Episode 689: How To Predict Content Success Instead of Guessing What Your Audience Wants with Dr. Kristen Wager

EBT689 – Dr. Kristen Wager

Intro 00:00

Food bloggers. Hi, how are you today? Thank you so much for tuning in to the Eat Blog Talk podcast. This is the place for food bloggers to get information and inspiration to accelerate your blog’s growth, and ultimately help you to achieve your freedom. Whether that’s financial, personal, or professional. I’m Megan Porta. I have been a food blogger for 13 years, so I understand how isolating food blogging can be. I’m on a mission to motivate, inspire, and most importantly, let each and every food blogger, including you, know that you are heard and supported. 

[00:00:37] Megan Porta

When you are planning your content and just overall strategizing for your business, do you tend to go with your gut or do you make research based decisions or a little of both?

I interviewed Dr. Kristin Wager. In this interview she is from Creator Pulse and and she talks about something that she’s really passionate about which is making research based decisions for your business and how this can only help you and benefit not only you, but your audience and how much money you make, how much traffic and traction you get.

[00:01:15]   

Literally everything you need to know about making research based decisions for your blogging business is included in this episode. Kristen talks about what makes a content strategy strategic. She talks about different types of research that can inform your strategy. Also different types of data, so historical data versus real time data. She gives some case study examples. There’s so much packed inside of this episode that I think will really inspire you to do some research and dig into your data to create a more well rounded business. This is episode number 689. Enjoy.

[00:01:55]  Sponsor 

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[00:02:35]   

Dr. Kristen Wager is a consumer researcher with over 15 years of experience and a PhD in research. She has worked with major companies like Google, Amazon and Meta, gaining firsthand insight into how research shapes strategy and drives growth.

[00:02:50]   

While these companies invest billions each year to understand their audiences, she believes creators deserve access to the same level of insight. Most recently, recently Kristin led consumer research at Raptive, collaborating with some of the biggest food bloggers in the industry, including Half Baked Harvest Tastes Better From Scratch, Just One Cookbook. Hey Grill hey.

[00:03:10]   

And the Walks of Life. During this time, she developed a deep appreciation for the creator space and identified a significant gap. Many creators lack access to first party data to inform their business decisions. When Raptive ended its research program, Kristin launched Creator Pulse to continue supporting creators, particularly in the food and lifestyle space, with real time audience feedback.

[00:03:34]   

Her mission is to help creators make smarter data backed decisions that truly reflect what their audience wants. Dr. Kristen Wager, welcome. I’m so excited to have you here today and to have an amazing chat. How are you?

[00:03:47]  Dr. Kristen Wager 

Good. Thank you so much for having me here. I’m, I’m so excited to talk shop, talk research, and I appreciate being able to enjoy this experience with you.

[00:03:56]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, I’m super excited too. Before we get into the juice, do you have a fun fact to share with us?

[00:04:02]  Dr. Kristen Wager 

I have to think about this. I’m not really great at talking about myself, so I’ll just share like facts about myself, which are, you know, stuff that I love to share about myself are. I’m California native, Michigan transplant, I am both a stepmom to a beautiful preteen and a bio mom to a one year old.And I’m a dog lover. I have a husky and a corgi. And then now that I’m actually thinking about it, probably my fun fact is that I just love opposites.

[00:04:32]  Megan Porta 

Okay. I love that. Yeah, that provides actually that kind of aligns with what you do. Right. Just kind of digging into the background of things and I love it. That’s really cool. Absolutely. So we’re going to talk today about how research can drive a content strategy for any creator that really drives home with your audience, which is so important.

[00:04:56]   

I think research is something that a lot of food bloggers ignore or avoid because it’s not necessarily like baked into their DNA. We’re content creators, but research is actually really important, correct?

[00:05:10]  Dr. Kristen Wager 

Absolutely.

[00:05:12]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. Okay, so to start, Kristen, would you mind just telling us a little bit about what you do? What is Creator Pulse? Give us the scoop.

[00:05:19]  Dr. Kristen Wager 

Yeah. So Creator Pulse is a full service research, both a platform as well as a research platform that offers DIY research. So I offer full service research. I walk you through the entire project, take all the heavy lifting, and then I give you results that help inform strategy. So whether that’s content, content strategy or product ideation, price optimization on a cookbook, I help you understand what those key points are for your audience.

