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Episode 226: The Power of The Ask with Christine Brady

In episode 226, we talk with Christine Brady about how asking your audience for their struggles will help you offer a way to solve the issues they face and create a product they can use.

We cover information like a magic survey strategy, give your audience an opportunity to respond with open-ended questions and make sure to let the answers reveal the solutions themselves.

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

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Guest Details

Connect with Zest For Baking
Website | Instagram| Facebook

Bio
A lover of baking and lover of bread, Christine has been creating gluten and dairy free recipes on the Zest For Baking blog, since 2013. There’s been a lot of ups and downs – a 2 year break, an algorithm hit (or two) and a rebrand… but she continues to share her love of blogging and wouldn’t change a thing (except maybe the algorithm updates!) Also, a busy wife, mom to 2, Christine loves a great latte!

Takeaway

  • Always be developing and in contact with your core audience that you grow through your email list.
  • When surveying your audience, use a mix of radial questions and open-ended questions to give them a chance to share their unique needs.
  • Once you have the results, take time to read through it. You can jot down themes, surprises, outlying responses and the ones that were repeated. Begin to think of what response you can have to solve some of the needs put out there.
  • Offer the opportunity to respond to the email 3-4x. Send it out a couple of times and then also mention it in a weekly email or some other correspondence you regularly use.
  • It’s nice to follow up with a thank you message to your audience as well and let them know you’re going to respond soon to their identified issues.
  • Your audience wants to hear from you. They want your solution. They’ve connected with you, they trust you and want your solutions.
  • Get something out there. Ask your people what they want and get it out there.

Resources Mentioned

Questionnaire

Diversifying Your Income?

Listen to episode 208 as Cynthia Samanian shares about creating online cooking classes to grow her audience and business.

Transcript

Click for full text.

Intro:

Welcome to Eat Blog Talk, where food bloggers come to get their fill of the latest tips, tricks, and insights into the world of food blogging. If you feel that hunger for information, we’ll provide you with the tools you need to add value to your blog. We’ll also ensure you’re taking care of yourself, because food blogging is a demanding job. Now, please welcome your host, Megan Porta.

Megan Porta:

Food bloggers. I want you to know that I myself am a food blogger. So I understand the need to find those connections and find the answers and create transformations in my business that are actually going to matter and help me to grow and make more money and get more traffic. All of the good things. If you are interested in this too, which you probably are, please consider joining our mastermind groups, which are starting up in the fall of 2021. Go to eatblogtalk.com to find the application. There’s a button there that says Join A Mastermind Group. That will bring you to an application that will determine whether or not you are a good fit for these groups. As Napoleon Hill, the author of Think & Grow Rich says about the mastermind principle, two or more people actively engaged in the pursuit of a definite purpose with a positive mental attitude, constitute an unbeatable force.

Unbeatable force, you can’t argue with that. Weekly zoom calls will have the format of peer to peer learning with members taking turns being in the hot seat. Once a month, we will invite in guest experts who will unleash their knowledge about very specific topics relating to food blogging and relating to ways that you can grow your business in a big way. We convene every single week where we share our struggles, our wins, and we can shine and lift each other up and provide resources and input that will help the other members in the group to grow their businesses and grow as individuals as well. Again, go to eatblogtalk.com to fill out an application, to see if you’re a great fit for the mastermind groups.

Hey, food bloggers. Welcome to another episode of Eat Blog Talk. Thank you so much for joining us today. I am super excited because I have Christine Brady with me and she is from zestforbaking.com. We are going to talk about the power of the ask. So that simple act of asking people what they want and how much power lies in that. A lover of baking and lover of bread, Christine has been creating gluten and dairy free recipes on the Zest For Baking blog since 2013. There have been a lot of ups and downs, a two-year break, an algorithm hit or two and a rebrand, but she continues to share her love of blogging and wouldn’t change a thing except maybe those algorithm updates, right Christine? Also, she is a busy wife, a mom to two, and she loves a great latte. Oh my gosh. Me too. Lattes are my favorite. I love them. Well, I am very excited to talk about this topic with you today. I think it’s a really simple yet important one, but first we all want to hear your fun fact.

