How to Grow Your Audience as a Food Creator on Reddit

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI.

Bjork Ostrom: This episode is sponsored by Member Kitchens. Let’s talk about real results. With Member Kitchens, creators, actual food bloggers and social media chefs are adding an average of $2,500 each month to their revenue with some consistently surpassing $10,000. These aren’t hopes or guesses. These are documented numbers from creators transforming their brands into thriving, sustainable businesses today. How? Member Kitchens offers a fully branded platform that looks and feels like you, your recipes, your style, and your unique message. Members get dynamic meal plans, automated shopping lists, and much more. All within an ad-free mobile app they’ll rave about. Getting started is simple. Using AI, member kitchens, imports your existing recipe library so you can start selling subscriptions quickly. Plus, before you launch, an expert will personally review your app to ensure it’s ready for the spotlight, ready to see results for yourself. Visit memberkitchens.com today to start your free trial, and you can get a special discount by being a listener to our podcast. You can use the promo Code FoodBloggerPro for 50% off the first two months.

Ann Morrissey: Hey there, Ann from the Food Blogger Pro team here, you’re listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. In this episode, Bjork is sitting down to chat with Jacqueline Schell, the food blogger behind Crafty Cookbook, all about the world of content creation on Reddit from how to engage with the right communities to the importance of staying authentic in your posts. Jacqueline will also share why Redditors value real genuine content and how you can strategically grow your visibility while keeping it true to yourself. Plus, if you’ve ever struggled with time management, and let’s be honest, who hasn’t, she’s got practical advice on conducting time audits, carving out time for side projects and using mobile tools to stay on track without burning out. Whether you’re creating content on Reddit or managing a busy schedule, this episode is packed with tips to help you boost your online presence and stay organized. And now without further ado, I’ll let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Jacqueline, welcome to the podcast.

Jacqueline Schell: Hi, Bjork, thanks so much for having me.

Bjork Ostrom: We’re going to be talking about, believe it or not, food content, creating food content on the internet, which is what we do with this podcast. But we’re going to be talking about a platform that is starting to become much more relevant, much more popular. It’s always been really popular, but now we’ve really seen an uptick in usage and that is Reddit. And it’s kind of a scary platform because it’s not like Instagram, which it feels like the playbook is pretty clear. It is a little bit unique in terms of a platform, but you have found some real success using Reddit to build awareness of your site to post content. And we’re going to dig into what that looks like. So it sounds like Reddit was a platform that you actually started with. That’s where you were creating or posting content to begin with. Is that more or less accurate?

Jacqueline Schell: Yeah, that’s right. So originally I started kind of a personal recipe book project, and that’s kind of where everything started for me. And as part of that, I started working on taking more beautiful recipe photos and kind of developing my food photography really just from my little personal book. And then in 2020 during the pandemic, we were all stuck at home and I started using Reddit a little bit more, and specifically the food subreddits. And they’re really full of tons of people who love to cook, who love to share information, share recipes. And so I started posting some of my photos to some of those communities and I was kind of surprised to get feedback from people saying, Hey, that looks so good. I’d love to make that. Can you send me the recipe? And so sometimes those would maybe be recipes that I just got somewhere that I would send them a link. But a lot of times those were recipes that I had been kind of working on for myself. And so I would send them over my copy of it. And it was so exciting because people would comment back to me later a day or two later and say, Hey, I made that recipe. It was great. Thanks so much for sending it. And that was really awesome to see, hey, I’m putting out recipes that other people actually enjoy and I’m getting this positive feedback from other people. And so that really inspired me to start sharing them more formally. And so if you’re someone who is maybe on the edge about whether or not you want to pursue sharing recipes online, it’s a really great way to do that and actually get some traction and feedback immediately versus maybe something like starting an Instagram account where it might take a while to kind of build up any sort of audience there.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. It’s one of the things I’ve never thought about is the fact that with Reddit, you can show up to a community that is preexisting, and it’s almost like a version of a brand might work with Pinch of Yum because they know that they’re going to be able to get exposure to a preexisting community. But with Reddit, you can sign up for a subreddit, you can join a subreddit, and you can access that preexisting community. And I’ve never thought about that before, but it’s really true. It’s different than having to get discovered on Instagram through a reel that goes viral or getting picked up by search algorithms with your site. It’s like those people are already there and you post content there. And if it’s within a community that’s active and there’s a lot of people there, it will get a certain level of exposure. The difference is you are not setting the culture the vibe, you are not creating the community, the community’s preexisting. So it seems like one of the realities of engaging with a preexisting Reddit subreddit is you need to understand what kind of group you’re coming into and being respectful of that. How do you do that? If you’re interested in starting to post in these communities, how do you understand if you’re going to post in a way that isn’t going to result in a bunch of people getting mad at you and chasing you out with pitchforks?