[00:05:56]   

And I turn that into action. So things like content strategy, you know, if your audience really loves, you know, Meals for Two, and you’ve been missing that point, I help you turn that into what that means for content and then what that means for your audience. The DIY platform is actually new and it’s really meant for creators.

[00:06:18]   

It is. It is curated for creators with templates that help you with strategy, with product development. So if you want to get more income, diversify your revenue, and you want to go into, you know, productizations of consumable. Consumable products, you can survey your audience and understand what products are best for them and what they would be willing to buy from you.

[00:06:43]   

So that’s the. That’s the whole side is I have the research side, the full service research side, and the DIY research site.

[00:06:51]  Megan Porta 

Okay. Yeah. So to give people different options, some people do like DIY and some like handing everything off. So I love it. Now, I think that speaking of opposites, you said you really enjoyed opposites, so I feel like research is kind of the opposite of going with your gut. Would you agree with that?

[00:07:12]  Dr. Kristen Wager 

Absolutely.

[00:07:15]  Megan Porta 

So you must feel strongly about going with your gut. What are your thoughts on that as far as, like, developing plans and going about your business?

[00:07:23]  Dr. Kristen Wager 

So I. So starting off with, like, a little bit of tough love, your gut cannot scale. So I’ve watched creators for years, content teams for years, trust their instincts, and I think that has a good place and it’s gotten you this far. But I think relying on intuition alone is not enough. So I think I go back to.

[00:07:49]   

Platforms change, and we see this with AI, everything is changing so fast. Audiences are evolving, their needs and wants are evolving. And I think what worked, and we look at trends and how quickly they shift. What worked six months ago might not always work today and right now, or trends may not apply to your specific audience.

[00:08:12]   

So I think when you’re going with your gut, it really leads to two primary things. Echo chambers, where you really are posting what you want and what you like and not necessarily what your audience wants and needs, which I think your audience in general reflects your passions and excitement. But as you shift and you grow as a creator and you try new things, it does that still align with your audience.

[00:08:38]   

And then the second thing would be content burnout. So you’re guessing and you’re guessing your way through content creation without any real clarity, and you’re just really throwing spaghetti at the wall, which a lot of creators do this. They post a piece of content and then hope it sticks and hope it becomes viral and liked by their audience and gets all this engagement.

[00:09:01]   

But we only know that after the fact. And I think research, really, when you’re proactive with it, you essentially are not guessing what’s going to work, you are predicting what’s going to work and that leads to your content strategy and how to, how to build that. And I will also say long winded big brands like Meta, Google and Amazon, they are not guessing.

[00:09:25]   

They spend millions of dollars in research. And so I think that I’m here for the underdog, the small business. Like, getting research in the hands of creators, I think is important because that’s how they’re going to grow, that’s how they’re going to scale. And brands like Meta, they’re doing research on creators, on how you interact with your audience.

[00:09:47]   

So you should be doing the same thing so that you can learn how to grow and create solutions that grow your audience and drive real growth for your brand.

[00:09:57]  Megan Porta 

Because that’s what we all want, right? We want that growth, we want that traction, we want traffic, we want money. Yes, Amen to all of that. I love it. And I think content strategizing is a big piece of the puzzle for food bloggers, content creators. And you’re right, a lot of people do just kind of guess like, oh, I like to make green bean casserole.

[00:10:19]   

So I’m going to put that on my calendar for the month or the quarter where there’s probably a better way to do that. So do you have recommendations for just making that piece of it a little bit more strategic?

[00:10:32]  Dr. Kristen Wager 

Yeah. So I think we have to kind of define what strategy is in that first, that first bit. So like really teasing out what strategy looks like and what, how strategy really does fit within the content creation process. So when you look at most content creators today, their strategies are really based on performance metrics, the likes, the shares, the engagement.

[00:10:56]   

And they either look at, you know, the past three months or they look at, you know, for Easter, what was successful last year, and then they try to kind of recreate that with like maybe a different twist or a spin. Right. And that is a very reactive approach to content strategy. And that’s not bad.

[00:11:12]   

Like obviously people are successful at it and it does bring in views, but it’s really important to shift from being reactive and move into a space where you’re proactive and that’s where you’re actually being strategic with your content. So basing your performance, basing your past or your content on your past performance, again is being reactive.

[00:11:39]   

So a truly strategic content strategy is proactive, not reactive. It’s built with a purpose, it’s built with intention, it’s built with your audience’s needs in mind, and it also aligns with your business growth. So I think that’s a huge part of how to be strategic in general and then how to apply strategy to your, your content strategy.

