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Episode 353: How to Actually Establish your Blog’s Brand Identity (+ Busting Brand Identity Myths) with Melinda Keckler

In episode 353, Megan chats to Melinda Keckler about how to establish a strong brand identity and why building brand affinity with our audience is so important to have a successful blog. 

We cover information about why you need to get ready to play the long game in blogging to build brand identity and affinity, what to consider when you think about what your readers will take away from visiting your blog, remembering that marketing is meant to get your readers to do something and how video and audio are the secret sauce to connecting and engaging with your growing audience.

Listen on the player below or on iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast player. Or scroll down to read a full transcript.

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Guest Details

Connect with Crinkled Cookbook
Website | Instagram | Pinterest

Bio Melinda Keckler is the recipe developer, content creator, photographer and founder of the food blog Crinkled Cookbook. She’s been blogging since 2019 while jugging a full time marketing job, two children (grown up!) and a husband. For the past 14 years she’s worked in brand strategy and marketing and is applying those principles to help grow her food blog.

Takeaways

  • Marketing and brand strategy is something that we should all be mindful about.
  • Brand strategy, brand identity and building your brand identity, cannot be seen in a 24 hour cycle in your Google Analytics.
  • Brand lives within the experience that our readers have as they prepare our recipes and hopefully enjoy the outcome.
  • We don’t own our brands.
  • We can build our brand identity and brand affinity.
  • Marketing is a tool to influence brand identity.
  • Social media is a marketing tool to help build and sustain brand affinity.
  • Awareness is where someone for the first time finds our blogs and is the first step experiencing our blog and content.
  • Video content is the secret sauce to building brand affinity.
  • Amplifying what we can to help influence how the audience comes to our website and perceive our content,

Transcript

Click for full script.

EBT353_Melinda Keckler

Melinda Keckler: Hi everybody. This is Melinda Keckler from the Crinkled Cookbook, and you are listening to Eat Blog Talk. 

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Megan Porta: Hey food bloggers. Welcome to Eat Blog Talk, the podcast for food bloggers looking for the value and confidence that will move the needle forward in their businesses. This episode is sponsored by RankIQ. I am your host, Megan Porta, and you are listening to episode number 353. Today I have Melinda Keckler with me. She is going to talk to us about how to establish your blog’s brand identity. Melinda is the recipe developer, content creator, photographer, and founder of the Food Blog, Crinkled Cookbook. She’s been blogging since 2019 while juggling a full-time marketing job, two children and a husband. For the past 14 years, she’s worked in brand strategy and marketing and is applying those principles to help grow her food blog.

She considers herself an early riser, but a late bloomer. Melinda is always looking for ways to reinvent herself, and she’s eager to share her expertise. Hi, Melinda. I’m so happy to have you here. How are you today? 

Melinda Keckler: Hi, Megan. I’m doing great. Thank you. Let me just say I am a big fan of this podcast, and the pleasure is really mine to be here. I’m just delighted. 

Megan Porta: Oh, I love hearing that! Thank you so much for listening and yeah, let’s get into your topic. But before we do that, we wanna hear what your fun fact is. 

Melinda Keckler: Oh, okay, So back in my early twenties, I did a study abroad in France. And it was for a summer, and it was very specific, it was strategic. I wanted to become fluent in French. I’d taken French in high school and a couple years in college, and I thought, you know what? This is what I need to immerse myself in a French environment. All French speaking so that I can become perfectly fluent.

Megan Porta: Oh my gosh. And are you fluent? 

Melinda Keckler: So here’s where it’s a fun fact. I’m attending the university there and I’m living with a couple. I had a roommate and we ended up having to walk several miles each way to the university every day. It was very hot. So in the evenings when we’d get back with this nice couple, it was just exhausting. I found myself not leaning into the French and more leaning into the English because they curious to embrace a new language themselves. So anyway, somewhere in the south of France today, there is a family speaking near perfect English, thanks to my visi. It didn’t work out quite the way I thought.