Christine Brady:

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited. So my fun fact is I also have a yard card sign business. So I don’t know if you’ve seen these signs out, but what we do is people rent these yard card signs from us. It’s a 24 hour rental for birthdays, graduations and we put it in their front yard. It’s unique. I mean, it’s fun. That’s why I say it’s a fun fact because it just puts a smile on everyone’s face. It’s when you wake up in the morning. We do a lot of 40 year birthdays, 50 year birthdays, kids, and it’s out in front of their yard and it says happy 10th birthday Zack.

Megan:

Yeah. I’ve seen those. I actually saw a picture of one on Instagram recently, it was for a 16th birthday or something and I thought they were so cool. I love that you do that. How long have you been doing that?

Christine:

Since 2018.

Megan:

Wow. Do you stay pretty busy with that?

Christine:

We do. I have a friend who does it in Dallas and I’m in the Fort Worth area, Arlington. Course the pandemic, I hate to say it helped, but it definitely, just like food blogging.

Megan:

Totally understand that. Well, that’s really cool. I love that. I’m excited to talk about the reason you’re here today, Christine, which is just that simple act of asking people what they want and then delivering it. I also love that you’ve found the world of online teaching that way because you do online baking courses, correct? I think more importantly is how did you land on that? You didn’t just pull something out of a hat and say, I’m going to do online baking courses. You actually put thought into how to figure it out. I’m super intrigued by this because it’s such a simple concept. So I would love it if you just talked us through this process, how you started it and the process that you took your audience through. Would you mind sharing that with us?

Christine:

Like I mentioned with the pandemic, pandemic time was great for food bloggers. We definitely saw a nice uptick, but I noticed, and I think just seeing in Facebook groups and just the chatter. Once January hit, things of course took a little slump. Now of course with where we’re at with the summer, it really took a hit. I would say especially for me, but I know for everybody it really has. I guess we should back up to January. So when that started, I wouldn’t say I saw the writing on the wall, but I thought, oh man, I’ve got to do something. I want to make this year my year to really grow and just accelerate my business.

One of the things that I’ve been consistently doing with my people, my readers, because we’re very close. I have maintained a very close I’d say relationship even with them from day one from when they first joined my email list. That’s one thing I try to work on and develop that relationship. Well, I thought, how can I best help everybody? I’ve got so many people responding to my emails and saying so many different things. Hey, I need help with this. Can you clarify this? Or I get to this point in the recipe and I need to have a little more help. It could be anything, so many different things. So I got to thinking, how can I better help them?

What can I do to kind of give them more information and help them in their gluten-free baking journey? At that point I was still toying with the idea of maybe a private Facebook group? What could that actually be, a cookbook? I had these ideas and I just kept jotting them down. Here’s an idea. Here’s another idea. I’m just going to keep a file folder, whatever of all these ideas. So after I had all this together, I thought, well I have a pretty good email list. I’m going to do a survey. I hadn’t done a survey in forever. So I started putting together some questions. With me, and I don’t know if other people are like this, but I work on something, then I have to put a pause on it and then come back and just see the questions. I hate to say it’s a one-shot deal, but to me, it was. I had one shot to get this survey right. I couldn’t go back and say, oh, wait, I’m sorry, I forgot a question. Let me throw this in there too. So finally I had this survey. I would say it was just a matter of a few days. It didn’t take too long. Then I pushed the button and sent it out and said, okay, y’all I want to hear from you. Tell me what is on your mind. I had seven questions. They were a mix of open-ended and things that, again, going back to my ideas that I thought maybe would help them. I interweaved it a little bit, but tried not to lead them. When everything was said and done, I had 630 responses.

Megan:

Oh my goodness, are you kidding?

Christine:

I’m not kidding. aeo I was thinking, okay, maybe 200 responses. I mean a survey.

Megan:

How many people are on your list?

Christine:

So at that time it was 11,000. So it was pretty big. In the scheme of things, I guess it was pretty good.

Megan:

But percentage wise, that is a massive response.