[00:12:05]   

So it’s more than just looking at that past performance. It’s who is my audience, what are they thinking, what are they looking for, what do they need from me? And then how can I meet my audience where they’re at so that you can have a clear direction on where to go. It sort of gives you a roadmap of how to best meet your audience where they’re at. So I think that’s really where true step, true strategy sits.

[00:12:33]  Megan Porta 

Okay, so you recommend for food bloggers, probably looking at your data. So opening Google Analytics, seeing what has worked in the past, and then marrying that with what your audience is actually needing from you. Correct. Is that kind of a good template?

[00:12:50]  Dr. Kristen Wager 

Yeah, I think that’s actually great. And I think I’ll even add to that a little bit more. Is like, you know, we can use press performance to guide future performance, but without that piece of knowing what your audience wants and needs, that’s kind of the missing key to really drive that success. But then there’s also the component of, you know, looking at performance after and understanding, you know, I put this out three months ago.

[00:13:18]   

What worked? What didn’t? You know, did this drive engagement? Did this drive like. So it’s looking at past performance, measuring what your audience wants in real time, and then looking at the performance of the strategy that you build based on that and kind of making tweaks and adjusting from there.

[00:13:35]  Megan Porta 

So it’s not a one and done situation. It’s kind of an ongoing thing where you have to keep experimenting and seeing what data to look at and what to analyze and how to move forward. Right. It’s an ongoing process.

[00:13:49]  Dr. Kristen Wager 

So that is absolutely what I love about research is it’s iterative and it’s never perfect. And just asking your audience is a way to connect with them. And I think the way that I look at it is it’s not just about research, it’s about an ongoing goal of connecting deeper with your audience.And one of the tools to do that is through asking them what they want.

[00:14:18]  Megan Porta 

Okay, so let’s go on to that a little bit. So how do you recommend we do that sort of research? So is that surveys is it just paying attention to what people are putting in the comments on social media. What else?

[00:14:32]  Dr. Kristen Wager 

There’s so many ways that you can do research. So for someone who’s really inexperienced and just wants to start asking questions, it’s as simple as putting a poll on, on Facebook, on Instagram, and saying, hey, are, what are your pain points in the kitchen right now? Kind of taking all of the answers and identifying some key themes.

[00:14:54]   

Like, you know, maybe one of their pain points is, I don’t have enough time, or I don’t. I never know what to cook. And I’m always looking for inspiration. But Pinterest is so bogged down with ads like, how do you solve that problem for me? Right? So that’s the first thing. And I would say that’s not as rigorous as a survey developed by, you know, an expert, but it’s a start, and it’s a way to just connect with your audience and ask what their needs are.

[00:15:21]   

So if you want to start research, you want to start it in a very inexpensive way. Put up a poll, one question, and then look at the answers. And I think too, the other piece of this is it’s also about listening. So if you ask your audience a question, listen and engage and understand what those, those answers mean, and then try to identify what that, what that piece is, that’s actually going to solve the problem for them.

[00:15:47]   

So that’s kind of the, the cheap and easy way, the I’m getting started way. At creator post, we do tons of different stuff. We do social listening. So again, looking at your website, looking at your comments all across the board, your socials, identifying, you know, what’s working, what’s not working. I really, I put social listening in the category a reactive Approach.

[00:16:06]   

So I think it’s great and it has its place. But I love it when we can do interviews, we survey audiences, so we’re interacting with them directly and in real time. And then we kind of turn that into all the data that comes in, into actionable insights. I’d say from that perspective, there’s so many different types of research too.

[00:16:30]   

So it’s not just surveys, interviews, polls, social listening. There’s kind of buckets of research. And in working with creators over the years, I’ve really found like, the most impactful research for them that really hits home and helps them make business decisions is audience insights. So profiling your audience and that really helps to understand psychographics, demographics, behaviors, habits, loves, hates, challenges.

[00:17:03]   

And then it essentially profiles your larger audience into like three, four different categories. So that you can target those specific categories much more effectively with messages and recipes and all of those things that solve problems and resonates with them. I’d say the second type of researcher solution that I’ve seen is like competitor benchmarking.

[00:17:27]   

We always want to know, like, you know, what are my peers doing? How, how do I look compared to them? And I often got that question a lot. It’s like, how, you know, what, what did my peer get in this mark score? And I’m like, I can’t tell you, but you’re doing great.

