Episode 627: How to Nail Down Your Brand and Stand Out Online with Katie Trant

EBT627 – Katie Trant

Intro 00:00

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

Supercut  00:37

You are going to want to download our bonus supercut that gives you all the information you need to grow your Instagram account. Go to eatblogtalk.com/Instagrowth to download today. 

Megan Porta  00:52

Do you know how to define the word brand as it relates to your business? I love the way Katie Trant defines what a brand is for food bloggers. In the episode, she refers to it as the emotional perception for the person who interacts with it. You might be over complicating the branding for your business. It really is such a simple concept. Tune in to hear what a brand is in relation to your food blogging business, and maybe even more importantly, what it is not. Katie talks through traditional branding versus personal branding. One is not necessarily better than the other, and she gives really good pointers for people who really want to build a brand that sticks out in the sea of so many other food bloggers. So you are unique. It is a really good episode. I hope you love this one. It is number 627 sponsored by RankIQ. 

Sponsor  01:48

Good news, we still have spots available for the 2025 mastermind groups, and I want to give you a chance to grab one of them. One of the reasons this group just works so well is because when you invest in yourself and in your business in a really big way, you become more focused, dedicated and serious about your blogging business. For more information and to apply, go to eatblogtalk.com/mastermind. Current member, Dahn from Savor the Best talks about investing in yourself in this clip. “I feel like when you put a significant investment into a mastermind where you’re really investing your your money, then you’re held more accountable to showing up and to helping the process and staying committed. I think that there’s a lot of other like little mini masterminds that people will form like that, and they’ll fall by the wayside, because I’ve definitely tried to form other masterminds. It’ll start up and kind of putter itself back out. And so I just I felt like if I really wanted some good engagement and growth, that getting in and really investing myself would make a difference.”

Megan Porta  02:57

Katie Trant is a branding expert, a copywriter, and an OG food blogger. For more than a decade, she has worked at brand consultancies, helping huge global players define their brands. Recently, Katie has launched Foodie Brand Lab, a course and brand consultancy, especially for food bloggers who want to build a brand, refine their brand strategy, and take their business to the next level.

Megan Porta  03:19

Katie, Welcome to Eat Blog Talk. How are you all the way from Sweden today?

Katie Trant  03:24

Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for having me. 

Megan Porta  03:26

Yes, and I’m gonna have to come just knock on your door in Sweden, because, oh my gosh, it looks so beautiful. I can’t believe you live there. I just…

Katie Trant  03:34

I know it’s crazy. Well, you’re welcome anytime, but pick the time of year. I recommend summer, when it’s late all the time. 

Megan Porta  03:43

Choose, well, choose the season. Well, that’s what I say about Minnesota, too. People are like, Oh, Minnesota so pretty. I’m like, yeah, it is. But you… choose wisely,

Katie Trant  03:52

Pick your season. Yeah, for sure. 

Megan Porta  03:53

Well, I’m super excited to have you here. You’re going to talk about branding for food bloggers today, which is something we haven’t talked about in a while on the podcast. So I think this will be really good going into 2025 just a good topic to cover before we get into that. Do you have a fun fact to share with us?

Katie Trant  04:11

It was hard to choose one, but I thought I would tell you that, you know, I’ve had one of those like long, convoluted career paths where I’ve done many things, but for a long time I worked as a lifeguard, and so that was kind of like what I did full time for I did it full time for about eight years and part time for 16 years, and then I had to have shoulder surgery at one point, and I needed something else to do because I couldn’t swim. So then I had a brief but profound stint as a professional Zamboni driver, which I think that’s like the most Canadian thing that you could possibly do. So that’s always my claim to fame that I once drove a Zamboni.

Megan Porta  04:51

Okay, that is a claim to fame. I feel like, anytime I see a Zamboni, it’s the coolest thing. My boys are always like, Oh my gosh, a Zamboni.

Katie Trant  05:00

Yeah, mine too. They play hockey now, and so every time it comes out, I’m like, you know, I used to drive that. 

Megan Porta  05:05

Oh, you’re the coolest mom ever. Zamboni. Mom. Yeah, that is awesome. I feel like I should compile all of the either previous occupations or, like, sideline occupations that people mentioned on the podcast, because there are so many unique things that people have done. It’s so crazy. Lifeguard and Zamboni driver are definitely top of the list. So that’s cool.

Katie Trant  05:27

Yeah, yeah.

