How Kate Shungu Grew to 400k Sessions a Year from Pinterest by Using a Marketing Campaign

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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 Kate Xungu from the food blog. Gift of Hospitality Kate first started blogging in 2017 with no real focus or niche. In 2018 she rebranded to entertaining and hospitality but as you might imagine, had to make a pretty large pivot again during the summer of 2020. Since then she has settled into her niche of vintage recipes for modern cooks and thanks in part to narrowing down her niche, she was able to quickly grow to 50,000 sessions in the spring of 2021 and qualified for Mediavine. Kate has a background in marketing and in this interview Bjork and K Approaching your brand promotion via platform specific year long marketing campaigns and how to think about marketing as investing your time versus spending your ad dollars. Kate shares more about her year long Pinterest marketing campaign and how she spent a year devoted to growing her Pinterest traffic and how it majorly paid off for her. Pinterest is now her biggest traffic driver and has kept her afloat through many Google algorithm updates. Kate shares more about her keyword research strategy on Pinterest, her pinning schedule and everything you would need to know if you wanted to run a similar campaign for your own food blog. Kate Also shares more about the year long campaign she ran for Facebook and her success stories on both of these platforms will be really inspiring to anyone looking to diversify their traffic sources away from Google. There are lots of practical steps and how tos in this interview. It's a really useful one and we know you're gonna get a lot out of it, so I'll just let Bjork take it away.

Kate, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to talk marketing today.

Yeah, we're going to be talking about marketing these campaigns that you've done, some success that you've had on specific platforms and growing your following on those platforms. But before we get into it, let's talk about the switch of the niche. And you made kind of an update in the approach that you were taking with your site and your site content that in the early stages really helped you grow some traffic and to establish yourself as a creator to grow your following. So talk to us about what happened happened and the benefit of changing up your niche.

Yeah, absolutely. So I started the blog in 2017 under my name and my focus was whatever I wanted to focus on. I had no focus before realizing that I really didn't need one. And so in 2018 I switched the URL to giftofhospitality.com I wanted to focus on dinner parties, entertaining, having people over, providing recipes for people, giving people ideas for hosting in their home. And I did that for about two years. It grew pretty slowly. But I was working part time, I had a baby in there and so it was like kind of that the thing I did on the weekends or during nap time or whatever else. And so I was hovering around 11,000 sessions in 2020 and I get a call from my boss from my marketing job that and this is March of 2020. We all know what happened then that he would be able to make this next payroll, but the one after that he wasn't going to be able to make. And so I was working in events based marketing at the time Pandemic hit and that's what happened. So I was out of a job and then I had a blog that was focused on entertaining and dinner parties. And in March of 2020 no one was having people over for dinner.

So it was both of the things. It was like the side hustle that you were working on. And it was also your day to day job being both being like event and gathering people focused.

Yes, exactly. So it took a turn, the world took a turn and I knew I needed a PIVOT and so I spent that summer really thinking about it. And my grandpa had recently given my grandma's old recipe books. So these were those church cookbooks that they use for fundraisers, the Spiral Bound. You know, everyone contributed a recipe, and he had given me those. And then her recipe binder, which were full of typewriter recipes and handwritten recipes, and really just a treasure trove of, you know, these recipes she'd made for years. And so I got to looking through those in the cookbooks and thought, you know, these women, mostly women who contributed these recipes, these were their star recipes. These were the recipes that they fed their families that they had for holidays. Like, no one wanted, you know, to try. You know, you didn't want anyone thinking you were a bad cook, right? So you submitted your best recipes. And so I got to thinking what, you know, great recipes these would be and that there would possibly be an interest. And so in the fall of 2020, I pivoted and I came up with a new tagline called Vintage Recipes for Modern Cooks. So I take recipes from the 50s, 60s, 70s, and some from the 80s and test them from these recipe books, test them, find the best ones, and publish them on my site. And so it was the fall of, let's see, 20, 20, 20 that I started that. And in the spring of 2021, I grew to about 50,000 sessions where I was able to qualify for Mediavine. And granted, can I all. Can I attribute it completely to the switching my niche? Maybe not entirely, because it does take Pinterest and Google a few years to get the ball rolling on your site and gaining traction there. But I will say from what I was able to focus on my perspective, I was able to start running instead of just kind of pitter pattering around and doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I had a focus and I could really run in one direction.