Jacqueline Schell: So you definitely want to come into the community and observe for a while before you start trying to contribute. So see what posts are doing well, if you go into a community, you can sort the posts through a couple different ways. So you can sort by the top posts. So those are going to be the posts that have been upvoted the most. And you can look at what are the top posts from this week, what are the top posts from this whole year? And kind of get a feel for what people in that community really like and what they’re really looking for. So that’s one thing you definitely want to do. And then you also want to look at the rules of the subreddit. So each subreddit is really governed by itself, and so they all have different rules and they will typically post those in a rule section. I’ll say that sometimes subs also have hidden rules that they enforce that are not actually explicitly written. So you may run into that. So you want to tread a little lightly. Give an

Bjork Ostrom: Example of that, what a hidden rule might be.

Jacqueline Schell: Yeah, so it really depends. So I think it might make sense to first cover what are some of the most common rules in the food subreddits, and then we can talk about some of these more hidden rules. But so some very common rules in food subreddits, some of them are that the post has to be original content, so it has to be an image that you took. And so sometimes if you’re posting something as a food blogger where your images may exist somewhere else on the internet, someone may think that you stole that image from you. And so you may encounter that a little bit. So it’s good to usually claim, Hey, this is my own image. So that one’s pretty common. Another one that is common in some of the larger subreddits is they do not want you to post a link, or if you are going to post a link to your recipe page on your website, you must also include a written text version of the recipe in your comment. And so those can kind of really change the behavior of how people interact with your post. So for example, the largest food subreddit is r slash food. And so you can get some really good exposure there if your post does well, I believe they have something like 24 million members. However, they do require that you post a recipe, plain text recipe along with your link. And so that’s because they don’t want their users to have to leave the site to go to your site to get the recipe. And so typically what I do is I’d post the link at the top and then I’d include the text version. And so a subreddit like that is going to drive a lot less traffic to your website, but it might get more exposure overall. So you might have so much more exposure on the post that it does still drive quite a bit of traffic to your site versus maybe a smaller subreddit that doesn’t enforce a rule like that where you can just post maybe a short description and then a direct link. And that’s going to drive a lot more people to your website because they’re going to be curious about what’s actually in that recipe.

Bjork Ostrom: So it’s understanding. And in pulling up our slash, for those who aren’t familiar for a subreddit, it’s reddit.com. That would be like the homepage. And then when you get into a subreddit, it’s the URL is reddit.com/r/food. So when you say R slash whatever it is, it’s just like the name of the subreddit for those who aren’t familiar. So on the r slash food subreddit, you look through the content and some people just post a picture that’s all that they post. But my guess is if you are posting a link, you also then need to include the entire text of the recipe. Is that right?

Jacqueline Schell: That’s right.

Bjork Ostrom: And probably what they don’t want is people who are just looking to get clicks to post content there. They want either just the image or if you are going to include a link, you need to include the recipe so somebody can just make it from that. So makes sense. It’s like the incentive is for that community. They don’t want to be a traffic satellite, they want to be the hub where you come to consume this type of content. They just don’t want to be a marketing channel for people who want to get traffic. And so you can start to see how the rules that are enforced by the moderators impact the community of that subreddit. So how about being a moderator? I know that you are a moderator for a couple subreddits. Can you talk about what that is, how you became a moderator, and then what it looks like to moderate a subreddit?

Jacqueline Schell: Yeah, so I moderate two fairly large food subreddits, so r slash Japanese food, which has about 1.2 million members as well as r slash sushi, which has about 525,000 members. And so yeah, being a moderator, basically your job is to kind of oversee the subreddit, and a lot of it is really removing content that does not align with the subreddit and handling. If anyone is posting comments that are really out of line or need to be taken down, you can handle those. And so the way I became a moderator for these communities is one, I was in the communities a lot, so people would see me commenting and posting and things like that. And so with these communities, the moderators can kind of come and go. And so what can happen sometimes is that you may end up with really only one active moderator left. And so those people are really overloaded and then they tend to reach out and see if they can find other people to help. And so actually for both of these subreddits, they basically just made a post and was like, Hey, I’m solo moderating this subreddit. I really like some help. If you’re active here, send me a message and we’ll chat. And so I reached out and said, Hey, I’m here all the time anyway, I’d be happy to help. And so they onboarded me onto that. And so it’s a pretty simple job really of just going through mostly user reports and taking things down. So it’s really helpful user users can just go through and if they see something that they think a moderator should take down, they can just flag it and that sends it into a inbox for us and we can just go through those quickly and handle them.

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, interesting. So it’s almost like the community is doing the first tier of moderation by reporting something and then you’re doing the last round, which is by either saying, yes, user who submitted this issue, you are correct, this should be taken down or potentially saying, no, actually it’s okay, it’s within the rules of the subreddit. It can stay. And to be clear, it’s a volunteer position like Reddit is run by people who are moderating for free. Is that right?

