Why I'm Starting a Podcast & My Blogging Journey

In this episode, Jenna shares what steps led her to creating a blog and why she's launching this podcast. Grab a cup of your favorite beverage and let's take a stroll down memory lane.

Ready to monetize? The Ultimate Guide to Pitching Brands teaches you how to pitch paid brand deals.

Resources

• Bloggerbytes
• The Urben Life
• Pitching Brands Guide

Transcript

Welcome to the Blogger Bites podcast. I'm your host, Jenna Urben. This is a podcast for bloggers, influencers and content creators.

Here I'll share transparent advice, plus emerging tools and platforms to empower you, to establish your brand, serve your audience, and monetize your influence. I'm so happy you're here.

 In today's episode, I want to share more about why I'm starting a podcast and share a bit of my background so you can get to know me and hopefully I can get to know you too.

I run the blog The Urben Life, which is a food and lifestyle blog. I started it in 2016 and then a few years later in 2019, I started Bloggerbytes, a resource for bloggers. And now here in 2022, I'm starting the Blogger Bytes podcast.

So I just want to take a trip down memory lane. Let's back it up to we'll go to the college days. We don't need to go beyond that. And I think it will really illustrate why I have such a tendency for being an early adopter and why I'm so intrigued by leveraging social media for blogging and how all these different steps led me to actually creating a blog and now sitting here today recording a podcast.

So I studied emerging media and communication in college, and it is just so crazy to me when you hear that. You're probably like, oh, well, yeah, of course she became a blogger, or of course she works in social media. But the reality is, when I was attending college, I 100% envisioned myself getting into digital marketing, public relations, or event planning.

I had no idea that I would eventually become a full time blogger. But it's wild to look back. I pulled up the different courses that I actually took and it's just so wild to me.

I had a course all over Photoshop, and I'm in Photoshop daily now as a blogger. And I had a course over video editing, which caused me a great deal of anxiety, along with sound design, which that one was a little rough for me, I'm not going to lie. So the fact that I'm sitting here today recording a podcast is, wow, if I could see that professor today. But it was also mixed with digital journalism, and my Capstone presentation was all about community, and I actually built a website. And so when I think back on that, it's so clear now how community has always been at the forefront of what's important to me, as well as connecting with others through social media or blogs, websites, what have you, even podcasts. And so it's just wild to think back.

That's where I started with emerging media and communication to what I'm doing today with my blog and now this podcast. So let's fast forward a bit. So I graduate college and I'm working at different digital marketing agencies around the Dallas area for a few years, and I decide I want to change. And so eventually I start freelancing and I'm offering social media services. Basically anything my clients need assistance with that pertains to marketing.  So that might be emails, it might be photography, light, graphic design in that realm. And so I'm offering these social media digital marketing services and then I decide, I think I'm going to start my own blog.  And really, that is where The Urben Life came from.

 It came from me wanting an outlet to share how I was adapting family favorite recipes to fit my diet. Dairy free and egg free. It included different travels that we were going on.  It included my wedding planning tips as I had recently gotten married.  It included just everything that was happening in my life.  It really was more of a lifestyle blog.

I had posts about how to decorate for the holidays in your small apartment and like small apartment, pantry, hacks, stuff like that. However, I realized that the posts that were really gaining the most traction and getting shared the most and the most comments, they were the ones that were the recipe posts, really focusing in on those recipes that were easy to adapt. Quick and easy to make, seasonal yet simple.

As well as some travel guides, because I was focusing on travel guides through the lens of traveling with dietary restrictions, which turns out a lot of people need help with.  So I really decided to focus in on that. But that wasn't until a couple of years later I still had a lot of learning to do.  And so fast forward about three years later, I have my blog.

I have no idea what I'm doing, but I decide to attend the Everything Food Conference and I am able to learn from so many inspiring and motivating creators. I'm able to meet my instagram friends: IRL shout out Leah and Jay, christina, marissa. It is just such an experience being in these rooms filled with creators who are doing this full time.

