The Blogger Genius Podcast

Today I've got Deepak Shukla back on the podcast for Part 2. Deepak runs an SEO agency called Pearl Lemon, and he is an expert in SEO. Today we are talking about online reputation management -- one new strategy that will grow your traffic. It's all about managing your online reviews and testimonials because this can have a major impact on how your blog or business shows up in search. You will be blown away by the tactics we discuss, so check it out now. Resources: Pearl Lemon MiloTree StartUp Podcast Moz Capterra Wordpress Plugin Marketplace Shopify App Store TrustPilot Secrets of a Six Figure Lead Gen Consultant Transcript: One New Strategy that Will Grow My Traffic with Deepak Shukla Jillian Leslie 0:03 Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast. Brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Deepak, welcome back to the show. Deepak Shukla 2:26 Hey, Jillian, how are you? Jillian Leslie 2:28 It is so great having you back on the podcast. And as I've shared with you, I got such great response from your first episode. If anybody hasn't listened to it... Deepak Shukla 2:39 Oh, thank God. Jillian Leslie 2:40 ...I'll link it in the show notes so you can hear part one. Deepak Shukla 2:45 Yeah, I had a lot of fun. And thank you. I'm really glad and happy to hear that. Thank you. To the listeners. Jillian Leslie 2:52 Yeah, you were so generous with what you shared. And since then, just to get everybody up to speed, we have decided that we're going to start working together for MiloTree. Yes. Amazing. Exactly. And the cool part about it is because there's one thing to sharing tips and strategies like on a podcast, just to be talking about it. And it's another thing to actually do it and see what happens. Blogger lessions in SEO Deepak Shukla 3:23 Yeah, completely agree. Completely agree. Completely agree. Jillian Leslie 3:27 So we had our kickoff call with David, my partner, my husband, and afterwards, we're like, "Oh, I wish we had recorded this." So next time, we do that, we'll record it and we'll release it so that people can hear us strategizing and talking about ways we can dig in with SEO, with marketing to grow MiloTree. Deepak Shukla 3:50 Completely agree. Jillian Leslie 3:52 I know. So it's really fun. And I don't know if anybody has ever listened to the podcast Startup. But the first season was exactly that. It was them trying to raise money and kind of what the journey was, and all the mistakes in the work. So hopefully, you'll get to see our mistakes in the works too, and be kind. Deepak Shukla 4:15 Exactly. Be kind. Jillian Leslie 4:17 Be kind. Deepak Shukla 4:18 I know. I'm happy to be a part of the journey and yeah, I'm excited. SEO Strategy: Online Reputation Management Jillian Leslie 4:24 Awesome. Okay. So today, what we're going to do was we were going to go deep in another SEO strategy. So offline, you and I talked about the topic of online reputation management. Deepak Shukla 4:40 It's how we do everything offline anyway, isn't it? I mean, online reputation management really simply is a fancy way of saying, "Well, what do you think about that, Jillian? What did you think of that movie, Jillian? Or have you shopped at H&M or Prime Mark or Walmart? What was it like?" It's literally that, but just online, the management of a reputation that a business has. So it's, yeah, let's get into it. There's a lot there. Jillian Leslie 5:11 Because when you said it, I was like, I don't even know what that means, or how it would relate to an online entrepreneur or a blogger or somebody like that. So would you kind of start there? Like, what is the benefit? What is online reputation management? Deepak Shukla 5:24 Yeah, absolutely. So really, simply, let's start from a couple of ways. So from the kind of common sense perspective, right? When you're about to make a purchasing decision, it's very typical to be part of your kind of initial filter: "Does this business or does this individual or does this product or does this service or does this restaurant, whatever it may be, have good reviews?" What do people think about it? It's something that's a big pot certainly of our landscape is consumers. Before you go to the cinema, you're looking at IMDb, or Rotten Tomatoes, or Metacritic or something. Before you buy something from Amazon, your look to see if they're a trusted seller, same thing on eBay. And the dividing line between that being different from B2B and B2C is ever blurring. And that's why there's probably been this huge rise, many listeners probably, or some businesses have noticed that you just start as I call it, seeing stars and stripes in search a lot more with featured snippets, and just basically seeing stars when you Google a company name, and that's, everybody, what I want you to have. So when people are deciding or people are thinking about, "Can I trust working with you guys?" they'll quickly look and see that, "Well, everybody's saying good things about them; therefore, this is important." And for anyone who's kind of a technician, if you look up, for example, like Moz, their survey basically indicates that online reviews count up to as much as up to 10% towards kind of local SEO in general. It's got a huge kind of constituent ranking factor as to what will help you rank if you do any level of local service. And that's, again, corresponding the beginning to leak into nationwide search and that's why the sites like, I don't know, Capterra or the WordPress repository for plugin reviews or the Shopify repository for in a plugin review. So it's really looking at that person, right? Because this is about conversions. It's really looking at the person who's about to make a decision whether to install or to add to cart or to download and they're deciding whether your business is one that's trustworthy. "How well are they going to to rank you?" "Well, let's see what my friend, Jillian, is telling me about this app before I download it. Ah, she's given it five stars. Jillian's have given this product five stars. Why online reviews are important for online reputation management Therefore, of course, it's going to be the case that that's going to help you basically get highest up on the shelf at eye level, where everybody's looking, which is where you want to be. Jillian Leslie 8:31 It's a funny saying this because in my head, I haven't really thought about it this way, but everything I do is all about reading reviews. My husband refuses to go to a restaurant that isn't highly reviewed on Yelp. Like we could be walking by a restaurant, we're someplace that we've never been before. And I'll go "How about we go here?" And he'll be like, he'll be like, "No" because he has to get on his phone and see what the Yelp review is. And we just moved and so we're buying stuff for our house and like a lot of stuff on Amazon. And it could be like a trash can. And I am always reading the reviews of the the trash can, like it's something stupid. I am trained now to read reviews. Or my Uber driver, I want that five star Uber driver. Deepak Shukla 9:25 Yes, exactly. Exactly. Jillian Leslie 9:27 But I hadn't even thought about. I mean, it's just part of, it's like just part of my nature now that all I think about is how highly reviewed is something. Deepak Shukla 9:38 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I completely agree. And when you kind of inverse that and think,"How highly reviewed am I?" Jillian Leslie 9:46 Yes, definitely. Deepak Shukla 9:50 Absolutely. And I mean, at its simplest level, Jillian, the big takeaway for everybody, of course, and people are kind of fearful of the idea of asking somebody or how does it work in practice, but reviews are huge. And your wonderful partner, David, has just demonstrated that by making you literally move away from restaurants that you're outside the front door of... Jillian Leslie 10:17 Yeah. Deepak Shukla 10:17 ...because it doesn't have... How powerful is that? Jillian Leslie 10:21 I know, I know. But it's funny because remember, you'd be on vacation, you see a restaurant, you just go in, and it's like, "Oh, no, we don't do that anymore." Deepak Shukla 10:29 Yes, yes. Exactly. Exactly. And here's a statistic, I think, that is mind blowing to me that local search as in the Google three pack, the stuff that appears in when people run searches, and they are running a local search, apparently, up to more than 60% of the time, depending upon what comes up within the top five, it results in an offline purchase. It's incredibly... It's incredible. And Google My Business, the place on the right hand side, they encourage you to go out and get reviews. It's part of their listed ranking algorithm. And, but Google is saying "Hey, help us help you. Ethically go and ask customers for reviews." Advice: You don't just need to get reviews from customers or clients And to make this really practical. And this is the part that I think sometimes people get worried about, you don't just need to get reviews from customers or clients. You have partners, you have people that you pay for services, people that you buy services from, people that you've worked with in business, people that you've done lots of weird and wonderful things with as long as there's something commercially that's happened, and they feel that they've benefited or vice versa, there's no reason why it isn't ethical to ask them for review. And that is something that is probably the lowest hanging fruit in terms of going out and generating reviews out of the gate, because you'll have friends that you built in business. And LinkedIn recommendations. Jillian Leslie 12:11 Right, I like what you're saying, which is being strategic about how you curate. It is about curating your reputation. It's not just saying "Hey, anybody, write a review for me" but it's saying "I know this person. I've done business with them." That person is going to say something that will shine a light on how good my product or service is. Absolutely, absolutely, I think that you've, you've hit the nail on the head, Jillian, that's within your network through and when I say you, I'm talking to you, the audience, right, you're in business, or you're going into business, but you at some level, have done something that constitutes advice. One of the things that I've began doing when I was starting my agency in the early days, the first two months, when I was scrambling, I would have 20 minute calls where I give some great advice. People would say "Amazing, thank you." It wasn't commercial. That was just a conversation. And at that moment, though, they would say, "Wow, thank you so much for this advice. Can I help you any way?" I would, at that moment, have a link ready and they "Actually, David, you can." Is it okay if you just leave a review for me just reflecting what you just said, that you had a consulting call with Deepak, it went really well, or whatever you want to say that you think is relevant? Could you do that for me? And who's going to say no, after that, and that was probably where I got my first 30 reviews from across the board online. Well, okay, today, just before I got on this call, I got an email from someone who I don't know, and who just said, "I want you to know, I'm really enjoying the podcast." And I wrote back "Thank you so, so much for reaching out. I'm so glad. We've got some great episodes coming up. So stay tuned." And now, I'm kicking myself that I didn't say "Hey, by the way, could you write a review on iTunes? Here's a link." How to ask people for online reviews Deepak Shukla 14:14 Jillian, the goodwill is not lost. I would recommend and advocate that you go back through your inbox, search keywords that relate to anyone who's left an enthusiastic response and spend two hours crafting a shit load of follow ups to say, "You know what, I'm kicking myself. Is it okay that what you wrote here, insert quote, you could reflect that, you putting a review online? I really appreciate it, like smiley emoji, prayer hands and see what it throws back." Because I've also done that exact same thing. And that's always how I followed up and 20% of the time, people say, "You know what? Yeah, I can definitely write that for you. Because there's still goodwill between us." Jillian Leslie 14:57 Oh, okay, because I have to say, I don't know, putting maybe some emojis in there, like it's hard. We talked about this the last time. It makes me cringe. It's hard to ask. Deepak Shukla 15:09 I understand. You have to, when we go in, I always go into conversations like that within mind that everybody favors the underdog. So position yourself as the underdog. And when people feel like they're doing something to help you succeed. And that you're being really kind of nice with it, I found that I get way better responses. And the best way in absence of my body language and tone of voice and my loveliness on call is emojis. Jillian Leslie 15:42 I just have to tell you, there's a reflection on my screen right now. So I can see myself and as I'm talking to you, I am like holding my mouth because I can tell that, like not consciously, but I can tell how uncomfortable this is for me. I have my hand like over my mouth going "Oh, this seems so." So I have to work. I feel like this is like our therapy session that I have to get better at being okay asking for that. Deepak Shukla 16:15 And if it helps to the technically minded people out there, Google is beginning to index emojis as part of search. Oh, really? So you can search with a burger icon plus near me and Google will bring up burger joints near you. It's something that has begun to start featuring recently. Therefore, this is a thing the young kids are doing it. So let it be known that there's data to support the rise of the emoji even from a Google ranking perspective. Jillian Leslie 16:48 That's so interesting. Please leave a review for me and The Blogger Genius Podcast on iTunes Hey, it's Jillian and I am doing the uncomfortable. I'm doing what Deepak suggests. I am asking you to rate me and to rate The Blogger Genius. So if you head over to iTunes, please leave a review or rate us. I am so curious to hear what you have to say. And remember, if I can do this, so can you. So now back to my interview with Deepak. How a food blogger can ask for reviews Okay, is there a use case for a blogger? Let's say, I'm a food blogger. We have a lot of food bloggers. Is there a use case for reputation management for a food blogger? Let's say I don't even sell any or let's say maybe I do affiliate marketing. Maybe I sell a cookbook, and I make a lot of money via traffic and working with brands. Deepak Shukla 17:43 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that it's a really amazing place to get reviews because the biggest number one thing when it comes to converting traffic, you're a food blogger, you talk about food that you love, what we want is some kind of audit-able trail of people saying how fabulous your recommendations have been. And that was a couple of things. So number one, in terms of, let's answer the practical question, where would those reviews live? Jillian Leslie 18:18 Yeah. Deepak Shukla 18:19 Well, number one, as places like Trust Pilot. Number two, I would look at also where you can get reviews that relate to your industry. My initial place for everything is Trust Pilot. Jillian Leslie 18:32 I don't even know. What is Trust Pilot? Deepak Shukla 18:34 Trust Pilot is literally as it says on the tin. It's all about kind of trust. And I have a Trust Pilot that relates to both my business and both me personally so when you search Deepak Shukla, for example. So, so, okay, brilliant. I'm thinking out loud now. Yes, to extend it. So to be practical, number one, Trust Pilot is a great platform to ask people for reviews upon. Index is very well and good going. It does give you the stars and stripes effect which is pretty nice. If you search even Deepak Shukla, it's about paid position number nine. So people can actually rank for their own keyword or their own name. So if you're a food blogger and your blog is, I don't know, Frank. Frank Loves Food, or Frank, Frank Reynolds, because you're Frank Reynolds, then you can get some stars and stripes next to your name if you are a food blogger. So it really helps with branded search number one, and then people see that you're someone who's got a lot of reviews online; therefore, they'll trust the advice that you give. So you can really just treat yourself like a business to that extent. Leaving reviews on Facebook for repetitional management Deepak Shukla 19:44 So really simply, food bloggers. So number one, TrustPilot. Number two, Facebook reviews because Google indexes Facebook reviews big time, so one of the things that I quickly did was I have my own personal Facebook like page. It stands to reason a blogger will have a page either related to their blog or related to them personally. Jillian Leslie 20:05 Well, like if you have a business page on Facebook, people can leave reviews? Deepak Shukla 20:11 You can leave reviews. You can leave a review for somebody so you could go over right now to me on Facebook, and you'll see that I've got about 30 plus reviews. Document everything. When someone leaves a comment on your blog, also ought them to, could you write that on Facebook as a like and then you can begin to get the stars and stripes effect of course because Google has Facebook like reviews then you've got from Trust Pilot. If you want to set your business up locally, then you can also get into the Google business reviews and other ranking factor and then of course, you can use that as part of either your copy or your content, and put it around any of those key areas that you wish to of course have people convert from. So on the same page, for example, that you have a particularly well-performing, or maybe even an under-performing affiliate link that has a high rate of traffic, you could experiment with inserting Deepak Shukla as seen on Trust Pilot, take 109 reviews online and you can put the direct links to it and again engender trust that while Deepak must know about food, if he's got all of these reviews. Jillian Leslie 21:19 I was just thinking. Let's say I'm a food blogger. And one of the ways I monetize is working with brands. If I could send them a link like let's say, there's a brand I really love and I want to work with them like Ben and Jerry's... Deepak Shukla 21:34 Yeah. Jillian Leslie 21:35 ...and I find out who their person, their social media person is, and I send an email saying, "I'd love Ben and Jerry's. Here's why," but if I also were to put, again, that a link to something that gives reviews about my recipes, or even working with me, that I am trustworthy and that I produce good content, that could be a great way to give myself that edge. Deepak Shukla 22:06 Absolutely. 100%. I mean, if that leads to Ben and Jerry's getting reviews and referring back to you, if that leads to you writing an open letter as a blogger saying, "Ben and Jerry's, I'd love to work with you," and then referencing some way to lead that into a review that, then absolutely, and I think that at a food blogger level. I think that this is where there's space for the individual and building trust and thinking about the ways that you can do that. Document all your reviews and testimonials Because the irony is that when we talk reviews, blog comments, YouTube video comments, that all forms and reviews. A review is simply an online testimonial that verifies what you're saying, or what you've said or who you are, or what you've delivered is of know, and is now worthy. And the really important biggest takeaway is that document everything. If it's in your inbox and nowhere else, it's useless. Jillian Leslie 23:10 I love that. Okay, so for me, the way that I document stuff is I have a folder in my email, and I call it "love letters." And if somebody, if you write me a love letter, I will save it in love letters, but then I don't go back to them. They make me happy, I appreciate them. I always write back to them, that kind of thing. And then I also have a Trello board where I have asked people for reviews of MiloTree, and I will keep those and then I will recycle those. Like we have testimonials on our homepage. Deepak Shukla 23:45 Yeah. Yeah. Jillian Leslie 23:46 But I do feel like I'm not doing enough with these comments and reviews and things like that. Deepak Shukla 23:54 And absolutely, and it's great that you've documented it in Trello as well as the other places you have been because you have them there. And this can be even something as simple as creating a dedicated page for your reviews and enabling the Discuss plugin on WordPress or whatever you want to use to capture comments and then that could be used and re-purposed in so many ways in terms of how you reuse that across your site. A lot like these info product marketers that will screenshot so many reviews, and the simplest way to do this is as soon as someone leaves a comment that's really positive in your inbox or something. An Instagram direct message or a Facebook message, then send them a link to a dedicated... milotree.com page. We'd love to hear what you think about us page where people can just literally write up a comment and publish it on your site. Jillian Leslie 24:46 Wow. Wow. Okay, this is kind of blowing my mind because it is about making it easy to do, right? Deepak Shukla 24:56 Absolutely. Make it easy for people to leave reviews Jillian Leslie 24:57 Because I guess the thing that I would say is all of my stuff, they're all over the place in different buckets, kind of like I'll get to them at some point. Deepak Shukla 25:06 Yep. Yep. Build one bucket. Make sure that it's so easy for people to just make it as easy as writing a Facebook instant message if you find that the review platforms aren't of use because you're a blogger and open that page up to the world and let people see. And how powerful would it be of what people are saying about us page where there's just literally tons of comments that fills up with an endless scroll and the use or the flow for that is "Oh my god, that podcast with x person was so great, Jillian. Amazing! Could you say exactly what you just said on this page?" You can just type it in and you send them a link to milotree.com/wonderful-words or whatever it may be. Jillian Leslie 25:52 Right. Right. Deepak Shukla 25:52 And again, they type it in, published, done, off and away, and you've got it documented in a way that Google will index that reflects upon you really well, that engender trust because if it's a social login, then leave their Facebook page or leave their link to their Facebook and then the app, the devil's advocate, is thinking, "Can I trust Jillian and MiloTree?" She'll see 57 reviews with people that have left their direct Facebook link which means they can link back to their actual page, and it creates also a very transparent level of trust. So there's all of these benefits are begin to come from building buckets that make it easier than ever for people to be able to leave reviews. Jillian Leslie 26:39 Google is rewarding this. Google wants to know that Deepak does good work. Deepak Shukla 26:48 Absolutely, as I said, it's up to 10% now as a ranking factor in terms of percentages what Google favors like reviews I'm seeing. And I would, again, just point to the common sense experience that people have the reviews are too big to be ignored. There are, I don't know if they're billion dollar but TripAdvisor... Jillian Leslie 27:10 TripAdvisor, yes. Deepak Shukla 27:14 ...is built literally around reviews. Jillian Leslie 27:16 Yes. Deepak Shukla 27:17 It does. Jillian Leslie 27:18 And it's so funny you saying this because again, I live my life based on reviews. And I haven't really thought about it. I hadn't thought intentionally about managing my own reviews. Now, let's talk about this. Which is, I think what is cool about it is it does make you up your own game. It does make you believe in karma. Deepak Shukla 27:44 Yeah, yeah. Jillian Leslie 27:45 Which is I'm gonna put my best work out there because somebody could write something about me. Deepak Shukla 27:53 Absolutely. Absolutely. Then it just becomes a win-win always because it brings more value to the exchange because you know that you can not only deliver value but the other person can give value back via the review because a review, Gary Vaynerchuk talks about this: document, don't create. It's his phrase and just building opportunities that make it easier than ever for any positive comment to be documented is so important. AppSumo ended up taking advice for me because they couldn't understand how I was able to... I've done a course launch basically. And what's interesting about my course launch was that I was able to generate about 23 video reviews, literally people on YouTube saying great stuff about the course before anyone had actually even finished the course. Jillian Leslie 28:47 Really? How to get testimonials before people have completed your course Deepak Shukla 28:48 Yes, you could go on to YouTube right now and type Deepak Shukla. Deepak Shukla testimonials, I think. I'm just searching now. Here's 23 videos up that are all in relation to a course. And what's really interesting about it, of course, is that none of them had yet finished the course. This is literally after two weeks of the course going live. And it's like a three month program. And they were like "How are you able to do that?" And I said that "Yes, if you search Deepak Shukla testimonials on YouTube, you'll find a bunch of the reviews as to that ranked top at the moment. And they're two of many. And again, the way that you do this is in effect is simple. It's what you see in the retail world all of the time, when did they upsell you the popcorn at the cinema, which they make far more money on this in the cinema ticket, when you just purchase a ticket, and you're really excited to go and watch the Avengers or Avatar or Bohemian Rhapsody or whatever it may be. So you need to hit your customers with the asked at the point at which they're the happiest. And everybody's the happiest when either one, they're gushing; two, actually gushing because they bought something and it's really excited. They're really excited. And then or after, when they come and reach out to you, as soon as people were like, "Hey, I've just bought the course, Deepak. I'm so pumped." I'd say immediately "That is amazing. Could you just record a video if it's okay? Please say why you bought the course in the first place, what was different about my marketing and what you felt made me trustworthy, given there's lots of so called gurus, out there, and people are really happy. But yeah, I'll absolutely do that. Because it's at the point of purchase that you go and tell everybody, "Hey, I've invested in the MiloTree pop up," or "Hey, I've just bought something from here." And that's when you want to move forward with the documentation process. Jillian Leslie 30:55 Okay, first of all, what is the course? Deepak Shukla 30:58 It's called Secrets of a Six Figure Lead Gen Consultant. It talks about how I built my agency using cold email and how you can. It really focuses around how to build an agency based around cold email, because that was how I built my SEO agency in the beginning. Day one, the problem that I had was that I couldn't rely initially on SEO for my initial means of revenue, to attract customers to my site to then sell them SEO. So I had to find different means. And it goes through ultimately, it's really about how to build a pipeline, how to build a continual flow of sales calls that you can get on where people are interested in working with you. Because in the service industry, the biggest problem that people have is that you have a great product of course, as we know, but how do we get people that are interested in potentially buying from you to talk to you. Example of how to get testimonials And Secrets of a Six-Figure Lead Gen Consultant really deals with that. The space of lead generation based upon someone who has no network, never wants to meet anybody, wants to work from home, you know, how was it he go about build a business. So that's what the course is about which is of course, a side note. Jillian Leslie 32:13 I know. But I'm curious only because, again, this comes so naturally to you. Okay, how about the idea? So let's go through a couple usecases. So we talked about a food blogger, let's say somebody who sells a product. Deepak Shukla 32:31 Okay. Yeah, absolutely. So I think that in the space of e-commerce, let's say that you sell a teapot or let's say, you've got a teapot because you're British like me. So you drink tea. So therefore, you sell it, and you're British Indian like me. So that means that you're the big exporter of tea so you send it from India to the UK and now, you sell teapots. What a lovely business. It's great. So you're selling teapots online, of course, and you may be making let's just say 10 sales a day to people they haven't met. The question always is, as you know, how do you get reviews. So there's two ways to do this, I think. There's the first way which everybody kind of knows and works to a limited degree, which is some form of automation, which is okay, someone's just purchased, boom, hit them with an email saying, "Hey, what do you think about a product? Could you leave a review saying what you thought about" which can work. Certainly, if you're doing things at scale, then I think that there's a benefit to that. There's a second way that I think can turn customers into raving fans that will write gushing reviews that can even write blog posts about your product. And that's the way that I prefer, so the way that you do that, and again, remember we discussed about everybody favors the underdog. Why the people love Rocky, why? Absolutely, so in that instance, if you're a e-commerce business owner, deepaksteapots.com then deepaksteapots.com would have an intern because you probably do have an intern anyway because you're growing e-commerce business. If you've got an intern and I do have, for example, I have a virtual assistant called Lincoln. Lincoln works with me. You can look him up on PearlLemon.com. I think he's there, and Lincoln... Jillian Leslie 34:29 Where is he located? Deepak Shukla 34:30 Lincoln located in Kingston, Jamaica. I'm slowly employing his entire classroom which is quite interesting and brilliant. And Lincoln really just would see a transaction that goes through from jeremywillis.com, would look up jeremywillis.com online, find him probably on Facebook and reach out as you know an intern at PearlLemon or deepaksteapots.com and say, "Hey, Jeff, I hope you don't mind me reaching out. I noticed that you bought a teapot." And he's like, "Yeah, dude. Yeah." And basically creating this level of personal reach out and catching people when they're excited, and they won't work for everybody because you need to be able to find them on Facebook, need to find them. You can just email them also. But really, if you can send personalized messages, get a really crazy, enthusiastic response from somebody saying, "Dude, I'm so excited. I've just got my teapot. I'm about to get my teapot." You can then asked him the same thing saying, "Hey, that's brilliant. I would totally love, if it's okay, could you just record a video saying why you bought the teapot, what you thought about deepaksteapots.com, what was it that made you buy our teapot instead of other teapots." And they're yet to receive the teapot and just ordered it. They're super excited so a proportion of people but, "You know what, screw it. I will record a video about teapots," or, "I will leave a review online about teapots." Or and again, I'm reusing the same process, Jillian to support the SEO growth of my course. Because I'm beginning to get people to write case studies now, and to write reviews of the course, and then to link back to the course at the moment when they're happiest and then asking them if they do that favor for me. And by and large, people say yes. And when you position it as someone who's inside the business if you're an e-commerce store, just reaching out to Jeff saying, "Hey, what did you think? Sorry to reach out on Facebook. I apologize." But you've just bought a teapot from the company. So of course, you're going to accept it. "Oh, no. Hey, man, it's cool. It's really cool. This is released. This is really novel. I like it." "How can I help?" Or "I love your teapots." Jillian Leslie 36:44 Interesting. Is there a way to do a quid pro quo in terms of, like, does that seem smarmy and not as cool like, let's say, somebody buys your teapot. And guess what? He said he sells tea or he sells a different product or whatever, to say, "Hey, would you review this? And I'd love to take a look at your stuff." Or... Deepak Shukla 37:11 Absolutely. You know what? It really, so in my experience, I always go for building that further down the line of the value ladder. So that it depends upon the nature of the ask. So in my experience, if someone's like, bought your teapot, and they sell tea, first of all, you can say, "Hey, how's the teapot? Or is everything okay? Why did you buy the teapot?" They say, "It looks really good." I would, at that stage, maybe awesome to leave a review. And then later down the line asked about doing some level of higher exchange. Because you know what, a lot of this depends upon who you're asking. If you're asking me, Jillian, I could leave a review and five seconds, right? So we don't know how big the ask is. I would say, in my experience, that experimentation, once you've got direct dialogue with a customer, it's really easy. It's when you send emails off into the business, it's a problem that you don't know how it's received. So what this does, when you communicate with someone on a direct messaging platform where it feels more personal, you then immediately reframe the conversation. So what connecting with somebody on Facebook does, if it's someone internal and you're selling tea pots, and the other person sells tea, is it makes the conversation much more mano a mano instead of one business to another. Jillian Leslie 38:35 Yes. Deepak Shukla 38:36 And that is way more productive in terms of eeking out something productive. Jillian Leslie 38:40 Yes. I mean, I keep hearing this, which is anybody who leaves a comment on an Instagram post, you kind of have the right to strike up a conversation with them. Deepak Shukla 38:52 Absolutely. I mean, they're your fan, they've said it publicly in some way, or they're expressing their enthusiasm that they like you. Jillian Leslie 39:01 Right. Exactly, like those are, that's kind of like, that's your low hanging fruit. Are even people who are just commenting on your post, like, that's a way to build that relationship. Deepak Shukla 39:14 Absolutely. And then once you begin to build a process for that, what becomes really powerful is that then you can begin to audit, which are these people have a social media presence in their own right. If you have a SAS product, for example, like MiloTree, what we'll do. Jillian Leslie 39:29 Wait a minute. I just want to stop you. It sounds great in your accent. So you're saying, I have a SAS product. And in my accent, which means software as a service? Deepak Shukla 39:39 Yes. Jillian Leslie 39:40 Like a subscription? Okay, that sounds better the way you say it. Deepak Shukla 39:45 Oh, I don't know about that. But absolutely, if you have a SAS product like MiloTree, I would say that you're going to have some raving fans who just installed it or said "Just bought your product. I'm pumped." And all you need to do is number one, obviously build a process in place to say "Hey, that's awesome. Could you be so happy to leave a review, just explaining why you decided to buy the product?" And then that does not hold on anything unethical because you've been very clear about what you're asking for. You're not asking them to review the product, you're asking them to write a review for why they bought the product. That's number one. Number two, is that once they begin using the product, you check in and say "How's it going?" They're like, "Hey, yeah, loving it." And you're like, "Amazing. Could you now leave a second review on a different platform?" The first platform could be the WordPress plugin repository site. The second platform could be Capterra where you can look at a review so that would be the second thing. And then the third thing down the line is that, "Hey, you know what? This is out there. But we'd love to maybe give you three months of free." And if they have a blog, basically, you want them to write a case study. Jillian Leslie 41:00 Okay. How to ask someone to write a blog post review of your product Deepak Shukla 41:01 Or if they've recorded a video testimonial, you can probably put those. You can turn that into a transcript. And you could write the elements of a blog post in their behalf. To be honest with you, I've just asked people to say "Hey, how would you feel about writing a blog post?" And some people have said to me "Deepak, I don't even have a blog." And I'd say "How about you create a blog on wordpress.org and just write one up?" They're like, "You know what? I love your product for you, man. I'll do it. And they do. Jillian Leslie 41:27 Wow. Okay. Deepak Shukla 41:28 And I say look, just do it on wordpress.org. Just link back to the site. It's all good. I just care about you or even say, "Write the blog post and I will sort out the technical and just whip up a wordpress.org site very quickly just so they can post it for secretsofasixfigureleadgenconsultant.wordpress.org. And I don't see really many people doing this like really TEDx-ing how much goodwill that you get from people and how much people want to see you succeed if they think what you're doing is really valuable. Jillian Leslie 42:01 I love that. I love that. Weirdly, I feel like I am looking right now in the world for moments of kindness. I feel myself trying to be even more kind and giving because I feel like the world is in a tricky place. Deepak Shukla 42:20 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it is. That it is. Jillian Leslie 42:22 I noticed myself. I mean, this is like, but just even at the grocery store saying a little bit of a stronger "thank you", just validate for people that this world is a really lovely place. So you saying this somehow is triggering that kindness place like hoping that we all have the capacity for goodness. Deepak Shukla 42:46 Absolutely, absolutely. And everybody is listening that this all come from a place of me assuming and knowing that you're already delivering the value. So the value that you deliver is worthy of asking for review. And I'd say to anybody that believe in what you offer. If you don't believe in what you offer, then maybe you're offering the right thing because if once you know that what you're giving is value, then asking somebody that they can help you on your journey by writing a review by putting a blog post together by writing by recording a quick two minute video, which is easy as these days is absolutely okay, and also the ethical thing to do because it helps them as well. Have a link on your site to testimonials Jillian Leslie 43:31 Yeah, absolutely. Yes, in fact, absolutely, I love this. So do you recommend then on a blog like even on our MiloTree site to have like a link to testimonials? Deepak Shukla 43:47 Oh, 100%. You want to overwhelm people with social proof, you want to leave no kind of stone on uncovered. The number one, the company. So the company in this case would be MiloTree, for example. Jillian Leslie 44:14 Okay. Yeah. Deepak Shukla 44:14 The number two, they need to be convinced on the service or product. So the product in this case would be the pop ups that you guys offer. They need to be convinced "Oh, MiloTree is a company." They need to be convinced on the pop ups. They need to be convinced on the individual who's going to be delivering the product or the service, which in this case, might be whoever it is on customer support, or whoever is the account manager, or broadly speaking, the founders of the company. And those three spaces need to be in alignment. So those three spaces need to in order to get as many conversions as possible, because you can have two out of three, and you can still make a sale. People can be convinced on a product, people can be convinced on the company, and people don't really know who the founders are and they can still buy the product, but then you don't build what I call brand loyalty really. Jillian Leslie 45:04 Right. Deepak Shukla 45:06 Because you connect it more and more so, especially today to a person. So I would absolutely say that testimonials reviews give people kind of no room to question the excellency of what you deliver. And certainly I think that in terms of the conversions that we've made as a business, our social proof Pearl Lemon, that we built has been such an outlier that it's been incredibly helpful in... There's never ever been any issues with quality or trust or service or delivery. And this is me selling high ticket items where it's going from three to $5,000 a month and people that I've not met on the basis of one or two phone calls, and they're happy to just wire me money across and... Jillian Leslie 45:57 Wow. Deepak Shukla 45:57 ...what we need to think about in those instances is what can we do to leave no stone unturned? And this is where, as I said, Jillian, that a lot of people have typically one of those things out of alignment. The importance of building brand loyalty And if you're a brand that's faceless, then you have the issue of they're not really sold on the people behind the brand because it doesn't exist, and therefore, it becomes a little bit of comparing apples to apples meaning that MiloTree is no different from other pop ups. Jillian Leslie 46:28 Right. Deepak Shukla 46:29 But if I get Jillian with MiloTree... Jillian Leslie 46:32 Right. Deepak Shukla 46:33 ...no one else is Jillian. Jillian Leslie 46:34 Right. Well, two things that I, well, it's funny, I didn't do this from a strategic point of view. But I started the podcast because I'm super curious. And I thought, wow, if I have a podcast and I can interview people, I can help people by sharing like Deepak, your knowledge. And I can learn, and everybody can learn. And hopefully, people get to know me behind MiloTree, especially because again, like we built this for ourselves, it worked, and we're in the trenches also. That was really what I was trying to communicate. And then I also have my newsletter, where if you join MiloTree, I send you weekly nuggets. And again, it's so that you see that I'm in here struggling along with you. And that there's no, like, we're not some big company, we're just David and Jill trying to build something and help inspire others on their journey. Deepak Shukla 47:35 Absolutely. And your biggest unique assets are completely absent from your website, which is the crazy thing, right? Because there's not any pictures of you or David, which would be really endearing because "I want to support you, the little guys." And you said you have a cross fertilize. I can go from your podcast or to your blog to MiloTree, but I can't go from MiloTree to anywhere else. And it becomes, it looks and smells and feels a lot more like a big company. Jillian Leslie 48:08 I think that's what we were trying to do was for us to look bigger than we are. Deepak Shukla 48:20 Absolutely. Well, you're selling a product that's for $9 a month. Small businesses are going to be buying it and it's going to be composed of individuals. Jillian Leslie 48:32 Right. Deepak Shukla 48:32 Or what I do because I'm trying to sell, of course, a high ticket service that doesn't scale with any way that MiloTree does. It's important that for me to make sure I position myself and my agency as a company, of course, that we are, but with your audience, it's different from the audience that I sell to. And it could be that there's a little bit of a misalignment with what you offer versus who's buying it. Building a cohesive whole with your business Jillian Leslie 48:59 Yep. I see that. I see that. Yeah, I think that we're not putting that, again, that things are in buckets. I've talked about this previously on the podcast, and we need to kind of build more of a cohesive whole. Deepak Shukla 49:15 Well, the brilliant thing is that it's already, with all of that being said, the design and how it is presented is already excellent. And it's just little tweaks that we can apply to the company and we all do this right. We fall into what I call a little bit of a corporate mode, and we forget kind of where our roots are, and why people followed us in the first place. And I think that certainly the more that we see that and it's going to be relatively simple, I think the greater returns that you'll get because that's, of course, as everybody talks about, certainly in the blogging space, this is how you build your tribe. So let's give them the opportunity to become loyal to MiloTree. Jillian Leslie 49:58 Yes, yes. Yes. Oh, Deepak, honestly, I feel like this has been so valuable. And I hope as bloggers, entrepreneurs, creative entrepreneurs, you recognize, I am recognizing the value of people getting to know you and writing authentically about you. And I see so many ways that this is valuable. One being Google. Deepak Shukla 50:28 Yeah, yeah. Jillian Leslie 50:31 Thinking your own life where like you won't go to a restaurant unless it has good reviews, or you won't buy on Amazon just thinking or go on that trip without looking at TripAdvisor. So you've got Google, but also, you've got that personal touch. Deepak Shukla 50:48 Yeah. Absolutely. Jillian Leslie 50:49 And I feel that people can go, Oh like, we've gotten some reviews, for example, where people have said, "Wow, Jillian and David were so helpful, because one thing that we try so hard is to provide really good customer service. And I've always discredited those testimonials." Deepak Shukla 51:08 Yeah. Jillian Leslie 51:08 Because I've weirdly thought it doesn't make us look corporate if they're talking about Jill and David being like, right there solving their problem, solving people's problems. Deepak Shukla 51:19 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Jillian Leslie 51:20 And now I'm thinking "No, we want people to see that." Deepak Shukla 51:24 Absolutely. I think that you just look to the voyeuristic nature of what people love right now. Snapchat is probably the best example of it as a billion dollar company that's focused around, give us the snap literally... Show your personality in your blog or company Jillian Leslie 51:40 Totally. Deepak Shukla 51:41 ...of what you're up to at the moment or live streams, etc. So, I think that it's definitely a great opportunity, and it's going to be with people to offer so much value. And the beautiful thing here is your neurons are probably firing, and you're thinking of about 110 different things you got to activate. And I always wanted to be, I always want, I wanted to be stuff that you can just go out and do and that you get, and then it does carry a return and stuff. And I think that this is certainly where everything is going or if not, it's already gone. And the more that you can kind of personalize and show your quirks, the more that I think you'll get people that will just love you guys and stay with you. Jillian Leslie 52:26 Thank you. And again, though, for our audience, if you reach out to brands, and you want to sell yourself, get some testimonials that you can then send over so that you can increase your trust if you sell a product, get people talking about using your product. Or if people are loving your recipes, put those up. If you're a food blogger, and you're like, "Yeah, but I just monetize via ads." Deepak Shukla 52:56 Absolutely. Imagine being able to show Ben and Jerry's Jane's blog about food is the reason why I'm an addicted Ben and Jerry's customer, then you can get a review like that and sending that over to their marketing manager. How powerful is that and how different is that from anything else that verifies that you're smart with SEO? It demonstrates that you've got a real audience and it's just so different from anything else that it's much more likely to get responses. So if you can generate reviews at scale, and you can get your customers to insert the keywords of the products they bought, especially if you're an affiliate, that just creates endless leverage for the things that you can do with that. Jillian Leslie 53:37 And the one last piece, as women, my audience is predominantly women, get used to being uncomfortable in asking because I'm right there with you. And I am now going to after we get off this call, email that person back and ask if they would write just a two or three sentence something that I can then use. Deepak Shukla 53:58 Brilliant. I think that you absolutely should, and I hope that everyone listening does the same thing. Jillian Leslie 54:03 Yes, we'll do it together. So Deepak, thank you so much for for this. I feel like I have learned so much. I hope, as audience members, that you guys have a bunch of takeaways. And this makes me think to put a more personal touch on stuff. Deepak Shukla 54:22 Absolutely. I think that let's all remember that you can position yourself as professionally as you want to. But no one's fooling anybody. People will Google you before they're going to buy anything from you, or if they do buy and they haven't googled you, they're probably gonna have a bad retention rate because they don't care enough, and it was more of an impulse purchase. So give your audience reasons to love you. Jillian Leslie 54:46 I love that. Okay, so we're going to be back at some point where we talk about us like down in the in the nitty gritty, rolling up our sleeves and seeing what's working and what's not. So please come back and listen to our journey. Deepak Shukla 55:03 Absolutely. I'm excited. Jillian Leslie 55:06 Deepak, how can people find you? Deepak Shukla 55:09 Absolutely, guys. And why I'd say guys? Sorry, ladies, I apologize. Yeah, no my mistake. I am sorry. Ladies, if you listen, just check deepakshukla.com, head to deepakshukla.com. If you're interested in the course I spoke about earlier, there's a pop up that will appear at the top. If it doesn't, then find a way to message me online, on the site. There's a bunch of different ways, and I always do my best to respond to everything. So you can catch me there. Jillian Leslie 55:39 Alright. Wonderful. And spell your last name? Deepak Shukla 55:41 Yes, absolutely. So D E E P A K, first name. Last Name, Shukla, S H U K L A.  If all of that fails, and you could just look up Deepak Shukla and spell it still incorrectly and write TEDx. I've got a TEDx talk that you could find that ranks. Okay, so you could go ahead and just wander over to that. Jillian Leslie 56:04 Oh, wonderful. Well, I look forward to going on this journey with you. Deepak Shukla 56:08 Ditto. Ditto. Jillian Leslie 56:09 I hope you liked this episode. And as Deepak said, our reputations really matter and that includes our social media reputations. If you want to grow engaged, active followers and subscribers. I invite you to go to milotree.com to sign up for our pop ups. You get your first 30 days free and see what we can do for you, and how you can really put your social media accounts on steroids.  

