Episode 594: How to Step Back from Social Media Content Creation to Focus on Your Website for Longevity Reasons with James Wythe

EBT594 – James Wythe

Supercut  00:00

Hey, food bloggers, check out our new SEO supercut, a bonus 15 minute episode capturing highlights from SEO episodes we have recorded recently. Go to eatblogtalk.com/SEOsupercut to get access today. 

Intro 00:10

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. 

Megan Porta  00:53

With everything going on in the world of food blogging right now. Are you focusing more on social media, or are you focusing more on your blog? Or maybe you’re doing an equal amount of both. I had James Wythe from Healthy Living James join me in this episode to talk about his journey stepping back from social media creation to focus more on his website, just for longevity reason. He has such an inspiring story and such a unique perspective on this, especially in this year of 2024 when so many people are focusing on social media, it’s honestly really refreshing to hear his story. It gives us a little bit of permission to step back and just figure out what is stirring up passion inside of us. What are we actually enjoying? Do we feel like we have to be creating for someone else, for another platform, or are we enjoying what we’re doing? He has a story to share about how he got really burned out on social media, and how that led him to focus more on his website, which he’s really happy with. I hope you find inspiration in this episode, like I did. It is episode number 594 sponsored by rankiq. 

Sponsor  02:09

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Megan Porta  03:39

After a sudden illness caused James to be housebound for 4 years, he taught himself to cook with a chair in the kitchen. James started his blog to share his journey of recovery and recipes in 2016. Since then James has built a social following of over 1M and published a cookbook. The blog currently has 300,000 monthly page views which James 5x in the last year.

Megan Porta  04:06

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

James Wythe  04:10

I’m good. Thanks Megan for having me on. Big fan of the podcast, I listened to a lot of the episodes, so it’s nice to be on. 

Megan Porta  04:15

Oh, thanks for listening. So I love having listeners on as guests. So, so great to have you here. We’re going to talk about the topic of stepping back from social media content creation to focus on your website, which is a really interesting topic because we are tending to talk about the opposite of that lately. I think so. Yeah, this will be a really good conversation. But before we get into that. Do you have a fun fact to share with us James? 

James Wythe  04:43

Yeah, so before I started food blogging, I was actually a professional poker player for about six or seven years. So I’ve had some fun, fun careers so far.

Megan Porta  04:54

Oh my gosh, that’s so cool. Our youngest son, he’s 14. He’s an amazing chess player, but he also loves kind of that strategy involved in poker. So my husband, I mean, I am a terrible poker player, but my husband is okay, and he’s been trying to teach him. So we actually play, like family poker here once in a while. So it’s hard. It is so hard.

James Wythe  05:18

It’s a surprisingly technical game. Like, I think everyone just sort of sees it as another sort of gambling game, but there’s a lot that it’s very deep. Like, there’s a lot to it. I spent probably six, seven years studying it, and it’s very much like chess, yeah. Like, it’s thinking ahead. You’ve got to be very good with numbers, and there’s a lot of strategy to it, and there’s, it’s just a lot. It’s a really interesting game. The deeper you get into it, the more the more sort of complicated it gets. So yeah, it’s really fun.

Megan Porta  05:51

Yeah, it’s, like, the actual card game itself is fairly simple. It’s straightforward. But when it comes to, like, Okay, what order are you in and then, like, what could other people have have in their hand? And all of that is just too much. It taxes my brain.

James Wythe  06:10

The actual card card game itself is very easy and quick to learn. It’s everything else that comes along with it that makes it very complex. And there’s so many different scenarios that turn up that you sort of don’t expect or yeah, is a fascinating game. 

Megan Porta  06:29

It’s fascinating, and I’m always fascinated by people who are really good at it. So love learning that about you. You should come over and join us for family poker night, one time.

James Wythe  06:39

I’m actually coming over to so even though I was a professional for a while, I’m actually coming over to Vegas for the Tastemaker Conference coming up nice next, yes, in January, and it’s a it’ll be funny. So be the first time I’ve been to Vegas. 

Megan Porta  06:54

Oh, awesome. 

James Wythe  06:55

Even though, like, I used to be a professional boat player, but now I’m actually going to be there for a food blog conference instead.