[00:17:44]   

So essentially, you know, competitor benchmarking is really looking at your niche overall, looking at what content’s performing. And that’s kind of sits in the secondary data area where you’re like looking online and you’re just kind of gathering information of what’s already out there. And then it’s taking all that information, building a survey, sending it out to an audience, and figuring out what the gaps are in this space.

[00:18:12]   

Creator Pulse really sits more in that area. So we survey their audience and we look really at, you know, what is most satisfied or what’s satisfied across the board with food bloggers, what’s really important to your specific audience. And then that creates a really good map of what’s underserved. So if your audience is really dissatisfied with a specific topic, but it’s really important to them, you’re going to see really the opportunities of content and then you can help to.

[00:18:44]   

That will help build strategy around content. And then the last one is, I’d say brand perception would be like the last piece of bucketed research that I have found useful. And that’s really helping creators to understand how their audience perceives them. And essentially it’s, you know, what values are you presenting to your audience?

[00:19:08]   

What do they think about you? What do you represent? And you can use that information to shape content around your identity and how you’re perceived. Or if it’s not the way you want to be perceived, you can adjust your messaging to better align with like your business goals and how you want your audience to really perceive.

[00:19:30]   

So at the end of the day, you know, those three methods, those are great. I always say, like, if you don’t have the budget or, you know, are beginning research, start with a poll. Just start with asking your audience some something.

[00:19:43]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. Do something. Yeah. This can be feel overwhelming I think for a lot of people, especially since, like I said in the beginning, we’re not all research driven like you are. I’m so grateful for people like you that actually like this, because it does seem like, oh, gosh, is this necessary? I just want to create content and put out content.Content. But I think if you, from what I’m hearing you say, if you put in the time, a little bit of time even, that you really can get super valuable data to move forward with.

[00:20:12]  Dr. Kristen Wager 

Yeah. And I think too, it’s, it’s about baking it into your workflow. So you create kind of a regular cadence of research where you’re asking, planning, putting out, measuring success, asking, planning, putting out, measuring success. So if you really bake it into your workflow and you create kind of the questions that are more templated, it does become less overwhelming when you’re like, okay, I know every quarter, every six months, I’m going to ask these four questions of my audience because I want to see if anything has changed.

[00:20:47]   

I want to see if there are any new needs that are identified. And of course, you know, if you don’t want to do it, my company can always come in and do it for you.

[00:20:57]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, no, that’s a good point. That once you get into a flow of it and create a system that it’s not quite as overwhelming, which. Absolutely, that’s good news. Now, when we’re looking at data, how far back do we go? Do we look at like, if we’ve had blog data for 15 years, do we look at all of that or do we look more like within the past year?Do you have thoughts on that?

[00:21:22]  Dr. Kristen Wager 

Oh, absolutely. So I sit in the space of real time data. So first party data, you are engaging with your audience, you’re immediately taking that, turning it into insights and then putting the content out. So it’s very 1, 2, 3. I think that if you look at past data, you’re looking at those performance metrics, those like shares engagement rate.

[00:21:45]   

If you look and you compare to last year’s, I think that would be like sort of a good rule of thumb. So, like, if you’re planning Easters are really salient because that’s coming up here. You all are probably putting out your Easter desserts and dinners and have had that planned for months, I’m sure.

[00:22:03]   

But if you’re looking and planning, you look at the past performance, about a year, maybe two years, and you go, okay, well, here’s what performed really well. We did notice that, you know, dinners performed really well, but desserts didn’t. So that can kind of guide a little bit. But when your audience is changing and evolving so much, you always want to kind of stay at the forefront of those trends of that information and you can do that by asking them real questions in real time.

[00:22:38]   

So I think that’s kind of, kind of the key to this type of research and this, it’s called primary data, where you’re actually getting firsthand data from your audience to then inform the information and the strat, the strategy that goes behind your content, your business, any product development and all that.

[00:22:57]  Megan Porta 

Okay, yeah, that’s helpful. It’s tempting to look far back. For me, it’s like, oh, I’ve, I have so much data here, let’s look and see what happened years ago. But that’s probably not the best strategy. We want real time more for those trends. Right? Like trends change all the time. So we want to keep an eye on that as well.

[00:23:16]   

All right, do you have an example of a time, because I know you’ve worked with a lot of people when research has really helped content strategy and change the course of a business?

