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Episode 363: 6 Ways to Think Outside of the Box with Blogging with Andrea Hundley

In episode 363, Andrea Hundley shares six ways to think outside of the box when it comes to blogging. These are unique strategies that can potentially help you grow and keep you motivated.

We cover information about how to select some non-recipe content to garner traffic, trust your gut when determining which experts to listen to, why it’s important to delegate in your business and the importance of focusing on passive income projects.

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

Write Blog Posts that Rank on Google’s 1st Page

RankIQ is an AI-powered SEO tool built just for bloggers. It tells you what to put inside your post and title, so you can write perfectly optimized content in half the time. RankIQ contains a hand-picked library with the lowest competition, high traffic keywords for every niche.

Connect with Design Morsels
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Bio Andrea is the creator behind designmorsels.com. She writes about decorating and design for the the last 4 years. Andrea successfully joined Mediavine after two years by focusing on low-competition keywords and SEO. Andrea saw her traffic uptick since embracing Rank IQ. Since then, Andreas trained a VA to update old content inside the tool to keep the momentum going.

Takeaways

  • Write outside your niche to inform your users and gain traffic, inspire yourself and others.
  • Learn to delegate more, opening up time for yourself to do the content creation.
  • You can use someone to help you for each individual task if you’re unsure about a general VA.
  • Take bite sized pieces of projects to do on the blog vs trying to look at everything all at once and getting overwhelmed.
  • Ignore the experts. Not everyone is an expert so don’t get sucked into things that overwhelm you. Trust your gut on whether the advice is valid too.
  • Find your tribe of people both inside and outside your niche.
  • Personal development can look like a lot of things but prioritize it for yourself.

Resources Mentioned

Podcasts: Blog Millionnaire

App recommendations: Growth Day App , Start Today Journal

Book recommendations: The Five Minute Rule, Tiny Habits, The Gap and the Gain

Bob the VA – optimizes old content in Rank IQ and optimizes images
Site Consulting Services – performs site audit and helps set up email in Flodesk or Convert Kit
Kim Anderson Consulting – one on one coaching
The planning tool, Daily Fire and journaling in the intro version are worth every penny
Headline Studio – for writing better titles. There is a great free version, which is enough to help write better titles

Rank IQ

AHREFS

Transcript

Click for full script.

EBT363 – Andrea Hundley

Andrea Hundley: Hi, this is Andrea Hundley from Design Morsels, and you are listening to the Eat Blog Talk podcast. 

Sponsor: Hey, food bloggers. Are you ready to accomplish your 2023 goals faster than you ever thought possible? If you are nodding your head yes right now, the EAT Blog Talk Mastermind program might be a great bit for you. We are now accepting applications for 2023, and I will let you in on a little secret. If you sign up before the end of November, 2022, you can lock in at the current pricing. Go to eatblogtalk.com/mastermind for more information and to apply. Brittany and Terrence are the awesome blogging duo behind Plantpowercouple.com, and here they are talking about how the Mastermind program can massively boost your confidence and how this can so positively impact your business.

If you feel isolated, if you feel like one of the main things that’s holding you back in business is your own struggle with believing in yourself and your own struggle with believing that you can do this, I think you need to do it. I think it’s the biggest thing that can change the trajectory of your business and your mindset. Yes, you learn these things, but you gain a sense of community and support and just accountability. You start to believe in yourself more and you start to be able to borrow these other people’s beliefs in yourself so that you can build yourself up while you’re getting there.

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’m your host, Megan Porta, and you are listening to episode number 363. I have Andrea Hundley with me today. I’m super excited. We’re gonna chat about six ways to think outside the box with blogging. Andrea is the creator behind Design Morsels. She writes about decorating and design, for the last four years, she has done this. Andrea successfully joined Mediavine after two years by focusing on low competition keywords and SEO. Andrea saw her traffic uptake since embracing RankIQ. Yay, RankIQ IQ. Since then, Andrea has trained a VA to update her old content inside the tool to keep the momentum going. Love your strategy. It’s such a powerful one, isn’t it, Andrea? 

Andrea Hundley: It is. 

Megan Porta: Yes. Oh, I love it. So I’m super happy to have you here. How are you doing today?

Andrea Hundley: I’m doing great. 

Megan Porta: Good. We wanna hear what your fun fact is before we dig into this awesome conversation. 

