Ep #31: Blog Post Production Planning for Food Bloggers

Do you find the idea of writing your blog posts one of the most difficult parts of your job? Do you ever dread how sedentary a food blogger life can be — hours in front of a computer screen all day long? Do you ever get tired of the stress of putting out today’s fires, day after day after day? Well, if you answered yes to any of these questions (or all of them as it’s been for me sometimes), then you are going to seriously LOVE today’s podcast. Today I’m talking Blog Post Production Planning for Food Bloggers with Christine Pittman. It will knock your socks off!

When we start with the dream of becoming a food blogger, we’re thinking about the passion of sharing our recipes and love of food with people. Right? We’re thinking about all the fun stuff — testing recipes, light trickling in through the window, illuminating the flour as we roll out the cinnamon rolls. Those are the romantic moments of food blogging. They do happen sometimes, but once you get serious about monetizing your blog, sometimes those romantic moments get pushed aside.

There’s no time to appreciate the romance when you’ve got a sponsored post deadline that has to be emailed today and you still have photos to edit!

If this is how you operate — putting out today’s fires today and dreading tomorrow’s fires because you know they’re coming — today’s interview with Christine Pittman will show you the light to a better way.

The way she describes her process for creating her editorial calendar, planning and scheduling out her posts (months in advance) and then how she actually produces each individual post, will wow you! It may even make you fall in love with food blogging all over again!

Christine and I talked about her very thorough and yet creative process for creating her posts and she said:

Christine shares lots of great information on her process for developing blog posts, oftentimes at least 3 months out! Along the way you’ll find some nuggets about SEO and other tidbits, like how Christine now talks less about her family and personal life in her posts and focuses more on sharing information on cooking tips.

I feel a relief knowing – I’m moving to post only once a week now – so if I do a day and I cook four or five recipes, my recipes for the blog for a month are done…and that feels really good! You know? I finish the day and I’m like, ‘Whoo! That’s December!'”— Christine Pittman, Cook the Story and The Cookful

Learn more about blog post production planning to make your food blogging days the best ever!

Featured Content – Blog Post Production Planning with Christine Pittman

Here are some of the highlights of my discussion with Christine, where we discuss:

• How Christine decided to start her blog Cook the Story
• Christine’s food-loving family that planted a love for food in her life
• Christine’s family was also entrepreneurial which makes her life a perfect storm for being a food blogger!
• Christine talks about her editorial planning process, including how she plans her recipes months into the future
• Christine talks about her process for creating a blog post
• Christine talks about how she works with virtual assistants
• You will be so intrigued to learn about Christine’s process for actually writing her posts. If you ever thought being a food blogger was too sedentary, Christine will prove you wrong!
• Christine’s process for

Show Notes

This episode includes references to some resources you might find interesting. Here they are:

• Check out Christine’s sites: Cook the Story and The Cookful.
• Give a shout-out to Christine and connect with her via Cook the Story on Twitter and Instagram!
• Christine talks about attending a food photography workshop by Hélène Dujardin of Tartelette
• Christine also talks about working with Todd and Diane Cu of White on Rice Couple and their food photography workshop
• Christine’s two favorite resources are: The Flavor Bible by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg and The Flavor Thesaurus by Niki Segnit
• Christine talks about her writing team including Lindsay of Cook and a Good Book.
• Become a contributor to the Cookful
• Christine talks about her work with the Produce for Kids Foundation
• Christine and I met for the first time at Blended Conference in Phoenix, Arizona
• Christine talks about one of her favorite wordpress tools CoSchedule which was also discussed in my interview with Nicole Johnson
• Christine is using Opt-in Monster to build her email list
• Connect with Chopped Academy Online:  Instagram  | Twitter
• Connect with Marly: Namely Marly |  Instagram  | Twitter
• Production, music, graphic art & sound design by Shawn Beelman

Announcements

1. Learn about future Chopped Podcast episodes by subscribing to the ChoppedCon newsletter. Just add your email in the subscribe section at the bottom of this page. You’ll be glad you did!
2. Tickets for the 2015 Chopped Conference are available. You can also attend a Food Photography Workshop with Matt Armendariz or participate in the dynamic Food Blog Success Summit. Take your food blog to the next level…learn more and buy your tickets today!
3. Next week’s podcast episode will feature Erin Clark with the site Well Plated and we’re talking about a food blog rebrand. Do you ever wish you could start over with your food blog? Erin has tips on how to do it right! Subscribe today so you won’t miss it!

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!