Episode 741: Why Niching Down Can Unlock Growth and Brand Opportunities With Sarah Seeds

EBT741 – Sarah Seeds

00:00 Supercut

You are going to want to download our bonus supercut that gives you all the information you need to master Pinterest. Head to eatblogtalk.com/masterpinterest to download today. 

00:54 Intro

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

01:11 Sponsor

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02:14 Megan Porta

Hello Sarah, welcome to the podcast. How are you today?

Sarah Seeds

Hey, great to be here. Thank you so much for having me. I’m doing really well. How are you?

Megan Porta

I’m good too. So excited to talk about the the power of niching down. This is a huge relevant topic in the moment at here in 2025. So yeah, super excited to learn from you on this. Before we get to it though, do you have a fun fact to share with us?

Sarah Seeds

Ooh, I was thinking about this ahead of time and I don’t know if it’s a fun fact, but it’s a weird fact. So I’m from Orlando and I grew up here, but I spent about 12 years up in Northeast Ohio, smack in the middle of Ohio’s Amish country and so it’s interesting. As a food lover and someone that considers myself a foodie, a lot of the cooking skill that I have and have acquired over the years has come from a lot of old Amish women.

And while, you know, the Amish and Midwesterners traditionally eat a lot differently than I do, as a plant based person, it’s always just fun to see how, like, the processes and just the way that you deal with food and prepare food and the love that goes into food is the same across so many different cultures.

Megan Porta

So that’s awesome. Yeah. Not many people can say that they learn from Amish women.

Sarah Seeds

Yep.

Megan Porta

So do you carry any of that over into how you cook now?

Sarah Seeds

Yeah, absolutely. And it’s really fun to kind of take some of the more interesting dishes or things that I had never heard of or never tried and now make them vegan, vegetarian, plant based versions of them.

Megan Porta

Yeah.

Sarah Seeds

And so a lot of that stuff is like, you know, swapping out, you know, for a vegan sour cream or, you know, that kind of stuff. But the bones of it are still the same. And so I do share a lot of those recipes and I always, it’s fun to call out, hey, I.

This is not mine. I mean, it’s mine now, but I, you know, this is actually, you know, a lot. There’s a history and a story behind it. So whenever I have recipes like that, I always try to call that out on the blog and on Instagram as well.

Megan Porta

That’s so cool. I love that. And that kind of leads into just Plant Based Ginger, which is your blog. What is Plant Based Ginger all about? Tell us about it.

Sarah Seeds

Yeah, so I’ve been plant based for well over 20 years now. And, you know, one of the things that I’ve always really enjoyed is I’m not afraid of a good con. I love cooking for people that do not eat the way that I eat and trying to just introduce them to vegetables in ways that they haven’t had them before.

And so Plant Based Ginger kind of came out of that. It was right at the beginning of COVID everybody’s home. At the time, my mom was really ill and so I was immunocompromised. And so I was very strict during COVID and, you know, being a good noodle and staying at home. And so all of a sudden, you know, we’re all back home, we’re all cooking, everyone’s making sourdough, we’re all doing the things.

And I just decided that I was going to start a separate little Instagram page for all of my food so that my friends and family and people that like didn’t care didn’t have to see it. And so I just started cooking in my kitchen, writing down basics. They weren’t even like full blown recipes.

It was just like, hey, I did this thing and these are the ingredients I used and started posting on Instagram and it started taking off and before I knew it, I had thousands of people that were engaging with me and asking me questions. And so it just kind of started from there on Instagram for sure, which is still a bigger platform for me to.

And even my blog. But at some point I was like, well, I have to have a website because people want the actual recipes. And so kind of being able to push people over in that direction. That’s where the blog landed as well. I have a background in marketing and design, so that was helpful in that creation.

And it’s something that is, it’s always fun. I’m really proud of the fact that I do a lot of this stuff in house, including like the marketing and website and all the stuff we’re going to talk about today, as well as the cooking and everything. So it’s fun. Food is so fun because it gives you outlets in so many different directions.

Like, no matter what hobbies or interests you have, you can probably find some little niche within the food community that satisfies those things for you.

Megan Porta

Yeah. Oh, that’s so true. And since plant based is in your title, your URL, I’m assuming you started out with the scope, you know, plant based focus. So have you niched down from there or is is plant based your niche?