Andrea Hundley: Okay. My fun fact is that I jump rope almost every day. 

Megan Porta: What? Okay. For exercise? 

Andrea Hundley: Yes. I started when I turned 50. I decided, okay. I’m just gonna see if I can start jumping rope just for 30 seconds and started with that and I have just never stopped and it is the most immersive exercise because I find if I put music in, I can’t even think about anything else because I’m trying to focus on what am I doing with this foot or this hand so it’s completely, you can’t think about anything else. You don’t have to do it for that long.

Megan Porta: It’s a good way to force yourself to be in the moment, it sounds like. 

Andrea Hundley: Yes. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. So do you have a record, like how long you’ve done it without stopping? Or do you not keep track of that? 

Andrea Hundley: I don’t keep track of that. I do intervals, so I don’t try to do it. It’s not the length. I’m more trying to focus on can I do this trick or that trick. 

Megan Porta: What’s your favorite trick? 

Andrea Hundley: Oh, I guess probably the crossover was the hardest one for me to get.

Megan Porta: I remember that one from being a kid. It was so hard. Then when you get it, you’re like, yes, but you get whipped in the face a few times on the journey, right? 

Andrea Hundley: Yes. 

Megan Porta: Okay. I love that. Super cool, fun fact and it means that you are in great cardio shape probably. 

Andrea Hundley: I don’t know about that, but I enjoy it. I was never an exerciser before, so I’m excited to find something that I look forward to doing .

Megan Porta: Absolutely. I think there was another guest who said they did hula hooping, I believe, a while ago. So that’s another good thing, like something that you just wouldn’t think of that people would find passionate, but you just never know. 

Andrea Hundley: Yeah, that’s true. 

Megan Porta: Okay, so let’s talk about your blogging journey. You have six outside the box ideas to grow your blog, but first I wanna hear when you started and how your journey as a blogger has unfolded for you. 

Andrea Hundley: Okay, sure. I started about four years ago. In August, had my four year blog anniversary. 

Megan Porta: Congrats! 

Andrea Hundley: Thanks. I decided four years ago that I’ve always worked with my husband, who’s also a blogger who has several successful blogs, and I’ve worked with him in the back end of the WordPress site and watched what he’s been able to do with it. I thought, I wanna have something that only interests me and something that’s just mine instead of something that is more supportive of what he’s doing. So I thought I’m gonna write about decorating and just really enjoy decorating my house. It was a good thing for me to do once I sold my bed and breakfast becauseI felt like once I let that go, it’s like, what do I do besides stuff with him? 

Megan Porta: So where did it go from there? 

Andrea Hundley: From there, the first person that I found when I was starting blogging was a lady named Kim Anderson, and she had a coaching program and a podcast, which I listened to religiously. The name of her podcast at that time was Just Keep blogging. It was just what the title says. It was really a lot of encouragement to just keep blogging regularly and started to find different things around my house I wanted to change and started taking pictures and meeting people, and it just has moved on from there.

Megan Porta: Awesome. I always love hearing how people’s blogging journeys unfold. Everyone is so unique, and I love that your husband’s blog was an inspiration for you. I don’t think I’ve heard that one before, so that’s really cool. Usually it’s the other way around. The husbands see the wife’s blog as an inspiration, but a cool story. Okay. So how did you come up with these outside the box ideas? Is this just something that you’ve accumulated as you’ve grown as a blogger? 

Andrea Hundley: Now it’s something really, from listening to your podcast. I thought that I’m not a food blogger, so what can I say that’s different from what everybody else has been saying? So that’s kinda how I came up with the ideas. 

Megan Porta: Awesome. Okay.

Andrea Hundley: Because I’ve gotten a lot from you. It doesn’t matter if you’re blogging about food or you’re blogging about bicycles or you’re blogging about decorating. 

Megan Porta: I think it’s valuable at times to step out of the world of food blogging and just see what other bloggers or other entrepreneurs in general are doing. I think that can add so much value to our businesses because we’re like in this world and we hear the same things, and we talk to the same people, and we listen to the same people. So stepping out a little bit, I think this is gonna be a really valuable chat because you have a similar perspective, but slightly different. So let’s dig into your point. So what is the first way that we can step outside the box? 

