Recent Makin' Bacon Food Blogging Articles - Page 12

In this episode we look at how to craft your own personal story, the best way to stand out in the crowded blogging space, and how you can take advantage of times of uncertainty to push yourself.

There are a TON of bloggers out there. There's also a ton of people that post pictures of food on Instagram, swap recipes on Facebook, and share ideas on Pinterest.

Trying to stand out in this crowd can be a HUGE challenge. There are different ways to go about it, but one that works across all platforms is sharing your story in a way that connects with the Fans you are looking for.

And today's guest is the perfect person to help us discover just how to do that.

She is a professional speaker, published author, and former high school speech teacher who now helps online business owners hone their message. She believes everyone has a story to tell, and she aims to help business owners craft theirs in such a way they authentically connect with their audience.

She has had the opportunity to share her own story on Ellen, the Today Show, and as a contestant on The Biggest Loser. So we all have a ton to learn from today's guest, Abby Rike from Your Message Matters.

Affiliate links are a great way to make money for your website and they're a good way to serve your fan's needs. However, when you use them, you need to be clear about when you're using them, so your fans know.

This isn't only good practice about being honest with your fans, which is something that's very important to me, but it's also the law. There are a few things you must do, and in a recent podcast of mine, I talked to Christen Evans, who is an affiliate guru.

She's an affiliate brand manager for some great brands, and she knows more about affiliate marketing than pretty much anyone I've ever met. Christen knows the best ways to effectively disclose that you use affiliate links.

A big part of blogging is not just driving traffic to your blog, but also to a specific page on it. There are many ways to drive traffic to a specific page, but one of the most effective we have found is using OptinMonster. We have used OptinMonster for several different purposes, and we wanted to share how you can use it to drive traffic to a page that you want to highlight with your Fans. OptinMonster is one of our favorite Tools of the Trade which we have used successfully to both build our email lists and to promote our products.

There is never enough time.

Once I started implementing this one method in my blogging process, it exponentially increased my efficiency. I've gotten more done, I've gotten better quality content out there, and I'm moving my blog forward much more quickly.

I'm going to show you how you can harness this superpower for yourself.

One of the things that food bloggers consistently run into is that there's not enough time to get everything done, we want to get done. It's just not enough time in the day.

There's too much that can go into blogging to ever accomplish all of it. But good news, I found something I consider a superpower and that's to reuse, reuse, and reuse.

Taking the same content, the same concepts, the same ideas and information, and reapplying them in different ways. It's the fastest way to grow your blog, get more content out, and save time.

A reader of mine recently wrote in with a question about how I approach moderating Facebook groups that I thought was worth sharing.

I tend to break group members down into 3 categories: 1) people that I like, know, and interact with a lot who I want to keep happy 2) jerks and trolls 3) everyone else. When they misbehave, I treat them all differently.

When most food bloggers want to start selling a product, they think about putting out a downloadable PDF for sale but that's not the best approach. I'm going to tell you why and tell you exactly what is, so you won't make the same mistake other people do.

Today I want to talk about something that always frustrates me. I get asked a lot by bloggers, "How do I increase the sales of my pdf book?" You know what the secret to that is? Stop trying to sell just a PDF book.

Putting out a cookbook can be this long, lonely process where everything is on your shoulders and you have to make sure it all comes together. It can be really hard, but it doesn't have to be that way. I'm going to share with you what I do when I want to put out a great cookbook that I'm really proud of but doesn't just fall on my shoulders.

Today I wanted to talk to you about a process I just recently went through: creating a collaborative cookbook.

Most cookbooks are singular type of adventures you go on by yourself. You come up with all these recipes, format them, put the book together, and then start trying to market and sell it.

Stop learning. That's my message today. It's currently holding you back and I'm going to tell you why.

I wanted to delve into some of the ways we hide when we don't want to put ourselves out there. In my Mastermind group we were recently talking about some of the different courses people have been taking and things that they're learning to do.

And one person is interested in putting out a master class. They're relaunching their business and they want to get some content out there so they can start to sell to people. It makes a lot of sense. They've already taken classes, gone through webinars, paid for courses online and read books, but they currently haven't created a single piece of content.

As you probably know by now, I'm a big Seth Godin fan and I have found value in a ton of his articles. One of the ones that has stuck with me over the years is his idea of creating two lists.

The first list has all the complaints you have, things you hate, unfair stuff that happened to you, and things that make you miserable. These are all perfectly valid observations of the world.

The second list has all the things you are grateful for, the breaks you've gotten, and the wonderful things in your life.

Both lists are equally valid, and both lists accurately reflect reality, but which do you want to focus on?

As I've been doing more and more "talking head" video work and started doing online podcast interviews I decided I needed to up the quality of the equipment I was using.

In an ideal world, I would have a high quality 4K video camera set up in a mini-studio with lightning and sound optimized for the space. However, I live in a small apartment (thanks New York City!), so my "office" is also the kitchen, greatly limiting what I can leave set up for any length of time.

Because of that, I searched for options that would maximize my video and audio, making it "professional" even though it's not "perfect". I'm currently very pleased with my latest setup and wanted to share what I did.