It’s crucial to know how to pivot in business during challenging times. Unexpected situations can really throw any of us for a loop, especially when they affect the very heart of your business and require major changes for survival. 

When the pandemic hit in 2020 that’s exactly what many people faced and we saw some really creative ways people adjusted to their audience’s needs. 

Join me in today’s podcast for the opportunity to learn from a long-time client of Simple Pin who felt the brunt of the pandemic as a travel blogger. It’s the story of how Jane Ko of A Taste of Koko, an OG blogger of 10 years, pivoted with her brands and navigated the trials in her home city of Austin through a pandemic and a snowstorm of historic proportions.

Understanding the needs of her audience is part of Jane’s story and that’s what we’re all about here at Simple Pin Media. 

Helping you understand how to know the needs of your audience is our focus and getting to know the needs of our audience (you) is equally important. So we are hosting a podcast survey giveaway to celebrate five years of the Simple Pin Podcast! 

Three lucky winners who complete our short five-minute survey will receive a $50 gift card to Amazon or your local equivalent. So hop up to the top of the page, open the survey link and let us know what information is most relevant to you as you continue building your Pinterest marketing strategy over the next five years. 

Complete the survey before our May 31, 2021 deadline and you may be one of our lucky winners!

I hope today’s podcast encourages you as you hear from an online business entrepreneur who has navigated this past year with tremendous grit and strength.

A Taste of Koko – How It All Started

Jane Ko started her travel blog in 2010 before the term influencer had even been coined. When everyone she knew in college had plans to become a doctor or lawyer, Jane knew she just didn’t fit into that life.

So what did she do with a college degree she didn’t plan on using? Jane took her passion for reading magazines and looking at all the beautiful photos, especially of food, and started a blog. 

From the beginning, she knew one thing — she really wanted her photography to shine because she didn’t think that she was “good with words”.

She jumped on Pinterest and started using it as a resource to help her figure out how to shoot food photography. She combed through Pinterest looking at professional photographs and figured out how to deconstruct them to shoot and create an aesthetic/style of her own.

Jane was living in Texas when she started this blogging adventure and felt it was a bit of luck for her when she decided to focus on her home city of Austin.

I got super lucky! I feel like there were a variety of factors that really fed into the success of my brand. One of those was Austin becoming a popular city as major companies started opening offices here. 

She didn’t truly see herself as a travel blogger since travel represented only 25% of her content. The travel blogging component took off for her in 2014 when the Carnival Cruise Line brand noticed and loved her storytelling style and reached out to her to offer a one-year contract.

I was over the moon because Carnival was a brand that I grew up with. My parents saved for our family to go on a cruise. For this brand to come to me and say, ‘We want to do a project with you.’  It was such a big deal!

      

That contract became a two-year partnership with Carnival that really opened doors for her, propelling a flood of other travel projects.