7 Tips for Starting Your Food Blog Today

As authors, different people have different aspirations. If your dream is to become a food critic or publish your own cookbook, the first step is to become a food blogger. You can host your own website with interesting stories about popular or not-so-popular food destinations in the country or across the world. You can also participate in food blogging on other websites which promote content for food lovers. In short, before you proceed towards a print-on-demand cookbook, you must establish yourself as a near expert in the field and food blogging is right way to start branding yourself.

 Food blog is like a white canvas and there are infinite possibilities for being creative in a food blog. After all, if you love to cook and eat, you enjoy writing about it. So, food blogging is all about what you love; what you want to do. Therefore, it’s possibly the best place to reflect your creativity and originality. If you follow a few tips, you can really grow as an influencer in the web world-

1. Be Original– Since food is something that is close to our hearts, there is barely any necessity to draw inspirations or follow others. Be yourself, be original in whatever you create in your blog. Bring in original stories from childhood or adolescence, discuss about your favorite destinations, or just share a recipe that is created by you. Something that is random is best in case of a food blog.
2. Be Creative– In ancient India, there used to be poems and songs about special food items. Rich influential classes were patrons of good food. Connecting art with food produced a creative environment for them, until cooking became an art form on its own. Use your creativity to make your food blog more interesting. You may recite about specific dishes or ingredients, like it is done in some of the wedding menu cards these days. Or you can pull out a line from ancient literature about a specific cuisine. Make your food blog stand out from the crowd with weird ideas.
3. Discuss History– Every cuisine or dish has a story of its own. Find out more and exploit that history in your food blog. For instance, India has such a diverse food culture; every region has a cuisine unique to itself, because migrations have been common in India historically. Hence if you want to discuss about biriyani, you must talk about the Persian invaders and the Mughal settlers. When you talk about Goan food, you should be discussing about Portuguese influences. Likewise, every dish has a story and when you bring it in, you not only add newness to your blog, but also impress the readers that you have in-depth knowledge about the subject.
4. Discuss Places You Have Visited– As a traveler, you can give the most authentic account of food. Rather than trying to bring in names and stories about items that you have heard of or read about, use your personal experiences to create your content, no matter how common place they may be. Authenticity is the most important thing in a food blog or in a print-on-demand food travelogue. Even cookbooks with cliched recipes are no longer appealing to the crowd where most people can browse the internet for basic recipes. Share your own experiences of travel and food, hotels, restaurants and street food, high-end Michelin star places to pavement destinations; you never know, you might come up with something unique, information that is unavailable to the masses.
5. Add Pictures Intermittently– We don’t just eat with our mouth, we eat with the eyes, nose, ears the other senses as well. Just like texture of food is as important as taste, sight of the food is equally important for us to visualize and be intrigued about the item. Images provide a vivid idea about a particular ingredient or recipe. Especially, for food blog, images are important because that urges us to salivate with gastronomic delight. An image is just a suggestion, the rest is imagined and reimagined by the reader in his/her mind. for example, you provide the image of prawns served on a pristine white plate, the reader can feel the aroma of the dish and can taste the flavors in his/her palate from the sight of the dish. In fact, he/she may also be transported to a beachside restaurant beside the clear blue oceans Costa Rica. Your food blog can give a pleasurable experience to the reader with startling images which is a big part of marketing the content.
6. Keep Your Blog Website Clean and Easy To Navigate– Overcrowding is a no-no for food blogs. Keep your web pages compact, neat and clean. Even your print-on-demand books on food need to be sleek, attractive and clean. Another thing to remember is optimization of buttons on your website. Do not add unwanted buttons and menus everywhere; put what is required, but your page should be easy to navigate. Readers should be able to find archived blogs, images and other categories easily. It should be easy for them to sign up or comment on your blogs.
7. Encourage Readers to Contribute– One-way interaction doesn’t sustain long. You have to welcome readers to contribute their feedback on the content; you must urge them to try your recipes and share how they turned out. You should also encourage them to share their own stories and experiences with food; they must feel free to share an alternate perspective too; that way, debates and conversations erupt which can popularize your food blog on the web platforms.

Food is a passion for most homecooks, chefs, bakers, food lovers or food bloggers. It can be assumed that you are one of them if you want to pursue becoming an author on food. However, if you want to pursue food writing just as a professional, you can use the above tips on food blogging to start off. The more you do, the better you get at understanding cooking techniques, ingredients, equipment and the chemistry of food process.

Share on Facebook

Tweet

Follow us