Megan Porta  07:01

Well, you’ll have to sit down at a table and play a few rounds of poker. 

James Wythe  07:05

I might do, yeah, I might I have a few games when I’m out there. 

Megan Porta  07:08

Yes, definitely. Well, I love knowing that about you. I guess to start our chat, James, would you mind telling us a little bit about your very beautiful blog? 

James Wythe  07:16

Thank you. So I started it healthy living. James, about end of 2016 I started the website, social media, all at the same time, and it’s I actually started it way back because I wanted to share recipes with family and friends, because I went through a stage of a long sort of recovery, stage of illness. I was bed bound for two years and housebound for four years. So I actually started the website after that, because friends and family were asking me for recipes, because I started to teach myself how to cook in the kitchen, I’d have a chair to sit down on. So I wanted an easy way of sharing recipes, rather than texting it to people, so I actually set up the website and then social media so that I could just post a new recipe rather than having to tell everyone separately. Now I just started getting random people follow me, which was interesting. I just really enjoyed, like helping other people and hearing people’s feedback, and I just kept going. And the website and everything’s evolved a lot since then, but that’s how sort of it started.

Megan Porta  08:22

Okay, I love your story, just about how you were kind of doing it for family to share, and then you’re like, Wait, what are all these random people showing up for? That’s great, because I think a lot of people start with the idea that everyone’s going to start flooding in. So you kind of started with a different mindset a little bit.

James Wythe  08:39

I didn’t expect it at all? No, it was, it was actually, I’ve always been quite a, I guess, a shy, slash private person. So for me, sort of opening up and like letting people in was a bit weird, but I sort of got used to that over time. Yeah.

Megan Porta  08:55

So when you started your blog, you started social media right away. Correct. 

James Wythe  08:59

Correct. Yeah, all Facebook, Instagram, yeah, Tiktok, obviously wasn’t around then, but Twitter, everything that was around I started at the same time.

Megan Porta  09:08

And then how much time did you invest in social media? Right off the bat, were you invested? Were you just kind of using it as a sideline project?

James Wythe  09:19

Sideline at the start. So I created the recipes to put on the website, and then just sort of used it as a way of sharing the new content. And then over time, I sort of started to spend more and more time on social media. I mean, this is we’re talking like way before stories or even a thing, which is doesn’t seem possible, right? Like that seems like so long ago, I remember when the first stories came out on Instagram, and it was really weird, yeah? Like, I would spend an hour trying to do a 15 second video because I just hadn’t been on camera at all. And I probably a lot of people can relate to that. It’s not that easy to be on camera at the start and then. I started spending a lot more time on socials, and then when covid came around, what’s that? Probably four or so years ago, I really stepped it up on social media and and took sort of advantage of the situation, I guess, and sort of doubled down on everything and spent a lot of time there. That took away my time from the website, which now I can’t say a regret, but if I could go back, I probably would do things a bit differently, but that’s the way it was at the time. 

Megan Porta  10:29

Yeah, and you, you gained over a million followers correct during that time.

James Wythe  10:34

Yeah. So, so it’s, I think it’s 1.1 million or so now.

Megan Porta  10:38

Okay, that that’s a lot, and that’s more than most food bloggers have or will ever have that so much so you definitely spent time. You invested energy in growing that account. Did you have a strategy?

James Wythe  10:51

Not really like I was. I mean, I was probably posting when, this is when reels first came about. I was posting four or five, maybe six a week at the start, with no real sort of strategy to it. It felt like it was just, I just love doing it. So I just kept, kept going, going, going. Obviously, there was nothing else to do was there that was sort of stuck at home, and I just enjoyed doing it, and I built momentum and just cracked on with it, really. And then I sort of got a book deal off the back of growing socials quite a lot. And then I sort of felt like I needed to keep going to help promote the book and keep growing my socials. But that sort of took its toll in the end, I guess. 

Megan Porta  11:36

Yeah, so you got a book deal that’s great, and you feel like that came because of your large following on Instagram?