It's almost like for people who are creative, sometimes it's really helpful to have constraints because those constraints result in more creativity and more focus and more traction, as opposed to the, you know, kind of boiling the ocean approach where you could kind of create content about anything. Suddenly it's like potentially more difficult to create content because you're like, well, maybe I'll do some keyword research and see where the opportunity is. Or I kind of like this recipe, so I'll publish that. Neither of those things are bad, but it's just very different than having a niche where you can say almost like a process. And my guess is, in your case, it's like looking through a lot of these old cookbooks. Or maybe it's, you know, the church cookbook from First Baptist Church in Cambridge, Minnesota. Like, we have one of those sitting in our kitchen cupboards and suddenly you can start to say, okay, Great, I see 50 recipes that would be good candidates and can kind of move forward with that. To your point, maybe there's some traction from having multiple years of content, but usually what we find, especially in 2025, is that you need to have some positioning as a brand, which we all are, that people would look at and say, oh, this is what you're about. You know, A good example is Food Blogger Pro. If somebody's starting a food blog, they're like, oh, I know Food Blogger Pro. I should. You should check that out. That's a good resource for you. As opposed to something more generic like LinkedIn learning. It's like, well, there's a lot of things you can learn Microsoft Word and you can learn photography on LinkedIn Learning. But if you get really focused, it's easier for people to share about it. It's almost like a marketing position that you're taking. Can you talk specifically about the recipes? Are you changing them at all or tweaking them? Or is it just like as written, you're going through and, you know, adding some, maybe context around it, some pictures and whatnot? How much are you changing the actual original recipe?

Yeah, so I try to stay true to the original recipe for the most part, but most of the recipes are a little vague. It might say, you know, for a cake, bake until done. So it certainly needs a temperature. It needs some testing on the time. A lot of the recipes might need the addition of salt. They just, you know, it wasn't added for whatever reason or just little tweaks here and there. So. But I. My goal is for someone to come upon the site and find the recipe that their mom made, their aunt made, their grandma made, and make it and be able to say, that tastes exactly like mom's is the goal. And so I try to stay true as much as possible.

That's great. I love that. And so you had this focus. You were able to get to the point where I think it's an unlock for a lot of creators, which is the point where you qualify for some ad company. It's either a sponsor comes to you if you're growing a social following and says, hey, we have a budget of 3,000, 5,000, 10,000, whatever it is, we will pay you to create content that's One of the unlocks or if you are publishing to content to a site, somebody comes to you and says, or you get to the point, you know, fifty thousand, a hundred thousand page views where you're able to qualify for one of these ad networks. Can you talk about that moment specifically? Like once you qualified, you turn that on. Is that when you started to see, hey, this could be a thing that I could, that I could really get after and build into a sustainable business?

Absolutely. And honestly, it was always the goal. I had had another food blogger mentor me and he mentioned that this could be really a sustainable business for someone who wanted, like I did, to stay home with my kids and have a business. And so that has been the goal all along, to be able to balance those two. And so actually I qualified for mediavine two weeks before my second son was born. So it did work out very. But it's, you know, it's very much the, the hustle that a lot of bloggers do of like, you know, you're working during the fringe hours or you know, nap times or after work or after bedtimes or you know, weekends and things like that.

Yeah, it's one of the great things, you know, if you look at the spectrum of what work could be, there's the extremely rigid work, it's like an office job where you have to check in at a certain time and be done at a certain time, you're watching the clock or like, you know, a manufacturing line maybe kind of as the ultimate example of one end of the spectrum. And then for a lot of us who are doing this type of work, it's the other end where it's like, it's work, it's effort for sure, and there's a lot of it, but the flexibility is off the charts. Like you can fit it in to the margins of your life or if you have, if you're in a season of life where maybe you don't have kids and you know, you don't have a lot of day to day responsibilities, you can just work a lot if that's what you're wanting to do and still do that in a portable way where you can, you know, show up on vacation and you could work for three hours in the morning or you know, you could work on the airplane, whatever it might be. It's one of the great benefits of this type of work and also that you are building a thing that is in itself valuable. Like you have this valuable asset which is this website and it's not passive. But you could not work for a week and still earn income. So you get to this point, you're starting to make sustainable money. You're able to see this is, you know, 50,000 page views that translates depending on your RPM. It might be, you know, $500 or a thousand dollars. Like you. You can start to play the numbers game a little bit and see, if I start to increase this, if I start to get more traffic, if I start to figure out ways to get more people to the site, I can earn more. And you also have a background in marketing. So talk to me about the strategy that you started to implement at that point where you saw there was these opportunities, you saw you had some traction, and then you said, okay, where can I find additional ways to grow the traffic to my site?

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I talk about this concept of marketing campaigns. It's. I'm not, you know, pulling back some magic curtain in the advertising world. Like, we can see this all around us. Just the way that if you think of your favorite brand and you think of the way that they advertise to you, it's really only one or two channels that they get to you. So, for example, like, what's the last place you saw McDonald's ad? Bjork.

Oh, man. It would have been probably on tv.

