I can only go up from here – thanks.

Hungry Gals last blog post..Broccoli Potato Soup

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!

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.

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.

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.

@ 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.

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

Chris’s last blog post..How Does A Father Say I Love You?

Emiline’s last blog post..Peanut Butter-Honey Oatmeal Cookies

Bravo. And bon appetit!