James Wythe  11:44

I don’t think it would have come without those as a backup. And I know it’s the market’s becoming a lot more saturated now with cookbook deals, and it feels like sort of everyone that’s in food blog space is starting to bring out cookbooks four or three, four years ago is still quite a complicated, very difficult thing to do because you it was so competitive with TV chefs and things where I feel like the influencer side has started to take over publishing a bit. But back then, it was still quite a tough thing, tough thing to get. And so I was really, I was really excited about doing that. It was something that I would assume a lot of listeners can relate to, is like a dream to do.

Megan Porta  12:27

Absolutely. 

James Wythe  12:28

And it, it was an amazing journey, a very difficult one. It’s a lot more complicated and tiring, and yeah, there’s a lot more to it than people think, but it’s there’s still probably the highlight of what I’ve done so far. 

Megan Porta  12:41

Well, that’s great. So it was a good experience for you overall.

James Wythe  12:45

Yeah, yeah, definitely. 

Megan Porta  12:46

Is there anything else that came from your high your large following, like, did you get a lot of sponsored work, brand work, things like that? 

James Wythe  12:54

That was my main focus then, was, was branded work that was coming through Instagram. So Instagram and Facebook are, like my two big, biggest platforms. Most of the work was coming through Instagram. And again, back then, we’re talking sort of three, four years ago, there wasn’t as many people doing it. So the the branded jobs were more so frequent, and then over this the last few years, with the whole source of media space getting quite saturated, and especially within food, it’s become tougher for me, especially.

Megan Porta  13:32

okay, even with a large following, it’s you can see that it’s tougher. Yeah,

James Wythe  13:36

it doesn’t, yeah, it doesn’t feel like it. So I’ve got just under 300,000 in Instagram, and I feel like even that doesn’t 300,000 say three years ago, felt like quite a big number, maybe three or four years ago. Now, it feels like there’s so many people that are sort of around that, or more or up to a million. Now that that I know of but it doesn’t, I’ve spoken to quite a few of them, and it doesn’t really equate to more jobs necessarily. A lot comes down to your location. Brands are very aware of that. I think just the whole space has evolved a lot like brands are more aware of what they want, whereas I feel like three, four years ago is a lot, is a lot more crazy space than it is now. Yeah, there’s more a lot more refined, right?

Megan Porta  14:25

Yeah, things are definitely evolving. You can feel that. So was there a point where you just felt like that social media burnout was getting you? Because I feel like, even if we don’t have a large following, most of us feel that at some point,

James Wythe  14:40

I would say I started to feel it after my cookbook came out, which was March 2022, so what’s that? Just over two years ago? So I started to feel bits of it there with the promo for that. And I felt like it wasn’t so much about me any. What was like, kind of like not having to prove myself, but there was another someone else to please, I guess was the thing. Like, I had to please the publishers and and agents and things like that. So I felt like it was, I lost a tiny bit of love around that stage. I guess it felt like quite a lot of pressure. And a lot of people would feel that around their first book, I think because you also don’t want it to do badly because you want to do another one and and all of those things. So I felt like there was quite a lot of pressure around that, and then probably more so about a year ago, I started to really think about, Do I want to carry on like it was got to a point where I wasn’t sure I really wanted it anymore? 

Megan Porta  15:38

And you’re speaking of like social media in general, or Instagram? 

James Wythe  15:41

Or, yeah, well, actually, all of it, all of it. I just was thinking, do I? Do I want to do all of this anymore? And then I sort of break things down, and I thought, I’ve realized that a lot of that was coming from social media. I’ve, I felt spent a lot of time on there, growing all of that. Yeah, I just felt like I didn’t, didn’t necessarily want it anymore, which was quite sad feeling. So I’d spent so much time growing everything, and I really, I’ve always really enjoyed it, and then so I just had to sort of figure out what it was that was making me feel that way with it. And I think a lot of it was the pressure around social media, having to sort of post three, four times a week, and coming out with content that you hoped went viral, and there was just a lot of pressure around that and trying to grow. And I got to a point where I didn’t want to do it anymore. 

Megan Porta  16:35

Yeah, that’s hard when you spend so much energy, so much time, so much love, building a business, and then you have that feeling, and you’re like, Wait, why am I feeling this way? I used to love this. It’s really hard. It’s like a reckoning. It’s so confusing, too, right? 