Andrea Hundley: Okay. I guess the first way that I’m gonna suggest is to write outside your niche posts that are informative to your users. The reason I say this, I know it goes against what a lot of experts will tell you to narrow down and narrow down what you write about. But the reason I thought this might be a good strategy is because I started looking at, I use Ahrefs and I started looking at, when I came across a blogger that I liked, I would put the site into Ahrefs and just try to see what they were ranking for because I was curious. I’m looking at a lot of decorating and design blogs and every time I’m looking at one, I’m always noticing, huh? Their ranking in the top 10 of their posts is something that has nothing to do with decorating and design. In fact, one example was this lady who had a post and her second most popular post was about how to rice potatoes. She doesn’t write about cooking, but she has a post that gets regular traffic about riced potatoes. And another example was an entertaining blogger that I know had a really popular idea about a packing list for a specific destination. So these posts get regular consistent traffic, but they’re not necessarily what’s your expertise. The reason why that can be nice to add into the mix is because sometimes you don’t have time to develop a recipe or for me, I don’t have time to build a picnic table or whatever it is. So you might have time to write a review about your favorite kitchen tools or write a post about this non-stick pan versus a ceramic nonstick kitchen pan, so it could be an opportunity for you to supplement your content, and I know you do that with things that aren’t just recipes and you can get really good traffic from those kind of posts.

Megan Porta: I have a 65% increase in traffic year over year right now from last year. The main reason is because of the supplemental content that I write through RankIQ, honestly. Without that, I would not be in this spot, and I feel very grateful and fortunate that I’m here, but that’s why. RankIQ IQ opened my eyes just to see oh, people are actually searching for what is marinara sauce versus spaghetti. What’s the difference between spaghetti sauce and marinara, and things like that I never would’ve thought to write about, but that also can give my recipe content a boost. So this is what you’re talking about. Finding something relevant but not necessarily a recipe. 

Andrea Hundley: No. Yeah. That could work for any niche, yeah. 

Megan Porta: Food is the best place because there are so many things relating to food that we can talk about. You mentioned this kind of pan versus that, or this kind of food versus that. Or you can do substitutions.

Andrea Hundley: Table decor. You could write about decorating. I know so many bloggers that write a whole post about what to serve the food on.

Megan Porta: Yeah, that’s a good point. So if you have a lot of holiday meal recipes for example, then people are probably going to want to know how to dress their table or plate their food or whatever. Anything on the table, decor even. So there’s a lot that can relate to it that doesn’t have to do with food. 

Andrea Hundley: No, I agree. 

Megan Porta: Where do you recommend people start with us if they’re like, Ooh, sounds interesting. 

Andrea Hundley: I think what you suggested RankIQ is the place to go. I know just looking at his library, I’ve gotten a lot of good ideas for just random things that I never would’ve thought to write about. You’ll come across one and you’ll think, oh, I know something about that. Even though it’s not really in my wheelhouse of my pillars of content, I could easily write a post about that. I find that the posts that I’ve written from his ideas are in my top 20 traffic posts pretty quickly.

Megan Porta: Same. There’s so much power there. So give it a try. Love that first point, Andrea. What is your second point to think outside the box? 

Andrea Hundley: So my second point is to delegate more. I feel like especially women tend to not delegate and you tend to think, I can do this better and therefore I should do it, which is probably true, but sometimes if you wanna really grow, you have to find the things that you can pass on to somebody else that even though you might be able to do them better, you could train somebody else who can leverage your skills. You don’t have to do it all. RankIQ IQ is the one place where I thought, I really know I need to update old posts because I know that can help my traffic a lot, but that is a really boring task and I don’t wanna do it. So I happened to come across somebody who was retired from her nurse practitioner job and looking for a way to earn extra money. Didn’t know anything about RankIQ. I Don’t know anything about blogs. After two hours, that’s an easy, repeatable task. She can go into my posts, I load them into RankIQ for her. She goes in and she thinks of it like a word game. She’s super reliable and doesn’t change the way I say things. She just does some word swaps where it sounds natural, and once I got comfortable with her doing that part, then I trained her to put the changes into WordPress. So now I’m getting five posts updated a week and it’s really pumped my traffic up this year. 

Megan Porta: That is so awesome. I just have to say, I love that you acknowledged that we all have that I do it the best and nobody can do it as good as me. That’s true and just to be okay with that. Okay, it is probably true because it’s my business. I care more than anyone else is going to care. Yes. That is a fact. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t delegate. So you have to get to that point where you just step over that bridge and just do it anyway, even if it’s uncomfortable or scary. So you found this amazing VA that is doing work for you. It’s working and it’s taking a load off of you. What are some other ways that we can delegate? 