Sarah Seeds

Yeah. So I think when we think about niching down, at least for me and my brand, I started blogging very, very casually. I didn’t think it was going to be casual at the time. I thought I was going to be the next biggest thing. But it was all lifestyle. Right. And so I had a blog and it was everything from like, I love DIY.

So it was a bathroom makeover and then the next day it was a recipe and then it was, you know, fashion and then it was a, you know, daily devotion, whatever, all of the things. Right. It’s just a general kind of lifestyle and I think that’s really representative as who I am as a person is I love to be creative and I have a lot of different outlets.

But when we’re thinking about building a brand, it’s really tempting to think that the bigger and more abstract the brand is, the more people that you’ll be able to touch because you’ve got this big, giant, massive audience. And what I learned is that was totally the opposite for me once I started kind of niching down.

So basically the process for me just looked like moving into seeing what people were enjoying the most, which tended to be the recipes and the plant based stuff. There’s a ton of people right now that even if they’re not like full blown vegan, vegetarian, you know, they want to do a meatless Monday or they want to just cut something out during the week or their kids aren’t into burgers or whatever.

So I found that there was really an audience for that even in the non plant based community for wanting those recipes. And so I started kind of niching down. Niching down. So I just went into like all recipes and then into food in general. So I would highlight, you know, other local places or, you know, I’m at a friend’s house and so there’s content of her recipes.

From there, I niched down even further and decided I’m only doing plant based stuff. I did that for a while and then from there I went to I’m only doing my stuff, my recipes. And so that was kind of the progression for me. And as wild as it sounds like, the, the more granular I got, the bigger I grew.

And again, it feels like a catch 22. And especially if you’re just building a brand from scratch, like you want all of the eyeballs, no matter which direction they’re coming from, but the people who might see your content casually and kind of enjoy it, that’s definitely a demo that you try to hit.

But also, and probably more importantly is how do we convert these people into actual followers? And not even just followers in the sense of the numbers on Instagram, but people that know your brand, enjoy your brand, they’re going to share your recipes, tell their friends about it. And when you niche down, you tend to hit the demographic of people that are just more passionate about the same things that you’re passionate about.

And when you can connect with people on that level, the growth comes a lot, much, much easier than when you’re just casting this big wide net and you have no idea really who you’re searching for. You know, you’re just kind of out there in your boat fishing.

Megan Porta

Yeah, yeah, it does seem counterintuitive, right? Like, the more content I can offer, the wider array, the more people I’m going to capture, but that’s not actually how it works. And it feels, it feels weird to narrow your focus, but like you said, it actually really works. So under the scope of plant based food, do you have anything that’ any categories that are wildly popular, like dinner recipes, anything specific?

Sarah Seeds

Yeah, I mean, I think it’s. There’s. I have two pretty different camps in that regard. The first one tends to be vegan junk food. Oh, love it. Right? It’s like, we know it’s not good for us and people that don’t eat the way that I do, that’s the first thing is like, well, that’s not good for you.

You’re like, yeah, I know, I know it’s not good for me. But you. A burger isn’t good for you either, and you eat it and you enjoy it. So the vegan junk food, I just did a recreation of a very popular double decker sandwich from a Golden Arches franchise. And you know, stuff like that hits every single time because it’s when people see it broken down that they can do it at home, all of a sudden it feels a lot more doable and you kind of still get that hit of like junk food without.

So it tends to either be that where I do kind of like knockoff recipes or try to like recreate things that people enjoy from like a traditional menus, or it tends to be a lot of the just like quick and easy, like quick and easy salads, one pot meals. You know, everybody’s super busy, kids running around everywhere.

And then those recipes are so fun too, because the amount of veggies that you can pack into a meal and try to, and feed your kid and they’ll never know.

Megan Porta

Yes. I love it.

Sarah Seeds

Is one of my favorite things. I have a niece who’s three years old. Um, we make these oat milk based like ice pops basically. And so we did a mint chocolate chip one and I used the base of, I mean a lot of people avocado and you know, all this kind of stuff.

So it’s green, the chocolate chips, a little bit of mint extract. They’re delicious. And you know, she had absolutely. Would, would she eat an avocado if I handed her one?

Megan Porta

Right.

Sarah Seeds

Absolutely not. You know, did she polish down one of those popsicles pretty quick? Yeah, yeah.