Megan Porta  05:28

So tell us a little bit about Foodie Brand Lab. I know you’re also a food blogger, but now you focus more on branding for foodies, correct? So can you tell us about that?

Katie Trant  05:41

Well, I would say I divide my time. It’s definitely been tilted towards Foodie Brand Lab in the last six months, when I’ve been working hard to build the business and launch the course. But it is my blog that what you know, the inspiration for Foodie Brand Lab was actually born out of a mastermind group that I have with a group of food bloggers, and it’s my blog that funded the whole venture as well. And I think it’s the beautiful thing about writing a food blog and having income that relies on ad revenue is you could have these seasons of your life where you can pivot and focus on other things, and the blog just kind of keeps on chugging. You know, I’ve been blogging since 2010 so the posts that bring in the most revenue were kind of older ones. And I love that I have this venture that I can pick up and nurture, but I can also neglect for long periods of time, and it’s generally okay, but yeah, Foodie Brand Lab. You know, I work full time at a brand agency, and I have done so for the past 12 years at a few different agencies here in Stockholm, in various roles, but my job has been working with, you know, as part of a team of copywriters and art directors and brand strategists who work with big companies to do a variety of tasks, but to help them define their brands. Sometimes it’s building an entirely new brand from scratch, or we’ve had companies that have merged, and then they need to do a rebrand. So I’ve been working deeply within branding and brand strategy for well over a decade now, and there came this moment in the last, I would say, year or so in food blogging, where all of a sudden the conversation shifted to it’s time to build a brand. You need to build a brand. The you know, the internet is changing so quickly AI is coming along, so the time to build a brand is now. And I heard that loud and clear in a lot of different, you know, at conferences and podcast episodes, but I didn’t hear anybody talking about what that actually means. So I had with when my mastermind group meets, we have a rotating responsibility for presenting on different topics. And I said, I don’t know if anyone’s interested, but this is what I work with in my day job. So I could talk about brand, and I gave a presentation. You know, it was like a 20 minute presentation, super high level. We talked about what a brand is, what a brand isn’t, how to do brand positioning exercise, really basic stuff. And at the end of it, there was this silence. And I was like, hello, and they were like, Oh my God, why are you not doing this for food bloggers? This is exactly what we need. And it had genuinely never occurred to me until that moment, like, why? And I thought, Oh, my God, why am I not doing this for food bloggers? And I reached out to a good friend of mine here in Stockholm, who is a brand strategist, and she’s the one who helped me get into the brand agency, and she helped me a lot with my blog back in the day as well, you know, to kind of shift it more into a brand like to have a better idea of what I was doing, rather than just throwing spaghetti at the wall. And I said to her, listen to what just happened. I had this presentation for my mastermind, and they said, why aren’t you doing this? And I’m going to do this. And she was like, oh my god, worlds are colliding. It’s like everything we’ve done up until this point, you know, was meant to be to to build this new brand. So I put my head down and spent six months behind the scenes working on on Foodie Brand Lab, and so we launched back in September, and now it’s out live in the world.

Megan Porta  09:13

Oh, great. Great story! Isn’t that funny? How you have something lying inside of you that you’re not even aware is so valuable, and then somebody else can bring it out and say, Oh my gosh. Why aren’t you doing this? You need to share this with the world.

Katie Trant  09:25

And now you know, now that I’m doing it, it’s so obvious. And what I love about it so much is at in my job at the brand agency, my boss, our CEO, he says that what we do is we solve interesting business problems. And what I realized over the last few years is that, you know, the companies that we work with, we work with these big global companies, like fortune 500 companies, and the projects that you work on, they are so slow moving, and they take so long, and there’s so many stakeholders, and you learn a lot. But I. I realized that fundamentally, I don’t care that much about solving the interesting business problems of like these big Nordic tech companies or, you know, Nordic fashion brands and so on. But when I look at the interesting business problems of a food blogger, if it’s like a woman running a small business from her kitchen from Minnesota, or she’s got a small team. Those are business problems I actually care about solving. And so the work that I’m doing now with food bloggers in Foodie Brand Lab is so much more meaningful to me than anything that I’ve done in the past decade at a branding agency. So I’m super inspired to be doing it as well. 