James Wythe  16:51

It was. And then I sort of thought, Do I dislike everything about it? And that was the answer to that was No. Like, I still really enjoyed creating recipes. I still really enjoyed hearing people’s feedback. I really enjoyed helping other people. So it wasn’t everything that I disliked. It was just the sort of pressure and comparison, constant comparison, I guess, with other people, and seeing other people come up from nothing and grow really quickly. And, yeah, it was just it. I know you’re not supposed to compare with other people, but you always do, like, it’s hard, not too hard. It’s so hard. So I sort of realized that, okay, what is it I still love about all of this? And then it brought me back to I was like, why don’t I just go back to the way that I used to do things like create recipes for my website and use social media as a way of sharing those. But I’m not going to create exclusive recipes for both, because they’re two different they’re completely different recipes. And when I was trying to explain it to family, they didn’t really get it at the stop I was, I was saying to them, like trying to create a recipe that goes viral on social media is so different to what someone’s searching for on Google or what someone’s looking with the intent to make they’re just complete leagues apart. I mean, it feels like two different jobs. They are so far apart that I was creating one recipe that I thought, Okay, this could be quite popular and quite weird and different and fun, and then I’m trying to create something that’s actually quite basic and simple that people are searching for, and they were too so far apart that I just was kind of finding it hard to balance all of that, so I thought I’d just go back to doing what I originally did, which was post the recipes on my blog and then out share them to the social media for people to go back to.

James Wythe  18:55

Did that help your burnout? 

James Wythe  18:58

Yeah, I’ve sort of stepped back a lot from social in the last six, three to six months. Now, I just sort of post the recipes that I create on the website, onto socials, not all of them. I sort of just do it when I fancy doing I still turn up quite a lot on stories and share. We had a daughter a couple years ago, so I share a lot about bits of our family journey and and behind the scenes of stuff. But I don’t sort of create perfect sort of videos that I used to do anymore, and I’ve enjoyed it a lot more doing that way.

Megan Porta  19:29

I love that. And how has your audience received that on socials? Have they loved your change? 

James Wythe  19:35

Yeah, it’s been a lot of people when I post, I actually did a post about how I was feeling, and my overall sort of health and the impact of social media that everyone sort of understood and totally understood the situation and supported it. Obviously, the accounts not growing as much as it used to. That was expected, but I sort of just don’t care anymore with that. That like I I think it just, I don’t know if it’s getting older or having a child and things like that, where just the numbers don’t really mean that much to me anymore. Maybe it’s from stepping out side of it, because when you’re in that moment of trying to create content, trying to grow, you really care about those numbers. And actually now I’m like, it’s just not that important in my life. 

Megan Porta  20:24

Yeah, absolutely. So you’ve had a perspective change, and it sounds like your audience has been very receptive of that. That’s great. I mean, of course they would be right if they love you. 

James Wythe  20:35

Yeah, yeah. And that’s been great. It’s still difficult to get people off of platforms, though, like it’s not to get people off of Instagram onto a website is not an easy task, like it’s so I know, always knew that I wouldn’t get tons of traffic from socials onto the onto the website. So I always knew that, you know, trying to rank highly on in Google and things like that were going to be very beneficial to me and have the socials as a backup to that, yeah, to help boost them. But yeah, it’s been interesting, and I know a lot of people are going the other way, and I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts of people, people struggling with Google and going back to social media, whereas I’ve gone the complete opposite way around.

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Megan Porta  23:06

Yeah, it’s kind of like you’re swimming upstream, because it does seem like most people are going the other way, which is fine, like their stories are really inspiring too, and it’s working for them. And you know, it’s like, where you’re at, what your perspective is, what you’re like, where your passions lie. It sounds like you’re really enjoying the recipe development and focusing on the blog more now, right? 

James Wythe  23:29

Yeah, definitely, like, I feel like it actually brings back to those poker sort of roots where it’s quite a lot of strategy to it. And yeah, the deeper you sort of get, the more it just keeps going. Like, and I really enjoy that, that element of it that’s so cool, which I didn’t really get from social media. Like, I don’t think I sort of got that. 

Megan Porta  23:54

Fulfillment, yeah.

