Three Types of Food Blog Posts You Must Master
(This is the third post in the How to Write the Best Damn Food Blog series. If you’ve not read that introductory post, please do so before reading the following.)
Well, we’re off to a decent start. We talked last time about how good writing is the #1 reason people read food blogs. Today, we should talk about what kinds of good writing are most effective on a food blog. After all, just because you write well doesn’t mean that what you have to write about is interesting, does it? You’ve got to know what to write about; in other words, you’ve got to what kinds of blog posts work and what kinds don’t.
Here are three types of blog posts that are guaranteed to become the most popular sorts on your food blog:
1. The Mouth-Watering Post
This post makes your reader hungry. Through your word smithing and your pictures, you want to get the reader to walk away, drooling as they drive to the store at 2 AM to buy chocolate chips. The mouth-watering post takes one of your reader’s basic needs (nutrition, in this case) and turns it into a want, as in “I want to eat these mother lode pretzels right freaking now!” You make the case why they need your recipe, and how they’ve needed it all along. These are the Dorie Greenspan posts, where you can almost smell the dish right through your computer screen.
But, the post doesn’t end there. After you’ve gotten your reader to identify a desire, you pull out the big guns. You give them exactly what they’re hoping for. You tell them how simple it is to make those pretzels. You tell them not to worry about the calories, because we are all going to die one day anyways. You break down arguments and you show how your recipe solves their felt desire.
Without belaboring the point, you can see how this works with other blogs topics, too. You can write about making money online, for example, and about how great it would be for your readers to quit their day jobs to blog. Then, you turn around and offer your blog training or blog setup program, meeting that felt desire. That’s what the mouth-watering post is about.
Do your posts make your readers so hungry they could eat?
2. The Kitchen Tech Post
In the Kitchen Tech post, you show your readers how to do something. Preferably, you show them how to do something they think they can’t do, or you offer them a quicker, more efficient or more perfect way to do something they already know how to do. Maybe you explain how to make the perfect hard-boiled egg, with no traces of sulfur on the outside of the yolk. Maybe you teach them how to get a bunt cake out of the pan. Whatever it is, you give your reader the technology to do what they want to be able to do.
Are you providing readers with valuable tools in the kitchen?
photo credit: unclebumpy
Kitchen Tech posts are the ones that get linked to, over and over again. They are become the reference material for your blog, and they get passed around over and over again. While the Mouth-Watering post will likely be used once and then forgotten, the Kitchen Tech post will be bookmarked for every time your reader needs to complete that task. These are the Alton Brown posts, which leave your readers thinking, “How clever! I can do that, I’ll bet!”
Here again, in the non-food world, you have the same thing. These are the “How to” articles. They tell you how to brand your blog, or they tell you how to choose an iPod. Whether it’s food tech, writing tech or tech tech, these posts become pillars for your blog.
3. The Empathetic Post
Most readers of food blogs are women between the ages of 25 and 50. Many of them are professional chefs, but the vast majority are moms and wives who are looking for a way to add something interesting to their dinner table. The Empathetic Post is one that connects with these readers on a personal level. You might talk about a friend who’s mom is dying of cancer, or you might talk about trying to get your kids to try asparagus just once. You might do like we saw the Pioneer Woman do yesterday and mention the “Pesky brother-in-law, Tim.” Something in this type of post causes your reader to think, “Hey! She’s just like me!” These posts don’t have to include personal details, but they do need to make an emotional connection of some sort. These are the Paula Deen posts, where you just want to give the blogger a big old hug when she’s done.
Are you connecting with your readers?
What’s the value in this kind of post? With the Empathetic post, your reader begins to think of you as a friend. Just like they call their friend Jane when they need their computer fixed, they visit your blog when they need to figure out what’s for dinner. They trust your judgment, because you are one of them. When it comes time for you to recommend a product to them, they see you as a friend offering advice (which, in many ways, you are) rather than a marketer vying for their attention.
For my blog, one Empathetic post became an entire series where I wrote about my journey as a writer, and about where I see that journey taking me from here. That series allows my readers to know who I am first, make a connection with my struggles as a writer, and then decide whether or not my writing advice is worth anything.
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These three types of posts will make up the skeletal structure upon which the meat of your food blog is built. Will every post on your blog be one of these three types? Of course not. Are there other types of posts that can be useful to a food blog? Absolutely. In fact, let’s talk about them today:
What other kinds of tasty posts are essential to your food (or non-food) blog?