Megan Porta  10:38

I love hearing that, because there is something really special about people, I think mostly women, right? Who venture out on their own and they decide to do this thing, mainly for freedom and to spend time with their loved ones. So there’s a good cause behind it, and there’s so many good humans in this space, genuinely trying to make it work. So I love that you’re out there, just like truly on your heart, wanting to help these people get their businesses branded properly. Yeah, that’s really, really cool. So you mentioned earlier some of the questions your group was asking you is, what is a brand and what isn’t a brand? Can you talk about some of those things?

Katie Trant  11:17

Yes, I think most of the time, when I hear people talk about brand, they’re either talking about one part of a brand, so they’re talking typically talking about brand identity or or maybe brand personality or something like that, or they’re not talking about brand at all. They’re talking about business strategy rather than brand strategy. And you know, business strategy and brand strategy are two sides of the same coin, but they’re quite different in what their purpose is and the type of decisions you’re making and the type of outcomes that those decisions serve. So, you know, part of the times I’ll I’ll be talking to someone, go, no, no, no, that’s actually business strategy. Like, what? Where you invest your money, where you invest your time. That’s kind of a business decision, and then brand. A brand is a complex ecosystem of many things, and I think it’s easier, in a way, to start by saying what a brand is not, which is, you know, it’s not, it’s not a logo, it’s not a color palette, it’s not a name, it’s not any one thing, but it’s an overall, you know, it’s like, if you could see, sort of like a swirling orb of all these things working together. It’s like a solar system, almost. And they come together to form the thing that is your brand. But the most important thing to understand about brand is that it lives in the hearts and minds of the consumers, of the people who interact with so we don’t actually even own our brands, and it’s not up to us to decide what they are. It’s an emotional perception by the person who interacts with it. And all of the work that we do, when we say that we’re working with branding or brand strategy, that work is specifically designed to shape those perceptions.

Megan Porta  13:07

Okay, this is a little deep. I’m trying to process it. 

Katie Trant  13:09

It is hard. I tried to explain to my mom who, my mom was a retired doctor, so her job was very, you know, black and white, like and I don’t think that my my parents, they really understand what I do, like they’ve seen Mad Men. They’re like, Oh, you’re Peggy, because I work as a copywriter in the agency. And I’m like, um, kind of but if Peggy worked in a brand agency instead of a advertising agency, because brand is all about it’s like creating the architecture, you know, the scaffolding that would hold up a house, and then the outside layer of the house is going to be the identity, the brand. You know, how it looks and so on, and then how you feel when you go into the house is like the brand experience. And I mean, I think maybe this is kind of falling apart now, because how the house behaves, a house doesn’t, but it did, then that’s your brand personality. So it’s all it’s like layers upon layers of strategic decisions that you make to shape the experience of interacting, yeah, with your brand. Is the branding work. 

Megan Porta  14:14

So you said earlier that it might not even be something that we’re consciously aware of. So can do you feel like somebody can fall into a certain feel or a brand and not even realize they’re doing that? 

Katie Trant  14:27

Definitely, and I think that when I have students in Foodie Brand Lab, and I had a group of beta testers go through and what I think that what their brand is is usually already there, and you’re just doing a bunch of thought exercises to help pull it out and define it. And there’s one example that I give a lot of my friend Jess, who writes a great site called Inquiring Chef, and she is really diversifying her. Business. 

Megan Porta  15:00

Oh, yeah, I know Jess, yeah, yeah.

Katie Trant  15:03

So she’s diversifying her business quite a lot right now. She’s got a cookbook coming out. She’s been doing cooking camps for kids, and we had a long talk last year when we were in Chicago together, and, you know, trying to sort out how all of these elements of her business strategy worked together to form, you know, what part of it was the brand, and did each of these ventures need their own brand? Were they sub brands, or was it part of, you know, of like a bigger brand ecosystem? And then I said to her, you know, I went home and I thought about it, and I sent her a message, and I said, Jess, who is the Inquiring Chef? Is it you? Jess Smith, are you the inquiring chef, and you are the you know, that’s like an aspirational character that people would want to try and become kind of, or do you exist to serve a community of inquiring chefs? Because if it’s the latter, you are the guide. You’re the tour guide for all those people. That’s your role in the brand, and everything that you do can stem from that knowledge. And she was like, Oh, my God, you just nailed it. And just understanding that right? It was already there. That’s how she was already operating. But we just needed to, like, pull that knowledge out, and then that allowed her to make business decisions and make brand strategy decisions, that realizing that her purpose was to serve that audience of inquiring chefs, gave her a green light to do a lot of things that she wanted to do. And then we had another woman in the mastermind group, Amanda from Scarlatti Family Kitchen.

