bucket because our other big thing for last year was diversify. After the Google helpful, you know, helpful content update, we were like, we cannot put all of our eggs in that basket. Um, so I was like, brands are a really good way to increase this and keep us afloat. Um, so I started doing that in September of. Was it September, August of last year? Shortly around that time, we had a positive outcome from a core update. And so we gained back like 1.25 times our traffic again. And so we.

That was 1.25 of where it was like the month before or of where it was.

So like we were at 80,000 and then we jumped to like 90,000.

Got it. Yep.

So if you looked at our chart, it looks like a big hole we just dug ourselves out of.

Yeah, interesting. Would you. Is there anything you would attribute that to? Like, one of the reasons, Again, we don't know for sure. But why do you think that you benefited on the other side?

We spent a lot of time. I spent a lot of time updating content. We no index or deleted any content that didn't perform or was not protein related unless it was a top performer. Anything that could be converted to high protein, we made it high protein. We built out like our homepage to like make it really clear we're high protein. You know, rewrote the about us things like that and then social proof I think is a big component of that. Both we had some stuff go off on YouTube too, and then the Instagram, obviously. And so I think a culmination of all those things helped. It's interesting because we have about the same amount of pieces of content now as we did back then, except they all perform much better. So instead of just having like two one off things that perform in Google, we have 2030 that are all performing well. And what we're seeing now, just as of January is now we're starting to rank for like high Protein dinners, which is a huge category. Right. So it definitely solidifies that. Google sees us as a protein resource and so we're starting to rank for these bigger things.

Yeah. It's such a testament to the importance of focusing on a niche, making sure that when your audience comes, they knows what type of content you talk about. In Food Blogger Pro, in the membership, we do these things called coaching calls. And one of the things is like a once a month call with a member to do kind of like a tear down of their site and their business. One of the things I constantly come back around to is, is who are you talking to? What is your niche? And it doesn't have to be that way forever. But all the great businesses, you know, the biggest businesses in the world all started in a similar way. It's like Amazon was books, Zappos was shoes. And I think what's hard is in a lot of ways, especially with Food Blogger Pro, people maybe know pint of Yum and they say, well, it's kind of this like general recipe site. And I think if everything were to go away and we were to start again today, we wouldn't start a general recipe site, we'd start a niche. And you know, maybe the best example within the work that we do is Food Blogger Pro. It's a really specific niche. It's like food creators on the Internet and there's a lot of those now and enough that you can support an industry and even like work with ads and you know, or brands and sponsors on the podcast. But it's, it's a small niche and it's a small focus. And I think what you've done is a great testament to the importance of that focusing in and the resulting growth that you've seen along with, and I think this is important, really good content because it has to be both of those things. It's not like you can just pick a niche and then show up and then you'll grow. You have to have that good content. But having the niche is a multiplier on your efforts in creating good content. So how about looking forward? We're at the one year mark of a really fun year for you, of growth and reaching new heights for your business. When you look to next year, let's say January 2026, what does that look like for you in terms of what you hope to be doing, what you hope to accomplish in this year, and even the things that you might do different this year than what you did last year, if there are those.

Yeah. So looking to the next year. Right now, I'm not really focused on Instagram growth. I'm more so focused on engagement and getting the current people, the current users to convert more to the site and more to our meal plan. Our big push is our paid meal plan right now, and we use substack for that. So that's our big push because it's a lot of work and if it doesn't produce, we're not going to keep doing it. I mean, it's all roi. Right. The other I think the things that I would do different is I have. I like to call myself a serial hobbyist. And so, like, I continually try new things on Instagram.

Yep.

And I know what works at this point. And so I just need to double down on it.

Yeah. But it's. Sometimes it's less fun because it's just like you're not learning. It's not a new thing. You know, it works. But part of what we do there is an element of, like, exploration and fun.