Megan Porta

That’s great. I love it. Okay, so if somebody’s listening and they are like, you know, I’ve, I’ve known for a while, I should probably niche down because it is kind of the time when a lot of people are doing that out of necessity.

Sarah Seeds

Yeah.

Megan Porta

How do they evaluate how or I guess like where to go, what niche is right for them? I think that’s the hang up for a lot of people.

Sarah Seeds

Yeah. So I think first of all, you need to. If you want to create a brand that you’re going to be wanting to stick with long term, it really needs to come from something that you love doing and not necessarily something that you think is popular or trendy or it’ll get you a lot of views or it’ll, you know, you can enroll in a creator program.

All of this. None of those things are bad. But realistically, if you want to do something as a hobby, then, you know, pick anything you want. If you really want to do something that you’re going to want to stick with long term, I’d say it just has to come from something that you’re quite passionate about, otherwise you’re going to burn out.

Yeah, I always tell people too. So my dad is an old hot rodder, car guy. And so not a food analogy. But if you think about it this way, if you’re into cars and you have pages and brands that are coming through all of the various ways that we’re advertised to at this point, and it’s just all cars of all varieties, all ages, all colors, all car brands, you’re like, oh, that’s cool.

I like. But if you have a specific type of car, say you’re like a Mustang guy right now, all of a sudden you start seeing content that’s just Ford and then maybe just Mustangs and then maybe the Mustang that you have, right? Like, all of a sudden you’ve niched way down and you have fewer eyeballs probably on your page overall.

But the ones that you have are the people who want to be there. They want to engage with your content. They’re going to ask thoughtful questions, they’re going to help you build a community yourself. So you’ just the only one kind of plugging away at building this, you know, community. And so I think it really starts with something that you’re interested in and then just kind of digging down to see, like, what are the layers of this, right?

We’re peeling back this onion. And I know for me, like I said, there was a long time when I was doing just all food content, right? So like a new restaurant in town or like I said, over at my girlfriend’s house and she’s making something and none of that’s bad, right? But that was a way and it was still related and it was still plant based, you know, it still.

It hit a lot of markers. But when I finally realized, like, what is it that I love to do? I love to cook. And I love to create recipes that challenge people’s view on what they think that they like in terms of vegetables.

Megan Porta

Yeah.

Sarah Seeds

And so when I really got down to, like, what is it that I love, how do I share that with people in a way that feels really, I hope, authentic? And so depending upon sort of the industry that people are in, I think it really just is a clear look at, you know, how can we dive deeper into this?

You know, it’s not so much about. It has to be this particular industry or this particular brand. Every brand can do this. But some really actionable items, I think, start with being really real with yourself and saying what? Like, what do I want to do and what do I. What do I have to say and what do I have to give?

There’s a lot of content creators out there that are putting out a ton of content. And not that the content isn’t good, but if there’s not that, at least for me, the brands I love and follow are the ones that are authentic and feel genuine in a way that feels a little deeper than social media, even if it might not be a little deeper than social media.

Megan Porta

Yeah. So do you recommend maybe. I love that suggestion. Just start with what you love. Because people can feel if you’re writing about something or posting about something that you don’t love, so starting there is great. Do you recommend aligning that maybe with stuff that’s already working and building a plan from there?

Like, if you love vegan snacks, then look in your data and see if that’s working and then maybe run with those things. Does that make sense?

Sarah Seeds

Yeah. And I think, like, in a perfect world, if you’re creating a brand from scratch, I would tell people to, like, niche down immediately. Like, don’t. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Most of us, especially people who are at all creative or entrepreneurial, we don’t do that. We jump right in and we think that we’re going to the moon straight away.

And so I think, I think what you’re getting at is, like, for a lot of people, like, they’re kind of already in it. So how do we kind of back this up a little bit? So if you have the analytics behind the posts and the content that you’re putting out, whether that’s social media or your website, you should definitely be digging into those.

I would also suggest, if people aren’t doing it already, looking at, like, a scheduling platform specifically for social media, it’s a really easy way. And there’s a lot of free tools out there that are really great that will help to provide some of those analytics for you. And they’re kind of all in one place.

So you’re not like popping around from like Instagram or meta over to TikTok and you know, all of the things you can connect all of that, you can connect your website a lot of times into them as well. So you can get data on, hey, this performed really well on a social platform, but did it lead to click throughs to the website?

