426: Social Media Deep Dive: Threads, X, and AI with Andrea Balogun

Bjork Ostrom: This episode is sponsored by Clariti. Here’s the question. Are you manually keeping track of your blog posts on a spreadsheet or a project management tool? Maybe it’s Airtable or Asana. Or maybe you’re not even keeping track of anything at all? When it comes to optimizing and organizing your content, how do you know what to change? How do you know what you’re doing is actually moving the needle?

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Emily Walker: Hey, there. This is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team and you are listening to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. This week on the podcast, Andrea Balogan, our social media expert, is back on the podcast for a social media deep dive into lots of hot topics and news that have been happening in the social media world lately. Bjork and Andrea will be chatting about Threads, Twitter or X, and some of the new apps and social media platforms that you might want to be aware of.

Or you might just need some more ideas of how you might share content on those platforms as a food creator. All of the talk of new platforms turn to talk of social media strategy and how to avoid feeling overwhelmed or burnt out as a creator on social media. There are so many different social media platforms, and so many different types of content that you can share that it can easily be very overwhelming to think you have to do it all.

Andrea has a really amazing perspective on how to approach your social media strategy to avoid getting overwhelmed, how to really lean into creating the types of content that bring you joy, and sharing on the platforms that you really enjoy being on the most. It’s a really great conversation around thinking through your strategy, and hopefully it will change how you approach your social media strategy in the future.

Andrea and Bjork wrap up the conversation chatting about some new tools, including some new AI tools in the social media space and how you might want to incorporate them into your current social media workflow. It’s a really awesome conversation if you are on social media as a content creator, which I will imagine most of you are. It’s really a must-listen episode. I think you’ll have a ton of takeaways and learn a lot. So I’m just going to let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Andrea, welcome back to the podcast.

Andrea Balogun: Hey. How are you?

Bjork Ostrom: Good.

Andrea Balogun: Good.

Bjork Ostrom: We’re going to be talking about all things social media today. For those who are Food Blogger Pro members, they’ve seen you before, and those who are longtime podcast listeners have heard you before. We’ve had conversations on the podcast before, a couple of years ago, but we’re going to be talking about social media because that’s the world that you live in.

For those who aren’t familiar, can you talk a little bit about what it is that you do and the focus of your work and your agency?

Andrea Balogun: Sure. The bulk of what I do now is social media strategy. There was a time when I was a manager, but I have learned that it’s a lot better when people know the strategy behind what they’re doing. I do have sessions one-on-one or sometimes with groups and workshops about social media strategy.

In the one-on-one sessions, I will do a custom plan. And then, my overall goal is just to help people who are overwhelmed with social media understand it a little better and find their magic. Everybody shouldn’t do it the same.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s such a good point.

Andrea Balogun: Yes, but they can learn some things that will work specifically for them and their niche or industry.

Bjork Ostrom: Love that. I think when people hear those two things, social media and overwhelm, everybody is nodding their head. My guess is everybody listening. One of the reasons is because it feels like to some degree you could spend all of your time on any one given platform. But then, there’s all of these platforms and you have to make decisions on how often you should post to those, what you should post to those.

As we get into it, I think one of the ways we could look at it is almost like addressing some of the most recent questions around new platforms and how to treat them. One of the newest is Threads. There’s this peak. When we’re recording this, it was maybe a month ago, a month-and-a-half ago. Threads comes out. It’s connected to Instagram. Everybody flocks over there. Maybe that has dwindled a little bit, but can you talk a little bit about what Threads is and how creators could potentially be using it?

Andrea Balogun: Sure. As many of you know, Threads is a competitor for Twitter, now X, and that it is totally text-based. I think the big draw in the beginning was that you didn’t have to start from zero when it came to your following. A lot of people basically locked down their name that they already have with Instagram and downloaded it and took a look around.

I think right now, as much as we are frustrated with how Twitter, X, is falling apart in some ways, we still have mostly a core group over there. So a lot of people are still on Twitter or X, but they’re dipping their toe in on Threads. Threads is usually … The people who are the loudest are either people who had stopped using Twitter and were like, “Good. Let’s go here.”

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Andrea Balogun: And then, the other people who are mostly auto-posting like, “This is another platform. I can just spread the same information.” And the rest of us are just playing around with it like we used to with Twitter a decade or so ago.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s a new platform. Getting a little bit of exposure to it. Getting a feel for how it works. What have you seen from creators who are doing it well on that platform? What type of content are they posting?

