Turning Mistakes into Opportunity

bydonco6

1.3K followers

4 months ago

I posted yesterday about my new "SmallBakes" direction - how I'm creating a new subset of recipes for smaller portions of baked goods. I wanted to show you how a mistake can actually be used to expand your offerings, while providing real value to your readers.

I was reducing the recipe for a Wicked Good Boston Cream Pie. It's a two-layer hot-milk cake with pastry cream filling and a chocolate ganache topping. Not the easiest cake to make, but I've done it numerous times with success.

Ah, but I learned something very important in this attempt. As you can see above, the cake fell in the middle when I tried reducing the recipe. Oopsie. After analyzing my ingredients and process, I noted the mistakes I'd made and now have an entire post on "Hot Milk Cake" in addition to the upcoming post on Boston Cream Pie.

When I have a baking tip, I post it on Facebook under my "Baking Naturally" page. I try to offer something daily there, whether from my own baking or ideas from the various magazines I subscribe to (that I can claim as a business expense through my LLC). For this one, I'm posting how I approached the adjustments, what I experienced as I was making it, a photo of the final result, and the corrections I made to create a better version. And I always have a "Subscribe to my page" ask, dangling the ultimate final product recipe as an enticement (Coming Soon - SmallBakes Boston Cream Pie for Two)

I find that people want reliable information from a real person. With me, they see photos of my kitchen, my mis-matched bowls, my battered Kitchenaid mixer, and my silly kitchen aprons. They know I'm real. And they know I've actually made the recipes I'm promoting. I may not be a professional baker, but they see me as an expert in my field. By sharing my mistakes, I let them know that making boo-boos is all part of the game, but that there are solutions to the problem.

When you share your mistakes as well as successes, you generate incredibly useful content, you grow your audience, and you garner respect in the field. This all leads to more traffic, more engagement, and more revenue!