Episode 793: When Blogging Feels Hard – How to Keep Going Anyway With Martin Glover

EBT793 – Martin Glover

[00:00:00]  Megan Porta 

If you have ever felt like the universe is conspiring against you and your blogging progress, between AI disruption, algorithm updates, maybe family chaos, or just burnout, this episode is for you. Martin Glover of Dad What Cooks joins me to talk about what it really takes to keep going as a food creator when time, energy and motivation feel scarce, he shares honest, fun, funny, and deeply encouraging gems about ditching perfectionism, embracing constraints, and building a blogging practice that is fun and sustainable. This one is like a warm, hopeful little hug and pep talk all wrapped in one. Don’t miss it. I hope you love this.

[00:00:43] Intro  

Hi, food bloggers, I’m Megan Porta and this is Eat Blog Talk. Your space for support, inspiration and strategies to grow your blog and your freedom. Whether that’s personal, personal, professional, or financial, you are not alone on this journey.

[00:00:59]   Megan Porta

Hello, Martin. Welcome to the podcast. How are you today?

[00:01:02]  Martin Glover 

Very well, thank you. Megan, how are you doing?

[00:01:04]  Megan Porta 

I’m good. So happy to have you here. We’re going to talk today about how to keep going as a blogger. Everything is. I don’t want to say everything. Things feel a little bit tough, like we’re maybe swimming upstream a little bit sometimes. So we’re going to talk about how to make things a little bit easier for all of us.

[00:01:24]   

Before we get to that, though, what would you say is the reason people are going to press play on this episode? What is the pain point that we’re solving for people today?

[00:01:34]  Martin Glover 

Yeah, absolutely. I think there’s a lot of people out there who are probably in a similar situation to myself in that you’re trying to build and grow a blog while you’re really up against it with everything else that’s happening. So the likes of AI, you’ve got time pressures, you might have a full time job, which is my situation.

[00:01:50]   

So you’ve only got limited time to be able to do your blog. And I just felt that some of the things that I do might be useful to other people, so I wanted to share those with them. Really?

[00:01:59]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. I think this is great and so relevant and I think this is one that people will definitely tune into. So thank you for showing up for us today, Martin.

[00:02:07]  Martin Glover 

No problem.

[00:02:08]  Megan Porta 

Can you tell us a little bit about your blog? So you’re the blogger at Dad What Cooks, correct?

[00:02:13]  Martin Glover 

I am, yes. Bad grammar, I know, but that’s how it is, just from where I am in the UK. So it’s just a dad What Cooks? Yeah, I’m a Dad What Cooks. So my blog’s been going from about 2019 and it’s really a. Well, it really started off as a, as a slow cooker blog and really a place to put my recipes and barbecue stuff which is what I like to do as well.

[00:02:37]   

Just somewhere to kind of format them. I’m a tech guy at heart and my day job is an IT tech guy.

[00:02:42]  Megan Porta 

Okay.

[00:02:43]  Martin Glover 

So the two worlds of tech and food collided and ended up with a blog that kind of just started and kept going. Really, you know, it’s not a full time job for me. It is a hobby. I appreciate some people in this world are full time bloggers and probably a lot of what I said today isn’t going to be relevant to them because they don’t have.

[00:03:03]   

Well, they still have time pressures. But I think maybe it is relevant. I don’t know. But yeah, for me it’s really, you know, about making the most of the time that I’ve got available to blog with and hopefully it’ll be of use.

[00:03:18]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, no, I think, I think that’s great because I do know so many bloggers who have all the time in the world and they don’t get anything done. So I think if we can also talk about just how to maybe do self imposed, you know, time constraints a little bit so that you actually get your work done, we can get into that.

[00:03:37]   

So you have a full time job. So you work I’m assuming somewhere around 40 hours outside of blogging. Right?

[00:03:43]  Martin Glover 

That’s right. Yeah, that’s right. So I am lucky in that I’ve got a know some of it is remote and some of it is, is in the office but when I am in the office I’m lucky enough I suppose to, to be on a train. I’m not driving so I can get the training and that gives me an hour of time on the train where I could read a book.

[00:04:01]   

I could, you know, I do my Notes app on my phone is, you know, it’s always open with just ideas pinging around my head. So anything that pops in gets written down in the Notes app and really just to just to capture those various thoughts along the way. Whether that be sort of ideas for a newsletter or I must write about this post or this popped in my head last night.

[00:04:21]   

I can’t forget about it. So I think you can find a lot about a person in the in the Notes app if you ever, if you ever read other people’s.

[00:04:29]  Megan Porta 

That’s funny. I wonder what people would think about me. I write so many things in there

[00:04:34]  Martin Glover 

and it’s the most random thoughts as well. That’s the other thing that go in there, you know, just anything that pops in, it’s just a good place to start it centrally.

[00:04:41]  Megan Porta 

That is a good idea. So how often do you refer back to your note? Do you look at it every day?