Andrea Balogun: To me, if you were doing well on Twitter, then Threads is for you. If you didn’t like Twitter, I don’t know that Threads is going to be any different in terms of how you produce the content, because it’s still conversational or big events happening. We’re all going to be talking about that same thing.

So it’s still not the same type of strategy you would have on Facebook or Instagram. It’s truly text or conversational. If that’s not something you’re really interested in, it wouldn’t really matter if you had it. But because it is tied to your Instagram, it will always be there, because you won’t have to pick a name or anything. It’ll always be something that you can add to your strategy, if that’s something you want to do later down the road.

Bjork Ostrom: Conceptually, I think it’d be helpful to talk about that. It’s closely correlated to Instagram. And so, if you have a handle … I don’t use Instagram to publish it, but I have @BjorkOstrom as my handle, in case all the other Bjork Ostroms wanted to come for that handle. I have it locked down on Instagram. So then, when I create Threads, the only option I have, if I’m remembering the process right, is to use that same handle.

Andrea Balogun: Right.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s not like somebody is going to come in and grab that handle or grab the @PinchofYum handle if we already have that for Instagram, but you also can’t use a different one. It’s just going to be your exact same handle on Instagram. Is that right?

Andrea Balogun: That’s what I’m seeing right now. I know that it’s still new and a lot of things are changing. In the beginning, I think you couldn’t even delete Threads without it deleting your Instagram account as well, which upset a lot of people. That’s changed, but at this moment, I think it really is tied to your Instagram. They’ve really woven those two together.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it. And the benefit I would imagine with setting up a Threads account sooner rather than later is the onboarding process that Threads takes people through, which is an auto-follow for anybody that you currently follow on Instagram.

And so, if you have a million followers or 100,000 or whatever it is, and you waited three years before activating your Threads account … Even if you didn’t post any content, you might miss out on a lot of people following you. Because those other people who are signing up for Threads, as it is right now, the onboarding says, “Auto-follow all of the people that are on Threads that you currently follow on Instagram.”

Even just by setting it up, you would catch some of those people who are tipping over and signing up. Not as many now as it initially was, but is that true still? You probably haven’t gone through the onboarding recently.

Andrea Balogun: I think being an early adopter to a lot of these is fun, because you are there first. And then, when people join, you’re easily found. I would say that as I have been on and more people have joined, I still think I’m getting those follows. They can follow me. But if I was joining later, perhaps I wouldn’t have. You can still auto-follow. I’m trying to see if people have been able to do so after the fact, but I don’t think so.

Of course, there’ll be suggestions that you’ll be able to go through a list of, but I think it is a little different. When you weren’t there at the beginning, then there’s no one to follow. Sometimes you get those notifications, “Somebody has done their first thread.” Something like that, where if it’s somebody you follow on Instagram … But you’re correct. It would be either a suggestion, but not part of that auto-follow when you connect your account to Instagram.

Bjork Ostrom: The point being, there’s no downside. Other than the fact that you’ll have an account and you might not be active on it, but it wouldn’t hurt to set that up. Just so you can catch any of those people who are your followers, that after you set up your account, they set up a Threads account, and would opt-in to auto-follow anybody that they follow on Instagram.

Andrea Balogun: Right.

Bjork Ostrom: One of the hacks that they had, a growth hack … That’s maybe not the best word for it, but people will, versus starting a social platform for Zero and needing to get a bunch of followers and everybody over … Suddenly, the perception is like, “I have all these followers and I didn’t really have to do any work.”

Because the transfer people will just say, “I’m signing up for an account.” And they’ll say, “Do you want to follow all of the people who are currently on Threads that have a Threads account that you follow on Instagram?” Oftentimes, people will say yes.

One of the things that I think is worth pointing out is you talked about the difference between Twitter or X and Threads and other platforms like Instagram. To me, it seems like … You kind of said this. One of the biggest differences is, “What is the expected behavior when you’re on one of those platforms?” Or at least, posting onto it.

For a platform like Threads or X, it feels like the expected behavior is conversation or almost information-heavy type sharing. The people that seem to do really well are sharing … They’re journalists or it’s things that are happening in real time. Or it’s people who have deep industry knowledge and they’re sharing insights.