[00:23:27]  Dr. Kristen Wager 

Yes, I absolutely do. As you mentioned, I’ve worked with, with a lot of creators and honestly I work with a lot of food creators and I think probably the most salient and, and kind of most exciting because I actually was able to measure after the fact working with this creator. So I had a food blogger who was in her main brand, you know, modern Southern cooking with like a healthy twist.

[00:23:52]   

And our audience loved that they, we were not going to shift away from like content that was specifically like healthy and modern Southern cooking. So we did ask, we surveyed our audience. We were looking for opportunities that sort of uncovered opportunities, untapped opportunities, and where her audience felt like they were being underserved with her with content in general, like across the board and then also with within her content.

[00:24:16]   

And I really, I love this because it came from one piece of data. And then obviously we kind of made some assumptions based on other pieces of data. But a really good theme emerged across the board. Small batch meals. So like meals for two. So we looked at her audience demographics and their values and we actually found that a lot of her audience was empty nesters, young couples, people who really weren’t cooking for bigger families.

[00:24:47]   

And they also had values around food waste and food reduction, like weight, like reducing food waste. And then they were also essentially mentioned, like I don’t want to eat the same meal over and over and over again. Right. So I don’t necessarily want or need the leftovers. And then any leftovers I do end up having with like a four person recipe.

[00:25:10]   

I waste and I don’t like wasting. So the strategic insight there is not changing your content. Completely, but creating a new series to meet that need. That still focused her content around healthy southern cooking. But it was smaller portions that really was designed for this specific piece of her audience in general. What I loved is the results were amazing.

[00:25:39]   

Like, over six months, she increased her views by about 200,000 page views. That was across just. It was under 10 posts. On those posts, she made about 50,000.

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[00:27:02]  Dr. Kristen Wager 

So it’s kind of stuff like that where it’s like, oh, like I didn’t realize that this was an untapped opportunity for me. It’s so simple. Now I have to create specific meals for two. But this is actually gonna drive page views and engagement and increase my ad revenue.

[00:27:20]  Megan Porta 

And once you see that, you’re kind of encouraged to do more of it. Right? The end result is extra dollars and extra traffic then.

[00:27:28]  Dr. Kristen Wager 

Absolutely.

[00:27:29]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. That’s great. Thank you for sharing that example. I love it. So how do we take the data that we accumulate and turn it into kind of a plan? Some people would call that an editorial calendar or something along those lines.

[00:27:43]  Dr. Kristen Wager 

Yeah, I love that. I have another example because I think putting it in context of like how we would do, how we would work with you. Right. So how I would work with you. I’ve worked with a lot of creators and it is hard. You guys are so good at content marketing, at perfecting your recipes and you sit in that space and turning data into insights is often confusing.

[00:28:09]   

Hard. It’s hard to translate those data points into something that’s real and usable. And that was one of the things that I really struggled with at first because in working with this audience was I used to work with like Google and Meta and these companies that, you know, know data and you are speaking with people who speak the language.

[00:28:32]   

And so I think what I like to do is not just leave them, leave creators hanging, but take the data points that we find through surveying, through interviewing those types of things and then turn it into that actionable piece. Right. So I was working with a wellness creator who’s in the food space.

[00:28:51]   

She, we discovered through research. Her audience was like really obviously still interested in nutritional tips, but they were struggling. Like one of their main challenges was quick, easy, healthy breakfast. So not relying on a food bar to get their kids to school, but plan ahead. Those types of things that you could microwave or just pull out of the freezer.

[00:29:15]   

So based on that knowledge, what we do is to build out the editorial content, we bucket all of the themes that emerge from that research into content themes. So five minute breakfasts, family friendly mornings, morning meal prep hacks. So those kind of buckets that you can turn into an actual post, an actual blog post that helps solve the problem for them.

[00:29:41]   

So that gives a clear roadmap for the content creation and. But it is also still rooted in that data. So that data is informing that content direction. So the second thing that I would do to kind of translate that data into action is then help create messaging frameworks. And those are related to the essentially two to three pillars that define you as a brand.

[00:30:08]   

So fast and healthy meals, family wellness routines, mindful eating habits. So those are three pillars that connect both with the content of Healthy Breakfast, but also with her brand in general. So you’re kind of like creating this space and this flow for content to really be created through data. The next thing that I would do to create that data into action is connect those insights and that content to your business goals.