Megan Porta: Oh, that’s the story of life, I feel like. You go into something with one expectation or desired outcome and something completely different comes out of it. But hey, you helped some people. 

Melinda Keckler: I love that that’s how we’re looking at it. Yes. They were awesome. So all is good. Yes. It was a long time ago.

Megan Porta: That had to be extremely scary to just immerse yourself in a different part of the world and Yeah, that’s very brave.

Melinda Keckler: For sure. You grow from these experiences and we learn a lot about ourselves when you’ve realized you can’t communicate with ease. Because living in a space and coming and going in and out of restaurants and businesses where no one speaks your native language, that is hard. 

Megan Porta: We take that for granted, I think. So much. Just the fact that we can communicate anytime we want to with anyone around. Oh, thank you so much for sharing that. I love it. So I alluded to this a little bit in your bio that I read through, but you have experience in marketing. So can you tell us just a little bit about why you are interested in this whole concept of identifying a brand and how you’ve come to marry this with your blog or blogging.

Melinda Keckler: Thank you. Marketing and brand strategy is something that we should all be mindful about. My day job is, I’m a director of marketing. I interact with a couple thousand employees at my place of employment. We talk about brand strategy all the time. I’ve got a good size team. There’s a lot that we do to influence the brand of the organization where I work. As I started food blogging, I realized, these same principles can certainly apply to food blogging. The nice thing about marketing strategy and brand identity is a lot of this stuff, it’s really just a shift in mindset for us. It’s not a heavy lift in terms of what we have to understand from a technical perspective. It really is a shift in mindset. So this is something, do as I say, not as I do. I’m working hard to apply all of these things to my blog as well. My blog is still fairly young. I’m growing. But this, brand strategy and brand identity and building your brand identity, that is not something that you can see in a 24 hour cycle in your Google Analytics. It takes time, and we talk about that a lot as food bloggers, but I really was excited to have this opportunity to share some of the insights that I have gleaned in these 14 years and share them with everybody. Because this will impact how the needle moves.

Megan Porta: I wanted to ask you really quick about the, you mentioned shifting your mindset. If you listen to Eat Blog Talk, which I know you do, I’m big on mindset and just making those little shifts. So how do we shift our mindset to align with what you’re talking about? 

Melinda Keckler: So first and foremost, I’d like to do a little myth busting. So first of all, your brand is not your logo or your font style. Now both of those things are a big part of our graphic identity for our brands, and as our blogs grow, those visual things are cues that tell our readers, Ah, yes, okay. I’ve come to the right place, which is that familiar look and feel that I know represents this particular food blog. Consistency with those visual cues is really important. But our logo, our font, those are things that absolutely no one cares about except for us. Because they are not the brand. To help settle this for just a second, I kind, I’d like to use an analogy and kind of step outside of our food blogging world. So think of your very favorite restaurant and why you like it and why you would recommend it to someone. So it’s probably because the food is delicious. This service is great. The ambiance feels so good, The location is nice. Maybe you have great memories there. They’re the reason why you recommend that restaurant and you enjoy eating there. The reason why you would recommend that restaurant, that’s brand. I’ve never heard someone say, Oh, Melinda, you’ve gotta try this new restaurant. And if I say why? Oh, the font on the menu is so cute and the logo on the door. So those are cues and it’s obviously important for fonts to be legible. It’s important that the logo be consistent and be pleasant to look at. But that’s not your brand. As painful as it is for us to think about, we really don’t own our brands. Brand lives within the experience that our readers have as they prepare our recipes and hopefully enjoy the outcome. We don’t own our brand, but we can influence it and there are things we can do, easy things to influence and build our brand identity and brand affinity, which is really important. 