Megan Porta  16:41

Oh, yeah, I love her. Too. Good group you have there.

Katie Trant  16:44

Yeah, it’s, they’re amazing. But she, you know, we, I took, she went through the course as a beta tester, and, you know, we spent a lot of time talking about her brand, and how, you know, is it a personal brand or a traditional brand, and what is her role in the brand? And I said to her, I think that you are actually the exact opposite of Jess because you she rebranded her site to Scarlatti family kitchen, which is her, her family name, and so I said you are literally welcoming your community into your home like into your personal kitchen. So you are the brand. You’re like not taking. You’re not serving this community of users who you’re their tour guide. You are welcoming them. You’re like this presence, this like light that they’re coming towards. And you know, again, that decision or not decision, but that identifying her role within the ecosystem of her brand really liberated her with her content strategy and how she talked about her brand, the types of recipes she decided to do, how she interacted with her audience, all of those things. So oftentimes it’s these really, like basic, granular things that are already there. And it just takes, you know, knowing a little bit about brand strategy and knowing how to pull that information out to to take the next step. 

Megan Porta  18:03

And an outside perspective too. Isn’t it so hard to see your own like anything in your business, whether it’s a brand or anything else, I feel like it’s so hard to see what’s going on, but just so much clarity comes from an outside perspective on that, especially if you have some background and branding?

Katie Trant  18:21

Yeah, definitely. I mean, this is why big businesses hire branding agencies, right? They have, they have, typically a head of brand, and maybe a head of employer brand, and a lot of people within the company who already work with brand, but they still hire a brand strategy agency for those outside perspectives and to have a team of people who can kind of take an an outside in or an inside out look, and, you know, map everything out and and show you what is in front of you, but you can’t see on your own.

Sponsor  18:50

Hey, food bloggers, are you looking for new ways to monetize your site, grow your audience and prepare your business for the future? If so, you should get to know Raptive, as you might know, I have been with Raptive for at least seven years, and I continue to believe they are the best partners for premium food creators ranked the number one food property by Com Score, Raptive is home to more than 1500 premium food creators. The reason so many creators choose Raptive is because of their industry leading RPMs and investments in our future. Raptive is much more than an Ad Management platform. They are strategic partners focused on helping creators grow their unique businesses and maximize earnings from SEO to AI to future proofing and revenue generating strategies, Raptive has creators covered. Interested in learning more about Raptive 15% minimum RPM lift guarantee on top of your year over year growth, what they’re doing to protect and empower creators from the threats posed by AI, including the Creator led keep it real, initiative to preserve authentic content. Or maybe you’d just like to hear how other food creators. Not just me. Are benefiting from Raptive support. Go to raptive.com/EatBlogTalk, to learn more or to schedule a call with their team. We will also be hosting a Raptive executive on one of the upcoming podcast episodes. So if there’s anything you would like to learn more about, please let me know again. Go to raptive.com/eatblogtalk to learn more, or to schedule a call with their team. 

Megan Porta  20:25

Do you have any strategies for simplifying just how we can figure that out on our own, like you talked about Jess and Amanda, like not knowing what their brands were, but then once you enlighten them, they’re like, oh my gosh, of course.

Katie Trant  20:39

I think it’s hard. You know, branding is not a quick fix. It’s not like finding a great keyword or having a pin take off. You know, branding is definitely playing the long game and but I, I think if I could boil it down, there’s three simple questions that I think you could ask. One is, who are we or who am I as a brand? What do we do? And why should someone actually care? And I think that answering those questions, it’s not going to put an entire brand strategy in front of you, but I think that knowing that information and the the interesting thing is, there’s, there’s a difference between traditional brands and personal brands. And I think we hear a lot about personal brands in blogging space, and most people assume that, because they are small businesses, because it is a blogger who started this company, and they are the voice of the brand, they assume that they are personal brands. But when I have people go through the course, this is one of the first exercises that they go through. And a lot of people will say, we have a Slack workspace where people can post, you know, questions and so on. And they’ll come into Slack and say, Okay, I am a personal brand. And then I’ll go and I’ll look at their website, and I’ll say, actually, I don’t think that you are. And these are the reasons why you’re not operating like a personal brand. You’re not telling stories about yourself. You are, you know, very much operating this business like a traditional brand, which, you know, a traditional brand can be built from any inspiration, whereas a personal brand really revolves around a person, obviously. 

