Blogger Spotlight: Kat Buckley, Baking Explorer

Kat Buckley created The Baking Explorer in 2012 to share her hobby and discoveries about baking. Although Kat loves to make things that are visually presentable, her aim on the blog is deliver achievable bakes that her audience can produce in their own kitchen. Through her tried and tested product recommendations and baking challenges, Kat provides the instructions and inspiration to help make baking easy. In this Spotlight Kat, who features on our top ten baking ranking chats to us about what makes her blog different, how she likes to work with PRs, and what has been her blogging highlight.

Why should people read your blog? What makes it different? My blog is all about recipes that you can make yourself at home, I provide step by step instructions and photos so you can follow the recipe and know exactly how things should look at each stage. I like my food to look good, but also look achievable for the regular home baker.

How do you measure the success of your website? I measure it by interactions and comments from my readers, I love to hear feedback about recipes and find it so exciting when someone I’ve never met has made something off my blog!

What advice would you give to someone who wants to start a blog? Go for it! There is such a great community of other bloggers who will help and support you. Remember it’s a journey and a learning curve so not everything will be perfect at first.

How do you work with marketers and PRs? As I also have a full time paid job, I let PRs and marketers approach me and then I pick the opportunities that best suit me and my blog, and also which I can fit around my schedule.

How do you use social media to promote and share content? What are the challenges? I share my posts on social media and I enter a lot of link ups with other food bloggers, I really enjoy using social media and the instant feedback you can receive. The main challenge I face it how time consuming it can be, I wish I had more time to focus on social media.

What can PRs do in working better with you? If they could read through my blog first and make sure they know what it’s about and what kind of recipes I make. I’ve been asked to try out meat rubs when I live in a vegetarian household, asked to try teeth whitening products, when my blog is about baking, and so on!

What has been your blogging highlight? There have been so many it’s hard to pick one! I love going to events and I really enjoyed getting to meet John Whaite and baking with him thanks to Neff and AO.com.

What will be big in your blogosphere in the coming months? Lots of Autumnal and Christmas recipes!