And if that’s one of your goals, then you’re going to want to make sure that you’re tracking that data. So people, I think, need to, you need to identify the goals that you want to hit. Like, what do you want to do with this? Right. So if you are somebody that is purely creating content and you’re trying to stay on social and the website is kind of a tool for you for that, or are you a creator that has something that you’re trying to physically sell people and you need those click throughs to come through because it’s your sales funnel, you know, and there’s different strategies depending on kind of where you at, where you’re at with that, or where you fall on that spectrum.

But I think that, you know, kind of identifying the goals for and then making sure that it’s driven by data and not just what we think people will want. And then thirdly, I think really is just being open to change and to shifting. I had a really great mentor years ago that told me essentially, and he said it a lot more eloquently than I will.

But it’s not about failure because everyone’s going to have failure. We’re all going to have ideas that just aren’t good. It’s about how quickly your ego will let you identify that failure and figure out a different way forward. That’s the difference between people that are, you know, moderately successful or really successful. And I think a lot of it as creators, whether you’re preparing food or art or, you know, some kind of service, whatever it is that someone wants to offer, there’s a lot of energy and a lot of emotion that goes into that.

And sometimes when we put it out there and it’s not immediately received the way that we hoped, our egos get in the way. Right? And so it’s that whole like, the longer you’re on this train, tracking down this track, the longer it’s going to take to come back from it. So I would say that just being willing and open to shifting and to pivoting I would never have the platform that I have now if I wasn’t willing to go, maybe I should do something else, or maybe I should drill down into this a little bit more.

And it is scary because all of a sudden you’re like, well, I’ve done all this work. Some of it may be a salvageable and some of it’s not right. But, like, if it’s not working, doing more of it is just going to burn you out faster.

Megan Porta

Yeah. Wow. That was all so well said and I think a truth we all need to hear because it is hard to have that realization that maybe what we’re doing isn’t working and that we need to pivot. But you are so right by saying that the most successful people in any industry are the ones who are willing to look at what they’ve done and realize that they need to do something differently.

And so that’s where niching down comes in. If what you’re doing isn’t working currently, if you’re not getting traffic, if you keep getting hit by updates, if. If bad things are happening to your blogging business, then you might need to take a real look at it and consider a niche down.

Sarah Seeds

And I think when we talk about niching down, it’s not even just, you know, on one hand, it’s very abstract, it’s very big picture. We’re going to niche down, right? But I think some of the practical things with that, right? So even like you were saying earlier, even the types of recipes that people are interested in, or it can be as simple as the look and feel of the content that you’re putting out, right?

So if you’ve never done something like this, I would highly suggest to think about yourself like a brand. You know, a lot of people have a logo of some variety, but are you using the same. Does your stuff look cohesive? If people see something that you put out, are they going to know it’s your brand or does it look like everybody else?

And if you don’t have that yet, then you have a really good opportunity to decide what you want that to look like. Are you using, you know, the same colors, the same fonts? That kind of stuff is general marketing. But more importantly, things like how you’re choosing to take your photos. Most of the photos that I put out, I hope that people look at them and go, oh, yeah, that looks like Sarah, you know, and so almost all of the food photography that I do, it, it looks very similar.

And I have a certain style of the type of photography I Like how I like to showcase things, the backgrounds that I use. And so it looks all nice and cohesive. So even that can be a type of niching down, right? It’s like if you, if you feel like you’ve gotten to the place where you’re like, I’m as niched as I’m gonna get.

I’m at the bottom. This is as little as I get down to. There’s still opportunity in a lot for a lot of these principles. And so just even things like the types of captionings that you’re using, the way that you’re writing your recipe, you know, how. Where can we cut that fat? So to speak, right?

Like, there’s always something that you can kind of dig into and go, this is really, really broad. Maybe I’m going to start, you know, only using. I mean, I know brands that use the same background music in every single reel that they post. And you’re like, that is redundant. But, you know, every time I scroll and I hear that music, I’m like, I know who that is.

Megan Porta

Exactly.

Sarah Seeds

So, you know, there’s always opportunity to niche down. Even if the brand at large isn’t necessarily a total, you know, makeover, you might find little things within kind of your. Your marketing in at large that could also benefit from a little more streamlined.

Megan Porta

Yeah, no, I appreciate that distinction because we, when we talk about niching down, it’s often in our minds, content. How are we niching or how are we presenting our content? But it’s so much. It can be so much more than that, even down to the song that you’re using for reels. So, yeah, thank you for saying that because I.