Andrea Hundley: I found just focusing on hiring people to do really specific things that they can do well, instead of trying to find a general VA. I have someone who did a site audit for me, and it’s not something you would find from Top Hat Rank. It’s more of a functional site audit, because I don’t wanna take the time to click through everything on my blog to see, does my opt-in work? Does my navigation work? Does this? So she took a look at my website from a user’s perspective and didn’t give me a really daunting list, but just said, Hey, here’s a one page list. Take a look at this, take a look at that. It was something that I really didn’t wanna do and I hate having somebody tell me what’s wrong with the site, of course. But she did it in a sort of more approachable to-do list way, and that was super helpful to me and I found another VA who is really good at proofreading and editing. So those two site consulting services are the VA that did the site audit and behind you every day is the VA that will do proofreading. So I just use them for very specific tasks only. 

Megan Porta: I think that’s super smart, and I love something you said earlier too about just starting with a really simple task and building from there with the VA, who does the keyword research for you. If it seems overwhelming to pass your WordPress login to somebody, then just start with what you’re doing, with something that’s really simple and doable, and then graduate from there. 

Andrea Hundley: Yeah it makes it easier to transition into delegating more. 

Megan Porta: Oh yeah. So true. Is there anything else about delegating?

Andrea Hundley: I guess my only other thing would be to say it’s not like we’re curing cancer and we can go back and you can undo anything that someone does to your site. WordPress makes it easier for you to see what people have changed if you allow someone else in there and you can always undo it. So it’s not the end of the world if you don’t like it. 

Megan Porta: Yes. That is a great point. Okay. What is tip number three for thinking outside the box? 

Andrea Hundley: So tip number three is to ignore the experts. When I first started blogging, I went to a retreat with a lady who was really huge in my niche, and it was a table of 12 ladies. She sat us down and said, okay, if you wanna be a success, you need to post three times a week and send it to Instagram and Facebook and do Pinterest and make sure you get the video. Email your list every time you do a post. It was a really daunting list of things that, oh my God, how am I gonna do all that ? So I learned over time, unfortunately later, that you have to really learn what you’re good at and what you enjoy because if you try to do all the things, you’re just not gonna keep doing it. Blogging is a really long game. Which is good for those of us who’ve been doing it for a few years, but it’s not something that you can do for a year, most people, and be good at. So you need to really find the things that you enjoy doing, so you wanna keep doing it.

Megan Porta: There’s no better way to repel a blogger from blogging than to just give them all the things they quote have to do. I think that is, it’s disheartening to hear if you’re not on this platform, you’re not gonna succeed because it’s just not true. I know so many bloggers who ignore a lot of platforms and they are crushing it. So that is false. You do not need to be everywhere, so love that, Andrea. Just use your own discernment and ignore the expert sometimes. 

Andrea Hundley: Yeah. If you’re really good at something, that’s great, but I’ll just say Instagram is the bane of my existence. I really hate posting on Instagram and I hate getting on there because I feel like it swallows up a giant amount of my time, so I’m not gonna do it. There’s no rule that says I have to. 

Megan Porta: I know a food blogger who, I believe he doesn’t have Instagram or Facebook, he doesn’t even have accounts for them. I think that is such a bold statement, but it’s working for him. He does YouTube, he does his blog and he really focuses on SEO, and I just love that there are people out there who are like, no, sorry, I’m not gonna do this because a lot of us, myself included, are afraid to do that. We’re afraid to rebel in that big of a way. But clearly it’s working for him. So it is possible.

Andrea Hundley: It’s interesting that you say him because working with my husband, I noticed he doesn’t do any of that. His blogs are, Significantly more successful than mine. He doesn’t do Instagram. He did Pinterest only for a short amount of time, but he delegated that to someone else. But he only focuses on SEO. And I think there are a lot of male bloggers who have successful blogs who don’t get bogged down and try to build all the social media content that you don’t own.

Megan Porta: So interesting. So that social media time that I’m spending, and I don’t invest a lot of time these days, I used to do more, but the time that I do spend on it could be spent doing valuable SEO and keyword research. So it’s really interesting. I have been tempted in the past just to throw my whole Instagram account in the river and say goodbye, part ways because of that. Because I feel like even though it’s minimal time that I’m spending there, it’s still time. 