James Wythe  23:56

So it’s interesting to hear people do the other way around now, but it’s a long game, like it’s you’ve got to enjoy the moment that you’re in. I’ve that’s what I’ve learned. I think that if you’re happy with doing what you’re doing at the moment, keep doing it. Yeah, because it’s such a long game that you’re going to keep changing the way you do things. And think the what you enjoy will change. And you just gotta go with that, because if you’re not enjoying any of it, then there’s no you’re just not gonna make it, are you? You’re not gonna keep going.

Megan Porta  24:29

No, and there’s no point. There’s no point moving forward if you’re not enjoying yourself, in my opinion. So what do you think about the whole future of creating recipes for the blog, because Google has been pretty frustrating this year, and a lot of bloggers, that’s why they’ve turned away from creating recipes and doing more of social media. So what are your thoughts on recipe development and publishing on the blog?

James Wythe  24:55

I think everything goes around in cycles, in circles. I feel like I don’t when I think about social media. I’ve obviously been heavily involved with it for for years, and reels and videos and recipe videos have been I mean, I’ve never seen so many recipe videos in all my life, like as there is right now. It I know, I know, I follow a lot of food people and obviously Instagram and the algorithms are going to target me for more recipe videos, but it’s just endless. Like, I could just scroll recipe videos I recommend for days and it wouldn’t end, whereas, years ago, that wasn’t, that wasn’t a thing, like there wasn’t that many video recipe videos being created. So I just feel like it’s going to go back more to longer form content. It feels that way with newsletters and people like that are starting to really do well from newsletters over the last year or so, whereas I feel like that wasn’t really a thing three or four years ago. So I feel like everything goes round in cycles, and I feel like longer form content is going to be where it’s at again, but I still think that’s a bit early to say. I think that’s maybe in a few years time, but that’s where I sort of feel that it’s going to go because there’s just a lot of burnout when it comes to video creation. And if you’re an you know, I’m going to say a normal person at home that wants to find recipes, I feel like you’re just going to get so overwhelmed with video content that you’re just going to get bored of it.

Megan Porta  26:32

There’s so much of it. I mean, it’s very like you said, it’s so saturated.

James Wythe  26:36

Oh, it’s crazy. It’s so saturated. And the last two years, I’d say it’s accelerated at like unreal pace is mad. And there’s a lot of younger people coming into the space that have got a lot of creativity, a lot of energy, and some of them do amazing stuff, like they’re doing great content growing really well. But I just also just didn’t really see the longevity there with the social media side and brand collaborations, and I just didn’t see that long term view with it, yeah, yeah. So it’s interesting,

Megan Porta  27:10

But with publishing content on your blog, I I think what you’re trying to say is like that is going to be there forever or not forever, but like that is the long game, right? Is that kind of what your message is?

James Wythe  27:23

Yeah. The other thing was that social media, you don’t really own the content like you obviously own it, but there’s nothing to say that I could do something wrong on Instagram. Instagram get blocked or banned for for doing something like something that I wouldn’t, you know, be able to control potentially, and that could literally end me overnight, like that could literally put a stop to my whole career. 

Megan Porta  27:54

That’s scary. 

James Wythe  27:55

That just didn’t seem right. Yeah, it didn’t, it didn’t seem right to have, and I know, obviously Google could literally end my career overnight as well, but it feels less likely to happen than potentially social media doing something. So I don’t know, I just felt like there wasn’t that much security and in it. And also you still have to get the brand jobs to come in like this. It doesn’t matter if you got 5 million followers on Instagram, 10 million. If you’re not getting brand jobs, you’re not making money like you can’t survive that way. So I think the little bit more stability with ad income and things like that was just a bit more appealing to me going forward as well.

Megan Porta  28:37

Yeah. There’s a member in my mastermind group, who her okay? I don’t remember how this happened, but her Facebook page, her business page, was removed. Or like, no, it still exists, but she’s not allowed to manage it anymore. And Facebook basically told her that like you’re done for like, she has no idea why she cannot get on. She cannot manage her page. She had this loyal, big following, and it’s done, and she’s tried, and there’s nothing she can do about it. And it’s so hard to watch because she’s publishing a cookbook, and she would really love to promote it there, but it’s such a helpless feeling she has no control over.

