Courage to Follow Your Dream with Nora Taylor

In this episode of the Chopped Podcast, I’m joined by Nora Taylor of the site Nora Cooks. We talk finding courage to follow your dream. Because Nora had other options before her. Solid options. It was a job offer that fit her education. But following a “whim” Nora found herself purchasing her first DSLR instead. Today’s discussion highlights what happened after that, including her quick success in the food blogging world, and a lot about how she got to that point!

About Nora

Nora began her blog in February of 2017 after a big move with her family. Before she was a blogger, she had pursued a nursing career. Nursing school was hard and then she started work as a nurse and realized she didn’t like it as much as she had hoped.

After her move, she turned down a nursing job to officially start her career as a blogger, with a passion for vegan food and the goal of growing it as a business.

In fact, the same time she turned down that job in nursing, she found herself purchasing a DSLR camera instead. What happened next is a textbook case of pursuing a dream: she officially started her career as a blogger.

A Fast Growing Site

From December 2017 to December 2018, Nora’s blog took off at an extremely high rate. She went from 56,000 page views per month in December of 2017 to over 800,000 in just one year!

In the beginning of summer 2018, she worked on improving SEO, then August traffic started picking up. That’s fast turnaround!

We discuss how improving her SEO contributed to that growth. Nora also talked about shifting her branding to less of a healthy blog and to more of an indulgent, family-friendly emphasis. This change, she believes, had an impact on her site and her traffic.

This episode is full of helpful social media tips, ideology on quality verses quantity, and so much more! We had such a fun conversation and I’m so happy to be sharing it with you.

Show Notes

• Connect with Nora on her site Nora Cooks.
• Say thanks to our guest today with a shout-out on: Instagram
• Nora uses Evernote to help stay organized
• Do you use CoSchedule? Both Nora and Marly talk about how they use it for editorial planning and social media scheduling
• Related Post: Here’s an episode devoted to using CoSchedule for Food Bloggers
• Tailwind is a popular tool for food bloggers and Nora mentions that she uses it as well
• Connect with Chopped Academy Online:  Instagram  | Twitter
• Related Post: Tailwind for Food Bloggers
• Connect with Marly: Namely Marly |  Instagram  | Twitter
• Today’s post production, music, graphic art & sound design by Shawn Beelman
• Subscribe below to be the first to hear about future Chopped Podcast episodes and get some awesome tips on food blogging. You can subscribe at the bottom of this page. You’ll be glad you did!

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 Apple Podcasts 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!