Today my guest is Melissa Johnson from the blog, Best Friends for Frosting. Melissa has built one of the most beautiful and successful lifestyle blogs out there. In this conversation, we talk about the best ways to monetize and grow a lifestyle blog, what it's like working with your husband, how to experiment with selling products, and tips for working on sponsored posts with brands. Melissa has been at this a long time, and you can tell by all her wise advice! Listen now! Resources: The Blogger Genius on iTunes Best Friends for Frosting MiloTree Cupcakes & Cashmere Bando Best Friends for Frosting Pinterest Heartfelt Success Podcast Transcript: How To Monetize And Grow A Lifestyle Blog with Melissa Johnson Host 0:04 Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast, brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jilian Leslie. Jillian Leslie 0:11 Hello and welcome back to the show. Before we start, I have a very quick favor to ask. Please, if you haven't already, subscribe to The Blogger Genius Podcast. Pause it for 10 seconds. Just press the subscribe button on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, wherever you get your podcasts. This will help get the podcast found, help it grow so that I can keep bringing you awesome guests. So let me tell you about today's episode. Today I am interviewing Melissa Johnson, and she is the creative force behind the blog Best Friends For Frosting. Melissa is an old timer like me, when I think about her blog, it is one of the most beautiful blogs. She creates incredible content, she is the ultimate creator. So without further ado, here is Melissa Johnson. Melissa, welcome to the show. Melissa Johnson 1:09 Hello. I'm so excited to be here. Jillian Leslie 1:12 So we have been kind of like friends, colleagues online, but we've never spoken, and it's so fun because it feels like I'm talking to an old friend. Melissa Johnson 1:24 Same here. I feel like it's been so long that we've emailed back and forth and we've been Facebook friends, and it's about time we have a call. So this is perfect. Jillian Leslie 1:32 Totally. I don't even know your story. Tell me how you started with Best Friends For Frosting. By the way. I've always loved that name. How your business your entrepreneurial journey has evolved since then. Starting the blog, Best Friends for Frosting Melissa Johnson 1:44 So I started Best Friends For Frosting, eight years ago, and it was initially a dessert blog but I learned that I was multi passionate. So about a year and a half into blogging I turned it into a lifestyle website where we cover everything under the sun whether it be entertaining, DIY, a little bit of fashion, recipes, interior design, all that fun stuff that I'm passionate about. The way that I see the blog is that it's all of my favorite things that I get really excited about on my little corner of the internet. So that's what I've done at Best Friends For Frosting over the years, and then also we've expanded into product lines. We have launched a Best Friends for Frosting Airbnb that was named after our Best Friends for Frosting Instagram hashtag, that has over 120,000 shares. Jillian Leslie 2:29 Wow. Okay, keep going. But we're going to have to come back and talk about that. Melissa Johnson 2:33 Sure okay. There's just a lot going on. It's been really fun. And I absolutely love blogging. So I feel like this podcast feels like a second home to me already. Jillian Leslie 2:43 Good. Okay. So have you always been creative? Melissa Johnson 2:46 I have ever since I was little. I love baking. I love doing little DIY projects. My mom would always take me to the craft store to get little pieces of confetti and stationary. So I have always been creative. Yes. Jillian Leslie 3:00 Okay. And so you are the quintessential lifestyle blog? Melissa Johnson 3:05 Yes. Jillian Leslie 3:09 You are the ultimate lifestyle blog. Melissa Johnson 3:11 Yes. The ultimate lifestyle blog. I guess you could say. I don't know big words like that. Jillian Leslie 3:18 But again, like it doesn't matter. Because look how creative you are. You have an Airbnb. Okay, so explain. Did you start because you're like, I want to be a blogger, or this is like my business. How did that work? Melissa Johnson 3:40 So my brother actually, he started blogging about, gosh, I want to say like, almost 15 years ago, he was like, an original blogger. I remember one day I was working a job that I was not passionate about. And he came to my parents house and he had a check for $30,000 from Sprite. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I always thought I was more entrepreneurial than my brother was, I feel kind of bad saying that. But growing up I did just because I was really organized. And my brother wasn't as organized as me. And I just always felt like I was driven. So it's like, oh, my gosh, if he can do it, I can do it, too. And so he really inspired me just seeing how he monetized. And so he taught my husband and I some things about blogging. And then I just figured out what I was passionate about. And then I ended up running with it. Working with your husband on a blog Jillian Leslie 4:25 That's amazing. Okay, and you work with your husband? Melissa Johnson 4:28 I do, we work full time together. It's our only revenue stream. Jillian Leslie 4:31 Wow. And did it start that way? Melissa Johnson 4:34 No, we did not start that way. So it was just myself actually. And I'll tell you what, my son was actually about six months old when I started blogging. And basically what happened was, at first, it was myself running a blog. And then I was working as a marketing director for senior in home care agency. And so I was working that job while blogging. About a year into blogging. I started monetizing. And so I was able to actually quit my job immediately from that monetization. And do that full time. My husband ended up quitting his job, I want to say about three years into it. It's all so blurry to me. But about three years in the blogging, he quit his job and came with me full time. So ever since then, it's been him and I on this. Jillian Leslie 5:14 Wow. And how do you split up what you do what he does? Melissa Johnson 5:18 So it's really cool. Because with him, and I, and we both have total separate zones of geniuses. So with him, he's very much a true blue artist. He does photography, he does recipe development. It's amazing. I really hit the jackpot with him. And so with myself, I'm really great at marketing, branding. Um, gosh, I mean, we're both good at a lot of different things. But we're able to split up equally what we're both individually good at and take those skill sets, and then blend them together and just kind of run with it. So it's been really fun. Jillian Leslie 5:55 I work with my husband, David, and he's the technologist and he built all of the software and all that stuff. And I would agree, which is we have very concrete domains. And I've heard this from other interviews I've done that sometimes when you work with your spouse, it can get kind of mucky if you don't have those delineations. And the people who seem the most successful are the ones that have these, you do this, I do this, we come together for this. And we kind of hand stuff off to each other. But like, I don't have to answer to you. And you don't have to answer to me. Melissa Johnson 6:33 Yes, it's so true. And its so funny you say that, because I feel like this is gonna sound horrible. I love my husband. But I feel like during our work hours, the least that we have to run into each other, the least smooth sailing, it's going to be. I'll tell you all of our fights that we have revolved around business and kids, because those are the things that we're super passionate about. Jillian Leslie 6:55 Yeah. And for us, I would say that people say that what is for you the biggest downside of working with your husband and I always say that, it's like, we can't, it's hard to turn off the business side and the parenting side, like, just to be the two of us goofy and funny. My husband is really funny, and he cracks me up all the time. And sometimes though, when we're like, in our work zone, we will be playful with each other. And it's a weird, I miss you, even though I work with you. Melissa Johnson 7:36 We're the same way too, because you're working. We're in the mode, we're in the zone, but outside, we have to have boundaries on that as well, where it's like, okay, like five o'clock and beyond we are not going to talk about business. We're focusing on the kids, we're focusing on our family weekends as well. We really try to adhere to our schedule Monday through Friday working. It's exciting too because our daughter, we have a two year old daughter, Claire, and she actually just started preschool a few months back. So I feel like she's been at home with us for the past couple of years. So it's really exciting for us where we feel like the newness is kind of coming back, we are able to dive in deeper into our business and focus on things that we weren't able to focus on months or even years ago. Monetizing a lifestyle blog Jillian Leslie 8:17 Okay. So when you start your blog, you start monetizing via traffic, via display ads. Melissa Johnson 8:23 Right. Jillian Leslie 8:23 And we both talked about how we were with the same ad network, Mode. And they went out of business and we both lost a ton of money. We'll just say that that was very painful. But I did feel really bonded to you. Because we're in this Facebook group talking about it. It was we were both talking just before we got on, how it made us both sick. I remember walking around with a stomach ache for like weeks. But it was horrible. Melissa Johnson 8:47 And honestly, I'm an open book about it. I have been very candid about the loss in interviews and different things. I think it is important for bloggers to realize to get their money up front versus waiting. Because I was very much trying to trust with our agency and so on. I just kept thinking, oh it's going to be fine. It's going to be in my Paypal. It's all good. And then yeah, I just remember like I was signed with them. They were the first company that allowed me to quit my day job. So I was so thankful for them. And I still a very thankful for the opportunity even though it's crummy, what happened. But yeah, it's crazy. Jillian Leslie 9:21 Yes. I think it taught us a very valuable lesson, which is, the internet is a crazy place and don't count your eggs. What is it? Don't count your chickens before they hatch. Melissa Johnson 9:35 Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Jillian Leslie 9:36 Don't put all your eggs in one basket. I mean, if you're doing this full time you're doing this with your husband. It's a wild ride, huh? Embracing change as a blogger Melissa Johnson 9:45 It truly is. Jillian Leslie 9:46 You gotta hold on and just like be willing to embrace change, to embrace disappointment. And there are some really cool things about it. Melissa Johnson 9:57 Yeah, you said it so well. And I think, embracing the change in the disappointment. Everybody deals with that no matter what part or part of the journey they are in. For myself, even right now, I'm embracing a lot of change, a lot of different things on my journey. And just because right now, I'm really focusing on growing a podcast from the ground up, and you're probably, you probably can relate to that. I mean, especially with MiloTree, what you've been growing and working on, which is so cool. I mean, it's like, it's kind of like you have your business, but then you're starting new businesses and new adventures. Jillian Leslie 10:28 Absolutely. Okay. So let's talk about this. Okay. So you start your blog, you're monetizing via ads, and sponsored content. And then how did you start growing into products? How did you start growing into an Airbnb, all of that? Selling products as a blogger Melissa Johnson 10:44 So this year, we really tried to like beta test different products, because we haven't put a ton of money behind it. It's more of like brands have come to us and have paid us for releasing the line, that sort of thing. So we really wanted to beta test it behind other brands. So that way that we wouldn't lose a ton of money it into a product line, just to see how our audience reacts to the sales and all of those different things. So that was our game plan when we release the product line, which sold out. Jillian Leslie 11:12 Slow down. I need you to go step by step. Okay. So you decide you're going to make a product line product, right? Melissa Johnson 11:21 Yes. So we decided to make a product line. Jillian Leslie 11:24 Okay, what kind of products? Melissa Johnson 11:26 So for starters, we released a desk, a very stylish modern desk. We released the desk earlier this year. Jillian Leslie 12:00 I have to say, it's a little random. Melissa Johnson 12:04 It is random. But I mean, it isn't. Because interior design is one of our most popular category. I really wanted to test what sells would be like releasing an actual furniture product. Jillian Leslie 12:15 Okay, got it. Melissa Johnson 12:17 So we released the desk, but you sit and write out or work on your laptop out. And I'm actually sitting here as I'm talking to you. It sold out. Jillian Leslie 12:27 Wow. And you did this with another company. Melissa Johnson 12:30 We did. We had another company manufacturer it, ship it out, sell it. We took the product imagery, I worked in designing it. And that's how the whole thing came about. Jillian Leslie 12:38 Got it. And then was it like a rev share kind of thing where, you know, this is their manufacturing and shipping it and all that stuff. Like you get a cut of it. And they get a cut of it? Melissa Johnson 12:48 Correct. Jillian Leslie 12:49 Okay. Melissa Johnson 12:52 So that ended up performing really well. And then in addition to that, we also released a product line with a company called Readable. It's a female founded company. They're amazing. And they're just doing some really cool things. They did their first collaboration with Emily Schumann, of Cupcakes and Cashmere. And they also collaboration with Band-O. And so I'm the third one on board. And so we did a product line collaboration, which sold out to different rounds, I believe. Jillian Leslie 13:24 What kind of product? Melissa Johnson 13:26 So it's actually like, it's a box that you order. I know this is a little confusing, but it's a gift box that you ordered, put really fun things inside. And then on the inside of the box is personalization. You can upload your own custom photos. And a little message like Happy Birthday says, I love you, or whatever you want to write in the box. And so I designed the exterior of three different prints for the boxes. And they performed really well. It was really fun for me, I got to work hand in hand with their designer, oversee the entire design of each box. So it was just a really cool experience. Jillian Leslie 14:11 With you selling these products. Were you testing if people would buy from you? Melissa Johnson 14:22 That's exactly what we wanted to see how the sales generated. And it's tough when you're in the blogging industry, and you see your audience and the other side. It's hard to know, okay, what are they going to gravitate towards the most? What are they going to be most inclined to purchase? And so we just really wanted to test the market and see how that worked. Without totally breaking the bank. Jillian Leslie 14:41 Totally. Wow. And it's good. I mean, your stuff is selling. That's phenomenal. Okay, let's talk about social media. Your husband takes some beautiful photos. When I think of you, I think of beautiful photos. Melissa Johnson 15:02 That's really sweet of you to say yes, to me and then also we've collaborated with a couple other photographers in Sacramento over the years as well. And so now my husband's doing more of the photography. He updated his camera this year. And he's really been learning it and practicing it. So it's been really cool. How to drive traffic as a blogger Jillian Leslie 15:19 Okay, so talk to me then about how you drive traffic to your blog, and what social media platforms do you use? And what where have you connected the most with your audience? Melissa Johnson 15:32 Oh, that's a great question. Okay. So for in terms of social media, I would definitely say Instagram and Pinterest have been our most popular platforms in terms of building relationships, and really making Best Friends for Frosting turn into a brand. I know that they're so different but I'm such a visual person where I love that on Instagram, its so easy to be able to see things, and Pinterest it's so easy to see things. But when it comes to Facebook or Twitter, right, it's not as much of a visual thing. And so in terms of like, generating traffic, Pinterest is working on a case study for Best Friends for Frosting. It turns out that they have told us that we are one of their highest engaged accounts. Yeah, we actually we have 6.5 million monthly viewers on Pinterest and so that's been an awesome way to grow an extension of our brand, because our readership, people learn about us through Pinterest, Best Friends for Frosting from Pinterest, and then from there, will generate more site traffic, which makes makes us able to demand higher rates for sponsored blog post. We can also have a higher amount of traffic from our visitors from Pinterest. And then the other cool thing is that if people are feeling really inclined, they can follow us on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter. So Pinterest has been a great, great part of our growth. Jillian Leslie 16:55 Right? And do you use MiloTree? Why the MiloTree Pinterest pop-up will grow your traffic Melissa Johnson 16:57 I do. And I love love, love, love MiloTree. Jillian Leslie 17:02 What are you growing with it? Melissa Johnson 17:04 So MiloTree right now I'm focusing on Pinterest, because one thing that I noticed on Pinterest for a hot minute there, was that followers weren't growing as rapidly in the earlier part of this year, because we weren't putting as much content. I just saw that those numbers weren't growing as fast as they previously were when we were pinning a lot more actively. And so I installed the MiloTree plugin and had a little pop up on my website. This is "Follow me on Pinterest." And I have literally grown thousands and thousands of new followers just by having that little pop up. Jillian Leslie 17:34 What I see probably working for you is if a lot of your traffic is coming from Pinterest to your site, and then your pop-up shows up and says, Follow me on Pinterest, they already know that you're an influencer on Pinterest. So they're more apt to then follow you. Melissa Johnson 17:51 Yes, that's so true. The other cool thing about having that plugin as well, is that people will come and find us on Pinterest. But maybe they just want to see the actual like posts. They're trying to find us from Pinterest, go to my blog. And today, like they haven't even had an opportunity to say like, Oh, I'm going to follow her on Pinterest because they're trying to find that direct content to my blog. And then that pop-up comes up. And it's like, oh, yeah, I need to follow Best Friends for Frosting on Pinterest Jillian Leslie 18:15 Right. I'm so glad it's working for you. I'm so happy. Melissa Johnson 18:21 Honestly, it's funny, because we download a lot of plugins. And a lot of times it's one of those things where we waste money. We buy a year subscription and it's like, oh, this sort of works, but we're not going to renew it. And MiloTree is one of those plugins that I like tell every blogger, like you have to download it, it's so helpful to grow your following, like whatever platform that you're trying to nurture and grow have that MiloTree pop up for. Jillian Leslie 18:43 And we want you to love it. And if you don't, we don't want you to pay for it. So we don't lock you in. I mean you can buy a year subscription but you can also just pay nine bucks a month, and we're super happy, and we we want to be part of your success. Melissa Johnson 18:59 That's what I'm so thankful for, recently we bought a recipe plugin. And they want a whole year up front. And I get a little commitment phobic, like I don't want to pay all that up front. What if I end up not loving it? And so my MiloTree it's cool because you can spend you know that $9 a month and you get these awesome newsletters with all the business tips that you send out, to which is cool. Jillian Leslie 19:19 Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I love doing that. Again. I love connecting. That's how we did this, was you read one of my emails. And you emailed me back and then I said, Come on my show. Melissa Johnson 19:36 That's awesome. Yeah, I'm so thankful to be here. This is so great to just be able to be on your official podcast. I've heard so many great things from other bloggers about this. Jillian Leslie 19:47 So now for Instagram. So Pinterest is driving traffic to you. Is Instagram driving traffic? Or what are you getting from Instagram. How to use Instagram as an influencer Melissa Johnson 19:56 So Instagram right now, we have our website like in the actual address bar on our Instagram page. But to be totally honest, I feel like Instagram is more of a place where it's kind of like its own animal. So it's housing all of its own content. Now it's doing video. Now it's doing stories. I'm even getting to a point where I'm posting my recipes. And I'm not even saying go back to my blog on my here's my recipe because now they're even trying to have like that Pinterest aspect where you're able to save your own content and create your own prints. And so I feel like they are trying to be their own animal and a lot of ways, right. And so I especially, because a large portion of our bread and butter is sponsored posts. I make sure to really nurture those relationships. And offer as much up front value without taking them outside the platform as possible, though, I'll tell you, I do have like anxiety moments where I'm like, I'm going to be kicking myself because Instagram, Facebook owns it. And we don't know what's going to happen because we don't own that platform. When it comes to our blogs. We own that, we own those platforms. And you can easily search for things that a search engine on your blog posts, like, and as a search option, you cannot do that on Instagram. I mean, it's kind of it's a very unique time for content creators. I have to say. Jillian Leslie 21:12 What do you mean by that? Melissa Johnson 21:13 Just, I mean, those spaces just constantly evolving and changing, and there's just a lot happening, Jillian Leslie 21:19 Right. Do you monetize more from sponsored content than traffic? Melissa Johnson 21:25 Oh, yes, we do. Sponsored content is our bread and butter, I would say for sure. We do monetize from or traffic too. But the largest portion of our monetization is from sponsored blog posts and social shares. Jillian Leslie 21:37 Got it. So are you constantly doing sponsored posts? Strategies for sponsored posts as a blogger Melissa Johnson 21:42 We are. We do quite a few a month. Gosh, I mean, anywhere ranging from like, three to ten per month. Jillian Leslie 21:51 Wow. Okay. And how do you think about it? Like, how do you think about managing your time, managing your process, so that you're not just constantly reinventing the wheel? Like, okay, we've got another recipe, like, how do you how do you do it so that you can get everything done? Melissa Johnson 22:13 It's tough. I mean, honestly, it's a never ending battle, because I feel like I'm always refining that process, and then eventually ends up not working for me, or something ends up just, I don't know, it's really tough. I feel like it's a never ending battle. But I am at a unique point where as much as I love blogging, I really want to generate multiple revenue streams. So I am focusing on how to fine tune Best Friends for Frosting to run like a well oiled machine, where I'm not having to be such hands on as I currently am. And so I have that mindset right now. It's an interesting time for us for sure. Jillian Leslie 22:52 We also now have two businesses, so that we're really trying to find a variety of income streams, and especially, you know, when Mode exploded in our face, like it did, you know, I think that that's further inspired us to, to really look at how we can make money in a variety of different ways. Melissa Johnson 23:13 Totally, I completely agree. I know, it was such a shocker. And that was a big eye opener, where it's like, you can't put all your eggs in one basket. And so now at this point, we're working with a lot of different agencies in terms of closing deals for sponsored posts. Jillian Leslie 23:27 That was my question. Are brands reaching out to you? Who is your favorite agency? Like, how do you get work with brands? Melissa Johnson 23:37 So in terms of getting work with different brands, and things the majority, a lot of them are coming to us directly, like Hey, we found you, and we'd love to work with you on this or that. And so then it becomes a negotiating process. And so, you know, sometimes they're not willing to pay our rates, and so it doesn't end up working out. And so it's just a case by case basis, for sure. But we do work directly with ad agencies, PR agencies, and then directly with companies, a lot of companies now. In the past, they used to get companies like ad agencies or PR agencies to house in facilitate their blog partnerships. But now companies are actually hiring dedicated people in their headquarters to handle those themselves. So I'm a little bit of everybody. Jillian Leslie 24:21 Okay. And then how does it work? Like, are you ever racing at the last minute to get the content created? That was always our thing, where I'd tell me husband, this weekend, we can't have any plans, because we have three posts, we have to work on. Melissa Johnson 24:41 Yes and it's hard. Yes, absolutely. We've been there, done that so many times. And it's hard, because, I mean, we've never been late, we always fully execute. But we have had times where we have to scramble at the last minute and so that's the hard part. I love what we do. But there is that side things where it's like, there's so many steps involved, you have to generate that organic content to keep your audience staying put, and loving what you're doing, then you have to pitch brands, create the content to support what you're doing. So there's just so many different steps when it comes to blogging, and not to mention all the social media growth and all that stuff. Jillian Leslie 25:19 Yeah, so how many new posts are you posting a week? Melissa Johnson 25:25 Only two. We're only doing two, we used to do about four to five, years ago. It's just kind of to the point where I thought, you know, quality over quantity, and it's just, I really want to, like produce things that I'm over the moon excited about that are meaningful to me, versus just scrambling together to drop a post. Jillian Leslie 25:41 Does that include sponsored content as well, like, that would be one of the two that you're releasing that week? Melissa Johnson 25:46 It does. Not every single week, but a lot of times it does. Jillian Leslie 25:50 Now, are you going back? This is the thing that we're doing. Are you going back and updating old content? Melissa Johnson 25:58 I should be. I'm doing it for SEO purposes. And I have it on my list. And I'm like, Okay, I gotta jump to that. But I'm at the season where I know I'm kind of touched on this earlier, but I tried the whole, getting an office, having employees, having a team, and then I just felt like I got to a point were just getting to the office was a pain in the, you know what, and then, micromanaging people, where managing employees was just so hard for me, because I'm type-A and I'm a perfectionist. And so I just had a point where I just realized, it's easier for Andy and I to do this together. So that's kind of where we've been this past year. But I'm now at a point where I feel like I'm running myself ragged in a lot of ways. I'm doing a lot of smaller tasks, whether it's like updating a social media platform, or I hate to say it like that. But I mean, when I'm updating Facebook or Instagram, I do have an intern update that for me, but I am on like Instagram and I myself and an intern manage the Pinterest being like, totally fully transparent. But it's hard because I'm trying to do everything and then it's like factoring in growth. I mean, the strategies are just getting tougher and tougher and tougher, right? Updating old blog posts as an SEO strategy Jillian Leslie 27:12 Yeah, they're getting more intricate and so here's what I would say. What we've done that has lightened our load is we used to post three original pieces of content a week and now we have gone to two and all we do with that third one is update a post. Melissa Johnson 27:30 Really? Are you saying that you update it and change the date? Jillian Leslie 27:35 Yes. Republish it, because Google doesn't care. They don't care that you did an evergreen post three years ago, if it's still relevant. And you can maybe make a new collage, update text, all this stuff. Google's happy if you publish it today. Melissa Johnson 27:56 That's awesome. That is really cool. I've heard other people talk about it. But I'd never heard it broken down that way. Where it completely makes sense. Jillian Leslie 28:03 Yes. I used to believe that you had to feed the Google machine with new content, new content. And then actually, it was at the AdThrive conference where the SEO guy was like, it doesn't matter in Google's eyes. And in Pinterest's eyes, if you update it. It's much easier, first of all, to update a post than it is to create a new post. All you need to do is like, right now I'm editing out photos, I realized that we had too many photos in a post or making a new hero image, or trying to really optimize the post for SEO. So I am putting more links at the bottom of a post. So let's say it's a Halloween post that we're updating, well then at the end now we'll say, "Hey, you know, do you want free Halloween party printables?" And then we'll do some links to our other posts. And literally, that's how we update the post Melissa Johnson 29:06 Yeah Google loves those links. Jillian Leslie 29:08 So good. So right. I'm trying to provide for Google, but really, I'm really trying to provide for somebody who wants to see, you know, let's say we do we have Halloween pretzels. And they're cute. And so at the bottom will say, hey, do you want Halloween free Halloween printables? Because, you know, you probably have printables at your party with pretzels. And it's been a really successful strategy. And it's taken a lot of the load off. Melissa Johnson 29:36 Oh, I can imagine. Jillian Leslie 29:37 So you could go to like, one piece of content a week and then take an old evergreen post and update it. Melissa Johnson 29:45 I might just need to do that. Jillian Leslie 29:49 I think that the emphasis used to be back in the day for us was like, we did four posts or five posts or seven posts. And now it's seems like the emphasis is on quality and updating your content. Somebody described it to me as a library, you have a library of content, and all you're doing is just making the books ar as good as they possibly can. Like, you don't even need more books. You just need high quality books. Melissa Johnson 30:20 Right. And that's what I've been learning more and more, even with blogging and building my business in general, is that it's quality over quantity. And simplifying is so important. So if you can take something in fact, it it's better like, just think about In and Out Burger. They could have so many things on their menu, right? They, keep it very simple. Because decision fatigue. Have you ever gone to a website where you're gonna buy something and you love something. But then you see six things that you love, and you can't make the choice and you end up saying to heck with it. And you leave. Jillian Leslie 30:48 I feel that way at Zappos. Shopping for shoes. I can go through 32 pages of shoes. Melissa Johnson 30:56 No way. No way. But if you go somewhere, like In and Out Burger, there's like four really good things that have been perfected, and somebody put their heart and soul into it and just made it the best. I feel like that's the way to go. Jillian Leslie 31:07 And by the way, that's our same philosophy with MiloTree, which is one ask per visit. So it's not, Oh, my God. And then we've got all these things that we need you to do. And you get like, totally overwhelmed as a visitor versus, Hey, follow me on Pinterest. Melissa Johnson 31:22 That's so smart. Yeah, and it's definitely working. Especially from my perspective, from the growth that we've seen on our Pinterest audience loving it. Jillian Leslie 31:30 I'm so glad. Okay, so tell me, what about your business are you most excited about right now? Melissa Johnson 31:41 Is that bad, that I have to think about that for a second? Jillian Leslie 31:43 No, because I know what your life is like. I relate. Melissa Johnson 31:51 You know, right now, I feel like I have five really good ideas in my head. And I'm having a really hard time saying and giving myself permission to say, this is where I'm going to start. And this is the one that I'm going to focus on. And so that's been tough for me. But I'll tell you what I learned during that process. And I'm going to get right back to your question kind of intertwined together. Blogger advice: the secret to getting ahead is getting started But I learned the secret to getting ahead is getting started. So, for example, Heartfelt Success Podcast, that's my, new podcasts that I launched, we feature celebrities and entrepreneurs. And we talk about things that can motivate or uplift you or offer value, whether it's social media tips, or growing your blog, or a challenge that you may have faced in your life, or motherhood or whatever it may be. It's a little bit of everything but I was so nervous and so scared to start that podcast. What I ended up doing was I just started sending out emails and getting guest on and recording and then you know, one thing led to another. We had to learn different things as we were going, but we ended up getting everything going. And so I learned, you know, the secret to getting ahead is getting started. But anyways, that's kind of where intertwines back. I am really excited about Heartfelt Success Podcast, we have some awesome guests lined up. So we've already been featured Laila Ali, and we have other guests in the pipelines that will be released soon. So it's been fun. But yeah, that's what I'm most excited about. Blogger advice: Start a podcast And I have four other things that I'm really excited about, but I just, I don't know which one to go on to next. So that was my whole answer. In a nutshell, I talk a lot, I blame it on being Italian. Jillian Leslie 33:28 I went to a podcasting conference. I love podcasts. I came home. And I said to my daughter, I'm going to start a podcast. And I think she was like, yeah right, mom. And so in a weird way, I wanted to show her that I was going to really do this. And so I just same thing, I just put one foot in front of the other. And I remember it's like saying, I'm really starting a podcast. And she was kind of like, whatever. And then I kept reminding myself that done is better than perfect. And so I watched a bunch of YouTube videos to figure out how to do this. And then the literal boom, I have a podcast. And as I was saying to you, it's kind of messy. And I'm not the best editor. And, you know, sometimes, something will happen in the middle of it. And I go, Well, you know done is better than perfect. And so, I get it. And I'm excited for your podcast. Because I have to say, if you out there are thinking of starting a podcast, do it. It's, it's not expensive. I really fun. I find it really satisfying. Melissa Johnson 34:34 It is really fun. And yeah, that was the thing is that I thought it would be so hard. But honestly, like it's really easy to get things rolling and going. And the secret to getting ahead truly is getting started. I agree with Jillian, if you're thinking about starting a podcast, just go for it. There's so many resources and Facebook groups, and great ways to really learn and find out how to go about it. Jillian Leslie 34:54 Tell me if you agree with this, I think you find your voice. Melissa Johnson 34:59 Yes, it's true. It's true. I said yes. And like a really funny voice. I'm like, wait, but that's not my voice. I know what you're saying you find your voice, you find what you're passionate about. And what's really meaningful to you. Jillian Leslie 35:15 It's like a good way to learn about yourself, that's what I think. Melissa Johnson 35:19 I agree. Jillian Leslie 35:19 Okay, so how can people learn more about you reach out to you all of that? Melissa Johnson 35:25 So in terms of if you want to follow along, I am over on Instagram at Best Friends For Frosting. You can type in Best Friends For Frosting on Pinterest. The website is bestforfriendsfrosting.com We are just now building a website for Heartfelt Success Podcast, so we do have the website holding page up at heartfeltsuccess.com. And then if you go onto Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, just type in Heartfelt Success Podcast and then you can hear me talk unlimited again and we can keep in touch. Jillian Leslie 35:53 Awesome, okay. Well I have to say friend it is so nice having known you for so long, to actually get a chance to chat with you and have all these other people listen. Melissa Johnson 36:06 Yay! We're so overdue. I love that our first conversation was actually recorded, so we can go back to this one day and just laugh about it. Jillian Leslie 36:12 Oh Totally. Well, thank you for being on the show. Melissa Johnson 36:16 Thanks for having me, this is great Jillian Leslie 36:19 If you want to see why Melissa loves MiloTree so much. Head on over to MiloTree.com, set up your pop-up, put it on your site, and watch your Pinterest followers grow. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!  