Megan Porta: Oh my gosh. That was also well said. I was taking notes like crazy. You said so many gems. Brand lives in the experiences our readers have. Wow. I love your analogy of just being in a restaurant and that makes so much sense to me. I don’t care about what’s on the menu. I do often complain about the way menus look. Do you not\? I think we can all relate to that. What are they thinking? But that’s not why you love a restaurant. It’s more about the feel. How the people make you feel. The vibe, the food, all of it coming together. So it’s not one or two elements. It’s like a bunch of elements coming together.

Melinda Keckler: Exactly. It all lives in the mind of our audience. That’s what I love about food blogging. When you think about the opportunity for brand building and establishing brand affinity with our audience and our readers, what could be a more communal, engaging experience than preparing food for someone? That’s what we are helping people find success with. So I think the opportunity for brand building and brand affinity is just limitless in food blogging. 

Megan Porta: Oh my gosh. Amazing. So can you tell me what the difference is between the words brand and marketing? Because I think we often get those two confused, like they meld together.

Melinda Keckler: They sure do. Marketing is meant to get people to do something. People often think marketing is advertising. Actually advertising, paid advertising that lives under the umbrella of marketing. Marketing is engagement that is message driven, audience driven. It’s designed to prompt a response. The brand is the way people feel once they’ve engaged with our content. So marketing exists to get people to do something, and in marketing lingo, it’s often called a conversion . Depending on the platform that we’re posting our content to, that conversion can be different. Sometimes all we really want people to do is to come to our websites. That’s the mothership of all conversions for us food bloggers, right? We want sessions, we want page views. We want people to come to our website. So marketing is a tool to influence brand identity. It’s a tool to influence how people perceive our blogs. It’s a tool to help people feel our brands and connect with our brand story. As lovely as it would be to think that people come to our blogs, they dive into our about section and they pour with wrapped attention over every post to get to know us better, that’s just not how it happens. The onus is on us to use tools to influence our perceptions. Which leads into another myth I would like to bust. Your brand is not what you post on social media. I know I’m busting myths. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. Wow. Yes. 

Melinda Keckler: Let’s put on our marketing strategist hats here for a second. Your social media posts, that’s engagement. That’s marketing. That’s marketing for your food blog. That is marketing for your food blog. We tend to care so much about those big conversions that drive people to our website sessions and pageviews. But as we all know, this is a long game. Brand affinity, brand affinity is not something measured again in a quick cycle, a day cycle in Google Analytics. So social media is a marketing tool to help build and sustain brand affinity. 

Megan Porta: Okay, so you are blowing my mind. I’m just trying to absorb this all. What we post on social media is supporting the way that people feel about what we’re delivering, right? So it’s a tool to get people into our world and to get them to feel like that amazing restaurant that they walk into. 

Melinda Keckler: Correct. So we want to build brand affinity. We want someone to consider us a trusted source, an expert. We want raving fans to be a part of our vibrant community of our food blog. We want people to know our name. We want them to know the name of our blog and enjoy engaging with our content and return to our blog time and time again. In marketing we often talk about the marketing, depending on the industry, it’s a funnel, it’s an upside down pyramid. It can be a tiered approach with a ladder, but again, hiring ourselves as our chief marketing strategist for our food blogs, I think is really important. To think about that marketing funnel as we’re thinking about the different tools that we use to engage our audience with our content.

The way the funnel works is everybody, everyone starts at the same level. Everyone is completely unaware that our blog even exists. That’s how the world is. That’s where the potential lies. Awareness is that first step on the ladder. That first entry point into the funnel. Awareness is where someone for the first time finds our blogs, maybe in Google search, or they happen to stumble upon some of our content on Pinterest. Maybe someone, God bless them, shares our post on Facebook. Awareness is really important because nobody gets to brand affinity without knowing it exists. So that kinda leans into the value of our social media content, of our Instagram, of being active on Facebook in some capacity or Pinterest. So awareness is really important, that having a great user experience on your webpage, making sure that we’re doing the right things so that we’re trusted as well in the eyes of Google and our content is being served up in Google search. Awareness is really important. So that’s the first step.