Tv. Okay, tv. Or if you're driving down the highway, you might see a billboard, right? Like, those are the two ways that they advertise you. They're not necessarily in your inbox. I'm sure they have some sort of email system, but they're not in your inbox, you know, four times a day. They're not all over social media advertising to you. And so if you, you know, contrast that to, with, let's say, a clothing company, they are all over your inbox, and they are all on social media advertising to you. And so. But you can see, like, that clothing company is not advertising to you on TV or, you know, doing billboards. So these companies have each figured out what the fastest way, the best way to reach you that makes the most sense for them and that converts for them. And so I knew that Pinterest had a lot of opportunity, right? I had heard from other bloggers that there was traffic to be had from Pinterest. And so in 2022, I decided to focus on Pinterest. That was my marketing campaign, right? Because food bloggers don't have ad dollars. You know, the clothing companies, McDonald's, they have the ad dollars. We have our time. And so with. With our ad dollars or our time, like where are we making the investment? So I decided I'm going to invest heavily in Pinterest that year. So I pinned every day. I got new pin templates, I listened to podcasts, I took a course, I started doing those idea pins that they wanted us to do in 2021, 2022, you know, that didn't have the links thinking, well, let me just see what happens from it. So but as a result of this year of work, so the December before I started, I started with 41,000 sessions from Pinterest that month of December. The following December I had 87,000 sessions from Pinterest. So more than doubled that amount from comparing December to December. And then in addition, I got invited to their creator rewards program, which is no longer in existence, unfortunately. But I was invited pretty early on, presumably because I was doing these idea pins, and then made another $20,000 from that, that year from that rewards program. And so this success from that year long investment has really continued over the course of the next couple years. In fact, this past December I had almost 400,000 sessions from Pinterest. And granted that involved a pin going viral over Thanksgiving. And so I think some of it would, you know, would attribute to that. And so I don't want to claim that as like an ongoing number, like a normal number for me, but say it's the, how it has climbed steadily since is a testament to that year that I invested in it and that, you know, once you spend that time on it and you know, working heavily on it, those, the next year you can replicate that success without working so hard too, right? Like you figured out your strategy and how you're going to do it quicker. You can even teach it to a va, which I did in the following year, so she could execute on that strategy so I could work on something else.

It's, it's the, what I love about it is it's these daily actions that you are taking. It's taking a course, it's reading even like reading the documents that a platform's releasing on best practices or their creator hub, right? All of these platforms, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, they all have these hubs where they're like, here's how to be successful on our platform. And taking time to do that. To your point, it's like that's the investment you're making, you're taking your time, which there's a cost to that and you're investing it. And the return on it can be as it was in your case, not only through that creator program. But also just through the traffic attributed to it, literally tens of thousands or potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars from the acquisition of knowledge and the implementation of that knowledge within your business. So can you talk to me what it looked like for you as a mom who was doing, you know, early stage, you had young kids, were in this stage. We have a four year old and a six year old. So we're kind of coming out of it. What did it look like to actually create content consistently, to learn about this, to create systems with it and to stay on top of all the other things? You know, you're in your house, people are listening, you have a very organized house. It's not chaotic. Like to stay on top of all these other things as well. Talk to us about the how that fit into your day to day in a way where you not only were able to sustain, but also to grow pretty significantly.

Yeah. And to your point, it was really consistency of carving out the time that, okay, during nap time, I'm going to spend the hour and a half or hopefully it was that long, right?

Yeah. It's always hour and a half or 15 minutes, correct?

Yes.

Yeah.

One wake window or one sleep window or three. So it was the consistency of taking that time. My husband helped an awful lot, I will say. He would take the kids on walks when he got home from work. I would work after bedtime, I would work on the weekends. So it was really just fitting it in. I realized that I could browse Pinterest. This was back when I was actually when I was focusing on Facebook the following year, which we can get into in a little, little bit that I was looking for like memes and, you know, other things that people used to post on Facebook, repost on Facebook. And so I realized I could do that while I was rocking a sleeping child or, you know, there was ways to fit it in. But it came from if I want to do this, if I want to make this work, I need to put in the time and effort required, even if I have, you know, a million other things. And so not saying I did this perfectly right, like, housework certainly went out the window some days and things like that. But if I. My goal was to stay home with my kids and so I needed a business to get me to the point where I could do that.

Yeah. And do you feel like at this point pretty comfortable in that? Like, do you feel like mission accomplished?

I do.

Yep.

I sent my youngest off to preschool and our like half day preschool here is like a decently long half day. And So I sent him off in the fall, and then my oldest is in kindergarten, and it's working. I can go pick him up every day.

And that's awesome. Congratulations.