Whereas, Instagram, TikTok, it’s maybe more entertainment-based. It’s still information, but in a different way. Have you seen food creators do well in the conversational text-type platforms? Or is it just more rare to do well on those platforms given the medium of food?

Andrea Balogun: I think if there is something that is happening in the industry, if you have a following that you’ve grown on Instagram or Pinterest that you want to move over to Twitter … If there is something like a popular cooking show that’s coming on, because there’s something that you can talk about that’s within the niche, but maybe popular enough for other people that they’re watching it … A lot of those shows will have those hashtags where you’re joining a conversation.

I have always found that there is an advantage in joining these conversations, because there are a good amount of people looking at hashtags. If you’re watching MasterChef, people get really into those shows and have favorites. Having and sharing that conversation on Twitter is good in terms of conversation, and then a trending topic of that night. Those are things I’ve seen.

Q&As. If their favorite somebody in the industry is having a Q&A, because they’re part of something … If some journalist or some other huge platform decides they want to do Q&A, they’re still doing those on Twitter. People are still going to Twitter for news stuff, even though we have to wade through ads. It’s still a good platform, if that is something that you can keep up with. I find that still some people will start okay, and then they’re just like, “Wow. I don’t want to keep up with this.”

Bjork Ostrom: Part of it is you don’t really see a return. There’s a handful of folks that I follow on Twitter and they’re in the finance space. There’s some people who do real estate. And the real estate example, what this guy does … The account is called @StripMallGuy, and it’s an anonymous guy who talks about what it’s like to own strip malls, but what he does is he raises money from investors.

My understanding is it’s a great platform for him, because he shares all of his knowledge and insights and then grows a following. And then, from that following, he can engage with those people who want to become investors in what he’s doing. He’s validating his knowledge through that. I would imagine it’s a better platform than Instagram would be for somebody like that.

Andrea Balogun: Even though it’s text-based, you can still share those videos or pictures and stuff. And the advantage is still that you can use links. That’s still something that Instagram is not allowing us to do in the comments. There’s still something to where even if you were auto-posting links to your blog, you still run the advantage or risk of someone clicking those links.

So it’s still something that I think people should add in terms of, “This is a way I can get traffic if I’m just auto-doing something.” But I think a way to specifically grow an audience is to have those conversations. And then, hopefully, people stay around for those blogs or recipe videos.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. Another category that I’ve found really helpful on Twitter, or X … I feel like it’s such a weird purgatory period.

Andrea Balogun: I’m still calling it Twitter.

Bjork Ostrom: It doesn’t feel right to call it X. We’ll call it Twitter for the sake of this conversation. It’s still twitter.com when I pull it up, so we’ll call it that for now. As soon as it switches to x.com … I wonder if x.com … No. It just redirects.

As soon as that change happens, I’ll use that as my marker for calling it X. Search SEO professionals. An example of one that I just recently came across again is this guy who goes by @ViperChill. I don’t know the background behind it, but his name is Glenn. He does a lot of breakdowns of public companies that are content companies and what they’re doing in the world of search. “Hey. This company IAC is this really big company. They released their quarterly results.”

He reads through them and part of what that has to do with is search trends. It’s also good for industry knowledge like that I’ve noticed as well. Different in a way, again, than a blog, because it’s not long form. It’s not photo-based. And so, I would imagine for people in the food space, if you can come up with something text-based like that, that also allows you to converse. It can be a great platform for that.

How about order of operation? We talk about overwhelm. People are inevitably overwhelmed by all they have to do. This would be especially true for solopreneurs. And I think one of the first things that starts to happen as you start to get some momentum and you have some revenue to reinvest back into your business … Or if you just are early on and you are investing into your business with maybe some disposable income that you have.

A lot of times one of the first hires that people will make is somebody a few hours a week to help post to other platforms just to take off the burden of that operations process. But let’s say it’s somebody in that solopreneur stage. We need to prioritize the actual content creation, and then going onto a platform to post. What would you recommend for people who are overwhelmed and saying, “Man, there’s all these platforms. I know they all have opportunities.”

It kind of becomes analysis paralysis. “I don’t know which one is the priority. Should I do them all? Should I just do one?” How would you recommend people step into it and maybe even become self-aware around where they are? You talked about, “Make sure you’re crafting it for you. Your best platform.” How do you do that? How do you understand where you are, and then build a plan to not be overwhelmed, but to post?