Jacqueline Schell: Yep, that’s right.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. And it was interesting, they had some conversations I think around special access to an IPO and would moderators and community members get early access to that? And I know there’s also been talk about different types of subreddits where you could charge to be a part of them, and some of those conversations around a subreddit evolving almost into a paid community. Am I remembering that right? And where is that at in terms of being released or in the pipeline? Do you know?

Jacqueline Schell: Yeah, I’m actually not sure on that. I know what you’re talking about. I have heard of that, but I am not sure really what has gone on with that.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. Yeah, I remember hearing some conversations around it, but I don’t remember if they had a timeline for it or if it was even just rumors. But so for you as a creator, one of the things that I think is important to call out that you talked about is it’s a great way to step into the world of creating. And for anybody who’s made that transition from consuming content on the internet to creating content on the internet, one of the great joys is when you create a thing that somebody responds to in the early stages, you get a comment, I made this and it was awesome. That can be really influential. You post something to a subreddit and somebody’s like, this looks delicious. Can I have the recipe? And you start to realize there’s this vibrant social system on the internet, which is people using it and interacting with the thing that you create. And one of the things I love about a platform like Instagram or TikTok or Reddit is it allows you to enter into that world of creating content and getting a response from people in a really easy way. And the goal is to make a decision around this is both early stage and if you’ve been doing this for 10 years, where do you want to be showing up as a content creator? What’s the best platform for you considering how you create content, the vibe of the community that you want to interact with, the medium that you enjoy the most? For people who are considering Reddit, what are the things they should know about characteristics of somebody who’s successful on Reddit?

Jacqueline Schell: Yeah, so I think one of the big things, especially if you’re coming in and you already have a food blog established, is to really show up as a person and not as a brand. And so I would say that would start with making your username. I would not recommend making your username the name of your blog. Actually, I have the username for my blog held. I do have that, but that’s not the account that I post under. And so really you want to be a person first. And that’s really what I think the community of Reddit is really all about. They’re kind of anti-consumerist, a little bit anti-establishment, a little bit, I think. And they really want a genuine connection, a genuine person. They don’t want someone that’s just really coming in as a brand. And so yeah, I think that starts with choosing a username that is maybe just something personal, something fun, not your brand name becoming part of the communities that you’re interested in, and then don’t spam your content places. So one thing that’s really indicative, there are accounts that are just bots that come in and they will spam various subreddits with links and things like that, people who are trying to build backlinks. And you do not want to be mistaken for one of those accounts. And so when you post something, one behavior that is kind of a red flag is if you post it to say 10 different subreddits. So say you have

Bjork Ostrom: The same thing or a similar,

Jacqueline Schell: So you have this soup recipe and you go and you post it on R food and r slash soup and r slash cooking and you post it on all these channels, that’s going to be flagged pretty immediately that that’s kind of a spam behavior and people are not going to like that. So moderators might take your posts down. And so those are kind of things that might be kind of in more of the hidden rules where there’s not going to be a rule in the subreddit that says, don’t post this same content to 10 other subreddits. But if you do that, a moderator might notice that and say, this is kind of suspicious and take it down. So typically when I’m posting my recipes, I will only post them in either one or two of the most relevant subreddits. So I do maybe post the same recipe twice but not more than that on the same day, maybe six months later come back and post it somewhere else where it’s kind of fresh again. But don’t do that too much. And I really think that the niche subreddits are a really great place to start. So if you have a really awesome soup recipe, go post it in our slash soup. And our slash soup is a really, it’s a super cute community. It’s people who love soup, that’s great, and they’re excited to see your soup recipe and it’s great. You post there and you share the recipe and people are often really excited that you include a recipe or a recipe link because sometimes people just post a photo and people comment, this looks so great, I want the recipe, and then they never respond. And so people will be excited to get your recipe and you want to engage in the comments, so people are ask questions, people might relate it to some other recipe they really like and share that one too. And you want to be very positive in supporting all of that conversation. And it really is a lot. I get a lot more engagement and a lot more conversation on my posts on Reddit than I do even on my own Instagram. And my Instagram following is not huge. I have about 6,000 followers on there, so it’s nothing crazy. But I mean, if I post something on Instagram, I might get a couple comments, maybe a few, but posting something on one of these niche subreddits, I might get 70 comments or a hundred of people discussing it and asking questions. And so you want to be a part of that conversation around whatever you’re posting.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Part of what I think we are doing as content creators, there’s two ways that I view creating content on the internet. One is you create content as a tool to sell something. And an example would be clarity. So we have a software tool called Clariti. If we are creating content on Clariti’s blog, the goal isn’t to monetize that content. The goal is to point people towards the software tool clarity. So it’s almost like content marketing. There’s also the type of content that we create with Pinch of Yum and your site and posting to Reddit, which is like the content is the product and you are monetizing that via ads, sponsorships, affiliate, maybe. But really the thing that you are selling is the content itself. And so instead of us thinking of the content as a tool to market it, we need to think of how do we market the content? And to do that, we need to think of all the different places that people are showing up and consuming content online and getting in front of those people. Social media is an easy one. Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter might be a way if you are conversational, more informational type information, email is a great way to market your content. But Reddit I think is also a way that you can market your content, but to your point, you have to do it in a way that makes sense within these communities. Oftentimes that means including the recipe, it sounds like if you are also going to include a link, can you talk about the hesitation that I’m sure a lot of people would have, which is my recipe is the thing that I want to protect. I’ll post my link in places, but I don’t want to ever post my recipe in places because that means that people don’t come to my site to actually make that. I’m guessing a lot of people would think that. Have you seen any issue with that and how do you think of it when you’re posting a full recipe and even do you see it in a search result if you’re searching for your own brand’s recipe? Do you see Reddit show up as an option in the search results?