Do the fairy. To gymnastics and swimming and the whole bit.

That's great. And have this successful business that you're running alongside that. And I think so so often. One of the things that I try and bring up a lot on the podcast is like, we are each defining our own game and what success looks like for us. And for some people, success looks like you are 1000% in on your business, and that's what you want to do. You want to become famous and known and make as much money as possible, and that's great. But for other people, it's like, I want to have something that I spend the least amount of time on, and I'm still able to just pay the mortgage. That's all that I want to do, is pay the mortgage. Right. And so that's somebody's game. And for other people, it's like, I want to be a business owner. I want to grow a thing. I want to have success with it. I want to, you know, really hustle. But I don't want to hustle to the degree that it eats into time when my kids would be at home. Like, all of us are playing a different game. And so part of it is just defining what game you're playing and then going after it. And I love hearing from you that your goal was, I want to have this sustainable business in service of me being able to be fully present with my kids and be home with them. And it's super helpful to hear all the different perspectives of how different people are showing up, and that's awesome. So congrats on being able to get there and continuing to grow. So you talked about Pinterest this season of Pinterest. I know for a lot of people, they're like, I can't figure out Pinterest or Pinterest used to work really well and now it's not working well. How have you found today in 2025? You know, spring of 2025, we're recording this in May. How have you found Pinterest to be performing for you?

It is my highest traffic driver, and it's kept me afloat through the Google algorithm changes. I get hit really hard in the March of 2024 update. And so what I found most recently is that keywords are making a difference for me.

On Pinterest?

Yeah, on Pinterest. Yep. So as an example, there's A creamy cucumber salad that has it's like cucumbers, onions, and like a sour cream and dill dressing. It might be a Midwestern specialty, it might be a little bit less regional, but it's a summery salad made with cucumbers. And so if you think about the ways you can position it on Pinterest, you know, cucumbers with sour cream and dill, sour cream cucumbers, cucumber and onion salad, creamy cucumber salad. There's all these different ways, and I've had success using different keywords for different pins or for example, for the same.

Recipe, for different keywords words. Yep, yep. And so this is what you're getting into is an important reminder that Google is a search platform, YouTube is a search platform. Pinterest is definitely a search platform. But we don't often think about SEO as it relates to Pinterest. But it's interesting to hear you say that's a huge approach for you, is thinking strategically around keywords on Pinterest and how your content correlates to those keywords and getting the maximum coverage for the different iterations of a certain keyword that exist as it relates to a certain recipe. Is that right?

Exactly. Yep. And as another example, I have this old fashioned egg casserole, and it's made with sliced sandwich bread, like Wonder Bread. And so I put, I made a pin that said egg casserole with bread. And it turns out this is the recipe that a lot of people are looking for if they're looking for this particular recipe. But they remembered that one unique ingredient. Right. Because you can make a casserole with hash browns, you can make it with tater tots, you can make it with, you know, different kinds of bread, but they remembered that it's the sliced sandwich bread. And so if that's what they're searching for, I'm, you know, showing up there for, for what they're looking for.

Can you talk about how you go about doing that? Because I think in people hear that, they're like, oh, that makes sense. Like you have different keywords attached to a recipe. People click on it, they go to the recipe. The recipe name might not be an exact match for what they were searching within Pinterest, but it's obviously gonna be close enough because you wouldn't do like a, you know, corn casserole keyword if it's not corn casserole. But can you talk about what that looks like, that process? How many pins are you doing for a certain recipe? How are you Coming up with the ideas for what those keywords might be. What does that process look like?

Sure. So for each post I have any number of pins. I maybe do three or four off the bat and schedule them in three or four week intervals. But first I check and see if there's one thing like one ingredient in that recipe that's different. So for example, with the egg casserole, it's the bread that makes it stand out. So you can look for that. Otherwise I go to Pinterest and just go to the search bar at the top and instead of selecting your pins, search all pins and then just start typing and see what comes in. So, you know.

So they auto suggest.

Exactly. Auto suggest. So you know, you type in salmon patties or like an old fashioned, an old fashioned cake or you know, something like that. And sometimes it'll, it will give me ideas oftentimes.

And you take those ideas and those become the keywords. Now when you say a keyword, what does that mean within the context of Pinterest, like how you're crafting the pin.

So I would put that item. So let's say it's a creamy cucumber salad that would be in the text of the pin, that would be in the title, and I would somehow weave it into the description as well. In addition to how you can pitch keywords on Pinterest from their, you know, dropdown menu. So you would choose cucumbers, you would choose sour cream, you would choose, I don't think dill's currently a keyword, but choose as many ingredients as you can from their list of keywords too.

