Today we are talking about the essential team roles to boost your blog’s success and support you as your blog grows. From the roles that are going to support you as the CEO to the roles that help you to execute content, I go over the key players that you need to build a team for your food blog.

When I started food blogging, I did not want to manage team at all  and felt like I would be a solopreneur forever. What I quickly found was that I did not have the amount of hours in the day to do all the things I wanted or needed to do in order to scale my business. So, my team building really first started with Grace and Vine and it started simply. I first hired a virtual assistant and that was all I had for a few years. Then I started to feel like I was the bottle neck once again. I was constantly feeling like I was behind and not getting tasks done. That was my first sign I needed to invest more into my team.

It can be a scary thing when you are growing a business and need to invest in a team because it can be expensive. It also takes a lot of trust to bring someone into your world and let them be a part of what you are doing. I say all of this to let you know that I totally understand if the idea of growing a team makes you feel nervous. But what I can tell you from experience is that when you invest into your team, you are able to do exponentially more than you can do on your own. That will lead to growing your income, providing jobs for other people, and allow you to rely on other’s expertise. 

Today I want to go through a few of the key players that seem to be the biggest hitters to take your business to the next level. 

Before I go over the key roles, I want to share a few quick tips for hiring and building a team:

1. Create SOPs before you are even ready to hire. Document the things you are doing on a daily basis.
2. Have a clear definition of the role written down. One of the common pitfalls I see when it comes to hiring for small business owners is not being clear about what you want someone to do. 
3. Organize your team’s tasks and your own tasks with systems and templates within a project management tool. I recommend having a place where someone can go and know they can find the work that has been assigned to them. 
4. Set boundaries from the beginning. Set the boundaries on communication, how you collaborate, how you want them to be autonomous. 

Diving into the actual roles you can consider. These are roles I’ve found helpful and have had in each of my businesses:

Blog manager

The blog manager role is the number one thing that took my blog from being stagnant to me being able to produce more content. When I hired my blog manager, I was able to focus on the content I wanted to create and carve out time to do the recipe development and photography. This role has been a game changer in my business and it is a role I highly recommend. 

A blog manager is someone who can help:

Manage your editorial calendar and help your ideas off paper and onto a calendar

Reorganize things as needed if things are behind or off schedule

Help do a quarter review or plan

Writer/photographer

This a really common role to hire for. The content creation process is what can take the most time, mental energy, effort.  If you can hire people to help get content created, this can dramatically increase the amount of content you can get created. Often you might find that you can hire people that are better at that craft than you are. Hiring for these roles doesn’t mean that you are never doing this type of work (unless you want to hire it all out!). It means having a little bit of support in that role so you can get more content created.  Working with a photographer or writer can take some time to get into a groove. It sometimes take more work up front to onboard these roles but once you get into a good rhythm the load taken off your plate is worth it. 

Virtual assistant

This is the role that most people start with and I actually don’t know if it is the best one to start with. There are so many different ways that a virtual assistant can support you in your business. One downfall of this role is that it really becomes a catch-all. People in virtual assistant roles tend to be really good at juggling lots of things and doing a little bit of everything. If you can keep the scope of a VA’s role more narrow and focused it will help you to expand as you grow and have more trust in that person. It will also help you see if that person might be gifted in one area over another where you might decide to have another team member come on board to take over other tasks. Here are some major task areas you might hire a VA to help with: 

Social media content and scheduling

Inbox management 

Analytics and data management

Track budget and expenses

Task management

SEO/keyword research

We know that keyword research is an essential part to growing your organic traffic. But what if you really don’t like keyword research? Or your brain just doesn’t work that way? I know a lot of food bloggers are so creative that getting into an analytical mindset to look into keyword research is really hard. Having an expert that can help in this area can seriously take stress off of your plate and lead to better results for you as well. This role can vary widely based on who you are hiring and what their service is. In general, some things this person might help with are: 

Discoverability and finding the right keywords for your website

Looking at your competition to see what they are doing as well

Helping you figure out what unique spin you should take on certain keywords and topics 

Technical SEO 

Keyword tracking and data

Website and design team

Your website and design team might not be working day in and day out with you to grow your blog. But they are a crucial part of your blog’s growth. They can truly be what takes your business to the next level of success. To put it simply, most of the food bloggers these days are starting out using the same one or two premade themes. These themes are great to start out but what happens after that? When you get to a place where you have a site that is monetized in some way, you might find that you are ready for the next level of branding and website design.

Investing in your brand and website design is the key to the next level of success. This is exactly what our Crafted Services product is designed to do. It is designed to support the level of food blogger who has gone from zero to monetizing with ads or other methods and they are ready to jumpstart their next phase of blog growth. If you are ready to have a website and branding team to support you, we would love to chat with you! You can fill out our contact form here.