[00:04:47]  Martin Glover 

Probably not every day, no. But when I’m kind of at a point where I think, oh, I’ve got a bit of time to do something, or I might say, you know, I can use half an hour this lunchtime, or I’ve got a bit of free time in the evening, I’ll kind of have a running list in there of things I want to do and things I want to be seeing.

[00:05:04]   

So having that small window of time really forces you to, to prioritize and adjust and, you know, what actually matters, make the priority of that. I think distraction from other things is really easy, especially when you’re on a phone. You know, you’ve got all your apps and messages and things pinging left, right and center.

[00:05:21]   

So I think it’s, it’s important to have a list of something that you at least want to achieve now, whether that be in, in the day, in the week, in the month, even in the year, the quarter, whatever. You know, it’s, there’s, there’s lots of options and. But having something that’s running, knowing where your end goal is, I suppose as to what you get to is quite a key one.

[00:05:42]   

Having said that, the biggest distraction is if, is your phone and if you don’t have your phone or if you don’t need your phone, then move it out of the room. So when you are writing and if you’re on a computer and you, you know, you’re writing a blog post or something, make a quick note of the, the things you want to make a note of and then move your phone somewhere else.

[00:05:59]   

I think distraction is, is so easy, I’m, I’m guilty of it all the time. And what I found is sort of if you just say, right, two minutes, so you give your brain two minutes to just start focusing on the task and it will go beyond two minutes. But it’s just getting that initial hands on the keyboard and start, start typing type thing.

[00:06:18]   

Quite a few of these tips is a book called Indistractible by Nir Eyel. Sorry, I’m not sure how you pronounce the surname E Y A L. Anyway, and his book is. It’s brilliant because it, it just, it gives you so many tips and things like that to, to sort of work out and, and know how to not be distracted.

[00:06:39]  Megan Porta 

I have not heard of that. I’m so excited though. I love new book recommendations. Thank you.

[00:06:44]  Martin Glover 

Yeah, absolutely.

[00:06:45]  Megan Porta 

Yeah.

[00:06:45]  Martin Glover 

Ironically, I found that by being distracted. So it’s.

[00:06:48]  Megan Porta 

Oh, you found it during your distraction time and it helps you to not be distracted. I love it. So you’ve, you have some tips, clearly, because you have to.

[00:06:59]  Martin Glover 

Right.

[00:06:59]  Megan Porta 

You have limited time. You have.

[00:07:01]  Martin Glover 

Yeah, I think planning around the time you’ve got, you know, work with the time that you, you have, not the time you wish you had. You know, you might want to have five hours in a day, but you might only have half an hour before you log on for work. So use that wisely.

[00:07:15]   

Refer back to your notes, but also I think, decide what you’re doing, find what works, because it’s all well and good thinking. I’ve got to do a newsletter, I’ve got to do a blog post. I’ve got to do some Pinterest pins or something like that. For me, you know, I focus more on the blog and the content and getting that right because while it’s nice to be able to do 15 pins a day, it’s just not viable for me anyway.

[00:07:40]   

It’s just something that I can’t do. My blog doesn’t make hardly any money at all anyway, so I can’t outsource it. It is a hobby, like I say. But when you do get to a point where you can start getting other people to do the things that you either don’t have the time to do or, or can’t do, then that’s a good point to do that.

[00:07:56]   

But when you, when you’re doing everything yourself and you are sort of the one man band, I think it’s important to prioritize it as best you can. And I think yes. So like email newsletters, social media, you know, I, I really focus on, like I said, my blog and my Instagram piece, they’re kind of the two big bits that I do.

[00:08:14]   

And I’m really trying in 2026 just to get at least one newsletter out per month to my readers. You know, it’s only a couple of hundred people, but I think the consistency is, is something that is key on that.

[00:08:28]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. So find the things you want to be consistent with and prioritize them and make them happen. Is kind of in a nutshell.

[00:08:38]  Martin Glover 

Yeah. And I think so. I think only sort of focus on what’s working for you as well. And if something is working, double down on it because you know, it’s, it’s going to help in the long run. And the other stuff should follow. But, you know, I’ve got a TikTok, I’ve got Threads.

[00:08:50]   

Use the tools where you can. So with Instagram, it does have the option to post the threads as well. Well, you know, if you’re doing a post on Insta, it’ll. It will do that. And if you get all that configured, at least try and use the automation as best you can because that’s the, the helping hand you might need.

[00:09:03]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. So for your actual blog content, because I assume you keep consistency up with that, how do you carve out time for that and how much do you create? Do you feel like you’re stretched or is it pretty easy at the minute?

[00:09:18]  Martin Glover 

I’ve been really focusing on getting what’s on there. Right. And, you know, up to date and as relevant as possible. Because I think this. There’s not loads of content on there. There’s probably about 130, 140 posts and recipes, which is a decent amount. But there’s a lot of stuff that really needs to be kind of tweaked and formatted better.

[00:09:39]   

You know, early posts especially.

[00:09:41]  Megan Porta 

Sure.