Christine:

For me, I think surveys and I think, oh, the response would be even less than a click through to like a blog post. So it was wonderful. Some of my questions were open-ended so everybody typed stuff in. Every one of those 630 typed a response. It took me about a week to go over and I still had more coming in. I used Google forms. It’s great for that. Then they’ll convert it into an Excel sheet so you can look basically on my monitors, I had the thing up and then the answers. So I could go back and forth and just align everybody to where I thought their answers were. I’m looking at it with the purpose of doing something that is going to help them. That’s going to matter, that they’re going to essentially love and buy. So I took an old fashion notebook and started writing some things down. A lot of the issues are the same with gluten-free baking. You’ve got your top issues and then some other things also that come up. I basically took these top issues, probably five of them, six of them and looked at my idea list of what I thought would resonate with them and came up with a baking course. Because what I was noticing is that my target audience, they do like to read recipes, but they also like to be a part of it. They would appreciate somebody making a recipe, like a class. So I thought this was new. I just thought, oh, wow, this is new to me. I didn’t realize that. It was revealed in my survey. After the survey, when you’re asking people, what is it that is bothering you? Of course it’s your job to figure out how you can plug in and create something to solve their problem. At that point I got to work on creating what I had never done before and that’s creating a class.

Megan:

Oh, okay. So many questions and things I want to comment on, but how cool. So my first thing, did you have any idea before you sent out the survey that a baking class would be an option?

Christine:

You know, I had it noted as an option. I did. Yes. But, I had never used a front-facing camera before. I’ve done hands in the pans videos, and then slideshow videos on my blog. I had never actually been what do we call it? Cooking show style, I guess, is that what we call it? So it was on my list, but maybe just a private Facebook group. Is that what you want?

Megan:

I know. You’re trying to steer them to the easy solution. But it’s not always that. So can I ask you about your survey? You mentioned that you did a few open-ended questions. I think that’s so smart to actually get people writing because when they start writing. It’s not just picking from ABC and D they’re actually pulling things out of their minds, which I think is really valuable. What did you ask? I’m curious, if you don’t mind sharing a few of your survey questions, would you mind sharing those with us?

Christine:

Not at all. I can definitely do that. So I will preface it by saying there’s no question that I wish I had asked. So make a note of this one because this is a good one. I do wish that I had asked their age group. It’s a random question that you think, oh, why would you, but I think it would help because I come to find out that my age groups are not really on Facebook. They’re comfortable with email and websites. So that’s one question that I would have asked. It’s just a radial dial maybe for that. I had seven questions. So I titled my survey, how can I help you? Then for the subtitle, I just put, I want to hear what’s stumping you with living and eating gluten-free. So these were radial dial questions. Do you consider yourself, and then there were options. New to gluten-free, not new, but still trying to figure things out or experienced and just looking for more recipes and tips. So that identifies them. I wanted to really know, am I talking to new people or who am I talking to? I was surprised. I thought my audience was new to gluten-free. But it comes to find out that my people are actually experienced. These things that you didn’t realize. Then my next question was more about other allergies.

So are you also dairy free? Are you egg-free? I had a selection of things, low carb. They could select more than one and then there was another, so I gave them seven options and then there was another. They could fill in whatever dietary restrictions that they had. I did that mainly because I was curious. I knew that they were dairy free also in addition to gluten-free, but I wanted to see what else was out there. What else people are struggling with. So it was more a curiosity thing, I guess. Then their biggest frustration, and this was my first open-ended question. So this is one thing I would recommend is to start off your survey with two radial dial or the check mark questions. It starts off easy. Then your third one would be an open-ended one. So that was mine – what’s your biggest frustration with being gluten-free or baking gluten-free. I had all these required by the way. So this was where they could type stuff in. Then the next question, after that, your fourth question was also open-ended. If you could wave a magic wand and fix a problem you’re having with gluten-free foods, what would it be? I got that tip to use with audience members. It’s a good question. Then the next two questions after that were also check mark questions.