Got it. And, and can you talk about the image? I know there's been over the last decade plus all different ways to create images on Pinterest. Are you seeing any common themes with the best type of image, of images that you are creating in terms of length and layout and text and all of that?

Not a big theme other than I would say my like regular size, what 1200 by 800 pins do maybe a little bit better than the slightly longer pins, but for the most part it's still pins from two and three years ago that are still doing the best. If I looked at my top 10.

It'S just, it's such an interesting thing with Pinterest. Like it's similar to YouTube in that way, where you can create a piece of content that can continue to serve you or a blog for that matter, for a long period of time. And so different than a platform like Facebook or Instagram where there's the lifespan of the content is much shorter. And it's one of the great things about Pinterest. It also takes time to build that up and to get that momentum and then to get something that catches. So the general process would be. Well, and this would be a question. When you are creating a piece of content, are you almost doing like keyword research on Pinterest before creating it? Like, a lot of people do keyword research with a tool like, you know, key search or ahrefs and saying, hey, there's an opportunity here. Are you doing any of that within Pinterest or are you just creating inspired content knowing that people are gonna come across it and you might be interested in it? What does the content origination process look like for you?

Yeah, that actually comes from these old cookbooks. I look and see what recipes keep showing up, and I figure out that these were probably some of the more popular recipes. And so I, you know, make the spreadsheet and I still put it through KeySearch and everything like that and make sure I'm not, you know, going after something crazy or not leaving behind a keyword that I could use, you know, for my size blog that that would work well in terms of competition, but I use that and I actually use Facebook as a little bit of a. To create these ideas for posts. And so part of my Facebook strategy is to post photos of these church cookbooks, the uncopyrighted ones, some that are copyrighted and I have to say, interesting. But the uncopyrighted ones, and there's quite a few, it gains a lot of traction on Facebook and I can start to see what people are interested in and what resonates with people, what people are commenting on. And then I think, oh, this must have been a popular recipe.

That makes sense. So you're. And I'm just looking through the Facebook page right now. So you have these cookbooks. Where are you finding these, by the way? Like. Cause, you know, we have like three maybe at home. Are you sourcing them from ebay? Finding them at like estate sales?

Estate sales is a. Is a great one. I have been unfortunate enough to that family and friends find out that I'm doing this and they are more than happy to give me their find purpose for their old. Yep. When their parents pass and they're cleaning out their house and they, you know, hand me all the cookbooks, I'm happy to take em and, you know, honored that they thought of me. But for the most part it's been family and friends. But I Have well over a hundred of these.

Got it. That makes sense. Like because of the niche, you always are starting with something that would have existed within one of these old cookbooks, uh, then from there refining a little bit. Okay, so there's a rhubarb custard pie recipe, you know, or easy Southern pecan pie, maybe there's a little bit of tweaking around like what you're actually calling it. You go through the process, you document it and then it's. This is also keyword research. And, and I think people sometimes forget you can use keyword research to refine something that you know you're already going to create as opposed to pick the thing that you will create. And so for you, it's the keyword research around Pinterest. Looking at all the different ways that it might be, you know, if you type in rhubarb pie, there might be easy rhubarb pie or rhubarb custard pie or rhubarb. You know, all these different iterations that you would get. Do you just create those, put those into a little note that then you're using as like your Pinterest content creation note?

That's exactly it. Yep. That I can.

And then one of the things that you said is, you know, you might have 3, 4, 5 different ideas of how you would name it and then schedule those three, four, five weeks apart. So are you. You'd schedule one of them and then three weeks later you'd schedule another pin of the same recipe but with a different name.

Exactly. Yep. And that is just based on some documentation I read. It might have been back in 2022. I don't even know. I don't want to keep it. Best pract. But yeah, that's just the strategy I have just to space it out a little bit and to be sure that I am coming ahead of holidays too. Right. Like I pinned something in early October that went viral over Thanksgiving. And so that jump, that's what, seven weeks that in between that to give it a head start to.

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Pinterest, that pretty much sums it up. Other than just the consistency of I still pin two pins a day. It's just the, it has worked in the past. It is continuing to work and continuing to grow. And granted these nostalgic recipes, the appetite for nostalgia is really high over the holidays and so there's some pretty, pretty strong peaks and pretty low valleys, to be honest, in this particular niche. But the year after I did Pinterest, I switched my focus to Facebook and I took a year and I focused for the most part on Facebook. I knew there was some traffic potential there. I had heard this. I wasn't sure if it would work for me, but I figured it was worth a shot. So I thought I'd give it another year. So I started posting multiple times a day. Consistency again. I tried all kinds of sharing. Like I was talking about sharing memes. I don't do that anymore. But you know, my own content, others content. I almost stopped in June. I was getting absolutely nowhere.