[00:30:39]   

Right. So if your business goal is newsletter signup, what do we need to do to get more newsletter signups and what’s really going to help that? So like for example, you could create a lead magnet that is download seven quick healthy meal and breakfasts in the morning for busy mornings. Right? So like one of the.

[00:31:01]   

I love this example too because again, I was able to kind of track it and use those performance metrics after that. So with that specific example we, we did, we did a lead magnet that was, that was a pop up. It said download seven quick and easy healthy meals for breakfast. And she ended up with higher increased engagement.

[00:31:20]   

So that was really cool over a three month period. And then her engagement or her Newsletter signups grew month over month, 7%. And in the past they were. Her growth was 3%. So she had a pretty steady like growth. But we were able to kind of push that 4% more and to meet those business goals.

[00:31:41]   

So I think there is, you know, those, those kind of four steps. And again, I take obviously through the steps of research, you know, research, turn it into content, connect those with your business. We get to also measure at the very end. And I love this because that’s where performance metrics really shine, is like tracking and understanding.

[00:32:01]   

But I think there’s something even more important to really reflect on is that as you learn more about your audience and as you create content that satisfies their needs and addresses their wants, you’re building, I think you’re building something, something so much more valuable, and that’s trust and loyalty. And just by asking and listening, you are building trust and loyalty among your audience.

[00:32:31]   

And I think when you go beyond that surface level data, you really dive in deep. You know, you’re taking, you’re not looking at those likes, you’re not looking at age or gender that Instagram gives you. You’re diving into what your audience actually wants and what they’re saying they want. You get those higher engagement rates, you get the steady growth of your newsletter and you’re building stronger relationships.

[00:32:54]   

But I think that opens the door to alternative revenue streams, like bigger brand deals, because you have built that trust and loyalty. More clicks on your affiliate links because your audience really trusts your recommendations, because you are building content for them. So I think those are kind of. I always like to say that because I think the whole point of research is to build these connections so that you can meet the needs of your audience who has challenges.

[00:33:25]  Megan Porta 

So, yeah, those are the perks that we don’t always think about. Right. But that come up inevitably after doing research. So I, I wouldn’t have thought of that. But it makes sense. You’re going to gain more trust and build that connection with your audience, which is what we all want. So it’s kind of a win, win all around.

[00:33:44]   

I kind of mentioned this earlier, just having those misconceptions about research, like, it’s too much time. I don’t want to pay someone to do this. I already outsourced, blah, blah, blah. Can you address some of those misconceptions and maybe break them down for us?

[00:34:00]  Dr. Kristen Wager 

Oh, absolutely. I mean, I definitely. In research you get people who are always going to create barriers, like, what if the research doesn’t work? What if it doesn’t give me answers. I think I’ve bucketed the misconceptions or myths about research into kind of three bigger categories. And that would be like research takes too long.

[00:34:23]   

You mentioned it. You know that one, it’s too expensive.

[00:34:26]  Megan Porta 

Yeah.

[00:34:27]  Dr. Kristen Wager 

And then I already know my audience. I think those are the three that I hear over and over again when I’m working with creators and food bloggers. So I think to bust to myth bust the first one, I would say I’ve worked with creators for the past three years. Lovely audience by the way.

[00:34:45]   

I absolutely love working with creators. I’ve worked in corporate and it’s soul sucking. And then to shift from creators who are there with their passion, they’ve built a business out of it. It’s amazing. Anyway, side note, so I came from academia obviously, and when you talk about research that takes too long, let me tell you, this is the most well thought out research that takes two years.

[00:35:10]   

It doesn’t take two weeks or a day, it takes two years. So when you get into the industry from academia and you see that research takes two to four weeks and you’re agile and you’re quick and you have to move along, it’s pretty eye opening. So I would say to address that specific one, research takes too long.

[00:35:29]   

Even just the quickest poll, you can have answers within 24 hours. So if you just put one pull out into the world, you can turn that into insights within 24 hours. So I think that is, you know, a big part of it. And I also notice like too, when working with creators, I as a researcher, and if you are a researcher listening to this, you’ll know one of the hardest things to do is get participants into your study.

[00:35:57]   

That is not the case with creators. You already do have a pretty loyal audience and they want to give you your feedback, their feedback, so they are primed and ready to answer questions for you so that you can then tailor your content to meet their needs even, even more so. You know, the first time that I worked with a creator, I was like setting our expectations.