And at that time, I was 100% still balancing freelance work, blogging, am I going to go back to the corporate world, all of that.  And so really seeing these bloggers out there making a living out of it, it was incredibly eye opening for me. So I'm still bopping around though.  I'm posting, I'm getting recipes up, I'm doing Roundups, I'm doing everything, but I still don't have a strategy. However, I am able to have the confidence.  I guess we can go with confidence to reach out to brands.  And I think when I think back on it, I really think I came from a background in marketing.

So I know that these companies need content. And with a blog, you can offer incredible value. And so I'm reaching out to brands that align with my audience that I use and love daily. And eventually, because I'm doing sponsored posts, other brands see that I offer sponsored posts.  And so it's just this nice machine that.  It's a nice cycle that just you do one, you pitch some, you don't get them all, but you get some.

You write it, you post it, you publish it, you pitch more, or eventually what makes this cycle so great is you start getting pitches sent to you.

2019 is when I'm really going in with brand partnerships, and it is a great income stream for me, as I might have had ads enabled, but I was not earning I was not earning a lot with ads or affiliate links or anything like that. So I'm posting these sponsored posts and naturally other creators are like, wait a second, you don't have a huge following.

How are you working with these brands? How are you landing these sponsored posts? So in 2019, I start Bloggerbytes, and it's really a resource hub for bloggers, influencers and creators. And more than anything, it's a separate website and has nothing to do with my recipes, but it's really like an educational resource hub to share kind of what I'm doing, what's working for me, what I wish I would have known.

And so, yeah, so that's really how I started Bloggerbytes, and I didn't update it all that frequently, to be honest. It was just kind of a passion project, if you will, for me. Because really, at that time, my focus was really on the urban life.

So a year goes by and now we're in the summer of 2020. So I am still working with brands, I'm still plugging away at my blog, but every single day just about, I'm receiving a message. How am I working with these brands?  How am I able to do this? Because I didn't have a big following. I still don't have a huge social following, but I consistently work with brands. And so every time I received one of these messages, I want to be as helpful as possible. And so I'm writing and crafting a personalized response so I can basically coach other creators how to do this.

But it got to a point where I was spending an entire day really doing this. And so I decided, okay, I'm going to sit down, I'm going to write down my process tips I've learned along the way and package it up in a nice comprehensive ebook, put a little bow on it, and let's sell it instead. And so that's exactly what I did. And so the ultimate guide to pitching brands is still out there today.

It's a guide that answers all the common questions I receive surrounding sponsored posts, how I calculate rates, what to include in your media kit, and all of that. And so when I launched it, it was incredibly well received. And every time I talk about it today, my creator friends are like, jenna, why don't you talk about this more? Why don't you share more about this?  And I don't have a good answer for you. I don't. It is still for sale.

But really, more than anything, I want to be like your blogger bestie. I want to help you. I want us to work together so we can both reach our goals.

And so as an enneagram 2, I am just thrilled when I'm able to help somebody pitch their dream brand and they land that sponsorship and they realize that working with brands is something they want to do to further their blogging business. And so that was a huge part of my 2020.

Unfortunately, I was able to push that out, and I was able to really focus on my monthly partnerships that I had with my brand partners. And so I was working on that. I was releasing the book. I also was trying to further my food blog so that my income wasn't fully dependent on sponsored posts.

So let's fast forward to 2021. I'm still working with brands, I'm posting content on my blog. I'm definitely posting content on social, but my blog growth was increasing, but it was slow, and my traffic was mainly coming from Pinterest, and I had some coming from Google. And actually, because I was experimenting with web stories, I had a big chunk coming from web stories as well.

And so I kind of want to break down 2021 even further because a lot of growth and learning took place that year. And I think it'll be pivotal to share kind of these different things that got me to where I was kind of stagnant to kind of extreme growth in a matter of a few months just by doing some tweaks and of course the work that I put in before, it plays a role.

But I still think 2021, specifically the fall of 2021, lots of growth took place there. So let's get into it. All right, so up to this point, I'm posting recipes. I know that recipes and travel guides are what I need to be focusing on, but I don't really have a strategy here. I'm writing posts, I'm publishing them, I'm sharing them to all the social platforms. I'm emailing my subscriber list, but that's about it.