Andrea Balogun: Right. I think as a food blogger, you’re already a maker. You’re already doing something when you are producing content. I am still a big champion of repurposing. So if you are planning to … Even if it’s a written blog, there will probably be pictures. And if it’s something as simple as putting a phone to the side and just documenting everything that you’re doing.

No rhyme or reason. Just documenting that period of time. You take that content, and then split it up for what you think might be a good reel. You use that one reel and put it to all of the places it could go. YouTube Shorts, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. That one piece of content can be in all those different places. You don’t have to change anything up unless you want to.

Maybe within TikTok, you want to change the little cover or something, but I am real big on documenting the things that you’re already doing. Because that won’t be overwhelming. You won’t be having to think, “Let me create content.” You’re really just repurposing things that you have already done. And then, once you determine, “This is something I can handle,” maybe after that you pick up something else.

I think we talked about those first ones would be Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest. If you’re really into video, then YouTube, obviously. I think a lot of people can still take advantage of YouTube Shorts even if they’re not doing full-length videos. And I think what’s great about starting out in the beginning is you can see what your audience likes.

It’s a great time to see what gained traction, what got traffic to my blog, what time of day was it, the length. You’ll have a wealth of information over a first month or 30 days to see what sticks. And then, don’t do those other things that you think are working or that somebody told you to do. You look at your own data insights and go from there, because then you will feel like you’re actually getting some return from these things that are actually driving traffic to your website.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s such a balance with gaining knowledge and information from other people and not just doing what other people are doing. If I saw somebody who was a gymnast and they were like, “Here’s how I got really athletic.” And I’m like, “I want to be athletic.”

They’re like, “I’m really flexible and I would work on my flexibility and I would try and get flexible.” It’s just like, “I’m not a flexible person. I can’t touch my toes.” It’s kind of, “Craft who I am into who somebody else is.” But at the same time, there are best practices and things that are working well in certain categories.

Andrea Balogun: Yes. Absolutely.

Bjork Ostrom: And so, it’s almost this art and science of understanding who you are, how you best create, where you have a natural tendency, getting really good at that. To use the athletic analogy, maybe it’s like I get into it and I’m like, “Actually, I really like tennis. I can play tennis well.”

So then, I’m going to listen to people around what’s working within tennis. As opposed to listening to anybody who’s athletic and being like, “This person lifted weights for two hours a day. I’m going to do that.”

Andrea Balogun: Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: No. You need to approach it differently based on your self-awareness around how you create as a creator. Does that feel accurate and reflect what you’re saying?

Andrea Balogun: Yeah. We know what’s outside of the realm of things that we can keep up with. It’s cool if you think there’s this trend, “I’m going to try this once.” But being consistent, sometimes that’s the greatest way in burning out, because you’re trying to keep up with people who may have more resources.

There are bloggers that have people that come in every week to take new pictures of them. If I have that, great, I can post every day, twice a day. If I don’t have that, I need to be more strategic on posting the stronger content.

Maybe it’s only two or three times a week, but it’s going to be the best content. And there will be no filler content, because you’re focusing on what you know is going to work versus trying to keep up with other people who are … Thinking about posting every day overwhelms me right away.

Bjork Ostrom: An example of that is … Right now, on the other side of the wall here, Lindsay is shooting video with her friend Landon, who’s the video editor we work with and also a good friend of ours. He comes in once a week, once every two weeks. They shoot. They edit. And then, we also have Krista, who’s an awesome member of her team, who helps out getting stuff ready and preparing.

And so, it’s a team and they’re all working on it together to produce this content, but when you look at it from the outside, you’re like, “Wow. All of this stuff is happening.” They’re launching a new product, producing a video, and there’s a blog post that comes out. It seems like, “How is all this happening?”

And oftentimes, it’s happening because either, A, somebody is working an incredible amount of hours, which does happen. Or, B, somebody is working with a team. Still an incredible amount of hours, just dispersed among multiple people. Or sometimes, C, both. An individual’s working a ton and you’re working with a team. And so, the output that you have is just more than normal.

That feels also like a self-awareness thing. What’s the capacity you have? And then, making decisions around both time and money. And then, making decisions around, what’s the best way to deploy that? And that’s what we do as entrepreneurs is figuring out … It’s like resource allocation. Time and money resource allocation. Do you have any thoughts or reflections on how people can do that? How do you reflect on where you should spend most of your time as a creator?

