We recently connected with Tobi Igbalajobi and have shared our conversation below.
Tobi, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear how you think where to draw the line in terms of asking friends and family to support your business – what’s okay and what’s over the line?
I honestly feel like a sizable chunk of the support I have and a large portion of my audience are my friends, or friends of friends. I am so thankful to have such a great support system of family and friends. In addition to the numerous connections over the years whether through school, or work, my congregation members, and others I meet, that have helped me get to where I am with my page. I didn’t really have to ask for support. I just would cross engage between my personal page and my foodie page, and different ones would actually check out my foodie content as a result. I also had a lot of great friends who would repost my content, or share my page with their friends. Which I truly appreciate! I don’t feel like you should necessarily directly have to ask your friends or family to support, but just be appreciative of those that do. I think if you provide good work or content, people naturally will support it! And if they don’t, I wouldn’t hold it against them.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
My name is Tobi and I am a “food blogger” based in Houston, Texas. My instagram handle is @eatzwithtobi. I use the term “food blogger” loosely, as I really do think I just enjoy trying new places and sharing them, wherever I may go. That was really, in part, why I created this page. The primary reason is naturally, I just really love food. But then I do eat out quite a bit and would always recommend places to friends, and post about it on my personal page. I would get so many friends who would say to me “Tobi, you need to have something dedicated to where you go to eat, so I can look back when I’m in need for a suggestion”. So I thought, why not try it out. I definitely just started for fun, and didn’t even realize how big of a foodie community there was in Houston until I started really getting into it.
My other passion is to travel. So, although, the majority of the places I feature are in Houston, I do like to include locations from my travels as well. I have recently started getting more into video content, and sharing about restaurants through that.
I currently work full time, as a technology analyst, but find time in between to share my love of food with others. I’m also very open to suggestions, and love hearing from others of their recommendations.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
For me, I enjoy seeing other peoples reactions to different posts. Or actually visiting the restaurants I recommend and trying the food and enjoying it. I like that I get to add my own flair to everything. I actually really enjoy writing captions and thinking of things to write that will draw people in.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
As I mentioned, I already had a good foundation of friends and family that were ready and eager to support my page. From there I researched about different ways to increase your reach and engagement. I know now, with Instagram’s current algorithm, more focus is being made on video content. So I would suggest making those, using popular sounds or hashtags. Hashtags in general are helpful. I also utilize stories more, as I feel that you get a larger audience and can see who engages and then from there know how to tweak your posts to match what gets more engagement. I also would recommend following any other small local pages and make connections.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @eatzwithtobi