Jacqueline Schell: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean I think if you really don’t want to post the text version of your recipe, I would just avoid the subreddits that have that as a requirement. There are still plenty where you can post a direct link. I think for me it is a lot of times the larger ones where your reach might be bigger, and so you do still get, even if the recipe is in the comment, you still get quite a few people that are clicking on the link going to your website. A lot of people will save it to Pinterest from there. So I think it kind of bumps that up as well. And you’re getting eyes on your content that wouldn’t have been on your content previously. So even if you’re driving a smaller percentage of them to your website, it’s still a traffic source that you wouldn’t have had if you didn’t post it. I will say the caveat being exactly what you’re saying about your posts from Reddit coming up in Google search results, so you can be very strategic about that. And so sometimes with a Reddit post title, I will target a keyword that I know I will not rank for because of the domain authority of my website, probably not going to rank for it, maybe a larger search term. You can target ranking for that with your Reddit post. And if I’m doing that, I’m going to probably try to do that on a subreddit where I’m going to be able to post just the link. There’s even been cases where I kind of wasn’t as intentional about that early on. There’s been cases where I’ve gone back and I’ve actually deleted old Reddit posts because they were outranking my own post, my own website’s post. And you can actually see, I mean I use the keywords everywhere plugin, and you can see directly in there the traffic that is going to that Reddit post, especially ones that have been around for a while, once those numbers kind of start to roll in. So you can see on this search query where my recipe comes up pretty high and so does my Reddit post, I can see that divide of who’s clicking on the Reddit post, and if it’s one where maybe it didn’t have a link in it or it had the recipe fully written out, I might actually just go back and delete it if it’s competing with my own post.

Bjork Ostrom: Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors.

Emily Walker: Hey, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team coming at you with something special this week. We are really excited to be planning an upcoming episode featuring questions from our listeners. We always love hearing from Food Blogger Pro members and podcast listeners with any questions they have, problems they’re solving or anything else that’s come up in their blog and business lately. So we are asking you to call in with your questions. You can head to speakpipe.com/foodbloggerpro or we’ll have the link in our show notes and send us a recording. You can ask a blogging business, social media or branding question for Bjork. If you have questions about Pinch of Yum’s current strategy or questions about working with an ad network, really the sky is the limit for any questions you might have. Just leave us a message and Bjork will answer your questions in an upcoming podcast episode. Again, head to speakpipe.com/foodbloggerpro to send us a recording. All you need is your phone or a laptop. It’s super easy, but head to the show notes and you’ll see the link to send us a recording. We can’t wait to hear from you.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I love that tidbit on you have a piece of content, but you can almost rebrand it on a subreddit and call it something else. So it’s not competing if you have an intentional keyword that you’re pursuing with your post. And I know a lot of friends who are deep in the marketing world have almost thought about their search efforts changing from how do I show up higher in search results to how do I create really good content on Reddit because that’s really easy compared to creating your own content to show up higher in search results, knowing that the downstream effects of having a piece of content that you have crafted where you are the main voice on that piece of content, maybe it includes a link is going to be more beneficial than trying to, or the return on your effort is going to be more beneficial than trying to get a singular piece of content on your website to rank at least in the current iteration of what search results look like and how quickly Reddit content can show up high in a search results. So I love the idea of being strategic about keywords and then also just monitoring and saying, Hey, if there is a time when this is showing up higher, maybe switch the strategy, delete the piece of content on Reddit if you want your site to be the sole source of traffic for it. So can you talk about creating subreddits? Is that something that you’ve done before? And what would your advice be for people who are analyzing? Do I really see it as three options? You can let me know if there are other options as well. I could join a subreddit Reddit, and I could post to that. I could become a moderator and almost be an admin for subreddit, or I could create my own subreddit. You are able to build it from the start. It’s able to be your custom thing. You’re able to set the rules for it, but requires more effort to build it from the ground up. Have you started one before and what’s that been like?

