The Secrets to Growing Your Food Blog, SEO, and Spreadsheets with Brandi Crawford

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Do you think the food blogging milieu is too crowded? Too competitive? That it’s impossible to grow your site? If so, today’s show is just for you! I’m discussing the Secrets to Growing Your Food Blog with Brandi Crawford. Brandi shares about her numbers and the tremendous success she achieved within the first year of her food blog!

A headshot of Brandi Crawford from her appearance on the podcast talking about the secrets to growing your food blog.

Hey there! I’m so excited to share with you today’s podcast. Why? Because I think it’s so easy to sit back and feel negative about today’s food blogging environment.

  • It’s too crowded
  • Sooo competitive
  • It’s impossible to get ahead so why even try?
  • You have to be an insider to get ahead
  • Only chefs or trained experts, like dietitians, can make it

Have you found yourself thinking any of these thoughts? If so, today’s show is JUST FOR YOU!

Featured Listener

Today’s featured listener is Kristina of the siteFork in the Road  (see link below). Here’s what she says about the Chopped Podcast.

I am a food blogger who works full time and this podcast is a HUGE source of support and inspiration to keep me going. I love to listen to episodes while cooking and photographing my recipes. It’s like a friendly support group while I’m plugging away at my dreams. Keep up the good work, Marly!”

Thank you Kristina, for your support of this show and for the amazing work you’re doing each and every day!

Would you like to be a featured listener of an upcoming episode? Head to iTunes or Stitcher (see link below) and leave a review of the podcast.

Encouragement

We all need encouragement!

I know I sure do. I’m so glad to have a network of people around me, including Shawn and Adee, that give me lots of support!

We need our teams to help us get through. I hope today’s show will be source of encouragement for you too! In fact, I think today’s guest, Brandi Crawford, will inspire you SO MUCH.

Brandi started her site Stay Snatched (see link below), and she’s seen phenomenal growth since starting her blog.

Be Inspired By Other’s Success

Note: Before I go on, I want to emphasize something really important. If you’re not seeing the kind of tremendous growth like Brandi is, don’t let today’s episode be a source of discouragement. 

It’s easy to sit back and think, she’s doing this, how come I’m not? Is there something wrong with me?

Instead, I encourage you to look at Brandi and think, “here’s someone who is showing that you can still break through. You can find your niche and you can really succeed as a food blogger. If she can do it, then I can too!”

Secrets to Growing Your Food Blog

Brandi talks about several things that have pointed towards her success as a food blogger. For example, she talks about the Chopped Podcast episode where I interviewed Casey Markee about SEO (see link below).

One thing specifically that helped in this process was switching hosts. It was a  big part of helping her increase her traffic. 

She also mentions my interview with Kay Feather (link below) about being a part of MediaVine because being on an ad network was an important goal for Brandi. Once her traffic reached the milestone of 25K page views per month, she was able to apply to MediaVine and now has a regular source of income coming in from her blog. Below I’m linking to my interview with Amber Bracegirdle of MediaVine.

A photo of the ocean with the words, "Stay true to your audience!"

Stay True to Your Audience

Another thing that really stuck with me was her devotion to studying her audience and creating more of the content that they really love.  

It’s so easy to get distracted from our own audience. Don’t you think? I mean, I do it all the time. It begins with a visit to Pinterest where I see someone made a snickers bar cheesecake with caramel drizzle. And I think…I could make a vegan version of that.

Of course, I totally could. It’s the kind of challenge I love.

But rather than creating something, forcing it on my audience, and then spending lots of time marketing that recipe, why not do a little research first?

I’ve learned my audience really likes easy recipes. So, when I stick with that formula, things go much better. And that type of audience research is part of Brandi’s winning formula as well.

Geeking on Spreadsheets

I was lucky enough to meet Brandi in person as well since she lives here in KC. We met at a local coffee shop and I can tell you she’s just as fun and informative in person as she is in this discussion. And we definitely compared spreadsheets. It was so exciting!

I think you’ll find today’s discussion inspiring, both from a process point of view and content creation. Brandi loves a good spreadsheet as much as I do, so we geek out on that for a bit. 

So, let’s get straight to it. Here’s today’s featured discussion with Brandi Crawford.

Show Notes

This episode on Secrets to Growing Your Food Blog includes information you’ll want to check out:

Subscribe to the Show & Feedback

Thanks so much for listening to today’s podcast. I hope you found it informative and helpful to the work you do every day. Make sure you don’t miss out on any of the Chopped Podcast episodes by heading on over to iTunes to subscribe to the Chopped Podcast. While you’re there, provide a review and rating is a great way to help other podcast listeners find it too! That’s it for today’s podcast. As always, thanks so much for joining in the discussion!

Posted in Food Blog Resources, Food Blogging, Podcast