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9 Responses to “Three Types of Food Blog Posts You Must Master”
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You know Bob, you’re a genius. Do you mind my saying it? These tips are so easily translated to other genres, and you have hit upon the very formula we all need to follow for blogging success.
Bravo. And bon appetit!
Interesting post. I’m going to read over some of your other posts. I definitely need help in my writing. It’s all over the place!
Emiline’s last blog post..Peanut Butter-Honey Oatmeal Cookies
Now why can’t I write like this? Teach me my master.
Chris’s last blog post..How Does A Father Say I Love You?
Hi Bob
This is a timely series for me, as I just did my first ever podcast - Food Writing As Inspiration For Freelance Writers. http://www.growyourwritingbusiness.com/?p=533
The podcast was inspired by 2 food blogs and their wonderful writing.
Even if we don’t write food blogs, we can learn a lot about writing styles and techniques from the way they write so passionately about food.
Yvonne Russell (Grow Your Writing Business)’s last blog post..Is The British Prime Minister Following Me On Twitter? And Takeaway Lessons For Writers
@ Lori - An eeeeevil genius. MWAHAHAHA! Seriously, though, thank you.
@ Emiline - Thanks for stopping in! You’ve got a great writing voice, by the way. Angie and I have enjoyed your blog for some time.
@ Chris - A master of eeeeevil. MWAHAHAHA! Welcome to Writing Journey, and thanks for your kind words.
@ Yvonne - I just swung over and listened to the podcast. Great stuff! I’m jealous of the book fair you mention. We live in a rather rural area, and the best we can do is Barnes & Noble.
I think that the dialogue between bloggers in different niches (when it happens at all) tends to be more about marketing than it does about writing. We writing bloggers might talk all day long with food bloggers about Twitter, but fail to take anything else away from the conversation, or to provide them with any of our experience and perspective on writing.
Bob,
I am really enjoying this whole series. I think I relate mostly with the empathetic writing style and it is making me try and think of ways that I can branch out a little.
thanks.
Wendi Kelly’s last blog post..The Pie Theory: A Story About Pie.
@ Wendy - Thanks for your thoughts!
I tend, myself, toward the tech post. I spent nearly a decade in Information Technology, and I like to tinker.
Writing Journey has been fun for me, in part, because I force myself to do less tech (though it’s definitely still here) and work more on the other areas. Here, I work at being transparently human, thereby building empathy. Believe it or not, it was a big stretch for me to write my Banging the Gong series, because it was, in many ways, so intimate.
Besides, I do enough tech writing in my content work that it’s nice to stretch a bit here.
Trying to think of other types of post that would appear on a food blog. There’s the wrap-up post, which can be useful if it’s VERY specific. “Look at all the chard recipes I found” is something I’ll bookmark. “Here are all my favourite recipes that other people posted” is a bit yawnworthy.
Restaurant reviews.
Entertainment tips? Or are they just a tech post in a different room.
Pleas for help (I don’t mean that in a horrid way - if you want to get your lurkers commenting, ask them for cooking advice!)
I’m not sure where you would slot the lifestyle cooking blogs - vegetarian, Atkins, etc - where the focus is on changing the food habits of a lifetime. Recipes but also substitutions, temptations, restaurant/party issues, etc. Some of those posts fit into the above categories but not all.
I’d like to have a food blog that was mainly mouth-watering.
@ Sylvia - I see what you’re saying about wrap-ups or “link love” posts. One school of thought says “keep the links in a theme,” while the other says “here’s what’s new this week.” I think the theme sort is probably the best for a food blog, while the new sort is probably best for a tech or trends blog.
Restaurant reviews and entertainment tips, in my mind, usually belong in another setting. They are related niches, but different enough to warrant their own blog. Still, they can be useful for changing things up a bit. It’s like when I take a day or two detour to talk about marketing or whatever. I wouldn’t make them a regular feature, though.
The danger in asking for advice is that it can cut into authority. (See the Essential Element of Food Blogging for more on that.) Although again, if used sparingly, I can see how it can be useful in drawing out lurkers.
I think the lifestyle cooking blogs are, in some ways, a hybrid niche. There’s the life coach-type advice alongside recipes. I think the vision of a lifestyle cooking blog is different than most cooking blogs, to be certain. I think many of those posts are tech (again, not kitchen tech, but maybe life tech?)
Thanks so much for your thoughtful and insightful comment. You’ve really hit on some profound things here!