Jacqueline Schell: Yeah, so I have not, I mean do actually, I hold the subreddit name for my blog. I did grab that just to make sure that it’s mine and no one else is going to take that. But generally building a subreddit from the ground up, it’s going to be a lot starting fresh on social media. So you’re going to have no audience, and you’re going to have to find ’em, and that’s really difficult. So I think if you’re looking for more bang for your buck, you’re going to want to find a relevant community that already exists and try to participate there versus building something from scratch, you’re really going to be stretching to try to find people to join it join because it’s pretty hard to come across them naturally if they’re really small. So usually, when people are doing that, they start reaching out to similar subreddits and try to message members and say, Hey, you might be interested in this new one. But it’s really a lot of work, and a lot of people really don’t get a lot of traction. So I would generally not recommend doing that, especially not just for starting out with Reddit,

Bjork Ostrom: But your point about grabbing your own brand name is a great one. If you haven’t done that yet, secure your own subreddit for your site or your brand just so you have that in. You don’t have to do anything with it. But let’s say you want to build your own community for your own brand on Reddit, you’d have the ability to do that, which is a great little takeaway. How about, so you work have a successful career, you’re also doing building your site and you’re social following and you’re doing so successfully. We talked about before we press record consistently earning just from advertising revenue, 2000, $3,000 a month. It’s like the ultimate side hustle to be able to have something that it’s not DoorDash, which is great. It doesn’t require you to go out and drive strangers around or strangers food around, which again, it’s not bad, but I think for a lot of people it would feel better to be at home working at their computer, maybe a show on in the background and to be creating a really substantial income enough to pay most mortgages. But it also requires some diligence around time and how you divide your time. You have your full-time gig, you have the actual work of creating content, and then you also are moderating some of these subreddits and creating content on subreddit. So, within the margins of what you are dedicating to working on your site and building your business, how do you divide that up, and how do you split that time out? And then maybe even you can talk about how much time is it all in as you’re side hustle on a week-to-week or month-to-month basis.

Jacqueline Schell: Yeah, so I think for me, one of the big things is scheduling time to work on it. So setting aside time because when you’re really busy and you’re probably going to be tired from working all day, I have to be pretty diligent about setting aside time that I’m going to dedicate to it. So that’s a big one. And really understanding how long things actually take you to do. So, doing a time audit and seeing how long does it take me to edit photos from a recipe? How long does it take me to write the post once I have the recipe fully done, things like that. When I did the timeout myself, I found that things actually took me quite a bit longer than I thought they did. I think it just goes by so quickly while you’re doing it. And so that has really helped me to set good expectations for how much work I’m going to get done in a given time block. So previously, maybe I would say, oh, I’m going to finish writing the two posts for these two recipes I have in a certain amount of time. And that was never realistic because it was always going to take me longer than that. And so it’s really helped with that to kind of reframe my productivity as well because if I think I’m going to get twice as much done and I only get through half of it, that’s kind of upsetting. And so really understanding how long things actually take you so you can set reasonable expectations for yourself. I think that’s really big.

Bjork Ostrom: How do you do that? Are you using a tool? I’ve started personally in this year I’ve started using Harvest, which is a time tracking tool. And I try and when I’m switching from one thing to another just to get an understanding of how much time is essentially exactly what you’re saying, to get an understanding of how much time I’m spending on respective projects and tasks and businesses. Are you using just a simple like, Hey, make a note of when you started on something, make a note on when you stop just to get an idea of what it looks like. Is there a tool that you’re using? I think people would find that really beneficial and it’d be interesting to hear how you actually do it.

Jacqueline Schell: So I was just using an Excel spreadsheet basically. And so I did some time auditing for a period of about a month, and I would just say every day, how much time do I actually spend working on the website in my content? And so if I were to spend time during that day working on it, I would just log it, I’d log what I was doing. And through that I was also trying to pay attention to individual tasks. How long did I spend on photo editing? How long did I spend on writing a recipe post? And so I kind of just tracked all that and it’s pretty consistent in terms of how long the individual tasks take once you kind of have them down, maybe there’s some variation, but so I don’t do the time auditing now. I kind of did it for a period through an Excel sheet, kind of got some good information out of that. And then that’s kind of just rolled into what I’m doing now.

Bjork Ostrom: And then do you have a guess as to how much time you’re spending each week working on your site, working full time? You’re a rocket propulsion engineer, which sounds like a hard demanding job. And so what does that look like for you outside of work?