James Wythe  29:22

Yeah, I mean that. That’s exactly what I mean. That’s that’s scary, isn’t it? And you the thing is, with the social media platforms, like, once they’ve made a decision, that’s it. Like, you’re not coming back from that. Like, yeah, it’s very unlikely that you’re going to be able to turn you can’t even get in touch with people to help you. Like, there’s no that’s one of the biggest problems.

Megan Porta  29:42

It’s very frustrating.

James Wythe  29:44

There’s not a lot you can, you can do about that, and that’s, that’s horrific. 

Megan Porta  29:51

And like you said, Google can take away traffic too, but it’s with your blog. It’s something that you have control over. You still have a newsletter. Have email subscribers, you have Pinterest, you have other ways of sharing your blog content. It just feels a lot more like yeah, just in control and not something that somebody can just take away.

James Wythe  30:14

Yeah, and the updates obviously happened a while back, have caused a lot of problems, and I know we hear a lot of the negative sides of it, my traffic’s improved since then, whether that was because, whether that’s because I wasn’t that focused on creating great content four years ago, whereas other people were. And I feel like the people that it seems to be a lot of the people that were very interested in SEO and creating good content four years ago got hit pretty hard with that, and the newer people, or the people that weren’t sort of doing much of it, haven’t been as impacted. And are doing, are going the like, going upwards. I don’t, I don’t really know what’s what’s happened, but for me, it’s been, I’ve obviously spent a lot of time updating and improving the site, and I’ve literally just launched a brand new site, actually, on about four days ago.

Megan Porta  31:12

Oh my gosh, it’s beautiful.

James Wythe  31:14

Thank you. Did new branding because I’d literally just done it as a DIY job for, like, the last six, seven years. So starting to understand myself as a bit more of a brand and trying to stand out from the crowd now is an important thing. So I spent a lot of time updating content, and then changed the site over from feast to cultivate, and I had all new branding work done has been nice change. So we’ll see how that does over the next few months as well. Yeah, but it literally just launched four, four days, four so days ago.

Megan Porta  31:51

Oh my gosh. So it is very fresh. So you mentioned, yeah, that you have been doing a lot of republishing of old content. How has that been going? Has that been fruitful for you?

James Wythe  32:01

Yeah, so it did. So I didn’t actually have a lot of content on the site. I had about 220 or 230 recipes, which is actually quite small amount compared to a lot of people. So going back through a lot of those felt insanely overwhelming at the time. I don’t even want to think back to it, because it was, it’s so overwhelming when you look at all of the content. I actually had an audit about five years ago, and I was so overwhelmed with all of it that I just was like, I’m just going to focus on social media. It’s easier. It just felt an easier route at the time, and that’s probably one of the reasons why I did focus on social, because it just felt easier to just create a video instead. And then I had another audit probably 18 months ago, and that one really sort of kicked me into and I I went off the back of that and updated probably 80% of the content, no index, some deleted, some that just couldn’t find sort of relevant keywords for or anything that I could rank for. And that has probably seven or eight times my traffic since then, organic traffic, and probably just just around about a year. So, yeah, it has improved a lot.

Megan Porta  33:24

Wow. So huge payoff, especially during this time when things are so volatile and up and down, that’s that is so great. I’m so happy for you. 

James Wythe  33:32

Yeah, it’s been hearing, obviously, a lot of people are struggling, so it’s and I’m sort of just hiding behind the curtain. 

Megan Porta  33:39

No, I, I was talking to an SEO expert on the podcast this year, earlier this year, and he was saying how he so appreciates when people who are doing well, despite what’s going on with everyone else, talk about it, because it gives people hope, and then it also encourages other people who are in the same in the same boat to talk about it too, because we hear all the bad stuff, like you said, we hear all the negative stories. Yeah, traffic is gone. I’ve lost everything, and we don’t hear the good stories, because people are so afraid to share it. So I appreciate so deeply when people share like, actually, my site’s doing really well right now, because it gives us hope that Google isn’t, you know, they’re not completely ditching bloggers or not. I don’t know. I just, I think it’s very refreshing, so.