[00:09:42]  Martin Glover 

So I took the opportunity at Christmas time to go through and build a little WordPress plugin that was essentially, I just got Claude to do it. So I got on the old AI and asked Claude to make me a plugin that will prioritize which post I need to update.

[00:09:55]  Megan Porta 

Oh, gosh.

[00:09:56]  Martin Glover 

Because previously it was a case of, you know, exporting it from your database and then sorting in an Excel spreadsheet and, you know, finding the dates, the oldest ones and updates. And this little plugin now does a few extra bits of that. It’s quite, it’s quite neat. And I’ve made that available for free as well.

[00:10:12]   

If anybody else wants to use it, I’ll share that link in there.

[00:10:14]  Megan Porta 

I’m sure many people would.

[00:10:15]  Martin Glover 

I hope so. But yeah, that, that’s quite useful because that will give you a. These posts haven’t been updated in X amount of days, months, weeks, and it will just, you know, traffic light warn you which ones needs to be done. So I’ve put that on my site and I’ve been using that to, to refer back to my earlier posts.

[00:10:30]   

And then it’s really, you know, getting all the SEO, the keywords right and, and making sure that everything is as targeted, I suppose, as. And relevant for the post, but as helpful as possible because that’s the key thing these days, isn’t it? You know, it’s got to be useful and helpful content. We’ve all been burned by the algorithm updates and I think there’s a lot of people have been hit by that and lost a lot of traffic. Ironically, I’ve seen mine kind of grow quite nicely.

[00:10:57]  Megan Porta 

That’s great.

[00:10:59]  Martin Glover 

I know and I was as surprised as anybody really, but I was really pleased to see, you know, to get some traction on it. Still not loads and still never sort of top three results. But it’s, you know, at least first page, I’ll, I’ll take. Absolutely.

[00:11:13]  Megan Porta 

It’s going up. That’s.

[00:11:14]  Martin Glover 

Yeah, yeah, it’s going the right way. That’s.

[00:11:16]  Megan Porta 

That’s the thing.

[00:11:17]  Martin Glover 

Yeah.

[00:11:17]  Megan Porta 

Yep. So you primarily focus on this strategy where you kind of figure out what needs to be tweaked and then finding new content to make. And how do you make time for that with your full time job? Is it like once you sit down, are you ready to hit the ground running? I assume.

[00:11:37]  Martin Glover 

Yeah. So essentially goes back to using the phone again really. So my pictures, if I’m making a meal or I’m making some bread or some, you know, barbecue recipe, I’ll try and make the effort, the conscious effort to photograph it as I’m doing it. Because while I might not be writing the post that day or that week, if it’s on my phone and I’ve got the sequence of pictures, it’s then there as a reference point to be able to sort of grab them and build that post out accordingly.

[00:12:03]   

The actual, when I’m making a recipe post, it will be in a, you know, a pretty typical format and that there’ll be an introduction, you know, a step by step process, you know, the usual kind of substitution sides to pair it with the recipe card itself. So that actual process, because it’s mostly templated now anyway, it’s a fairly quick process for me to do and I will engage with AI as well and I won’t get AI to write it for me, but I’ll draft the post and then I’ll, I’ll kind of, you know, put it into AI and say, give me some content gaps on that, you know, what, what am I missing based on X keyword?

[00:12:43]   

Where can I improve things and just get, you know, don’t take it as gospel, but take it as another pair of eyes reading over the post and see if it is going to be of any use for you. I think people have made the mistake in just putting everything in and dumping the AI output into the recipe post or the blog post in general.

[00:13:02]   

And I think that’s obviously it doesn’t look natural, you can tell one that’s been written by AI, you know, and it’s only getting, I don’t know if it will get better or worse. I think, I think the content being created will get better, but the obviously the tools that detect it as well will get better.

[00:13:18]   

So I really do think there’s still something in that human element of writing.

[00:13:22]  Megan Porta 

Absolutely. I think that’s more important than ever. So you use AI just to kind of, you know, generate some ideas and help you keep things moving.

[00:13:32]  Martin Glover 

Yeah. So in ChatGPT, I think you can use quite a few various GPT types. So obviously you can, you can set up, you can almost set up a team. So you’ll have an SEO team like a GPT that’s using my language, in my terms and the way I work. But, you know, act as a SEO expert and da, da, da, da and that kind of thing, which, that’s that one.

[00:13:55]   

And then you get a marketing one or a social content one and you can create these teams. Obviously you need a kind of the pro level.

[00:14:02]  Megan Porta 

Yeah.

[00:14:02]  Martin Glover 

Plan to be able to do this. So it does cost a little bit of money, but I think that’s worthwhile at this level that I’m at anyway because I’m not having to outsource to other people who have that expertise now. It’s never going to be perfect, but I think it’s a start and, you know, if you’ve got a start, at least it’s the first foot on the ladder.

[00:14:21]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. And do you think this is a way to embrace the changes with AI? Because I know AI is one of the things that people are resisting because it is taking traffic from some blogs. So is this a good way to kind of. Yeah. Just embrace the chaos a little bit. Like use the good things that are going to help your business?