So then it goes back into maybe an easier thing to just check. That question was, what’s your ideal method of learning? Reading online, reading printouts such as recipes, cookbooks, watching a video, listening to audio in person then an in-person class was the last option. That was a good spread. Reading online was definitely number one. Which I think with food bloggers would probably be across the board and then an in-person class had quite a bit too. Then a video was my second one. When you’re thinking that maybe this could be the answer, I put it third, because I knew reading online would be number one with them and then reading printouts.

It’s kind of the same, but I put that as another option. Then I thought, okay, watching a video is going to be really high up there too. So I went ahead and put that third as an option. Just to kind of see how things would fall. The next question, what do you find most challenging? So then you’re asking what you find most challenging, but it’s not open-ended. I had some options there. This is where I took the answers that I was hearing in my email. So one of the questions, when anyone joins my email list, the second email that they get from me, which is an hour after the first one, I send a second email and the title of the email is, “one more thing.” When they open that, it’s asking them a question, what do you struggle with? It can be anything. That is exactly what I asked them. I hear things back. So I just basically took those answers and put them in here just to solidify that I was hearing that this was the correct stuff. Then my last one, I just threw this in there. Just anything else you want to share, and this was not required, but it was just an open-ended question. So it’s a good mix of, starts it off as an easy radial dial, then checkmark and then some open-ended ones. I’m happy to share this. I can create a copy and just share this if anyone wants it and adapt it to your audience.

Megan:

Oh, that is very generous. This is so interesting. I took so many notes as you were talking. I love that you’ve put so much thought into this because I think when we think about sending out a survey, like you said earlier, it was like, yeah, I haven’t done that in ages. What am I going to say? We don’t really put a ton of thought into it, but the fact that you went through and put so much thought into not only the questions, but how you were going to pose the questions, whether or not they would have to write about each one and then taking challenges and including them from a totally different email that had happened beforehand. That is all just so brilliant and well thought out. You got over 600 responses, so clearly people wanted to take the survey and they were interested and they didn’t just start and stop. They actually submitted it. Your title is, how can I help you? Then just something simple. I want to hear, what’s stumping you on the topic of gluten free and dairy free eating, correct? So it was just as simple as that. So anyone else could cater that to their own niche. How long did it take people to fill it out? Did I think you said it was about a week?

Christine:

So I sent it out. Then for the ones that didn’t open it, the unopens on email. I sent it out again. I hate to say, but I probably sent this three times total. The third time was within the body of another email. I sent emails for my new recipes and then it was basically a third paragraph. Hey, if you haven’t filled this out yet, I would really love to hear from you. So, it was mentioned a total of three times.

Megan:

That’s smart too, just to keep nudging people to get there. How have the classes gone? So you’ve implemented this baking class. Is it going well?

Christine:

It is. After this survey, then it kind of led me to, okay, I’ve got to get busy and create something. I would say it took probably two months. When I sent my thank you email to them for filling out the survey, I had said, I am going to be working on something, just give me, give me a couple months. But I’m going to have something ready. That’s just kind of a rule I’ve given to myself that if I tell them I’m going to do something, I’m gonna get busy on it. It took me two months. This was pre recorded. Now I call it a masterclass. So I had recorded, basically me. It was a series of three classes and in one of them was me actually making this bread. That is good. It’s a good bread that they all love. It’s just one of my recipes that’s a good one. Again, I was getting questions on it and that’s great. You want questions as a food blogger.

Megan:

Absolutely.

Christine:

I used that recipe and I’ll tell you, I had never done anything like that before. I had to actually record that one. The bread one, I think I did three times because the first time I didn’t have my audio right.

Megan:

That’s how you learn though. Right? Making mistakes. So it was a stretch for you, but you did it and you kept trying, and even if you came upon a stumbling block, you tried again and you made it work. So it was like a, I think you used the word masterclass in your notes here, and you packaged it and you put it together. So it’s not a live baking course, correct?

Christine:

No, this one is not. My subsequent ones are going to be because it’s funny that I never thought I would be doing this. I really didn’t. But once I did this. Once I had this master class done, I launched it, I sat back. I promoted it. I watched to see what it would do. Now I’m excited. This worked. This is great. During my slump time, here I actually made a really good profit. So the platform that I used for it also can do live classes. That’s actually what they do. So I am scheduling my live class and again, I’m still kind of working out some tech things, cause I want to have somebody here to help me just for the first one. But I’m gonna do some live classes. It’s funny, it’s like I said, just not anything I would have ever expected I’d be doing.

