I Went Viral Talking About Beans 🫘

It’s been two months since I last wrote, taking a break to focus on my jobs and get through the film festival in October.

I have always been torn between writing long-form content for Subtack and creating social media content. I had been feeling the pull to spend more time creating content for Instagram, and, as we all know, you just can’t do it all.

Social media is a torturous relationship for many people, whether it’s doom scrolling, stalking exes, constantly checking how many likes your posts get, or trying to spend less time on it. In addition to all of these negatives, I truly believe social media has been a bridge to connection for all these years. Beyond all the parasocial relationships, real ones have been built there too, and in addition to all the garbage floating around on social media, there is a lot of great and value-added content as well. Call me an optimist!

I had already started zeroing in on beans as what I was mostly writing about and creating recipes for, but my posts weren’t being seen. I thought that to create popular food content, you had to have the most beautiful image in the best light that would make someone want to eat it. What I didn’t think about is that there are still plenty of people on social media who don’t care about a perfect photo and want to connect about real things.

One morning a thought popped into my head that I would love to work with someone who could help me be strategic on social, I knew I had something to say but I just didn’t know how to say it. I typed "Instagram growth coach" into the search bar and came across someone who didn’t have a big following but was talking about how to make authentic content without burning out. We had a call and she loved my message about beans and encouraged me to share the WHY behind the beans, how did i get here? What is my goal in sharing recipes about beans? Who am I?

I put together a simple carousel post, see it here, and it got some love in the first day or two, but by the 3rd day, I was getting hundreds of followers an hour, and the comments were rolling in with so many people who were also passionate about beans and ...