The Essential Element of Food Blogging
(This is the fourth post in the How to Write the Best Damn Food Blog series. The other posts in the series include How To Write the Best Damn Food Blog on the Internet, The Number One Reason People Read Food Blogs, and Three Types of Food Blog Posts You Must Master.)
We’ve already talked about why people read food blog. We’ve also talked about the types of posts readers enjoy. I want to work backward a little bit now. I want to look a bit deeper, too, to look at an essential element of every successful food blog. This element is integral to your food blog’s success in many areas, from readership to traffic to monetization strategies. In many ways, this element is more important than any of the tactics we’ve discussed so far.
What is it? What is the one core element your food blog can’t live without?
photo credit: jon.nelson
It’s authority.
What’s authority blogging? In the blogging world, “authority” refers to the way that your readers view your blog. Do they see your blog as a reliable source of information? If not, then you may as well pack up and go home.
Readers want to know they can trust you. Sure, part of building that trust is empathy, like we discussed last time. But empathy will only get you so far. Authority gives your readers confidence that your recipes are tasty, and that you know what the hell you are talking about when it comes to food. I’ll let Chris Garrett tell you more about authority blogging, as Chris is probably the expert in the area. (Chris, by the way, will soon release his Authority Blogger program. I highly recommend it to everyone. Chris’ advice on authority and leadership is solid all around, and I would stake my own reputation on the fact that this program is going to be worth the cost. I’ll update you here as we get closer to the release date.)
So, how do you project authority in a food blog? There are four basic ways, as I see it:
Know what you’re doing.
Food blog readers are an astute bunch of folks. They can smell crap a mile away. If you don’t know what the hell you’re doing in the kitchen, they will know. Even if you try to fake it and make them think you know what you’re doing, when they try your advice and it fails miserably you can bet they won’t be back.
On the other hand, if you do know what you’re doing and can demonstrate it, readers begin to respect you and to view you as a source of expertise. As an example, you might write a wonderfully informative post about a unique, efficient, or easy way to make pie crust. Down the road, if a reader is having a problem getting their pie filling to turn out, she’ll immediately think of your blog. Demonstrate that you know what you’re doing in one area and folks will assume you know what you’re doing in other areas.
The same goes for other blog niches. It cracks me up when I see a blogger writing about how to get huge amounts of traffic to your blog when they’ve got a horrible traffic rating on Alexa. Likewise, if you want to write about writing, you damn well better be able to write. That one, in particular, is hard to fake.
Write with clarity.
Food blog readers are in a different situation than readers in some niches. In most cases, food blog readers go to your blog to get instructions on how to do a specific task. They want your recipe for Coconut Cream Pie, or they want to know how you get brownies to turn out. As a successful food blogger, you should be able to tell them. However, if you don’t tell them in a way that they can understand or follow, they won’t be back.
Can your readers make out what you’re saying?
photo credit: $arah Murray
One of the clarity-related dangers food bloggers run into is specialized cooking terms. For example, a recipe might instruct you to “julienne” some carrots. While many of your readers know what to do, some don’t. The ones that do know won’t usually be bothered if you explain the term, and the readers that don’t know what it means will be grateful. Here’s an example post where Angie Pangie (that’s my darling wife, by the way) does exactly that.
One useful way to deal with the specialized terms that also adds to your authority as a food blogger is to create a glossary page. The glossary page is a great way for you to present novice readers with technical definitions without having to interrupt the flow of your post. You simply link to your glossary page every time you mention “julienned” and move on.
The glossary page serves several other purposes for your blog, by the way. I use my Internet Writing Glossary page constantly, both from within my blog and when I’m on a writing message board or article directory. That page drives readers to my site on a pretty regular basis. On top of that, it’s one of the pages that other writing bloggers often link to when they don’t want to have to explain a term.
Admit your mistakes, but do it infrequently.
You are human and are going to make mistakes. Your readers already know that. You don’t have to remind them of it two or three times a week when you post a recipe and say, “this didn’t turn out, but I think I forgot the sugar” or “I couldn’t figure out how to julienne the carrots, so I just sliced them.”
Your readers can benefit from your mistakes. Usually, that benefit is transparent. You make a mistake, fix it, and then present the final product to your readers. Sometimes, you point out common mistakes that people make in the kitchen, like I did with my 8 Most Common Internet Writing Mistakes. (That post, by the way, has by far been my most popular post on this blog, with more than three times the number of hits as any other post). Other times, you run through all of your mistakes at once, and use them all to make a point. But if you only ever talk about your failures, that’s how your readers will see you: as a failure.
Instead, talk about your successes. Talk about how you added just a pinch of sea salt to that brownie mix and how amazing it turned out. Talk about the time your 7 year-old, who hates fish, ate three servings of salmon. You can do it humbly, but do it without self-degradation as well.
(There are some interesting exceptions to this rule. My good friend Brett Legree’s blog motto is”Fail Early, Fail Often.” In context, it seems to be working for him.)
Give your best to your readers.
Yes, there is value to posting every day. Yes, you tend to get more page views and more unique visitors when you post every day. But, especially for food bloggers, it isn’t always possible to put up a stellar post every day. Food bloggers, perhaps more than bloggers in any other niche, have to invest a heck of a lot of time in each post. They have to find a good recipe, cook it, redo it if it’s crap, take pictures and only then can they start to write about it. Because of this, I’m skeptical when a food blogger puts two or three recipes up a day, or even a recipe every day for two weeks straight. When is it they test these dishes? Don’t some of them flop, ever? Most importantly, will the one I try to make flop because of this?
There’s no magic formula here in terms of posts per week. The point is, though, that if you wouldn’t recommend a dish to your best friend, don’t recommend it to your blog readers. Skip a day (or two or three or six) if you need to. In the end, your readers will be grateful for it and will respect you for protecting them from crap recipes.
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So, what about your blog, food blog or not? Can your blog readers trust you? Do you really know what you’re talking about, or are you just faking it? How’s your clarity? Do you spend more time talking about failure than success? And, maybe most importantly, are you giving your readers your best stuff?
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3 Responses to “The Essential Element of Food Blogging”
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Bob, the issue of authority is certainly important but in my mind you don’t have to be an expert on every subject you cover. You do however need to write with authenticity. As you said if you’re faking it by mimicking “success” methods and you have no passion for your content or readers, people will discover you’re a fraud.
Bob, I apologize for not stopping in to leave a comment here sooner, I had seen the trackback (thank you) and, well, you know how it is…
This is good advice for any kind of blogging, you know. I’m sort of getting my groove right now, learning what works, and getting into a schedule that will work for me and my friends.
And whatever you do - have fun… keep on doing it because you love it.
-Brett
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