I remember June of last year.

Oh, sorry, June of 2023.

Okay.

Yep, this was the year of year after that. I did Pinterest. I did Facebook the year later. So 2023, I was getting nowhere. I had like 2,000 followers. I was getting like six or seven thousand sessions a month and it just, it wasn't going anywhere. And so my husband encouraged me to just, just stick with it. I decided to give it to a. Give it a year. So I gave it a year and something changed into September. It just like, you know, probably an algorithm change, but it started growing really rapidly. I ended that year at about you know, 50,000 session or I'm sorry, 50,000 followers and tripled my number of sessions, which, you know, isn't huge from a traffic perspective, but it's, you know, it was about a little over 20,000 sessions a month. But I realized Facebook and now I'm at like 118,000 followers roughly. But it continues to be where I can connect with my readers, where I get ideas from. Like I was talking about earlier of posting those pages and seeing what's resonating with people, what people remember, what, you know, might be popular. I have a lot of people send me things to post. They send me their, you know, mom's handwritten recipe card for Swedish meatballs and then a photo of the Swedish meatballs that they made last night and say, can you post this on the page? Because it's not a group, it's a page, a business page. And so I'm more than happy to do that. People are happy to share. And it's where I've really found I can engage with readers. So that was less of a traffic growing experiment and more of like a branding experiment that year. But I did get invited to the bonus program on Facebook that year and so that has helped certainly weather the storm of the algorithm update in 2024, because that's continue.

And can you talk about, you know, we had a interview with Britta Britnell and she talks about food with feeling, really focusing on Facebook, growing that as her following there. She also talked about the benefit of this as like a monetization platform, not just from the traffic that you can send, which, you know, you talked about, I think you said, did you say like 20,000 sessions that you're able to get, which you can kind of shrug at that, but if you use is a 50rpm, RPMs are all over the place. But just for easy math, it's like that's an extra thousand dollars a month. And you know, if the other thing that I'm really interested in is the world of real estate and like if you bought a property that produced a thousand dollars a month, like that's going to be an expensive purchase. You know, you might be paying 150,000 for that property to make you a thousand dollars a month. And so not that the value exchange is the same, but one of the things I think about isn't just like, what is the money? What is the amount of money that you're creating for your business? But also like, if you were to get that somewhere else, what would you have to do to get that? And you'd have to work, you know, depends on how much you're getting paid. But if you're getting paid, you know, $50 an hour, you'd have to work, work five hours a week, or, you know, if you bought a residential property, you'd have to spend $150,000 to get that. And so I think there's a ton of value that we are creating in these little incremental things that add up over time. And so anyways, just to shine a light on that, like, how important that actually is from a business perspective and how valuable it is, obviously there's fluctuations. It can go away as easy as it can come, potentially, but still very, very valuable. So can you talk about the monetization program within Facebook? You got invited into it. What does that look like? Is there any predictability around how much revenue that might produce?

It's about as predictable as the algorithm. That is to say, not very, but I have noticed. So on average, I probably make about $2,000 a month from it. It could be 600. It could be maybe 4,000, depending on the month. And it, you know, the holiday time does a little bit better for me, but it's. It's just the consistency of posting again that gets me there, because you never know it's gonna be a success.

How often are you posting?

Four times a day.

Okay. Yeah, I think Britta said she's posting eight times a day. And then what types of content are you posting that?

Yeah, it's partially my content. So two posts per day are just photos with the link to the recipe, and then the other two are the photos of these uncopyrighted church community cookbooks.

Yep. Which I'm sure if people see one that really is nostalgic for them or resonates with them, it can become something like, you see a lot of people sharing this, like, 22 shares on the chocolate cake mix or, you know, chocolate cake recipe, 45 shares on the strawberry salad. You know, it's like. Like, that's really fun for people. And I can imagine people getting really into that and enjoying seeing some of those. So Facebook, when you think of it, you know, could be something that's producing 2, 3, $4,000 of revenue for your business by posting four times a day, having a system around it, having a process around it. And it goes back to what we talked about is, like, developing expertise and opinion around a platform and then creating a system to show up and do that every day. And you also talked about bringing in a VA to help with some of that. So at what point did you make a decision? Hey, I'm ready to pass this off to somebody. And how much are you paying attention to that process once you pass it off?

Yeah, great question. So it was my youngest, his last year home before he started preschool. I was like, I can't keep doing this. We're running around everywhere. Brother's in school. I was just all over the place, and it just wasn't sustainable. So we started. It was just five hours a week, but it was enough for her to make quite a few pins. And the pins for the week, basically about 14 or 15 pins, and then to schedule most of the Facebook content. And so I still sourced the ideas for her, the pages of the church cookbooks, but she went ahead and did all the captions and scheduling and everything else. And so it was because I had put these systems in place and had done the work over the past two years. It was a strategy at that point that I could easily pass off to her with a quick loom video. Here's how you do it. And she could replicate it.

