260: How One Recipe Blogger Turned Her Blog Around with a Simple Mindshift

How a Mindshift Changed One Blogger's Perspective This episode of our Blogging Breakthroughs series features eight-year blogger Sarah Cook. Her blog Sustainable Cooks shares recipes, gardening tips, and real food for food people. Sarah describes how a simple and practical mindshift recently ramped up her efforts as a blogger. She changed her mindset from “me” to “we”. Most bloggers put the emphasis on themselves, which is natural. But if you want to build a big audience and monetize your blog you should focus on your readers. You can still inject yourself into your blog. Just remember who is reading, what their lives are like, what role you play in their lives, and how you can help them. Create an avatar to learn more about your readers. If you have one, revisit and update it. Another option, depending on how brave you are, is to connect with your readers directly. Before each post Sarah asks herself, "How will this post improve my readers' lives?" Keep it real, and show your readers what normal life looks like. Being vulnerable is powerful. Knowing more about your readers will help drive and reveal your blog’s design, branding, marketing, monetization and content. Never forget that your readers are human beings, not just numbers. Links and Resources for How One Recipe Blogger Turned Her Blog Around with a Simple Mindshift: Sustainable Cooks How to Create a Reader Avatar for Your Blog (with free downloadable template) Pat Flynn’s Blog Further Listening My Mid-Life Crisis and the Power of Being Vulnerable on a Blog Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Welcome to episode 260 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name's Darren Rowse and I'm the blogger behind problogger.com which is a blog, a podcast and a series of courses, eBooks and events even, to help you to become a better blogger. You can find more about ProBlogger at problogger.com. Now today, we're going into our blogger breakthrough series where we’re sharing stories of bloggers who have had breakthroughs in some way. We've had three of these previously and they've been really popular. I've had a lot of really positive feedback about those episodes. People seem to like to hear from normal bloggers. I’m not saying I'm not a normal blogger, but normal bloggers who are at different stages of their journey. Today, we've got a story from Sarah Cook. Sarah has a blog called Sustainable Cooks. I guess, a bit of a play on her name but also the topic as well. She writes about recipes, and gardening, and I guess doing food from a family perspective in realistic ways. She will introduce that much better than I did. I love this story. It's a really short one today and it's simple on some levels, but it's incredibly powerful. Sarah has been blogging for eight or so years now. Things have really ramped up in the last year as a result of a mindshift. Also something really practical that she did. As in similar stories, it is a mindshift type thing that needs to start with, but it's also a practical. I'm going to let Sarah share that story. As I said, it's not long. At the end, I want to come back and share a few thoughts and give you a free downloadable resource that you can also use to do the exact thing that Sarah did. You'll find a link to that on today's show notes, and you'll find a full transcription as well as links to Sarah's blog, the show notes are at problogger.com/podcast/260. If you want to look at Sarah's blog as you listen, she is at sustainablecooks.com. Sarah: Hi, I'm Sarah Cook from Seattle, Washington and my blog is Sustainable Cooks. You can find it at www.sustainable cooks.com. I've been blogging for eight years though only seriously in the last 11 to 12 months.