[00:14:42]  Martin Glover 

I think, I mean, it’s there. I think if you don’t use it, you’re going to get left behind at some point. Now, I don’t know when that will be and I don’t even know if that will be the case. You know, is there going to be a bubble up with bursts? There’s so many different arguments and thoughts on the, on the whole concept.

[00:14:57]   

But the bottom line is if you look at where we are now compared to where we were last year, you know that that is a massive difference already, isn’t it? I know it’s only going to change again. So, you know, while it’s difficult to stay ahead of the curve, at least try and stay on track with it as best you can and I think just utilizing the elements of what it does offer, whether you decide to use them on your site as well, that’s essentially the human decision.

[00:15:21]   

You don’t have to put it on. So if what it spits out or what, what it’s suggesting to you doesn’t feel right, you know, trust your gut. And it’s really important that you do that because you know, if you don’t, then you’re not being true really. And what you’re, what you’re actually putting out there isn’t, isn’t yours, if that makes sense.

[00:15:38]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. And like you said, you can use it more as a coach, like be my SEO expert, tell me how to navigate this or be my marketing coach and tell me how to market whatever. So it’s not like you necessarily need to copy and paste or worry about writing blog posts. You can also use it as more of a business strategy.

[00:15:58]  Martin Glover 

Absolutely.

[00:15:59]  Megan Porta 

Strategist. Yeah.

[00:16:00]  Martin Glover 

I think from, from that point of view, earlier in the year I wanted to get myself a bit of a plan together for what I would do in 2026 and where do I focus? Because as I said, I’ve got 100 or so blog posts on there. Which ones are doing okay, which aren’t.

[00:16:14]   

Now my blog is barbecue bread and a bit of slow cooker air fryer type meal. That’s kind of my. I was trying to niche it down but I just, it’s just too random that I can’t do one specific niche. So I kind of cover it as best I can and then again I go back to, well, I’ll just do what I enjoy doing.

[00:16:33]   

And you know, I’m not in it to make money. I’m in it just for keeping somewhere to keep my recipes and that. But try and keep them as organized as possible so they’re at least useful for people. But what I wanted to do was to find out if there was anywhere that I could kind of focus my efforts and make it a bit more structured for this year.

[00:16:50]   

And one suggestion which I’d seen in a video somewhere was about using your AI tool to essentially generate you a business strategy by taking the output of your Google search console and Google Analytics whereas and export the CSV of your stats from the previous year or two or however much you’ve got and input that and say based on that, how can I grow?

[00:17:13]   

And I must have come out with a 10 page document saying, you know, this, this area is really good. Ironically, the air fryer one was the, the part that was doing the best, you know, it wasn’t really what I wanted. Yeah, I wanted to focus on the bread and the barbecue, but the air fryer stuff was kind of, that’s doing really well. You should do more of that.

[00:17:30]  Megan Porta 

Yeah.

[00:17:30]  Martin Glover 

And I was like, well, that’s nice, but don’t go, I don’t want to do it. So, you know, it came up with a plan though, in, in Q1, try and do this in, you know, if you’ve only got so many weeks. And then I went back to it and I said, well, I’ve only got five to seven hours a week to do this.

[00:17:45]   

So then it rejigs it and it says, right, well on week one, try and do this, week two, try and you know, and you get a breakdown and it’s a manageable breakdown, which is quite nice to see as well. So, yeah, that’s, that’s a, you know, a good, another good sort of way of using it, which works.

[00:18:01]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. And like we kind of talked about earlier, you have a full time job, so you have to make your time valuable. You have to make it work. But this is a way for people who maybe this is their full time job and they’re having a hard time finding the time. This is a way for you to sit down and make things happen.

[00:18:19]   

Have a conversation with ChatGPT about, okay, you’re my business strategist. I have this many hours a day, tell me what to do. And I mean, the conversation might take a while. Some of my kind of broader conversations about my business are investments of time. But it’s so worthwhile because it really can help you to think through and map out a big plan and like a strategy for what you’re doing.

[00:18:44]  Martin Glover 

Yeah, absolutely.

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[00:19:39]  Martin Glover 

And you know, obviously there’s plenty of other tools as well, which AI related which are time saving ones, which I think are useful. So I talked about Pinterest or like Canva and using Canva to create your pins. Well, creating the templates of the pins before you go ahead with that, I think is, is really useful because what I was doing previously was trying to sort of drag and drop pictures into a Canva post and then either save that picture and then upload that to Instagram or whatever to Pinterest.

[00:20:11]   

But then I discovered there’s the whole brand element in Canva. And then I kind of thought, right, what I don’t actually do is I’ve not learned the tool. So I’m thinking, you know, I love tech and I love messing around with different things. But what I wasn’t doing was finding the tool I’ve got and focusing on learning how to use it.

[00:20:29]   

But now I’ve got templates set up, I’ve got the schedule part of it. So you can spend two hours on a Sunday afternoon making pins and then schedule them for 30 days worth ahead. You know, you’ve got that option. The same with Buffer.com is another one for sort of scheduling your Insta posts and your Facebook posts and that kind of thing.