This week my guest is Max Bonds from the blog, Tried and True Mom Jobs. With her blog. Max shows moms how to easily find lucrative jobs working from home, so they can stay home with their kids. We discuss a variety of online jobs available and how much they pay. We also talk about how Max started her own blog a year ago, and grew it to where it is today. If you are looking for interesting ways to make money online, or how to grow a blog quickly by solving a need, you'll definitely want to listen to this episode!   Resources: Blogger Genius on iTunes Tried and True Mom Jobs MiloTree Boss Moms Facebook Group VIPKid Holly Johnson Earn Money Writing Glassdoor Michelle Schroeder MediaVine The Female Brain Ibotta MiloTree Affiliate Program Catch My Party SiteGround * May contain affiliate links. If you click and make a purchase, I might receive a small commission at no cost to you. Transcript: How to Easily Find Lucrative Jobs Working From Home with Max Bond Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:01 Hello everyone. Welcome back to the show. Before we start, I just had to give a shout out to Paula Silva, who left me this comment on iTunes. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:13 She said, "I love this podcast, listening to it opened my eyes to many different ideas. Jillian is amazing, curious and eager to learn more. She always brings guests with great experience and ready to share their knowledge." Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:28 So big shout out. Thank you, Paula, for leaving that comment. If you guys are liking the Blogger Genius, please head on over to iTunes and review it, write a review or just even rate it, I would love it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:42 Okay, today I've got a really cool episode. Today I am interviewing a woman named Max Bonds. She is the founder of a site called Tried and True Mom Jobs. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:56 She wanted to leave her corporate job after having children. She didn't know how, she was looking for resources online. And when she couldn't find any she created this site. Jillian Tohber Leslie 1:05 In this blog she shares tips on how to find jobs for stay-at-home moms. What's cool in this episode is we get into how much moms are making working at home. Jillian Tohber Leslie 1:18 She's got some great tips. So without further ado, here is the episode. Max, welcome to the show. Max Bonds 1:26 Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Jillian Tohber Leslie 1:28 Alright, so I don't know anything about timelines. When did you start Tried and True Mom Jobs? And can you tell us how that how that happened? Jillian Tohber Leslie 1:42 I know you were working in corporate and then you said, enough. A need to find a job while staying home with your kids Max Bonds 1:47 Right. So, it first came about because when I became pregnant with my second child, I knew that I want to stay home. I was already missing out on so much with my son who's already two years old. And I know new that I needed to stay home. Max Bonds 2:01 But I needed also a way to make money to help contribute financially because we were living on two incomes. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:10 Got it. How long ago was this? How many years? Max Bonds 2:14 I launched the blog at the end of January of this year. 2018. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:18 No way. Oh, my gosh. Okay. Well, what's your job? Before this? Max Bonds 2:22 I was a marketing communications manager at a large manufacturer. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:26 Wow. Max Bonds 2:27 Yeah. So and my background is in marketing, and I enjoy what I did. But I would have enjoyed being home with my kids more. So I knew that corporate life was no longer for me after I had my kids. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:40 Right. So you said, Okay, I see these women, you know, moms making money online. I need to be doing that. Max Bonds 2:47 Yes. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:51 Tell me, how did you then come up with this idea? Max Bonds 2:55 Sure. So I was looking for ways to make money from home online. And I would see the articles about ideas that you can do to make money from home, but I didn't see how do I get started? Was it legitimate? Max Bonds 3:09 I want to see a success story from a mom, who was able to do this today and make money while raising kids. And most importantly, how much money were they making? Max Bonds 3:18 I didn't see that anywhere. There wasn't one website that I could go to, to find all this information. So I created one. Creating a blog to solve your own problem Jillian Tohber Leslie 3:29 I love it. Max Bonds 3:30 Yeah, thank you. Jillian Tohber Leslie 3:32 In your research, how did you think you would go about monetizing a blog and making an income? Max Bonds 3:43 To be honest, I had no idea. I recently created our website for our church. So I had a little bit experience doing that. And I just was looking for all this information. Max Bonds 3:56 And then it just occurred to me, since there's nothing out there, I might as well just create one. I didn't have any thoughts of how would I monetize it. How would I get traffic and even having a background in marketing, I didn't even think about how I would market it, I just kind of just did it. Max Bonds 4:13 So I did it. But I was lacking success stories for mom. So I had to reach out to moms who were actually working from home. So it was a lot involved in what I was doing. Max Bonds 4:28 But I just knew that I want to do this, because I knew how badly I needed this information, I was desperate to find a way to make money from home and raise my kids at the same time. And I knew that there are other moms out there. That wanted the same information. Jillian Tohber Leslie 4:40 Got it. So are you pregnant at this point, and starting this site and working your full time job? Max Bonds 4:46 Yes and I didn't even think of the blog idea for about maybe four or five months within my pregnancy. Because during that four to five months, I was just searching online for anything that I could do to make money from home. Max Bonds 5:01 I didn't even think about blogging, I was just looking for ways to make money. I just knew that I had to make some kind of money, but I didn't know what. Creating a resource for other stay-at-home moms Max Bonds 5:09 And since after searching for months and not finding any success stories from other moms, I just said, All right, it just occurred to me that I'm just going to create a website where I can find all this information in one spot, and just create a resource for moms like myself to go to for when we are looking for ways to make money from home. Jillian Tohber Leslie 5:29 What I love about this is you had a problem and you built a business solving it. Max Bonds 5:36 Yeah, thank you. Jillian Tohber Leslie 5:37 You weren't going, what could I do? Like, what's an idea here? You know, again, always starting with the problem. Max Bonds 5:46 Yeah, exactly. And I never thought I would be a mommy blogger. So I don't know what I will blog about. Max Bonds 5:53 It's funny because I'm a marketing communications manager. But I'm not even a good writer. I have my mom review my articles before I post them because she's good at writing. Max Bonds 6:02 But that's the great thing about blogging, you don't have to be like the best writer out there when it comes to blogging, just kind of talk in conversation and give good information, it doesn't have to be perfect. Jillian Tohber Leslie 6:14 Absolutely. I think the hardest thing about it is just starting. Max Bonds 6:20 Exactly, yes. I totally agree. Jillian Tohber Leslie 6:22 Okay, so you start to research this and tell me how you research, then how you were able to find content for your blog. And one last thing I want to say which is you are your avatar? Max Bonds 6:36 Yes. Correct. And so I kind of got lucky. Facebook groups have been just amazing. I feel like it's this underground world where every there's so much great information that so many people don't even know about. But I joined this Facebook group called Boss Moms. Jillian Tohber Leslie 6:53 Okay, I've heard of that. I was on her podcast. Max Bonds 6:58 Oh, awesome. And I love the group, it's a group of supportive women helping one another out. Max Bonds 7:06 I was searching through the search tool just trying to find out I can't remember what search term I chose that I was looking up women who work from home or something like that. Max Bonds 7:19 I found a thread where someone had already asked if they could interview some stay-at-home moms who work and it was a popular thread, where there were boss moms giving their email addresses saying what they did, and that they would love to be featured in that article. Max Bonds 7:38 So I reached out to them as well. And I said I told them what I was doing I want to help other moms like them be able to find out what they did, how did they get started, and how much money they made and they were very transparent. Max Bonds 7:51 I was glad to see that they weren't holding back on which they made, because I know sometimes that's very personal they don't want to share that information, but they let me have it. Max Bonds 8:05 It was awesome because they helped me decide what I want to do. And I knew it would help others try and find their avenue trying to work from home. Jillian Tohber Leslie 8:14 Okay, now you have to share how much are they making? How much money moms are making working from home Max Bonds 8:18 Okay, so I interviewed this one Etsy seller, I call her a pro Etsy seller. Jillian Tohber Leslie 8:25 Okay. So she's selling on Etsy, is it product she's making or is it product she's finding in China? Max Bonds 8:32 It's products she makes herself, she used to be a graphic designer. And she makes $300,000 a year on Etsy with her husband. Her husband was able to quit his job and work full time with her as they raise a kid together. Max Bonds 8:48 So she gave me her full schedule her day to day schedule, and how she was able to do it, how she sells on Etsy she's able to promote her items. She gave me everything. Jillian Tohber Leslie 9:00 What kind of items, I know she's making them. But what are they? Max Bonds 9:03 Yeah, they are like stamps, they are rubber stamps for weddings and different occasions and invitations I believe and that's what she does. Jillian Tohber Leslie 9:17 Wow. Max Bonds 9:18 Yeah. So go figure. Jillian Tohber Leslie 9:20 Wow, tell me more. Max Bonds 9:26 I found a mom, her name was Brittany Sutton. And she makes $1,700 dollars a month working only two hours a day for VIPkid. Max Bonds 9:36 And that's just, you know, for some people, that's just enough, just two hours a day, just teaching kids English in China. That's basically what they do for VIPkid. Jillian Tohber Leslie 9:45 So VIPkid, so she's online teaching Chinese kids how to speak English. Max Bonds 9:51 Yes. And it is also great, because you don't have to worry about her kids. So, you know, in China, the time difference is right. So I think she works from like four in the morning to six in the morning. Max Bonds 10:07 And so she's able to do it when her kids are asleep to teach kids how to speak English. And she has enough time to take care of a kid and do whatever else she wants to do. Jillian Tohber Leslie 10:15 Oh my god. Give me another example. Max Bonds 10:17 And then another one was an interior designer that I had the pleasure of interviewing. That makes I don't know exactly how much, but I do know that it's a six figure income. Max Bonds 10:28 And she just gave me the whole story on how she was able to do it. How she got started. And it's just a great interview. Max Bonds 10:36 And another one, there's a boss mom who makes over $200,000 freelance writing. Jillian Tohber Leslie 10:47 And how does she find her clients? Do you know? Max Bonds 10:51 Of course, she has a course. And she tells you all about it. But it's a free workshop to where she will show you about how to get started, and how to find clients, things like that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 11:02 And what is her name in case people want to know. Max Bonds 11:05 Holly Johnson. Jillian Tohber Leslie 11:07 Great. We'll put that in the show notes. Any others that are interesting? Max Bonds 11:11 Um, you know, Corky, I'm sure you've heard of her. She's a virtual assistant, And she created a course to how to get become a virtual assistant in less than 30 days. Max Bonds 11:24 And there's also some jobs that companies that are hiring right now, virtual assists with minimal experience that I do list on my website as well. Max Bonds 11:36 And I also do make sure that all the companies that I put on my website, they have to have a four to five or higher rating on Glassdoor. Max Bonds 11:45 I don't want companies on there that don't have a good reputation. So I do make sure whatever I list is thoroughly research before I put anything on my website. I want to make sure that it's tried and true. Jillian Tohber Leslie 11:58 Okay. So this is terrific. All right. So moms out there, if you're looking for ways to make money, definitely head to Max's site. Jillian Tohber Leslie 12:07 My question for you is, so you're doing this, right. So you start and you go, Well, I need to figure out how to make money online at home, and you start interviewing these women. Jillian Tohber Leslie 12:18 At what point did you say, No, I'm not going to be let's say, tutoring kids in China or selling on Etsy, I'm going to work on my blog. Max Bonds 12:30 Right. So I'm interviewing these amazing women and I love what they're doing, but it's not what I want to do. Since it's not what I want to do, that doesn't mean anything. There are people who still want to do that there are other people who wanted to those things. Max Bonds 12:47 So I wanted to make sure that I was sharing this information, but I'm still kind of searching for what to do and researching all this stuff. Looking at other bloggers' income reports online Max Bonds 12:56 I keep seeing blogging, and I'm seeing these blogging income reports. And I'm seeing Michelle Schroeder makes $50,000 a month. And that was just a while ago. So I mean, she's making even more than that now. Max Bonds 13:09 And I'm thinking why can I do that? I mean, I know I have a marketing background, but I think anyone can do this. I think that blogging will work for you if you just are persistent and you are diligent about being focused on what you want to do. Max Bonds 13:25 And I believe that anyone can do this but you just have to really want to do it because there will be days where you just really want to give up. Jillian Tohber Leslie 13:32 Now here's a question. Are these bloggers, how are they monetizing? How is this woman getting to $50,000 a month. Is it through ads is it through affiliates is it through selling virtual courses? What do you find? Max Bonds 13:49 So I'm finding for myself she talked mainly about affiliate marketing. I don't know if she's doing more now than that. Max Bonds 13:56 But also Carly Gamble I believe is her last name, she makes a lot of her money through ads and when I saw that, that was what intrigued me. Like if I can just get people to my website and make money off of that alone that would be great. Learning about affiliate marketing as a blogger Max Bonds 14:10 On top of that, learning more and more about this blogging world I found out about affiliate marketing so that's kind of how I'm thinking that this blogging thing could work. Max Bonds 14:21 I also interviewed two bookkeepers who are stay at home moms, and one of the moms has nine kids, homeschools six, and she is still able to make money as a bookkeeper part time. Jillian Tohber Leslie 14:36 That's amazing. Max Bonds 14:37 Yes. So these are just amazing stories that I just can't believe that these women are able to do these things, and still bring money in and raise kids. Max Bonds 14:52 So she took a course. So it's a bookkeepers course, and the courses are quite expensive. It's $2,000, but these two moms, and there are other moms have taken the course. But I interviewed them specifically to see is this course really is something that a mom could do and actually be able to build a business after taking? And their answer was yes. Max Bonds 15:14 And they told me all about their journey taking the course and how they have succeeded after the course. And I became an affiliate for this course. Because I knew that it was tried and true. Max Bonds 15:27 And I just had one person sign up for the course, after reading the success story, from those moms, and that was $500. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:34 Wow. Max Bonds 15:35 Just from one person taking the course. And I did want to make sure that I'm not just trying to sell any old course. This is the actual course that people have taken and have become successful after taking and that's why I'm referring this information. So I'm able to give good information and still profit at the same time. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:56 So you then right now, are you monetizing mostly via affiliates? Max Bonds 16:02 Affiliates and ads. I was able to join Mediavine, which is a higher paying at network. So after joining them, I was able to greatly increase my earnings through ads. Jillian Tohber Leslie 16:18 Got it. And how are you driving traffic to your site? Driving traffic to your blog with Pinterest Max Bonds 16:24 So primarily, and shockingly, Pinterest. Jillian Tohber Leslie 16:28 Yes. Not shockingly. Max Bonds 16:31 You know, it was really a shock to me, because I always as a personal user, will go to Pinterest for home decor ideas or fashion, inspiration, or quotes. Max Bonds 16:44 I would never think that Pinterest was a way for the personal finance niche. I just, I would never go to Pinterest for those reasons. Max Bonds 16:51 But I'm finding out just because I don't, doesn't mean other people don't, it has been a great traffic source for me to talk about these success stories from these moms. And people really want to know, they want inspiration. Max Bonds 17:05 And they want to know, how do you make money from home, people really just want to know how. Jillian Tohber Leslie 17:09 Well, especially I think there's a book that I highly recommend. I read it when I was pregnant. So 11 years ago, and it's called The Female Brain. Jillian Tohber Leslie 17:19 And what it does is it goes through a woman's life, starting at birth, what happens for females, and there was this chapter about pregnancy and how your brain gets rewired when you're pregnant. How having children changes your life and your brain Jillian Tohber Leslie 17:33 And I kind of read it. And I was like, whatever. And then I had my daughter. And I was like, Oh, my God, my brain has changed. Like, I love this little person so much. Jillian Tohber Leslie 17:44 And all the things that I valued before this, I don't value in the same way. And that's how we ended up starting Catch My Party. I was a writer in Hollywood, a working writer in Hollywood. Jillian Tohber Leslie 17:59 And I just, I had my daughter and I said, You know what? Like, Hollywood's not as cool. And I remember thinking, Oh, my God and I turned to my husband. And I said, I just want to take our fate in our own hands. And I don't want to have to answer to anybody. And I just wanted to start a business with you. Max Bonds 18:21 Wow. Jillian Tohber Leslie 18:21 And I felt braver. But in hindsight, I can't believe that I did this. But at the time, I felt like I had no choice. It was like, I have to do this. Jillian Tohber Leslie 18:36 So I get that struggle. You know, you're working in corporate America. So I wasn't even working in corporate America. But let's say you are, and you're just kind of grinding it out. But you know, you're getting promoted or whatever. And then all of a sudden, you have children and everything shifts. Max Bonds 18:52 Yeah, that's totally true. I didn't want to travel anymore. I wanted to be home, I want to come home to my kids. I didn't want to be out of town and not be with my kids anymore. Max Bonds 19:04 My aspirations in the corporate world were just no longer I didn't even care for those things anymore. Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:10 I remember I was nursing my baby, you know, still nursing her, so she was an infant, and I'm in a meeting a Paramount and you'll be like, Oh, my God, that's so cool. Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:20 And it was cool. But it was cooler again, before I have my daughter. And I'm sitting in the meeting. And the way that meetings work in Hollywood is everybody kind of like, you kind of talk about chuffa in the beginning. What movies you've seen, what TV shows your liking, that kind of thing before you get down to work. Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:38 And here I am my boobs are so filled with milk, and I'm going in my head. I'm going, you guys I don't care about this anymore. I have something. I have a more important job right now. Yeah, like, I'm a mom. I Lainey's mom. And I've got to get home to her. Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:53 So I remember just going through the motions thinking, can we get this thing started, and afterwards, driving home and thinking I just need to be with my baby. And this was not me. This was not who I was. Max Bonds 20:07 Yes, yes. You change. Definitely. I can never be the same. Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:11 Never. And, still to this day. So anyway, so I feel like I relate to this need that women have. It's almost like putting on a sweater that doesn't fit anymore. Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:25 And the desperate need for moms to take off this itchy, tight sweater and find something that works for them. Max Bonds 20:31 Yeah, I love it. Yes, that's it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:39 But yet women need money. And especially if you're a dual income family. You can't just, you know, have the luxury of saying, Well, I'm just going to stop working. Max Bonds 20:48 Right. Exactly. Right. And you still have to bring it and even if it's just $1,000 or I mean, I don't know someone situation. Everyone's situation is different. But just any type of extra income to help offset from costs will help anything really. Jillian Tohber Leslie 21:05 Absolutely. I also think though, that like for me, I would not have been okay emotionally without a something outside of being a mom. Max Bonds 21:21 I was just about to say that. Yes, I totally agree. Max Bonds 21:26 It's important for us moms, and even as women to have some kind of creative outlet. Because we love our kids. But I mean, during that time, we do have time or at night at night or early in the morning. Max Bonds 21:39 We do have time to do something that we want to do for ourselves. And I think it's healthy as even a mom and a woman to be able to have something of our own. Jillian Tohber Leslie 21:48 Absolutely. Because at a certain point, I could not sing "Wheels on the Bus" anymore. You know what I mean? I had to have something adult. Something that was was mine. And I still hate that song. Max Bonds 22:04 Yeah, and I had this "Baby Shark" song in my head all the time. Jillian Tohber Leslie 22:07 I know the Baby Shark song! I get it. I get it. So I agree. And again, for some women, it's enough to do the Baby Shark song and Wheels on the Bus. But for others, you know, we need to kind of find what works for us. Max Bonds 22:22 Yep. I totally agree. Jillian Tohber Leslie 22:24 Okay, so for you, then you're doing ads, you're doing affiliates. Any other way that you're making money? Max Bonds 22:30 I did do one sponsored posts. And it was my first time doing it. But it was like the easiest $250 I ever made. Doing sponsored posts as a blogger Max Bonds 22:39 And it was actually an article that was very relevant to my audience on how you can make money by doing laundry from home, go figure. Max Bonds 22:48 You can start your own business. I get it seems like as some people are working, and they have their busy lives. They don't have time to do laundry. So of course, they the market is out there for people who are looking for people to do their laundry for them. Max Bonds 23:03 So I'm that inspired laundry care is the business. And you can start your own business, doing laundry for others and make $500 a week actually. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:16 So it's like Uber for laundry. Max Bonds 23:18 Yeah, exactly. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:19 That's so interesting. Yeah. And what would you say? Okay, so you did your sponsored post, you would like to be doing more I take it. Max Bonds 23:27 Yeah. So after they approached me and asked to do a sponsorship, a sponsored post, and I wrote the article after working with them and getting information. So it was relevant to my audience. So I'm definitely willing to do more sponsored posts for anything that's relevant to my audience. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:47 Got it. And what would you say is the most popular job, I don't know if you can tell on your end. But that moms, you know what articles they're reading on your site, or whatever. What is resonating in terms of Tried and True Mom Jobs? Max Bonds 24:04 So right now, what's going viral on Pinterest right now is the VIPkid job where Brittany works two hours a day, making $1700 a month. Max Bonds 24:20 And Nikki who makes $300,000 a year on Etsy. Those are the one of my two popular, most popular articles right now. Jillian Tohber Leslie 24:34 And how is it going for you? So you haven't even been doing this a year? What a blogger can make in her first year blogging Max Bonds 24:39 Yeah, you know, it's, it's done very well, actually. And I'm probably making maybe about $1,000 a month now. And I started really promoting it in, I would say March on Pinterest. And that is my biggest traffic source. Max Bonds 25:01 I started heavily promoting it in March on Pinterest. And I've seen great success by joining MediaVine within three months of really promoting it on Pinterest, which I didn't have a lot. You have to get 25,000 sessions or more so in order to join MediaVine. Max Bonds 25:23 So in that short time, I was able to have some posts go viral about saving money, and work from home jobs, and it just kind of took off. Jillian Tohber Leslie 25:34 Pretty amazing. Yeah. And then you also talk about budgeting on your site. Sharing budgeting tips as a personal finance blogger Max Bonds 25:40 Yes, I'm a very frugal person. That's just my nature. I don't want to spend money on anything that I don't have to. So I guess I have a lot of experiences of how to save money that others aren't doing, or they just don't really know about. So I share that on the side as well. Max Bonds 25:58 And that's kind of the how I want to educate a lot of moms on ways to make money, save and invest so they can become financially free. Max Bonds 26:09 And I really just want to get across that they can really have the best of both worlds. You can make money and still be able to stay home and raise your kids. Jillian Tohber Leslie 26:18 Have you thought about doing couponing? Because those are big sites. Max Bonds 26:22 You know what? No, I have not. And I'm just starting to actually do some couponing by looking through the paper and things like that. So yes, I guess I am. Max Bonds 26:35 I love the Ibotta app, I think it's so it's so amazing. So easy. Just how you can just take pictures or take a picture of you receipt by downloading offers that you already buy anyway, and getting a little kickback for that. How to get more Pinterest followers with the MiloTree Pinterest pop-up Jillian Tohber Leslie 26:49 Right. Right. And then you also have a whole section on blogger tools. And I think you're a MiloTree affiliate. Max Bonds 26:58 Yes. Oh, I love MiloTree it has contributed to all of my followers on Pinterest. And I have over 3,000 followers on Pinterest now. Max Bonds 27:08 I think the first week I got over 100 followers after joining MiloTree, and I just always hear new bloggers. Well, I consider myself a new blogger. But people who are just starting out, how they don't know how to get followers. And that's the first thing I always tell people. MiloTree is definitely what you want, because Pinterest make so many changes. Max Bonds 27:30 Now, I don't even know how people get followers without a tool like MiloTree. Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:35 Right? It is tricky because Pinterest isn't really like the cult of personality that say Instagram is, where, oh, I want to follow that person. Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:48 On Pinterest. It's a little bit more of a disconnect. Like, I like these recipes. But it's not like I'm identifying that recipe with this person. Max Bonds 27:57 Exactly. You're only going to that article because of the of that pin you created. Max Bonds 28:06 So MiloTree is a great reminder to say, Hey, you like this content, follow me for more stuff like this. Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:11 Exactly. The one thing that I am seeing more and more, especially as Pinterest has told us a little bit about their algorithm. Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:21 Remember, Pinterest shows your pins to your followers first. So you want those followers to be really engaged followers. Because if your followers like those pins, then you will get broader reach with those pins. Pinterest then goes Oh, these are good will show these to more people. Max Bonds 28:40 Yes, and I attribute Pinterest followers even sometimes a little bit even more important than email subscribers. Max Bonds 28:46 Because like for example, if someone joins my email list, they'll never really know what I've put out there in the past because I'm not going to talk about old things I've talked about before. Max Bonds 28:58 But if they are my Pinterest followers, they're always going to see pins from my older blog posts that they may be interested in. And just stay up to date on everything that I've done and all my pins and that. Max Bonds 29:11 But my email followers will never get all that information. So I do think Pinterest followers are very important especially for the way I market my business Jillian Tohber Leslie 29:19 This is interesting and what are you doing then with email? Max Bonds 29:24 The way I'm using email right now is just keeping them updated so whenever I have new article about something, I'll share it with my email list, or if I find a new way to make money, or to save I'll share share with them so I just keep them updated on the blog and what articles we have going on. Creating a free course with affiliate links Jillian Tohber Leslie 29:41 Are you thinking of creating a course or creating products that you can sell? Max Bonds 29:48 You know I thought about that and I think what I do want to work on is creating a blog course on how to get started, because I've learned so much in such a short amount of time that and I've done pretty well and such short amount of time, that I want to create a free course for anyone. Max Bonds 30:05 Because I know when you're trying to start a blog, the last thing you want to do is spend money on something that you're not getting money from, so I definitely want to create something that's free. And if I profit off of it it would be through Affiliate Marketing. Max Bonds 30:18 So for example, if you got to create a website I would recommend SiteGround that's who I host my site through. Jillian Tohber Leslie 30:27 I recommend them. We don't use SiteGround because we use Amazon Web Services because we have a big site with Catch My Party and stuff. But we love SiteGround we think are really great. Max Bonds 30:39 Yes, they are. And they're probably one of the most inexpensive hosts out there that has the great support. Jillian Tohber Leslie 30:49 Definitely. Okay, sorry. So you were going to do a course or you're going to put together some resources that are free, but then monetize via affiliates. Correct? Max Bonds 31:02 Yes. Jillian Tohber Leslie 31:03 You know what, I was just thinking of top of my head, you could so do a lead magnet, like a one page lead magnet to get people on your list that just says Here are the top five ways to make money as a mom blogger or is as a mom as a stay at home mom. Max Bonds 31:19 I love that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 31:21 You know, you can do all these kind of interesting things, like do somebody laundry or teach English to Chinese kids, or whatever it is just boom, down and dirty. Like here, go do this. You'll start making money right away. Max Bonds 31:35 I'm writing this down right now. I love that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 31:40 Because I think it is hard to, like you were saying, if you just want to jump in. How do you jump in? And where's the low hanging fruit? Max Bonds 31:54 Right, exactly. Jillian Tohber Leslie 31:56 Well, I think this is just so great. Do you have time to be putting together a course? Jillian Tohber Leslie 32:05 How does it work for you with two young kids? Where are you finding the time? How to manage your time as a mom blogger? Max Bonds 32:11 It took me some time to really figure out how to use my time management skills the best. Max Bonds 32:16 I finally feel like I've gotten into a rhythm where it works. So I can do two hours in the morning before my kids get up. My kids are great nappers. They nap around two to three hours. So that's another time that I work. Max Bonds 32:32 And then at nighttime, so my husband comes home, I devote some time to our family. And then after I put the kids to bed, and spend some time with my husband, then I'll open my laptop up, and then just work until I can't work anymore, and then have to fall asleep. Jillian Tohber Leslie 32:47 So how many hours a week would you say you work on your business? Max Bonds 32:50 I would say 40. And it's possible because just early in the morning, two hours here, so two hours in the morning, two hours during that time, and then whatever I can do for the rest during the nighttime, I just work. Max Bonds 33:06 And then I also work the weekends the same kind of schedule. So the one thing while we're on your own businesses, if you don't run it, it won't run. Max Bonds 33:18 I just pretty much work as much as I can. When the kids are sleeping. I really pride myself in trying to be an intentional mom and being there and not being a mom that just gives them my phone or whatever, just so I can finish some work. Max Bonds 33:34 They are definitely my priority. And I just I make it work by just staying up late. And getting up in the morning and utilizing that time. Max Bonds 33:43 And one thing I do though, I will clean and cook and do everything I do when the kids are awake. And then that's when I just do everything that needs to do for the house as well. Max Bonds 33:53 So that's all the time that I had to do those things that I know a lot of moms do when the kids are asleep. But I just do it when they're awake because when they're asleep, that's my work time. Jillian Tohber Leslie 34:05 I get it. So if you had a piece of advice based on all of the research that you've done, and also starting your own business, so let's say I'm a mom, and I'm working in a bad corporate corporate job that doesn't fit me anymore. And I really want to be home with my kids. What piece of advice would you have for them? Max Bonds 34:26 Well, I would say check out Tried and True Mom Jobs! Max Bonds 34:29 But honestly, I would say that because every job is different for everyone. I know that I have a list of 20 ways that moms are making money from home. Max Bonds 34:37 But the only one that I'm really doing is blogging and affiliate marketing. Because it's just something that works for me and what works for me, that may not work for you. Max Bonds 34:47 So I would definitely check out the website and see how moms are able to do it, you can check out success stories and and see how they are able to do it while raising kids at the same time. Max Bonds 35:00 And just the job itself, I'm being a virtual assistant. That was definitely something that I was considering that I would have done had I not found blogging, because a virtual assistant can be so many things. Max Bonds 35:14 I actually have a list on there of 150 virtual assistant skills that you could have that you could service out to others. So I'll honestly just say to check out the website and see what it is that you think that you will want to do. Max Bonds 35:31 And then you can find out how to do it and that into start from there. And I'll continue into at ways that moms can make money from home, like I'm there. Max Bonds 35:42 I know that a lot of moms that are business coaches or life coaches that make money doing that. So I'm looking for someone that can review there. Max Bonds 35:51 I'm looking for a mom who's doing that today that I can interview and share with others to show how you can make money from home. Jillian Tohber Leslie 36:05 Are you continuing to interview moms like, Is that still the bread and butter of your site? Max Bonds 36:10 Yes, it definitely is that and my saving money articles, I feel like that's what people are most interested in. How to get interviewed as a mom entrepreneur on the Tried and True Mom Jobs blog Jillian Tohber Leslie 36:23 Okay, so let's talk about how can people reach out to you and are you looking for people to interview. Max Bonds 36:29 Yes, I'm always looking for people to interview, especially if you have a success story. Max Bonds 36:35 So if you make money from home, I just want to hear from you. I want to know how you're doing it, and if I can share your story with other moms just like myself, and looking for ways to make money from home. Max Bonds 36:46 So my email address is Max@triedandtruemomjobs.com. Max Bonds 36:57 And Triedandtruemoms.com and I check my email daily several times a day so I'm definitely looking to hear from from you. Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:09 Oh, great. And they can find you on Pinterest and Instagram and all of those places? Max Bonds 37:13 Yes, and I just recently joined Twitter. I actually fell off on Twitter. I didn't realize that it was still a big thing for the personal finance niche. So I just created a profile that I'm going to start being more active in as well. Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:30 Awesome. Well, honestly, Max, thank you so much for being on the show. Max Bonds 37:34 Thank you for having me. Join the MiloTree newsletter by signing up for a month free of MiloTree Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:36 I don't know if you know this. But I if you're liking this podcast, I send out weekly emails and I'm sharing tips, tips on social media tips about email marketing tips about growing your business, but I also share tips, personal tips on how to manage your time tips on how I over apologize and what to do about that I really try to cover the gamut of being an online entrepreneur being a female entrepreneur. Jillian Tohber Leslie 38:07 And if you want to get onto my list, the best way to do it is to sign up for MiloTree for one month free and you'll automatically be added and that way also you can take that those 30 days and see how MiloTree can work for your blog or your site by growing your social media followers on Instagram and Pinterest and Facebook and YouTube, and also grow your email list. Jillian Tohber Leslie 38:35 If you have any questions always feel free to reach out to jillian@milotree.com I read everything. We're here to troubleshoot and really we're here to support you and help you grow your business. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!  

My guest this week is Jennifer Priest from the blog, Smart Fun DIY, and the social media marketing firm, Smart Creative Social. Jennifer shares awesome advice about how to get more Pinterest traffic by crushing the Pinterest algorithm. By putting yourself in Pinterest's shoes, you can understand what they're looking for, and how by giving it to them, you will grow your traffic. We talk about optimizing your overall Pinterest strategy, using hashtags on Pinterest, what Pinterest communities are all about, and so much more! If you are trying to grow your Pinterest traffic, this episode is a must-listen! Plus, Jennifer is one smart cookie!   Resources: Smart Fun DIY Smart Creative Social MiloTree Catch My Party Sharer Brothers Social Media Examiner Smart Fun DIY Instagram Smart Creative Social Community MiloTree Mastermind Facebook Group Transcript: How To Get More Pinterest Traffic by Crushing the Pinterest Algorithm with Jennifer Priest Host 0:03 Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast. Brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:10 Hello, everyone. Welcome back to The Blogger Genius Podcast. Today I'm really excited to introduce my guest. Her name is Jennifer Priest. And she started 15 years ago in the online space as a DIY blogger. She has been doing that for this long, she's still doing it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:34 She has a digital marketing consulting firm. So we're going to talk about both of those sides of her business. So welcome to the show, Jennifer. Jennifer Priest 0:45 Thanks so much. I'm really glad to be here. Why going to conferences is good for bloggers Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:48 We are trying to figure out when we met, but we have been circling each other. We've been at a variety of conferences. We definitely met at Vid Summit last year. We both believe in conferences and like going to conferences. Jennifer Priest 1:04 Yeah, oh, my gosh, conferences are like one of my favorite, favorite things to do. Jennifer Priest 1:11 I think, you know, one of the things is we work from home alone. And so it's nice to go and see other people and interact. And it's nice to put a face to the name. I've heard of MiloTree for so many years, and to be able to then go and like meet you in person and talk to you. There's nothing that can replace that face to face connection. Jennifer Priest 1:31 Even if we're doing Facebook Lives, it's so different to actually interact with someone in person. So I love just the networking aspect of it. And then there's also the learning. Jillian Tohber Leslie 1:42 I so agree, and it's funny. It's exactly what you just said. As soon as you meet somebody in real life. It is like that friendship is so solid. Jennifer Priest 1:55 Yeah, you feel like you're like absolutely friends. And you're like, we literally talked for five minutes. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:00 But it's like, I would trust you with my child. Jennifer Priest 2:04 Yeah, I have a friend that we've actually been friends online for two years. And a couple years ago, or we were friends online for two years before we met in person. And a couple years ago, we planned this retreat, where like, six of us were bloggers and artists decided to go on this crazy trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and it was really fun. Jennifer Priest 2:22 And we met in a restaurant, and then we're going to carpool from the airport the rest of the way, to the place where are camping, and I was like, this is the first time we've actually met in person. And she's like, no way. And I'm like, Yeah, because we've known each other online and through texting for two years. But, you know, that's one of the great things about doing conferences is you can meet these people in person. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:44 Yes. I think it's kind of what you were talking about. We work alone at home. And there is something to meeting another online entrepreneur that you're, you have this feeling of like, I understand your world. Jennifer Priest 3:03 Yeah, I mean, I don't know anyone in my town who does anything remotely like what I do. I'd probably have to drive an hour to find someone local, that would even understand. Jennifer Priest 3:14 My family, my husband and my kids get it. But like my extended family, they're just like, you do something on the internet. Jillian Tohber Leslie 3:20 Right, right. So there is that sense of what it's like to sit at your computer in your pajamas, you know, working on something that needs to get done for tomorrow. Jennifer Priest 3:34 Yep. Yep. Or getting up at five in the morning. Because you're like my blog post due today. I didn't finish it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 3:41 Yes. I think there is that kindred spirit element to when you meet somebody in real life. And you can say, hey, let's talk SEO. And you both know exactly what that means. Jennifer Priest 3:55 That and I think too, when you meet in person, the guard comes down. So we were talking earlier that we had we had been to the Adthrive Conference together. And while we were there, a blogger that I have known online for years, I have seen her conferences, but we never really talked, we had a mutual friend. Jennifer Priest 4:11 And so the three of us, we went out kind of adventuring in Austin. And it was the most fun tim. We started talking about family and our lives, and I feel so connected to her. And it's like you, you can't replicate that. Jennifer Priest 4:26 It's the commonality that we have that kind of breaks down the barriers, and then the conference gives us that opportunity to get those deeper connections. That's not even about blogging anymore. Jillian Tohber Leslie 4:36 Right. It's why I say, I trust people, I would trust you with my child. You know, it's weird. And there is an intimacy to it. Jennifer Priest 4:47 Definitely. Jillian Tohber Leslie 4:48 Let's hear your story. Because I don't know it. Jennifer Priest 4:53 So it starts quite a long time ago. I've always been entrepreneurial, like when I was nine years old, I had my first craft fair, selling earrings. Jennifer Priest 5:03 I've always been crafty, always been entrepreneurial, always kind of a busybody. I used to organize the kids in the neighborhood to like, gather cans and bottles to recycle. And then we would amass the money together and go buy candy and stuff. I was always an organizing kind of person. Jennifer Priest 5:24 And so when I had my daughter, I started doing scrapbooking. And I got a mail order kit. And I got really into it. And I started teaching classes. And I joined a direct sales company. And the direct sales company kind of came at the time that I had just graduated from college, and two bachelor's degrees, and I could not find a job because the economy was really bad. Jennifer Priest 5:46 So I joined this direct selling company and I worked my way up the ranks. And within six months, I was like the number two consultant in California. Jillian Tohber Leslie 5:53 Now wait, what is a direct selling company? Jennifer Priest 5:55 So it's like, Stampin' Up or Tupperware it's multi level marketing where you order from catalogs, you do parties in people's homes and that kind of thing. And so that was kind of my entry into it. Jennifer Priest 6:08 I started doing email marketing to promote that. So previous to that, my online experience was to get through college, I used to sell like my daughter's baby clothes. And I would go and buy things and sell them on eBay for a markup. Jennifer Priest 6:22 So we'd go to like estate sales or yard sales and find something really expensive, and buy it for a good price, and then resell it. And that's a lot of how I got through college was was doing my eBay business. Jennifer Priest 6:33 So then I was doing this online thing with email marketing, because I was like, I don't know how to build a website. And so I did. I built that online business with email. And I was teaching in scrapbook stores. Jennifer Priest 6:44 And meanwhile, I ended up getting a job working for the local county. And I was doing grant writing, a mix of grant writing and contract management. Jennifer Priest 6:55 Working with all of these different contractors who provided substance abuse services for the county. I ended up losing my job, they're very crooked. And the day that they fired me was when they're being investigated bya grand jury and I was turning over records and they're like, No, you're gone. Jillian Tohber Leslie 7:11 Oooh interesting. Jennifer Priest 7:13 Yeah. Very shady. So I was devastated because I was going to school to get my masters. And I thought that I would work in government for a long time. Jennifer Priest 7:23 I tried to go to class because I was getting my masters. I tried to go to class my professors, like you're a mess, you need to go and so I went to the scrapbook store, because that's where my friends all hung out. And I had I had kind of taken a moratorium from teaching because I was commuting really, really far. Starting a blog through teaching scrapbooking Jennifer Priest 7:42 I go in the scrapbook store. And I'm like all teary eyed because I lost my job and wounded my pride and stuff. And they're like, good, you can now teach classes here more often. And I was like, seriously? Jennifer Priest 7:53 And so my husband, he end up getting a promotion the next week, and because I was making a lot of money doing what I was doing and, you know, his promotion didn't equal to what we were making before. But He's like, you know what, stay home, do your thing, go work this business, I know you're really passionate about it. Jennifer Priest 8:11 And so that's what started it all. And that was back in like 2005. So I started teaching at all these different scrapbook stores and still doing some different direct selling companies, and making kits and selling them and making things on eBay and selling them. And I had clients in like Japan, and they were just order stuff over and over and over. Jennifer Priest 8:36 And then as at this one store in 2007, that was a pretty big scrapbook store in Southern California. And telling people about my classes in my emails. And they were like, you know, we really would love to be able to share this stuff, can you put put it on a blog, share your classes on a blog, and then we can tell our friends. Or, why aren't you on Facebook? Jennifer Priest 9:00 I was a technophobe. And I was like, I don't need all that I don't need a cell phone. I didn't have a cell phone forever. I didn't have texting forever. But if I needed it for my business, I learned it. Jennifer Priest 9:12 And so I was like, Okay, I'm going to get on Facebook. And so my intention with Facebook from day one was a business thing. And my intention with the blog from day one was to promote my offline business, which was sell these craft kits. Jillian Tohber Leslie 9:28 Are those craft kits you were putting together, or was this these companies? Jennifer Priest 9:33 I was putting them together. So at that point, I had transitioned over to ordering the supplies wholesale, you know, going down to the garment district in LA and sourcing all these like, really unique things, making some of the supplies like die cutting paper and, and sewing little applications and stuff like that. Starting an Etsy shop as a craft blogger Jennifer Priest 9:51 And I would put these kits together in mass, and not only teach my classes with them, but then I would sell them on Etsy. And so in 2007 is when I learned about Etsy, and I was like, Oh, my gosh, this is like eBay handmade. For me, that was my reference point. And so I also started promoting my Etsy business in my emails and on Facebook. Jillian Tohber Leslie 10:14 And where are you collecting these emails? Jennifer Priest 10:17 I was using Constant Contact. So I had a paper notebook that people would fill out. Jillian Tohber Leslie 10:26 When you were teaching, you said, Here, give me your email address? Jennifer Priest 10:29 Yeah, I would have them fill out this paper notebook while I was teaching or like, if I did a booth at a craft fair, or scrapbook expo or whatever, I would have this little thing, you could sign up on my email list. And then I actually started making those and selling them to other people. And I would decorate it for their businesses. Jennifer Priest 10:48 And I would sell like the printable. I'd be like, oh, I'll make it custom for your business. I was doing all kinds of crazy stuff. Jennifer Priest 10:55 And so I had a paper book. And I remember this one time as using Constant Contact at that time, because they were the gold standard. So anytime Constant Contact was like, hey, do you actually have that this person signed up and, and they're like, we're getting a few spam reports. Jennifer Priest 11:09 And so I sent them photos of my book, the pages we used to have to do that. I mean, can you believe that we used to have to keep a paper record that they gave us their email address. Jennifer Priest 11:21 And so everything kind of evolved. In my circles, I started becoming the go-to person for blogging and social media advice, because I was using it for my business. Getting into social media management as a blogger Jennifer Priest 11:31 In 2009, I booked my first corporate client, and so somebody where I manage their social media and for their company, and posted the things and manage their design team, and just did all of that stuff in the craft industry. Jennifer Priest 11:46 And so from there, I've gained more and more knowledge because I'm learning it for my business anyway. Jennifer Priest 11:54 I gained more clients and then workin in social media on different client accounts, really eye opening to see like, how different things can be, you know, between a multimillion dollar company and my small little blog, but also to see the commonalities in there. Jennifer Priest 12:11 And the challenges that they still face, like money is not the answer to everything. And it's given me a lot of really interesting insights into how to work social media. Jillian Tohber Leslie 12:23 What are the commonalities? Jennifer Priest 12:29 Yeah, so to break it down as far as the commonalities, that's like more than a podcast. But I think one of the things is the methodology that you have to use, and looking at things that's the same. Using analytics and creativity to grow a business online Jennifer Priest 12:46 So you kind of have to approach it from more of a scientific mindset, where you're looking at the evidence, looking at the data, really analyzing it doing, you know, some level of creativity, so you've got to have both sides of your brain working. Jennifer Priest 13:01 So you look at, you look at the data, and you're really good with analytics. But if you you can't think of creative ways to then get to your goal, you're not going to be successful. Jennifer Priest 13:13 So I do a lot of studying the numbers, looking at what the platform is telling us based on how does our content behave, what happens to it when we post something on Facebook? And then what happens after that point. Jennifer Priest 13:26 But also looking at stuff like the signals that they're saying in the news, what their press room says, what is on their blog, what is Pinterest posting on their engineering blog,on Medium that gives us signals as to where they're going, and how the algorithm is performing. Jennifer Priest 13:44 And then I can take that information and also be some of my experience and the trends and say, Okay, this kind of content is going to perform well. If we put the content out in this manner, based on all this evidence, I think it's going to perform well. Jennifer Priest 13:58 And so every piece of content that we put out on social is an experiment we're trying to see, like, okay, I've hit check on these boxes that I think are going to make it work now. Let's see how it performs, and then go back and reanalyze it. Jennifer Priest 14:14 And so it's this continuous process of analysis and testing, analysis and testing. And I think that's where a lot of people get in trouble. Wwe go to a conference, or we take a course, and we're like, awesome, this person gave me a checklist of all the stuff I gotta do. Rainbows and unicorns are going to shoot out of the sky, I go home, I put it in place, everything's amazing. Jennifer Priest 14:37 And then tomorrow, the algorithm changes. And that stuff doesn't work. Because those are tactics, those are steps, those are tasks. And we're not learning how to think about the platform. Think about the platform and the algorithms of the platforms you're using to promote your business Jennifer Priest 14:50 And so that's the major thing that I've learned through all of this is just thinking about the platform and realizing the algorithms are here to stay, because there's just a fire hose of information. And they have to be there in order to give us a good experience on the platform. Jennifer Priest 15:05 I mean, if I saw everything that my family members were posting on Facebook, I would just delete it, delete it, because it's just too much. And so the algorithms have to be there. So we got to accept that they're there. Jennifer Priest 15:18 But then the second thing is what are the algorithms there to do? They're studying our behavior, and then making rules that help them get the outcome that they want. So we can do the same thing. If we study the platform's behavior, we can make rules to get us the outcome we want. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:38 I think that is so powerful. In fact, the thing that I always say is, so Pinterest is very valuable for Catch My Party. It drives a ton of traffic. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:49 And I say, when Pinterest says something, I pay attention. If they tell me, okay, we don't want these long pins anymore. And this is like, they come out and they say, 600 by 900, it doesn't matter if I don't like that. I'm not going to second guess what they say. Jillian Tohber Leslie 16:12 I'm not gonna go well, my long pins have worked so well. I know they're saying this, but I'm not gonna listen to it. Oh, my God, I'm going to be the first one listening to it. Jennifer Priest 16:23 Yeah, when you think of these companies, they don't do things flippantly. And there's this huge machine behind them that then it's almost like, I think of like, a big alligator. Like, they don't move that fast. They're kind of or a dinosaur moving so slow. And so everything they do is very deliberate. And there's meetings after meetings and focus groups. Jillian Tohber Leslie 16:49 And testing. Testing everything. Jennifer Priest 16:54 Yeah. And they're not making those announcements, because they just decided we're going to make it hard for bloggers. But that is that is the thinking that is pervasive in many Facebook groups with bloggers, is this idea of the platforms are just out to get us. The platforms are not out to get us as bloggers Jennifer Priest 17:13 They don't care. They just that is not their purpose. Like every single platform that's out there. And I feel like Pinterest is so good about being transparent about this, they have a mission. Pinterest's mission is to help people discover new ideas and go out into the world and try them. And so that's at the heart of everything that they're doing. Jennifer Priest 17:33 So if they're saying that this needs to be a two to three ratio pin, we can go and say, Okay, why is it that they're saying that because 80% of their users are on mobile, and they look better on mobile? Jennifer Priest 17:45 Have you tried to look at a giraffe pin on mobile, you can't see it. And so if that is what they think is going to help them get back to their mission to help people discover new ideas. Awesome. I'm going to help people discover my new ideas on their phone. Jennifer Priest 18:04 And so I think that the thing is, kind of a little bit of a mindset shift in how we think about these platforms. They are not out to get us, they absolutely know they need content creators to be on there putting stuff on there, whether it's Facebook, or Pinterest, or YouTube or whatever, but they have a mission. Jennifer Priest 18:23 And so if we accept that, and we stopped fighting it, and just take the signals that they're giving us and and then adjust our strategy to those signals. Jennifer Priest 18:33 First, we can have an ever evolving strategy. So that saves us a lot of grief. But second, we're going to have more success, because we're not wasting time. Jennifer Priest 18:44 I hate to kind of sound like I'm on a soapbox, but we're not wasting time with stuff that doesn't make any sense. And that is somewhat a level of immature thinking in our business to think that a platform is going to care about a blogger, even a 5 million views a month blogger to say, I'm going to make this change and platform to make that blogger's life hard. Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:03 Yes. And again, you have to think that these platforms need to monetize, these are businesses. So you have to put yourself in the mindset of Pinterest, or Facebook or Instagram, and they're trying to give the best experience they possibly can to their visitors. Jennifer Priest 19:24 And they're all still free. They're not charging us and people say well, it's just pay to play. There are always outliers, always people on the fringes that are all of a sudden they're going viral, because they're doing something that captures people's attention. They're doing something that works within the algorithm. How to work the algorithms to your advantage Jennifer Priest 19:46 And sometimes people don't have a plan. They just have some kind of magic touch. But really, a lot of the people have a plan. Like if you look at these guys, the Sharer Brothers they are two college brothers, they decided we're going to start a YouTube channel. Jennifer Priest 20:01 They're very methodical and how they did it. They started in January of 2017. By October of that year, they had over a million subscribers. You can totally work the system to your favor. And I think it takes a mindset shift of instead of seeing a difficulty, a roadblock, first looking at it as a challenge. But then looking at it as an opportunity. Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:27 Absolutely Jennifer Priest 20:30 A differentiator. Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:31 Would you say that Pinterest is where you focus your time or where you are the biggest expert? Jennifer Priest 20:39 So you know, one of the things that's been a challenge, I had this discussion with Michael Stelzer from Social Media Examiner. And this is something that I'm going to share the story because it's a little bit embarrassing, but it's also something that we need to think about in our businesses, especially as a lifestyle blogger. Jennifer Priest 20:58 You asked me what kind of blog I'm like I say, DIY, because I'm doing stuff. We're kind of all over the place, right? Where I do recipes, I, I fixed my house, I make crafts, it's hard to communicate. Jillian Tohber Leslie 21:09 Do you have travel? Jennifer Priest 21:11 I travel, Disney, Mexican food, there's a lot of stuff in there, right? And so we're trying to be all things to all people. And so I was talking to Michael Stelzer because he was like, Hey, you've kind of been on my radar for a while, but I didn't understand what you do. Jennifer Priest 21:29 And that was such like a heartbreaking but also revealing moment, because you can't be all things to all people. And so I think for us, when we're talking to people about what we do, if we can communicate like one thing that we're really solid on and that could be like our entry point. Jennifer Priest 21:48 And so I say, I'm DIY craft because that's something I'm really solid on. And that's an entry point into my craft blog. But I have recipes on there, too. Jennifer Priest 21:59 And so as like the Pinterest thing, I'm really solid on Pinterest. I have a course on Pinterest that makes sense for people to understand and know. But it's not the only thing I do. Jennifer Priest 22:08 I have a YouTube channel. I've had virals on Instagram. This year, I doubled the size of an Instagram account within a couple months and hit well over the 10,000 mark with it. So I can do stuff on lots of social media platforms. But I needed something that made sense for people to understand that, okay, she gets Pinterest. That's something bloggers need. That's something that businesses need to get traffic. Every blogger needs a niche -- a point of entry Jennifer Priest 22:31 And so that's like my entry point. But it's not the only thing. And so something for any of us that are like lifestyle bloggers to think about is like, what is our entry point that we can get people in and then they can learn all this other stuff. Because if we just say, I can do everything at the beginning, there's nothing for people to attach to. And they don't understand. Jillian Tohber Leslie 22:51 I get that. When I was at Mom 2.0 this last year, I went to an Instagram talk and I forgot who was leading it but she said this that I thought was really powerful, which you'll relate to. She said "lifestyle" on Instagram is not a niche. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:09 On Instagram you want to niche down and just how you said you know, Pinterest is kind of your way in, like if you are lifestyle blogger, pick your lane and really dig deep in that lane. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:25 Maybe you do more food than travel, or you like food better than travel, or like travel better. Go so that somebody can see you and go oh, travel well then you can add some food and stuff, but you do want to in the world of the internet, it's so easy to get lost. And so do think where could I... where's my comfort place? Where is my sweet spot? Jennifer Priest 23:51 Yeah, and I think you know, the idea to of having this one branded Instagram I mean I'm up against this too, I have a Smart Fun DIYs Instagram it is slow is slow growing. And I know why that is. It's because you look at it,and you're like I don't know what this is about, and people in less than a fraction of a second are making that decision and assessment where I have other accounts that are niched way down, and those are growing crazy. Jennifer Priest 24:22 Like in the same time period of three months on Instagram, Smart Fun DIY, this summer grew 1000 followers, it has 29.1000 followers. So not a lot bigger thousand in the same time period, I grew a niche to count from 7000 to 13,000. Jennifer Priest 24:42 It's going to be more than Smart Fun DIY before the end of the year. And it's because people look at it, they get it they're either in or they're out. They don't have to think hard. Their lazy lizard brain is like, I get it, I want it, I don't want it. And then they're in or they're out. Create niche Instagram accounts for your other content as an influencer Jennifer Priest 25:00 There's nothing that says and this is something I'm experimenting with. And I know other bloggers have experimented with this too. There's nothing that says that you can't take that and create other niche accounts. Jennifer Priest 25:10 So if I am doing let's say, food crafts and Disney and I have three different niche accounts that in interact with my lifestyle branded account, and I'm putting that content out in multiple places. Now, again, this is more of an Instagram thing. But why can't you do that. Jennifer Priest 25:28 And if you think of Pinterest, we have boards for different sub topics, you could treat Instagram like your boards to and have different sub topics. Now you need to be maintaining those. So there's a question of scale. You can't do it on 84 topics. Jennifer Priest 25:44 But it's something to think about of how do I get people in the door and then I get them to follow my main account just like I'm using Pinterest to get people in the door. But I do all kinds of other stuff for companies. Jillian Tohber Leslie 25:57 Right. And I would say for Catch My Party, guess what if you go to our Instagram account, we're going to show you beautiful dessert table after beautiful dessert table and and we have over 150,000 followers. But you like it or you don't. Jennifer Priest 26:14 It makes sense to people. They have to understand it. You know Walmart's confusing, it's big and huge. You don't know what they do. You go into Pier One. You're like decor. I got it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 26:24 Yes. And by the way, I get overwhelmed at Walmart. Jennifer Priest 26:28 Right, Costco, the same thing. It like hurts me a little bit. Like, I have to figure out how to get my cereal and my motor oil. Like it's too much. Jennifer Priest 26:38 I go to Target. And I only shop in one side of the store. I'm like, I'll shop in the grocery side for groceries. And then I'll make another trip to go get candles and notebooks and like, it'll probably be a different trip to get clothes. Because it's too much. Why the Pinterest pop-up from MiloTree can help you grow your Pinterest followers Jillian Tohber Leslie 26:55 As a blogger myself, I know that there is a lot asked of us. And sometimes it's too much. If you're trying to grow your traffic, then you definitely need to grow your Pinterest followers. Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:08 There's a direct connection to active, engaged Pinterest followers and growth in traffic. Because those are the people who are going to interact with your early pins and Pinterest is going to show it to a larger audience. Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:22 If you have not tried MiloTree head on over because we will help you effortlessly grow your followers. In fact, if you have a friend who's using MiloTree asked them what they think. Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:36 The best way we've grown, our business is through word of mouth. And also if you sign up, you get your first 30 days free. You get added to my newsletter. I send weekly emails, sharing actual tactical tips, but also some ways to think about your business and manage the different things that we struggle with as entrepreneurs. Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:02 So again, head on over to MiloTree.com, sign up, install it on your site. If you have any difficulty. Reach out to me at Jillian@MiloTree.com. And now back to the show. What are Pinterest communities and what are they for? Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:16 So while we're talking about Pinterest. Right before we recorded, so this is October 5, when we're recording this. And two things I want to talk about with regards to Pinterest. One is hashtags and one is communities which have just launched on Pinterest. Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:34 You have a Facebook group which I saw you talking in. And what is your Facebook group called? Jennifer Priest 28:42 It's called Smart Creative Social Community. So not very original name. Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:48 Definitely join her Facebook group. Because I saw you in there. And you were talking about communities. And I was like, oh, and then you are going to be on the podcast. I was really psyched about that. So, definitely join the Facebook group. Secondly, let's talk about hashtags and communities. Jennifer Priest 29:11 Yeah, so you've got to date it. Because like everything we know about social media today is a snapshot in time, and it could change tomorrow. So that is the challenge, right? Jennifer Priest 29:23 So first, let's talk about communities. Communities are relatively new. They talked about them, Pinterest did like this kind of a town hall conference where they invited people up to their headquarters this summer and told them about all these things. And communities was one of those things. Jennifer Priest 29:42 And luckily for us that didn't get to go. There were people who went who came back and share that information like, Alisa Meredith and Kate Ahl. They shared a lot of that information, which is really nice. Jennifer Priest 29:53 And so communities was one of those things. So we knew it was coming. We knew it was in beta testing, you could email and ask Pinterest to start a community. So now they've turned it on, essentially. And so the gist of it is, it's like if a Facebook group where you can talk and chit chat had a baby with a group board on Pinterest, it will be community. Jennifer Priest 30:16 So you can stick pins in there. They don't want it to be self promotional. They don't want it to be like a group board where, you know, I feel like bloggers come in and they break things. Jennifer Priest 30:26 So it's like, Hey, we started this new, beautiful thing called a group board. You can collaborate and their intention is something like my group board called Dream House, where my husband and I and my daughter are putting stuff on there that were like, Oh, I like this. Jennifer Priest 30:41 And bloggers were like, Hey, we can game the system. We're going to put 800 bloggers on here. We're just going to slam it with all our stuff. And we're gonna get it like a ton of traffic. And so Pinterest was like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we wanted this like, collaborative thing, like, what's going on here. Jennifer Priest 30:55 And not that bloggers are bad for breaking it, I think it's really good to push the boundaries of what something can do. Because Pinterest answer to that is, oh, we still want this mission, we still have this thing that we want to do, we need to put that in a different package. Jennifer Priest 31:11 And so they didn't take group boards away, which is nice. So they've got communities, and communities, they're like, we don't want self promotion, we want this to be a place where you can discuss things, where you can share things, where you can connect with one another over the Pinterest platform over those visual search results within the Pinterest platform. Jennifer Priest 31:29 And so if you think about it as something the way you're going to manage it should be a lot like a Facebook group. You need to nurture it, you need to curate the people that you're inviting to it, you need to go in there every day and check. Jennifer Priest 31:43 I started a community. I've been in there once in like three days. So I definitely need to make sure to make it a priority. Jennifer Priest 31:50 I wouldn't start a community just because you're like, I want to snag the name or I want to snag that topic. I wouldn't start a community for that reason. Jennifer Priest 31:59 I would start it because you genuinely want to be there, experiment with it, experience it and build this additional community, additional resource for your people where you're going to be connecting, because it's not about just dumping pins. It's more about let's talk about this thing, Jillian Tohber Leslie 32:17 So I started a MiloTree Mastermind Community, and I kind of don't know what to do with it. Jennifer Priest 32:23 Yeah, so you can start discussions in there, you can ask them questions, you can share information, you can pin posts, which is basically like a sticky note, you can sticky note the post so it stays at the top. So like, I made some guidelines for my community and, and put those at the top. Why you want to be a social media early adopter as a blogger Jennifer Priest 32:40 So yeah, you can put pins in there, etc. But it's still pretty unclear. It's still pretty new. And I I've heard some people being kind of skeptical of like, well, we don't know if they're going to still have communities, and there's glitches and I don't know if it's useful, so I'm not going to be on it. And I think that's fine if people want to do that. But I think they're missing the boat. Jennifer Priest 33:00 One of the great things about adopting something early on is that you learned early on. You learn and evolve with it over time. So it's the same thing as like kicking myself, because I did not start that YouTube channel back in like, 2010. And I started a couple years later, it was harder and trying to start a YouTube channel. Now, I don't know how anyone would do it, because it's so complicated Jillian Tohber Leslie 33:25 And crowded. Jennifer Priest 33:26 Yeah. And if you learn early on, you can navigate it. And as they add new buttons and new things, and you're learning it incrementally as it as it evolves, instead of it being this really complicated thing. Jennifer Priest 33:40 So the other thing is people that are skeptical, going, like, Oh, this is a dumb move, and they should have made more research. Like I said before, it's this big, slow animal. And Pinterest has a reputation for doing things really slow compared to all the other social platforms. Jennifer Priest 33:55 You know, Facebook's motto is like, let's break stuff. Like, that's literally their motto. And Pinterest is like, we want everyone have a good time. And so they're just going really slow and they're very like methodical, and really intentional with everything they do. Jennifer Priest 34:12 So if they think this is a good thing to do, it is worth paying attention to, because they didn't make that decision lightly. And it is an extremely expensive decision to make, it cost them a lot of money to do it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 34:28 What would you recommend for somebody like, let's say me, so I heard about it. I went on, I created my MiloTree Mastermind. I also have a MiloTree Mastermind Facebook group, anybody out there wants to join, please find it. And you know, and sign up. Jillian Tohber Leslie 34:46 And so what would you say, now? I've got now I go, Oh, God, headache. I now have to have two groups that I have to manage. So what would you say to somebody like me or somebody out there. When to start a Pinterest community as a blogger Jennifer Priest 34:58 I would not start a community until you are ready to put the time in to nurture and grow it. I would just go and be in other people's communities and talk to them because you don't want people to join your community and have it be a ghost town. That same with the Facebook group. Jillian Tohber Leslie 35:13 Okay. So people don't join my Pinterest community until I'm ready. Jennifer Priest 35:21 Or get a couple people who are active in your current Facebook group. If you have a thriving Facebook group, ask a couple people who are active in there and say, Look, I've got this community, would you guys like to come over and kind of help me keep it going. Jennifer Priest 35:32 I don't have the time to be in there every day. But I would love for you guys to be like moderator types. And I don't know if that's a setting or if that's if that's something that would be coming, but but engage those other people to come over and help them bring their energy to your community. If it's something that you're like, I want to grow it. But literally, the holidays are coming up. I cannot do this. Jennifer Priest 35:55 So that it's there. But you know, and know that if it's there, and you're not using it that it may be I don't know, it may be removed, it may just sit there and die. But I think at a minimum joining other people's communities and being active in it is a good idea. Even if you're like, I'm not sure I need one. Go be familiar with it. And get active with it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 36:14 Yes. Get your feet wet. See what people are doing and copy best practices. Jennifer Priest 36:20 Yeah. And I mean, sometimes something someone else is doing will spark an idea for you. That's totally different, which is awesome. So go try that. Jennifer Priest 36:28 There's no, there's no real rules right now, other than the one thing that I would say to do is Pinterest has community guidelines, which has nothing to do with communities. It's the same word. These are guidelines for overall Pinterest. Rather, they want you to do things. Jennifer Priest 36:43 So just google Pinterest community guidelines, and they tell you what to do, what not to do to be authentic. Don't spam don't incentivize people to like, you know, artificially boost your numbers, blah, blah, blah. So read those. And they just kind of keep that in the back of your mind as you are doing things in your community to make sure that it fits in with what Pinterest wants on their platform as a whole. Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:07 Got it. Great. I think that's all great advice. And we'll keep kind of checking in to see what happens if people have great ideas about their own communities. Please email me Jillian@MiloTree.com. I'd love to hear what you're doing. So that I can get Jennifer back on the podcast. And we can talk about it. Jennifer Priest 37:27 Yeah, yeah, that would be really fun. And just kind of leads into the hashtag thing. How to add hashtags on Pinterest pins Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:32 Let's talk about it. Jennifer Priest 37:33 Yeah, so last year, hashtags. Hashtags, just had their one year birthday on Pinterest. And recently, last year, Pinterest, turned on hashtags. And again, the naysayers were like, Oh, that's dumb, it doesn't work. No one's going to use those. Jennifer Priest 37:47 And again, it's like for them to be able to turn that on, they had to pay a lot of developers to do it, they had to do a lot of research. And it makes sense, if we look at hashtags overall. And I've kind of become somewhat of an expert on hashtags. I also have a course on hashtags. Jennifer Priest 38:03 It was just serendipity that I had this membership, where I provided research, hashtags, lists, hashtag lists to people last summer. And they were like, I was giving them these lists, and then realizing they don't know what to do with them. Jennifer Priest 38:18 So I was making a course and then Pinterest turned hashtags on. And so I had this captive audience that was like, hungry for hashtag info. And I was like, Okay, you guys, let's test it. And they were so awesome, because they all jumped in and started testing. And we found out a lot of really awesome stuff about hashtags. Jillian Tohber Leslie 38:35 Now, first, when you were creating this course, and sending people list of hashtags, was it all for Instagram? Jennifer Priest 38:40 It was. The list of hashtags were Instagram focused. And then I realized people didn't know how to use hashtags. The basis of hashtags really, is it's a tool to index content yet, if you remember, back when we had books like encyclopedia you would have an index at the back end, then you would say, okay, the banana shows on page 17, 21 and 842. Jennifer Priest 39:06 And really, that's what hashtags are for. Hashtags are a way to index that content. So you put hashtag banana on something on a platform, you click the hashtag, and that thing shows up for people looking for that topic. Jennifer Priest 39:22 That functionality is the same everywhere, from Instagram, to Twitter, to YouTube, to everywhere, that has hash tags, and that's the thing, Pinterest turned hashtags on last year, LinkedIn turned hashtags on two years ago, YouTube very silently rolled out hashtag functionality, there is a reason that these platforms feel that they need to make content easier for people to find. Jennifer Priest 39:47 And so not just this move by Pinterest as a signal that, hey, they've invested a lot of time, money thinking, mental power, etc, to figure out if they should do this, but that all these platforms are doing it. Musically has hashtags now. Jennifer Priest 40:01 So there's all these apps and platforms that are that are putting hashtag functionality in place. So and Instagram was stories. I mean, it's just, it's just all over the place that we can use them. Jennifer Priest 40:13 So it was like, okay, Pinterest, how do we use hashtags on there, because it is different than how we use them on Instagram. And so my first thought, like, we're trying to do hashtag searches and stuff, and it wasn't chronological. Jennifer Priest 40:25 Now, hashtag searches on Pinterest are chronological, these still are missing things. So I would think of it a lot like in that way, a lot like Instagram, you search for the hashtags, you're not going to see everything in the results. That's for that hashtag. But you're going to see the vast majority of stuff show up chronologically in real time. Jennifer Priest 40:47 So that's the same as if you search the hashtag on Pinterest. But where it gets really interesting, and where I feel like the power of hashtags is, and I have a free guide on how to do this on my site, you just get to a right from the front page of site. Jillian Tohber Leslie 41:00 I'll add it in the show notes. Jennifer Priest 41:02 Yeah, so the real power is in keywords. So making hashtags out of your keywords, not thinking about, okay, I'm putting this hashtag on here, because somebody is literally going to type in hashtag cauliflower recipe. I'm putting this hashtag because I want my cauliflower recipe to show up in searches for cauliflower recipe, not as a hashtag. Jillian Tohber Leslie 41:28 Wait, say that again. Jennifer Priest 41:29 Yeah, it's a little complicated. So if you take a keyword and turn it into a hashtag that is like an additional signal to Pinterest about the topic of your content. Jennifer Priest 41:43 So if I want my content to show up for searches for like buffalo cauliflower recipe, I'm going to put those keywords in the description. I'm going to put those in the title of the blog posts, etc. And also a new thing on Pinterest this month is you can edit the titles of your pins, so that it's different from the metadata on your site. Jennifer Priest 42:04 So I could split test different titles with different keywords. Like there's some cool stuff. Jillian Tohber Leslie 42:11 That's very cool, yes. Jennifer Priest 42:13 Yeah. So let's say that I'm giving all those signals to Pinterest what the content is about, but the hashtag seems to be like a jab, like a like a double whammy of, Hey, if you don't know that, this is about buffalo cauliflower. Here's hashtag buffalo cauliflower, hashtag cauliflower recipe, like putting those hashtags on. There's like this extra punch that really make sure that Pinterest knows it's about that content. Jennifer Priest 42:41 So no one out there is searching for hashtag buffalo cauliflower recipe, they are searching for buffalo cauliflower, cauliflower recipe, easy cauliflower, vegetarian cauliflower recipe, they're searching for those things. Jennifer Priest 42:56 And so the hashtag is a way that that keyword, very specific the hashtag is a way to make sure that that content shows up in Pinterest, search for the keyword. And when you talk to normal people, like Pinterest says, and I've heard them say this at multiple conferences. They're like, use broad hashtags. Use keywords as hashtags on Pinterest for search Jennifer Priest 43:15 So in that case of the buffalo cauliflower, Pinterest would say use hashtag recipe, use hashtag cauliflower, which cauliflower is probably a little more specific than they would go, and that will get you if people are searching hashtags. And they're searching these very basic ones that'll get you in the chronological search for that. But if that recipe showed up in a search for #recipe alongside a blueberry pie, who knows what they're looking for. Jennifer Priest 43:45 So there's that. But there's also that every single non marketer, non online business person that I talked to, doesn't even know how to use hashtags. They think it's a joke that you say, like, hashtag funny or whatever. And they don't notice they're on Pinterest. And they're definitely not searching for them. They're searching for best sangria recipe. Jennifer Priest 44:11 So that's how we were doing hashtags back in the beginning. With my group is we were like, less hashtag keywords. Let's try different things. And we found that when you put the keyword as a hashtag, it shows up higher in the search. Jennifer Priest 44:25 Now, I don't have any numbers that say it shows up higher in the search other than evidence that's somewhat anecdotal. Like I put my keywords as hashtags on a sponsored blog post two weeks before Thanksgiving. And it was about Thanksgiving, so it should have bombed and it went viral. Jennifer Priest 44:47 There's those stories that we have for that, but there's nothing that I have that says, Like, if you put hashtags in your pin, it's going to show up 20% higher in the search. I don't have that kind of data, and my brain starts to hurt when I think about doing that. I'm more from the angle of try it, test it, refine it, test it again. Jillian Tohber Leslie 45:09 So would you then recommend the broad hashtag, if I'm doing let's say buffalo cauliflower recipe? Would I do a hashtag of recipe like Pinterest says, would I do cauliflower? Would I do cauliflower recipe? Would I do buffalo cauliflower, hashtag buffalo cauliflower. Like, how would you parse it out? How to come up with the right hashtags on Pinterest Jennifer Priest 45:27 I would brainstorm and also search on Pinterest, all of those things. First, I look at the keywords and then I would brainstorm my hashtags. And so those will be usually be about 30 hashtags or so. Jennifer Priest 45:41 I only want to put like five or six on a post. I mean, if I'm being like, really aggressive, I'll put more but you want to avoid the appearance of keyword stuffing. It's very easy to do. But there have been some indications from people whose accounts have been suspended. Jennifer Priest 45:57 Now Pinterest hasn't come out and made it a formal announcement about any of this, but there has been some indication that there was a level of keyword stuffing with hashtags and to where you know, it's like 30 hashtags of like cauliflower, buffalo cauliflower, cauliflower buffalo, they don't want that kind of thing. Jennifer Priest 46:15 I would take like the 30 that I have and then split them up and maybe sets of five, so I might have hashtag buffalo cauliflower, hashtag recipe, hashtag vegetarian, hashtag Quito, as the hashtags on one post, and then the next post might be slightly different hashtags. Got it? Jillian Tohber Leslie 46:34 Yeah, that's smart. Jennifer Priest 46:35 So I'm still hitting all those hashtags. Yet, I'm not doing it in a spammy way. Jillian Tohber Leslie 46:40 Yep. Yep. And again, think about it from Pinterest's point of view, which is they want the user experience to be good. They want those hashtags to help inform the searcher not annoy the searcher. Jennifer Priest 46:55 Yeah. And I mean, if we look at the hashtags, we are putting the hashtag to help people who are looking for that content. Discover it. Yeah, that is straight up all we're trying to do. What is a fresh pin strategy? Jennifer Priest 47:06 And so there's another strategy that I use, I call it my fresh pin strategy, okay. And so this is where I have more than one pin for post. That's how I'm able to take that block of 30, sometimes at 50 hashtags, and I am rearranging them and putting them on lots and lots and lots of different pins, and then putting them out over the course of time over the course of the year, usually, to see how they perform. Jennifer Priest 47:33 And I've been doing this strategy since February. And again, I say, pay attention to those signals that the platform tells you Pinterest engineering blog, well, it will make you go cross eyed, because you're like, Oh, my gosh, they're talking about UX and UI. And also, I don't know what all this stuff is. It gives you all these amazing signals about what the heck they are doing. Jennifer Priest 47:54 Back in February, they started talking about a new AI, artificial intelligence they were using to read images into read posts, and help Pinterest generate fresh content based on like, the other content you've looked at, etc. And so this topic of fresh has come up multiple times when I've seen Pinterest talking on Facebook Lives or at conferences, or in some of their announcements and documentation. Jennifer Priest 48:21 And I think it's coming from there was a while there on Pinterest, where you would go and your home feed would have the same pins and data over and over there were the same like most popular pins, but you're like, dude, I've already seen that cleaning hack like six times, your house is clean. Jennifer Priest 48:38 So yes, yeah, we were annoyed. And so I think this is a response to that. Because now when you go to your feed, it is different every single time. And vastly different. I'll be like, wait, I saw that pin I wanted to pick and I didn't pin it like, you know. And so it's like, it's vastly different. Jennifer Priest 48:56 And so how can we capitalize on that? Because we have the same old content four years ago, that still amazing good content? I've updated it. I've done all this stuff. How can I keep that going? Well, you need fresh content. So fresh is new. But fresh, could also be maybe new graphics, maybe new descriptions, maybe new hashtags. Jillian Tohber Leslie 49:16 Are you then putting these new images in the post, or you separately uploading them? Jillian Tohber Leslie 49:21 Let's say you do a post on January 20. And then, like you've created some images, and you post one image, let's say in January, and then you wait two months, and then you're going to post another image. But is that image already living in the post? Are you adding it separately? Jennifer Priest 49:42 No. So what we're doing is we're taking what we think is going to be the best performer and we're putting that at the bottom of the post. And then we're putting the rest of the pins out through Tailwind or through Pinterest. And then through Tailwind, because there's a little bit of a strategy there. And then I'm putting them out at a different frequency. Jillian Tohber Leslie 50:02 But you are uploading them directly to either Tailwind or Pinterest? Jennifer Priest 50:06 Yeah, yeah. And then we do split testing and paying attention to how is this performing because of something rises to the top, that will now become the image on my blog post, because of this one image is driving more traffic, I want other people pinning that too. Jillian Tohber Leslie 50:21 So you're going to put that at the bottom. Jennifer Priest 50:23 Yes, And I don't do this for like, every single post. I'm not watching 500 posts, and going Oh, ok. post 499, we got to change the pin. I'm just looking at the cream of the crop at the top. The 80/20 rule in blogger and life Jillian Tohber Leslie 50:33 Great. Yep, yep. And again, remember, like the 80/20 rule, which is this idea that you can chop up things in terms of it usually takes 20% of the effort to go 80% of the way. And then it takes the last 80% of the effort to do that last 20%. But it works in all these different scenarios. Jillian Tohber Leslie 50:57 So most of your traffic, 80% of your traffic is coming from, say, 20% of your pins, or 20% of your blog posts. So you want to take the cream of the crop and you want to optimize the hell out of that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 51:11 And you do not want to optimize the hell out of the stuff at the bottom. That's not really driving any traffic, because you're not getting any value from that. But you're getting a ton of value from the stuff at the top. Jennifer Priest 51:23 Well, and then you also can use those signals, right? So like, what content do people want from me, they're telling me and the same, not just on my blog, but I've a YouTube channel. They're like, Hey, lady, we don't want your recipes at all. Only 40 of us watched it. But if you put up a craft room tour, 10s of thousands of people will watch that right. And I don't want to listen to their signal. I'm still making recipe videos. Jillian Tohber Leslie 51:48 Right? That's funny. That's funny. Okay, and why are you not listening to their signal? Jennifer Priest 51:55 Because sponsors want me to make recipes. So if they're gonna keep paying me money, and and you know what I've thought about taking those recipe videos, and slowly moving them over to a recipe only channel, which I have enough content that I could probably do that for a new video every week for two years, and not run out of anything. Jennifer Priest 52:15 And seeing if it performs better, because, again, niching it down, they don't understand what Smart Fun DIY is about on YouTube, because it's all over the place. Jillian Tohber Leslie 52:23 It's so interesting, how much of your time are you splitting between Smart Fun, DIY, and then also your consulting/social media management company. Jennifer Priest 52:38 So I'm first Smart Fun DIY, if I have a sponsored post and probably spending like maybe 10 hours on the the blog a month. And if I don't have any sponsored posts that month, usually I do have one. But if I don't have any, I'm literally working on it, like three hours, maybe four hours. Jennifer Priest 52:59 I do have a VA, she does a lot of submission stuff. For me, really, what I'm focused on this year with that site isn't so much making new content, but really dialing in on my SEO and, you know, making those those fresh pins and making sure that the content, when they get from Pinterest to my site is valuable. And you know, there's meat to it, and that it's going to give them some good information. Jennifer Priest 53:23 So I have, you know, there's I'm always up for trying like crazy stuff. So there are some low quality posts on my site that, you know, I was trying something out and it's just is not a good experience for people when they get there. So I'm, I'm really working on fixing that stuff. Jennifer Priest 53:37 But Smart Fun DIY, literally is a part time gig compared to what I'm doing at Smart Creative Social. So I've got two courses there, and a membership. I have corporate clients where I do strategy for. Jennifer Priest 53:53 I do have one client I'm still doing management for, but that is a service I phased out. So I only do strategy consulting, because I'm not here enough to do management, you know, management, you need someone that's available 24/7 or has staff available 24/7, you know. Jennifer Priest 54:12 So they can email you on Friday, have a holiday weekend and be like, I need these 50 pins up now. And you can do it and I don't think that lifestyle was super fun. And I know people that like love it. It was super fun for the years that I did it. But I'm like I'm retiring from management. Jennifer Priest 54:28 Because I feel like I can't do that service well, and there's a lot of people who can, but what I do well, is strategy. And so I also have some coaching clients. I have group coaching and that kind of thing, that I do where it's not just social media. I mean, there's so much stuff that we know these interlocking pieces, and that's more what I do in those areas. Jennifer Priest 54:45 And that is more than 40 hours a week. Just because I really like it. I have a lot of fun. You know, I'll be on the phone with clients at night. Or, you know, especially if it's a coaching situation or doing group calls with my course people. And that part is super duper fun. So I love that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 55:07 So Jennifer, if people want to reach out to you see what you're doing. What is the best way to do that? Jennifer Priest 55:14 they can go to smartcreativesocial.com. And you can get to everything from there. Or hit me up on Instagram. If you go to Smart Fun DIY on Instagram. Let me say it slower. Smart fun. DIY on Instagram. You can message me anywhere if you find me on Facebook or anywhere you can message me and that Facebook group that you had talked about. I mean, I'm pretty easy to find. Jillian Tohber Leslie 55:44 I love it. Okay. Well, Jennifer, thank you so much for being on the show. And I hope to run into you at a conference in 2019. Jennifer Priest 55:53 Yeah, definitely. And thank you so much for having me on. It's been so much fun. I totally love dishing about this stuff. Please rate The Blogger Genius Podcast on iTunes Jillian Tohber Leslie 55:59 If you're enjoying The Blogger Genius Podcast, please do me a favor, head on over to iTunes and rate us or write us a review or both. I would so appreciate it. Okay. Until next week...

Today my guest is Kara Maria Ananda from KaraMariaAnanda.com. Kara is an expert in the healing and wellness space, and has built her successful online business creating health-related courses for women. Her first courses were all about natural health, but then when she saw other wellness professionals needing help building their own businesses, she moved into educating these budding online entrepreneurs. In this interview, we talk about Kara's journey from healer to teacher, and how she organically grew her business to help solve her customers' problems. I think you'll find Kara inspiring. She is continually looking to improve her life and her customers' lives, by adding lots of positive energy into the world. Resources: Kara Maria Ananda Catch My Party MiloTree Awesome Birth Teacher Training Women's Healing Arts Teacher Training Tailwind Simplero * May contain affiliate links. If you click and make a purchase, I might receive a small commission at no cost to you. Transcript -- How to Grow an Online Business in the Wellness Space with Kara Maria Ananda Host 0:03 Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast. Brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:11 Hello everybody. Welcome back to The Blogger Genius Podcast. Today, my guest is Kara Maria Ananda. Now Kara is a women's healing arts educator. She is also a holistic business coach. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:28 What she wants to do is help women in the wellness space, get their message out. So welcome to the show, Kara. Kara Maria Ananda 0:29 Thank you so much, Jillian. I'm really excited to be here and talk with you today. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:34 Yeah, we were starting to talk offline and I'm like, No, no, let's wait wait. Both of us would start talking. I'd be like, Oh no, no, let's wait till we get on the show. You were talking just about your philosophy and all that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:56 So the way I found you was I was looking at our current customers who use MiloTree, and I saw your site and I thought, wow, I wanted to talk to you. Getting into the wellness space as a blogger Jillian Tohber Leslie 1:07 And I haven't interviewed that many people in the wellness space. So I thought this would be really interesting. So tell us a little bit about your journey and how you got to be this online entrepreneur in this very specific space. Kara Maria Ananda 1:25 Oh, well, thanks so much. I've had a long journey in the wellness world and healing arts. I've always been passionate about natural healing. It's been a part of my life since I was younger and I found myself always gravitating towards that. Kara Maria Ananda 1:39 My very first job was actually at an integrative health clinic and massage therapy school when I was a teenager, and then later in life, I decided that I really wanted to focus on that professionally So I became a massage therapist. Kara Maria Ananda 1:54 Then I got really passionate about women's health and my practice as a massage therapist and evolved into really focusing on pregnancy and birth and women's cycles, and became a birth doula and a postpartum doula to childbirth educator. Kara Maria Ananda 2:11 I started teaching about women's health and for many years I had a private practice. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:15 And where are you located? Kara Maria Ananda 2:17 Oh, well, uh, currently. Kara Maria Ananda 2:19 So I'm actually located in Southern New Hampshire about 45 minutes from Boston, and I'm in my hometown right now where I grew up, but I actually spent 20 years living all over the West Coast. Kara Maria Ananda 2:32 I moved to Seattle, where I studied massage therapy and became a doula. I've lived in Oregon and California and Sedona, Arizona, and recently just last year, actually moved back to my hometown, which is really cool. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:47 Can you just briefly explain what a doula is for people who don't know? Kara Maria Ananda 2:51 Oh, yeah. A doula is a companion for somebody who is pregnant and going through birth and labor and postpartum. Kara Maria Ananda 2:59 They provide emotional support physical comfort measures like touch and massage, and heat packs and ice packs and all that kind of stuff, and but it's really somebody who supports women through through the childbearing process. Jillian Tohber Leslie 3:15 I wish I could have had you. Kara Maria Ananda 3:19 It was so special, so I was really very involved in the doula world, and was attending a lot of births and was teaching doula workshops where I would travel. Kara Maria Ananda 3:33 What happened was, I was on call at the at the end of like doing all this for about 10 years in person. Kara Maria Ananda 3:39 What shifted me to working in an online business was that, I love all the doula work, but is really working one on one with people and I was on call 24 hours a day seven days a week. Kara Maria Ananda 3:52 I would then travel somewhere and then teach for multiple days, and was back on call and then some things happen in my life that really changed. Kara Maria Ananda 4:01 My mother passed away and I felt like I needed to shift, and I really just focused on how I could reach more people in more places, and be able to spend more time with my family. Creating an online business in the wellness space Kara Maria Ananda 4:11 So about 9 or 10 years ago, I really focused on the online business and so I started creating classes online to teach people about birth and women's health, and then that evolved into also business coaching and support and online business. Kara Maria Ananda 4:27 It's been really amazing. It allowed me to spend more time with my older son as he was growing up, and I've had two more children, but I'm able to be home with and homeschool. Kara Maria Ananda 4:36 I get to help support women to discover natural health, and become leaders and provide support in their own community all over the world from North America to Europe and Asia and the Middle East and South America. Kara Maria Ananda 4:52 It's  been really satisfying for me to be able to feel like I'm making a bigger impact online, while also being able to have that freedom to actually spend more time with my own children. Jillian Tohber Leslie 5:09 This audience is predominantly women and these are predominately moms. Although there are some, of course not moms, but what would you say to a female entrepreneur? Where do you think she needs the most support? Kara Maria Ananda 5:30 Oh, women, we need so much support, right? And especially if you're an entrepreneur and you're a mom, I get this question a lot. Kara Maria Ananda 5:37 People want to know how do I have this growing online business that I'm running, as well as being with my children and spending a lot of time with them and homeschooling. ADVICE: Setting clear boundaries as an online entrepreneur Kara Maria Ananda 5:49 Really, time management and being able to set really clear boundaries and ask for support when you need it. Like my husband. He supports me a lot and our business we really run it together, and homeschool our kids together. Kara Maria Ananda 6:02 So having that support is really key. And you know a lot of women that I know who are entrepreneurs, we need to ask for what we need and set time whether that's childcare or really prioritizing what we're doing. Kara Maria Ananda 6:19 Because it's not just the time that we spend with our children. That's important. But it's also the example that we're spending that we're showing them. Kara Maria Ananda 6:27 So spending time investing in our dreams and our passions and our hobbies and saying, this is important, you need to do something else, you need to find a quiet activity so I can do this. Kara Maria Ananda 6:36 It shows them and it demonstrates to them as they grow up that, investing time in their passions is important, too. So I think that there's a balance and we need to let go of guilt and having to do everything perfect and ask for what we need. Jillian Tohber Leslie 6:54 I completely agree and I think that I've mentioned this previously on the show, which is I have a daughter and she has watched my husband and me running Catch My Party or our first business and MiloTree. Jillian Tohber Leslie 7:10 And I like that we don't just go to an office and stuff happens. And then we come home and see her. She sees everything. Kara Maria Ananda 7:16 That's so great and what a fun business for her to grow up watching too, parties. I bet she has some opinions and ideas. Jillian Tohber Leslie 7:23 Oh my gosh, yes. Very much so. Kara Maria Ananda 7:28 Educational too, you're teaching about how to be an entrepreneur. A lot of kids aren't learning this in the school system today. And I think it's one of the most important skills for children to learn to. Jillian Tohber Leslie 7:38 Yeah, so my husband and I are talking business all the time and, and we only have one child, so she's there listening. And she created her first business, which is back like a year and a half ago, when fidget spinners were a big deal. Jillian Tohber Leslie 7:52 My husband is a 3D printer guy. So he printed her 3D printed fidget spinner and she's like, Oh my god, I want to do this and sell them to my friends at school. Jillian Tohber Leslie 8:05 So they figured out how to personalize them with somebody initials. And then she started a business. Jillian Tohber Leslie 8:12 What was so funny was, they were kind of outlawed at school. So it was almost as if there were like these drug dealing transactions going on. Jillian Tohber Leslie 8:20 I've watched her kind of open her backpack up and like, take out the spinner. And then somebody would handle this wad of cash and she shoved in her backpack and she'd come home with all these singles and she'd be like, counting her money. Jillian Tohber Leslie 8:36 And it was so funny, but I think because she has grown up with us as entrepreneurs. She's gonna be one. Kara Maria Ananda 8:43 Yeah, absolutely. You know, my oldest son, he just started college this year as a freshman. I have an 18 year ol,d a seven year old, and a two year old so they're pretty spread out. Kara Maria Ananda 8:57 But the the oldest one, he actually got really involved in entrepreneurship too, he did some programs during high school in the summers and entrepreneurship, but before that he got involved in it in junior high. Kara Maria Ananda 9:09 He figured out that on the way to school, he could stop off at the corner store and buy candy, and then he would buy the candy bars. He didn't eat them because we weren't really into candy. Kara Maria Ananda 9:20 I mean, he probably ate a few, but but he wasn't bringing them home and eating them. He would buy them and the take them to school and sell them for double what he bought them at the corner store. Kara Maria Ananda 9:29 He did this all on his own. I found out about it after it been going on for a while. Jillian Tohber Leslie 9:35 Were you proud? Kara Maria Ananda 9:37 I am. I am kind of proud. Yeah. And then he ended up, as he was older in high school, he actually got a wagon and he would take it and park in the summertime and sell sodas to people in the park during the heat waves and yeah, entrepreneurial spirit. Kara Maria Ananda 9:51 I feel like I have more faith in him as he's growing up. I'm like, okay, he has the ability to like figure out strategies and solutions for things. Kara Maria Ananda 10:01 And I think that's one of the most important skills that that kids can have as they're becoming adults, actually, in a world that's changing so rapidly. Jillian Tohber Leslie 10:08 Yes, yes, I totally agree. Okay, so let's talk about your journey. So you decided that you were going to move your business online and you created your first course? Creating your first course as a blogger Kara Maria Ananda 10:19 Yes, I created my first course before I totally decided to go online. It was kind of like a little test. Kara Maria Ananda 10:25 I created a childbirth education class for parents. I didn't even really promote it. I just kind of tried it out to kind of feel around with the online space and had a few customers and it inspired me. Kara Maria Ananda 10:35 And then I realized, you know, after thinking about it, that I really wanted to shift and I wanted to reach more people. And that online was really a way the way to do it. Kara Maria Ananda 10:46 So then I really jumped in, really focused on the online business. And I created the what's now the "Awesome Birth Teacher Training" and started teaching, reaching out and educating childbirth teachers around the world. And it was so inspiring. Kara Maria Ananda 11:02 And so that developed. Then the next was the "Women's Healing Arts Teacher Training," which covers all the different cycles of a woman's life from menstruation, fertility, pregnancy, and menopause, and sexuality and different natural healing arts that we can use for empower self care during all these cycles. Kara Maria Ananda 11:20 And then after that, I realized that some of my students were amazing, and were had taken both of these trainings, and I knew that they had other certifications and other trainings. Kara Maria Ananda 11:31 But I was still seeing them struggling to actually get their business out in the world, and start teaching workshops or doing consultations and creating a website. Kara Maria Ananda 11:40 So then I created the "Healing Arts Business Academy" to support women's wellness leaders to create online businesses and products and services and find confidence to share and publish online. Kara Maria Ananda 11:54 And then that's grown into a variety of courses now, for all about women's leadership, and holistic wellness, and how to create online courses. Kara Maria Ananda 12:04 And I do a lot of private mentoring also, with women in the wellness field, who are coaches and midwives and doctors and massage therapists who want to expand their online presence and share their message in a bigger way. Building an organic online business by listening to your customers Jillian Tohber Leslie 12:19 What I think is so interesting about what you said just now, is that you started with something and then you started to listen and see problems that you could solve and that it sounds like it was like organic growth. Jillian Tohber Leslie 12:36 Like, "Oh, I see that these women are taking my courses, but then they don't know how to start to build businesses, I will help them." Kara Maria Ananda 12:43 Yes. Jillian Tohber Leslie 12:44 So it sounds as if it was this natural progression. Kara Maria Ananda 12:48 Yeah, it's very organic. Sometimes people look at me, and they're like, well, you do all these things, and how do you do all these things all at once, but I did them one at a time. And they've built up and it's been very organic. Kara Maria Ananda 13:01 I'm very passionate about what I do, and helping the people that I work with. Kara Maria Ananda 13:05 So for me, I have to feel really passionate about something. So I listened to my intuition and what I'm writing about to people, what I'm talking to people about in my coaching sessions. Kara Maria Ananda 13:15 And then these subjects that are the passionate kind of hot topics of the day, that's what tends to evolve into the next offering, the next course, the next sale. Jillian Tohber Leslie 13:25 So just basics, what kind of platform are you using to build your courses? Kara Maria Ananda 13:33 I use Simplero, it's a great, very simple all in one holistic business management system that's really specifically designed for people that are creating online course businesses. Kara Maria Ananda 13:45 And I've been using Simplero for the past five years. I love it. So that's the heart of my business. Jillian Tohber Leslie 13:50 I've never heard of it. Kara Maria Ananda 13:50 Yeah, it's smaller. It's not as popular as or well known, because it's a smaller company. But they've been around and naturally growing. Kara Maria Ananda 13:59 I connected with the CEO of the company about five years ago, through an entrepreneur group. And as he was starting the company, and I was like, this is a perfect fit. Kara Maria Ananda 14:09 He was a holistic coach that wanted to create a platform for other holistic coaches to be able to share their their courses online who are really focused on this. Kara Maria Ananda 14:18 And it's has a lot more than just online courses. So I actually run my shopping cart and my email list. And email automation, and you can do deadlines. And you can do landing pages. You can even do a whole website, although my website is on squarespace. com. But Simplero is really the heart of my business. Kara Maria Ananda 14:38 It's been pretty awesome. I have a blog post on it on my website about Simplero about how we use it. And actually, if you go to my website, I have a tools bar where I list my favorite tools, and Simplero is number one. Jillian Tohber Leslie 14:51 Is MiloTree on there, by the way? Kara Maria Ananda 14:54 Oh, I'm going to add it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 14:56 Do you know, we have an affiliate program? Kara Maria Ananda 14:58 Yeah, yeah, definitely. I will add it, actually it's on my list of things to do. But you know, as being a mom, there's one thing at a time, right. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:07 So let's talk about how to share this. Kara Maria Ananda 15:09 I will share more about how how your program has been helping me too. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:13 Oh, well, here, okay, so tell me. So that's how I found you was I saw MiloTree on your site. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:21 Would you share actually about Pinterest and your thoughts and how you ended up with MiloTree? Kara Maria Ananda 15:27 Absolutely. See, I've been using Pinterest since the early years, like what was that 2012 ? And I always enjoyed it. And I've always, tried to share my blog images. Kara Maria Ananda 15:38 And over the years, I've focused on creating vertical images and my blog posts that could be shared on to Pinterest. But I didn't really focus a lot on it over the last year. How Pinterest can grow your business as an online entrepreneur Kara Maria Ananda 15:51 But then what happened was that I've consistently noticed that even without putting a lot of effort into Pinterest, by sharing my blogs there, and by other people, pinning my blogs to Pinterest that I consistently get a lot of traffic. Kara Maria Ananda 16:06 And I have been quite focused on Facebook and Instagram over the last couple of years. But honestly, with the algorithm changes and the loss of organic growth, it's a little disappointing to see how everybody's organic growth is, is going down. Kara Maria Ananda 16:21 I still think that Facebook and Instagram are fantastic for connection and essential for entrepreneurs, especially for the ad platform. But I love that Pinterest was just bringing all this organic website traffic that was equal to Facebook without putting effort into it. Kara Maria Ananda 16:38 So I realized I should put more effort into this if all this traffic without really focusing on it, what happens if I really focus on it? Kara Maria Ananda 16:46 So the last, two, three months, I've been really focusing on daily going into Pinterest, really creating, super optimized vertical images with words for all my blog posts and sharing them on Pinterest and and and seeing what I can do. Kara Maria Ananda 17:02 And so I found MiloTree because I was like, yeah, how do I get more traffic. This is a really amazing place to be connecting with people through Pinterest. Kara Maria Ananda 17:13 And so MiloTree is really cool because I got this little pop up now on my website, and it just pops up and invites people to come follow me on Pinterest. Kara Maria Ananda 17:21 So now I've been naturally growing and my Pinterest followers and my reach. And just last week, I actually hit a million monthly viewers on Pinterest for the first time. Kara Maria Ananda 17:34 It was really cool. Now it's like 800k, but I'm still like super psyched about that because it was like 7 k for like the last year and I realized it went up to 90k. Kara Maria Ananda 17:45 And I was like, Look, this is growing. I should do something about this. And so with my effort with having MiloTree, with using Tailwind with really optimizing my Pinterest images, that it's grown. Kara Maria Ananda 17:59 Specifically the monthly viewers is nice, but a lot of that honestly, is for pins that aren't even my own, to but my own personal website traffic, which is the indicator of how is Pinterest working for me since I started using these putting an extra focus on it. Kara Maria Ananda 18:16 My Pinterest website, referral traffic has grown from where it's been consistently been 4% of my monthly viewers to now 17% of my website traffic. Jillian Tohber Leslie 18:26 Wow. Kara Maria Ananda 18:26 Just from putting effort into Pinterest. So I'm super stoked about it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 18:31 It's motivating, isn't it? Kara Maria Ananda 18:32 Yeah. Jillian Tohber Leslie 18:33 When you see results. It's funny, because with Catch My Party, we were totally all into Facebook. And then all of a sudden we started noticing we were getting traffic from Pinterest. Jillian Tohber Leslie 18:46 And it told us go deep into Pinterest. And so that's why we built MiloTree and all of that. And so it was really kind of like, Whoa, we see this and almost like I think Pinterest is a sleeping giant because I don't think it's a sexy as Instagram. Kara Maria Ananda 19:06 Yeah, because you don't put selfies on Pinterest. Pinterest is not a selfie platform. Kara Maria Ananda 19:12 It's funny, they say that faces don't generate as much interaction on those pins as having to like just information. Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:20 Right. Kara Maria Ananda 19:21 Yeah, Instagram. I love Instagram. And I put a lot of effort into it. But recently, I haven't. I have just been kind of posting when I want to because Pinterest has been so satisfying. And the fact that it's an information place. Kara Maria Ananda 19:35 So I realize that as an entrepreneur, where I'm excited about sharing information and articles and blog posts and not like, necessarily pictures of myself. Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:44 Right and the truth is that your audience wants to be inspired by you. But really, it's about them. Them learning and solving their own problems. Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:58 And it isn't as much like a cult of person like oh my God, like what's Kara doing? No, it's like, what can Kara teach me? Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:10 And so that's where I would say, why it it doesn't surprise me that Pinterest is a richer platform for you then Instagram. Kara Maria Ananda 20:20 Yeah, and I think a lot of people don't realize that. I think you're right when it's like a sleeping giant because it's been around for a while. But this new phase, it's really changing. Kara Maria Ananda 20:29 And I think that it's different. I think a lot of people are really realizing that it's a great place for people who are sharing information. And it's a great place for being a wellness entrepreneur. Kara Maria Ananda 20:39 It's not just for crafts and food. People are looking for health information all the time on Pinterest. It's awesome. Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:50 Maybe it's just my awareness. But I feel like the wellness space right now is blowing up. Kara Maria Ananda 20:56 It is. Absolutely. I have a couple articles about that on my website too. I have a lot of blog posts about what's going on in the wellness field. And it is huge. Kara Maria Ananda 21:07 So health and wellness specifically like natural, holistic wellness, alternative medicine. Healthy Food is a $3.7 trillion global industry. And it's poised to grow significantly in the next five years. Kara Maria Ananda 21:22 And women are leading this category. Not only are women leading as entrepreneurs and small business owners, which is really empowering and exciting. But women are the main consumers to women make 80% of the choices for the health care and food shopping and all these kind of, you know, healthy lifestyle changes in in households today. Jillian Tohber Leslie 21:43 What's funny, so I would say that really Pinterest started and it was cupcakes and weddings and things like that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 21:53 And then I feel like food blogging just took off on Pinterest. And typically the ooey gooey unhealthy foods that you just look at and you just start dying to eat. Jillian Tohber Leslie 22:06 But at the same time that is always has always been really popular. You know, beautiful cakes and cupcakes. And you always want to get that like chocolate shot, you know where it's like oozing out. Jillian Tohber Leslie 22:17 But then now I'm seeing wellness coming in. Especially with like Whole 30 and just this focus on living a healthier life. I feel like that is like this new wave of experience for women. Kara Maria Ananda 22:35 Yeah, people are looking up, like healthy snacks has been like trending as one of the top things that people are looking up on Pinterest recently. Kara Maria Ananda 22:44 And you know, there's tons of like paleo bloggers and wellness bloggers who have really blown up. I mean, you can find like thousands of recipes for like, how to make homemade bone broth and how to heal your gut and how to eat paleo and keto on Pinterest Jillian Tohber Leslie 22:59 And the combination. So for example, we just made, this weekend delicious chocolate cookies with almond flour. Kara Maria Ananda 23:08 Oh, that's awesome. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:09 And we found the recipe on Pinterest. Kara Maria Ananda 23:11 I love almond flour last night. I just made homemade baked apple cider donuts with almond flour. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:21 You know you can have that ooey gooey experience now. But with like a healthy twist. A somewhat healthy twist. Kara Maria Ananda 23:27 Yeah, high protein. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:31 So thank you. By the way, I'm so glad that MiloTree is working for you. And one thing that's nice, I just want to say, here's my little plug, which is MiloTree will grow your Pinterest followers. Why MiloTree grows high quality Pinterest followers Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:42 But what's great about it, it will grow Pinterest followers who've already come to your site, because it's your visitors. And those Pinterest followers are the Pinterest followers who are aligned with your content. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:54 So Pinterest will show your pins first to your followers. And if your followers respond to them, then Pinterest will show those pins to other people on the platform. So if you align your followers with your content, then you will have even more success on Pinterest. Kara Maria Ananda 24:15 That's awesome. And I think that's really cool. Because like I said, I've been on Pinterest for a long time. So I think that a bunch of my followers might have started following me like five years ago, they might not still be active on the platform. Kara Maria Ananda 24:28 And well, you're like reach and your monthly views, you can have a really small following on Pinterest and reach a lot of people. Kara Maria Ananda 24:35 I just have over 4,000 followers. And probably a lot of those came from a long time ago. But I just reached like a million monthly views. Kara Maria Ananda 24:43 But at the same time, having new engaged followers that are going to see your content interact with it first is really important. Kara Maria Ananda 24:50 And because of the platform, I don't feel like it's super easy. Like, you know, you click on pins, and you save pins, but you're not always looking to follow people. Kara Maria Ananda 24:58 So having a prompt for people that are visiting your website to also follow you there is is really helpful. I feel like it kind of closes that loop a little bit. Jillian Tohber Leslie 25:07 That's interesting. I hadn't thought of it that way. But you're right. I mean, we currently with Catch My Party every day, we follow new people, because I think the algorithm likes that right? Jillian Tohber Leslie 25:21 It says, Yeah, active. But the truth is, when I'm like browsing for myself, I'm looking much more for pins than I am to find new people to follow, right. So that's interesting. I hadn't even thought of that. Kara Maria Ananda 25:34 Yeah, but now I see MiloTree or other bloggers, websites. And so it'll pop up, I'll be looking at somebody's blog, and it'll pop up and I'll be like, Oh, great. You're active on Pinterest, you know, right? Kara Maria Ananda 25:45 So it's kind of like a, it's kind of like a letting people know, like, I'm active on Pinterest right now, and tells me the sites that I think we're older. And so becoming more active and engaged now and sharing really good pins like, those are the people I want to follow. So it's a little badge. Jillian Tohber Leslie 26:03 It's like a little bit of social proof. Kara Maria Ananda 26:04 Yeah, little social proof, which is really good. That's one of the things I've been focusing on a lot today. Kara Maria Ananda 26:10 I think that as the way that we interact online is changing. Like, now we have all these Voice Search technologies, and people are using Pinterest as a search engine. Kara Maria Ananda 26:19 And social media is changing, like having our own websites is really important. But also trying to think about how would our websites change into the future, and with this new interactivity, how can people interact with us in our websites, and we create more opportunities for interaction. Kara Maria Ananda 26:38 So that's one of the things I've been focusing a lot on recently, is giving people more options of things to do that engages them with my website, and content that can be like fun. Jillian Tohber Leslie 26:47 Can you give some examples? Creating interactive experience on your website as a blogger Kara Maria Ananda 26:50 Recently I created an online oracle deck on my website, which is really cool. So you can actually go to my website and choose a card of the day. Kara Maria Ananda 27:01 In the top navigation bar, it says oracle and you can click on that page. And they'll invite you to discover your card of the day. Discover your destiny. Kara Maria Ananda 27:13 And so these are messages for, like, positive motivation, living inspiration for leaders. Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:22 Oooh I like it, so today, mine is "Trust your intuition and you will succeed." Oh, that's so nice. Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:32 It's like you're just putting out some good energy into the world. So thank you. Kara Maria Ananda 27:36 Yeah, and the next right, you could choose a new card, you can come back whenever you want to, if you want, like a positive message. So little fun things like that. Kara Maria Ananda 27:45 The other thing that I did is I created a search bar on my website. So it's like my own little Kara Maria Google search bar. Kara Maria Ananda 27:53 You can actually type in any word like birth, or, sexuality, fertility your business, and it'll pop up all the different blog posts and pages that have that information. Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:07 That's wonderful. I like the way you're thinking how people are all different. Somebody's going to use your search bar, and somebody wants a little dose of positivity, and you've got something for everybody. Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:24 Which is, again, back to that strategy of like, let's say you're going deep now on Pinterest. And what I recommend then, is to show a variety of images for a certain post, because you don't know what somebody's going to respond to. Right? Kara Maria Ananda 28:40 Yeah, now, I've been spending a lot of time going back and updating my old blog posts, because there's some blog posts that still get a ton of traffic. And it's exciting to see. Creating new images for Pinterest and updating keywords for older blog posts Kara Maria Ananda 28:51 But then I realized, like, oh, wow, this is getting a lot of traffic. And it has an image that I created two years ago, what happens if I add a new image that we got to capture people's, current sensibility of what they're attracted to? Jillian Tohber Leslie 29:06 Yes. And then, are you adding new keywords? Are you adding more text or more information? Are you then updating the date? Kara Maria Ananda 29:16 Oh, yeah, that's another thing I did this year, I updated my website, and I took the date off of the blog post. So all of the blog posts will still have the date in the URL, but when you go to my website, it doesn't say right underneath the blog post, like this was written in 2016, Jillian Tohber Leslie 29:34 Okay, but you're not, you didn't have the date in the URL Kara Maria Ananda 29:38 I did at the very beginning, I didn't like 2013. And then I changed the blog URL around 2014, so that the date was no longer in the URL, right. Kara Maria Ananda 29:50 But it was still showing up on the blog posts until about six months ago, when I changed that. And I took that off so that now all those older blog posts, somebody could go to to it. And they would just see the title and they would see the content, they wouldn't know when it was published. So it feel more relevant. Kara Maria Ananda 30:07 And yes, I am changing keywords. I am adding keywords to headlines, I try not to take away the words that are already in the headlines, though. Kara Maria Ananda 30:16 If they are ranking on Google because you don't want to ruin a current ranking that you have. So I'll add an extra keywords. And I reformat the articles because some of my older ones, I realized that I had a lot more text, like multiple sentences and longer paragraphs. Kara Maria Ananda 30:30 Writing for the web today, we really want to create, almost a paragraph space between like every sentence or two. So definitely reformat it to make it more readable. Jillian Tohber Leslie 30:40 I love all these. I mean, everything you're saying. I'm like, Yes. Kara Maria Ananda 30:43 Yeah. So that is a huge, like getting a lot more traffic and more shares of blog posts that are still super relevant. You know, it's great Jillian Tohber Leslie 30:53 I see you have keywords at the top of your posts. Kara Maria Ananda 30:56 Oh, I do. Oh, those are tags. Jillian Tohber Leslie 30:58 Tags. Yes. So they're showing. Kara Maria Ananda 31:00 Those are actually searchable to on my website. If you click on the tag, you can find other blog posts with that same tag on my website. So that's another cool interactive thing on my website. Jillian Tohber Leslie 31:13 What I love is that as an entrepreneur, I can tell that you have been educating yourself, going from being a doula or a massage therapist, you wouldn't necessarily think online entrepreneur, but you speak in a very sophisticated way about your online business. Kara Maria Ananda 31:33 Absolutely, I am passionate about education, that's what I'm all about. And that's because I, myself, am a lifelong learner. And I'm super passionate about learning. The need to be a lifelong learner as an entrepreneur Kara Maria Ananda 31:41 So I consistently am also, taking online courses, and studying with mentors, and doing a lot of my own personal research. And really, you know, what entrepreneurs do is we learned a lot through trying things. Kara Maria Ananda 31:54 So I try a lot of things, and I really look at them and analyze what worked, what didn't work, and it's, those are all learning opportunities. And it's a great way to figure out how we can grow and evolve is through learning and trying and taking risks. Jillian Tohber Leslie 32:13 That's terrific. Now I just have been thinking about this as you think about building courses content, I've been talking to some people who are building courses. And it seems like it is one of these things where you never finish your course, building it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 32:29 So how do you get there because everybody says, I should I should write a course, I should create a course. But how do you get from beginning to end? How do you know, when that course is done? What's your process? Kara Maria Ananda 32:42 Oh, well, you know, that's a really good question. And I love all my courses. And I'm really passionate about supporting people to create online courses today. Kara Maria Ananda 32:50 I actually created a new program that I have on my website, it's called the, Of Course Academy, you can create your own signature online course. How to build an online course as a blogger Kara Maria Ananda 33:00 And to help break down the process of how I actually do this, because there is quite a process. Kara Maria Ananda 33:06 I think the first part is really research, you have to research what you're doing, how to be able to communicate it online, what's going on and really figure out as part of your research, how you can stand out. Kara Maria Ananda 33:21 It's important to have your own style, your own story, that's the part of what you're doing, to make it you know, unique in the online world, and, and give it that value that only, you know, that is something that only you can really offer. Kara Maria Ananda 33:37 And then I use Simplero and really use, you know, an outlining process of creating an outline, creating topic and my sub topics. And then testing those out first through like social media posts about those topics, through blog posts, see how people react to them, and then organizing them. Kara Maria Ananda 33:56 And then, you know, teaching and teaching them is a lot of fun. I love teaching online. Having the right equipment makes a great deal. Jillian Tohber Leslie 34:04 Are you making videos? Kara Maria Ananda 34:06 Yeah I do a variety of different things from different courses, I do videos of me presenting a teaching. I do screen shares, you know, presentation style videos about certain topics, or demonstrating things online and the online business and audios and PDFs. We can create so many different kinds of media and really create these amazing multimedia experiences. Kara Maria Ananda 34:29 And then, of course, yeah, there's also marketing and promotion. And, you know, you could have a launch. You could have an Evergreen Launch where you have your course available ongoing and there's different kinds of marketing strategies for each of those. Kara Maria Ananda 34:42 And then upkeep, yeah, it's really, it's never done. I mean, this year, I went back and I updated a lot of my courses and went through and redid the the course membership site that they were on to make them really beautiful and on point with my current branding. Kara Maria Ananda 35:00 So there's always more to do,. You can always go back. I think that if people want to create an online course, because they think it's just something that they just do once and the launch and it's just going to create passive income without them having to do anything else, that that's not going to exactly be how it turns out. Kara Maria Ananda 35:16 It's a path. And it's an ongoing process. And I love that about courses too, is that you can just do it the first time you get your course out, and whatever way it is, and then you evaluate, and then you can always upgrade it and add enhancements. Kara Maria Ananda 35:32 And so it doesn't have to be perfect. It just needs to be really valuable and passionate, and actually give people the value and the solution that you're offering to them. ADVICE: Done is better than perfect as an entrepreneur Jillian Tohber Leslie 35:43 I love that because I teach this all the time. I say it to my daughter, I say to my husband, because he can be more of a perfectionist, Done is better than perfect. Jillian Tohber Leslie 35:56 And  Reid Hoffman, who founded LinkedIn always says this thing, which is, if you're not launching your product, and you're not embarrassed, you've launched too late. Kara Maria Ananda 36:09 I love that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 36:10 There needs to be that element of like, oh, you need to know that in a year, you're going to look back on this and be embarrassed. And if you don't do that, you've waited too long. Kara Maria Ananda 36:20 Yeah, upgrades are always happening. I'm consistently going through my website and just changing little things, we put things out. Kara Maria Ananda 36:27 And then as an online entrepreneur, we're always, you know, upgrading. And I like to do little upgrades. Because sometimes you see, this is really good, but maybe it could do better. Kara Maria Ananda 36:37 And sometimes it's just a few words or an image or phrase. So I like to go through and make 10% changes, I'll make 10% of a change to like the words in an area or try, you know, changing a photo and test it out and see if it gets better results or worse results. And if so, then change it back to what it was. Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:00 Now, given the you have a one year old -- Kara Maria Ananda 37:04 He's 21 months old right now. Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:06 Okay. So almost a two year old. Kara Maria Ananda 37:07 Yeah. Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:08 How many hours a week are you working on your business? Kara Maria Ananda 37:11 Oh, you know, I knew you're gonna ask this. And I've been stumped with this question. Because I don't work all at one time, right. And I don't keep a schedule. Kara Maria Ananda 37:20 I've been thinking maybe I should keep a timer for a week and test this out and actually see, because I work in little bits of time, a half an hour here or half an hour there, and then a couple hours here. Kara Maria Ananda 37:34 But I work a lot because I'm really passionate about what I do. And even when I'm not working on my website, or responding to emails or working with clients or create a course, I'm still working because there's other projects that I'm working on. Kara Maria Ananda 37:46 I have books that I'm writing slowly, creating images on Canva. So I'd have to say like, you know, at least 20 hours a week, if not, you know, up to 40, I don't know, I'm really not sure. Jillian Tohber Leslie 38:01 That's amazing. Yes. Well, again, if you're passionate about it, you do the work, the great thing about being an online entrepreneur is you have the flexibility to say, Oh, my baby's crying, I can go be with my baby. And then I can come back with my baby is napping. Kara Maria Ananda 38:20 Absolutely. And you can be at the playground so that the kids could be happy playing, and you can get on your phone and do Pinterest or respond to emails. Kara Maria Ananda 38:27 So absolutely I take advantage of all those little time blocks when I can. How to monetize as a wellness online entrepreneur Jillian Tohber Leslie 38:32 Absolutely and are you mostly monetizing via coaching and courses? Kara Maria Ananda 38:37 Yeah, those are my two main main things. Right now. I have an amazing selection of online courses for women's health, birth, business, spirit manifestation and life. Kara Maria Ananda 38:49 And I also provide private coaching mostly for women and wellness and small business and who are wanting to create a bigger online profit sense, or just designed their signature programs. Kara Maria Ananda 39:03 And I also do some writing and some speaking, but those are my two main main things. I love teaching. And I love helping people to enhance their communication and spread their message. Jillian Tohber Leslie 39:15 Great. Okay, we started the interview. And I said, when you work with female entrepreneurs, what do you think they need? Jillian Tohber Leslie 39:23 And you were saying they need support and all of that. So how do you go about getting support and feeding your own sense of self, so that you can be a mother, homeschooler, and also have this business? Kara Maria Ananda 39:41 Oh, wow. Well, self care is really important. I make sure to eat really good food, like a high nutrient dense food. Kara Maria Ananda 39:48 We have snacks throughout the house, like hard boiled eggs, things that I can like, grab, like one hand foods are really important, you know, green shakes, things like that. Kara Maria Ananda 39:58 Also, you know, I have doors. I shut doors, headphones, headphones are a magic key for mom entrepreneurs. Kara Maria Ananda 40:08 The kids are noisy, they're watching, you know, Paw Patrol or something. You really need some time to really focus, putting on your headphones. Kara Maria Ananda 40:15 When you sit down at your computer or laptop, or even phone and listening to like relaxing music. It creates your own little world where you can focus and calm down, and relaxes your nervous system. Tips on setting boundaries as an entrepreneur Jillian Tohber Leslie 40:27 Mm hmm. Ok. And then how do you get it? You were talking about boundaries. So what are your tips on setting boundaries? Kara Maria Ananda 40:36 Oh, yes. You know what, I ask for what I need. My husband and I communicate a lot. And I make sure to check in, not only do we have calendar systems online, and in our family area for a family, but I'll check in like, every day before we go to bed. Kara Maria Ananda 40:51 It's like, Okay, this is going to happen tomorrow. This is when you need to have the kids to do that. This is what I can do this. Kara Maria Ananda 40:57 And then in the morning again, because sometimes we wake up and things can get, you know, really busy with the kids doing stuff. Kara Maria Ananda 41:03 And so again in the morning we will like check in with our tea or coffee and be like, Okay, this is what we need to do today here at this time there at that time, and then we know what other parts of the day can can kind of flow. Jillian Tohber Leslie 41:16 That's great. That's great. Well, this has been such a pleasure, and I'm just like going to explore your website. Because you make me feel really good with my little moment of my oracle. Kara Maria Ananda 41:32 Oh, thanks so much. Jillian Tohber Leslie 41:36 I feel very inspired and like the universe is today set out to kind of conspire to bring me, to give me what I need and what I want so what I'm working towards that. Kara Maria Ananda 41:48 Absolutely, Jillian Tohber Leslie 41:49 Truly this has been such a pleasure and thank you so much for being on the show. Kara Maria Ananda 41:55 Oh thank you so much. Jillian Tohber Leslie 41:56 Oh wait, before we stop please tell people how they can reach out to you. Kara Maria Ananda 42:04 Oh, absolutely. Well, you can find me on my website KaraMariaAnanda.com and I have that free oracle and the top navigation bar you can get your personal message of the day. Kara Maria Ananda 42:15 And I also have some other great free resources to under the free tab on my website, including a masterclass right now for women on how to grow your wellness business, with the three tips to what is growing fastest and wellness businesses today. Kara Maria Ananda 42:32 And plus more fun stuff including some quizzes and women's wellness ebook and more. Kara Maria Ananda 42:39 And I love hearing from people to whether you have any questions about natural wellness for women or for creating an online business in the wellness world. Kara Maria Ananda 42:50 And I'd love for people to reach out to me through the contact form and say hello, and let me know you know if there's anything from this talk that was inspiring, and if there's any questions way that I can be of service or support. Jillian Tohber Leslie 43:02 Oh, well, Kara, thank you so much for being on the show. Kara Maria Ananda 43:07 Oh, thank you so much, Jillian. I really appreciate it. This is a lot of fun. Getting more Pinterest followers with MiloTree Jillian Tohber Leslie 43:11 Pinterest has been huge for Kara's business and that's why she uses the MiloTree Pinterest pop up because it pops up and it asks her visitors to follow her on Pinterest and her followers just keep growing. Jillian Tohber Leslie 43:23 If you want to get your own MiloTree Pinterest pop up, head on over to MiloTree.com. Sign up and you'll get your first 30 days free. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

This episode demonstrates that it is possible to get to 6.6 million pageviews in 2 years of blogging, because Caroline Simmons of Swaddles N Bottles did it! And the best part is she loves sharing all her tips and tricks. In this episode, Caroline and I discuss how Pinterest has fueled her blog growth, and how she strategically uses group boards to find new opportunities. Learn how she hires contributors to create content for her parenting blog, and how she's started a new blog to teach other women how to build online businesses. This is all in addition to having two babies at home! If you want actionable steps to take your blog traffic to a new level, you will love this episode! Resources: Swaddles N Bottles Tailwind PinGroupie Pinning For Pageviews Canva Shutterstock Adobe Photos MiloTree Social Warfare HashtagJeff ShareASale CJ Affiliate PepperJam The Basics of Blogging The Basics of Blogging Facebook Group Mastering Affiliate Marketing The Slight Edge * May contain affiliate links. If you click and make a purchase, I might receive a small commission at no cost to you.   Transcript - How to Get to 6.6 Million Pageviews in 2 Years of Blogging with Caroline Simmons Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:03 Hello, everybody. Welcome back to The Blogger Genius Podcast. Today, my guest is Caroline Simmons. It's Caroline right? Not Carolyn? Caroline Simmons 0:21 Yes. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:21 Yes. okay, and Caroline is a mother of two itty bitty kids. And she's a blogger. She's owner of a blog called Swaddles n Bottles, and it's a resource for new moms. Now what's super interesting is that she started this in 2016, and she has since grown it to over 6.6 million page views. So we are going to get into how she has done that. Welcome to the show. Caroline. Caroline Simmons 0:49 Hi. Thank you for having me. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:51 So I have to say that we met because you sent me the loveliest email out of nowhere, just saying how much you enjoyed the podcast. Caroline Simmons 1:02 Yes, I am someone who always want to be learning about whatever there is out there that I can get my hands on involving blogging and growing. And just finding new strategies and tips. And anytime I see your email pop up in my inbox, I either read it right then and there, or I flag it because I know it's always got such great content. So yeah, I really enjoy it. And, you know, I like that we were saying that the internet can be kind of a lonely place. And so I always like to just send a positive message whenever I can. And just send you a little word of encouragement that I'm reading it and I'm loving it. And it is absolutely helping me. Jillian Tohber Leslie 1:42 Thank you. And you're also using MiloTree, because if you sign up for MiloTree, you get my emails. So honestly, like when I get an email like that. It's it makes my day. Caroline Simmons 1:54 Well, good. I'm happy to hear that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 1:56 And then when I learned a little bit about your business, I was like, please come on the show, I want to interview you. Caroline Simmons 2:02 Yes, I'm happy to share whatever I can. Kind of pay it forward everything you've given me. I'd love to share some of my tidbits and hope that it can help someone else. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:11 Okay, so let's start at the beginning. You started this blog not long ago? Caroline Simmons 2:16 Right. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:16 So tell me a little bit about you. And how you did this. Caroline Simmons 2:20 Okay. Yeah, so I launched it in October of 2016. Starting a blog two years ago to help other mothers Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:25 Wow. So two years ago. Caroline Simmons 2:27 Just about two years ago now. And my first daughter was just three months old at the time. And when I was pregnant with her, I spent so much time online, trying to get my hands on any and all information I could about what was to come in my near future. In terms of my pregnancy and labor and delivery and bringing home a newborn and breastfeeding that newborn. And so I spent so much time online, just trying to collect every bit of information I could. Then as I kind of started going through, you know, those first couple months of motherhood and testing things out and trying to figure out. What was working what wasn't. What were the mom hacks that were saving me time and sanity and whatnot. I thought I would love to share this. And so I decided I wanted to start a blog. I had never done anything website related in the past. Jillian Tohber Leslie 3:22 And what was your previous life? Caroline Simmons 3:24 My previous life, I kind of dabbled around in a few different things. And I spent a few years working for an energy company. I did some recruiting for them. I did some customer service for them prior to leaving my job. Right before I had my first daughter, Emmy, I was working in higher education and working with college students, which was really, really fun. So, to be honest, I can say that I hadn't found what I wanted to do long term. And then when this idea, once it struck me, like creating a blog creating something from scratch that I've done all on my own, and growing it to the point of reaching me, no, never would have guessed it would have been millions of mothers and helping them. Once that idea was in my brain, and in my heart, there was no stopping it. It gave me, it's still to this day gives me goosebumps, just thinking about having the opportunity to do that. And so that's kind of what set me on my path. Jillian Tohber Leslie 4:24 Okay, so you get this idea. You have this tiny little baby, and you think I want to help other mothers, right? So what do you do? Start a blog to solve a problem you're struggling with Caroline Simmons 4:34 I bought a domain and I'm pretty sure my husband thought I had lost my marbles because he's like, do you know anything about blogging? And I didn't. And really, when I was a new mom, I was a new blogger. I researched. I took every free course I could find. I read every book I could find. I invested a little money in some paid ebooks and paid courses. I just just dug into anything I could get my hands on to figure it out. And I started creating content. I think one of the things that was the most helpful was that I was creating content for an audience that I was in the same position. I was going through the same struggles, and I was finding solutions. And I was seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. And I think that really helped. I had to tap into what's going on in my life. What struggles and am I going through? And how can I help others? Jillian Tohber Leslie 5:37 You know, it's so funny, because people will go, I want to start a business, what should it be? And I always say, examine your own life. Because, you know, if you're having a problem, chances are millions of other people are having that exact problem. And that's it again, we didn't set out to create MiloTree, we built it for ourselves, it worked really well. We're like, Hey, we could help other bloggers. And so we didn't set out to go, we're gonna make this app. And, you know, it's just, we scratched our own itch, and we were able to find a solution. Just like you did. Caroline Simmons 6:11 Right, yeah. And that is, I think, what what brings in the people is when you're solving a problem for them, and you're not setting out trying to do something for yourself, right? Having a mindset of helping as a blogger You're saying, and this is something that a lot of people are struggling with, how can I help? And when you have a mindset of helping, I think people can sense that. Yes. And I think that they are attracted to it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 6:35 I agree. It's like, they can smell it. Caroline Simmons 6:37 Yes. Jillian Tohber Leslie 6:39 Okay. So you start writing posts. Caroline Simmons 6:42 I started creating content and building the website, which that was a struggle in itself. Learning this new platform of WordPress, and that, that took some time. That was probably the biggest learning curve. Jillian Tohber Leslie 6:57 Did you did you hire somebody? Caroline Simmons 6:59 No, it was really just tutorials, and watching a lot of YouTube tutorials, and just reaching out to other bloggers, and just kind of trying to figure it out little by little. And still to this day. I would say it was maybe three months ago I installed a new theme in my blog and made a major change. So I tried not to be too hard on myself with it being perfect in the beginning. Because that is kind of, building a website is ever evolving. That was probably the hardest kind of hurdle in the beginning was the technical stuff. Something as simple as changing the color on my menu bar would take me, you know, 45 minutes to Google it and figure it out, and then try it and it didn't work. So I had to try it again. So, that was definitely tough. But now I'm pretty proud of what I do know, and what I can accomplish. And it was fun to learn all of those new things. Jillian Tohber Leslie 7:59 So there's a lot of content on your site. Caroline Simmons 8:02 Yes. Jillian Tohber Leslie 8:03 Did you write it all? Getting contributors to your blog Caroline Simmons 8:04 No, no. So I did in the beginning, and then I believe it was June of this year, I really kind of felt like, while my experiences were great, why not start providing some other views, some other experiences. Because every path through motherhood is unique. And why not give some other people an opportunity to share what they have. So I opened up an application and put it out there on social media, my Instagram, my Facebook. I started reading content that all of these other mothers had submitted. And I was blown away by the results. I never would have thought that I would have received as many applications as I did. And then from that, I now have three writers who write for me consistently. They are wonderful. I feel incredibly blessed to have them because they too, I think, really share my passion for helping moms and providing whatever information they can. So they helped me create a lot of the content. I have done a lot of guest posts in the past where I've allowed newer bloggers to share things. But I would say probably 70% to 80% of the content I wrote myself. I'm really loving having other views and other just stories and point of view this from others. Jillian Tohber Leslie 9:28 Do you pay them? Caroline Simmons 9:30 I do? Yes. My content writers who are with me, my three, I do pay them and I have not paid for, like blog posts in the past. But I do pay my writers. Absolutely. I mean, if you read some of the content they provide me with, it's amazing. It's stellar. And I like supporting them. And the fact that they're also trying to make something of themselves as freelance writers. So, yeah, I love being able to support them on their journey as well. Jillian Tohber Leslie 9:59 And how much content. How often are you posting? Caroline Simmons 10:03 You know, that's one of the interesting things about blogging. Since I brought on these writers, I've been a lot more consistent. When I brought home my second daughter, she was born in October, she was a little bit early, so she really needed extra attention. And so I didn't post there for maybe two months. When I first found out I was pregnant with her, oh, my goodness. I have like the worst morning sickness. And so I didn't post then for two or three weeks. So I wouldn't advise that to other bloggers. Having flexibility as a blogger But I would say it is one of the nice things about blogging, is when you do have to take time for your family, and for yourself, you can. But I have seen a lot of growth since I've been really consistent. And I'd say for the month of September, I think I'm already up to we've posted 16 times. Jillian Tohber Leslie 10:57 Okay. Wow. Caroline Simmons 10:59 And that's a combination of my own, and my writers as well. So as long as there's stuff to be shared, you know, we're going to be sharing it, we're not going to hold ourselves back. As long as we keep having inspiration on things to write. We're going to keep putting it out there. Jillian Tohber Leslie 11:17 That's awesome. Okay. Now, here is the million dollar question actually be 6.6 million question is, how have you grown your page views so big? Be where your audience is as a blogger -- focus on your most successful platform Caroline Simmons 11:29 Well, this is just kind of my philosophy for any blog is you have to know your audience and where they are spending their time, where are they hanging out. And wherever that is, you have got to work the heck out of it. For me, being that I am targeting women, new mothers, for me, that was Pinterest. And Pinterest has been the number one source of traffic for my blog. Really since day one, I have just researched and read and implemented and tested and dug into my analytics with Pinterest more than any other platform because it's what's working for me. And I think that that's something it took me time to figure out to work on what's working. You know, I think as a blogger, we can get so tied up with, well, there's Facebook, and there's Instagram. And there's Twitter. And there's LinkedIn. And, you know, there's all these different things and you're trying to make each of them work. Because you maybe hear that they're working for other bloggers or you think it could work. Where really I mean, if Pinterest is working, work Pinterest, and focus on that. And once you've got some consistent traffic from it, that's it's okay to start working on other things, and looking into other things. But I think that by really focusing on that one platform and doing whatever I could to learn and master and just make it work for me, that's what really drove the traffic. Jillian Tohber Leslie 13:05 So by the way, you are so preaching to the choir, I agree with you 100%. I always say this, which is go toward what's working. And then people will say, yeah, but what, what happens when Pinterest changes their algorithm, and I go, Oh, don't worry, they will. And then you go toward whatever else is working. But if something is working, dig deep, it doesn't mean that you ignore Instagram, but focus on what's making you money. Caroline Simmons 13:33 Right. And especially if you're just starting out, you're like, wow, this is working, okay, that means you've just skim the surface. If you've just pinned a few times, and it starts doing good things for your page views. Imagine what would happen if you really just took the time to educate yourself and read as much as you could. Even if you take three days to do nothing, but just educate yourself. It will pay you back and you will start knowing how to implement these things differently and just and really launch it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 14:01 So let's talk about this. Okay, so did you take Pinterest courses? Caroline Simmons 14:07 I did not take a specific Pinterest course. I'll be honest, I was an avid pinner before. I loved recipes. And when I was young and single, I had my dream wedding board, and all of that. My fashion board and such, so I was a pinner beforehand. And I think I understood how it worked. In that sense, when it came to making it work. For myself as a blogger, I think it was really just about digging into analytics. There's so many free resources out there, you know. Just a quick Pinterest search on Pinterest tips and what you can do to make it work for you. There's so much content out there. Which I love that about the blogging world. I love that people are willing to share, what is working for them. And so I might have taken some free Master Courses, as they call them, where it's like a one time thing where you sit and they share just kind of a few golden nuggets from Pinterest. But I didn't take one course that kind of changed everything. For me, it was more of just grabbing whatever I could, wherever I could, and just implementing little things here and there. Dig into your analytics on Pinterest to see what's working And then, like I said, it's all about digging into your analytics. You know, if you don't know what's working, you're not going to know what to stop doing and what to change. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:32 Okay, so so let's unpack that a little bit. Caroline Simmons 15:34 Okay. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:34 What does that mean? Digging into your analytics? Caroline Simmons 15:41 So you've got your analytics on everything, if we're talking specific about Pinterest? Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:46 Yeah, let's do Pinterest. Caroline Simmons 15:48 Pinterest analytics lets you know what boards you're pinning to that are getting the most results. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:54 Okay. Caroline Simmons 15:54 You can also look into things like what type of pins are performing. You can see what times of day that you're pinning that are working for you. I am an avid user of Tailwind. Jillian Tohber Leslie 16:11 Got it. And we do too. Caroline Simmons 16:14 Oh, my gosh. And that it's not just the Pinterest analytics alone. My Tailwind analytics are huge for me. It lets me know so much. Using group boards as a blogger to grow traffic And especially like I said, I'm a big user of the group boards. And using group boards on Pinterest is a great way to expand your reach. And it's great how they can let you know, you've pinned to this board 67 times in the past month, and it's only been been repinned once. Well, that tells you that your ideal audience is not hanging out in that group board. That's you're not getting your pin in front of the right people. So it may be time to, take a break from that group board, possibly leave that group board and really start to focus more on where are you know, my my ideal pinners? How can I get in touch with them? And how can I make sure that they're seeing my content And clicking on it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 17:11 So in Tailwind, you're looking at which are your most successful boards? Caroline Simmons 17:17 I'm looking at what are my most successful boards. I really also love to look at what people are pinning directly from my domain. Because it shows them if there is an image within a blog post that really is like standing out to them. And they're really captivated by Wow, this is this is such an interesting graphic. And so if I see that that's being pinned a lot, I like to go in and maybe create a new PIN that's maybe a little modified version of that, that graphic, it just tells you so much. But the board analyzer as they call it, and that really helps me see where is my effort is most being returned. I'm using that time slot to pin to this board? Is it worth it? And then from there on the opposite end of, leaving boards and also helps me see what are my rock star boards? Where are my people for sure, hanging out. And I like to make sure that as soon as I have a new blog post that it's going to my rock star boards, because I know that that's going to be the fastest and the best way to reach my audience. Jillian Tohber Leslie 18:24 And how many boards do you have? Caroline Simmons 18:27 Oh, my goodness, I think I'm probably in about 145 range right now. Jillian Tohber Leslie 18:32 Okay. Caroline Simmons 18:33 And that's what's really great about group boards is because I personally have maybe 15,000 followers on Pinterest right now. But my reach is 4.5 million. Jillian Tohber Leslie 18:47 Wow, wow. Caroline Simmons 18:50 Being part of those group boards, it's expanding my reach well beyond my individual followers. And I mean, that's huge, right there. That is what I say is the secret to Pinterest is the group boards. Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:04 Is the group boards. Caroline Simmons 19:05 Absolutely. Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:05 Because, again, I feel like I've heard over time that group boards are not as useful that they need to be very curated. Are you pinning in group boards that have thousands or hundreds of contributors? Caroline Simmons 19:23 You're touching on something that I've heard a lot of debate on. So I agree with you that if you are in boards that are pin whatever you want, no rules. Pin, whatever, and there's, you know, 4.5 thousand people in it. Yes, that can be a negative. But I am personally part of a board that I think have probably 700 or 800 contributors, and it's one of my top ones. That's why when I'm looking at group boards to join, I'm not usually making that decision myself. I'm going to ask to join, I'm going to give it 30 days. And I'm gonna let my Tailwind analytics Tell me from there. So I test it out, see if it's working. And if it doesn't, okay, I'll go ahead and leave. But I also think that you really do need to have a balance, I would say, you know, 70/30. 70% of your group boards you really need to be focusing for that's very specific target audience. I'm a parenting and pregnancy blogger, I'm going to be joining boards that focus around pregnancy, babies, labor and delivery, breastfeeding. That's what I want to be looking for. Testing out group boards as a blogger I'm fine with testing them out. But I'm also very quick to leave them if I feel like they're not working. But I'm not going to rule them out from the beginning. Let's give it a try. Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:44 Now, how are you finding these group boards? Caroline Simmons 20:47 PinGroupie is an awesome resource. It has really evolved too, from when I first started blogging, they've really updated it. And it's a lot more user friendly. Now, you're able to go in and filter out the category of group boards that you're looking for. And so that's awesome. Another great thing is , go to your fellow bloggers, see what some of the bigger bloggers in your in your area and see where they are pinning to and into to get added to those group boards as well. Jillian Tohber Leslie 21:25 And so will you reach out? You emailed them? Will you messaged them on Pinterest? Caroline Simmons 21:30 Yeah, I'd usually just follow the instructions on the group board. And it'll say, follow me and, send me an email or follow me and messaged me on my Facebook page and things like that. And I think one of the most valuable things that's helped me is I have two things I always follow up, I keep a running list of who I have messaged in regards to these group boards. And then if I'm added, I make a note, send them a thank you email. But a week to 10 days later, if I haven't heard back, I send a second email and I continue to follow up with them. Jillian Tohber Leslie 22:06 I love this. Okay, keep going. How to get added to group boards on Pinterest Caroline Simmons 22:08 And then more than that, a lot of times, and this is like a really big secret. But a lot of times, you'll notice that the bigger bloggers that have, you know 300,000+ followers don't have instructions on how you can grow the board. And so it takes some digging. I go to their website, I find, you know, their email address, and I send them a very personalized email to see if I can get added. And so a lot of times, I think that, you know, bloggers will look at these larger accounts. And well, there's no instructions on how to get added. So they must not be accepting contributors. And I don't take that as a stop, I keep going, I keep digging past that. And I find a way to make a connection with them. And I've got a group board that I'm part of. And you know, she didn't have any instructions. But she has half a million followers. And they're my target audience. And I reached out to her, and I kind of established a relationship with her and asked if I could be a contributor. And that was a big launch forward for my traffic. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:08 That is terrific. Oh, my God, I'm going to go back and kind of rethink our whole group board strategy. Caroline Simmons 23:16 Yeah, it's powerful. Not only that, it's a great way to build a community with people in your network. In my ebook, I have an ebook, Pinning For Pageviews, where I talk about the strategies that work great for Pinterest. And one of my suggestions is to have your own group boards. And, you know, pay back the favor. Give other people an opportunity to market their blog post and their blogs to your audience. And I think it's a great way to say like, hey, I've got this many followers and this group board your content is great, I'd love to add you and you kind of do like a little group board swap and build a relationship there. So for all the group boards who have given you the opportunity to share your content, pay that back and invite some of our fellow bloggers to join yours as well. Jillian Tohber Leslie 24:05 So how many would you say, how many group boards are you in? How many group boards do you have? And how many regular boards? Caroline Simmons 24:17 Yeah, I want to say I am probably part of at least like 100, 120, group boards and 40 are my own. I'm so worried that those numbers are going to be completely off. I'm thinking, like when I'm in tailwind, and I'm adding all those boards, I'm thinking of like, how many days right and so I want to say that's probably about right, I'm in like maybe 120 boards? Jillian Tohber Leslie 24:49 Wow. Okay, how do you keep track then of all of these group boards? Do you have, say, your top five group boards? So if you're pinning do you pin into 100 boards? Caroline Simmons 25:08 So this is going to be really hard to explain but tailwind, has this amazing feature called board lists. And what I do is I create groups of 10. So I have mom boards A, mom boards B, mom boards C, and that's how I go through. And I of course, have a Google Docs with all of my full list of all of them, and which one is on which board list so that way, I ensure that I'm not missing one. And then when I go to pin, a new pin, I go through my list. And I pinned to the group board A, group board B, group board C. Also having it set up in that way where I have those different board list helps me so that way, I'm not pinning, you know, all of the same boards and all the things day. Does that make sense? Jillian Tohber Leslie 26:01 Yeah. Okay. So let me see if I can say that back to you. So you can group boards on tailwind? So let's say you've got 100 group boards, you can lump them, let's say 25 into a group and then another 25 into a group. So that when you are choosing what boards to pin to, all you have to do is put that group name and all those 25 boards will be included. Caroline Simmons 26:32 Yeah, that's it. What's really nice is you can go on your first pin, you go A, B, C, D, then on your second pin, you go B, C, D, A your next pin. So that way you're really mixing it up. Group boards have rules they don't want you pinning 25 times in one day really helps you mix it up so that you're pinning all across your different boards each day. And that's really awesome, too. Because, I mean, you think about like I said 4.5 million when it's mixed up like that. You're really hitting all of those boards. All of those people throughout the week. Got it? What does your team look like as a blogger? Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:09 Yes, this terrific. Okay. So do you have somebody helping you? Caroline Simmons 27:16 You mean with my Pinterest? Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:17 Yes. So are you doing all of this? Caroline Simmons 27:19 I did have a VA for some time who was really, really helpful. And she ended up finding a great full time job that was just like, so meant for her. She's so great at it. But she was helping me for a little while. And my husband helps me with some things like outside of Pinterest. He helps me with more of like the business aspects of it. But Pinterest, I'm really kind of doing it all on my own. And that's not a bad thing. I really enjoy it. I really love it. And it's such a wonderful platform. And like you said, they're always updating, they're always changing. And I think I've yet to see a change that I really dislike. I think that they're always just making it better for the users, which is great for us. Because that means people are enjoying it more. They're spending more time there. So yeah, I really don't mind doing these things on my own. Because I just I love Pinterest. Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:12 It's so terrific. Okay, how many hours a day are you spending on Pinterest? Caroline Simmons 28:19 Spending on Pinterest? Honestly, not too many, thanks to Tailwind. I do do some manual pinning here and there. I really think that Pinterest rewards people who are in there being an active user. And pinning. So I do get in there and pin on different recipes and just things that you know, are of interest to me. So I do spend some time here and there. But I don't have much time to work each week because of you know, the two little babies. So I have to be pretty wise with my time. I'd say each week right now. And probably working. I would say 25 to 30 hours a week. Jillian Tohber Leslie 29:00 Wow, that's great. Caroline Simmons 29:02 Yeah. So I try to squeeze in as much as I can during naptime. And after they go to bed. And they go to a mother's day out program two days a week for just five hours. So the night before they head off to their little school days, we call it I like to sit down and plan well, more than five hours of work. So that way, I can really just set the momentum for myself and just get as much done as I can in that amount of time. Jillian Tohber Leslie 29:31 Who is creating graphics for you? Creating Pinterest images in Canva Caroline Simmons 29:34 I create my graphics. Jillian Tohber Leslie 29:36 Cool. Okay. Using what platform? Caroline Simmons 29:41 Canva and I also really have just discovered Shutterstock, I believe is the name of it. And Adobe Photos a little bit pricier when it comes to purchasing photos. But the quality of them is so great. And as much as I love Canvas, Canva images are very heavily used, and you really start to see and a lot of the same photos being used over and over again. So for me, it's worth it to spend, you know, $3 on a photo that I know is like 100% unique and really just is so on point with the blog post topic. But I love Canva. I am an avid user of it. One of my things for next week is to create a little tutorial for the bloggers and my facebook group who I kind of help with whatever goals they have on Canva, because it's just the possibilities are endless. And, you know, you can really I mean, every graphic on my blog, pretty much 99% of them I created in Canva. Jillian Tohber Leslie 30:41 Wow. And do you have templates set up in Canva so that you can put the image in change the text, and it looks like it's consistent with your site? Caroline Simmons 30:51 I don't. Canva provides a really great Pinterest template, which is that optimal size for a pin. But besides that, I think it's really just creating my own brand in a way in terms of I have certain fonts that I always use, I really I have just a look. And that I stick with. I really like high quality images. I like for the image to be big and bold. And I like for my my texts to be very easy to read as somebody scrolling through Pinterest. I don't want it to be too small. So in terms of templates, I'm really just using that Pinterest pin template on Canva, and then adding all of my own kind of signature things. Grow our email list faster with MiloTree Jillian Tohber Leslie 31:40 I wanted to take a short break to tell you about a new feature, we've added at MiloTree to help you grow your email list faster. Now in your email pop up, you can add add an image. So let's say you've got an e-book or a course or freebie. Or you just want to make your pop up pretty. Just add your image, you will increase the number of subscribers you get. So head on over to MiloTree.com, sign up for your account. Get your first 30 days free. And now back to the show. Keyword strategy for Pinterest Jillian Tohber Leslie 30:41 Now, what about writing descriptions? How do you think about that on Pinterest? Caroline Simmons 32:24 I think you've got to use the same kind of SEO tactics that you use on your blog with Pinterest. You've got to really sit down and create a very keyword heavy description. And you've got to be thinking in the mind of your ideal reader. What are they going to be typing into a search bar and whatever that is, you've got to find a way to work it into your description on Pinterest. Jillian Tohber Leslie 32:55 Yes, yes. Now, are you using hashtags? Caroline Simmons 33:01 I mean, I think maybe once or twice. I have not jumped into that. And I know it's a newer feature. So I haven't started using them yet. But I know others are. And I haven't heard too much feedback on it. Have you heard of people really seeing a huge difference? Jillian Tohber Leslie 33:19 We are starting to put a couple hashtags into our descriptions. And I want to go back and add some hashtags at least like one to every board description. That's a big undertaking, because we have a lot of boards, but that's what I am thinking of doing. But we are starting to put a couple in our descriptions. I don't know if it's helping. I feel like it can't be hurting. And so what we're trying to do is put like our basic search words, you know, #babyshower, #girlbabshower, you know, #pinkbabyshower, that kind of thing. Caroline Simmons 34:02 And you've just touched on like, the toughest thing about blogging, things are always changing. And then you've got to decide, do I spend an entire day going back into this? It's like a few, maybe what, six months ago, Pinterest decided that they were going to change the shape of their board covers. And we all had to spend an entire day going back and fixing all these graphics. You have to really weigh things out and say, Is this a wise use of my time or is it going to even really make a difference? Jillian Tohber Leslie 34:34 And then you don't know that's the bit, you have all these analytics and all this stuff. And then at the end of the day to, there's a part of you, that just doesn't know. Caroline Simmons 34:42 Right. And I think that that's when you've got to take care of the things that you like we've talked about with Pinterest, you got to take care and nurture the things that are working for you, and take on those outside things just one week at a time. And don't try to do all of them at once. And you've really just got to space out and use your time wisely. Jillian Tohber Leslie 35:00 And what I want to say about you is you're not using hashtags and you're still getting tremendous traffic. So will you go entire day going back and doing hashtags because I don't think it's gonna change too much. Exactly. So you do a blog post. Or let's say, even somebody you have these writers. Do you create the editorial calendar for them? Did they pitch you ideas? How to work with blog contributors Caroline Simmons 35:27 No, most of the time I'm sending them the ideas based on what I know their strengths are. I have one girl that's just awesome at the How-tos she just wrote an awesome blog post for me about the maternity leave, with financial planner and how you can basically save up. She's very good at like actionable steps things to do. I've got another one who's just she's wonderful at, tapping into the emotions of motherhood and really just writing almost what I like to call like this supportive type blog posts. And then I also have someone. I have a labor and delivery nurse who writes for me, and she gets all of the things that have a lot of a lot of medical terminology. And, and she she is a great combination and knowledgeable in her field. But she also is so great at breaking it down so things aren't so scary. They're all very, very wonderful writers. And again, I'm so thankful that I have them. At the beginning of each month, I usually send each of them three to four posts, topics, and they begin writing and they have access to Swaddles and Bottles, and so they go in on the back end, and they create their blog posts, they do the formatting and things of that sort. And then it saves as a submitted post. And then I go in, and I do all the search engine optimization, I create the graphics for it. And I do all the little back and stuff, and then I publish it. Then I add it to my Tailwind, and I get it running through all of those group group boards. And then I put it on my Facebook schedule if I plan to share it there. And that's kind of just the the lifeline of a blog posts. Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:19 And how many images are you making per post? Caroline Simmons 37:23 When I first started out, two to three. Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:27 And they all have text overlays? Caroline Simmons 37:30 Yes. Always, use overlay. I like to just play around with the different titles change some words, you know, because the science of what makes a pin go viral. And what makes the pin just die off into the abyss is something that so many people have tried to specifically pinpoint. And it's not a perfect formula. I mean, you can't do ABC and within 24 hours have 20,000 readers, right. There's a lot of great guidance that we've received a lot of just general rules that people say, but again, you know, one of these, general rules that people say, is to avoid having like, faces in your pins but some faces and some pins that have done really, really well. So I think that it's a combination of a lot of things. And so I really like to try to tweak those things with each graphic that I make, just to kind of cover a few different bases. Jillian Tohber Leslie 38:30 So what would those bases be? When you kind of go, Okay, I'm gonna make three images for this blog post, what will you go to, as things you think might be successful? Caroline Simmons 38:40 I'm just really changing the title. And I don't want to say call to action. But for example, let's say I wrote a blog post on losing weight, you know, I might do the first one on, you know, the Complete Guide to losing weight, I may do another one that's like, losing weight 101, 25 ways to get past your plateau, or than I might do another one of, Number stuck on the scale, can't get past a certain point? Here's how we can help you. So it's the exact same subject, but your wording it in different ways, because you never know what's going to appeal to someone, everyone's different. So I really just kind of rewording those things I might do maybe some different fonts, things might look different, just based on whatever the image is. If the image allows for me to do text over the whole image, then I'll do that. If it allows me to do text, they would just kind of like in a bar across the bottom, I might do that. So I really do try to make them pretty different. But the overall goal is, I want that text overlay to really be compelling, and really, really show them that there's value behind clicking through. Jillian Tohber Leslie 40:02 Yes. Got it. I meant to ask this, when you have your contributors, do you say this needs to be at least 300 words? Do you have a limit? Caroline Simmons 40:14 I usually will write that whenever I'm sending them the prompts. Sometimes, yes. The wonderful nurse that I have that writes for me, she just did an awesome blog post for me on the the biggest myths of labor and delivery. :ike debunked by a nurse, which was so awesome, because I mean, moms, you know, we got that we tell our horror stories, and everyone's like, terrified, but then to hear it straight from her. So with her, I usually just kind of let her roll with it. And they've all been writing for me, like I said, for so long, to the point where I think they just know what's the ideal length for Swaddles n Bottles. And we don't have anything that's, you know, an extensive 3, 4 page blog post, and I'd say, 2,000- 2500 words is probably the absolute most that we have. Everything ranges, probably in between, I'd say 650 to 1000 words. And the reason is, because it's a resource, we are trying to get you the information, we don't really want to fluff it a lot. We want to inform you, get you what you need, so that you can feel better about whatever it is that you're looking for. You're struggling with. Jillian Tohber Leslie 41:30 Got it. And then will you add, say, the three images into the blog post? Or will you kind of add them into say Yoast, and then if somebody is going to pin your post, those other images will show up? Caroline Simmons 41:45 Yes. So usually, I just do one in the blog post, then what I will do is create new pins in Pinterest and put that link there. And you bring up a good point, a great tool that I really like, I don't want to get into too much of the debate because they have been having some technical difficulties is Social Warfare. They've done some updates, and some people are jumping ship, I haven't had any issues whatsoever, and I really, really like it. But Social Warfare allows me to select which pin, if somebody decides to click on that Pin It button, it lets me decide which pin is going to be used. And one more than that is it allows me to write that description. Like we talked about that description that's got those keywords. I don't have to worry that they're going to pin something with a blank description, whatever they're pinning, it's keyword heavy. It's got all of those things that I know are going to help it grow. Google vs. Pinterest for driving traffic Jillian Tohber Leslie 42:42 Got it. That's terrific. Okay. Now how are you doing with Google search versus Pinterest in terms of driving traffic. Caroline Simmons 42:52 Google or search engine traffic? Search engines are number two for me. I've seen a great increase. I used to get maybe about four 450 and pageviews a day from search traffic. I'm now into about the 2,000-3000s, and again that has come from all of the amazing bloggers out there who have been kind enough to share you know their tactics and their strategies. I took an amazing paid course from Hashtag Jeff. Are you familiar? Jillian Tohber Leslie 43:38 Love him, love him. Caroline Simmons 43:39 He's so good and I love how he's so real with you. He's like look videos are not my thing. I'm not a really like out there, bubbly blogger. But man, he is so good at what he does. And he breaks it down so well. I love the checklist that he gives you and everything like that. So taking his course why probably what really launched that forward for me. Jillian Tohber Leslie 44:06 I did a workshop with him at an AdThrive conference. And I loved him. Caroline Simmons 44:12 Did you go to the Adthrive Conference last year in Austin? Jillian Tohber Leslie 44:15 Yeah. Were you there? Caroline Simmons 44:15 No, me and my husband were so close to going, and I don't remember what happened. But we weren't able to go and I have like everyone in the Adthrive group has been talking about, when's the next conference? Jillian Tohber Leslie 44:28 Yes, oh I will go. Caroline Simmons 44:30 I'm so ready to go. Jillian Tohber Leslie 44:31 Yes. Yes. So he was there. And that's where he just opened my eyes. I'm going to try and get him on the show. He opened my eyes to the power of SEO. Caroline Simmons 44:41 Yeah, he's wonderful. I love how he keeps it coming for you. Like he's constantly sending emails of new things. When this whole Google big whatever happened in August, he was the first person in my inbox saying here's what you need to do to try to fix it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 44:56 Was this like GDPR? Caroline Simmons 44:58 No, Google did a big update changed. Some things a lot of people in certain areas, saw some big drops. I didn't see anything too big. And I had one day where I got down to just like 1400 but it was one of those things where I think was really scary. A little dip and things have kind of corrected themselves since then. He's just so knowledgeable. Jillian Tohber Leslie 45:22 Yep. Yep. Okay, so how do you monetize? How to monetize as a blogger with affiliates Caroline Simmons 45:26 My monetization strategy for Swaddles n Bottles. I think is really about and I think that should be the case for all blogs, diversification. You don't want to put your eggs in one basket. You don't want to have just one way that you're making money and so we just talked about you know, Adthrive. I monetize my website through ads first of all. Secondly I do affiliate marketing and I think affiliate marketing needs to be diversified. So many people just think Amazon, and Amazon is wonderful I absolutely love it. I was an Amazon mom well before I became a blogger who was promoting it. I mean I order more stuff off of Amazon than I would be willing. So I love it and I love promoting it to to my readers and the products that I use. But then I also love the smaller affiliate marketing setups. You know there's shareasale and CJ affiliates and pepper jam they all have affiliate programs. Target has an affiliate program. I mean, really, it's kind of difficult this day and age to find someone that doesn't have one, so I really think you need to diversify that and not just stick with Amazon, but reach out to all of those those other smaller affiliates as well. Jillian Tohber Leslie 46:40 Are you making your most affiliate income with products like strollers or bottles? Or is it courses about new mothers? What works for your audience? Caroline Simmons 46:57 You know, the product that I'm using, there are so many products for just having a baby in general. It can be difficult to really navigate through them. I do a lot of suggestions -- either the best products that is cost effective products, the ones that work the best things like that. I just did a blog blog posts too, on the products you do not need, because you're going to think that you do, but you actually don't need them. And so I do do a lot of that. I also do an affiliate for courses that like you said, you're a new mom. Here are some things that could help you out, or you know, you're a breastfeeding mother, here are some things that can help you out. So I think it's really just diversifying that. And in thinking outside of the Amazon box, it's a great way to get started. It really is. But then once you've got a good steady hold on it, start looking for more things. Because there are more things out there. The courses and things add so much value for my readers. And I know that they're really, really helping them. And so I love promoting and any other blogs that have courses like that. So that's another way that I monetize affiliate marketing. And then I do do occasional sponsored posts, I'm not too big on them. Well, not to say that I'm not too big on them. I don't do them very often. Because I really do try to stay super selective and which ones I do because I want them to be just really, really in line with my audience, and what they need and what products I think would actually benefit them. And so I do them. I'm not constantly aiming to do a certain amount per month or anything. And when I find a product that I think will be great, I love pitching them. And I have a lot of messages that come to my inbox as well about partnerships. But we just try to stay selective and what we do so that we we stay in line with what our audience needs. Jillian Tohber Leslie 48:54 And if you were to break it down? Are there any other monetization strategies? Caroline Simmons 48:58 No, not for Swaddles n Bottles. Jillian Tohber Leslie 49:00 Okay, if you were to break it down, how much, percentage wise, how much would you say you're making the ads via affiliates? Caroline Simmons 49:09 Affiliates is always number one. I definitely make the most with affiliate marketing. To go back to the diversification, I was just looking at my different income for the month, and Amazon's great. It's on track. It's doing well but for the first time those small little here and there other affiliate opportunities is what I call them, has surpassed my Amazon income which goes to show you can't disregard the little things. This little affiliate program may only make you $100 a month, and this program may make you $100, but then when you've got 10 of those small wins it adds up, so affiliate marketing with Amazon and other affiliates combined, those are definitely my number one source of income each month. Ads as a close second and I think the ad network that you're with is a big part of that, and and then of course sponsored posts would probably the smallest percentage. Jillian Tohber Leslie 50:14 Right and then because you've had all this success, you created another blog and you also have a Facebook group? Teaching other bloggers as a blogger Caroline Simmons 50:24 Yes. So then I created the Basics of Blogging and obviously I hope someone can tell through everything we've talked about today. I really love helping other bloggers. I am a firm believer that I could give away every blogging secret that I have, and it's not going to hurt my success. Jillian Tohber Leslie 50:46 I love that. Say that again. Caroline Simmons 50:54 I had a wonderful mentor at my past job. And his saying was, a candle loses nothing by lighting another candle. Jillian Tohber Leslie 51:03 Yes. Caroline Simmons 51:06 And so I think that as bloggers, it's a natural for us to want to hold everything close. And not give away our secrets. But I think that as long as we all promise to just stay unique and always be ourselves and create our own content. There's nothing wrong with sharing what's working for you. And so I started the Basics of Blogging as a way to share just really anything and everything that was working for me. I created two ebooks Pinning for Pageviews and Mastering Affiliate Marketing, where I just kind of share everything. And then I have a Facebook group where I try to get on there and share just little tidbits here and there. We've recently also started doing something where we invite other successful bloggers to kind of take over the Facebook page. Jillian Tohber Leslie 51:56 Oooh, can I come in? Caroline Simmons 51:57 Yes, absolutely. Come in. And you just kind of share. Jillian Tohber Leslie 52:02 Can we talk about MiloTree? Caroline Simmons 52:03 I actually talked about MiloTree this morning. Jillian Tohber Leslie 52:06 You did? Caroline Simmons 52:06 Yes! Jillian Tohber Leslie 52:07 Oh, thank you. Caroline Simmons 52:08 Yeah, I told them. I was like, I'm doing an interview this morning. I'm really excited about it. And I kind of told them why I think it works so well. And how it's helped me bring back traffic and grow big following. Jillian Tohber Leslie 52:23 I love it. Wait, but tell us what is this Facebook group? Caroline Simmons 52:26 It's called just the Basics of Blogging. Jillian Tohber Leslie 52:28 Okay, got it. Caroline Simmons 52:29 And it's very different than your typical blogging Facebook group. Because in some of the other ones, you'll see a lot of like, promo days and follow for follow and comment threads and stuff like that. It's not really my goal. My goal is, like I've told everyone is just a constant waterfall of knowledge and support. And it's just really where I want people to come and grow and learn and hopefully meet their goals that they have. So it's not a place to come and share your latest blog post on the wall and stuff like that. It's a place to kind and just kind of join this community of people who have the same goals as you. We're all trying to be successful bloggers, and I really want it to be a resource for people. But I also don't want to be the only person sharing what I know. I really want it to be a community and kind of set the standard for whatever's working for you, share it, share the wealth, share the love driven knowledge. I'm excited. You know, all of this the blogging thing blogging about blogging is kind of a newer. Jillian Tohber Leslie 53:33 It's kind of meta, isn't it? Caroline Simmons 53:35 Yeah, it's, it's new. And it's very different than blogging about babies and bumps and birth and things like that. But I enjoy it. I do I really enjoy helping people. And I love hearing your feedback. And one of the bloggers who's doing, you know, takeover soon, she was one of the first people to purchase my ebook. She was a brand new blogger. She's now, bringing in well over 100,000 page views a month. I know that it's not just because of the blog, I know that she also just has a wonderful mindset in terms of continuously learning, and she's just sharp and she's just got something about her that she's been able to be very successful at this very quickly. And so I'm gonna let her take over and share some of her stuff. Jillian Tohber Leslie 54:19 Yes, I would love to come in, just to share kind of what's worked for us. Caroline Simmons 54:24 It's a smaller community. We just, I've just kind of picked up on this with them. Now that my girls are in school, and I have a little bit more time but I've got I've got big goals for it. And I really hope that it becomes something you know, five years down the road when someone else is doing an interview like that. They can say, well, the basics of blogging really helped me. Jillian Tohber Leslie 54:46 Oh, I love that. Okay. Do you have any parting advice for a mom blogger out there? Like you have two little babies, and you're doing this, like, what is your advice to somebody who listens to this and wants to be where you are? Advice: Embrace the process as a blogger, it takes time Caroline Simmons 55:07 I would say well, I would say to just really embrace the process. It takes time. Just the process of that journey of creating something and putting in these hours and staying up late after your baby good, it's bad. And, you know, hustling during those times. It's a tough journey. But man, when you get to the point where you're seeing your goals, you're knocking them off, and you're crossing them out, because you've done it, it's so rewarding. So just embrace it. and be patient with yourself. Don't try to shortcut it or, or anything like that. Really just just embrace the process. And be patient with yourself. Continue to just make those small efforts every single day they will add up. And you will start to see it happening for you. Jillian Tohber Leslie 55:54 Oh, wow, Caroline. Thank you. Just you know, I love your mindset of small goals. It's a slow build, the overnight success is not really real. But if you just keep in there and learn and grow and do your right one thing every day, you will grow your business. Caroline Simmons 56:18 Yeah, absolutely. The Slight Edge is what I'm reading right now. And it's all about that same thing, just constantly making the daily efforts that if you look back at what you did yesterday. Those little efforts that's not what's going to make you successful. But it's continuing to do those over and over and over and over again, that's going to get you to the point where you're meeting your goals. Jillian Tohber Leslie 56:47 And one less thing, which is we all compare ourselves to others. And there are always people who are bigger than us, whose businesses look so much better than our businesses. And by the way, one thing I will say is you have no idea what really going on in that person or that business' life. When you feel yourself contracting and feeling less than, to force yourself into saying and I believe in abundance, and I believe in abundance. Caroline Simmons 57:14 Absolutely. Yeah, you're right comparison, like the saying, comparison is the thief of all joy. If we would all just focus on ourselves and anytime that we're feeling down, write down a few things that we've done and we've accomplished and be able to say that you're proud of yourself. That is a bigger motivation and to me then looking at someone else and trying to you know, catch up with that so to speak. Jillian Tohber Leslie 57:37 Absolutely. Well Caroline, this was such a pleasure thank you so much for coming on the show. Caroline Simmons 57:43 Absolutely. I have enjoyed speaking with you so so much. I hope I get to meet you in person at the next Adthrive convention. I would love it and we live kinda near each other. Yeah, we have made some family trips to Austin with our girls here and there. So I will absolutely reach out to you. If we make our way there. Jillian Tohber Leslie 58:03 I realized I ended my recording without asking Caroline how people could reach out to her me to give you that information. Now, her website is called Swaddlesnbottles.com and her email address is Caroline@swaddlesnbottles.com. Her other site is thebasicsofblogging.com and that's also the name of her facebook group. So do reach out, especially if you'd like this interview. And just like how Caroline is using Milottree to grow her Pinterest followers. Because Pinterest traffic is so valuable, you might want to do it also. So head over to MiloTree and get your Pinterest pop up that tells your visitors to follow you on Pinterest installed on your site. And if you do that you get your first 30 days free. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!  

Wait until you hear today's episode. I'm interviewing Jenny Melrose from The Melrose Family and JennyMelrose.com. Jenny is an expert on how to win working with brands. We get into it all in this interview. Want to know how to reach out to companies you want to work with? What to write in your email? How many times to follow up? How much to charge? If you are an influencer or want to become one, you must listen to this! Resources: The Melrose Family Jenny Melrose Sway Group Pollinate Izea Catch My Party MiloTree Pitch Perfect Pro Social Bluebook Influencer Entrepreneurs Podcast The Blogger Genius Podcast Transcript - How to WIN at Working with Brands with Jenny Melrose Host 0:03 Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast. Brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:11 Hello everybody. Welcome back to Rhe Blogger Genius Podcast. Today, my guest is Jenny Melrose. Now Jenny has two blogs. She is a lifestyle blogger and she's the founder of The Melrose Family. And then she also has her own site JennyMelrose.com. How to work with brands as a blogger Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:30 What we're going to talk about today is working with brands, strategies for getting brands to notice you, how to reach out, and how to really build that part of your business. So Jenny, welcome to the show. Jenny Melrose 0:44 Thank you so much, Jillian for having me. I'm so excited to get to share some of my little tidbits of trainings and things with your audience. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:52 Perfect. Okay, so Jenny, will you tell us how you started? Jenny Melrose 0:57 Absolutely. My lifestyle site, The Melrose Family has been up and running for nine years, so I'm a little bit of a dinosaur. It started off just kind of as a hobby. I was a new mother and kind of lost myself, in needed something to kind of have a creative outlet. Jenny Melrose 1:17 I started writing. Back then it was, this is what we did today and this is what we ate for lunch. And then it transitioned, as I saw other bloggers, and got into different communities, seeing that they were actually able to start making an income. As a blogger start by solving problems and pain points Jenny Melrose 1:31 I transitioned into making sure that I delivered content that solved problems and pain points for an audience. Jenny Melrose 1:38 When The Melrose Family was started it was prior to Pinterest and Instagram. So I've been able to kind of learn the strategies that work on social media, as I've grown with those outlets. Jenny Melrose 1:52 And then as I got further along in it, probably three years or so into it, I started making an income working with brands, where I would create content for them in exchange for a fee that I decided I would charge, based on my kind of influence that I had at that time. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:13 Were these brands that were reaching out to you? And were you surprised or were you strategic? Using networks to get sponsored posts as a blogger Jenny Melrose 2:19 So when I first started, I didn't actually reach out to a ton of brands myself, I kind of used networks. Bloggers would let you know, I'm in this network, or that network, there's all, there's so many of them. There's the Sway Group, Pollinate, Izea has one TapInfluence used to be one that's now owned by Izea. Jenny Melrose 2:36 But the way that the networks work is you apply, and then you put in your social numbers, as well as like your analytics for Google, how many page views you're seeing for your traffic. And you also put in all of your personal information as far as how old are you, how many kids you have, do you have a pet. Jenny Melrose 2:53 So they can determine if you are a good fit for the brand that has come to them with a certain amount of money, and then they would hire you in order to create a sponsored post. Jenny Melrose 3:05 I used the networks for quite some time. But the problem that I ran into is that I was like a needle in a haystack. There were so many bloggers, I wasn't standing out. Jenny Melrose 3:17 So about from year three to about year five, I started honing in on my own strategy where I would pitch myself to the brands. Jenny Melrose 3:28 I never saw a million page views. I think at the height of when Pinterest really was driving a ton of traffic, as well as Facebook. I was probably seeing about 700,000 page views but have since been cut in half because of the algorithm change. Jillian Tohber Leslie 3:43 Totally. It's happened to all of us. Jenny Melrose 3:45 Yes. So because of that, I was never one of these huge bloggers that all the brands knew about, and came flooding in to work with me via email. I had to really go out there and reach out to the brands that I knew and loved, to show why my audience would want to hear about their product. Jenny Melrose 4:07 That was from year three to year five. It changed everything for me. At that time was also an inner city school district teacher, was working full time, and I had a second baby and was miserable. Not because I didn't love my students that I had. But I never saw my kids. It was I missed out on everything I felt like. So my sponsor post income actually took over for my teaching salary. Jillian Tohber Leslie 4:37 Wow. How building a blog can change your life Jenny Melrose 4:37 And I was able to retire at 35. Jillian Tohber Leslie 4:40 Wow, wow, I can tell you know, it's funny because I've, I think you are Episode 40, or something like that. How many women have a very similar story to you. Jillian Tohber Leslie 4:53 Many teachers, but many who start their blogs of as a way to make sense of their lives once they become mothers, like how to find meaning, how to hold on to a piece of themselves, how to be creativ. You know, when you're all you're doing is thinking about your kid not having a meltdown and what the right snack is to possibly solve that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 5:16 And then the fact that you've been able to learn and grow and figure out your niche. I just I'm always so inspired by that. Because I do believe that when we start businesses, we don't know where they're going to take us. Jillian Tohber Leslie 5:32 For you, by being able to be savvy and go toward what was working. I mean that you were able to change your life. Jenny Melrose 5:39 Yes, absolutely. Jillian Tohber Leslie 5:43 And be there to solve the problem of being home with your children, or being a much more present mom. Jenny Melrose 5:49 Yes. And now with having left teaching, we moved from New York to North Carolina, and I am now home with the girls. I'm able to put them on the bus, pick them up and bring them to their different events which I never got to do. Jenny Melrose 6:08 And I started the other side of my business once we moved down here, which was the JennyMelrose.com side. And I did it primarily because I knew what it was like to want to make this something, to make it a business, and not knowing who to turn to, or what to listen to, to know how to move it forward. How being a teacher helps you as a blogger Jenny Melrose 6:28 I wanted to be able to be that resource for other moms. And I honestly attract a ton of teachers, because I'm very strategic in the way that I teach things. I'm very much a teacher, and it's given me that passion. I always love to teach. I always loved my students. For me to be able to turn back into my love of teaching and now help these women make their wives business, it's a passion for me. Jillian Tohber Leslie 7:04 Yep. And again, I think that there is something to you know about building your business and learning along the way. Jillian Tohber Leslie 7:13 Because, Jenny, if I said, guess what, in five years or ten years, here's how your life's going to be. You would never believe this. Jenny Melrose 7:21 Oh, no. Like, if someone had said to me three, even even three years ago, when we first left New York, that I would be doing what I do know. I mean, I have spoken at probably 10 to 15 different conferences just this year. I have a podcast. There's so many different aspects of this, that it has become just something that I love to be able to do. I never would have believed someone that that's what I was going to end up doing. Jillian Tohber Leslie 7:48 I love that. I do again, for us, for example, MiloTree, our second business, which, if you look at it, you'd be like, wow, that has nothing to do with Catch My Party, our first business. Jillian Tohber Leslie 8:00 We built MiloTree, not because we thought it was a business, but because it's solved a problem for us for Catch My Party. It grew our social followers. And then we're like, wait a second. Because I to feel very similarly to you, which is I want to help moms, entrepreneurs, grow their businesses in as effortlessly as possible. Jillian Tohber Leslie 8:21 And so we're like, Hey, we could offer this as you know, we could roll this out as a separate business and see what happens. Be open to new opportunities as a blogger Jillian Tohber Leslie 8:29 And so again, my recommendation or my piece of advice, you could tell me what you think about this, is to just start growing your business and to be mindful of how it's growing, to see opportunities that you would never have thought were out there. Jenny Melrose 8:45 Yes. and not being afraid to take that risk. It takes courage, honestly, to do what so many of us do, because it is the wild wild west. Jillian Tohber Leslie 8:55 It is the Wild West. Jenny Melrose 8:56 Yeah, to being able to say, okay, I'm know the algorithms are going to change. I know that I'm going to have to be flexible. Jenny Melrose 9:04 I didn't go to school for technology. Cell phones didn't exist when I was in college, but I'm going to make this work. And I'm going to figure it out. And I'm just going to keep trying to push through that wall. Jenny Melrose 9:17 I firmly believe that you do something where you start looking at who your audience is, and understanding why they're coming to you and continuing to solve problems for them. It's a business and once you start to treat it like a business, everyone else will too. And it can just it can explode it really can. Jillian Tohber Leslie 9:39 Yes. I so agree. It's so it's so funny because we are so like-minded in this way. What is influencer marketing as a blogger Jillian Tohber Leslie 9:46 So okay. Let's talk then about influencer marketing. Jillian Tohber Leslie 9:52 Which is, I decide I'm going to start my blog. And I want to work with brands. You know, we all love certain brands. Yes. And so how do I think about this as turning let's say, my blog into a business? Jenny Melrose 10:10 So first thing to do is you're probably using product in your posts already. You're probably using a specific ingredient for a recipe, or a particular type of decorating to put together a party, whatever it might be, look at those brands and see who they are, your authentically using them, it's going to come across even to your audience. But it is paid. Jenny Melrose 10:38 Because a lot of the negative kind of connotation I think that comes from sponsor posts. Oh, you're selling out to be able to push their product, when in reality, it's a partnership, they see the value in your audience. Jenny Melrose 10:53 So you're going to want to be able to put it out there for your audience and continue to grow and talk to them about that product. Jenny Melrose 11:03 I always teach my audience of bloggers that are looking to work with brands, look in your pantry. Go see what's in your linen closet. What are those brands that you're already buying and using, so that you can really reach out to them and be authentic. Jenny Melrose 11:21 You want to start with an email address. And then from there, it's just pitching yourself even a little bit, freely pitching your audience because that's what they care about. Jillian Tohber Leslie 11:32 Right. Jenny Melrose 11:33 And I think a lot of times, when bloggers first start to reach out to brands themselves, they will forget that. They will think well, it's all about me, what I can do and what my social stats are. Jenny Melrose 11:45 And that's where a blogger maybe that isn't as large but maybe lives on a farm, and can show the behind the scenes of the farm. And um, any sort of like kitchen equipment she uses, it's going to connect with her audience. And because of that, that brand won't care as much about the page views, they'll care more about the audience that is engaged and interacting with her content. Jillian Tohber Leslie 12:12 So I would say this, women in general have a hard time putting themselves out there and figuring out the story, you know, that really shows them in the best light. Jillian Tohber Leslie 12:28 And I'm wondering if that is what you're saying, by not focusing so much about how great you are, but focusing on how great your audience is, that could be a way in that seems less scary. How to pitch to brands as a blogger Jenny Melrose 12:43 I do a Pitch Perfect live every four months where I do this free training on and we're in the middle of it. And the first two days we spent them really figuring out exactly what you said, about how are you unique, what makes you you. Jenny Melrose 13:05 Because honestly pitching is 50% confidence 25% is then the follow up and the other 25% is the pitch that you send. Jenny Melrose 13:15 But if you don't have the confidence to be able to send it and to be able to follow up with them you're done. Jenny Melrose 13:23 You have to really know, and be able to articulate what it is about you for yourself, and be able to look at your business like a business. So that when you send that email you're not going to take it personally when they don't answer. Or you're not going to take it personally when they come back and say, hey we don't have any money right now. And you're like yeah, you do, you are Kellogg's or whoever it is you pitched. Jenny Melrose 13:49 You have to have really thick skin. And then what I teach is you then turn it towards that audience. It can kind of get the pressure off of you. Jenny Melrose 14:02 Because like you said, as women, we have a terrible habit of not being able to know what makes us different. I had a client that kept saying to me my pitches, all right. It's good. But I can't. I don't know how to explain how I'm a little bit different. Think about what makes you different as a blogger Jenny Melrose 14:19 And I looked at her and I read through her pitch and said, well, how many kids do you have again? And she says, 10. Oh, and you homeschool them, that's what makes you different. Jenny Melrose 14:37 You run a parenting blog and you have 10 children that you homeschool. Your audience comes to you because of who you are. They know that you have experience and then you're you're not just randomly pulling this out of wherever it is personal. I'm learning from raising 10 children. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:04 So I tend to interrupt. I'm so sorry. Could we talk about fake it till you make it? Jenny Melrose 15:10 Yes. Oh my goodness. It's one of my favorite phrases. And it's something I've been saying this entire week. So I love it. Jenny Melrose 15:17 It's just when you have that confidence that you run a business and you are a powerhouse. You're not going to take anything kind of negative coming back as badly as you would if you didn't have that confidence. When it's not worth working with a brand as a blogger Jenny Melrose 15:34 And a lot of times bloggers will say to me, well, I got pitched to work on for a bag of granola. And I'll say okay, well, is that granola, something that's valuable to you for your time? Could you say that, that bag of granola is what you would get paid on a sponsored post for doing all the pictures, doing the social shares everything that goes into it? Jenny Melrose 15:54 If the answer is no, then you need to turn around tell that company: Listen, I appreciate and I love your granola. But in order to keep the integrity of my site to my readers, and any previous brands I've worked with, I only work on compensated content. Jenny Melrose 16:10 And what they always, these bloggers that are newer will always come back to me and say, but Jenny, I haven't worked with any brands. How can I say that? Jenny Melrose 16:19 No one is going to spend their time going back to see if you've done a sponsored post or not. So to being able to just have that confidence to say, you know what, my time is not worth a bag of granola. I built up this following, I have an audience at this size. And I deserve to get paid for my time. Or I'm just not going to do it. I'm going to walk away. Jillian Tohber Leslie 16:51 Yeah, I've shared this previously. Once I became a mother, it looked like my confidence went up tenfold. But the reality was, I got super busy. Jillian Tohber Leslie 17:05 So a brand would come to me and say, we want to pay you x. And I would think that was too low. So I'd double it or even triple it. And I'd go, Yeah, sorry. Here is my rate, here is why. And I write like the fastest email. And before I could even think about it, I would press Send. Jillian Tohber Leslie 17:27 And if I didn't have my daughter at, you know, and she wasn't in diapers. And it wasn't just a big hot mess in my house, I would have gone up into my head, and I would have second guessed myself. And I would have said, Oh God, should I send this email, maybe I shouldn't double my fee. I would have over thought it and I wouldn't have sent the email. Jillian Tohber Leslie 17:48 So the fact that all of a sudden, I had all these different priorities. And you know what, I'd forget that I had sent that email. So they didn't get back me, I wouldn't remember, right. And so it weirdly tricked me into being much more confident. Jenny Melrose 18:08 Right, and you valued your time, you knew that you only had a certain amount of time. And if you were wanting to put your time into doing a post, it was taking away from your daughter, and your time is valuable. Jillian Tohber Leslie 18:21 Yes. Jenny Melrose 18:21 And we all need to realize that. And I know that there's this kind of feel, where I've watched a lot of bloggers, like rip into new bloggers about don't work for free product, you're ruining it for all of us. And that's not true. If it's valuable to them where they would spend that time and if the product is a $300 blender and their price is normally $300, that makes sense to them. Jenny Melrose 18:47 So, you know, not kind of looking down upon, but knowing what's valuable a lot of times to when you're first starting out, to pitch and work with brands. Sometimes they'll offer and it's kind of like a test. Jenny Melrose 19:01 I wouldn't say, even if you're a new blogger, to do a blog post for a bag of granola, it's not worth it. But I might say, do social share, do an Instagram story, and then prove to them with that data that you're given inside Instagram that you're worth the price that you're asking. Jenny Melrose 19:21 I've had people that bloggers that have told me, Oh, I told her I couldn't pay my mortgage with granola, can she? and I'm like oh, boy. Jenny Melrose 19:31 Yeah, not the best way to go. Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:35 I like that. But no, don't do that. Why MiloTree will help you if you are trying to work with brands Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:39 I wanted to take a short break to talk about MiloTree. Now. If you want to be working with brands, you know that social media followers matter. But not just any sort of social media follower, an engaged follower. And that's why MiloTree is so cool. Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:56 Especially on a platform, let's say like Instagram, you are converting your site visitors into followers. And what better follower than somebody who's already been to your site, seen your content, knows who you are, those are the followers you want. Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:13 Those are the followers who will make you look great on social media. So if you sign up for MiloTree now, you get your first 30 days free. So go do it. And now back to the show. Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:28 Well, okay, so we talked tactics. How to contact a brand to do sponsored posts as a blogger Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:32 First off, you mentioned email, you said find their you know, email that how do I find a brand's email address? Jenny Melrose 20:39 Such a good question. So you want to start by going to their website. And if you go up to the top tab, or sometimes even down in the footer, you want to look for something that says media or press releases. Jenny Melrose 20:50 Once you get a press release, you want to pay attention to whatever product they're talking about, because it's probably a product that you should pitch to help them promote. Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:59 Yes. Jenny Melrose 21:00 Look down towards the bottom, where it signed from the PR person and they're going to have their email address on that press release. That is the person that you want to work with. Jenny Melrose 21:10 A lot of times bloggers will come back to me and see, but it's not Kellogg's that's on there, it is some random PR company. Jenny Melrose 21:16 Every brand for the most part, unless they're teeny tiny mom and pop brand, is using a PR company. You're never working directly with that brand. But a PR company is your gatekeeper that it's going to be the one that you want to talk to. Jenny Melrose 21:32 Now, sometimes you can't find an email address. They don't make this easy. I actually had someone today asked me is there just a list of like all the toy brand emails? I'm like, Girl, are you great, right? Everyone would be pitching! No. Jenny Melrose 21:47 So if you can't find an email address, what we've actually seen huge results with it's doing an Insta story. Because what happens is like you take a picture of that, whatever the brand is that you're trying to reach out. When you say something cute about how you love it, and you tag them in your Insta story. It goes right into their DMs. Jillian Tohber Leslie 22:07 Yep. Jenny Melrose 22:08 Now when they give you a little heart for having put up that Insta story, you're going to immediately reply to them and say hey, I love your product. I'd love to get the email address for the person on your team that works on blogger or influencer campaigns. Jillian Tohber Leslie 22:25 I love that strategy. I always recommend Twitter because again, brands are listening. But I hadn't thought about doing it with Insta stories. Trying an Insta story to connect with brands Jenny Melrose 22:33 Their Twitter was actually the way that I started out teaching this too, because I've had Pitch Perfect Pro now has been open for two years. And originally it was Twitter based. But then Insta stories came out we saw the results just so much quicker because all the brands want you on Instagram. Jenny Melrose 22:53 If you're not an Instagram you're not gonna be able to work with brand at this point. And it goes to direct message which at yet the problem is with Twitter, is that you can put out a tweet but it's out there and then you need them to follow you in order to do a message as well. extra steps. This is so much easier. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:16 That is brilliant. That's brilliant. Okay, do you have a recommend, let's sa,y I found the email address. Do you have a recommendation for a subject line that will get your email opened? Jenny Melrose 23:29 Such a good question. Do a lot of times bloggers will want to put like "blogger influencer" or "collaboration" or something like that. I tell them what makes you stand out? What makes you different? Jenny Melrose 23:41 So if you have an Instagram account that has 300,000 followers you're going to put Instagram influencer with 300,000 followers collaboration up in your subject line. Or if you do a hands and pans and you have a huge Facebook page, you're going to put that in the subject line. Jenny Melrose 24:01 A lot of times people will rely on social media to kind of say what makes them unique. But you could also mom of 10. Jillian Tohber Leslie 24:10 Yep, yep. Jenny Melrose 24:12 Exactly. You want to kind of try to stand out. Because like those blogger partnership subject lines do not work. Jillian Tohber Leslie 24:23 Got it. So that's what I was going to say. Because I'm sure they get pitched all the time. How to write an email to a brand to get a sponsored post Jenny Melrose 24:28 Yeah, and this is definitely a process. Lot of times they will test you they'll see your first email and open it up, and not reply to you. But they need to see than you actually are invested. And you're going to follow up an email them again, a lot of times, the majority of the brands will answer until the second or third email. And it's not because they haven't seen it. It's because they really want to see that you're invested. Jillian Tohber Leslie 24:54 Interesting. Okay, long email or short email? Jenny Melrose 24:58 So I actually have a pitch checklist that has nine points to it that you kind of want to include. Normally, I would say you're looking for two to three paragraphs, you're not looking to tell your life story. You're going to really hone in on audience and you want to know something about that brand. Jenny Melrose 25:19 So if you go to the brand's website, and there's a tagline that you know is theirs, use that language when you're pitching about what you're going to put together. Jenny Melrose 25:29 Now, the other thing about this is your pitch should not include a specific project or recipe that you're going to do. It should be general. So in other words, if I was going to pitch Bob's Red Mill,  I would be pitching right now. First, you want to pitch three to four months in advance, so I wouldn't even be pitching necessary fall. I'd be thinking actually kind of Christmas or Thanksgiving. Jenny Melrose 25:56 When I put together the pitch. I'm not going to tell him that I'd love to make my grandmother's award winning apple pie with a strudel crust. Because if they're not thinking apple pie, you're done. Jillian Tohber Leslie 26:09 Right. Jenny Melrose 26:10 But instead, if you had said I would love to put together a comfort festive pie for Christmas, or for the holidays, that's likely to get you in the door. Because now you can let them kind of tell you what direction they want to go. Jenny Melrose 26:28 So is it the new type of flour that just came out, that's gluten free, then you can kind of go that direction and let them lead you. Jenny Melrose 26:37 They normally have their own ideas as far as a campaign of what they're trying to pitch, because they know their products that are coming out, right. So if you're general enough, it'll let them kind of see what you're thinking and give you a chance to actually put together a proposal and get on the phone with them. Try to get a sponsor on the phone to close the deal Jillian Tohber Leslie 26:57 I agree. Oh, my God, if any time I can get on the phone with a brand I get the job. Jenny Melrose 27:03 Yes. Yes. Because you can let them lead the conversation and find out exactly where, if you can ask the one question that I think always put the brand at ease is when I say okay, what are your KPIs? Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:17 Yes! What are KPI and why do they matter to bloggers? Jenny Melrose 27:18 Key performance indicators. A lot of bloggers you know, we aren't thinking that way, were just thinking like, okay, we gotta get, we gotta get this. We need some income coming in. Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:26 They think I can make it pretty. Jenny Melrose 27:28 Yes. But they have certain goals. Are they trying to get out of product? Are they looking for you to go to their website? Are they looking to grow their Instagram? Yep, you have to ask those types of questions. They know you're really wanting to know about the brand are going to be able to help them meet their goals. Not yours. Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:47 Yes. In fact, you know, again, I have mentioned this previously also, which is we love ourselves, we do because you know what, if I love myself, I will take care of myself and I will survive, and my genes will get into the next generation. Like it's a survival thing, an evolutionary thing to put myself first, right? Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:08 So this is also the same for brands, brands love themselves. So anytime you can use their tagline, anytime you can put yourself in the position of this brand, and give them back the messaging that they are trying to give to their customers. They will love you. Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:28 So it becomes even less about you, and more about Do you see what they're about? Do you understand that? And can you pitch it right back to them? Jenny Melrose 28:37 Right. Yes, anytime you can show that you know what you're talking about. When it comes to that brand, they are going to stop and listen. Jenny Melrose 28:44 I've had so many brands that will come to me and say that they are looking for something in particular. And I'll be able to ask those questions to then drive them towards what they want. Jenny Melrose 28:57 I had one brand in particular, it's a very big skin company and came to me and asked, okay, we'd love for you to put up this Facebook video. No mention of money whatsoever. Jenny Melrose 29:08 So I emailed back and said, Listen, I absolutely love Kristen Bell. And I think she's super cute. But in order to keep the integrity and my site to my readers, and I'm previous brands I work with, I only work on compensate content, I'd love to send your media kit and a proposal for your review. Jenny Melrose 29:25 They came back and then in my proposal, I was able to talk about the fact that I have two little girls, one that's really very pale, very Irish, and the other one who is very olive skin, and I need two different sunscreens in order to work for both girls ,and how I love the company. It's the only sunscreen we use, and that resulted in a five figure long term contract with that brand. Jillian Tohber Leslie 29:51 Wow, that's terrific. Jillian Tohber Leslie 29:52 And they started simply wanting me to post a Facebook video up, because what happens is, as bloggers when been around for a while, you end up on these PR companies lists and they'll just send a blast email. They have no idea if you have 3 million followers or three. Jenny Melrose 30:10 Yeah, I think you have to come back with them. I've had so many bloggers that have been around for a while. Let's say I get these pitches all the time. I'm just deleting them. I said no, don't delete them go back at them and show them who you are. Jillian Tohber Leslie 30:24 Right, and assume everybody else's deleting them. Jenny Melrose 30:29 Yes, that's exactly right. And they do obviously have a campaign in mind. They just don't know how to get it out there. How to discuss your rates with a brand as a blogger Jillian Tohber Leslie 30:36 Right. Okay. Do I put my rate in an email? Jenny Melrose 30:41 Love this question! No. You never put rates in an email, and I believe you don't create a rate sheet. I teach that you put together a proposal and a proposal is a package price that they get one price for everything. Jenny Melrose 30:59 Because I have sat in at multiple conferences when I've been speaking and listen to other brands that are speaking, and I have heard them say, no matter what price you pitch, I'm cutting you in half. Jillian Tohber Leslie 31:12 Ooh, okay. Jenny Melrose 31:15 So if you go to them with let's say, $1,500 is your package deal. It gets them a blog posts, social shares on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. And then you also throw in... I would always recommend any form of video. So if you want to do Insta stories and IGTV or a Facebook Live, which is what I'm known for, and I have an idea of what I kind of charge for that in my own head. And you should kind of know what you're charging for everything. Jenny Melrose 31:47 But for me, I'm charging a minimum of $500 for Facebook Live. So when I tell them $1,500, and they come back at me and say, we can't quite to $1,500, but we can do $1,200 say. Okay, I'm going to take out the live broadcast. And now my blog posts, social shares just went from what I would normally say $1,000 went to $1,200. So I'm still getting what I'm worth. Jillian Tohber Leslie 32:14 Got it, but you are willing to say, Nope, I'm not going to do this. Jenny Melrose 32:18 Right. Exactly. Jillian Tohber Leslie 32:19 Will they come back at you and say, well, we kind of want that. So okay? Or not? Jenny Melrose 32:24 If they do come back. A lot of times, honestly, they don't come back once. They won't come back and ask for it to go back. And they'll just say, Yep, okay, because they feel like I gave up something without realizing that it's not the value that they're asking for. What is a "hate rate" as a blogger? Jenny Melrose 32:39 And if they try to cut me like, let's say, I'm at $1,500, and they try to cut me to $750, I absolutely tell every one of my students, you have to have a hate rate, right? So it's a rate in which you would hate yourself if you took it because your value is not that low. And the content is going to be terrible. Because you're going to be annoyed at the fact that you're working for half what you're worth. Jillian Tohber Leslie 33:07 I think that's great. I love the hate rate idea. Jenny Melrose 33:13 Yes, it's tremendous. It makes it so much easier to kind of go into it, knowing your prices. And a lot of people will say to me, Well, how do we, I don't know how to price myself? Jenny Melrose 33:23 Well, there's a site called SocialBluebook.com. It's like Kelley Blue Book for cars. But instead it's going to measure your social influence you put in your Instagram, Twitter, all of your social and then you also can pop in your Google Analytics. Jenny Melrose 33:38 So now you're able to get an idea on what you should be charging. It'll give you a range of a rate so that if you've been blogging for a while, and you're like nope. I'm worth more than that, then that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that you know, your value has been around for a while. It's a great site for bloggers that really don't know how to price themselves. Jillian Tohber Leslie 34:02 That is great, I've never heard of it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 34:05 Now here's a question, what if I just want to be an Instagram influencer? And I don't want a blog or what is your thought about that? Jenny Melrose 34:17 That is totally fine. You are absolutely running the risk of Instagram shutting down and your business would shut down with it. Don't build your business on someone else's platform Jenny Melrose 34:28 So I would always kind of try to say you don't build your business on someone else's platform. Only thing that you own is your your website, you have your own website and your email list. So brands will absolutely pay for Instagram influencers, I would just if you're going to create content, I wouldn't put all my eggs in that basket. I would try to make sure that I have something that is my own. Jenny Melrose 34:59 Growing email, offering product or services that you can grow an email through, I'm using Instagram. I've seen tons of bloggers do that. And I think that that makes sense to me on just being an influencer, you can absolutely do it and make money. But who knows for how long. Jillian Tohber Leslie 35:19 I agree with you completely. I say this all the time, which is it's really cheap to start a blog. So just own a piece of real estate on the internet. Jenny Melrose 35:32 Yes. Jillian Tohber Leslie 35:33 And over time, if you're saying making content for these other platforms, just put them on. Put it on your blog, you know, like, it's not hard and just at least have a piece of real estate. Jenny Melrose 35:47 Yeah, and I think that people get caught up because they think. Oh, my goodness, if I have Instagram, and I have Twitter and Facebook and Pinterest in my blog, I have to create all this different content. When in reality, you can reuse that content, you can adjust it so that the image is Instagram friendly, as compared to Pinterest friendly. And make it so that you are still using that same content. Advice: Crosspost your content everywhere as a blogger Jenny Melrose 36:21 And you have to remember that the algorithms don't let people see things. So putting out content is fine to have it on multiple platforms, the exact same as long as you're using like the prescribed images that they say to use. That's best for like Facebook and Instagram, and then Pinterest, because it's not necessarily going to get seen right away. Jenny Melrose 36:51 And even if you have someone on Facebook, that's also on Instagram, maybe they're only going to see the Instagram post. Or maybe they'll see the Facebook post. But so cross post thing is I would highly recommend, and I think it's fine to reuse content. Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:04 Yeah, and God forbid somebody sees the exact same photo of that cake twice, right? It's not the end of the world. And remember, for people to like buy from a brand, usually they have to touch that brand like seven times Jenny Melrose 37:19 I was just going to say that that's like my favorite stat to give because it's so true, and I didn't realize how true it was until I had a client that has bought my course, part of my membership site, and has done one-on-one services with me, a year after my podcast was started and she said I didn't know you had a podcast! And I'm like, How is that possible? Jenny Melrose 37:45 I talk about this all the time, but clearly I'm not. I'm not so putting it out there continuously, your audience has to hear things at least seven times. We're just so busy and things fly by, algorithms hide things So continuing to use that content, there's nothing wrong with that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 38:06 Absolutely, so right now today it is September 5 when we're recording this. Jillian Tohber Leslie 38:15 If I were to step into the role of the brand. What am I looking for today from influencers? Is it Instagram? Is it is it traffic to my site, like what what what's most important to me right now as a brand? Jenny Melrose 38:36 If the brand is smart, they understand that beautiful photos, that also give an authentic story that gets engagement, matters more than anything else. Jenny Melrose 38:50 I think a lot of brands will get caught up in the numbers and think okay, I've got this Instagram influencers. She's got 3 million followers, but those 3 million followers may not interact the same way that that other girl with 3,000 followers may interact and engage because of the algorithms, and the way that things change. You need an Instagram business account if you want to be an influencer Jenny Melrose 39:09 So it's more about the authentic story, and the engagement that that blogger or influencer is getting. I would definitely say that bloggers absolutely need to have an Instagram presence and you need to have a business account. Jenny Melrose 39:25 If you want to work with a brand, you need to have business accounts not so they can track you. But so that you can provide them with the data to be able to say, I was worth it. I got you this many impressions and this many pieces of engagement and you have to be able to report that to them. Jenny Melrose 39:45 And on Facebook. If you're don't have a business account you are, and you're promoting that you are breaking all sorts of Facebook rules. Jillian Tohber Leslie 39:54 Yes, that is true. But like, for example, do brands want clicks to their site? Do they want people, like we've done this relatively recently where a brand was running a contest, and they want people to come, you know, see what you're saying, and then go enter their contest. Or are brands predominantly just looking for kind of warm, fuzzy? Jenny Melrose 40:20 So the smart ones are understanding that if you're paying for sponsored post, it's different than an affiliate program. Because as a sponsored post, it's about providing your influence. It's not about selling a product. Jenny Melrose 40:36 For affiliate marketing, you need to sell a product in order to make money off of that, which means you need to rely on their website to actually sell. Jenny Melrose 40:43 For a sponsored post I might promote, and let's say a salad dressing. And they're going to ask me to link to their website. If that salad dressing company thinks that anyone is going to buy a salad dressing from their website site, they're out of their mind, right? That's just not what we do. Jenny Melrose 41:04 We are influencing them to remember that the next time they go into the grocery store. Oh, so Jenny was talking about that salad dressing. Let me pick up that salad dressing so it's not trackable in the sense that clicks and buys are trackable. Brands want engagement from bloggers and influencers Jenny Melrose 41:20 And when a brand understands that that is the purpose of a sponsored post. That's when the relationship works well, when they can see there's engagement. That's how they're measuring it. They're not measuring it based on click stories and engagement. I mean, like, comments, likes, shares, any of that kind of thing, right, not necessarily clicks and purchases. Jillian Tohber Leslie 41:41 Got it? Now do you recommend that the influencer proactively send analytics back to the brand? Jenny Melrose 41:53 Yeah, so inside of my course Pitch Perfect Pro, I actually teach exactly what to provide them with. The reason I started my course was because what I found worked really well for me, as I could in a network. When I used to work in the networks. That was one and done. I never had contact with that PR company. But my sponsored income started just growing and become filling up my editorial calendar because I was getting long term contracts. Jenny Melrose 42:22 I would work with them once. And then I would provide them with my data on a silver platter tied in a bow. And they would say, Oh, my God, you just did my work for me, and delivered exactly what we were looking for or whatever it might be. So yes, let's talk about three posts or let's talk about six whatever it might be. Jenny Melrose 42:46 And that's what I teach. Honestly, like Pitch Perfect Pro isn't about just getting a one sponsored posts with the brand. It's about creating a long term relationship with a brand so that you're not looking at next month going on. Okay, what income do I have coming in? Am I actually making money, I have these expenses, whatever it may be. I remember that feeling of looking at it and going, Okay, what's coming in next month? Oh, I have no idea. Fabulous. Jillian Tohber Leslie 43:18 Right. And I would argue that your influence, your authority, with that brand increases for your audience, the more you are in a relationship with that brand. Jenny Melrose 43:30 Yes. Because they see the authenticity, then they see that relationship that you're continuing to partner with them. Yes, absolutely. Jillian Tohber Leslie 43:39 So in terms of scaling posts, do you think it's easier? Also, one thing that that is difficult about sponsored content is you're always starting over. You have a new project and like, okay, what's the new recipe, that kind of thing? How to incorporate keywords and SEO in your sponsored posts as a blogger Jillian Tohber Leslie 43:58 Do you have any strategies for how to think through your process of doing sponsored posts, so that you're not necessarily starting at the way beginning again? Jenny Melrose 44:09 So I think that it really comes down to like trying to find that rock content of what your readers are coming to you for knowing and doing your research ahead of time. Jenny Melrose 44:18 Like I know, you have had podcast interviews with people about SEO, I think, doing your research and knowing what you're ranking for is so important, so that if you're ranking for comfort food, and it's a particular type of comfort food, keeping that brand if you have three posts with them, even within that form of those keywords is about it, that them and you it's really when you create content, it's about weaving a spider web, it's not about shooting them all different directions, they have no idea what they're coming to you for. Jenny Melrose 44:50 It's about keeping them on your site. I hear from so many people, oh, my audience just comes from Pinterest, because they're looking for a recipe. Okay, but let's have other you know, pieces, other recipes, side dishes or salads, or something that can go with that recipe that you're weaving a spider web around that audience member to be like, why I really liked it. This Yes, this is the right type of food for me. This is this is the way I want to be eating whatever it might be. Jillian Tohber Leslie 45:20 Oh, I like that. So you're therefore thinking about creating cool content for this brand. But also how will this impact your authority, your SEO, your traffic? All of that? Jenny Melrose 45:32 Yes. Make sure to follow through with your sponsored content and deliver Jillian Tohber Leslie 45:34 I think that is so so right on. Okay, here's another one last question. And we'll wrap up with, is one thing that I have heard from people who work at these influencer networks, is that bloggers can be irresponsible when creating content. Jenny Melrose 45:57 Yes. And those honestly are the bloggers that ruin it for many of us. Not the ones that take a bag of granola, the ones that don't follow through and deliver. You can't be doing this, if you are going to want to get paid, you need to run it like a business, and you can't miss deadlines, and miss part of the deliverables that you're supposed to be giving to that brand if you've signed a contract. Because really, you have entered into a legal transaction with them. And they can say, Listen, you didn't deliver this, you're not getting paid. Jenny Melrose 46:35 And I think when we get into the mindset of thinking of a I'm a business, I need to make sure that if I'm agreeing to a certain deadline that I can deliver that now. There are definitely some times where I think the networks can kind of be a little pushy with the way they want things done. Jenny Melrose 46:57 And I often think that sometimes because the network is the middleman, they'll go back to the brands and come back to you, and you can end up six edits in and all of a sudden the brand decides that that's not not what they wanted in the first place. And you're redoing the entire post. Jenny Melrose 47:13 So standing up for yourself being like, you know, making sense of what they're trying to ask you. I've had some clients tell me, they told me this date. And then they turned around and because of their edits turn around and wanted it the next day. Jenny Melrose 47:26 I had that happen with me, they turned around and it was like Black Friday or over Thanksgiving, they wanted it the next day. Meanwhile, they had been sitting on it for two months, and just gave me the edits and expected in 24 hours over a holiday. So there's definitely knowing how to treat yourself like a business, to deliver what you can want is expected. And then to stand up for yourself when you need to is important. Jillian Tohber Leslie 47:54 I like that. And don't you think though, that if you are responsible, and you do deliver, and you do turn things in on time, and you do have a good attitude, that that could really work in your favor, because you can assume there will be other bloggers a lot of times, like a brand will do a campaign and they'll reach out to 10 bloggers who are all creating content for that. And if you are the blogger that delivers, they will come back to you. Jenny Melrose 48:23 Oh, yeah. And that's so true. Not even just with the networks, but also with PR companies, because PR companies don't represent normally one brand. They represent multiple. So if you fit into multiple brands, they'll go to every single time because of one relationship that you built with one PR agent, Jillian Tohber Leslie 48:41 Right. And because they know that you make them look good. Jenny Melrose 48:45 Yes, exactly. Right. Jillian Tohber Leslie 48:47 And that they don't have to track you down. Right. So Jenny, this has been so wonderful. Will you talk about your course and how people can learn more from you? Jenny Melrose 49:00 Yes. Absolutely. So I actually offer a masterclass which will walk you through how to attract your dream sponsors without selling out, and we go through just some of the things that you definitely need to avoid and just being able to put it into practice. Jenny Melrose 49:17 My course Pitch Perfect Pro gives you step by step as you could tell him very much a teacher. You do not skip steps with me. You have to go from A to Z and nothing in between. Jenny Melrose 49:31 And it also provides you with absolutely everything you would need. I'm lifestyle, I've done everything. I've done travel, I've done the vacuums, everything. So my proposals are all in there so that you can see exactly what I do. Jenny Melrose 49:55 And then you're able to actually download it and you can edit it so that you can make it in your own. My follow up procedure that I use. I have a culmination document that I teach all my students to do. Those are all in there. Jenny Melrose 50:08 Pretty much every little thing that you need. Plus, I also have a closed Facebook group that we use for any specific questions that come up. So if you're running into something with a brand. You're like, Oh, I don't know how to handle this. They're asking for rights for the photos. What do I do? That's a question I think we get asked once a month easily. Yes. And I always think double your rates. Jillian Tohber Leslie 50:29 Yes. Jenny Melrose 50:32 And there's that access to me and my team so that we can make sure that you're getting what you deserve. Jillian Tohber Leslie 50:39 Oh, Jenny. Okay. Tell me how people can find you. Jenny Melrose 50:45 You can find me a Jennymelrose.com and my pitch checklist is actually right on the homepage. As soon as you drop in there. It's a cheat sheet that's going to tell you exactly what needs to be inside your pitch on. Jenny Melrose 50:56 You can also find me on my podcast Influencer Entrepreneurs. If you go into iTunes, and you just search Jenny Melrose, it'll pop as well, and and I also do weekly free training on my Jenny Melrose Facebook page so that you can get your questions answered live with me. Jillian Tohber Leslie 51:17 Awesome. Well, Jenny, thank you so much. You are a natural teacher. I have learned so much. Jenny Melrose 51:24 Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Subscribe to The Blogger Genius Podcast Jillian Tohber Leslie 51:28 If you're enjoying the Blogger Genius Podcast, please head on over to iTunes and rate us also if you have not yet subscribe. do that because that way you will miss a new episode. Jillian Tohber Leslie 51:41 And if you guys have any ideas for guests that you want topics you want me to cover. I love hearing from you. Email me Jillian@MiloTree.com.

Today I'm interviewing Divine Mwimba from the blog, Ladies Make Money Online. Divine shares all her tips on how to grow your business using Pinterest. After she started as a wedding planner, she figured out how to use Pinterest and email marketing to find bridal clients in Canada. We also talk about how certain social networks lend themselves to certain types of business. Divine also has a travel blog and uses Instagram to grow it. We also talk about why, as a business owner, you want to be investing in yourself. Divine does help ladies make money online, so if you're looking to, definitely listen to this episode! Resources: Ladies Make Money Online Catch My Party Culture Weddings and PR Association of Certified Professional Wedding Consultants ConvertKit MiloTree Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Blogger Genius Podcast on iTunes * May contain affiliate links. If you click and make a purchase, I might receive a small commission at no cost to you. Transcript - How To Grow Your Business Using Pinterest with Divine Mwimba Host 0:03 Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast. Brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:43 Hey, guys. Welcome back to The Blogger Genius podcast. Today I am with a female entrepreneur, Divine Mwimba. Divine, started her online career with two blogs, a wedding blog, and a travel blog. But then she created a site called Ladies Make Money Online, where she helps women build their online businesses. So Divine, welcome to the show. Divine Mwimba 0:41 Thank you so much for having me. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:43 So Divine, first of all, we were just talking about your history, right? You're from Zambia? Divine Mwimba 0:49 I am. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:51 And then you ended up in Canada via Australia. Divine Mwimba 0:54 Yes. I'm a big traveler. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:56 You are a big traveler. Very cool. So tell me about your entrepreneurial journey and how you created your businesses and where you are today. Divine Mwimba 1:07 Okay, thank you so much. So my name is Divine. As you know, I started my business back in 2014. I really wanted to work with people, to help people in some way. So I decided to get into the hotel and restaurant industry back then. Becoming a wedding planner And then from there. When I moved to Canada, I started working in a big hotel resort and I was introduced to weddings and event planning. And then from there, I started planning multiple weddings, multiple events and built a very successful wedding business after falling in love with planning events. And when I started in 2014, I started learning more about marketing, online business, how to really grow your business online for clients to actually find you. That's what I was having issues with. Like, why are people not calling me, I have a beautiful website. Why am I not getting you know, emails every day? Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:23 Can I stop you for just one second? Do you upload your parties to Catch My Party? Why you want to upload your party photos as a wedding planner to Catch My Party Divine Mwimba 2:28 I do not. Right now, I actually just upload them on my own website, and mostly Pinterest. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:40 Got it. Well you know, if you upload your parties to Catch My Party, which is our other site, we will show them off. Divine Mwimba 2:49 Oh, wow. I did not know that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:50 And we will drive traffic. We have something like, I don't know, I haven't checked recently 860,000 Pinterest followers. And we take the most beautiful parties that people add to our site, and we promote the hell out of them on Pinterest and Instagram. Divine Mwimba 3:04 I will do that right away. Jillian Tohber Leslie 3:06 Okay, good. Okay. Keep going. Divine Mwimba 3:10 So from there, I decided, you know, let me get into marketing. How can I properly market my business online to attract not only any bride, but high end brides, because that was my niche at the time. So I started working myself, trying to find ways to promote. I was on Pinterest every day. I was reading every blog, everything under the sun just to promote the business. Jillian Tohber Leslie 3:40 Were you using sites like, like wedding sites? Divine Mwimba 3:44 I was part of a group called the professional wedding consultants. I use them. I use a few other sites as well. But I found a lot of my clients came through from Pinterest. Jillian Tohber Leslie 4:01 Interesting. So they see they see a photo of a wedding you've done, they click through, and they contact you? Divine Mwimba 4:07 They come over to my site, browse around, look, fall in love. Contact me. Jillian Tohber Leslie 4:12 Perfect. Growing your wedding planning business on Pinterest Divine Mwimba 4:13 Yeah. So then I stumbled upon another blogger that was teaching people how to grow your email list. So I decided, let me give it a try. Let me grow an email list using Pinterest. So I created forums and promoted the forms directly to Pinterest. And then from there, I started capturing email addresses for brides, potential brides. Jillian Tohber Leslie 4:38 So tell me, okay, so you create an image, what is the image look like? Divine Mwimba 4:44 So I played around a little, so I created images, just of like weddings itself. So whether it's wedding dresses, decorations, and so on, to get them on to my email list. Jillian Tohber Leslie 5:00 So the pin will land on a landing page? Divine Mwimba 5:04 Exactly. Jillian Tohber Leslie 5:05 Okay. Here's the question. You're from Canada. How are you getting clients? How do they know? What, if somebody is in Louisiana, they're not going to hire you. Divine Mwimba 5:18 Exactly. So with that, I restyled my Pinterest account. So you need to niche down to say you are a Canadian wedding planner. Jillian Tohber Leslie 5:28 Got it. Divine Mwimba 5:29 Otherwise, you know, you're going to get everyone and everybody. Jillian Tohber Leslie 5:32 Yes, right. So smart. Divine Mwimba 5:35 You have to niche it down. You know, Canadian for me. In my case, I was Canadian/Ottawa. So, like my city where I'm at, wedding planner. Even though I plan weddings all around Canada, but mostly I was trying to target people around this area. Jillian Tohber Leslie 5:55 Got it. And that works? Divine Mwimba 5:56 It works very well. Like I said, at the beginning, I made mistakes, you know, just let it open. And then I was getting you know, brides from Australia, or the UK contacting me, and I'm like, why are you planning your wedding in Canada? You know, so, you live and learn. So, I niched it down and then from there I started getting more either Canadian brides or brides from around my area. Jillian Tohber Leslie 6:26 And if you got somebody's email address, what would you do? How to use email marketing to grow your wedding business Divine Mwimba 6:34 So I had two segments. So, the first one when they contacted me directly actually goes into a form. I wanted to niche down people that were serious, serious. So, my form asked a couple of questions. Some of the questions were, when are you getting married? So, I wanted to get a feel for when they are getting married, in case I was not available. Wedding budget so I know if they are in my budget. The type of wedding they are planning, and the last question was are you ready to hire a wedding planner, yes or no? That one was very important because at the time I was getting people just randomly filling out the form that weren't ready. Jillian Tohber Leslie 7:47 What software were you using for these landing pages? Divine Mwimba 7:52 I am using ConvertKit. I find it's much nicer to customize and make it more beautiful. Because remember your branding, right? If especially the wedding industry if you are presenting really ugly looking things no one's going to want to work or trust to work with you, if your landing page or your documents look bad. The bride will be like wow, that doesn't work for me, that doesn't look nice. I'm not gonna hire them because my wedding is not gonna look as nice, even though the website is nice. Jillian Tohber Leslie 8:32 Yeah, I get it. Are you still doing this by the way? Divine Mwimba 8:39 So no, I as you know, just had a baby. Jillian Tohber Leslie 8:43 Oh yeah, congrats! Divine Mwimba 8:44 She is 15 months right now. But I got so busy. I was planning 50 or 60 weddings per year. Jillian Tohber Leslie 8:54 That's great. Divine Mwimba 8:56 It was huge. And here in Canada most of the weddings were done during the summer months. So starting usually May to October is really really busy. Even though those are the main months, you still have the winter weddings. Okay. However you are still planning brides weddings year round. I was physically busy all the time every evening, every weekend every day so it was really time consuming. So back in like 2014 after our website was successful I started getting questions from other brides or other wedding planners asking me, how did you build this empire? Why are brides constantly booking you? How come you are not going to wedding shows and you're still getting all these brides? You know why are you always busy? What am I doing wrong? Building a business for wedding planners I started answering questions I was meeting with some of the industry people once in a while to answer their questions try to help them out. Again, time is money. Time time time we never have enough of it. That's when I decided to build my other website which was to teach other professionals how to build you know, five figure wedding businesses, or six figure wedding businesses. And then I sell a few courses on that blog as well. Jillian Tohber Leslie 10:34 Wow so are you mostly making money via your courses, via affiliate links, like what are you doing? Divine Mwimba 10:48 A little bit of both, mostly through affiliate links, like I said I have three website now so my money's coming from all three websites and it's mostly 90% affiliate marketing. Jillian Tohber Leslie 11:02 Okay so let's go through the three websites. Divine Mwimba 11:05 Yes so the first one that I started was the wedding website where I help other wedding professionals be successful. So it's not just wedding planners could be photographers, makeup artists. Jillian Tohber Leslie 11:25 On this site, this is where you're selling your courses? Divine Mwimba 11:28 Absolutely, my courses over there. As well as doing a bit of affiliate marketing. Jillian Tohber Leslie 11:34 Got it. Starting a personal finance blog for women Divine Mwimba 11:35 Yes and then I started Ladies Make Money which is a personal finance blog, like a lifestyle sort of blog and that one it's mostly affiliate marketing that I'm getting a lot of sales from. I do have three products from there, like courses and books, that I sell but I do not heavily promote them. However they are there but I usually heavily promote affiliate marketing. Jillian Tohber Leslie 12:08 Yes and you are very good MiloTree affiliate. Divine Mwimba 12:16 Yes, thank you. Thank you. Starting a niche travel blog Divine Mwimba 12:16 Yes. And then I have my travel blog, a St. Lucia travel blog. Jillian Tohber Leslie 12:25 Oh, wow. Okay, that is very niche. Divine Mwimba 12:29 It's very niched so focuses only on St. Lucia Jillian Tohber Leslie 12:33 Tell me how that happened. Divine Mwimba 12:35 Well my best friend is from St. Lucia okay and I did her sister's wedding about two years ago. Jillian Tohber Leslie 12:43 On St. Lucia? Divine Mwimba 12:44 Yeah right down there, and she hadn't been back there in a while, so when we got back she was like you know what I love my country, I love everything about St. Lucia. I do too. And she said, but people don't know about St. Lucia. People don't realize how beautiful it is. You hear about people you know, going down to Mexico to get married you know, but not a lot go down to St. Lucia. So we decided to start a blog all about St. Lucia, teaching people about St. Lucia. It's actually a really fun blog. It's very popular. We're getting our guest post section mostly from couples or people that have recently visited St. Lucia, that email us on a daily basis to be featured on the blog just to talk about the experiences that is St. Lucia. Jillian Tohber Leslie 13:42 No way! Why are they reaching out just because they had a great time? Divine Mwimba 13:47 Well, what we did is that yes, they had a great time, we wanted to really show what St. Lucia is about through the people's eyes. Okay, right. So it's not just us saying go to St. Lucia book your ticket now, you know, it's a fun place. You know, there's a scene that you read reviews, we wanted reviews. Growing a niche travel blog through Instagram So through our Instagram page, people are constantly saying like, Oh my god, I was just in St. Lucia. So the first person that email that was sent us a message we said, well do you want to share your experience? So they were like, yeah, so we're like, okay, we'll send you a couple of questions. You know, tell us why you stayed why you stay there why you liked St. Lucia? Would you recommend St. Lucia to other people and why? And send us a couple of photos, and that was a huge hit. I had from there everybody like honestly, I think every other day we get people saying like, oh my god can I send you my photos? Can I tell you about our journey to St Lucia were like. Yeah, absolutely. Jillian Tohber Leslie 14:48 And you don't get anything from this except reliving the experience? Divine Mwimba 14:51 Exactly they shared with their friends and family. We were featured here. I mean, we've had a few travel bloggers as well have emailed us. But mostly it's just people like random people. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:03 Yeah, I love that. Divine Mwimba 15:04 Yeah, it's a very exciting blog. I like it because of that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:08 It's funny. Okay, so for Catch My Party, people upload their photos. And we show them off, we show of their parties and stuff. And I think it's similar. And I always say to myself, well, it's amazing that people do this. Divine Mwimba 15:20 Yes, we get it all the time. We even have people that say like, Oh, my God, I'll be in St. Lucia next week. I can't wait to like, have you feature our trip and we're like "I will be waiting." Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:32 That's terrific. So how do you make money on that blog? Monetizing a niche travel blog Divine Mwimba 15:37 So that blog right now it's strictly affiliate marketing. It's pretty new. So we're not really like throwing every link out there. But we've had a few links that we've added like, you know, for travel gear, flights, and like little things like that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:55 Like hotels? Divine Mwimba 15:56 Hotels, everything. Places to stay, Airbnb. You know, the whole lot of things that we've been there. Well, first of all my best friends are from St. Lucia. But we've been there too, so we can tell people don't stay here. But here, do this. Do that. And yeah, it's pretty amazing. Jillian Tohber Leslie 16:17 Okay, so how do you do this? Do you have a staff of people to help you do this? Divine Mwimba 16:25 I did not. I actually have, Well, first of all, with my travel blog, my best friend does most of it because she's from St. Lucia. So I help with promotion and connecting with people. With my wedding blog I do have a virtual assistant that writes me a couple of blog posts per month, that I add on to the site. But I also get other professionals I want to feature on my site. So that I get a lot of men, and then once in a while, I do my own on there and then my main focus is the Ladies Make Money Online that takes a lot of my time Jillian Tohber Leslie 17:10 And I guess is that your biggest income driver? Divine Mwimba 17:14 It is. Just working and setting it up on automation so that it doesn't need me as much. And then from there, I'm going to move on to really drive it more on the wedding side, because I know that's also going to make a lot of money. And the St. Lucia side again, that's gonna blow up pretty soon as well. Jillian Tohber Leslie 17:37 Wow. Yeah, and you have a baby? Divine Mwimba 17:39 I do. Jillian Tohber Leslie 17:40 And how many hours a week are you working on your businesses? Divine Mwimba 17:44 I work about six hours a day Monday to Friday only. Weekends are strictly for family. She's growing, really fast I need to, you know, just be family focused. And it's also good to take a little break and then come back fresh, then you get better ideas. It's not the same thing, not the same boring things. So, I do that. And then I just have a set schedule, you know, I'd say Monday, Tuesday, I'm going to be working on Ladies Make Money Online. Wednesday, I'll be working on the wedding site. And then Thursday, I'll be working on the St. Lucia site. And then Friday is just, you know, emails, scheduling posts, social media, responding to email, the other stuff, this is how I set up my schedule. Jillian Tohber Leslie 18:44 Yes. Okay. So are you strict in terms of setting that schedule and keeping to it? Divine Mwimba 18:51 I am. I'm very strict on that. Just because when I had my wedding planning business, I was not strict on myself because you know, brides will call at 9pm, and I'll be answering 11pm there's a text message from a bride. But at the time it was just me and my partner. Divine Mwimba 19:13 So when I decided to just go full time to blogging as like I need a schedule, otherwise I will burn out and I'm not gonna produce as interesting work that people required for me Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:34 And you make a full time living just with your blog just with your sites? Do you miss wedding planning? Divine Mwimba 19:43 I do it from time to time, I mean I was really big in the industry at the time, so I do get people from time to time that come to me and say, can you help me design this with my clients can you help me do this. So they are people that outsource me for certain work but I don't do it as much. In fact last weekend I think I did 14-15 hour shift at a wedding, and I was like oh my god at the end of the day, I just want a glass of wine right now, you know so exhausted. So I'm still in the industry, touch and go, because like I said, I do run the wedding website. So I still need to get information. I still need to be out there. I still need to be able to do that to better communicate to my clients. How MiloTree will grow your business by getting you followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and YouTube Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:33 I wanted to take a short break to talk about my favorite topic and that is MiloTree. I don't know if you know this, but Pinterest came out and said followers matter. Your content initially gets shown to your own followers, and then if they like it, that's when it gets shown beyond. Also followers matter on Instagram, but not just any followers, good followers, engaged followers, and followers that come from MiloTree are some of the most engaged you'll get. Think about it, these are your visitors who've already come to your site. They've already seen your content. The pop up shows up, asks them to follow and they do. Those are the followers you want to get. If you have not tried MiloTree definitely do head over to MiloTree.com and sign up. It takes two minutes to install it on your site, and you will get your first 30 days free. Okay now back to the show Now in terms of your three sites, explain social media to me because like I know you've got your Facebook group. You're talking about Instagram. You're talking about Pinterest. You're talking about landing pages with email. Tell me what your strategy is here. Automating your business as a blogger with MiloTree Divine Mwimba 21:55 Okay so a lot of things are automated first of all so I try to use as many tools, like MiloTree that helped me grow my Pinterest followers in such a short time. With all my businesses, they have their own accounts. So they're not mingled up. I'm not using Ladies Make Money for my wedding site or my travel site. I'm not using this for that. Like everyone has their own account. It's better for growth, it's better for attracting clients. So I try to use as much automation as possible to make it easier for me. So for example, I started my Ladies Make Money Pinterest account back I think end of 2016, and then I believe I added the MiloTree app in 2017, I think. And now I have about 13,000 followers, and that's strictly on automation. So I didn't do any follow me and I follow you kind of thing. None of that. Like this is strictly people that wanted to follow me naturally, you know, So I use that for that. I also use it on my wedding website. Just so it's on it's own, it does the work on its own. I don't have to be there like constantly trying to find a way of increasing my followers. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:34 What are you growing with MiloTree there? Divine Mwimba 23:37 Pinterest. I focus mainly a lot of things on Pinterest. That's where my money maker is. However we haven't yet done anything for the travel blog. But for the travel blog, we're focused a lot on Instagram because that's where we really like the conversations there. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:56 Interesting so people are direct messaging you? Divine Mwimba 24:00 Direct messaging, just on every post you put up, people sending us pictures of themselves like please post this on Instagram, I'm in St Lucia right now. That one has a lot of conversations going on, like we post a post and we have like, you know, 100 messages by the end of the day. Jillian Tohber Leslie 24:19 My gosh, how many followers do you have on Instagram? Divine Mwimba 24:24 It's not so big I think it's 3,500. It's actually growing everyday. 3,500 followers but it's mostly engagement. Engagement is huge on that site. Every day it's where the conversations happening on that Instagram accounts. I'm really excited because we already started it like not even just before I had my baby. Then we took a little break because I had the baby and then we're back at it. So that's where that's happening right now. Certain online businesses do better on certain platforms Jillian Tohber Leslie 25:03 I like what you're saying because you get that certain businesses do better on certain platforms, and you recognize that and then you're going toward that. Divine Mwimba 25:14 Exactly. Focus more on where you're going to get the biggest impact. I can say like, oh Pinterest is where it's at. Then one day I decided, let me give Instagram a go. Then all of a sudden that's picking up you never know. But I know for me, Pinterest is where my clients are for the weddings and my personal finance blog, so that's where I'm attacking the most. Then with travel, we know Instagram is where it's at, so we're attacking that the most. And I just started adding Facebook, Like my Facebook page to the next couple of weeks ago, and it's picking up like it's actually picking up. But you know you have to be consistent with it I find with Facebook. But I'm slowly getting there, but I'm actually getting traffic from my Facebook pages by just posting a lot more on it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 26:17 Interesting and then are you sending newsletters? Divine Mwimba 26:23 Yes I do. I send newsletters every Thursday or Friday. Jillian Tohber Leslie 26:29 To which groups? Divine Mwimba 26:32 To all my groups. So I sit down on Friday mornings and I send to my wedding group, to my travel group, and my personal finance group. Friday is really my technical days. So it's mostly like I said emails newsletters answering questions you know, little things like that, get that out of the way. Jillian Tohber Leslie 26:58 Okay. So what about your business do you love the most? Divine Mwimba 27:04 I love them all. Connecting with people I guess. When people get excited and want to know more. Invest in yourself as a blogger to grow your business You need to invest in yourself at some point if you want results. Whether it's paying for a $10 plugin that will make your life easier. If you do not invest in yourself do not expect people to invest in you. Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:32 So if I'm someone that comes to your finance site, what would you say are the most successful strategies? Divine Mwimba 28:50 First of all you need to know where you passion is at. On my blog I talk about different ways to make money. If you are a blogger you are really interested in blogging as a way of making money, I have a whole section for that, how can you get started, what to do how to get your passion on. If you're not into that and your a mom at home, you don't want to go back to work but you're trying to find something to do, So whether it's opening up an online store that you're passionate about, using Shopify or Etsy, things like. I'm just working one on one with a lady that's just started designing her own cell phone covers. She studied and when she first started she just went got a couple of designs and threw them up. How to find your online business niche I'm like, did you do research? How do you know people are going to like that? What's so attractive about our phone cover, you need to do research, and need to know your people. You should know your passion before you just jump into things. So I give a lot of tips about that, how to successfully get started in your online business. Jillian Tohber Leslie 30:10 Interesting. So do you guys talk about affiliate marketing? Divine Mwimba 30:19 I talk about affiliate marketing you know how to properly do it. I've personally taken a couple of courses on how to do affiliate marketing. Jillian Tohber Leslie 30:27 Are there any you recommend? Divine Mwimba 30:29 Yes definitely start with Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing by Michelle. I started doing affiliate marketing on my own. I just stuck a couple of links on and never got a sale at all. And then a year later I decided, I decided to invest in something, so I invested in the course and, oh my god, I was like wow that makes so much sense. All of a sudden, I'm making money. I think my first month with Ladies Make Money I made like $80 and that was my very first month. And then from there was like $1000, $2000, $3000 and so on. And now I have like a strategy and have a plan. So, I do have a course on my website of Ladies Make Money. Two courses, actually. So the first course is more of like a full course on exactly how to plan out your month in order to make money that month. So the way I work on it is, let's say September, I have a target of saying like, I want to make $15,000 this month. Jillian Tohber Leslie 31:47 Good, job. Divine Mwimba 31:48 So you need to sit down and work backwards, how am I going to make $15,000 so which affiliate programs I'm going to use, what post is the post that's going to give me that $15,000, how we're going to market it to my email subscribers in order to make that much. Jillian Tohber Leslie 32:06 Wow. Divine Mwimba 32:07 So I break it down in our course. Jillian Tohber Leslie 32:09 That's terrific. So where are you, what do you feel what are you most excited about in your businesses right now? Divine Mwimba 32:19 Like I said, I started Pinterest account with zero followers. Now about 13,000, and now it's just every day it's telling me like oh, you just got 100 new people following you. I do nothing I didn't do anything at all you know it's just the growth. Jillian Tohber Leslie 32:46 You put MiloTree on your site. Divine Mwimba 32:48 Exactly. So exactly so that's working on its own, its doing this magic, what it's supposed to do. So I'm really excited to see where it's going to go. I'm getting people that are calling, emailing me, can we buy your website, will give you $50,000? I know, that's my maybe. That's what I kind of, like, designed, implemented and brought it up here. So I'm really excited about that we say about trying new ventures. I might start up another blog. Who knows? Okay, but it's good to start another blog. But we'll see. But right now to grow the three blogs that I have to the fullest capacity as much as possible. Jillian Tohber Leslie 33:31 And i there was a blogger who's just starting out, let's say there is a lady who wants to make money online. Yes. What is your advice? Two pieces one tactical and two softer, you know, like some sort of, kind of emotional piece of advice. How to budget so you can invest in your online business Divine Mwimba 33:52 Okay, so the first step, like I said, try to invest in yourself with this $9 that you're going to spend, whether it's $200. So make a budget, I find a lot of people come and say, I don't have the money. I just started this blog. And I have zero dollars. I'm like, Yes, you do. You know, like when I invested in Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing, it was, I think, almost just less than $200. And I said, I'm not going to drink coffee for months. And that paid for my course. I didn't use my credit card. I was serious about it. So I said, Okay, this is what I want to do. Because I know it's going to get me results. And I did my research. So definitely invest in yourself. Jillian Tohber Leslie 34:49 Got it. Divine Mwimba 34:50 Then emotionally in terms of, you know, starting a business, you need to have the desire for it. Well, you know, you need to keep going at it. Different people, you can't compare, you can say because this one had success, in like, two months, I'm going to get the same results. It depends on your niche. If you're in a very hard niche it takes longer, if you're in a very popular niche it might take longer because nobody knows you. So definitely try to keep working, see what the big people doing, who's talking about what, do research. And another thing I find is that when people write, sit down and write a blog post, I find that they just randomly create a post. It doesn't really work like that. You're writing for your readers, you're trying to connect with your readers. So do your research and see what are they want. What do they want in order to start writing about that? Yes, for sure. So if you're setting up any business, or whether it's blogging that you want to, you know, attempt, whether it's, wedding planning that you want to attempt, you know, because I have a Facebook group with wedding planning as well. We're getting a lot of newcomers who say, I'm a first time wedding planner. I don't know where to start. If you want to start, joining groups join the conversation, introduce yourself, you have to be out there. Like, if you're not, you're not going to get anywhere, introduce yourself, tell us what you want. So that's where you need the help. You know, people have emailed me I.t's like Divine, I want to make money. Where do I go? Where do I start? Well, what are you passionate about? And then from there, we can direct it to the right areas. Jillian Tohber Leslie 36:47 I love that. Okay, Divine, if people want to find you, yes, or reach out to you. What is the best way? Divine Mwimba 36:54 The best way honestly, is through email. I do have social media, you know, I'm on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and so on. But email works well for me. Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:08 And what is your email address? Divine Mwimba 37:09 My email address is Hello@ladiesmakemoney.com Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:15 And can they reach out to you with questions or any of that? Divine Mwimba 37:26 Absolutely. If you're starting a business if you're thinking about starting a business, if you're thinking about making money online, reach out to me. Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:34 I'd love it. Oh, Divine, you are a pleasure. And we did a Facebook Live on your Ladies Make Money. Facebook page. Divine Mwimba 37:42 Yes we did. We figured that out. So that was really cool. So I have to say this was such a pleasure. Thank you so much for being on the show. Divine Mwimba 37:42 No, thank you so much for having me. Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:55 I wanted to say thank you. Thank you to all of the people who have gone over to iTunes who have rated the show, written a review, really thank you. And if you haven't yet please do because it will help get The Blogger Genius found. Okay, I'll see you back here next week.

