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Episode #003: How To Rebrand Your Food Blog with Cassie Heilbron

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Blog Title: Cook It Real Good

Social Media:

IG: https://www.instagram.com/cookitrealgood/

FB: https://www.facebook.com/cookitrealgood

About Cassie: Cassie is the Recipe Creator and Food Photographer behind Cook It Real Good – a food blog that focuses on quick, easy and healthy recipes, with a bit of indulgence mixed in for good measure. Cassie loves to cook with everyday ingredients and tries to use as little dishes as possible as she hates washing up.

Notes from Episode #003: How and Why to rebrand in style

  • How to know when rebranding is a good idea and when it’s not

  • It’s important to define branding – Cassie shared that branding is what you’re all about. Not just a name or logo but its more about what you bring to the table, what your unique selling proposition is, what is different about you than everyone else. That comes from the person behind the blog.

  • Reasons why people rebrand – a blog vision changed, honing in on a niche, jumped into the blogging journey as a hobby and then wanted to take the business up a notch. Change of audience.

  • Keep your blog name interesting but general so it doesn’t limit you as you grow and find what you want to do and trends evolve. You want to give yourself room to grow and explore.

  • Take time to reflect, step away from the job and think about what you want to do BEFORE rebranding and give yourself time to make some choices and how you want to change.- your blog title reflects who you are so you should like it. Cassie took a 5 week hiatus.

  • Cassie was in a good position to rebrand because she wasn’t too established with followers, etc. She had time to grow and wouldn’t lose millions of followers. Cassie recommends that the sooner you can do it the better is when considering a rebrand.

  • Step 1 – Going through the name change. 

    • Brain storm – find a name you love! Check to see if its available – buy it but also consider social media names so that you are consistent across the board. Secure those names because it changes quickly!

    • Reach out to others who have gone through rebranding before and pick their brains. Use their expertise from having gone through it.

    • Utilize available tools and other professionals to help you grow personally and professionally – Casey Markee/SEO services were useful in getting an audit done on her site and worth the investment in regards to rebranding.

    • She hired someone to carry out the technical side of the change so she wouldn’t lose rankings, etc. 

  • Step 2 – Rebrand and redesign on the website – determine if you’re going to change the whole look and color scheme and make sure all changes are considered in this phase. 

  • Step 3 – Announce your intentions 

    • Don’t go live without sharing the thought process with your readers. 

    • Share posts that this is going to be happening online, create posts for social media sites too so as to avoid losing your audience.

  • Know it’s possible to rebrand. You can turn the train around with some hard work and results will come. The rebranding was a bit of a roller coaster but in the end, Cassie’s rankings did climb back up and she achieved more because she was being true to herself and who she wanted to share with her audience. The whole process helped her to define herself and share a journey with her readers. Ultimately, she’s found more of an audience now than before. Her passion is reignited. She is more confident now.

  • Take a moment to acknowledge it can be hard and it can be scary to change course. But if you love what you’re doing, it’s worth it.

  • Confirmation of your hard work will come in different forms – new brands wanting to work together, social media volume increases.

  • “When you share with your readers what’s happening, they get on board very quickly. The thing that you fear is more on your side, not theirs.”

  • “If you’re going to be doing a blog day in and day out, you may as well feel good about it feel passionate about it and think that it represents you.”

Helpful references from the episode:

https://www.mediawyse.com/ – Casey, SEO audit

https://highlysearched.com/ – Shelly, completed my technical rebrand.

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Megan
Megan

Megan started her food blog Pip and Ebby in 2010 and food blogging has been her full-time career since 2013. Her passion for blogging has grown into an intense desire to help fellow food bloggers find the information, insight, and community they need in order to find success.

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