[00:36:21]   

I’m like, okay, it’s probably going to take two to three weeks to get responses, you know, so this is, this is the length of the project. Just like setting your expectations. We’ll be patient, we’ll walk you through it. I launched the survey on a Tuesday. I came in the next morning to 1500 responses.

[00:36:43]   

And that’s a lot time and time and time and time again. So I think research does take a long time, but there are other ways that you can just get Quick answers by just doing polls. And again, within this specific audience, you are shortening it because you do get responses so quickly. So research is too expensive.

[00:37:03]   

That would be the third or the second one. So for me personally, my goal and one of the reasons that I started Creator Pulse is because I want creators to learn about research. I want them to make it a habit. And I know that research is expensive. I’m trying to make it affordable so that it’s accessible to everybody.

[00:37:24]   

So one of the biggest things for my DIY platform, I charge $6.99 for the first tier. So it is insanely inexpensive. It’s $6.99 a month. And it’s that. That’s my goal is like, I don’t need to make money off creators. I want to just bring research so that you can start informing that strategy.

[00:37:44]   

I think that that’s, that’s the most exciting thing for me is just helping creators build strategy. I think creators often don’t realize that the audience feedback is valuable and that it really doesn’t require a big budget. So when you go back to those polls, you again, could just use Google form and create three or four questions and send it out to your newsletter.

[00:38:08]   

A lot of times too. When research does get expensive is when you’re paying for your respondents. And the workaround that I’ve kind of found with that is offering incentives like, hey, hey, I’m gonna do a sweepstakes and please give me your feedback and I’m gonna enter you into a sweepstakes to win a cookbook, which you already have and you’ve already paid for, or giving away a free ebook at the end of the survey as an incentive.

[00:38:39]   

So those are some ways that you can make research a lot less expensive. And then one of my goals, again with my tool, is to just make it less expensive, because I can. And these tools that are out there already, they also can. They just don’t.

[00:38:55]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, okay, awesome. You definitely broke those down well. So, yeah, no barriers anymore. And then if somebody doesn’t want to do this themselves, because we do have such complicated businesses, sometimes it’s like, no, I would rather have somebody do this for me. I know Creator Pulse does offer this. So can you talk about how you can help?

[00:39:18]  Dr. Kristen Wager 

Yeah. So as I think I mentioned at the very beginning that I kind of have two. Two sides to my, my research business, and that’s the full service. I work with creators very into very one on one to design projects that are specific to meet their business goals. So it’s not just Looking at content strategy.

[00:39:38]   

But if your business goal is to develop content strategy on a regular cadence, I build a custom study that helps to inform that one creator I’m working with right now wants to productize and diversify their income that way. And so I’m working with them, built a custom study around understanding what their audience struggles with so that we can then that can inform the product ideation process so they can discover products that are actually going to be useful and resonate with their audience.

[00:40:14]   

So that really is very custom. It’s very much based on your needs. So if you come to me, I talk to you, I talk to you about your business goals and I go, okay, based on this business goal, I know that this is the research that’s going to help inform it and help solve the problem.

[00:40:30]   

And then the DIY research platform, it is much more templatized. And that’s kind of why I’m able to make it a lot less expensive. But it’s actually, I’ve designed it in a way with creators in mind. So those barriers of it’s too expensive, it’s too hard to understand. I never know what to do with the data.

[00:40:52]   

You come into my platform, you get access to an easy to read and understand template. You can go through that template if you would like to. Each of the questions are designed specifically to get at a really niche topic. So content strategy, for instance, is going to be specific to content strategy. It’s going to be less than 10 questions and it’s going to get, it’s going to help you inform your content strategy.

[00:41:17]   

So you would, you know, if you want to inform your content strategy, you would select that survey, you’d copy your unique link, you’d send it, put that link in your newsletter or your socials. Respondents come in. Once the respondents come in, essentially I have built out these very easy dashboards that connect with each of the templates that really break down each piece of the data, tell you what it means, and then tells you what to actually do with it.

[00:41:47]   

So that’s, that’s the DIY portion. So the way that I have developed the platform, I’m going to mark it with a much smaller. That’s the idea of the platform is I want to be able to build these massive templates. I’m going to mark it with a proprietary score that’s called the Creator Impact score.