Megan Porta  22:17

Do you feel like every food blogging business should be a personal brand?

Katie Trant  22:21

No, not at all. And I don’t think that there’s a right or a wrong answer. It’s not that one is better than the other. I just think it’s, it’s important to understand. And so for you know, the example I gave you with Jess from Inquiring Chef, what we realized is she’s very much not a personal brand. Even though she’s the face of the brand, she’s the brand ambassador. That inquiring chef is very much a traditional brand. And I look at, you know, a lot of big food blogs are run like traditional brands, even though they’re a one person brand. And I think that understanding that that’s the question, Who are we and what do we do? Do we provide a service? Do we open up our lives and let people in. Do we act to inspire people? Do we, you know, a lot of food bloggers are out there because they’re trying to help someone, you know, maybe they are celiac, and they want to help people access better Gluten Free Recipes. Or, you know, I have a background in nutrition, and so I write, you know, my food blog is all about no nonsense, fad free nutrition and healthy vegetarian recipes. So what do I do is I use my background in nutrition, I have two degrees in nutrition to provide that information for people who are like I don’t even know how to you know who to turn to, what who to trust. I want to be that trusted source of nutrition in that space, in the internet, and why should someone actually care? Well, because I have two degrees in nutrition, because, you know, you can rely on me for real information that, you know, it’s not just like woo, woo hippie made up stuff. I’m actually, you know, using a scientific background to provide this and to help people. So, you know, answering those three questions, I think that’s that’s definitely somewhere to start, but that’s gonna be the tip of the iceberg, really. 

Megan Porta  24:13

You have to let it play out too.

Katie Trant  24:15

Yeah. 

Megan Porta  24:16

Do you feel okay? So I hear this all the time. You round out your brand by doing other projects or, you know, emerging yourself in different platform or something like that. Do you feel like the more projects or platforms that you do, the more well rounded your brand becomes? 

Katie Trant  24:34

Not necessarily, I think that you have to be really intelligent in how you do that. I mean, that’s going to be a business strategy to really diversify. And I think that if it’s done well, then you are you have, like, a channel strategy where your brand is applied across many different touch points. But if you are just kind of like chasing the next opportunity all the time, you haven’t. Stopped and said, Does this fit with my brand? Does this serve the community or the, you know, the niche that I’m trying to serve? Are you just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks? I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that as a business strategy to try new things, but I think you have to go back to the fundamentals of what is your brand purpose? Why do you exist? What are your brand values? Does this actually align with who you are and where you want to go as a brand? 

Megan Porta  25:26

And then I’m just sitting here thinking about new bloggers, because I know there are a lot of new bloggers on the scene, a little bit frustrated because of all the stuff that’s been going on this year with Google and other things. And I know that they… 

Katie Trant  25:40

Yeah, it’s been a bumpy, bumpy ride. 

Megan Porta  25:42

Yeah, it’s a it’s a little bit bumpy this year. And I know that these new bloggers really want to stand out. They don’t want to look the same. They want to be unique and really let their personality shine and all of that. Do you have any advice for them?

Katie Trant  26:00

Do you know what’s what I think is interesting. And I had had a talk with Casey Markee the SEO guy, about about my branding initiative. And he was like, you know you and I both know nobody cares what your website looks like like. I think we care as food bloggers. And I spend so much time interacting with my own site on my desktop computer, that I really care what it looks like. And most people are accessing your site on their phone, and they just, you know, want an uncluttered site, and they want it to work well, and they want it to be easy to find the information. And so I think that there is a balance between, you know, going too far with branding, like having a really distinct brand identity, of course, is going to help with brand recognition. And brand recognition is super important for brand awareness, and, you know, having people remember you, and all of those important things for brand building, and also building traffic and building authority. But I think if I was a new blogger, I really, you know, I wouldn’t want to feel like I had to drop a lot of money on, like, a custom design or a fancy website. You know, if you have a site that’s, that’s fast and, you know, it’s got a good recipe card, and you’re, you know, kind of ticking all the functional and SEO boxes, and then really having beautiful photos, I think, is really important, and that, of course, your photography style is a part of your brand identity, so that is an important part of it. But I think your voice, how you write your brand, tone of voice, and your voice will carry you across different touch points, like your actual blog posts, your social media, if you’re using Instagram, both static posts, if you’re posting reels, if you’re posting stories, if you’re using Tiktok, all of those touch points are opportunities for people to hear your voice. And I think your voice is what resonates with people more than anything else, more than you know. Of course, beautiful photos are going to be really important. On Pinterest to attract people. But when people click through if they feel like, Yes, this is a place I want to be, I feel like I can identify with the person who’s writing this site. It’s, you know, funny, or it’s heartfelt, or it’s, you know, I feel warm and fuzzy, and I feel welcome here. All of those things I think are really important for helping someone to build a brand that people want to come back to and interact with again.