Andrea Balogun: I usually start that type of conversation with, “What do you like to do when it comes to social media? What is it that you like to do when you are thinking of creating content?” And then, I try to go from there, build something from there. A lot of times, it could be like, “I like writing things, but not all the time.”

One of the things I always say is when you are feeling creative, create a lot, and then you have a bank of things that you can do. Because I ain’t guaranteeing by Thursday you’re not going to want to create, but you have a bank of things that you can go to and pull from. I’m always writing lists. If I’m reading an article or maybe I saw something on social media, I add it to a list, “This is something I want to create content about later when it is creation time.”

Finding those little hacks in terms of your own productivity. Knowing, “This is what I like to do.” Maybe I only want to create stuff on Sundays, and then schedule it out for the next two weeks. It’s really about, one, deciding, “This is what I like to do.” And then, also looking at, “This is what people like for me to do. This is what people are asking that I share.”

Or you’re seeing people ask these type of questions and you know can answer it. You’re creating content to fill a need. That’s where I would start, because whenever we do get overwhelmed or frustrated with social media, we just stop. You’ll never see results from that.

Bjork Ostrom: It reminds me … I think I’ve mentioned this quote on the podcast before. It’s one of those classic quotes that’s attributed to different people, but I think it’s Frederick Buechner. He has this quote that says, “The place God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

And I think the more that we can think about that … Where’s that intersection? How do we figure out how to get as close as possible to that intersection of the world’s deep hunger, what do people need, and your deep gladness? Wow. What an incredible thing if we can find where that is and spend the majority of our time at that intersection. It’s probably a forever thing. You’re always looking for it.

Andrea Balogun: Yes. That’s what I was going to say. Sometimes I need a couple of hours to just sit with myself to map through that. Probably, once a quarter, that might change. After seeing what you’ve done for those three months, you’re like, “Okay. Let’s stick with this. We’re throwing this out and trying something new.” I think there’s a cycle of doing that. Because again, you don’t want to burn out and just stop.

Bjork Ostrom: I made a note to do this, and I actually was going to ask Lindsay. For a long season of life, we had date night, where we had a nanny and she’d come and we’d be able to go out. And then, our life got disrupted and we haven’t had it. Now, we’re starting it back up again.

Anyways, one of the things I’ve been thinking about is thinking ahead on the conversations that we can have when we go out on date night. One of the things that I’m creating a list around is … Which is either, depending on how you look at it, thoughtful or incredibly unromantic to create a list of things to talk about.

I hope Lindsay didn’t hear me talk about it. She’d be rolling her eyes. But one of the things was there’s this company, Michael Hyatt. Do you know the name Michael Hyatt?

Andrea Balogun: That name sounds familiar. Because I’m in Nashville and I feel like I’ve seen that name.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes. Totally. If you’re in Nashville, it’s now called Full Focus. They have this assessment that they do. There’s a journal, but one of the assessments they have … I think they call it a Life Score, but I’ve been thinking about that in the context both of work and life and figuring out how … I’ve talked about this before too, but how we can design our own video game.

Part of that is designing what we’re working on. Part of that is designing how much we work. Part of it is prioritizing all of those different components within our life. I feel like our lives ebb and flow in a way, where sometimes we can do a lot of that. We do have a lot of autonomy. Other times, we don’t have a lot of autonomy. Yesterday, our daughter was sick and we had to be home with her. And it’s like, “I’m not designing my life.”

Andrea Balogun: I’ve been there. I have been there.

Bjork Ostrom: What I love about what you’re saying from the self-reflection standpoint is to not just hear, “Somebody is being successful on YouTube,” and then you run out and do it. Or to not just hear that this hack is working on Facebook and you run out and do it.

That stuff can work, but to really look inward and say, “What are my priorities? What do I want to do?” And then, to have some way to measure that. The reason that I mentioned the Life Score thing, going through that, and then talking about it on date night with Lindsay is because that’s something that I’ve been thinking a lot about. I think it ties into what you’re saying, which is really prioritizing, crafting a vision for what you’re building. I don’t know. Is there a better way to say it? Or how would you …

Andrea Balogun: Yes. I always think of building strategy. The building blocks of your own strategy is different than another person. So I am agreeing with you and I think assessments are actually really good. There are assessments out there everywhere now. I recently took one, and I cannot think of what it is, about personality and also things I do.