James Wythe  34:33

Yeah, there does seem to still be room for improving. Like, I think there’s, there always needs to be something that’s shakes something up to make someone improve, like otherwise, people just continue and don’t really that’s so true. Move forward like that always does need to be something that makes you Yeah, improve, so yeah, and a lot of people will give up as well. Lot of people. All did, will give up, and that’s that’s normal as well. Like, people just want to, you know, I was like that with social media. Luckily, I’ve sort of changed my focus and gone more to the website, but people just move on. Like, have different things they want to achieve, on and focus on other things, which is totally normal as well. 

Megan Porta  35:20

Yeah, right. So what is your strategy going forward? Are you just focusing heavily on new content? Are you still going through and republishing? What’s your strategy?

James Wythe  35:30

So I’m still going back through older stuff, like, actually, a lot of stuff I republished probably a year ago. I’m starting to look at that again seasonally. So coming into sort of autumn, Christmas time, winter, I’m starting to look at some of that stuff again to see if I can move those up, and especially ones that are anywhere between sort of ranking five to 15, I sort of try to see if there’s some room for improvement there. And even a lot of the ones I did update a year ago, I feel like either don’t sort of match the the way that the template, or sort of the way the structure that I follow follows anymore, or just the way things are written or or changing the photos or things like that. So there are some stuff that I’m still going back to that. I’ve only just felt like I’ve updated a year ago and then obviously creating a lot of new content. Because my depth of content isn’t that big. Like, only about 260 or 70 recipes now to grow more, I feel like it’s a lot of our numbers game as well. Like, obviously all the new recipes you create aren’t gonna suddenly rank or do well, I just feel like it’s gonna be a lot of for me, a focus is creating new content to grow the amount of recipes that I have and obviously grow the traffic. So I do post currently post two recipes a week, and I’m actually gonna up that to three nice from September, so that’s great, yeah, and then updating recipes as well. Behind the scenes, I don’t really have, like, a set number of those, like I sort of just go in and have a look and see what I feel like I can do. The main goal will be to try and create three new recipes a week and try and update a couple of week so that it’s sort of every day of the week, business week, there’ll be sort of something that’s improved or new. 

Megan Porta  37:28

That’s awesome. And then last question is, just, do you have any encouraging words for people who might be in the boat that you are in where they just feel burned out by social media and that pressure to, I think you said these words to please someone else or to do something that’s not necessarily from within them. Do you have any encouragement for them?

James Wythe  37:49

I think the main thing that worked for me was trying to step back, write down everything that you do do, and then write sort of what you don’t like and what you do like and then that really helped me to understand that, okay, well, social media is a problem for me, but I don’t hate it, like I still am turning up and still creating stories, and I still enjoy interacting with people, but it was the having feeling like I have to create content to grow was the big problem for me, and then realizing that, okay, I still enjoy the the website and stuff like that. So I think stepping back and figuring out which side of it you love, because that’s the most important thing for longevity as well. If you don’t enjoy something, you’re not going to continue doing it. Yeah, so that’s the most important part, I think. 

Megan Porta  38:39

I am so inspired by this. Thank you so much for sharing your story. You were super candid, and I think a lot of people will appreciate that. It’s a unique perspective, I think, in this time that we’re in. So yeah, just really appreciate everything you shared today. James, thank you for being here.

James Wythe  38:58

Thanks having me.

Megan Porta  38:59

Such a pleasure. Do you have either a favorite quote or words of inspiration to leave us with?

James Wythe  39:03

I like a quote that I can’t remember who it’s but it’s the journey of 1000 miles begins with one step, which I think is really exactly sort of how I’ve gone about everything. Is, although I felt overwhelmed at stages, I tried to just do one bit at a time, because over the long term, that’s how you’re going to improve things and grow.

Megan Porta  39:25

Yes, I love that so much. So true. We’ll put together a show notes page for you, James. If anyone wants to go look at those, you can head to eatblogtalk.com/healthylivingjames, tell everyone where they can find you James. 

James Wythe  39:39

So social media. So we’ve spoken about Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok @HealthyLivingJames and then the website, as well as healthylivanjames.co.uk.

Megan Porta  39:49

Awesome. Everyone go check out James. And thank you again for being here. And thank you so much for listening food bloggers. I will see you next time. 

Outro  39:59

If you enjoyed this topic, you’ll also love the episode I recommend in the show notes, click on the episode description to find the link. Thank you, and I will see you next time you.