Andrea Hundley: I feel like you’re never gonna be able to control what the algorithm can do. So you know, the algorithm wants you to spend a lot of time and that’s who it’s gonna reward is people who spend a lot of time engaging and posting. If you wanna do that, that’s great. You can make money on Instagram. But you can also make money off ads and affiliate links. So it just depends on what you want. 

Megan Porta: Okay, this is my favorite point thus far, but I’m curious to hear the rest. So what is point number four? 

Andrea Hundley: So point number four is something you alluded to earlier. It’s beware of group think. I really think it’s important. I’ve heard a lot of your guests say it’s really important to find a tribe and that really helps you grow as a blogger. I think it’s important to find a tribe both inside your niche and outside your niche. So I have two different mastermind groups that I’m in and I know I’ve looked. I really wanna be in your mastermind group cuz it’s outside my niche. But I think it’s important to hear people talk about their blogs who aren’t doing what you’re doing. Because you’ll find out you get a lot of ideas that people who are in the soup with you, don’t have.

Megan Porta: Oh my gosh. I think that’s so important too. We talked about this a little bit earlier, but just to get that expertise from other entrepreneurs who aren’t in the river with us. They’re not floating in the same boat, right? They’re experiencing the same things as an entrepreneur, but they’re not in the food blogging scene. There is so much value there that we don’t tap into. So I love that you explore this, Andrea, and that you are a proponent of this. Do you have recommendations about where people could look outside of food blogging? 

Andrea Hundley: The lady whose mastermind group I joined first was Kim Anderson, and she does these mentored mastermind groups and everyone in them is not in the same niche. There might be a mommy blogger and a food blogger and a travel blogger and a decor blogger. So that was one place. But also, as you’re in Facebook groups or as you start to go to these conferences, that can be a really interesting way to meet people who are in different niches. And listening to different podcasts. You might come up in the comments or there’s just so many ways to try to connect, but it’s important to try to look for people who aren’t, I think just in your niche. I’ve been in a lot of what we call, I haven’t seen this too much in the food industry. In the decor industry, we do a lot of what we call blog hops. That is where you get a group of people and you all write a post. Let’s say you wanna write about fall decor and you each write a post about fall decor and you link to each other. Anyway, that’s not really about how to find groups outside of your group, but I’ve participated in those for non-decor bloggers, and that can be an interesting way to meet people that blog. But just contact bloggers that you like following. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. And not even bloggers, right? Contact another entrepreneur on social media who inspires you or has a message that really aligns with something you believe in. Contact them. Maybe there’s a group of people even outside the blogging niche that you could connect with. 

Andrea Hundley: No, that’s true. 

Megan Porta: I am a part of an amazing group that has nothing to do with blogging. They’re all entrepreneurs, but people from literally every niche you can imagine. There’s so much value in that. I learned so much in that group. 

Andrea Hundley: Ooh, what is it? 

Megan Porta: It’s a group for podcasters, but we all have businesses that are just completely different. But the only common thread is that we all have a podcast to support our business. 

Andrea Hundley: That’s great. 

Megan Porta: Yeah, it’s called We are Members. It’s awesome. Okay, so number five. Tell us what number five is. 

Andrea Hundley: Number five really doesn’t have anything to do with blogging per se, but I really feel like personal development is something that is super important to focus on because I feel like we get so wrapped up in getting this done or that done for our blog that sometimes we need to take a step back and look at ourselves and work on our habits, work on our morning routines, work on our, things that in the long run make us more productive. But we have to spend time just with ourselves figuring out how to improve as a person, and that ultimately ends up making our businesses better. 

Megan Porta: I love this point. So every point I’m like, yes, this is my favorite. This is my favorite. But this is really my favorite one. I think this is like key for success.

Andrea Hundley: No, me too. I’ve completely geeked out on this, especially during the pandemic. Reading all kinds of self-improvement books. But I really lately have discovered this app called Growth Day and it has a lot of really great personal development content in it. They have weekly lessons and motivational little tidbits and it’s great. It’s really helped me stay motivated.

Megan Porta: Okay. Talk about Growth Day. I haven’t heard of that. 