Jacqueline Schell: So it really varies week to week, but I would say I spend between 10 and 20 hours a week working on the site. It kind of varies, especially how much you count cooking because typically when I’m doing recipe testing or even when I’m shooting a recipe for the site, those are whatever we’re eating for dinner that night. So I don’t really do shoot days. I’m just shooting what we’re eating for dinner. And so being kind of efficient in that overlap with your personal life is definitely one way to make all the puzzle pieces fit together. I don’t think I would be able to have dedicated shoot days. I know some full-time bloggers are able to do. Another thing that I found really helpful is just kind of figuring out tasks. You can kind of slip into the margins of your life. And so for me, those are pretty much anything that I can do from my phone and I don’t need to do on my computer, that just opens up a lot more time. So for example, I shoot all my photos on my phone and I edit them in Lightroom mobile on my phone. And so that means that if my husband and I are driving to dinner somewhere, we’re driving for 20 minutes, I can sit in the passenger seat and edit photos for 20 minutes. And if that was something that I needed to do at my computer, I probably wouldn’t be able to do it in that time block. And so that’s another way that it’s really helped me balance things is looking for what are things that I can do outside of the traditional sitting in front of a desk and trying to make sure that I work those things in so that when I do have time to sit down in front of a desk and write or put together a post, the photos are already ready to go. So I’m not sitting there editing photos in this time block I’ve set aside to do some more intense work.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. Yeah, I think a very different but kind of similar example is as much as possible I try and schedule phone calls if I’m traveling somewhere and otherwise I’d be listening to a podcast or music. So especially when you have thin margins, it’s like, okay, where is this going to fit in? And I think one of the considerations is like what is good enough? You can’t be perfect. And so what does it look like to get to that 80 90% where you feel comfortable shipping? And then the other piece is where are the places that you otherwise maybe would’ve been? For myself, I think of I would’ve been consuming and how do you turn consumption periods into creation periods? And I think of the drive example, you’re doing a half an hour drive to meet up with friends for dinner. For a lot of people that might be content consumption, like you’re scrolling through social media, you have your phone, you’re maybe chatting a little bit, but to say, Hey, what if you turn that consumption session into a creation session? And I think for all of us, if we have that, if you have an iPhone and you have that screen time enabled and it’s like you spent five hours on tmz.com, it’s like, well, I could probably be using my time better if I’m actually creating, if that’s the goal. And for all of us, I think as content creators, that is the goal is how can we create well and create more. So I love that idea of trying to find those spots where you can do that content creation. How about in terms of traffic? A lot of times we think about traffic, traffic sources. How do we get more traffic to our site? Reddit kind of like Instagram might not necessarily be this ultimate traffic driver, but to go back to that idea of us being marketers of our content, it’s a really great place to get that in front of people and to get exposure. And I think even with the current Google algorithm, there’s so much to be said around offsite type variables like branded search and things like that. Can you talk about how you view traffic from Reddit as a consideration within your site and even rough percentage of direct traffic and then maybe an analysis of the general benefit that you feel like having a presence on Reddit gives you as a contrast to that pure traffic?

Jacqueline Schell: Yeah, so I would say in terms of pure traffic, it’s not driving a massive amount of my traffic. Most of my traffic is coming from Google search, and so it’s about 10% or so that is coming directly from Reddit. And the behavior there tends to be pretty similar to social media wherein the first day or two that your content is up, it’s going to be driving the most traffic, and then it’s going to pretty sharply peter out, with the exception being any of those posts that then end up maybe in Google search results at the top, then those will continue to drive traffic for years. And I still get people commenting on posts that are a year, two years old saying, Hey, I just made this. It was awesome. And so people are going back to those old posts, but they’re not going to be driving anywhere near the amount of traffic that they do early on. So it’s pretty similar to social media in that way. But yeah, I can kind of talk through maybe an example post.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’d be great.

Jacqueline Schell: Yeah, so one of the communities that I really enjoy is the meat-smoking community. So there’s actually a couple of them, which you’ll find. So the one I really like is called r slash smoking. There’s another one called r slash barbecue, and they’re all a little bit different, so you kind have to explore them. But one thing I really noticed in the smoking subreddit and kind of talking about going through and figuring out what these communities are looking for, a lot of the posts in the smoking subreddit are going to be your really classic barbecue foods. So they’re going to be a smoked brisket or ribs or things like that. But the community is really interested in other ideas, other more unique things to put in a smoker. And so whenever I post something that’s like, Hey, here’s this smoked chicken thigh recipe that you can use in tacos, something that’s a little bit different, people really respond to it and they really like it. So just last week I posted a smoked meatloaf recipe, so it’s like smoked meatloaf and it’s got chorizo in it, so it’s kind of a little bit, not your grandma’s meatloaf, kind of a more creative take. And so that did really well on smoking Reddit subreddit. People really were interested in that. It’s something a little bit different. And so I posted on Instagram and my post on Instagram, I mean it’s got maybe two comments on it at most. I don’t think that drove a lot of traffic, whereas within the smoking community, so the post Reddit will allow you to see metrics for your posts. So that post got 124,000 views, And then the up votes, those are public, you can see. So it got 1400 up votes, it got 550 shares where somebody sent it to a friend and 70 comments. And so that’s just different than myself posting to my own social media. I’m not getting anywhere near that exposure from a photo. And that’s one of the other things is if you’re a creator who is really more photo forward, I really have not delved into video too much yet. Most of the content on Reddit is photos. And so especially just comparing that to how photos do on Instagram these days, the numbers are very different. And so that meatloaf post in the first two days that it was up, it drove about 500 clicks to the website each day, and then in the next few days, about a hundred each day. So a little over about 1500 total coming off that post in the first week. And then likely that post will have some life after that either through Google search or a lot of times people come into these subreddits, and they will sort by the top. And so if you do have one like this that got over a thousand up votes, it’s going to come up in those top lists. And so people will continue to find it.