[00:20:49]   

It’s, it’s just a really good way of using that small amount of time. But having a real focus session on and getting something done.

[00:20:57]  Megan Porta 

I like that too. Yeah, I’m all for focus, focus sessions and batching. I think what you just mentioned is kind of a version of batching, sitting down and just kicking out the same sort of content so that you have it, you don’t have to worry about it like three times during the week.

[00:21:15]   

Right. Are there other tools you use consistently? So you mentioned Canva, obviously. AI and then what was the other one you, you mentioned about the schedule

[00:21:24]  Martin Glover 

Buffer is one which is a bit of a. I think it’s like Hootsuite, that type of thing, a social scheduling type. I think a lot of people use Tailwind as well. Which is the other, the other big one. I mean, I’m a little bit tight, so I use Buffer because there’s a free plan.

[00:21:37]   

You can, I only have two, two accounts and you can publish 10 posts at a time. But if, if I’m fit, so that’s enough for a week for me. But if, you know, feeling a bit flush, you can get an extra plan and you can get unlimited for the month. So it’s, you know, there’s a lot of options there and it doesn’t have to cost a fortune.

[00:21:53]   

The other one I was using was Lightroom and that was one which obviously for photo editing. And I realized that I’d done that for a year because you’ve got to sign up for the year for Adobe, and realized that actually I wasn’t getting any value out of it. It was costing me however much, nine, ten dollars a month, something like that, but it wasn’t.

[00:22:17]   

I wasn’t getting that amount of value out of it compared to what I could do in Canva, what I could do with tweaking the phone, the photos on my iPhone. You know, I was, I was using some of the, sort of the, the plugins and effects and that, but not enough to warrant that money.

[00:22:31]   

So I decided not to renew it this, this last year. And I’ve just, you know, I’ve got a DSLR camera for really nice food shots, which are great. You know, that was a really good investment and I was, I was pleased about that. That was a secondhand thing I bought for like 70 quid from, from one of the exchange shops nearby.

[00:22:48]  Megan Porta 

Nice.

[00:22:48]  Martin Glover 

It’s an old camera, but I was still getting better pictures than I was doing off my iPhone for the, you know, those feature shots and, and that, that kind of thing on, on the foodie pictures, they just look, you know, a different depth of picture. Really, really enjoyed them once. But yeah, the, the Lightroom didn’t need it.

[00:23:06]  Megan Porta 

So, yeah, I think that’s a great tip and something to like. Some people really love Lightroom, but there are other softwares and other things that like, quote, everyone tells you you should use, but maybe for you it just doesn’t make sense and you’re not getting the value from it, like you said about Lightroom.

[00:23:23]   

So just think through the list of what you’re using or what you’re supposed to use and work. Use what works for you.

[00:23:31]  Martin Glover 

Exactly.

[00:23:31]  Megan Porta 

I think there’s so much value there. I have so many people who are like, well, I’m told that I’m supposed to use this. Like, no, you don’t. You don’t have to do anything. You can, you can use your iPhone to take your pictures. You don’t need artificial lighting. You can use the sun.Like, there are so many ways to make blogging work that is affordable and doable for you.

[00:23:54]  Martin Glover 

Absolutely. And I think, you know, for me it’s about it being fun and not being a chore because it’s something, you know, I do it as a, as a hobby. It is a hobby, you know, and I do spend a bit of money on it. But people spend money going to the footballs, people Spend money going out and you know, it’s, that’s not what I do.

[00:24:09]   

I do messing around with a blog, which is. But I think like you say there’s so many different people using different blogging for different reasons. And whereas you’ve got the people who are doing it full time, you, you do have the other end of the scale where you might get somebody who dips in every couple of months and then does a bit and then break out of it.

[00:24:31]   

And I think the, the comparison side of it is, can be quite dangerous because you can go on Facebook groups and different, you know, people are doing. You seeing all these full time bloggers doing these posts and they’re posting like three times a day on Insta and you, you know, it’s so easy to compare and I don’t do that.

[00:24:49]   

And that’s what I should be doing to be successful. But I think determining what actually success is for you is an important thing compared to what success is for somebody else. There was one I did see which I thought was a really good quote. Somebody on a Facebook group doing like sourdough additions like, you know, stuff like blueberries and things like that they put in there and they were doing a, like a nacho cheese flavor.

[00:25:13]   

You know, you look at the picture and you. But the caption on the picture was sometimes it’s fun to remember you’ve got free will. And that was, and I just thought it was so nice because it just makes you think actually there are no rules when it comes to doing bread making and that kind of just have fun, you know.

[00:25:28]   

And if you’ve got the ability to do that, do it because so what if it burns? So what if it’s a bit squidgy in the middle? Well, you know, you’ve tried it and you know not to do it again. Might be delicious, you know, so have the freedom to experiment. Don’t let it tie you down.