Megan:

That’s cool. That makes it cooler. That makes the story just a fun story. It’s a successful story. So obviously you’ve focused on gluten free, dairy free, and this is a baking course, but what exactly is the problem that you’re solving?

Christine:

So that’s a great question. In one of one of these survey questions, these were my options. These were kind of what I thought maybe would be the biggest. Because how do you figure out a pain point? That’s the age-old question. How you figure out exactly what their struggle is. For this particular one, it was wasting ingredients on gluten-free recipes that don’t turn out. I couldn’t have crafted that if somebody had asked me, there’s just no way. They just want to bake bread. Let’s bake bread. No, they want to have a tried and true recipe and bake along with somebody and not waste their ingredients.

Megan:

That is so interesting. I mean, there’s so much in there too. Because not only do they want a tried and true recipe that is written out for them, they want to see someone else who they trust, you, making the recipe so they have proof. Okay, it is working for her. We love Christine. We trust Christine and it’s working for her. So it’s going to work for me. Could you have ever come up with that before you sent out your survey?

Christine:

It wasn’t really on my radar. Again, I was going to promote it as let’s bake virtually. Let’s bake a loaf of bread virtually. I would have been off the mark and I probably wouldn’t have done as well with the launch as I did if I’d use that as a headline. Within the sales page and everything, sprinkle in all the other things. I would say I toyed around with a few different headlines. A lot of people say to write down like 10 headlines. I didn’t do that. I really had maybe two or three that I kept kind of toying with. So I didn’t do what everybody else says to do with that, but it worked and I couldn’t be happier. The launch did really well. I priced it at $29 for the week. I had it for one week. On the sales page I had put it as a 40% discount. So it was going to go back up to 49, which I think the math is a couple of percent difference, but up to 49. That was another thing that we’re food bloggers. We give stuff away, we have recipes galore that are free. They don’t have to do anything for them. So the idea of actually charging for something, that actually took me a little while.

Megan:

I think you’re not alone in that. I think that one of our pain points as a bunch of food bloggers is that we are so used to giving away things for free, that it takes us a while to come around to the idea of charging. I mean, I am all for food bloggers charging. But yes, I agree. It’s not just you, Christine. I think we’ve all been there. But I just love this. So it’s such a simple concept that we provide answers to our people by focusing on a pain point. It’s so simple. But we overcomplicate. How do we get to that pain point? We assume what their pain point is. I’ve done that for so many years. We make guesses and we think maybe because it’s my pain point, it’s also their pain point. Then we solve that problem and that’s the wrong problem. But you found this really easy way to figure out the pain point by sending out a simple survey that people actually reply to. Then you get their feedback and you don’t just get the feedback, but you take time to sit down and comb through it and figure out what people are telling you. I love this. If somebody else wants to figure out what their audience’s pain point is, what are some first steps?

Christine:

So here’s what I would suggest. I think it’s across the board, anybody can really implement something like this. If you’re talking about just on the survey end of things, I’m trying to think of how to actually put this into words. But you definitely want to look at things that are happening on your blog. Again, this may take some time. It may not take some time, but it is worth diving into, I promise. If you spend a couple of days just off and on just diving into even recipes, what people are talking about. If you’ve got an email list going, I would highly suggest adding a question on. They really, really do want to hear from a real person. They want to know that, oh, look, this is a real person on this blog. So, as far as the survey goes, finding that stuff that’s coming up as questions go, even things that you think might be a way that you’re answering their questions. I had stuff written down that, oh maybe this is it. I had this survey and I was typing everything out and it probably took me two days or something to actually put it all together. I would take stuff off. You definitely don’t want to lead them. Give them options. That’s one tip that I’d always have is, have another. I’m looking at this one where it’s, what do you find most challenging about gluten-free baking, select all that apply. So you have 5 possibilities for check marks, but then there’s another. So, always include that. Especially if they feel like you’re listening and you’re actually wanting to help them solve a problem and figure out what issue that they’re having with their cooking. I think that goes a long way. People really just want to hear that you’re asking if they really want to know that you’re asking and at least you’re listening.