Today I'm talking to Sarah Cook, from the blog, Sustainable Cooks. This conversation is all about what not to do as a blogger. Sarah made all the mistakes in the book, but if you look at her blog now, you'll see it has transformed into something beautiful! Plus, on her blog, Sarah writes: "Come for the food. Stay for the snark." Her special sauce is not just her gorgeous recipes, but her total honestly with her audience. If you have kids and a busy life, I think you'll find it refreshing. So listen now! Resources: Sustainable Cooks Food Blogger Pro What Bloggers Need to Know to WIN at SEO with David Christopher How to Gain Mega Free Traffic with the SEO Skyscraper Technique with Deepak Shukla MiloTree Pinch of Yum Food Photography ebook Mediavine   Transcript: What Not to Do as a Blogger with Sarah Cook Host 0:03 Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast. Brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:10 Hello everyone. Welcome back to the show. Today my guest is Sarah Cook. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:18 Sarah Cook is the founder of SustainableCooks.com. She is into healthy, tasty and sustainable food and life. She used to blog under a blog called Frugal By Choice, Cheap By Necessity. So Sarah, welcome to the show. Sarah Cook 0:34 Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here, Jillian. Sarah Cook 0:37 Oh, good. Well, first of all, what I loved about you was when you reached out to me, and you said, You're the only person who's ever done this."I have made a ton of blogging mistakes, and I would be happy to share them with your audience." Sarah Cook 0:55 And I was just, you know, checking out your blog. And I love your sense of humor. I love your honesty. Sarah Cook 1:05 Well, I mean, in life, we can't hide who we are. Not for very long. So you might as well just be who you are. From the start. Jillian Tohber Leslie 1:14 Yes, yes. And there again, I will say that there's something very refreshing about that. As we all try to present ourselves in a better light, then, you know, we might normally be. Jillian Tohber Leslie 1:26 So Sarah. Will you share how you started your blog, how it evolved, and where it is now? How to start a budgeting blog Sarah Cook 1:34 Sure. I started blogging in 2010. So I'm a bit of a blogging dinosaur. And I started blogging because on April 1, April Fools Day of 2010, my husband was laid off from his job. Sarah Cook 1:56 Very stressful situation. We had a one-year-old, and I had just taken a huge pay cut, because we had moved from Los Angeles back to our home town near Seattle. Sarah Cook 2:10 So things were already tight, and it was really stressful. And I started learning a bunch of stuff as I was adapting our budget and all those things. And I, I really wanted to share it. Sarah Cook 2:22 And the group of friends I was sharing it with, I realized I was like, kind of being annoying. So I thought, you know, I'll just start a blog and share it there. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:31 Okay. So this is just a personal thing. Sarah Cook 2:34 It was just a personal thing. I like to say that at the time, blogging was cheaper than therapy. I couldn't afford therapy. I'm a big list maker. So it was a way for me to kind of be like, Okay, this is what we're doing this week. And this is how much money we're saving this way. This is what we're eating. Sarah Cook 2:56 And then over months and months, I realized that my passion was what we were eating. And the gardening and the homemade cleaning supplies and all that, that that was fine. And it was still really enjoyable. But the food is what I really enjoyed most about blogging, and sharing our journey. How a budgeting blog turned into a budgeting food blog Jillian Tohber Leslie 3:16 Okay. And so now, was it hard at all to be putting yourself out there, talking about how you were budgeting and stuff like that, or was that liberating? Sarah Cook 3:26 It was liberating. And I'm a chronic over sharer. Anyone who has read my blog knows that I probably share too much, but it's all part of the journey. Sarah Cook 3:39 And also, if you think back to 2010, a ton of people were going through the same situation. A lot of people had it worse. It wasn't, this is me, and I am all alone doing this. It's, this is us. And we're kind of all in it together. And at first, again, I didn't really know anyone was reading. Sarah Cook 4:02 So as as it grew, I was like, Oh, you know, I helped this person today realize that they could make bread for 60 cents, instead of buying it for $3 at the store. Jillian Tohber Leslie 4:13 Wow. Sarah Cook 4:18 So I did that while working full time. And what we're doing, I worked for a medical nonprofit, I did recruiting for them. And so I was working full time and commuting. How to become a firefighter Sarah Cook 4:33 After my husband was laid off, he decided he was going to become a firefighter. Well, we had moved to Los Angeles a few years before, so that he could pursue his dream of working in TV and film. He did lighting and electrical on movie sets, and a lot of reality TV shows. Sarah Cook 4:57 And so when we moved home, I was kind of like, all right, let's have normal jobs. And then the earth fell out from under us. And he decided, I'm going to go be a firefighter. Which, if anyone knows any firefighters that I'll tell you, it's extremely hard to get into. It's very expensive, and it takes forever. Jillian Tohber Leslie 5:20 Really? I had no idea. Sarah Cook 5:23 No, I like to say it's like trying to join the mob. The mob, you know, you have to kill somebody. To get a job as a firefighter. It's, it's a really, really hard industry. And it's very expensive to get into, because every department requires a physical test and a written test, and you have to pay for each test. Sarah Cook 5:47 But no two departments require the same test. So every time you go to apply, you're taking two to three $300 worth of tests for this one department, and you may not even get an interview. So it's stressful. Jillian Tohber Leslie 6:02 So did he ultimately get in? Sarah Cook 6:05 Yes, it took four years and more money I would ever admit to in public. But yes, he is a full time firefighter. Jillian Tohber Leslie 6:13 Okay. And does he liked it? Sarah Cook 6:15 He loves it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 6:16 Okay. Okay. So that has a happy ending. So during this time you're blogging? Sarah Cook 6:23 I'm blogging, yes. How to monetize a food blog Jillian Tohber Leslie 6:24 And are you starting to make money? Sarah Cook 6:27 I think I put Google AdSense on about six to nine months in. But it was just, a little bit here and there. I wasn't doing it as a business. I was doing it as a hobby. Sarah Cook 6:41 My husband was gone all the time. Anyone who has small kids knows when they're very little, there's not a lot in your life that's yours. Jillian Tohber Leslie 6:50 Yes, definitely. Sarah Cook 6:52 And so this was mine. This was something I could do. It was free. I could do it in my spare time, which wasn't a lot, and I enjoyed it. Selfishly, it was what I wanted to do, and I could do it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 7:07 And are you still working at this point for in your nonprofit? Sarah Cook 7:13 I don't work there anymore. Jillian Tohber Leslie 7:15 No, but I mean, during this time when you were starting up your blog, were you working and raising your family and blogging? Sarah Cook 7:22 Yes, all of those things, but I wasn't blogging well. I'll definitely admit to that. So I'd put a post up when I thought about it. I'd write about whatever I wanted to write about. It was just like, Hey, this is me, me, me kind of mentality. Jillian Tohber Leslie 7:39 Got it. And when did it start to shift? Sarah Cook 7:42 Sadly, not until last year. Jillian Tohber Leslie 7:45 Really? Okay. What it's like not to give your blog readers a great experience Sarah Cook 7:47 I mean, I have a very, very loyal audience. And like, I like to say they have to be loyal, because I pretty much gave them crappy content for years. Jillian Tohber Leslie 7:56 Okay. Sarah Cook 7:57 Yeah. I mean, if you look back at my archives, and please don't. It's not, it's not the best stuff ever. But I did connect with a lot of people. And I think I helped them feel like they weren't alone. Sarah Cook 8:15 So, you know, they were either going through financial difficulties, or they were going through a job transition, or they had little kids and they kind of fell out of control with their situation. They could at least relate to me in that regard. But other than that, what I gave them was not great. Sarah Cook 8:37 And so, last May, May of 2017. I was listening to a blogging podcast, which I had never even known existed. Jillian Tohber Leslie 8:48 Which one? Sarah Cook 8:49 Food Blogger Pro. Jillian Tohber Leslie 8:50 Got it. By the way, I was on it. Sarah Cook 8:54 I know, that's how I found out about you. Jillian Tohber Leslie 8:57 I love that podcast. I love Bjork. Sarah Cook 9:00 They're so great. But I realized, Oh, my gosh, there's so much stuff, I don't know. So it was a whole, just new world for me. And up until that point, I was like, You know what, I need to quit doing this. I'm not, I'm not giving anyone any value. I'm not giving myself any value. Sarah Cook 9:20 This isn't enjoyable anymore. I sit down to write a blog post. And I'm like, I don't even know what to write about. That kind of thing. And so it's really been a journey since May of 2017. And I feel like every day I learned 10 things I wish I had known when I first started. Blog for the "we" instead of the me Sarah Cook 9:37 But something lit a fire in me. And I feel like I've turned everything around. I'm blogging for the, I like to say, the "we" instead of the me. Jillian Tohber Leslie 9:50 So can you can you unpack that? What does that mean? Sarah Cook 9:53 Yeah, absolutely. So it means that when I sit down to write a blog post, it's not like, Oh, I'm going to use this time to complain about, I don't know, this person who cut me off in traffic or something. Which, I'll still throw in from time to time. Sarah Cook 10:06 But hey, I'm going to put this blog post out there. And I need to know ahead of time how this is going to help my reader go about their day, in a better way. And sometimes that's just like, they need a little bit of humor in their life. Sarah Cook 10:22 But other times, it's, hey, this is a 25 minute dinner that you can make from scratch with all natural, real food ingredients and still get your kids to soccer practice on time. And not go through the drive thru and spend $35. Most useful posts for your blog readers Jillian Tohber Leslie 10:37 Got it. And what are your most useful posts for your audience? Is it that? Is it the quick meal? Is it the kind of I'm overwhelmed as a parent? Like, where do you feel you connect the most with your on you provide the most value? Sarah Cook 10:57 So I think so. Yeah, it's for me, it's the quick meal. And my readers tend to love quick meals, healthy meals, and side dishes. Sarah Cook 11:06 They're not really into desserts, though. Sometimes I will still do a dessert from time to time. Sarah Cook 11:13 But within my posts, I also like to weave in short personal stories. Because, you know, back in the day, when I was blogging, it was 600 words about what I ate for breakfast, or something like that. So now, it's like snippets of real life, but also, I don't, I don't sugarcoat things. Jillian Tohber Leslie 11:33 That's what I have to say. That's what I really like about your blog. Blogging with humor and truth Sarah Cook 11:38 Yeah, it's, I mean, we can't be perfect, nobody's perfect. And if we waste all of our energy, trying to pretend we're perfect. At the end of the day, there's nothing left for us. Sarah Cook 11:48 So I'd rather just say, you know what, my kids are driving me nuts today. And I made this dish and they're still driving me nuts. But at the end of the day, I really liked eating this for dinner. Jillian Tohber Leslie 12:02 I don't like my kids right now. But I like my dinner. Sarah Cook 12:04 Exactly. Like yesterday, I told my nine year old, You know what, next Summer, I'm putting you in Summer camp every single week. Because I cannot be around you this much. Jillian Tohber Leslie 12:14 Right? I read that. And I read your joke about Ambien, too. Jillian Tohber Leslie 12:21 I get it. So how does your audience then reach out to you? How do you know how you're connecting to them? Sarah Cook 12:28 So I would say it depends on the platform. On the blog, I can tell based on comments. Jillian Tohber Leslie 12:35 Okay, so people are commenting on your posts? How to know what's connecting with your readers as a blogger Sarah Cook 12:39 Yes. For my email subscribers, I can tell based on open rates. So, hey, I wrote this really great post. And I spent eight hours researching it. And only 30% of my readers opened it. Sarah Cook 12:56 And then I start looking at, well, geez, consistently, they're not opening these types of posts. Okay, so what's that telling me? It's telling me my readers don't care about desserts, or they don't want them from me. Sarah Cook 13:11 Instagram, I base it, you know, you kind of have to do it on a vanity metrics of likes, engagement, comments, direct messages, that kind of thing. Sarah Cook 13:24 Facebook, comments and shares, and then also emails, you know, I have a really, really engaged readership and they will happily email me and let me know what they thought about something. Sarah Cook 13:37 Sometimes it's positive. And sometimes it's not. But it's all a way to kind of interpret their feedback. Sarah Cook 13:43 What kind of negative feedback have you gotten? Sarah Cook 13:46 At the start, it was my language. I can be kind of salty. But I stopped responding to those or, just let people know, the internet's a really great big place. And if I don't resonate with you, there's other places out there for you. Jillian Tohber Leslie 14:03 Got it. Sarah Cook 14:04 You, you wouldn't come into my house and tell me how to speak in my house. So find something that fits better with you. Jillian Tohber Leslie 14:12 Okay, that's good. You will respond, or now, you don't? Sarah Cook 14:15 Yeah, if someone's aggressively rude or anything like that, I'll just let it go. Especially on Facebook. My friend once gave me the great advice of don't engage the crazy. But I find that I don't have  a lot of that. And if I do, oddly enough, my readers are the ones who take care of it. How MiloTree will grow your blog Jillian Tohber Leslie 14:36 I wanted to take a short break and give you guys some props, because I know how many hats you have to wear as a creative entrepreneur. Jillian Tohber Leslie 14:44 And I know how important growing social media is, and growing your email list. And that's why at MiloTree, our goal is to lighten your load a little bit. Jillian Tohber Leslie 14:56 So MiloTree is a series of smart pop-ups you and install on your site, program it how you like, super easy to set up. It puts your follower growth your subscriber growth on autopilot. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:12 Again, it's one less job than you have to worry about. So check it out at milotree.com, add it to your site, see how it works. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:21 And what's great is we give you your first 30 days of MiloTree free. So there's really no risk. And now back to the show. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:28 Here's a question. So the first mistake that you made for a lot of years was that it was your blog. You saw it as about you and not about us. Sarah Cook 15:39 Exactly. Yep. Mistakes bloggers make Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:40 What would you say? Say two other mistakes you made at the beginning or not? Even at the beginning, up until last year? Things that made you say, Oh, this is what I need to be doing. Blogger mistake: not know what SEO is Sarah Cook 15:54 Oh, gosh, there's so many more than just two mistakes. But I didn't know what SEO was until May of last year. So I had been blogging for seven years, and not a single thought had been put into search engine optimization. Blogger mistake: bad photos Sarah Cook 16:12 And I would also say, my photography was atrocious. It was terrible. And it's still my biggest pain point. But it was just, I mean, I was working full time. The only time I had time to write or take pictures was at 10 o'clock at night, and my fluorescent lit kitchen. And, you know, I take a cell phone picture or a terrible DSLR photo. Sarah Cook 16:39 I didn't know how to use my camera. And I'd put it up because that's all I had time for. Sarah Cook 16:45 And so when I say my readers have stuck with me through thick and thin, I really, I mean, they were looking at some junk for years. Jillian Tohber Leslie 16:52 Wow, but again, there's something poignant about this, that it isn't just about the beautiful photos. And it isn't, you know all about SEO that people are finding you on Google. Jillian Tohber Leslie 17:06 It's somebody stumbles upon you, and they connect to you. And they stick in there because they wanted it. You know, they want to feel connected. Sarah Cook 17:16 Yeah, they had to dig in pretty deep, because I didn't give them a lot of surface area. Jillian Tohber Leslie 17:21 Yes. And by the way, for people who want to learn about SEO, go back into my archives, because I've done some interviews on SEO that will really give you some insights into how to think about it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 17:33 But how did you start to fix your photography. Because I was just on your blog, and I think your photos are really pretty. Sarah Cook 17:45 Thank you. If you go back 18 months, you will probably have a different comment. Basically I just start. I listened to a few podcasts about photography specifically for food photography. Sarah Cook 18:02 I bought the Pinch of Yum Food Photography, ebook. And I went to a food photography workshop in Seattle. Sarah Cook 18:14 But basically, I feel like what really started helping me was when I got my photos out of the kitchen. Sarah Cook 18:26 I have an amazing amount of natural light except in my kitchen. And I was trying to force the situation. I was trying to take pictures in the kitchen because it was convenient for me. Sarah Cook 18:38 So now I have to take my pictures in the living room on my footstool pushed up against a window, which makes it very interesting when you have a two year old running around. Sarah Cook 18:49 Sometimes he makes it in the pictures stealing a bite or something like that. Sarah Cook 18:55 But I think it was it was just realizing that I didn't have to follow what I thought were the rules. It was experiment. Take 1000 photos, and maybe you'll get six good ones. Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:09 Yeah. My mother-in-law will always be like, wow, Jill. You take beautiful photos. And I'm like, Are you kidding me? This was 4000 photos. And there's one good one. The law of big numbers is in my favor. I'll get one good photo. Sarah Cook 19:26 Exactly. And I mean, next week, you might take 3900 photos and get two good one. Sarah Cook 19:34 But I know I need to learn to keep trying. Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:36 Yes. I completely I completely agree with you. Okay, so are you working now full time? Or is this your full time job or your part time job? Sarah Cook 19:46 So this is my full time job. I don't yet make a full time income. So it's good that my husband does have his full time job. And he's extraordinarily supportive of this. Sarah Cook 19:58 Because he says, for years you you supported us and let me do my dreams. And now it's my turn. How to monetize a blog Sarah Cook 20:05 How are you thinking about monetizing, what are your strategies? How have you started? Sarah Cook 20:11 So I monetize through ads. And I also do affiliate marketing, mainly Amazon, but a few other small, you know, channels. But recently I was approved for a new ad network. So that will be starting next week. So that's very exciting. Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:31 Okay. And what is the ad network Sarah Cook 20:34 Mediavine. Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:35 Okay, great. Sarah Cook 20:37 And for the next kind of two to three months. My plan is to really try and ramp up sponsored posts. Because I've done a few here and there, but I I've never had any direction with how I reach out to companies. I've never really had any good follow through on my part. And I feel like that's kind of where I'm missing a lot of opportunities. Jillian Tohber Leslie 21:04 Got it and, and is your plan to reach out to brands or to join networks where you could get sponsored posts? Sarah Cook 21:15 So my plan is to reach out to brands because I'm in at least one network for sponsored posts. But you know, through the law of averages you either don't get picked. Sarah Cook 21:26 Or when you look at the amount of work that's required for X number of dollars. You're like that that's not worth it. To me. I feel like when you go through a network, the pay is quite low, right? Jillian Tohber Leslie 21:38 Yes, yes, I agree. I'm like reading right now. Sorry, I'm reading I love this. That in your bio. You say, "Yo, I'm Sarah Cook and Sustainable Cooks is your guide to healthy tasty and sustainable life, unfiltered, no BS. Come for the food, stay for the snark." Sarah Cook 21:59 Yep. Jillian Tohber Leslie 22:00 And I love in your navigation bar all the different things you have. I feel like you are a unique voice in the world of food bloggers, and because you're kind of saying it how it is. And you're putting your truth out there. Sarah Cook 22:20 Yeah. And like I've said, you know, trying to be someone else at the end of the day. You get nothing out of it. Your readers get nothing out of it. And you're going to burn yourself out really, really quickly. Sarah Cook 22:30 So I realize I'm not for everyone. But that's fine. I don't need to be for everyone. If the people who are with me are really with me, then that's what I need. I need those raving fans instead of people who are like, it's fine. How to monetize a strong attitude as a blogger Jillian Tohber Leslie 22:42 Right? Well, that's it. I like it. Sorry. But like the wheels are turning in my head. And I'm like, how can you monetize your snark, your food and your snark and I don't quite know, but if anybody listening to this has some ideas on how she can monetize her snark, I feel like that is a really strong competitive advantage. Sarah Cook 23:03 I could be a billionaire if snark was monetized. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:06 Yeah, but I'm just like thinking about it. I'm like, wow, she has pretty photos. Just got some like, you've got some attitude. And I feel like a lot of food blogs kind of do similar stuff. You know, it's hard to differentiate many of them. Sarah Cook 23:23 Yeah, I mean, being vanilla in the world is not my, it's not my goal in life. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:29 What social networks work for you? Sarah Cook 23:33 Facebook to an extent. I mean, Facebook to the extent that it works for anybody these days. Sarah Cook 23:40 But for me, it's really Instagram. I have a small following. I mean, if you looked at the amount of people I have followed me, it's, it's not a lot. It's under 1000. Sarah Cook 23:52 But I didn't focus on Instagram for years. I mean, I'd throw up a picture every six months and be like, hey, hashtag, whatever, you know, because I didn't understand it. Sarah Cook 24:01 So that's an area I need to work on. But at the same time, I think they say the average Instagram post gets, you know, 1% to 3% of engagement, right? And my posts get, like 9% to 12%. So I don't have a huge number. But they're loyal. Advice: Get to know your Instagram followers Jillian Tohber Leslie 24:25 Interesting. What do you mean by that? Sarah Cook 24:27 Oh, you know, like the people, you will, defend and applaud, and you want to see them succeed. And when something happens in their life, you know, you celebrate along with them. Sarah Cook 24:42 So one thing I do is, I follow most of my followers, and if I don't follow them, it's not because I'm ignoring them or anything. It's just, you know, maybe they snuck in, and I didn't happen to see them. Sarah Cook 24:57 So I know a ton about my followers. I know their kids names, I know their struggles. I know their pains. I know, if their mother passed away last week, that kind of thing. Sarah Cook 25:08 So not only am I able to connect with them on that level, it helps me figure out how to tailor my content to meet what their pain points are. Find your readers' pain points Jillian Tohber Leslie 25:18 What would you say their pain points are again? We talked about they want quick meals, that kind of thing? Sarah Cook 25:24 Yeah, I would say most people are just really overwhelmed. They don't know where to start. And they feel like they're set up for failure from the beginning. And so it's easier to just not do anything. Jillian Tohber Leslie 25:37 Ooh, got it. Oh, I have so many ideas for you. I'm like, you could help people through this with some snark, you know, with some attitude. Sarah Cook 25:47 Yeah, some tough love, but some snuggles at the same time. Jillian Tohber Leslie 25:51 Exactly. I mean, that's what I feel from you. That's really wonderful. And then I'm looking at your website, and you also have resources on there to help other bloggers. Sarah Cook 26:00 Yeah, people would reach out to me from time to time and be like, Hey, what's this? Or what's this? Sarah Cook 26:07 I have a follower on Instagram right now. He's trying to get a blog launched. And so rather than just send everyone else send everyone information. Kind of piecemeal like, Oh, this is what I did. I thought putting it in one place. You know, I'm still I still love to answer their questions. But I always do say, hey, check this out first, and then let's talk about it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 26:27 Right. I don't see MiloTree and your resources page, just so you know. Sarah Cook 26:31 Oh, well, you know, I'm sorry. I do need to add that, it's good. Jillian Tohber Leslie 26:34 We have a really good affiliate program. We pay $20 a conversion. Sarah Cook 26:40 That's amazing! Jillian Tohber Leslie 26:41 Yeah. There is something raw about you. And I love that you're kind of in it right now. And really finding your way. Sarah Cook 26:56 Yeah, I'm definitely in the middle of it. I mean, I don't have all the answer. But I have some. How to find your secret sauce as a blogger Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:03 You have something by the way, that I believe is your secret sauce. And that is this deep connection to your audience. Sarah Cook 27:14 Yeah, my readers are the best and I'll shout that from the rooftop. And I'm, you know, I'm willing to do  anything for them. But I want to make them happy. Because they are amazing. And they are deserving. Sarah Cook 27:31 If they're spending their precious time giving me a few minutes, I want to make it worth their while. Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:36 So I feel that, so I don't know exactly what it could be. But I feel like you could you could monetize that in an authentic way. Whether you're helping them through their difficulty. Sarah Cook 27:51 Yeah, I mean, I'd love to figure it out myself. Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:54 We could talk offline about it if you'd like. Just because I think that it comes through. Like it just totally comes through. I'm just really impressed with that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:07 Okay, so in terms of mistakes, let's go back to that. Sarah Cook 28:09 Oh, gosh, yeah. Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:10 Okay. So you didn't know SEO. You didn't take good photos. You didn't know to think about your audience. Right? And what else would you say you were not doing great at? Sarah Cook 28:31 The website you're looking at now is new. I rebranded in January of 2018. So new new site, new name, new URL, all that. Sarah Cook 28:45 So up until I had quit my old job, I had never formally introduce myself to my readers. So they didn't know my last name was Cook, and you want to be in the food blogging space. And your last name is Cook. I mean, that's a huge missed opportunity. Sarah Cook 29:03 And it's just because I worked in a public job. So it was a public nonprofit. And it wasn't fair to my company, for readers to associate me with the role that I did. And so I, you know, I kind of just shut down that personal side of me. Sarah Cook 29:21 So with leaving my old job, and being able to be okay, this is who I am, that kind of thing. It was huge opportunity to rebrand. Sarah Cook 29:30 I was super over my old sites name, it was a mouthful, took forever to say. And it just put me into a niche that I no longer really was a part of. I felt like I couldn't be as authentic as I wanted to be. Sarah Cook 29:50 So last September or August, I decided to change the permalinks on my website. So I had originally started with Blogger back in 2010 can when I converted to a WordPress site in 2014. I had dates in my URLs. Jillian Tohber Leslie 30:11 Ooh, ooh, okay? So let's just say I want to explain what that means. in somebody's URL. You know, it has what the title is and I think is a WordPress default it will add the date. So it will say, you know, January like, 01012015 if that's when you publish the blog post right? Sarah Cook 30:34 Yep. Advice: take the dates out of the urls of your blog Jillian Tohber Leslie 30:35 Okay. And just so we all know, you do not want dates in your URLs because of course it dates your content. Sarah Cook 30:44 Yes. And not only that, but if you want to update your content. And then also republish it. Yes, it puts it out under a new URL. Jillian Tohber Leslie 30:55 Oh, well, you mean if you take off that date? Sarah Cook 30:59 Yes, but if you republish even if you republish the old if you republish the old post under a new date, than it changes the URL. Sarah Cook 31:07 Yes. So you have to redirect it, which can be glitchy. And so last year when I decided to do this by myself, which was dumb. Essentially what I did, I did this for a month. So I changed my permalinks. And then I started updating my most popular posts. Sarah Cook 31:37 And I was using a redirect plugin to do all that updating, and then I changed my permalink. So what I essentially did was going into q4, so the fourth quarter traffic, I broke all my most popular posts that were on Pinterest. Sarah Cook 31:53 So anytime someone found had saved or whatever, one of my old popular posts when they went to click on it, because maybe they wanted to make X, Y or Z for Christmas, it then directed them to a broken link. Jillian Tohber Leslie 32:06 Right. And Google hates this. Sarah Cook 32:10 Yeah, Google and I were not friends for a very long time. Jillian Tohber Leslie 32:14 So just just just for anybody who has dates in their URLs, you want to get rid of them. But you want to hire somebody to help you do it. Sarah Cook 32:23 Yes, don't do it yourself. Jillian Tohber Leslie 32:25 Because it's too valuable to you. Those URL links are very valuable. And Google gets really mad, it doesn't really get mad, but it will punish your site for broken links. Sarah Cook 32:38 And it definitely did. Jillian Tohber Leslie 32:40 So did your site get hit? Sarah Cook 32:43 Just record low traffic. Be very careful when doing big site updates so you don't lose your SEO Jillian Tohber Leslie 32:45 Yep, yep. And I have this new thing that I wanted to share, which is being mindful of like updating your blogs, and like, you know, rolling out a new blog. Anytime we have done that we have gotten so punished by Google. Jillian Tohber Leslie 33:07 So just be very careful if you can make just stylistic changes without changing the fundamental underlying platform, I highly recommend it. Sarah Cook 33:21 Yes. From a structural standpoint, for sure. And then when I rebranded at the end of January of this year, I definitely got dinged by Google for about four months. Okay, but I am on an upward swing now. And I'm on track to have the best month I've ever had this month, and in the middle of the summer slump. Jillian Tohber Leslie 33:43 That's terrific. That's terrific. Okay. That's wonderful. So yes, so I think the lesson there is just to be really mindful of links. And so now you're on WordPress, Sarah Cook 33:57 Yes. And I've been on WordPress since 2014. But I was on WordPress through my old site. So everything had to be connected to the new site. Jillian Tohber Leslie 34:07 Got it. So here's my question, which is, let's say, I am a blogger like you. And I've been at it for a while. And I didn't know about things like SEO, or I feel I feel behind. What would you say to that person to keep them going? Sarah Cook 34:27 Well, first, I'd give them some chocolate. Sarah Cook 34:31 And then I would say, if what you're doing now isn't working, continuing to do the same thing is not going to be working in a year. So it's time to bring in some fresh blood, whether that's through education, which is what I did. Sarah Cook 34:47 Podcasts are free, they're absolutely free, and you get such a wealth of information. Your podcast has been amazing. You know, there's like, 10 others that I listened to. And every time I listen, I learned something new. And I'm like, oh, gosh, Man, I wish I had known that eight years ago. Sarah Cook 35:06 But what I would say is, if you're not getting any traction, definitely doing the same thing is not going to move you in the momentum that you want to be in. Sarah Cook 35:17 And I would also say that, once I realized, this is kind of what I want to do, there was always a, "but what if" in my life. So I was working full time so I couldn't be a popular or a successful blogger. But if I didn't have to work full time, and then when I quit working, I'm like, Okay, now I can be popular. Sarah Cook 35:38 But oh, you know, my parents at the time lived with us. And I was a caregiver for my mom. I'm like, Oh, well, I don't have as much time to devote to the blog because I'm helping out my mom and I had a new baby. Sarah Cook 35:51 So you know, I'll be successful when all these things kind of like, fall into place. And then soon after I quit my job. My mom was diagnosed with cancer. And, you know, we had her for another 11 months. And that time was amazing and hard, very, very hard. Sarah Cook 36:10 But then when she passed, I was like, Okay, now, this is the time I need, now I can focus on me. And, you know, it didn't really happen until I made a plan, got new resources, things like that. Sarah Cook 36:23 So there's always going to be something mentally that is preventing you from being successful, and you just have to plow through it and realize I need new tools in my arsenal. Jillian Tohber Leslie 36:36 Hmm. I like that. I really like that. And now given that I believe your special sauce is your authenticity, your willingness to say stuff that other people might be shocked by that kind of thing. How to find what makes you special as a blogger Jillian Tohber Leslie 36:54 What would you say to bloggers who, let's say, a food bloggers, but who is trying to find their special sauce? Sarah Cook 37:04 Well, I mean, you can talk with friends and family who are willing to be straightforward with you and be like, when you think of me? What comes to mind? Like, how have I helped you? Or what's special about me? What is the Johari Window? Sarah Cook 37:19 There's a test that I had to do for work one time it's called the Johari Window. I don't know if you've ever heard of that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:26 No, Sarah Cook 37:31 I'm sure if you Google it it's there. Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:32 Yeah, I'm gonna put a link in the show notes. Sarah Cook 37:35 Okay. And so I mean, it's been a few years since I've done it. So you have to think there's a list of descriptive terms, and you have to pick like two for you. Sarah Cook 37:45 And then you send the link to like 10 other people. And they have to pick from this descriptive term list of descriptive terms for you and pick a few. Sarah Cook 37:54 And then at the end, you get this little report that said, Okay, here's what you think about you. And here's what everyone else thinks about you. And I realized when I did this, I was incredibly hard on myself and everybody else who selected terms for me was much more giving and kind. Sarah Cook 38:17 And I was like, well if all these people are seeing something that I'm not seeing, what is that saying about my current level of self awareness. Jillian Tohber Leslie 38:26 So what terms did you choose? And what terms were other people choosing? Sarah Cook 38:30 Oh, gosh, it's been like, five years. I don't, I don't really remember. But I think I said something like, it wasn't like assertive, but it was something that I picked that I thought was negative, and then other people were using, like giving, and like, selfless and stuff like that. Sarah Cook 38:52 And I'm like, Oh, well, what are these people seeing in me? That kind of thing. Jillian Tohber Leslie 38:56 Hmm. I like that. Oh, I like that idea. Sarah Cook 39:00 It's really interesting. Jillian Tohber Leslie 39:02 Yeah. Was it scary to hear what people thought? Sarah Cook 39:05 Um, I mean, I used to work in corporate. A long time ago. So I'm used to hearing what people think. So No, it wasn't. But I think what was really interesting for me was realizing that nobody saw my flaws in the way that I saw them. Sarah Cook 39:23 People weren't looking at me and seeing the negative, they were seeing the positive, and maybe I needed to start doing that for myself. Jillian Tohber Leslie 39:30 Oh, wow. That's wonderful. That's wonderful. Okay, so Sarah, if people want to reach out to you. And again, because I love that you're so open to that, what is the best way for people to connect with you? Sarah Cook 39:48 So I mean, I think it depends. Obviously, you can go to my website, SustainableCooks.com. I'm on SustainableCooks at Pinterest and Instagram, on Facebook, unfortunately, because, you know, years ago, I didn't really think through things I'm at Frugal Sarah C, but if you type in Sustainable Cooks that will eventually connect you to me. Sarah Cook 40:12 But if anyone out there is a blogger and has questions and wants to talk more deeply about the really stupid things I've done, they can just email me at sarah@sustainablecooks.com. I'm pretty much an open book. And I'll tell you my experience. Sarah Cook 40:30 And you know, if you ask me for advice, I'll give it to you. But I'm happy to share my mistakes so that other people don't repeat them. Jillian Tohber Leslie 40:38 Yeah, and definitely check out her website because you will get to know her within like a post or two. Sarah Cook 40:44 Oh thank you for saying that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 40:48 And for you, Sarah, to to think about how can you build on this, because it's really special. Sarah Cook 40:56 Well, now you have my wheels turning Jillian Tohber Leslie 41:00 Good. And if you want again, we could talk about it. Sarah Cook 41:02 Yeah. Jillian Tohber Leslie 41:03 Alright, well, wonderful. Well, Sarah, thank you so much for being on the show. Sarah Cook 41:08 Jillian, thank you so much for having me. I had a great time. Please rate The Blogger Genius on iTunes Jillian Tohber Leslie 41:12 If you're enjoying The Blogger Genius Podcast, please head over to iTunes and rate us. You don't even have to leave a review. But I think if we get enough ratings, and they're high then iTunes will, it'll signal to them that our podcast is worth listening to. Jillian Tohber Leslie 41:28 So I want to thank you in advance. So thank you and come back next week.

Today, my guest is Deepak Shukla from the SEO agency, Pearl Lemon. We take a deep dive into SEO strategy. If you want to learn how to gain mega free traffic with the SEO skyscraper technique, this is the podcast for you! The best part is that anyone can use this technique to grow their organic Google search traffic. You just have to know how. In our conversation, we talk about what the skyscraper technique is, why it's so successful, and how you can build your entire business around it! If you're trying to grow your traffic in a meaningful way, definitely listen to this! Resources: Blogger Genius #013: What Bloggers Need to Know to WIN at SEO with David Christopher Pearl Lemon Backlinko