[00:25:43]   

I think if it’s, if blogging isn’t your main income as well, then that, you know, that opens up that freedom even more because I know I don’t have to rely on my blog to, to, to feed the family. I mean we’d be starving if we did because it wouldn’t do anything good for us.

[00:25:58]   

But do just do what you enjoy with it.

[00:26:00]  Megan Porta 

I think, yeah, that’s such a great reminder for all of us. Whether you’re doing it for a hobby or a job. I think we all need to hear that because we do fall into that trap of everyone’s doing this or I’m supposed to create a recipe this way or I’m supposed to run my business this way.

[00:26:14]   

But it doesn’t always have to be like that. So thank you for that reminder. And then you keep calling it a hobby. Do you want it to be a job or is it. You’re just totally fine with it being your hobby?

[00:26:25]  Martin Glover 

I think if I’m honest with myself, you know, I’m mid-40s now. If I can get to maybe my mid-50s and it’d be good enough for me to retire on, then I’d be well happy with that or going the way I’m going at it. I don’t think that’s happening. It is just ticking over.

[00:26:41]  Megan Porta 

But so you really do just enjoy it. And it’s. It sounds like a little creative outlet and a tech outlet as someone who’s techie.

[00:26:48]  Martin Glover 

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It’s just somewhere to experiment and to try things with and, you know, it’s just. Yeah, it’s a good bit of fun.

[00:26:56]  Megan Porta 

I think you’re the one to learn from because you’re the one that doesn’t feel the pressure. Right. You don’t have like. So many people are like, oh my gosh, I have to make this work. It’s not working. I have to make this work. But you don’t feel that.

[00:27:07]  Martin Glover 

So Billie Jean King once said, pressure is a privilege. And if you remember that, then it’s all good.

[00:27:13]  Megan Porta 

Oh, gosh, that’s good. Okay. So do you deal with any perfectionism? This is another, like, comparison is a common theme in our industry. Also perfectionism. I see a lot. If. So how do you deal with that?

[00:27:27]  Martin Glover 

Yeah, it was something I did used to do before. I probably over overthought it a little bit when. When I was distributing posts and, you know, writing a. Distributing.

[00:27:35]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, that works.

[00:27:36]  Martin Glover 

Creating a blog post. Publishing. That’s the word I’m looking for. What I was finding was it had to be a certain word count. It had to have specific phrases. If, like the. The Yoast, like, yeah, meter didn’t show green and I wasn’t happy with it and I could rework it until that. And then you read through it and it’s like. That doesn’t sound right in that.

[00:27:56]  Megan Porta 

Yeah.

[00:27:57]  Martin Glover 

And now it’s right. Let’s just write the post, publish it, tweak it later. Because the bottom line for me is it’s never going to think, you know, it’s never going to hit result one of page one in an hour, in a week, in a day. You know, it’s just. It’s one of those where I can fix it later.

[00:28:16]   

But if it’s out there, at least it’s easy to link to. It’s easiest to start promoting it, I think. Just don’t overthink things. That’s the learning that I’ve had probably from this blog the most. And just publish it and hopefully it’s good enough because you wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t. But you can always improve.

[00:28:35]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. And the good thing about blogging is that you can edit anything. You can retake your photos, you can edit any text you write. That’s great. You can’t do that with a painting or, you know, other things you create. But with blogging you have that opportunity to redo whatever.

[00:28:53]  Martin Glover 

And I think, you know, being able to go back and like you say edit stuff is. It’s really freeing because, you know, you can go back and look at some of the stuff that I’d written really, really early on and like the first two or three posts on my site and. And you just think, like, why have I done that?

[00:29:09]   

Or I’ve done that a really strange way. And the reason that you think that is, well, that’s your progress because that’s when you’re looking back thinking, well, I didn’t know that then, but now I know that now. You know, I didn’t back then know how important like H2 headings were and formatting in that order and, you know, having a table of contents at the beginning and you go back to a post and you just think it’s a list of instructions in a bit of text and that was it, you know.

[00:29:33]   

And yeah, post length probably does matter a little bit, but it’s more about, well, is it useful post? You know, it’s all well and good, putting a bit of blurb at the top about what the. Where you got the recipe from and that kind of thing. But people don’t really care about that.

[00:29:46]   

What they want to do is, yeah, people read quickly, scan, you know, it needs to be in a format that’s, that’s readable and helpful.

[00:29:52]  Megan Porta 

Right.

[00:29:52]  Martin Glover 

We keep going back to the helpful content piece, but that’s, you know, I think that’s probably where the algorithm updates have probably done me a favor because I’ve been reviewing earlier posts and because they’ve been in the system, you know, a while. It’s, it’s, it’s kind of. It’s there, but it obviously wasn’t quite right.

[00:30:09]   

So it’s as we’ve been crawled again that the changes have been noted and they’ve increased in ranking. So, you know, I think it’s worth going back and looking at your old posts and refreshing them as, you know, as a. Probably a annual exercise, if not more.