Megan Porta  28:29

And that can take some time. I mean, you can’t build a voice overnight or in a week, or even, I don’t know. I mean, sometimes it takes years to do that. Don’t you think.

Katie Trant  28:38

Yes, it takes years. And I think it also changes over time. You really iterate on it. Like, you know, I’ve been blogging for a long time, since 2010 and I go back and clean up posts. I went through this period in like, I don’t know, 2018 or so, where I was, like, not actually writing curse words in my post, but I went through this, like, weird tonality period where I was just like, Yeah, I’m this, like, tired, grumpy mom, and I’m gonna, you know, and now I’m like, What was I doing? You know? I don’t, but I do think it resonated with people at the time. But the beautiful thing about a blog, about a food blog, is that it’s a living thing, right? You can go back. I’m still cleaning up old posts. I republished something from 2011 the other day, and I can tell you that was a terrible post as well until I redid it. So I think that your voice can develop over time, and your brand can develop over time too. I mean, this is why, in branding agencies, we have companies come back. It’s very rarely that you have, like, a one and done project for branding. You know, people, they need to continually come back and nurture the brand and, you know, update it and make sure that what you’re doing is keeping up with the way that the technological landscape and the cultural landscape is changing. 

Megan Porta  29:56

Yeah, that is such a good point that it’s not going to be one thing that’s one and done, and then you’re good, like my brand is set. You have to keep revisiting it, because you’re going to keep growing, right, and your audience is going to keep growing too.

Katie Trant  30:10

And I think that the a strong brand will be able to stand the test of time. But you even see, you know, I think about brands like Nike, or, I don’t know, Disney, or, you know, these, like big, big, big, powerful brands. And of course, they change over time, but you always are able to recognize that that is the brand you’re interacting with.

Megan Porta  30:31

No, that’s a lot to think about, because we just show up every day we create our content. So to kind of back up a little bit and see this bigger picture of who we are as a brand and what kind of brand we’re creating is, it’s pretty thought provoking. Like, oh gosh, who am I as a brand? Yeah, okay, so I feel like I started back in 2010 also, I feel like back during that time, food blogging was more like I knew which food blogger was creating what content based on their logo and the way their website looked and their colors, and that kind of was the brand back then. Do you feel like the word brand has changed?

Katie Trant  31:14

I think it might have changed in the minds of food bloggers, but it definitely hasn’t changed. Like, what a brand is has been quite consistent, or, you know, over time and but I think what your brand contains, you know, it is constantly changing because technology changes. And we, you know, a lot of people, it would have been only the website and they had their logo and their colors, and so you could recognize, you know, people were putting watermarks on photos, and you kind of knew what they who they were based on that. But I think now we have so many different channels that our brand acts in that and and those are constantly changing as well. So you know what it is if you’re having, like, I’m trying to think of the name of the what was that? It’s a social media channel. Obviously, I don’t use it because I can’t remember the name of it, where you can, like, get on a call with people. Do you know what I’m talking about? I’m gonna have to look this up and and get back. But it’s you know. So these things are changing. Like, how you can interact with your users is changing. And you know, now we have technologies like, you know, we have Tiktok, and we have Instagram, and then in Tiktok, you have Many Chat and Many Chat has changed how people are getting served content as well, because they’re getting DMed a link to a blog post and so on, and people will have channels in Instagram where their followers can be in with them, like basically in a chat, or you might even have a chat bot on your website now. Or you know all of these different things, and your brand is present across all of those touch points. So yes, it’s more than just a logo and color, it always has been. But, you know, the ways we interact with brands, especially online brands like food blogs, has evolved. And so I think the definition of brand has possibly, you know, just evolved along with with that.

Megan Porta  33:15

Yeah. I mean, there are so many things that are emerging every year and things that are also dying every year. So I imagine that it’s just like the whole concept of branding is just kind of going with the flow of everything if you need to. Is there anything else that you feel food bloggers should know about branding if they feel completely unaware about where they’re at with their brand, or maybe they do know where they’re at, and they just want to tweak it a little bit like, really establish their brand a little bit more. 