I tend to go straight to the. What kind of content are you publishing? 

22:40 Sponsor

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I think I would probably ask myself if I want to be in the same place this time next year. Because I think especially if you’ve never done something like this or like made yourself almost be vulnerable in this way. If you’ve never done that before, you probably haven’t seen, like any huge changes in your business or maybe you’ve like been on the upward trend. But when I think back to, like where I was at last year, if I had been able to look forward and be like, okay, I’m going to. Be here next year, if I make this investment like it would have been like a no brainer to do that. In six months your business will be different. Just do it.

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24:00 Megan Porta

And then do you have any results from that? People can expect from narrow, narrowing their focus. Will they grow potentially? Will they get more opportunities? What else can come into their businesses because of it?

Sarah Seeds

Yeah, I would say a couple of things. As far as results, you know, that’s where we go back to why the analytics are so important. Because you really need to know kind of where you’re starting from. So if you’ve never thought about any of this before, I would suggest that you find, like I said, some kind of a social scheduler or social platform.

I’m not going to shout out any of them. In particular, I think we all know if anybody wants to know which ones I’m using, just send me a DM or an email separately and I’ll get back with you. But you know, if you have never taken a look at your analytics beyond what each individual post is doing, you know, that’s definitely a place to start because then it’s like, it’s like anything, it’s like you’re training for a marathon.

Well, how long does it take me to run a mile now? I need to know that so I know if I’m making progress. And so the same thing would apply when we’re thinking about a growth mindset within social branding. And then from there I think really the next step is, well, I think there’s a couple of things.

The idea that you’ll niche down and then you’re going to get immediate growth overnight is probably not realistic. Just. But partnered with other good practices, you know, things like there really is, it’s difficult to duplicate authentic engagement whether it’s on your blog, on any of the social platforms, you know, doing things like this.

And I, one of the things that I really try to do is reply to everybody, respond to everybody, every comment, every dm. There will come a day hopefully where that is not sustainable for me anymore. But right now I still do and I’m still, I’m still really proud of that. And so that itself, once you can connect with people, the people themselves then help drive your brand, right?

Because they’re sharing your content or they’re making your recipes and they’re tagging you in it, or they’re tagging their, their brands that they like and saying, oh, yeah, so, and so did this right there. I did this recipe. I saw it on, over on her page. So I think the niching down combined with a really concerted effort geared towards authenticity and connecting with the people you already have is really, really important.

And then I think lastly on this topic, it would just be more about. You mentioned, you know, growth or working with brands and things like that. Most of the brands that I have worked with, and again, not to say this is exclusive for all of them, but a lot of the food brands that I’ve worked with, that’s what they want to see.

Like, you do this one thing and you do it really, really well because they’re ponying up their money and also their brand reputation, not to mention just ingredients, all the things, right? And so the idea that you can come in, give a pitch and say, this is what I do. This is what I do really well.

This is the type of numbers that I’m seeing from it rather than, oh, yeah, it’s. I mean, there’s a lot of people that can really talk a good game, especially if you want to work with brands. And that’s part of it, right? Because people like working with people that they like. So you don’t want to discount the sort of like, pitch of it all.

But if you don’t have kind of the guts to it, you’ll get a couple of opportunities to work with brands, but it’ll, it’ll peter off when people see that they’re not necessarily getting what you are promising them. And I think a big part of that is that authentic engagement with people. And when you’ve niched down to a degree that you know that the people that are there, they’re your people, man.

You know, follower count is a huge thing. And unfortunately, it is still what a lot of national brands use to help gauge the success of, of a brand. But as we all know, with all of the many ways that you can kind of inflate those numbers artificially, you can have a million followers, and if you’re putting out content that’s getting like five shares, what is the million?

You know, what’s it doing for you? So, yeah, I think that really a lot of this conversation becomes really circular, right? Because the idea of niching down holds hands with these other ideas. And so you can do one of them, two of them, but if you’re doing them all kind of together and using them as sort of a whole toolkit, I think people are going to get the best result that way.

Megan Porta

I like, I love what you said about the brands. It’s so true. If you are the person for xyz, brands are going to know that versus being the person who does everything. But you’re maybe dabbling in this one area, they’re going to recognize that and then you can create those long term partnerships that are so, so valuable.

They can be so lucrative and. Yeah. Just really powerful.