Yeah, loom is great. I think a lot of people are familiar with it. If you're not. Loom.com, we use it all the time. Super helpful for not having to write out a document or a process, but just press record and send it over to somebody going back to Facebook. So. So can you talk about how that functionally works with Facebook? There's the monetization platform. And then what? Like, you get invited, you get accepted, and then you just start posting on Facebook and get paid?

Basically, you have to, you know, opt in. You get the invitation, and they might send you an email. They might not. I think I stumbled upon it in one of the. The, you know, professional suites or something. I can't remember how I found out that I was invited. But, you know, you clicked opt in and then it starts going. And you get. You get paid every month.

Yep. And then are you posting any video content or is it all images?

Almost all images. It's. The reels don't do very well for me on Facebook.

Yep. And then is that true on Pinterest as well? Are you posting any video content?

I have found video just does not convert for me. It's. Yeah, it never shows up in the.

Top, you know, 50 pins, but images continue to do well. I also heard people talking about looking at what performed well on Pinterest and then taking some of that and using that as inspiration for Facebook. Did you see that to be true as well? Or do you notice any correlation to a recipe and an image that does well On Pinterest also doing well on.

Facebook, I have not noticed any correlation. It seems to be, you know, whatever you think is going to happen is the opposite.

Sure.

Right. This is gonna be great. And then it goes nowhere. And then this, like, random thing that you just thought to change a keyword on does does wonderfully. So it's hard to tell.

There's something about. And it goes back to what you're saying, consistency. And you're not gonna be able to do it by publishing once a week because you have to have a certain amount of frequency on a platform like Facebook or Pinterest in order to have something that kind of pops off and does well, but different than a platform like Instagram where you're not gonna. You're probably not gonna wanna post like 8 times a day just because it's a different platform and it works a little bit differently. So tell me about how you view your business. Pinterest, you've talked about as the most important traffic source. But when, where you allocate your time, where you see the best return on that time, can you talk about how you prioritize things?

Sure. So Pinterest and Facebook are. Well, Pinterest is my top traffic driver and Facebook is in the top five. And so I post one new post per week. I update several posts per week. And then I took back over from my VA Facebook. And so I do the scheduling of that every week.

Was that because you just had more time to do it? That time was found. And so that's the thing that you did. Took back over, correct?

Yep. Once my youngest went to school and so I was. That's kind of how I structure my week, is the new post updating old posts. I still do some freelance work because I enjoy it. It's for a company with not vintage recipes. So I can make, you know, air fryer, whatever, or instant pot, whatever. And it provides some creativity for me to be able to work outside the box of vintage recipes.

That's great. Yeah. And we often talk about this idea of like building your ideal job. And I think for a lot of people to do a type of content or to work with, even to work with a team like so many of us are working on our own or in a silo. And to be able to then have these instances where we're working with a team and alongside other people is so beneficial. So I'm curious to hear, you know, as things are right now, if all of this were to go away and you had to start today, what are the things that you would be doing that you feel like would be the best return, let's say, given the amount of time that you have. So it's the same amount of time every day, every week, but you're having to start from scratch. How would you do it knowing what you know and knowing what you've seen perform well for your content?

Yeah, I would be super specific and super strategic in focusing on just a few things because I think at first I was all over the place, right. I was doing Pinterest and Facebook and Instagram and trying to make video and doing all kinds of new posts, as many as I could, and updating posts when that became a thing too. And so it was a little chaotic because there's so many things you can do. And so I think figuring out my niche and figuring out, like, I've developed an avatar for my ideal customer. And so she's a woman. She is in her 60s or 70s, she's retired or almost retired. I've named her Judy just because I have several followers named Judy who fit this avatar. But she has a little bit more time on her hands and she's on Facebook several times a day. She does not have TikTok and therefore, as a business, I am not on TikTok either. But she's on Facebook and so am I. And I think about her when I'm creating these recipes and thinking, is this something Judy would make? It makes it very easy to, let's say, pass on what you think might be a really juicy keyword. Like if you find one for, you know, gluten free something or instant pot, whatever. Right. It looks really good. But like, Judy maybe is not making that. She might not even have an instant pot. And so I'm able to focus really quickly. And so if I were starting over, it would be fine. It would be to find that audience, figure out that avatar, that person. I'm marketing to figure out figuring out what platforms they are on and really digging into those.

