Is it just me or does the end of the year always feel like the perfect time to step back and set some blogging goals for the year ahead?
It can be so helpful to analyze what’s working (and what’s not!) in your current strategy to decide what to focus your time and energy on moving forward.
As you’re thinking about your goals for the new year, we wanted to get a feel for what food bloggers are focusing on in 2022 to give you some ideas and inspiration!
We surveyed The Food Blogger Pro community, as well as the team behind Food Blogger Pro and our sister companies, to get their thoughts, and we can’t wait to share the results with you today.
To poll the Food Blogger Pro community, we asked the following Question of the Week on our Member Dashboard a few weeks ago: “What is the #1 thing you’re planning to focus on in 2022?”
Here’s how Food Blogger Pro members responded:
In this post, we’re going to explore these different areas that food bloggers are planning to focus on and provide some resources to help you tackle your blogging goals with confidence. Let’s get into it!
SEO
The most popular area that respondees said they’d be focusing on in 2022 was SEO, or search engine optimization. And there’s a reason for that!
Since the majority of online traffic is driven by search engines, it’s important to optimize your blog posts and website as a whole to ensure that search engines are indexing and displaying your content.
We love to chat about SEO on The Food Blogger Pro Podcast, and we recently had Emma Duckworth from Emma Duckworth Bakes on the show to talk about the success she’s had from working with an SEO mentor. In the past year alone, she has more than doubled her pageviews by honing in on who she’s creating content for and optimizing the content on her site!
Want to hear what exactly Emma did to step up her SEO game?One of the biggest components of SEO is keyword research, which is the process of identifying popular terms and phrases that people enter into search engines. Once you figure out what people are searching for, you can strategically create content based on those keywords to potentially get more traffic to your site.
Personally, I’m really trying to lean into SEO and keyword research in the new year. I want to start incorporating more keyword research into my content strategy and hopefully grow my traffic to get to that next level with my blog.
–– Leslie (that’s me!), The Baker’s Almanac
Try working with an SEO mentor yourself in the upcoming year or invest in a course about keyword research to start including that your content strategy. Focusing more on SEO will only help you with your blogging endeavors!
Creating More Content
There’s no doubt about it: content is king. And because of that, 29.82% of respondees said their main focus next year will be creating more content!
Maybe you’ll try out a new tool to plan your content calendar or perhaps you’ll try implementing some time blocking and content batching to tackle your content goals.
For me, it’s content 100%. I want to actually (finally!) have a content calendar that I stick to. I’ll test drive that for a few months to see how that feels.
I’ll probably use CoSchedule and/or Google Calendar for that. 😊
–– Alexa, Fooduzzi
For 2022, I really want to get more quality content on my site. I’m aiming for four posts a month. So I am disciplining myself to stay focused by doing more time blocking and scheduling tasks ahead of time, by week, then by month, so it is more attainable and not so overwhelming.
The concept of time blocking is a gem! Having a roadmap a month at a time is helping me have a clearer vision of attaining both short and long-term picture goals!
–– Jocelyn, JOZmahal
And if you’re looking for some ideas to create some fresh, new content on your site, we’ve got you covered!
We have a course all about Getting Creative With Your Blog Posts for our Food Blogger Pro members that covers all the unique and creative ways you can share content on your site. From gift guides to seasonal ingredient roundups, there are so many ways to create valuable content for your readers.
Growing on Social Media
Another area that lots of FBP members will be turning their attention to is growing on social media. From TikTok to YouTube to Instagram, there are so many social media platforms where bloggers can establish a strong presence and build a following.
Lately, lots of social media platforms have really been encouraging creators to share more videos. And what better way to get your readers excited to make your recipes than through an enticing video?
For Pinch of Yum, I’d love to see us try reaching people in new ways – specifically with new styles of video! This year has made it clear that Reels and TikTok style videos are becoming an increasingly significant way that people find and consume content, so I’d love to explore those areas a little more for our recipe content in 2022!
–– Lindsay, Pinch of Yum
If you’re looking for some tips to make eye-catching videos for social media, you should definitely check out our post exploring 5 Ways to Create Instagram Reels as a Food Blogger!
Video
And speaking of video, many FBP members said they’ll be aiming to produce more video content in the new year.
While videos do take a bit more work to produce, they can be so helpful when it comes to teaching your readers how to make a recipe — especially if it’s pretty complicated to make!
Video is also great because it’s so versatile. Once you film yourself making a recipe, you can share that footage on your blog and then even repurpose it for your YouTube channel and various social media platforms.
Although there are a few different things I plan on focusing on in the New Year, I definitely plan on challenging myself to really lean into video. I’ve really been struggling in that department.
Now, I’m holding myself accountable. I will create 2 videos in Quarter 1 of 2022. It may not seem like a lot, but I like to reach for small goals that are attainable to try to set myself up for success, then I’ll go from there.
–– Cree, Cooking With Bliss
Getting Better at Photography
Photography is such an important part of the food blogging game, so it should come as no surprise that 7% of FBP members will be focusing on getting better at photography next year.
We rounded up 7 Beginner Tips for Improving Your Food Photography in a blog post, and it’s definitely worth a read if photography is a focus for you at the moment! The strategies listed in that post can help help you take your food photography skills from the photo on the left to the one on the right:
Email Marketing
Last but not least, a few FBP members said they’ll be focusing on email marketing in the new year!
Whether you want to share a weekly roundup with new blog posts or want to promote a new ebook you just launched, implementing a strong email marketing strategy will ensure that the people who are the most interested in your content hear from you on a regular basis.
Want to take your email marketing to the next level?——————–
No matter what you’re planning to work on in 2022, we hope this post gave you some ideas and inspiration to tackle your blogging goals with confidence.
And I know we covered a lot of different areas in this post, so definitely don’t feel like you have to tackle all of them at once. Whether you’re planning to focus on video, SEO, or email marketing in the new year, just work on learning a little bit more each and every day, and you’ll be on track to achieving your goals.
Now over to you: What are you planning to focus on in 2022? What are some of your blogging goals for the year? Let’s chat in the comments!
Happy New Year all! My focus for the New Year is going to include the following:
1. Upping my game on Pinterest. It’s my third biggest driver (after organic search and direct) and miles ahead of Insta and Facebook), and I want to make sure I am paying enough attention to it, both my own and making my posts Pinterest-optimized as much as possible.
2. Republishing old content. I have over 1200 recipes, and many of them can definitely use a refresh, either in terms of a new picture or better copy or both. I’m working first on the recipes that show up on page 2 or 3 of Google search, because it’s a lot easier to move to page 1 from that position then from being on page 75!
3. Deleting older content that is just not good enough. I might have LOVED it in 2011, but there are definitely older posts that gotta go. I always move these to Drafts, because inevitably the second I take something down, someone somewhere asks me for it, and that way I can find it and tell them whatever they needed to know.
Hope this helps! 🙂
These are incredible goals, Kate! Also, 1200 recipes!? 🤯 That’s amazing.
I especially love the idea of republishing old content and deleting content that isn’t really serving you anymore. I think focusing there (along with growing your traffic in other areas like Pinterest) will make 2022 a fantastic year for you!
YES YES YES. To all the things said above. Even though my blog has been live for 8 years.
I ALMOST gave up on it and it needs a new look and for me to show my business some love again via SEO, updates, emails, and quality content.
I am even planning on branching out to start offering my food photography services as a VA!
We’re so glad the post resonated with you, Amanda! 🙌
So exciting to hear all the areas you’ll be focusing on this year. Best of luck with your freelance food photography journey!