Sarah Seeds

Yeah. And open a lot of doors for me. I’m working with a brand right now. It’s so much fun and I would have not had this opportunity if I had not gone through. If I was still doing just like general content, lifestyle blogging, there’s no way, there’s no way I would have been connected with them.

But there’s a, a new agrahood that is going into Central Florida. It’s Orlando’s first agrihood. It’s called the Grow. And, and it’s going to be out on east in east Orlando. And in anticipation of this development happening, they started a cookbook, crowdsourced cookbook. That’s awesome sort of global cookbook campaign. And so even with them, it was interesting even with that process and as I got to kind of touch base with them and help craft some of the, even just the details of like how we want recipes submitted, you know, the types of recipes we want.

Their whole thing was trying to really niche down from general Orlando food scene into plant to table, you know, farm field to table, and then from there fresh produce that is in season right now, specifically in Central Florida or the Southeast at large. And so as we began to niche that crowdsourcing campaign down, all of a sudden it came together in ways that I think was really, really surprising.

And it’s been super, super fun. So we’ve got people submitting recipes from all over the country, which is great. And then we’re able to, I say we, I’m able to then take those recipes and recreate them and then feature them as, you know, blog posts and social posts on behalf of the brand kind of in anticipation of this development coming.

So that’s been super fun. If your listeners, if anybody has recipes that they want to submit at the end, I’ll make sure that all of the clickable places and links and apps are available to everybody. Because I know, I know based on the, the listenership of this Podcast that there’s probably a lot of people out there with really good recipes.

Megan Porta

Oh, my gosh. For sure. Yeah, we’ll include that in the show notes. For sure. So cool that the opportunity came to you. And I think the whole point of that is that you never know what opportunities are going to come your way when you just get really super focused on what your passions and what your expertise is.

Right? Yeah. That’s really cool.

Sarah Seeds

Yeah. And I think. And I think people can see that. I hope. I hope people can really see that and feel that. And that’s another thing, right? So, like, if you are. If you’re a brand or a sort of small to mid content creator, you know, and you’re stumped with like, okay, what should I be doing and what is my brand and what am I good at and what am I passionate about?

Find the people in your life that love you the most and ask them, because a lot of times other people, they see these things in us that we do not see ourselves.

Megan Porta

Isn’t that funny? We miss it.

Sarah Seeds

Yeah, we miss it. We miss it. And I’m really guilty of that as well. In the last couple of years, I had a little bit of a lull with my personal brand and some stuff happening in our family. And, you know, it was just one of those things where I wasn’t kind of giving it my all, so to speak.

And you saw that. I saw it with the engagement, I saw it with the follower count. And now that I’m kind of swinging back into that, you start to see things growing again. But I think it’s one of those things where even now I am not a good brand ambassador for myself. People will be like, oh, you know, what do you do?

And I’m like, oh, like this food thing, you know? Yeah. Like, I cook and I post pictures on the Internet and everyone’s like, okay. And then you talk to my friends and family and they’re like, oh, my gosh. And, you know, and they’re like, laying out my whole resume, they’re, you know, basically getting me, you know, elected to whatever, right?

It’s like they’re just praising me so much. But we don’t. We don’t do that for ourselves. And that’s a whole conversation of, like, why we don’t and maybe why, as women, we don’t. I don’t know. But what I do know is if you have some people in your life that, that you trust and, you know, they just love you, they know you the best, ask them, say, hey, here’s where I’m at, this is what I’m trying to do.

You know me, like, help me scale this down a little bit and I guarantee, I guarantee that they will have ideas for you.

Megan Porta

Yeah.

Sarah Seeds

Or at least thoughts about yourself that you hadn’t thought about before. And again, if we can like awaken these things that we’re passionate about, I think that’s where the longevity comes in from. From a brand perspective perspective, you’re not going to get burnout. Your people are going to be excited about it because you’re excited about it and you’re going to be able to see that sort of month over month growth that all of us are looking for.

Megan Porta

Sometimes I think we think that we can hide that, like if we’re in a bad spot in our lives or if we’re not into something, we think we can pull the wool over people’s eyes, but they know. It’s so funny how you can’t trick the system with that at all.

Sarah Seeds

No. And at one point a few years ago I had like done a handful of posts where I just was like, hey guys, here’s what’s going on in my world and I know that I’m MIA and I’m sorry, but that’s life. And you know, the interesting thing too is like, once you start building community, you really do have people.