One of the things that came out was, “You’ll be a good coach. You are affirming.” And then, I was like, “Coach? It sounds like a long-term …” I like doing the sessions, because it’s one-and-done. And I’ve had people say, “You make me feel empowered to do it.” I’m like, “That’s great.” And it was kind of affirming.

But I think having an assessment, having some time to self-reflect is really important in all things. But those personality things do tie into how you would do business, how you create content, how you feel confident in this space that we’re in. I think that all goes together.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. One thing I want to come back to, especially around conversations within social media, is that there are a lot of people who have successful online businesses and they don’t use social media primarily as their main thing. Maybe it’s a supportive thing.

I feel like Food Blocker Pro is a good example of that. We post on social media, our team does, but it’s not me actively using Instagram as a tool or a platform. My avenue is a podcast. I love having conversations with people and talking through things, but I don’t spend as much of my time on social.

Whereas, Lindsay spends a lot of time on Instagram. It’s a good fit for her. She enjoys the process of connecting with people there. You could see that in the growth of her account and what that looks like. How about … Go ahead.

Andrea Balogun: Well, I was going to say that speaks to two things. I think, one, different people are going to gravitate to different types of content. Like you said, you like to do podcasts and Lindsay likes to do Instagram. So I think choosing that platform is one thing. And then, the other thing is the season you’re in. I talked to somebody about that this week.

The summer might be where we slow down. Or I’m in building season. Or I’m just taking a moment. I know when I started, I was doing a lot of promotion. A lot of promotion. I also developed websites. I don’t talk about that as much anymore. I’m mostly talking about social media, but because I have built so many websites and my name is in the footer, I’m still getting referrals.

So I am not in the mode of promoting, promoting, promoting about the websites, because it’s doing something on its own. I’m in a lower impact season, because I’m not having to show up all the time about things that I’m not focused on. I think those are the two things. Personality is one thing, but also maybe being in a slower season or maybe in a building season. You just have to be aware of where you are.

Bjork Ostrom: I haven’t done it yet, but I’d be interested to see how much of that surfaces with something like this Life Score assessment, Full Focus. We can link to that where you can see, “This is a good reflection of the season I’m in.” Maybe it’s work-heavy or family-heavy or whatever it might be.

Transitioning, one of the things that I’ve noticed in the world of social is a lot of tools coming out. There’s a lot of people who build tools for social media. There’s the obvious ones like social scheduling, like Buffer. There’s lots of those tools, but I’m also starting to notice some tools come out.

These are really new ones. I don’t think a lot of people are using them. Klap.app. It’s klap.app. Or … I don’t know even how to pronounce this. I think it’s Dumme? I don’t know if that’s actually what it is. Dumme. Dumme.com.

Andrea Balogun: Looking it up now.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s kind of built around shorts. The reason I mentioned these two specifically is because we’ve thought about doing this type of content, or I’ve thought about doing this type of content for the podcast. Essentially, it’s AI-based, where you feed in a video, and then it supposedly surfaces the section that’s going to be the highest engagement and then creates a short clip around it.

I think there’s a lot of opportunities in the world of AI. Maybe early-stage now, but more so down the line. Even using ChatGPT to help formulate descriptions and things like that. From a tool perspective, what are some of the things that you’re seeing that are enabling people to maybe create at scale or create differently? Or have some help creating to alleviate some of that burden?

Andrea Balogun: This is another one of my favorite topics right now. I am a big tool automation tech person, so I have used a tool like that called OpusClip, where you put in your YouTube link and then it does spit out seven or eight clips for you. It does the captions.

I love these tools as something where if you don’t have money for a videographer or working with a copywriter … There still is something about the human touch on these types of things when it comes to copy or editing, but if you don’t have that, these tools work really well. And it’s sometimes scary how well they’re working.

I think with things like ChatGPT, I always tell people it’s really good to get good ideas, but you still need to inject your personality and your spice on it, because you don’t want to just copy and paste. You lose some of your personality. You can tell sometimes when it’s just copy or paste. I can just say that.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. Yep.

