How to Start a Successful Food Blog
Tips for Design, Audience, Content and Food Photography
Feb 26, 2009
Food blogging has taken off in the past five years, with bloggers ranging from celebrity chefs to professional journalists and food photographers to stay-at-home-moms to first-time cooks. Anyone can start a food blog, but given the size of the community a new blogger should follow these principles to get attention.
Know the Audience and Find an Angle
The very first step in planning a food blog is to determine what sort of blog to create. Those who are excellent photographers and web design experts may be able to create a general interest food blog with no trouble and rely on word of mouth to get a following, but most bloggers need to have some sort of a focus.
A focus might be on a particular type of food or cuisine – baking, wine, vegetarian, regional, restaurants, etc. Other creative ideas might be a blog focused on a food-related career, food travel, or foodie gossip. If the blog is general interest, a special feature might set it apart, for example inviting visitors to try and review recipes, offering foodie giveaways, or including "star" ratings of recipes.
Carefully Plan the Layout and "House" Style
Food bloggers needn't be layout experts, but an attractive blog will go a long way towards keeping visitors on the blog after the first click. Using promotion tools or being active in the foodie community will get visitors to click on a blog, but an attractive layout will keep them there. Blogger, Wordpress, and other popular hosts offer some very attractive default templates.
Serious bloggers may prefer a domain name and a completely customized layout. When using a template, a personalized banner is a smart idea, especially if the blog has a catchy title. A photo of the blogger serves a similar purpose. Finally, it helps if individual posts follow a predictable format or "house style." This makes recipes easy to find in a post, directs the reader's eye, and makes recipes easy to copy.
Plan the Foodie Content and Practice Photography
Beautiful photographs, like a great layout, are a "hook" for the casual visitor. These also show up on blog event roundups and indexing websites, attracting new visitors to the blog. Any blogger that wants to include food photography should practice photographing food before even starting the blog, take many photographs of every dish, and pay attention to simple things like lighting and what's in the background. Simple tablecloths and natural light can go a long way, while photographs in dark restaurants make a blog unattractive.
If recipes are to be featured, a blogger should also do some planning – will the recipes be gourmet or aimed at the casual cook? Will they be original, come from books or magazines or other blogs, or a mix? Of course, any recipes from another source should be properly credited and online sources should include a link.
Once the blogger has completed these three steps, she is ready to move onto promoting her blog and becoming a member of the foodie community!
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