I mean, the number of friends, followers, turned friends that I have because of this brand is remarkable. And the number of people that reached out at that time and wanted to know what they could do for our family or what they could help with was also super, super humbling. To just think that we’ve built this community of people that don’t even really know each other, but we’re kind of coming around this digital table, so to speak.

It was really, really great. And I think that if we’re honest with ourselves, I think that’s what a lot of us are looking for is just the capacity to impact in a positive way. There’s so much negativity in our world right now that if somebody can get some positivity out of, you know, oat milk ice pops on a Saturday morning, you know, making them with their niece like I made them with mine.

I mean, that’s what it’s about, right? Like those are the things that, that people love. And it’s what keeps us going too, as content creators, at least me, it’s what keeps me going. On the days when you feel burnt out, frustrated, you know, like, I don’t want to do this anymore and you’ll get you know, some great feedback from somebody halfway across the country.

You know, talking about, oh, I made your recipe and my kids loved it. And you’re like, there it is, now I’m back.

Megan Porta

Yes, I love that. And don’t underestimate the power of your simple whatever recipe impacting somebody else. You just never know how it’s being received. It could be the light of their month. You have no idea how much your recipes are impacting people. And then I was going to ask you, what are your thoughts about leaning into either or, and or both local and seasonal elements just to make your brand stand out a little more? If you need something to highlight your brand a bit.

Sarah Seeds

Yeah, I mean, I think local and seasonal stuff is always, you know, it’s hard to go wrong there. I think the one way you can go wrong, and I was real bad about this when I was younger, is it would catch up to me. And so all of a sudden it’s 4th of July and you’re like, oh, let’s do a potato salad recipe.

When realistically for what we do in the food industry, if you want people to actually see your recipes, you know, you’ve got to be working a month in advance, if not more. Which feels really weird, you know, in the end of May to be planning for fourth of July, but that’s what you got to do.

And so I would say the same thing for like local and fresh ingredients. Especially when we’re talking produce and the things that are in season, you just want to make sure that you’re giving people enough time to see the recipe to decide if they’re going to do it. Because again, like, this is no different than any other sales funnel, which is essentially, people need to see the message three times on three different platforms before it will kind of stick.

And then they’ll be like, oh, yeah, let me, let me make that recipe or let me try that ingredient. So I think a big part of that is just being proactive and doing stuff far enough in advance. But yeah, anytime that you can for me, because I do have kind of an international following because there’s a lot of plant based people in Europe.

You know, sometimes that does get tricky for me. But it’s also been really fun too because I’ve done different campaigns where it’s like, okay, well what is in season right now in Ireland? You know, like, are there any of those ingredients we can get here? You know, that kind of stuff as well.

So there’s always kind of creative ways to get around it. But the idea of, yeah, Finding local stuff or even just, I’ve got knives back to Amish country. I’ve got a set of beautiful, amazing knives that I absolutely love and will never buy another knife. But it’s just a small, it’s not a big national brand.

Most people probably don’t know it. And so even, even highlighting stuff like that, when people feel like that they’re kind of getting the inside scoop on something, it also feels really important. And so yeah, everything from working with other smaller creators and brands to, you know, finding the you pick strawberry patch in your area and doing content from there, I think all of those things again, is driving that authenticity.

Megan Porta

Yep, finding those things. And I bet you didn’t know the Amish situation would circle back, did you? Your fun facts.

Sarah Seeds

I really did not. I always tell people it was a really growing up down here and then moving there and now I’m back. And so sometimes it does feel like this weird little fever dream that I had for like 12 years. But it was great. It’s always fun to talk about. I always get a lot of like, oh my goodness, that we’ve never heard that before.

Megan Porta

So yeah, it is very unique. Is there anything else people should know about just evaluating how to do this, considering elements within, changing your niche, niching down anything that we haven’t mentioned yet?

Sarah Seeds

Well, the other thing that I would encourage people, people to do if they haven’t already, and sometimes this can happen at the local level depending upon the type of content you’re doing, the brand that you are. It can happen at the local level in your own hometowns and sometimes it can happen digitally as we, you know, as our world has gotten a lot smaller with the Internet, is finding a support system, finding, you know, a group of like minded people that are, you know, doing this or want to do it.