Andrea Balogun: So I think it’s really great, one, in terms of ChatGPT for ideas, you can ask it things like, “What kind of content should I do for this?” And then, it spits out ideas. You might even get things from there. You just might get ideas instead of content. And then, outside of video editing, there are some other tools where it’s tech space.

Where if you put in a video, you look for your particular section that you want … And that’s just helping you edit a video. Not really throwing out the clips, but like, “I know I talked about this here. Let’s take this part,” because it’s doing the transcribing for you. Those are some good tools. I’m trying to think of something else. Every tool that I use has now added AI.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Andrea Balogun: I use Notion. I use Notion as a tool to keep … It’s like a database of all my ideas or blogs or whatever. Now, they have AI in there that will finish the sentence for you. If you have started this thought and you’re like, “Hey, I need a little help.” Click the button. It will finish the sentence or paragraph for you, which is helpful.

Again, I go back and like, “I would actually say this.” But again, it’s a great helper. I of course don’t want to diminish anybody’s professional work when it comes to being a copywriter or a video editor, but it is helpful to have these tools when you really don’t have the budget to go big.

You can tell that a lot of people are using these tools, because everybody has fancy captions and things now. So I think they’re a real great help, as long as you know that it’s a help and that you should still inject your personality into the output.

Bjork Ostrom: I always think it’s easier to personally edit versus create from the ground up. And if there’s something that does the initial heavy lifting of the generation of a thing … I say that I haven’t used it a ton for different things. We’ll use it as a tool internally as a team to brainstorm, like you said. It’s almost like somebody who has industry knowledge and you’re asking them questions as you’re trying to think of a solution.

Andrea Balogun: It’s the second brain.

Bjork Ostrom: Almost always what I’ve found is … In our conversations with our team, what we’ve learned is we end up landing on something that we fully craft. An example being podcast titles. I was talking with our team, Emily and Alexa, and I was like, “Hey. I have an idea. Use AI to come up with podcast titles.”

They were like, “We already do that.” What they’re saying is it’s helpful to have some ideas, but we always end up using one, or oftentimes end up using one that we craft. Just because they know the audience and they know historically what has done well, but it’s still helpful to have that sounding board.

I’ve talked to other creators who will be able to say, “Write an Instagram description in the voice of …” And then, they’ll link to their site. Especially, if you’re at a point where you’re just super tired or you don’t have any mental juice left. It’s helpful to have something that’s like, “That’s good,” and maybe even change 50% of it, but to have something to help a little bit.

Andrea Balogun: The thing with AI, the output is only as good as the prompt. So that’s the thing about getting the right or the best information you can. You have to be really good at prompting it, because it is a computer. You have to be very specific or feed it something like your bio, “This is what you need to know about this. Now, create some brand statement for this.”

Or if you want it to have somebody’s voice, you can actually put a famous person’s voice. I find sometimes ChatGPT always adds a lot of emojis. I’m like, “I don’t know.” And I’m like, “Let’s tone it down.” Or if they give me five paragraphs, I’m like, “Condense that into one paragraph.” Once I got good at prompting it the right way, then it made sense. But before that, I’m just like, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” It really matters how you prompt it.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great and I think worth calling out for anybody who’s interested in that, the idea of prompt engineering, And that’s the practice of becoming an engineer, not like an official engineer, but getting good at figuring out how to prompt AI and all of the different ways that you can do that.

An example would be, “Pretend to be a copywriter who is fun and lighthearted and write a 100-word email that is about a sale for a new spatula.” And then, that spits it out. The example I was trying to convince a nonprofit that I work with to potentially use it … It’s just fun for me anytime that I get to introduce somebody to a new thing. I was trying to tell them, “Hey. You’ve got to use ChatGPT. I think you’d find it really interesting.”

And the example that I used was, “Write the notice for an upcoming event in one month and use cat puns,” because the person I was trying to convince to use it really likes cats. And so, it was this nonprofit fundraising email invitation with a bunch of cat puns. It’s so bizarre and so weird and so awesome, but all of that comes from prompt engineering, like you said.

Andrea Balogun: That one little twist makes it like, “This is fun.”

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. That’s great. For those who aren’t familiar with ChatGPT, if you haven’t signed up for an account, try it. There’s a free version and a paid version. You can also use bard.google.com is one that I’ve been using a decent amount.

Andrea Balogun: I’ve seen that one.

