This article is a part of my FREE Fan Focused Blogging Course. If you want to discover how to grow your blog while serving your fans, then my course is exactly what you're looking for.
Welcome to lesson 3 of my free Fan Focused Blogging course! Today we are going to be talking about how to find solutions to your fans' problems.
In the last lesson you learned more about how to find the problems your Fans are actually having, and you wrote down a bunch of problems you found. And now that you know what they are struggling with, you can start to find solutions.
For this step, I like to pick the top 3 to 6 problems that were repeated again and again and for each one of those, brainstorm how I can solve that problem.
From the simple to the complex, each problem will have multiple solutions. Think of as many as you can for each problem, and write them all down.
It may be a single blog post or video, up through dedicated cookbooks, video courses, or you flying across the country to stand in their kitchen with them. Write them all down. These are your potential money makers in each area.
This is not a time to be shy or censor yourself. We want a comprehensive list so we can determine what we would want to do. There's a lot of "bad" ideas that help inform other "great" ideas, so don't filter yourself.
Finding solutions to your fans problems can be challenging sometimes, but in this expert event from Megan Porta and Eat Blog Talk I dove into some methods you can use to find what you are looking for. It can help give you some concrete examples of how to approach problem solving around specific topics. Thanks so much to Megan for letting me share it with all of you.
These solutions can take any form, but for bloggers, these generally break down into a few different categories.
The first is blog posts, most of you are familiar with these! You can write an article, write a recipe, or write a guide about a subject. That problem could be as simple as "I need a recipe for chicken stir fry" or much more complex like "I found out I was gluten intolerant but I love to bake. Help!".
Blog posts are a great first step in a solution.
There's also videos. It may be a recipe video, a how-to video, a demo of a dish, a talking head video on Instagram or Facebook, an explanation of the science behind your style of cooking, anything.
It could also be a series of either of those. A single video or blog post isn't always enough to fully answer a question. Plus these are great for SEO through internal linking.
Classes and courses are another area bloggers hit a lot. This could be an in-person cooking class, a prerecorded course through Teachable, an email lead magnet course with only text, a zoom cook along. Pretty much anything that has you teaching other people.
Obviously cookbooks are a huge problem solver in the kitchen. And cookbooks are much more powerful when they are solving a real problem. Many bloggers want to put out a book to highlight their recipes, which is fine, but the real power comes when your book solves a specific problem your fans have.
Downloadables are another solution bloggers turn to. From meal planners and recipe cards to cheat sheets and printables, downloadables are great problem solvers.
Physical products are something many bloggers don't think about, but they can be really powerful. While kitchen equipment is a huge problem solver, a KitchenAid mixer solves about a thousand problems, but even things like prepackaged sauces or spices, and even cheat sheets and reference magnets that you can put on your fridge.
Finally, you can always do it for them! From catering and make-ahead meals to brand photography and content creation, there's a huge market where your Fans, and your clients, will pay you to do the work for them.
Most problems will have multiple solutions across most of these areas. Not everything will make sense, stopping their frosting from clumping might not be worth an entire book, but feeding your 2 children after working 10-hour days definitely is.
For example, staying with the "Needs to feed her 2 children after working 10-hour days" problem...some solutions could be:
This also applies if you want to work with brands or do consulting. If your target "audience" is a big brand, say Bob's Red Mill and you know their problem is "They are releasing a new whole grain oatmeal and need to get the word out", you could pitch them on a blog post, a video, a cookbook to include with their products, cooking classes, etc. All focused around how you are going to solve that problem for them.
Sure, if you've never worked with Bob's Red Mill before, they're not going to do a cookbook with you, but if you've done 5 or 10 sponsored posts with them, met them at conferences, and have a great relationship with them, they very well might.
So there's a lot of different options, and they are all equally valid, just at different levels of complexity and effort. They also range from a few hours of time to do, up to several months of effort.
Today's homework is to take 2 to 3 of the problems you came up with yesterday, and create a comprehensive list of solutions to those problems.
Again, think BIG! Think SMALL! Nothing is too silly or too complicated or too simple. Get them all written down.
Let me know in the Makin Bacon Facebook Group or the comments below. I want to hear your favorite solutions, your smallest solutions, and the ones that are crazy enough they just might work!
In tomorrow's lesson we will dive into some strategies for narrowing down which ones you should start implementing first.
This article is a part of my FREE Fan Focused Blogging Course. If you want to discover how to grow your blog while serving your fans, then my course is exactly what you're looking for.
If you want to read some more about this, here are a few helpful links.
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.