Bjork Ostrom: And I think the thing that’s unquantifiable but undeniably beneficial is just the awareness of your brand. In that case you have the image, my guess is the image isn’t watermarked, so you don’t have a logo on it, but you do have your URL in the post?

Jacqueline Schell: Yeah, yeah, that’s a great question. So when I’m posting, typically I’m going to post my hero shot photos and then some recipe step photos, so kind of a combo of both. So I’ll post that, those images as the primary post, and then I’ll make a comment. And so my comment will say like, Hey, this is this meatloaf recipe I’ve been working on, give some details about it, but not anything super specific. And then I say, if anyone’s interested in the recipe, I posted it here, and then I’ll have the URL and it’ll let you do a text URL, so it can say whatever keyword you’re trying to target on Google, you can put that in and have that as the link, and then people will go there. And so typically what will happen is the way the comments get organized is the comments that have the most upvotes will generally be displayed at the top. So typically what happens is people come in, they’re like, oh, this is the original person, and they’re posting it with the link to the recipe, I’ll upvote this. So this remains at the top. So every once in a while, somebody else will make some comment that’s funny or something else that gets a bunch of upvotes. And unfortunately sometimes that will bump up above your recipe comment. And especially when that happens, you might have more people that come in and they say, Hey, where’s the recipe? I want the recipe. They don’t see it in one or two comments down, but that’s okay because you can go reply to those people and say, oh, here you go, and give ’em the link and get your link in there a few more times.

Bjork Ostrom: And when you’re posting that content that’s under your Reddit username, not under the brand username, are you posting it with the assumption of anonymity or is it like people know it’s you because you’re posting it and then it’s directed to your site?

Jacqueline Schell: So I mean, it’s a little bit of both. So with Reddit, it is sort of assumed that you are sort of anonymous. However, if you go to my profile, so you can click on a user’s name, you can go to their profile, I have all of my channels and everything linked in there. It links to my Instagram, the website, my substack, all of that is linked. So if you click on it, it’s pretty obvious that those are mine. And usually what I say in the text is I indicate within the text typically that this is my recipe. Like, oh, I’ve been working on this recipe if you want it. Here it is.

Bjork Ostrom: You’re not trying to be anonymous, but you’re also not trying to be brand forward necessarily.

Jacqueline Schell: Exactly. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it. Go ahead.

Jacqueline Schell: A common advice is it used to be within, I think the guidelines for Reddit and they’ve removed it. I don’t believe it’s there anymore, but it used to be it’s okay to be a blogger with a Reddit. It’s not okay to be a blog with a Reddit. And so it’s okay that you’re you and you have this blog, but you shouldn’t be presenting yourself as a brand.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that makes sense. And the blogger versus blog being Star Tribune, which is the newspaper here in the Minneapolis St. Paul Twin Cities area, shouldn’t necessarily go on and post content in the same way that they would on Twitter. You could do that on Twitter or X, and that would be acceptable. What Reddit is saying is if you are Star Tribune, and you should probably come on as a journalist and interact or an individual who has a website or a blog, but not as a faceless non individual representation of a company or a brand.

Jacqueline Schell: Exactly. And some of that is changing. Reddit is trying to move away from that a little bit. And it’s kind of interesting to see because Reddit as a company is trying to move away from that more, especially I think with the IPO and all of that. But that doesn’t mean that the communities are moving in that direction. And actually a lot of the moderators and people who have been on the website for a long time are really pushing back on that. And so you’re kind of in this sort of gray area where the rules have kind of changed, but there’s still just a lot of momentum in the community to keep it very people focused. So you have to walk that line a little bit.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that makes sense. And then one of the things you talked about was upvotes post a comment, it’ll get upvoted that upvoted rolls up into this thing called karma. Can you explain the benefit of building your karma over time? My cousin, 10 years ago, I remember he had a couple pieces of content that he posted on Reddit that would get to the front page, and he had built up his karma and stuff, and I was just kind of fascinated by it, but don’t really understand how that all works. So what is it, and then what is the benefit of building your Reddit karma?