[00:30:23]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, no, I love that reframe. It’s like. Yeah, it’s so valuable because you are seeing the progress that you’ve made without going back. You wouldn’t see that. Right. And you wouldn’t have the. The frame of reference to say, oh, my gosh, I’ve actually improved so much in my writing and my structuring and my photographing, whatever.

[00:30:46]   

So it probably is a good exercise for us all to do regularly.

[00:30:50]  Martin Glover 

Yeah, I think so. And I think not just on the blog as well. I think looking at your, you know, your social accounts and your newsletters and that kind of thing too. Like, this year I really tried to do a bit more putting my face on the camera with my Insta posts. Like previous, it was pictures of food on a carousel, Swipe, swipe, swipe.

[00:31:06]   

And I thought, I need to probably do a few more reels and, you know, let people, if they can see the face behind who’s making it, you know, I’ve got a couple of pictures, but there was nothing much. But, you know, so that was quite. It’s quite daunting doing that. But it’s also quite freeing as well when once you get used to it and you just get used to talking on camera, it’s a bit more.

[00:31:25]   

You know, at first I felt a bit weird. Stood in the kitchen talking to my phone, you know.

[00:31:30]  Megan Porta 

Yeah.

[00:31:31]  Martin Glover 

I couldn’t do it when no one was in the house.

[00:31:32]  Megan Porta 

Yeah.

[00:31:34]  Martin Glover 

Sort of thing. Whereas now it’s like, I’m just doing a video. I’m just gonna. Won’t be. Won’t be long. My wife. I was eating some peanuts or something the other night and it was one from one of the barbecue people and I was like, oh, will you just film me eating some peanuts?

[00:31:49]  Megan Porta 

She’s like, exactly, yeah.

[00:31:51]  Martin Glover 

But just. I’ll use it at some point. I thought it’ll be useful. So you’ve got all these little clips of video on your phone. I mean, again, it goes back to. Said it before about the notes app. Like, some of the videos is what you see and you think, why have I done that?

[00:32:03]   

You know, but especially after a glass of wine or two, it’s just. Yeah, that’ll be really useful at some point. But then you. You just don’t.

[00:32:10]  Megan Porta 

That’s hilarious. Yeah, at first it feels weird, but then. Yeah, I used to be really weird about filming when my family was around, be like, can you guys leave the room? But now, whatever. I just keep on and they look at me like, what are you talking about? But there. I mean, we’re all used to it now.

[00:32:28]   

It does become more natural over time, but it does feel a little odd at first. Talking to yourself, talking to a camera.

[00:32:33]  Martin Glover 

But I think it’s nice because I think on my Dad What Cooks blog as well, going forward with that, I’ve now got some video which is on my Insta, which I can use on the blog post. So, yeah, you know, when it’s relevant for the recipe, for example, I never had doing a video before.

[00:32:50]   

I thought, what’s the point in that? It’s just. It just seemed extra effort. Whereas I’ve now got content that I can repurpose and I can mix it up a little bit. And I think that’s the other thing with that as well, like repurposing content and using different types. Like, I was really focused that my blog should be dadwhatcooks.com should be just recipes.

[00:33:12]   

And then as I sort of thought about it more and interacted with people that were commenting on my Insta posts, I realized actually it’s not just recipes. It’s. It’s also a blog. It’s, you know, I want to have helpful information. So how to chop an onion properly, you know, how to season your barbecue grill, how these different things that I think the useful tips that would be seen as useful by my audience that.

[00:33:40]   

That would hope to visit, you know, it just little things like that. It’s not just one format. And I think that, again, is something that’s changed over time. So the more laser posts I’ll find there probably not as many recipes and more blog how to’s and that kind of stuff.

[00:33:57]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, yeah. You have to think about the broader perspective. Right. What advice would you give to someone right now who is feeling overwhelmed by everything that’s going on, the changes with AI and the algorithms and I mean, fill in the blank with whatever the chaos and the world, like all of it is a lot.

[00:34:16]   

So do you have encouragement or advice for those people?

[00:34:19]  Martin Glover 

Yeah, everybody’s got their own unique selling point. Everybody’s got something. They might not realize it, but they, you know, people come to your blog for a reason. And I think you can offer what nobody else can because it’s your blog and. And you do the best of what you do. You do you is the phrase, isn’t it?

[00:34:37]   

I think, I think if it’s the right content for the right people and you’re true to yourself with creating it and doing that, then you’ll be fine. I think. Look at where, where you started your blog, look at your first two or three blog posts and see how they look compared to what you’re producing now.

[00:34:55]   

I think that’s really important. I think understanding that there are no shortcuts is, is really key because if you put the hard work in it so far, don’t think that AI and text generation and all that kind of stuff is going to make it easy. It’s just going to give you a speedier way to get to another, the next step.

[00:35:16]   

But you’ve still got to review it, you’ve still got to put your spin on it. It’s still your content and your blog that you’re, you know, you’re producing. So that’s, that’s really key because if you, and go back to saying about being, you know, being true to yourself, if you’re not, that will come across in your blog as well.