Andrea Hundley: I don’t know if you’ve heard of Brendan Burchard. He does have a podcast and he does a lot of just motivational speaking and he has a podcast, which, I don’t know if I should say this, but his podcast is not my favorite thing that he does. He has a lot of books. I feel like the podcast is mostly a selling tool for the app. The app is what I’ve really found the most value in. It’s not expensive, even the lowest level of it. Every day he has a little motivational thing that he records and you can listen to. Every month there’s a different topic of personal growth that he teaches about. One month it’ll be about relationships. One month it’ll be about conflict management. One month it’ll be about productivity. He has a bunch of different speakers, so you don’t just hear him talking. You can hear a bunch of different people’s perspectives. Like Mel Robbins is one of the coaches there. So it’s lots of different people who offer these lessons. 

Megan Porta: Okay. I’m super intrigued by that. That sounds amazing and right up my alley. There’s so much opportunity for getting into personal development. So you could just search podcasts. There’s so much free content out there that you could consume. Books, the books right now are cheap. You can get an audio book, you can do the audible subscription. I think it’s $16 a month and you get free content there. One of my favorite new things is TikTok because you can train the TikTok algorithm to provide you what you want. So I’ve trained it to deliver me basically just personal development topics.

Andrea Hundley: No, you’re right. There’s so much good stuff on there. 

Megan Porta: Yeah, there is. I always thought TikTok was like garbage and dancing and there’s nothing good there, but somebody enlightened me and told me, no, you can actually train it to give you what you want. I totally have. So now when I have a bad day or if I’m just feeling down and just icky, I open TikTok and it totally lifts me up. So that’s a good free option as well. 

Andrea Hundley: Yeah, no, there’s a lot of great people there. As long as you don’t get sucked into spending, I find that I can get on there and then an hour later I’m like, oh what happened? 

Megan Porta: Yes I do set a timer. If I’m worried about that, I’ll just be like, okay, I have 15 minutes. I want a good lift up, so I’ll set my timer and then stop. I do have to do that too. Otherwise it’s oh, my evening is gone. Where’d that go? 

Andrea Hundley: But I agree. It can be a great escape if you just need a break or you need to just take your mind off what you’re working on for a little bit of time. 

Megan Porta: A tip for that, for training TikTok. If you go into the app and you see a video that you like that inspires, you tap and hold, and then you’ll see a little text pop up and you can tap on, I think it’s more like this or add to favorites. So if you find something you love and you tap, add to favorites, TikTok will be like, okay, she really likes this. So then it’ll start delivering more of that. If you don’t like something, scroll past it fast, and that is a sign that you don’t like it. Then if you really hate something, I don’t wanna know about this topic. Tap and hold, and there’s also a little not interested selection, so do not be interested, and then it knows not to deliver that anymore.

Andrea Hundley: Oh, that’s a great tip. Now, I think it’s surprisingly better at knowing what you really are interested in than Instagram. 

Megan Porta: Oh, 100%. I didn’t believe it until, yeah, until I just got in and started exploring myself, but it’s so great. A year ago if I heard myself future Megan say that I’d be like, no, there’s no way. I was so anti TikTok and now I’m like, I love it so much. It’s just such a good positive place for personal development and other things because of that. 

Andrea Hundley: You’re right, it can be. That’s nothing you ever would’ve thought of. Yeah. But you’re right. There’s a lot of good motivational stuff on there. 

Megan Porta: Yes. Okay. Anything else about personal development that you wanted to mention, Andrea? 

Andrea Hundley: Not really. I listed a bunch of books that you can put in the show notes. 

Megan Porta: They were awesome books. So we will put those in show notes. Okay. Last but not least, what is tip number six? 

Andrea Hundley: The last thing I would say is to focus on what I would call passive income strategies instead of followers. I know a lot of people talk about, you really need to write to your audience, but I know I feel like 90% of your traffic, if you’re writing for SEO, is coming from Google, which is you’re solving someone’s problem and their problem might be, I wanna cook chicken Parmesan tonight. If I wanna cook chicken Parmesan, which I cook a lot, I’m not gonna go find my favorite bloggers, food bloggers. I’m going to go to Google. I’m saying, what’s the best recipe for chicken Parmesan? I’m gonna come with three posts, and I might not follow those people. I might not ever land on another recipe of theirs. So I feel like you really should focus on SEO and not on doing what your followers want because most of your traffic isn’t coming from your followers. It’s coming from people who are searching for a problem that you can solve. 