So, big picture. January to October, I'm hanging around 25,000 to 30,000 monthly sessions on my blog. And so in February I decide, all right, it's time, let's do some upgrades this year.  So in February, I switch hosts.In July, I install the feast plugin. And then in September, I attend my first virtual tastemaker conference. And it was just another eye opening experience where I'm I mean, it was virtual, but I still felt surrounded by such a supportive creator community.

And there were so many topics that I was wildly inspired by, one of them being starting creating a course for bloggers. Like I've mentioned, I have blogger bites. The website. I have my ebooks and templates, and I'm still getting questions and I'm eager to talk about it.

I love talking about this stuff and I love sharing it. So maybe creating a course is next up for me. So I'm sharing this with my good friend Marissa Moore. Shout out.  And so we're DMing and I'm sharing like, I'm really inspired to create a course.  And instead, she asked me about my page views, where are my sessions sitting? And so I tell her, and she really encouraged me to dig into keyword research and really invest in my blog so I'm able to qualify for mediavine.

And for those of you all who don't know, for Mediavine, you need to have 50,000 sessions a month, and then you're able to apply. And just to give you some context here, since I am a pretty niche food blogger, it wasn't something that I really ever thought I would be able to attain. And so I was inching closer to it. I was like, I don't know, is this possible for me? For me, like, little old me?

And so getting that urge from Marissa was an incredibly pivotal moment that cannot be overlooked at all. Because once we had that conversation and we kind of talked more about mediavine and blogging in general and all of that, I went all in on keyword research. I was like a sponge, trying to soak up everything I could about keyword research and the current SEO best practices and all of that. And really that paid off. I don't want to get too far ahead of myself.

So that paints the picture for, like, end of September, and then into October, the stars align perfectly, and I attend my very first food blogger retreat hosted by Megan Porta from Eat, Blog Talk and Pip and Ebby and Melissa from Mama Gormand. And once again, I'm reminded how important buckling down on blogging with a focus on keywords is, as well as SEO user experience, all that good stuff.

But yeah, once again, I hear this keyword research SEO thing again that I had never I'm sure I heard of it before. For me. I was like, Eh, I have pinterest. I got pinterest traffic. And finally something clicked where it was like, oh, if I do keyword research, Google traffic will come.

It all finally clicked for me, but I had to hear it several times over months. Let's take it months, could have been years, but I was having all these big breakthroughs and a month or two time. So just to really dig in a little bit deeper, to give you some more context, around this time, I was really experimenting heavy with Facebook reels because they were rolling out in fall of 2021, and I was seeing some pretty significant growth on my Facebook page.  And so I was really diving into that. My pinterest was doing good. It had always been a steady source of traffic for me, and it was only increasing. So I'm really relying on social right now.

In addition to I was experimenting with web stories, which was also bringing in some significant traffic. And so I'm doing all of these things that are working, but I'm missing this pretty big chunk of the pie for organic traffic. Not to say I didn't have any. It was still right behind Pinterest in terms of my referrals, but I wasn't doing anything to really optimize that, if you will.

I didn't have a strategy for that. And so after this retreat, I decided, all right, it's game time.  We're getting key search. We're diving in.  Let's do this.  And so in November, after I had been doing some updating and really diving into keyword research for new posts that I hadn't yet written, my sessions hit 44,000, and I was like, holy crap, what is happening?

I think I can actually do this. Oh, my gosh. We're going to see. And so really, from November to December, I'm just plugging away. I'm still doing my Web stories.  I'm still doing my Facebook Reels, pinning on Pinterest, but I'm also doing I have these keyword researched, updated posts and new posts going live and that all work together. And on Christmas Eve, I was able to apply for mediavine.

Fast forward. I apply. I'm accepted. It's January 2022, and I joined Mediavine. I am on Mediavine. I am in such disbelief. I am in disbelief today as I'm sharing this story with you. And it's October. It is just mind blowing to me the amount of learning and growth that took place during really in one quarter.