The next step, and there’s only a couple, is engagement. So this is where. Our audience does something. This is that conversion point. Marketing is designed to get people to do something, remember. So engagement is often where that conversion happens. So for instance, if sometimes when we get like an oh, if we’re lucky enough to get a national media placement, we’ll see a nice spike in engagement, and that’s when someone will click on a recipe. Maybe they’ll print our recipe and maybe if we’re really lucky, they’ll subscribe or something wonderful like that. But the fact is, at that point of engagement, they are on our food blog and that’s just where we want them to be. So at that point in the marketing funnel, that’s where the strength of our food blog really shines. Is our photography strong? Are the recipes written well? Are they accurate? Is the user experience on the website a good one? So engagement is that place where we see people experience our brand, experience the brand of our food blogs at the first step.

So the next step is familiarity. This is where it starts getting harder. Because we can easily lose people after that first conversion point. Look at our Google analytics. There’s x number of people who will come to our website every month. We see that in our sessions and our page views. Of course we wanna put our arms around and hug every single one of those. I totally get it. But we want them to come back. We want them to know that we’re a trusted authority. We want them to know that we will help them succeed in the kitchen. Of course, this is where the content on our pages and the quality of our content just pays dividends. It’s really important that people feel familiar with us. This is also where our social media content helps fuel that familiarity placement in the marketing funnel. Because that’s a great place where we can let our personalities shine and we can help people recognize that we are just like them and we’re raising children, or we’re busy working, or we’ve got the same challenges that they have. Familiarity is really an important part of the funnel for people to experience. 

So the next one then, and this is where, this is the mothership, right? This is where we find our most loyal readers and our biggest fans; brand affinity. That’s ah, that’s what we’re trying to achieve. We want people to remember us and return to our website time and time again. Brand affinity is not something that’s measured again in two or three weeks. I would say this is that real long game that we talk about. Take a look at the growth of your food blog over three months, six months, ideally year over year. How many folks are coming back to your website? How many open your emails if they’re subscribers? How many keep opening them? Is your blog growing? That is really the true test of whether you have achieved or are building brand affinity. But to really embrace those social media tools because they help build brand affinity even though sometimes we’re not getting an immediate conversion. I see this sometimes in, in Facebook groups, people talking about, why am I doing Instagram reels? I’m not seeing a conversion directly in my Google analytics. I get that because I look at Instagram for instance. I don’t get a large amount of traffic to my food blog from Instagram, but I know that there is value in posting, especially video content there. I wanted to talk a little bit about video content and the value that it truly has in growing brand affinity. Because again, I’m a marketing person talking. That’s the secret sauce of building brand affinity. Video and audio engagement, that is where people are much more likely to remember you. There is data to prove that. There is research science that shows that if someone reads text, their retention level is, I think it’s 10%. Video content. If people see a video, their retention level skyrockets to 85, 90%. There’s data to support that.

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Melinda Keckler: So that tells me that, okay, I want people to remember my food blog. I want them to remember my content. They might not come back immediately. They might not hop right over to my website, but I know that by using this strategic marketing tool, video, I am putting the cards in my favor that I’m building brand affinity with those folks who see the video. So again, this is the do as I say, not as I do. Full disclosure, before I got into marketing, I was a broadcast journalist for 15 years. I was on television every single day. I was a TV news anchor and a reporter, and yet I still, when I’m thinking about it, All right, I’ve gotta get something posted on Instagram. There’s still a part of me that I’m like, oh, my kitchen’s a mess. Oh, my hair doesn’t look very good. Even with the experience that I have, I still have to push myself to make sure I wanna build brand affinity. I know that even though the conversion rate might not be what I want immediately, this is a long game. So I am personally making a commitment to myself and my food blog to really commit myself to video and to do something at least once a week that I know is visually strong. It’s a video. It might be silly. That’s okay. My kitchen might be a little messy. That’s okay. Again, we’re looking to build brand affinity and video is one of those ways that we can certainly do it. The data doesn’t lie. 