Jacqueline Schell: Yeah, so the thing that’s kind of interesting about Reddit compared to a social media platform is that that actually doesn’t really matter. When a post goes into a subreddit, you don’t get any special perks or bonuses because you’re a high-karma account. There are a few things where to kind of weed out bots and things like that. Some communities might require you have at least some amount of karma, and you can get those just by commenting on things as well. But really building up a lot of karma, it doesn’t really matter that much actually functionally for how you interact with the site, it will give you some amount of credibility. So especially if someone sees maybe one of my photos and it looks like a professional blog photo and not like someone took it on their iPhone in their kitchen, they might go, oh, maybe this person is a spammer, and then click into my account and they see that I have hundreds of thousands of karma. They’re probably going to go, oh, okay, never mind. This person is clearly a Reddit user. They have a bunch of karma. They’ve been here a while. So in that case, it does give you some amount of credibility a little bit. It shows that you’ve been around, but it’s not necessarily going to be boosting your posts or anything like that.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s almost like a social indicator within the community that you are part of the community that you are active there. I think about it with Kickstarter where the people that I look at that I am most favorable to with a Kickstarter campaign are the people who have previously supported other Kickstarter campaigns. And it makes me feel more incentivized to support them because they have been a part of the community, and they’re not just using it for their own good. And it feels like Karma can kind of be a similar thing where people can understand, oh, you’re a part of this community and you’ve been posting here. So first step, let’s say somebody’s interested in starting to strategically use Reddit. What does that look like for them to dip their toe into it? What would your advice be?

Jacqueline Schell: Yeah, I mean, I would start by making an account. Like I said, don’t use your blog name, at least my advice would be to not do that, and then just start viewing content in these communities. So look up communities for maybe whatever niche you’re in. I mean anything under the sun, all different kinds of cuisines have their own so you can follow them. So you’ll start creating your own feed of the subreddits that you follow. I’d recommend following subreddits in your other interests as well. Don’t make it only food. If you’re really into gardening, really any interest that you have, there’s probably a subreddit for it. And so I would just check out all of them, go through that, and just start understanding the way people behave in those communities, the kinds of things people post, the kinds of things that are doing well, that are getting a lot of upvotes in those communities, and try to understand all of that before you start submitting your own content. That would be my advice.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s showing up to the party, it’s getting a sense for what the vibe is like. It’s not going in and shouting, look at me. It’s going in and getting a sense for how people are interacting, communicating. And then when you feel comfortable saying like, Hey, here’s piece of content that I think might be helpful, it almost feels like that’s the most important thing, is going in with the mindset of what is going to be most helpful for the intent of this community? What do these people want? And this could be said, broadly speaking, for anything that we do, creating content online, what does this group of people want? And then how can I create a thing that helps these people get what they want in a graceful and elegant way, considering how people are interacting? That’s great. So if people want to follow along with you, maybe if people want to join some of the subreddits that you’re moderating or a part of, can you let people know where the best place is to follow along with your site, maybe social, and then you can do some Reddit shout outs as well?

Jacqueline Schell: Yeah, so my website is craftycookbook.com, and I’m craftycookbook on Instagram, so definitely feel free to add me on there and shoot me a message or anything like that. And on Reddit, I moderate the r slash Japanese food community as well as the r slash sushi community. So definitely check those two out. And yeah, like I said, just check out all the communities that are areas that you’re interested in.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. Jacqueline, thanks so much for coming on. Really appreciate it.

Jacqueline Schell: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

Emily Walker: Hey, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team. We hope you enjoyed that episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Thank you so much for listening and tuning in Today, I wanted to chat a little bit more about one of the perks of the Food Blogger Pro membership. If you are a Food Blogger Pro member, you likely already know about these, but maybe you’re a new member or you’re thinking about becoming a member, and I just wanted to let you know about one of my favorite things in the membership. Every month we host a Live Q&A over Zoom with an industry expert and usually Bjork. They chat about topics ranging from republishing content to Google, algorithm updates, Pinterest or advanced SEO. Sometimes we’ll do an Ask Bjork Anything or even questions about creating content plugins, site speed. Really, we cover every topic you might need to know something about As a food creator, as a Food Blogger Pro member, you’re given the option to submit questions in advance or you can submit questions during the Live Q&A and the guest in Bjork will answer your questions and provide feedback. It’s always a really awesome opportunity to get advice and feedback from experts in the food creator community, and it’s just a really fun way to connect as members and get to know each other better since these Q&As are hosted live. But we always post replays on our site and for our members only podcast if you can’t make it live. So anyways, it’s just a really great feature of the Food Blogger Pro membership. If you aren’t yet a member, and this sounds like something you would like access to, head to foodbloggerpro.com/membership to learn more. And that’s it for this week. We’ll see you back here next week for another episode of the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. Make it a great week.