the fig cooking school

In the ten years that Heide Lang of the Milford, Connecticut-based Fig Cooking School spent posting on Instagram before I began producing her videos, she had gained around 2,000 followers. Over the course of the first year we worked together, the audience grew ten times over to almost 20,000 followers. Most critically, however, is that these aren’t passive viewers, but an engaged community that she can rely on to not just like, but comment on and share every post to their friends, too. 

The key to her success? We tried out lots of different kinds of videos, from hopping on viral trends to cooking demonstrations, before finding out what her audience was really looking for: her hot takes on everything from the toxicity of the restaurant industry to quartz kitchen countertops and tips on where to find niche ingredients on her vivacious tours of specialized grocery stores. 

Those 20,000 engaged followers are far more valuable than the million that some creators have – who almost never see their content! Because she has connected with her audience so strongly, each video has a much better chance at racking up views. This also means that if Heide takes a week off from posting, (she loves to travel — and we all need a vacation from time-to-time!) she doesn’t need to work nearly as hard to rev the engine back up – her fans will be there to greet her when she gets back to posting.