Bjork Ostrom: Just Google’s version of it, which has more realtime information versus ChatGPT. AI feels a little bit buzzword-y, but it’s because it is so common and there’s so many cool things you can do with it.

Andrea Balogun: It’s sometimes very helpful.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes. Totally. Any other news that you feel like is relevant? Or anything else in the social world that folks should be aware of? Changes that are happening, industry trends. There’s always this constant evolution towards video, which feels like it will continue to become important. As we close out, any last considerations or thoughts around things that are happening in the world of social?

Andrea Balogun: Well, one thing I always say, especially because we’re seeing all of these platforms change … Twitter or X wanted to limit DMs or limit tweets or things like that. As much as I love social media, I always tell people to remember that it’s really a driver to where you want them to go. If it’s an email list or a website, anything like that, to remember where social media is placed is in your marketing.

I think you said earlier about where people spend the most time. I still always suggest that social media should be an arm of your marketing strategy, not where you do everything. Because again, Twitter, Instagram, it could completely turn off, and then you’ve lost your database or your audience of people.

So I still suggest trying to get people into a email list. As much as people will be like, “Email list? What am I going to talk?” You would literally talk about the same things you talk on social media in an email list. If you are doing a roundup of your top five recipes, that’s an easy email, because you’re really just pulling links or talking about content you’ve already done.

So if it’s something as simple as a once-a-month thing, where you are recapping, catching people up, or sharing some of your favorite things … I would still look into having an email list for that and treat it like a social media platform. That’s what made it the easiest for me. Talk about those same things. Maybe link it to an Instagram or Pinterest or something.

If you are wanting to have that loop of social media to email lists to social media or whatever. That’s my thing. I love social media, but we don’t own that space. There’s a reason why it’s free for the most part. My big thing is to suggest, while you’re looking at all these platforms pop up or die, that you have people on an email list or people know where to find you on a website or something like that.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. And I think it’s so often overlooked. We just get in this content wheel, where it’s like we’re producing more content to get more followers to … What? Traffic is part of it.

Andrea Balogun: You’re more guaranteed to get an email in someone’s inbox than hoping and praying somebody sees a social media post or something. You have to get really good at making sure people will see your content, but for sure, people are getting an email.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great.

Andrea Balogun: I would say look at, if you can, whichever platform you on, WordPress, Squarespace, Webflow … There’s so many now. That should give you those analytics about where your traffic is coming from. I think it would be helpful to funnel those people, wherever it is, into a email list and just share the same information you would on social media.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. Andrea, if people want to sit down with you, we talked about how important it is to craft your own journey, your own idea of what success looks like. My guess is a lot of that comes in these sessions that you do with creators. What would that look like? How can somebody reach out and connect with you to have a conversation around potentially working together?

Andrea Balogun: Sure. I do probably spend the most time on Instagram, so I am there. I am @AndreaBalogun, my name. I’m sure you’ll see it on this podcast cover. From there, I usually talk to people on that platform. I have a Facebook group that’s free. I’m revamping. And then, from there, if you like the free content, we can move forward to me just doing a quick audit of your account.

And then, the next step is usually a full-fledged social media strategy plan. Those are usually the steps. There’s a lot of free stuff, and I’d like to do Q&As in my group when I can. We usually start there. And then, if you want something more custom, we can do this one-on-one session.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. We’ll link to that in the show notes. Andrea, thanks so much for coming on.

Andrea Balogun: No problem. Thanks for having me.

Emily Walker: Hello. Hello. Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team here. Before we sign off for the day, I wanted to pop in and chat a little bit about a resource that all Food Blogger Pro members have access to, and it’s called our Tools page.

The Tools page is home to tons of different tools and downloadable resources that can help you stay organized and working towards your blogging goals. A little sneak peek at some of the resources that are available to you on the Tools page.

We have an amazing SEO checklist, a social media checklist. We have a brand email template for pitching yourself to companies for sponsored content and an email marketing workbook. We also have a great super handy image size checklist and even more resources available to you, so you can download any of these resources right to your computer and reference them whenever you need them.

If you’re not yet a Food Blogger Pro member and you want to join to get immediate access to these resources, head to foodbloggerpro.com/join to learn more about the membership and community and get started today. We hope you enjoyed this episode of the podcast and we can’t wait to bring you another good one next week. But in the meantime, hope you have a great week.