This is part of my Makin' Bacon podcast, you can check out all the episodes or subscribe on your favorite podcast player.
The worst thing that could happen to you is that what you're doing could work. What type of blog are you building? What type of job are you creating for yourself? I'm going to show you where you might be going wrong. And if so, how you can correct it and start building the type of blog that you want to work on.
This episode from the Makin' Bacon Podcast podcast is available on all your favorite podcast platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Overcast, and Google Podcasts.
The video of the interview is also available on the Makin' Bacon YouTube Channel.
We all know there's a thousand places that we could spend our time. Do we focus on Facebook, Pinterest, SEO, talking to Brands, creating recipes, putting content out, doing YouTube videos? There are a thousand different places competing for our time.
Recently I've heard a lot of people saying, "I've been spending all this time on keyword research and I really hate it, but I know it's super important". Or "I've been trying to put out YouTube videos because I know it's so important, but I really hate doing it".
It's interesting to me that people are trying to spend so much time on things they hate. Don't get me wrong, there is a base level that you need to do for a lot of the stuff. But there's a wide range between the minimum you need to do and spending hours and hours a week doing it.
I think it's worth taking a really hard look at what are the minimum amounts you need to put into these things and how much time are you actually spending.
It's important to have an Instagram account and post to it occasionally. But if you hate Instagram and you are putting things on there, then trying to put multiple posts on a day and spending all this time and energy trying to do it is counterproductive. Because what happens if you succeed? Have you thought about that?
If you are not a fan of Instagram but you spend all this time and energy building your Instagram base and now you're successful with a following on Instagram, that means you have to continually do more Instagram work!
Or if you hate SEO and keyword research but you build an entire site based on people coming in through keyword research. All you've done is create a job that you have to do more and more keyword research to keep it going. You've created a job doing something you don't like!
It's worth actively looking at these things and saying how much SEO do I need, because there is some amount. If you don't have your titles right, if you don't have the proper structure, if your site's really slow, that's all going to hurt you regardless of what your focus is. But spending hours a day, or even hours a week, doing keyword research if you don't enjoy it, is not helping you.
For example, from my own blog I really like doing cookbooks and putting stuff out there. Creating content brings me joy and it's something I love doing.
But at some point when I started putting out cookbooks, I realized I needed to do a lot more marketing, to do more sales pages, to really dive into a/b testing, and thoroughly research how my customers are coming in. And as I started to do that more and more I thought, "I'm not enjoying this! This is not something I like doing."
I don't mind doing a little bit of it but once I do a run through or two, and I've optimized the big hairy things, the low-hanging fruit, I get tired of it.
And it dawned on me that I was spending almost as much time trying to double my sales for a cookbook as it takes to put out another cookbook. I decided I'm just going to create more content.
Yeah, the content I'm putting out isn't being marketed as effectively as it could be. But you know what, I'm fine with that because I'm enjoying creating content and I'm enjoying my job more than if I was spending it just doing a lot of a/b testing and marketing research.
I think it's worth taking a look at the tasks you're currently doing and thinking to yourself, "What if these did work?" If this is successful and I drive huge numbers of people doing keyword research, I'm going to have to keep doing keyword research. Is that something I want to be doing long-term?
Maybe it is. I know people who love keyword research, it's right up their alley. Maybe they shouldn't be doing YouTube videos because they don't enjoy that. But look at where you're spending your time and energy and think, is this the direction I want my blog to go? Are these the readers that I want to be bringing in, the people I want to be working with?
Here's some more information if you want to dive deeper into the directions you can go and the ways you can become a successful food blogger. I talk about the most important thing to know about becoming successful and that's understanding where you want to go to.
Because when you understand where you're trying to get to, it's easier to see the path to get there. And you can be more efficient, you can spend time on the things that you enjoy, and you want to spend time on, knowing they're moving you closer to your goal!
What do you hate that you are spending too much time on? What do you wish you were spending more time on? Let me know in the Makin Bacon Facebook Group or the comments below.
Hi, I'm Jason Logsdon! I'm an adventurous home cook and the head writer and photographer for Amazing Food Made Easy. I grew my income to 6-figures by focusing on serving my Fans by providing massive value, and I want to help you do the same.
