Pivoting Through Content Updates with Melissa of Bless This Mess
For over a decade, Melissa Griffiths from the highly successful food blog Bless This Mess has shared her passion for wholesome family recipes. She’s inspired thousands of readers with her approachable way of sharing her recipes and farm life. In this episode of The Ultimate Blog Podcast, Melissa joins us to discuss her blogging journey, the evolution of the industry, content updates, and how she’s navigating the challenges of being a full-time blogger in a constantly changing blog space.
Meet Melissa Griffiths from Bless This Mess
Melissa is the founder of Bless This Mess, a popular food blog focused on helping moms create simple meals that are both nurturing and delicious for the past 10 years. As a mother of five, she is passionate about taking the stress out of dinner so that it can be enjoyed by everyone at the time, Mom included.
Melissa Griffith’s Journey to Bless This Mess
Melissa’s blogging journey started in 2009 on Blogspot, where she shared updates with family and friends about her life in Southern Utah. The blog quickly became a space for Melissa to share recipes, and by 2012, she transitioned into a business and launched Bless This Mess.
How Blogging Has Changed Since 2012
Reflecting on the evolution of blogging since 2012, Melissa highlighted significant industry shifts, including the rise of search engine optimization and the changing preferences of readers.
Back in 2012 when Melissa first started her blog, most blogs were half memoir. People wanted to read about your life and family. But over time, readers started to want things that were more useful: quick access to recipes and no personal stories.
In the last few years, Melissa has been happy to notice a shift back to preferring more personal content. With AI now popular, people are craving authenticity again. People want to know there’s a human behind the recipes.
Overcoming Challenges in Blogging
2024 has been a particularly tough year for bloggers. Even Melissa has seen a significant drop in website traffic because of changes in algorithms and technical issues… and that’s after growing steadily for 12 years.
This is especially hard for Melissa, because blogging is the sole source of income for her family of 7.
Despite these setbacks, Melissa has decided to stay committed and pivot to keep blogging. She’s exploring new strategies, like revamping her email marketing and affiliate partnerships.
Creating Meaningful Connections with Your Audience
Melissa is also a busy mom trying to get dinner on the table, so she’s able to anticipate some of the pain points her audience has. For instance, she knows how challenging working with pie crust can be, so she created a pie crust tutorial to make it easier for moms.
But Melissa also values direct communication with her audience. She asks them what they need help with and uses their responses to guide her content.
Revamping Email Engagement
One of Melissa’s pivoting strategies has been increasing her email frequency, while maintaining the level of value in each email. This has resulted in people who aren’t a good fit for her community leaving her list. By cleaning her email list up, she’s focusing on subscribers who actively engage with her content and are a great fit for her.
Always Provide Value
Melissa’s passion for her blog is obvious. She recently created a 55-page Thanksgiving guide filled with recipes, timing sheets, and even printable kids’ coloring pages. She wanted to be in your kitchen on Thanksgiving with you, without you having to take out your phone or computer.
Instead of focusing only on driving traffic back to her website, Melissa prioritizes what feels most helpful to her audience.
Prioritizing Connection and Value
Like most bloggers in 2024, Melissa had a huge traffic hit after dedicating months to perfecting her website. But we are inspired by her commitment to continuing forward, and pivoting to keep providing value to her audience. She prioritizes connection with her audience and providing value most, and we’re rooting her on!
In this episode, we covered:
- How Melissa got her start in the blogging world over a decade ago
- How blogging has changed since 2012
- The biggest blogging challenges in 2024, and how it’s affected Bless This Mess
- Why Melissa values creating meaningful connections with her audience
- How Melissa has shifted her email marketing strategy to find her best-fit audience
- How Melissa continues to provide value to her audience through content updates
H2: Links and resources mentioned in this episode:
- Connect with Melissa on her blog, Instagram, and shop
- Grab Melissa’s Best Homemade Cornbread Recipe
- Learn more about Kit for email marketing
- Make a quiz for your business in 1 minute with Interact
- Sign up for our newsletter
- Check out last week’s episode
We’re so glad we could sit down with Melissa and talk about pivoting in the blogging world and building connections with your audience! What did you think of this episode? Send us a DM over on Instagram: @sparkmediaconcepts and let us know!