That's great. I love that. And what I love about it is it's user focused, it's reader focused, it's starting with the person that you're going after and then thinking about how do they use the Internet, where are they showing up on the Internet, what type of content resonates with them, what kind of content do they want to see, and then eventually getting to you as the actual creator of that content and saying, okay, how am I going to create this content in a way that resonates with that person that I've picked as my Target market, which is so great. We often talk about what we are doing. What our job is, is we are creating content, but then we are marketing that content. Especially if the content is kind of the end of the funnel. Like if we don't have a product we're selling, if we're not encouraging people to sign up for a course or a class or whatever it might be, we're just just marketing content. And from that content, we're working with a brand or, you know, ad network. We need to figure out marketing as it relates to our content. And so it's really cool to hear you reflect on not only some of the key components of marketing, like figuring out your avatar, but then also thinking about, to call back to what you were talking about before McDonald's. You know, as an example, what are the channels that are going to be most effective for me to market to the people that I want to reach? And if you do that and you're strategic about it, what you'll find is if you're creating content for Gen Z, like Facebook maybe isn't the best place. If you're creating content for somebody who's in their 60s or 70s, Facebook probably is a good platform. And so you have these decisions that you are able to make that help to remove the analysis paralysis or the overwhelm around like, well, there's 17 different platforms and I'm trying to post to all of them. It's like, well, there's probably two or three that are actually really effective for you and you should focus on those and even focus on one of those until you really get it down. Which is a huge takeaway for me as I hear about your story. So super inspiring to hear anything else that you would want to share as we kind of come to close out that you feel like it's been important with your journey.

Yeah, I would say I get this a lot when I'm talking to other people and something I worry about. But it's, I think as bloggers, we get scared to over promote our content. Right. But no one's mad when you walk outside and you see that McDonald's billboard. No one's mad that it's been there for a month. Right. Because you might not want an egg McMuffin today, but maybe you'll want one in five days, which is why it's up there for a while. And so similarly, if you have recipes that you really like that you're really proud of, your readers, like they have, you know, hundreds of five star reviews, you know, they're A slam dunk. Keep promoting it. And don't think, oh, I posted it a month ago, I'm not gonna post it again. Or I put it in an email three weeks ago. Because three weeks ago I maybe didn't want that 13 by 9 cake recipe, but I'm hosting in a couple weeks and I'm just starting to think about that party and maybe I do want that 13 by 9 cake recipe. And so your reader might not be ready for you in that moment, but the more they see it pop up, they think, oh, this must be a good one. And it might just hit them at the right time. So I would just encourage you, you to, you know, reuse that footage for reels to, you know, use different photos if you're posting something on Facebook again. Or you can use what your, what your readers are are saying about a recipe, you know, as different marketing copy. You can. There's great.

Yeah. If they leave a comment and the comment's positive to use that as kind of social proof within your writing.

Yep, exactly. Yeah. There's so many ways to remarket a piece of content and you can see other people do it and take notes and think of different ways to do it yourself. But I think especially the recipes that you know are good and if you want to be known for something, you gotta shout it from the rooftops.

Yeah. Play your hits. Right. It's like if you have these hit songs, you gotta play em and that can be one of the most beneficial things. It's been a reminder for me. There's been multiple interviews that I've done over the last few months where people are talking about strategically reposting, not reposting in the context of a blog only, although that as well. Or updating, but on social like in email, like going back to these hits that you have and finding the rhythm around repromoting those and remarketing those. Because in our world they don't go stale. Like they'll be seasonal probably, but even more so a reason to bring that up and to mention it every season if you have something that really works well in a certain season. So.

Right, exactly.

Kate, that's awesome. It's been super fun to hear about your story. Congratulations on your success. Can you talk about where people can get ahold of you? My guess is Facebook, Pinterest and your site. But other ways that people might be able to follow along with what you're up to. So we can link to those in the show notes?

Yeah, absolutely. So giftofhospitality. Com, you can find me @giftofhospitality on Facebook, Pinterest, and I do have an Instagram too. I just don't focus on it.

Great. That's awesome. Kate. Thanks so much for coming on.

Thanks for having me.

Hey there. This is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team and thank you so much for listening to that episode. We really appreciate it. If you liked this episode or enjoy the show, we would really appreciate you leaving a review or rating wherever you live. Listen to your podcast episodes. Ratings and reviews help get the show in front of new listeners and help us grow our little show into something even bigger. We read each and every review and it makes us so happy to hear when you're enjoying the podcast or what you would like us to improve or change in upcoming episodes. All you have to do is find the Food Blogger Pro podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, whether it's on Apple or Spotify or another player, and enter a rating and review. While you're there, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss a new episode. We really appreciate it so much and it makes such a huge difference for our show. So thanks in advance and that's all we have for you today. So have a great week.

Sam.