Megan Porta: Oh my gosh, that was so good. You put words to something that’s been on my mind lately because there’s not a direct link to a lot of things that we do to get results, right? So why am I doing TikTok again? There’s not a direct result. Or like you said, why are we doing Instagram reels? There’s not something that we can directly tie that to. But there’s more deep down I can feel. I am all about the long game and I can feel that it ties into the long game and you just put words to exactly why. So thank you. I think you just showed up in my life to explain exactly what I’ve been trying to put words to. Thank you, Melinda. 

Melinda Keckler: Oh, I love that. Thank you. 

Megan Porta: That was described so well, and I really appreciate that. I think this is gonna help clarify a lot of things for food bloggers and just give them permission to do those things without seeing a result tomorrow or next week. We just have to put in that work. You mentioned video work and audio. I’ve been a huge proponent of it for a while because I think, tell me what you think, but audio is almost as powerful as video in building that, as you call it, brand affinity because people love hearing your voice, right? Do you agree with that?

Melinda Keckler: A hundred percent yes. I think that audio has tremendous value in helping people get to know you and build an emotional connection with you. There is absolutely no doubt. I think it’s one of those magical tools that we have at our disposal and that’s what’s so amazing. We don’t have to go hire someone to do this work for us and write big checks. This is stuff we can do. We can download certain software. We can make small investments here and there to help our content shine. But with social media and the various platforms that we have at our disposal, the time has really never been better to tap into that and you don’t have to become the most proficient user of any of these platforms to grow even a little audience there. To have that audience get to know you, whether it’s audio or video or visuals. But again, I just think the secret sauce is definitely in tapping into those things that build a real human connection. The power of voice and the power of people seeing us and how we engage and listening to our voices, I think that just,, it’s magical the things that can happen.

Megan Porta: That’s so powerful, magical, and powerful are the best words to describe that. So I was trying to think, as you were talking through the steps of ways to go from familiarity to brand affinity, and you covered some of those, just tapping into the human voice. Also just consistency. Figuring out what you need to do and then doing it over and over and seeing it as a long game. Also, authenticity. Showing up as your real self and not trying to be somebody else or trying to be your competition or just being you, being real. Showing up with your messy kitchen like you were talking about. It doesn’t need to be perfect. What are some other ways to go from being familiar to achieving that brand affinity? 

Melinda Keckler: So I think there’s a lot of value in having our blogs be very distinctive. There’s only so much we can do, right? They are still websites at the end of the day. But there are words we can use that can be uniquely ours. In marketing we often refer to them as brand attributes. They’re often referred to as setting an intention for your business. I think when we look at what national brands do to really achieve that distinction, we can glean from that the power of words and the power of creating a human connection, even with just the look and feel of our websites and the content on our blogs. I guess just to use as an example, some of the national brands that clearly do it very well, think about Disneyland. The happiest place on earth. BMW, Ultimate Driving Machine. Nike, Just Do It. These are intentions that are woven through all of their marketing, all of their advertising, their products. Those are powerful words that were chosen with great care to help build and sustain brand affinity. So I would encourage people to look at their food blogs. I know I do this too. You know what? It’s not just about having a list of four words and weaving those into all of our content, although that matters. But to really tap into what is the personality of our blog? What do we wanna say first and foremost, when people talk about our blogs with their friends. Or if they prepare a recipe from our food blogs and it turns out really great, and hopefully that’s always the case. They’re getting compliments on the food. We want people to say, Ah, I got that recipe from Pip and Ebby. Megan is really an awesome food blogger. 

Megan Porta: Yes. 

Melinda Keckler: We don’t want people to say, Oh, I don’t know, I got it off the internet. Or I don’t know. I got it off some food blog. So the more we can really build in that structure that makes it easy for people to recall and remember who we are and why we exist in the food blogging space, I think that’s really powerful. Think about the national brands and what they do. Again, national brands spend millions of dollars every year on marketing strategy and building brand affinity. So I think we owe it to ourselves to spend a little time and to look at a lot of what we’re doing anyway through a little different lens and hire ourselves as the chief marketing strategist. I think we will be pretty pleased with the outcome. 