Megan Porta: That is so interesting. I’ve stopped nurturing an audience on my food blog. I hate to even put those words out into the world because I know it’s such a, like what you need to nurture. But I’ve stopped doing that and I’ve done exactly what you said. I’m just focused on getting traffic right now because that is working for me more than ever before, any other strategy that I’ve employed as far as okay, build up this email list and nurture your people. Not saying that email is bad, it’s very good, but it just wasn’t paying out for me. But now that I’m focusing on solving those really quick problems that people have, that’s working. So yeah, I’ve been shifting my focus there. 

Andrea Hundley: It’s not to say that you can’t. I use email too, and I would say email is probably the place where I do speak to my audience. If you could even say I have an audience. But, I guess if they care enough to open the email, I could consider them my audience. I know a lot of people in my niche who think that, ooh, people are gonna be upset if I don’t send out an email today. I really have found that my traffic on, I send on email once a week, but my traffic, if I don’t send the email is, not significantly lower. Am I really getting that much from my followers or am I just getting it from people who want to know how high to hang their chandelier? 

Megan Porta: I am so with you on that. Okay. I feel like you tapped into my brain, Andrea, with all of these. These are so good. Is there anything we’ve forgotten about each of them that you want to mention before we start saying goodbye? 

Andrea Hundley: I don’t think so. I guess we didn’t talk too much about tools, but I use a lot of the same tools as everybody that you’ve talked to. Maybe the only ones that I haven’t heard your audience mention is headline studio, which is really helpful for titles.

Megan Porta: Oh, talk about that a little bit. 

Andrea Hundley: It’s a website where you can, and there’s a free version. They try to make you get the paid version, but the free version is just great. You put in your title and it grades it and tells you need more of this type of word, or you need more words in general. So it helps you write more compelling titles. I found that as I went back and looked at my really old content, the titles were terrible, so that helps me with title writing. 

Megan Porta: Okay. You just proved your own point that talking to someone outside of your niche can provide tools and value that you’d never heard of or thought about before. So I have Growth Day and this new tool that you mentioned, mention it again. 

Andrea Hundley: Headline Studio. 

Megan Porta: Headline Studio. Never heard of that. So yes, thank you so much for that value. Is there anything else you wanted to say about tools, anything else that is really helpful for you?

Andrea Hundley: I guess going back to the first person who inspired me, just gotta keep blogging and that’s the key to it. Just keep going. And if you’re hitting a stumbling block, just change gears and write about something else. That’s why writing outside your niche can be something that gives your brain a break about food. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. Awesome, Andrea, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you taking the time out for us today. It’s been a pleasure. 

Andrea Hundley: All right, great. It was fun talking to you, and I enjoy your podcast so much. 

Megan Porta: Oh, yay. I love hearing that. So I know you just delivered some words of inspiration. Did you have anything additional, a quote, a favorite quote or anything else? 

Andrea Hundley: I guess my, I have two quotes. I had to narrow it down because I do keep these in a book, like Gretchen Rubin.

Megan Porta: Love it. 

Andrea Hundley: But my first quote would be that not taking action is an action. I see this with a lot of people that I talk to. We have to encourage each other to just go ahead and take the action because by not taking the action, that’s a different action. 

Megan Porta: Okay. That is deep. Not taking action is an action. Wow. Okay. I love that. Okay. Do you have another one? Since you’re a quote person, I want to hear what else you like. 

Andrea Hundley: The other one is just more of a growth mindset quote, which is the way we choose to see the world creates the world we see. 

Megan Porta: So true. Oh my goodness. 

Andrea Hundley: I don’t know who came up with either one of those quotes. They’re not mine, and I didn’t write down who came up with them. 

Megan Porta: Just claim them. You’re good. I love them. That so aligns with just the way I live too. So thank you so much for sharing those. We’ll put together a show notes page for you, Andrea. If anyone wants to go look at all of the resources that Andrea has, books, et cetera, to help with personal development and professional development, go to eatblogtalk.com/designmorsels. Tell everyone where they can find you, andrea, online and on social media. 

Andrea Hundley: You can’t really find me on social media. You can, but nothing I have that’s currently out there except for, so yeah. The best place to find me is on my blog, which is at designmorsels.com.

Megan Porta: Awesome. Go check Andrea out and thanks for being here, Andrea, and thank you so much 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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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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