[00:42:06]   

And that’s the first survey that you’ll get. Essentially it’s a score that measures your total influence over your audience by asking questions like, like would you Purchase products from me. How much trust do you have in me? What do you think of the quality of my recommendations? And that indexes all of those questions into a score from 0 to 100 that tells you how much influence you truly have over your audience.

[00:42:30]   

And then you can take that and turn that into your pitches, your media kit and it helps you stand out amongst your peers and then also helps you negotiate stronger deals with brands. So if a brand comes to you and they’re like, oh, I normally pay this, you can say, well, I actually have data to show that my audience is willing to purchase from me.

[00:42:51]   

They trust my recommendations, they believe my content is quality and my recommendations are quality. So I would like to counter with XYZ and you can confidently say that when you do have the data, you can say, I’ve asked my audience and I know this information. So that’s what I’m going to market with Creator Pulse and I’m hoping that it’s, you know, a useful tool and the idea would be eventually as I’m, as I grow, I’m going to build in these, these templates, the content strategy templates, the product information templates, product discovery templates that help and are curated but simple to help your business grow.

[00:43:32]  Megan Porta 

I love that you mentioned the brands and how they respond to data. I think that is so true. So if working with brands is a priority for your year, for the next couple years, I think this is an absolute no brainer. They are going to absolutely love the data you provide and probably you’re probably going to get quite a bit more money just by saying confidently, here’s what my audience thinks of me, here’s what they believe in and here are the numbers.Yeah, that’s so powerful. Yeah, yeah.

[00:44:03]  Dr. Kristen Wager 

And I, with the Creator Impact score, I’ve tested it out on several creators and the thing that I really like about it is it’s not a number that is going to be low. You are asking your audience and your following that already really loves you and already really trusts you from what I’ve seen.

[00:44:21]   

So your score typically is going to be on the higher range because you do have this influence over your audience and you do have this influence to change their decisions to help them click affiliate links. So it’s really just proving that out. And again like you said, giving bigger brands that data to say I have this and I know this about my audience.

[00:44:46]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, love that. This has been amazing. Do you have final last thoughts for us, Kristen? Just about, you know all of this data research situation. Yeah, I don’t know the data lingo, research situation.

[00:45:03]  Dr. Kristen Wager 

That’s the lingo right there. The situation we’re in, this big data situation.

[00:45:09]  Megan Porta 

That’s right.

[00:45:10]  Dr. Kristen Wager 

I’d say final thoughts would be it’s research only helps guide your creativity. And I said it earlier, but research is such a powerful tool to help you understand how to continually connect with your audience and create content that really resonates with them even as their. Their needs shift and as your interests change. So that’s. That’s what I would leave you with.

[00:45:38]  Megan Porta 

Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing all of this and for being such a research guru for us, those of us who need to lean on people like you. So, yeah, just thank you for your time today. Do you have either a favorite quote or words of inspiration to leave us with?

[00:45:55]  Dr. Kristen Wager 

Yes, very relevant one. I don’t even know where this came from, but I’ve read it throughout. Like, it’s on, like every marketing and research blog I’ve ever read. When you know your audience, your audience knows.

[00:46:10]  Megan Porta 

Oh, that’s good. I like that. That’s absolutely perfect. Okay, we’re gonna put together a show notes page for you, Kristin. So if anyone wants to go look at everything we talked about today, we’ll put it there eatblogtalk.com/creatorpulse now tell everyone where they can find you, Kristen.

[00:46:29]  Dr. Kristen Wager 

Absolutely. You can find me at creatorpulse.io. So that’s C R E A T O R P U L S E IO. That’s where my platform lives. You can find me on LinkedIn. I do live on LinkedIn and I know that’s not where you guys live. So I am trying to also live on Instagram.

[00:46:50]   

I’m not very good. I’m not very good, but my handles are creatorpulseio and then I both have a business page on LinkedIn which is Xreator Pulse. If you search it, you’ll find it. And then if you want to connect with me on LinkedIn, absolutely, connect with me. I’m Kristen Wager, Ph.D. on LinkedIn.So feel free to connect with me and then my email address. If you are interested in pursuing research, I’d love to chat with you. It’s [email protected].

[00:47:22]  Megan Porta 

Thank you, Kristen. It was such a pleasure. And thank you so much for listening food bloggers. I will see you next time. 

[00:47:32]  Outro

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Eat Blog Talk. Don’t forget to rate and review Eat Blog Talk on your favorite podcast player. Thank you. And I will see you next time.