Megan Porta: Great advice. I often think of looking at people who have already done it and who are spending millions just as a way to ask, what am I not doing? What are they doing that’s working and what can I learn from that, basically. So I think that is really good advice. How can we take ourselves through the process of assessing where we’re at and maybe making improvements? 

Melinda Keckler: So again, it’s not something measured in a day. So I would say, look back at the past six months of traffic to your food blog and Google Analytics, your readers. Are you seeing growth? That’s a good sign. If you’re not, I would say, lean into that subscriber list. I think that place is. Ugh, those folks have taken a huge step by saying, You know what? I’m going to engage with your content and I’m gonna give you my email address. So take a peek at how many people are opening those emails. How many people are coming back and reopening those emails? How much traffic are you driving? How many people are coming from their email, from their inbox to your website. Keep track of that and look for ways. If it’s not growing, then that’s okay. Maybe I need to get a little more active in some of my social media platforms. Maybe I need to post a little more content and make sure I’m sharing that with people who might reshare it. I think there are things that we can do. There’s more available to us than it might seem because it is daunting, and I get it. There are so many new things to learn. It feels like every day. But this is really just a mindset and an approach and making a commitment. Then, it’s a lot of testing, seeing what works and what doesn’t.

I know some of the social media platforms can feel disappointing. There are times when I feel like, Oh, look at those gorgeous pictures that I just posted as a Pinterest idea pin. It’s just flatlined. Other times I’ll just throw something together. Usually it has a little video involved and that thing will take off. There is an idea pin I have, I cannot believe the gargantuan amount of impressions that it has. It’s, holy cow. So it’s really about consistency, showing up, taking a peak at those long term analytics and the long term engagement that you’re seeing and then, just work to get to change a little bit something every single day and to just fan that flame of marketing strategy. I am a hundred percent convinced that it will pay off. 

Megan Porta: Speak on the long game a bit because I think this is such an important thing to touch on, and I feel like it’s really appropriate here. I hear so much in our space, people getting frustrated and overwhelmed and they’re like, where’s my success? It’s been a year, two years, and I just feel like, in the most loving way possible, just settling down a little bit. This is not a short situation. If you think of it that way, it’s only going to bring you frustration. Of course you’re never going to grow because you’re going to just muddy it with frustrating thoughts. So speak on that, like just, I don’t know, kicking your feet up, enjoying the journey and seeing it as a long game. 

Melinda Keckler: Yeah. Kicking your feet up and enjoying the journey. That is so powerful and so true. Even if you have a million dollar budget, and just for marketing or advertising, if you are a national brand, these things don’t happen overnight. Yeah, every now and then you hear about something that goes viral and Oh, lots of national exposure. That’s rare. That’s rare. So put that on a shelf and don’t even look at it. But I think it’s important that we just all look at our own Google Analytics and look at our own experiences as food bloggers and know that, when we’re doing the right things, we will grow. But it does take time. Are our food blogs structured in the right way? Is the user experience where we want it to be? To get advice and counsel from good places and to use that lens to make adjustments here and there, but to really only worry about ourselves, our own brand, and the people who come to our website, our wonderful readers. Think about amplifying what we can to help influence how those folks come to our website and how they perceive our content, I think that’s really first and foremost. I completely understand competitors and wanting to rank higher than somebody else and all that. I would say while it’s really important of course, to be mindful of how your content is doing, I think it’s probably more important to be mindful about how your readers are engaging with your content and how it’s really impacting their lives and helping them solve a problem, answer a question, and most importantly, serve delicious food to their friends and families.

Megan Porta: This is so great. I’m loving this conversation. What a great way to start my day. Thank you so much Melinda. Oh my goodness. This is packed with gems. What are we missing? Is there anything that we’ve left out of this conversation that you just wanna make sure we deliver to food bloggers? 