Maybe it looks like a business coach, maybe it looks like somebody who is going to come in and help you once a month, sit down for a few hours and hammer out a month’s worth of content ideas, right? Like there’s a lot of different ways that this can, like a lot of different starting points for people.

But I think really the biggest thing is just community, right? And like realizing that there’s a lot of people that are doing the things that you’re doing. One of the things I struggle with a lot of is admitting that I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know how to do this thing right.

And so you can spin your wheels and you can try to figure it out on your Own or like we talked about earlier with our egos, and ask for, you know, put yourself in a situation to succeed and find some people that, you know, have skill sets that you don’t have and figure out the skill sets that you have that they don’t have, you know, So I think there’s a lot of opportunity there.

But, yeah, if people aren’t already kind of running in a circle or a pack of sort of close content creators that are kind of doing the same thing, I would definitely recommend it. And sometimes, you know, you think, oh, well, these people are my competition. No, they’re not. They’re just not. There is so.

There is so much attention to go around that I think when you can shift that perspective from competition to collaborators, it makes a huge difference in your brand, and it’ll. It’ll take you. In my experience, it’s taken me a lot further than trying to, you know, be an island out here all by myself.

Megan Porta

Oh, my gosh. There’s so much truth to that. You cannot do this alone. And again, this is another thing that seems counterintuitive, but when you do it, you see the power of coming together. There’s so much power in that. Yeah, I love that message. Thank you. Thank you so much, Sarah. This was.

Sarah Seeds

This was so much fun.

Megan Porta

I love it. I love chatting about this, and I think it’s so important for people just to. To roll these ideas around in their heads, no matter where you’re at with your niche. Just a lot of good food for thought here. Do you have either a favorite quote or words of inspiration to share with us as we say goodbye?

Sarah Seeds

Yeah, I don’t know. It’s not necessarily a quote that I can pin on anybody, but I was told this a long time ago, and it has followed me around, is that not everybody is artistic, but everybody is creative. And I think a lot of times in the types of industries that we’re in, there is sort of the glamorization of the people that are doing the creative work.

Right. And what a lot of people mean is they’re doing the artistic work. They’re doing the fun stuff. They’re taking the pictures, they’re doing the. But we all have that within us. In some ways, everyone’s minds work differently. Everyone is energized by different things and different processes. And so, again, sort of leaning back into, like, get your community together, I would say that that’s just.

Yeah, that’s one of my favorite quotes. Not everybody is artistic, but everybody is creative. And so I think it’s like tapping into what that creativity is for you and figuring out how you can draw it out and share it with the rest of the world. Because people want. They want it and it’ll be good for you too.

Megan Porta

Yeah, people have a resistance to this. A lot of people I’ve noticed say I don’t have an ounce of creativity and that’s not true. There are so many different avenues for being creative. So yes you do and go find it. There are probably more than you think. So I love that message as well.

We will put a show notes together for you, Sarah. So if anyone wants to go look at all the things we’ve talked about, we’ll put, you know, the links to your cookbook, your community cookbook and everything else we’ve talked about at eatblogtalk.com/plantbasedginger. Is there anywhere else you would like to direct people to your site, your socials, anywhere?

Please feel free to mention.

Sarah Seeds

Yeah, I’m pretty easy to find. So I’m plantbasedginger.com is the blog and then on socials it’s @plant.based.ginger. And so you can find me there on Instagram mostly. And then for the cookbook, just to circle back because I still, I just know, I just know there’s going to be people in your audience that are going to want to submit recipes.

It’s The Grow. The T H E grow G R-O-W.com and then backslash cookbook and all of the information is there. Right now we are accepting recipes that would be featured in September. And so if you scroll through the website or even hit up thegrow, they have an Instagram and Facebook as well. It’s just LifeAtTheGrow.

And if they hit up any of those social channels, they’ll see all of the, you know, we’re kind of spamming it with all the content for the cookbook and they’ll get to see some of the recipes. These that I’ve already worked on and we’re super open. So I’m one of the influencers again that’s working on this campaign with them.

But if there are other people that are interested in being involved and have recipes specifically that focus on produce, I would love to talk to them because I think there’s a lot of ways for more than just me to be involved in this if anybody else is interested.

Megan Porta

Great. Thank you for mentioning that and thank you again for being here. So, so grateful to have this time with you. Thanks for listening food bloggers. I will see you next time. 

44:10 Outro

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.