[00:35:34]   

And when you’re reading back and updating your post that you do today, next year, you’ll think, why have I written that? Because you’ve made these mistakes or that post won’t turn well, you know, and there’ll be some reason why you want to change it. And I think, you know, don’t spread yourself too thin as well as the other thing, it’s try and do what you can do to its best rather than think, well, I’ll do a little bit on that and I’ll do a few Insta posts and I’ll do this.

[00:35:59]   

This is why I dropped TikTok and Threads, because it was just there was too many different things going on and I was really struggling thinking about, I need to update that this week because I’ve not done one on there for ages. And then so I thought, right, blog, Instagram, Facebook, I suppose as well, but only because it auto posts.

[00:36:16]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, right.

[00:36:17]  Martin Glover 

Yeah. It’s kind of just trying not to do too much. Don’t get overwhelmed. Just, just think, you know, look where you are now compared to where you were 12 months ago. But don’t live in the past. Don’t, you know, look at what you want to do and what you want to achieve as well.

[00:36:33]   

As we mentioned before, I’m quite comfortable in knowing that it’s probably not going to make me a fortune, this blog at all. You know, if it pays for its host, maybe.

[00:36:40]  Megan Porta 

You never know.

[00:36:40]  Martin Glover 

Yeah, people say that. Yeah, absolutely. And you don’t ever know you might have that one post that blows up and does. Does wonders.

[00:36:47]  Megan Porta 

Inspires you to create a million more that blow up.

[00:36:49]  Martin Glover 

Exactly, exactly. And if that happens, then I’ll embrace it. But I’m keeping my reality head on at the moment with that, I think. But you know, talk to other people, join the groups, chat to other people and see what they do. You don’t have to do it and you don’t have to. You don’t have to do what anyone says, really.

[00:37:05]   

When it comes to your blog, you decide what’s best. But be open to ideas as well. That’s the other thing.

[00:37:11]  Megan Porta 

I love it. Oh my gosh, so much great advice there. And we kind of glossed over your limited time. Do you have any advice about that? For the kind of person I was talking about earlier, who does have time but they just don’t utilize it? Do you have specific words for them?

[00:37:30]  Martin Glover 

I think work as though you do have limited time. You know, set a timer, use your, your phone to. Or a stopwatch or whatever just to say, right, I’m going to focus on 30 minutes now creating some Canva templates and just start doing it, but actually start that. You know, don’t think I’ve got all these other things to do.

[00:37:49]   

Prioritize your list. Get, get a, get your notes half open and put stuff in there. Come up with ideas. Have a brainstorming session. Send some posts to friends and say, right, give me some ideas about this. Put a post into your AI chat and say, how can I improve this? Give me five ideas to improve it.

[00:38:07]   

Give me five ways to reform this content into other platforms. How can I make some Instagram posts from this blog post? You know, that kind of thing. There’s a multitude of options about getting ideas. This is probably half my issue with things, is that I’ve got all these ideas going on and I know getting them to land and then actually sitting down and starting, because that’s the other thing.

[00:38:31]   

It’s. If you don’t sit and start, then they’re all just ideas and they’re not, they’re not going out there. You know, I should probably listen to myself a little bit when I’m. And see it’s not good intention.

[00:38:43]  Megan Porta 

Listen to this back and take all your advice. Yeah, I was just gonna say you have. So you’re such an idea guy. Every question I ask, you just rattle off so many great things, thoughts. I feel like you should be a coach or something. I’m like, should I start posing my challenges to you right now, Martin and have you solve all my issues?

[00:39:03]   

Oh, I mean seriously. So much great value and so many gems here. Thank you for all of this and thanks for sharing your journey with us. And every creator has such a unique journey and business and it’s always fun to learn. Like oh, you have a full time job and you carry this hobby and you like it as a hobby and all the things you do to make it work. So just so valuable. Thanks for all of this.

[00:39:26]  Martin Glover 

You’re welcome. That’s been nice to speak to you.

[00:39:28]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. Such a nice conversation. We will put together a show notes page for you if anyone wants to go peek at those. We’ll put everything we talked about today including the transcript. I love transcripts for episodes like this by the way, because there are so many gems being thrown around in a transcript you can actually see or you can run it through chat GPT and say pull out the gems that you think I would use.

[00:39:50]   

I love doing that. So you can find those at eatblogtalk.com/dadwhatcooks. And yeah, tell everyone again where they can find you, Martin.

[00:40:00]  Martin Glover 

Absolutely. So yeah, dadwhatcooks.com is my main blog I’m on at dad what Cooks on Instagram and I’d probably give a cheeky plug to the, the WordPress plugin that I did as well, which is at tidyposts.com so that’s just. Yeah, like I say, it’s a free download at WordPress.org as well if you want to get it from there.

[00:40:22]   

But yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s me for now, I think.

[00:40:24]  Megan Porta 

Awesome. Well, thank you. Thanks again for being here and thank you so much for listening food bloggers. I will see you next time. 

[00:40:33]  Megan Porta

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