Megan:

Right. That you’re actually there and listening. Yes.

Christine:

Whether you do something with it, that’s your thing. But at least you’re saying, Hey, I’m here. Let me know.

Megan:

Okay. After everyone composes a survey, puts it together, puts some thought into the questions they’re going to ask, send it out. Maybe send it a few times like you did. I liked your idea. I wanted to point this out too if people don’t reply, just mentioning it in your weekly email. Hey, if you haven’t filled this out, why don’t you go do this.

Christine:

Yes. You’ll get more. You will definitely get more responses. Then another thing I was going to comment on. Maybe I’ve actually mentioned it four times because then I sent a thank you. It didn’t have anything else, no recipe attached or anything, but it just had a thank you. In all my emails, I always put an image. So it had a thank you I found online. I got a couple of more. So when you tell them, hey, thank you so much for sending this out. I just love hearing from you. You’ll get some more. So it was probably a total of four times that it was mentioned before I just symbolically closed it. I mean, it’s still open. Anybody can actually fill it out, but at that point I thought, okay, I’ve got enough to work with. I’ve got to start getting to work.

Megan:

Six hundred responses. It’s definitely a lot to work with. Wow. That’s so impressive. So then you just took the time. Did you set a few days aside or how long did it take you to really feel like you were understanding the responses?

Christine:

Yeah, that’s really the tough part too. I did, I took time. I set aside, maybe an afternoon then. Because I was excited too. I mean, once people are doing this, you want to dive into it, you want to see what they’re saying. So I got kind of excited. I wanted to sit down and go through it. Then at the same time you have to step away because you’re going through all of that, I think I probably went through, let’s say I went through 20. Just kind of looked at the first 20 and I jotted down what they said. Then I went to the next 20. I put a slash on that question when it popped up again. That’s the process I use because otherwise it’s impossible to go through all of that. I don’t have the AI capabilities. I’m not some wiz with excel. So I’m sure if somebody else was, you probably could say, oh, you could just do this and it’ll total up your, but I didn’t. It would’ve been neat though. I just did it old fashioned, pen and paper, and then just put a slash mark next to each one that was coming up. Then as I went through off and on for a few days to make sure that I was accounting for everything that was on there. I ended up circling three things and then starred in one thing. So that’s kind of. how it ended up that they’re wasting ingredients. Here’s the interesting point on this. I didn’t even have that as an option. It was never there. I never even listed anything having to do with wasting ingredients.

Megan:

So revealing. Something that can be nowhere on your radar, not in your mind can pop up out of nowhere and you’re like, oh, that is not something I thought of. So do you use that in your messaging with your online videos, do you mention the wasting of ingredients?

Christine:

So I do on the sales page. That’s actually the headline on my sales page. Then that’s about it. I think I talk about it in one of the baking fundamentals classes. I address it on that sales page.

Megan:

I think that’s the important place to put it. If that is the pain point, you want it to be there so people can say, oh my gosh, yes, I waste so many ingredients. Then they’re like, I need to get this content from Christine. She’s providing quality content. She’s going to walk us through how to do this without wasting ingredients. So I think once you find the pain point, be absolutely sure that you put it on your sales page. I think that is key. So after you read through the answers, you take a few days, you comb through them. I love that you made stars or some sort of notation by the ones that were popping up again and again. Then you just pick the product idea that is solving one of the main pain points and you dive into selling it. That’s like magic, right? It’s so simple yet so hard.

Christine:

This is another thing where I had to kind of come to terms with it that, you know, there are so many. I even address it on the sales page because there are so many videos. You go to YouTube, you can watch all kinds of videos. But one thing that I had to keep reminding myself of as I’m going through this journey of creating this product, that your people want to hear from you. So that was another thing. If anybody is thinking of going to do this, but shoot, there’s so many out there. Why would people pay for that? Obviously as a blogger and creator and all of that, that’s where I struggled the most.

