When you are trying to run a food blog, you first need to know how to create a blog that people want to actually read. This is harder than it sounds, especially in the rather complex world of food. From trying to share quality recipes to giving people good information about nutrition, you have many avenues that you can go down for a food blog.
What, though, are some of the most essential traits that you need to put in place?
Using the below, you should be able to make your food blog even more appealing.
Find your writing style
First off, you need to have a clear and distinctive writing style. Start off by taking a more decisive look at what your blog is going to be about. Start off with the simple stuff – covering restaurants, talking about food-based media like events, books, movies etc. and delivering awesome recipes. However, you will need to choose a niche of food that you want to stick with: healthy eating, home-made take-out food, workout foods etc.
You need to be able to inject the content with a bit of energy and personality, too. It can be tough as you always want to come across as professionally as you can. However, your writing style has to be reflected in the content itself. If you are pushing a food blog about recipes, for example, you are much more likely to find it easier to do with a bit of verve and humor along the way.
Also, try and be as clear and as explicit as you can about the ‘rules’ of your food blog. If something is to be dairy/non-dairy, spell it out. Your writing style has to be your own, but make sure that personality never wins over clarity.
Invest in quality photos
Another important part of a good food blog is the visualization side of things. You could be detailing the most sumptuous recipe for the most wonderful pie – but if nobody can see picture proof, why would they believe you?
Add appetizing imagery, make sure you get good angles of the food and that you capture it with a high-quality camera. Just snapping it on your phone with an amateur angle isn’t an option: if you are serious about your blog, you need to take imagery quality seriously too.
Invest some time learning about food arrangement, lighting and composition within the imagery itself. Get on YouTube, hire a local photographer for advice – do whatever you can to help find your own understanding of image composition to help get the highest quality of snaps that you can.
It’s vital that you do so: quality snaps help to sell the words. You might have a grandiose and detailed how-to on making a pie, but if there is no picture proof of said pie it’s hard for people to get the desire to go and do it.
Show them the finished product, and they’ll be far more motivated.
Quality design counts
Another major rule that we think is essential for high-quality food blog management stems from a nice, clean website. Much like the kitchen should be when cooking, you want a food blog that is clean, crisp and minimalistic. You cannot get by with a site that is too busy; if you need to invest a bit more into getting a less generic, less busy design then you should absolutely do so.
A high-quality design is very important, so make it as clean as you can. Make the text clear, crisp and easy to read on all devices, with good photo placement into each blog post and image. If you want to get a high-quality theme, though, take a look at Testina WordPress theme. It’s a great choice for making sure you can easily fill up your site with an interesting look that people will love.
Also, use the Easy Recipe plug-in; an absolute must for making sure you can better format recipes for both website readability and search engine credibility. Using this, you will see a much more significant difference in the way that your content reads, and the way that the search engines index it.
Communication is critical
Lastly, we ask that you try your best to change how you communicate. Go too high-end with your content and you can put people off. Go too simplistic, though, and you can lack definition and come across as patronising. At the same time, this is the must for those who are opening up the comment sections on their blog.
If you have said sections open, then respond to every comment – good or bad. Always be polite, courteous and friendly. Engage, though, as engagement drives people to return as it shows you actually care about outside opinion. Install the Akismet plugin, too, as this can stop your comments section from becoming loaded with garbage on-site and making your food blog lack professionalism.
Use everyday terminology, too. Avoid going too over the top with food jargon. You will just put people off, so do yourself a favor and communicate with people in a way that is easy to read and enjoy.
You should really take the time to invest in social media, too. Social media can play a major role in how you come across and the way that your blog picks up traction, so don’t be afraid to both share and interact when you get the opportunity to do so.
Thanks to the above basics, your food blog is going to be much closer to the quality and consistency that you would have hoped for when you first started it. While running a quality food blog takes huge amounts of effort and time, the pay-off can be hugely rewarding indeed.
Now that you know a bit more about how to create a blog that is engaging and interactive, you should be ready to start creating more incisive content. Take the time to begin, and you can find that your entire idea of what your food blog needs will change entirely.