Yeah. Yep, exactly. And then the other thing I want to work on is videos that so, like in the Midwest, sometimes sunlight can be less than ideal when you're filming. And so I want to work on ways to film that. Take that into account. Because the other thing with video content is a lot of. It's visual, it's video content. And so, you know, I have questions from people who are like, my videos aren't taking off. And it's very clear to me that it's a low quality video, it's blurry, it's low light, things like that. Maybe they added a filter and that stuff isn't going to work on Instagram. Right. Like, what tends to do best is those bright lights, things like that. Or even if you're in your kitchen, like having a studio light in there so you can clearly see what's going on and make it look really appetizing. So I think that's the other thing I'm going to really work on this year is figuring out a. The best setup for me that isn't so reliant on sunshine.

Yeah, totally. It's like, it's great when it's great and then it's not great a lot of times, especially in the winter here, it's.

Yeah.

Sunny days are more rare than they are common. So that's great. You know, one of the things that we constantly come back to on this podcast, we've talked about it before, we mentioned it here, is this idea of getting a tiny bit better every day forever. And I think with your Story. One of the things I want to point out is when we started, we talked about this idea of 2021. You started in 2021, you continued to show up, you continued to iterate. And in 2023, 2024, that's really when you started to break out. And what you experienced was, you know, if you look at that chart, it probably is kind of like a hockey stick, where it's two to three years of kind of trying to figure it out, and then you figured it out. And oftentimes I think people get to that two year mark, they get to that three year mark and they feel like, gosh, I'm just, I've been trying to do this and I'm. I'm just going to call it quits. And not that that's a bad thing, but for those who are in the middle of it, stick with it, continue to learn, continue to iterate, continue to find ways to improve. Because there are these opportunities that come down the line where you could break out and suddenly you could find something that clicks. So as we wrap up, what would your advice be to somebody who's in the midst of it? They're kind of in the stage of feeling like it's a grind. They're trying to figure out how to really lock it in. What would your advice be to people who are listening in that headspace?

One of my favorite terms that has taken off on social media is this idea that in order to be a great entrepreneur, you have to be delusional. You have to be delusional enough to believe that you can succeed in crazy amounts, right? That you can reach for the moon and reach for the stars. So I think that's what I really hope to push on to people, is that you need to be a little bit delusional and you need to have this inherent desire, I guess, to continually push because nobody else is gonna push you. Like, you can push yourself, you know, and there's gonna, like my husband, he told me, you know, to go learn Instagram because he believed in me. But it takes me doing that and continuing through, you know, eight, nine, ten months of being crushed.

Yeah, yeah, totally. And then to feel that and continue to show up and say, I'm gonna figure this out, I can do it, I know that I can. That's great. I love that. If people wanna follow along, Micah, with what you're up to, learn, my guess is Instagram is a good place to go, but also the site itself, joy to the food anywhere else that you.

Would point people, you can go to Pinterest or YouTube, but I'm definitely most active on Instagram. If you have questions you can shoot me a DM or send me an email.

Awesome. Micah, thanks so much for coming on and sharing your story.

Thank you.

Hey there, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team. Thank you so much for listening to that episode of the podcast. As always, if you enjoyed the episode, it makes a huge difference if you share it with your friends or community. Since we are kicking off a new month, I wanted to take a moment to highlight what will be going on in the Food Blogger Pro membership this February. This Thursday we will be publishing a brand new coaching call. Our coaching calls are when Bjork takes an hour to spend with a Food Blogger Pro member and the member submits three questions in advance and Bjork and the member will work through those three questions over the course of the coaching call. On Thursday, we're releasing a coaching call with Jessica from More Than Meatless Monday. As a reminder, you can watch the video replay of the coaching call on our site or on our members only podcast, Food Blogger Pro on the Go. Next Monday, on February 10th, we'll be hosting our monthly live Q and A. This Q and A will be with Casey Marquis and will be about all things SEO. Remember that you can always submit a question in advance. Last up in February on the 20th we will be releasing a new Quick Win course all about using ChatGPT as a food creator. We are really looking forward to everything we have going on in the membership this month. That's it for now. Hope you have a great week.

Sam.