And so if you're in that mindset where I was a year ago, don't give up. Lean into what's working and maybe experiment with some new tools that could help. So let's go back to January. I see, all right. Keyword research. There's something to that. There is something to having a strategy.

And so I really start focusing on updating those old posts that aren't necessarily seasonal, but I can see that I can rank for Whole New world. Whole new world. I didn't even know this side of blogging existed.

So really leaning into that while also remaining curious because I love doing deep dives on the latest platforms and tools, like I mentioned, Facebook Reels and Web Stories. I love diving into these new things and seeing how they can fit into my workflow. And if they work for my blog and my business, they don't always work, but you don't know unless you try.

And so I love giving myself permission to set time aside and really dive into those things. And so what I've been doing recently, for example, really leaning into the different reward programs for creators and Pintv brand new Pinterest platform. And so I give myself permission to explore those things while also knowing that keyword researched blog posts as well as social and all of that, for me, it's all important. It all plays a role.

And so that's kind of my philosophy, if you will, when it comes to blogging, that is what I have done that is what I'm doing. And that's why I'm creating this podcast, really, as an extension to bloggerbytes.com, but also as an extension to the conversations that I have with fellow bloggers. I've always been one to dive in to conversations and let's just have a conversation about what are you doing on Facebook, what's working for you?  How is Pinterest working for you?  Here's how it's working for me. Like, oh, you're having success with this? I'm going to give it a try.

And it's about little experiments that of course, it takes time. You have to track them. You have to evaluate. You have to go back and decide, is it worth it or not, is it working or not? But that's what I want this podcast to be.

So before I get too much into that, let's back it up again to the spring of 2022, just so I can really share how this podcast came to be. In the Spring of 2022, March of this year, my friend Megan presented on the topic of the future of audio at my very first in person tastemaker conference, and it was geared towards food and recipe related bloggers starting their own podcast. But for me, as I was sitting there, I was just overwhelmed with the feeling of starting a podcast for bloggers as an extension of Blogger Bytes. And so Megan and I kind of talked about it.

I've been on Megan's podcast quite a few times, and we do Clubhouse conversations nearly every week, and she really encouraged me to start a podcast. And so when we shared this idea on Clubhouse, and maybe she even mentioned it in one of her own podcast episodes as well. But the support I received and the encouragement I received from the blogging community was just overwhelmingly positive.

Just sharing about, yes, pitching brands and partnering with brands, but also, what the heck is a web story and how did you see so much growth on your Facebook page and just sharing my experiences and what I've learned along the way. And so that is exactly what I plan to do with this podcast.

My goal is to share what has worked and what is working for me and hopefully encourage you to see if that makes sense for your blogging business as well.

So, to wrap up, I really just wanted to share my background and pivotal moments leading up to this podcast launch because it's just mind blowing to me to think how connected it all is and I didn't just wake up one day, start blogging, wave a magic wand, and have all the answers.

I actually want to make it clear that I don't have all the answers and I'm 100% learning alongside of you. I've been privileged to be surrounded by such an amazing community and privileged to have access to fuel my curiosity.

So in these episodes, I want to share what I wish I would have known, what I continued to discover and any best practices that I can share with you. So I want you to think of me as your blogging bestie we can cheer each other on, set some time aside to evaluate what's working and what's not.

So what will Season one have in store for you? You can expect weekly episodes that cover topics including new tools and emerging platforms, an up close and personal look into how I create content and what my workflow looks like, how I leverage social media, and how you can, too.

And lastly, I really want to start a transparent conversation around brand partnerships and influencer marketing, as well as additional revenue streams for creators, so you can expect all of that and more. That being said, please subscribe to the podcast.

And if you find value in an upcoming episode, I would really appreciate you leaving me some feedback through ratings and reviews. And finally, if you have any topics you'd like me to cover, send me an email or DM on Instagram.

I'm so excited to connect with you. In the next episode, we're going to be talking all about using Pinterest as a blogger. We'll discuss my strategy, their creator rewards program, my experience with Pinterest, the TV, and so much more. Stay curious, my friend.