Katie Trant  33:47

Yeah, I think that having, whether you are just starting out, or whether you’re, you know, a six or seven figure blogger, and you have a team working with you, if you’re working with consultants. You know, maybe you have a writer, maybe you have a photographer, or someone doing video for you, even if it’s just you, you’re like one person. I think that having brand guidelines is really, really useful, and this is something that we do. You know, the if someone goes through Foodie Brand Lab, course, there’s 10 units, so they go through kind of the branding basics, and then the output of that is brand guidelines. And in the guidelines, it’s, it’s basically like the, I don’t know, for lack of a better word Bible for your brand. So you can hand it over to anyone else who might work with the brand, or you yourself are using it. And so it’s going to have everything in there from you know your brand purpose, your brand values, your brand personality. And within brand personality, we have tone of voice, so that’s how your brand sounds and how your brand sounds in various channels. You’re gonna have your visual identity, so your logo, your colors, your photography style, you. And you’re gonna have guidelines on how these things are applied in different channels. So think about it like you as a person, you know, you have, you know, I have a an office job, so I kind of have my work persona, and then I go to the gym, and I have my gym persona, and then I go to my friend’s house, and I have my, you know, party persona, and I’m still me in all of those situations, but how I behave in those different occasions is a little bit different each time, and a brand is the same how it behaves in different channels. So I think that having these guidelines and saying, This is how we as a brand act, this is how what’s important to us as a brand, and just using that to help you steer the ship. And it makes it much more simple. From everything you know, if you’re doing your keyword research and you come across a great keyword, you know, like, I use key search, and I’m sure that many of us in the last few years, when SEO was such a priority and you’re chasing keywords, you know, I was like, oh, green light. Green light. And key search. I’m going to do that without stepping back and going, does this fit within my brand strategy? Is it part of one of the content pillars that I’m trying to build as part of that strategy? And, you know, is this photograph on brand is this, I work with a photographer. I don’t take my own photos anymore. So for me, you know, having guidelines that I can hand over and say, like, these are the types of settings that I use. This is how, you know, I want photos to be styled. And you know, if you go through my website, it’s very difficult to know which ones are mine and which ones are hers, and that’s because we’ve worked really hard to make sure that that they’re on brand. So, you know, little details like that, I think go a long way.

Megan Porta  36:48

Yeah, I love this perspective on branding. I’ve had a few on the podcast over the years, but this is definitely a new take, and it’s just so simple. I love your perspective. So thank you for bringing that all to the table, Katie, we really appreciate this value. Do you have either a favorite quote or words of inspiration to leave us with today? I

Katie Trant  37:07

Do have a favorite quote, and it’s, you know, I started with the Zamboni driver thing, and so I’m gonna end with my favorite quote by Wayne Gretzky, who I happen to share a birthday with. That’s also a fun fact, and his he says you miss 100% of the shots you never take. And I think that that applies, you know, to hockey and to food blogging and, you know, to trying to start a new business like Foodie Brand Lab. So I love that.

Megan Porta  37:34

Love that. What a great way to end. Thank you for sharing that. I will put together a show notes page for you, Katie, if you want to go look at those head to eatblogtalk.com/foodiebrandlab, tell everyone where they can find you. And if they’re interested in getting branding help, I assume you offer those services as well. 

Katie Trant  37:53

Yeah, I do. So you can follow me on Instagram, both at Hey nutrition lady and at Foodie Brand Lab. And then Foodie Brand Lab.com is where you go to check that out. And in Foodie Brand Lab, we have three different levels of services. We have the course, which is the entry level, because my mission was to really make branding accessible to everybody. So the course is super affordable. It’s self paced. There’s lots of support with our Slack channel and monthly office hours. And then we also have both a done with you and a done for you service if you’re looking for a little more hands on support with your brand. And those are the sort of more premium levels. But all of that is on the Foodie Brand Lab website, and we, I’d be happy to extend a discount for Eat Blog Talk listeners. So I will give you a link to put in the show notes, and that will give $50 off the cost of the course. 

Megan Porta  38:49

Thank you. That’s very generous of you. Everyone. Go check that out. And thanks again, Katie, for being here. And thank you so much for listening food bloggers. I will see you next time. 

Outro  39:01

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 you.