Megan:

It’s you. Yes. They want that video series from Christine. They don’t want that delivered from the blogger next door. They want it from you and your unique message and the way that you deliver that is important to them. So I love that that’s a key thing that you brought out here because it’s not just from anyone. Your audience wants to hear from you. So keep that in mind as you’re figuring out the product and then creating it. So I’m really glad that you pointed that out. Is there anything else? I know I’ve said this a million times, but it’s so simple. We’ve got to find that pain point. But I’ve talked to a lot of food bloggers and this is so hard. It’s one sentence, a few words, but it’s so hard. So is there anything else you want to leave us with as far as anything we’ve talked about or anything, additionally, how do we do this? What are your final words of advice?

Christine:

My final words of advice, I definitely would say, it’s you. Funny enough, people are so forgiving. As I watched my promo video that I had done and I thought, oh, shoot, that wasn’t right. People don’t realize that. You’re the one that’s realizing that. Yes. It’s something you should do. Your people will love you for it. Then as far as, you know, figuring things out and crafting maybe is the word, crafting that asks, the longer that you have an email sequence going, as long as that is in there, you will get people to respond. Because that’s actually one thing that I’m doing right now is revamping my email sequence. I do feel like that’s your one shot. If you have an ebook or something that you’re selling, that’s your shot to introduce them to you and I will reveal a little bit about myself. I’m private, but yet I do let them in a little bit in my life. It just seems to help. I know food bloggers try to keep it all about the recipe. That’s what we’re told to do because we should do it. But I think there is an element of listening and a smile goes a long way.

Megan:

I so agree with that because I mean, depending on the experts we talk to or listen to, we hear that we should strip our personalities or at least to a certain extent. I just disagree with that. I feel like our audiences are not going to fall in love with us if we don’t have a personality; if we’re solely delivering information. So I love that you said that too, because it’s a reminder to all of us that without a personality, people aren’t going to want to be in your world. They might want your recipes, if they’re good, but like in your case, Christine, they trust you and they like you and they want to see you making the recipe. That is their confirmation that they’re not going to waste ingredients. So I think that’s kind of the missing key is that, if the personality is gone, then are they gonna care about watching your videos? Probably not. But your personality is there, so of course they want to do that. So your personality has helped to sell your product. This has been such a fun chat. I just think there’s so much value in this little, teeny tiny concept. It’s so simple. Put some time into it, like Christine has done and really put love into it. I mean, you’ve really thought through the questions and you did some work beforehand by asking them questions and other emails. If you can do that, then you’re going to get those pain points delivered to you and then you can act on them and then you can also make money. So I’ve just loved everything. Thank you for being here today, Christine, and for everything you’ve shared, this has been super valuable.

Christine:

Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Megan:

It’s been fun and I’m glad to know you. I would just love it if you would share with us either a favorite quote or words of inspiration.

Christine:

Yeah. So words of inspiration would be to get something out there. Ask your people what they want and get it out there.

Megan:

Yes! Just do it. Just do it. Put out a survey, start composing your survey today. I love it. Just do it. Well, where can we find you online, Christine? Can you share your website, Instagram, anywhere else that people should go to look for you?

Christine:

Yeah. So I am at zestforbaking.com and it’s just all one word. Then Instagram is just zest_for_baking.

Megan:

Perfect. We will put together a show notes page for you, Christine. So if anyone wants to go look at those we may even put some of those questions that we talked through on there, if Christine’s okay with that. So you can find all of that at eatblogtalk.com/zestforbaking. So go look there and just thank you again, Christine for being here and taking the time. I just appreciate you and thank you so much for listening, food bloggers. I will see you all next time.

Outro:

We’re glad you could join us on this episode of Eat Blog Talk. For more resources based on today’s discussion, as well as show notes and an opportunity to be on a future episode of the show, be sure to head to eatblogtalk.com. If you feel that hunger for information, we’ll be here to feed you on Eat Blog Talk.


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Megan
Megan

Megan started her food blog Pip and Ebby in 2010 and food blogging has been her full-time career since 2013. Her passion for blogging has grown into an intense desire to help fellow food bloggers find the information, insight, and community they need in order to find success.

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