Melinda Keckler: I want people to know that this is not hard, It’s just a shift in mindset. So to look at all of the tools we have at our disposal and to embrace them, to figure out how to use ’em, none of us have to be photojournalist or social media experts. There are ways we can tap into the resources that are really available to us in one quick trip to the internet and to just really embrace that and to give it a try. The thing is, as food bloggers, we are the CEO, we are the CFO, and we are also the chief marketing strategist. So these decisions are ours. It’s one more thing that we’re in charge of, but it’s not super, super hard. Again, it’s just a shift in our mindset. 

Megan Porta: All right, make that simple shift and heed all of Melinda’s amazing advice, I love this message just to see it as a long game and to put in the work of, engaging, getting your audience to engage with you, getting them familiar with you and achieving that brand affinity over time. Are people coming back? Are you getting growth reassessed from time to time? How often do you recommend that we take a look back and just evaluate? 

Melinda Keckler: I’d say three months is a pretty fast turnaround, six. Is feasible. I think year to year is really where you’re gonna get the best insight. I know that’s a long time, but I think you need to give yourself a chance because think about our own experiences. Again, how long does it take us to really get a sense that some product or organization or business or another blog is having an impact on our lives? In marketing we know it takes between six and eight touch points. It takes multiple exposures for someone to really understand, oh, there’s something going on over there that I think I wanna buy that product, or I think I want to subscribe to that website, or I think I want to become more engaged with that brand. It’s never just one thing. I say this a lot in my day job, when people ask, we have money, what should we be spending it on? I’m like, it’s not just one thing. If it was one thing, we would do that one thing all day long. We have to look at it as we need multiple different ways to engage with our audience using different platforms and ways for them to feel like they’re getting to know us so that we become the trusted resource that we want for them.

Megan Porta: Great. Melinda. Thank you so much for joining me. This has been a pleasure and I cannot wait to publish this episode. You’re a Wealth of Knowledge. 

Melinda Keckler: Thank you, Megan. It’s been wonderful. 

Megan Porta: Yes. Thank you so much. Do you have either a favorite quote or words of inspiration in addition to everything you’ve shared to leave us with?

Melinda Keckler: There’s a quote that’s often attributed to Lucille Ball that I really love. It’s, “if you want something done, ask a busy person to do it. The more you do, the more you can do.” What I love about that quote is, as food bloggers, we are all so busy. Many of us have other jobs. We may be raising young children, helping aging parents, dealing with health issues. I don’t think very many people are like, I’m food blogging and that’s it. So many things that we do in addition to food blogging and there’s so many things that are a part of food blogging. But to recognize that really the more you do, the more you can do. It’s so true. I think about, think about busy times in our life and how, or during that moment, that period of busyness, it’s look at all that stuff I did. How did I pull that off? That’s when we’re really working efficiently and we are capable of more than we might think. 

Megan Porta: Oh, that is so great. Especially for food bloggers to hear because we do have so much I feel like. So yes, the perfect way to end . We will put together a show notes page for you, Melinda. If anyone wants to go look at those, you can go to eatblogtalk.com/crinkledcookbook. Why don’t you share where everyone can find you online, social media, etc.

Melinda Keckler: Yes, thank you. So I am on Pinterest – Crinkle Cookbook and on Instagram. If you are a young food blog or an old food blog or whatever, find me on Pinterest and I’ll be happy to find you back. Yes. We’re all friends.

Megan Porta: Yes, we are all friends. Thank you again so much, Melinda, for everything you’ve shared today. Thank you for listening today, food bloggers. I will see you in the next episode.

Outro: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Eat Blog Talk. Please share this episode with a friend who would benefit from tuning in. I will see you next time.


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Pinterest image for episode 353 how to actually establish your blog's brand identity + busting brand identity myths with Melinda Keckler.
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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