Food Blog

Amateur Gourmet has reached his 1000th post and it’s called How to Start a Food Blog. He’s got some good advice for you fledgling bloggers. For lots more detailed advice on food blogging, visit the Food Blog S’cool.

I could spout on here with advice and tips for new bloggers, but the Amateur Gourmet (certainly not an amateur blogger after being that prolific) covers the most important part of blogging - what you get out of it. It’s been said before, blogging helps you become a more knowledgeable writer, a better communicator and in the case of food blogging, a better cook and a better photographer.

I recently made the argument against setting popularity as a goal for blogging, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try for greatness, or a book deal. But with the food bloggers population increasing exponentially, you will really have to shine above all the rest.

Here’s a few tips I don’t see in many blog advice posts:

Keep it short. The classic blog post is short, two paragraphs at most. Complicated recipes and 12 course restaurant reviews are obviously going to take more, but if you post essays that run 4 screen-page scrolls every time, readers will start to skim posts. Reread and edit anything that’s redundant, repetitive and that you’ve already said twice. And please people, use the ≤p≥tag. 70 sentence paragraphs are easy to write, but impossible to read. And while I’m at it, use a period once in awhile.

Use some personality. Don’t be afraid to be opinionated, both on your blog and on others, but be respectable, reasonable and likable. People with character become celebrities, or at least they become memorable. That cake recipe that reads the same as a Betty Crooker cookbook isn’t going to make you likable no matter how good it is.

Link, link, link. Links are the currency of the web. So spend. You will be paid back with interest. Link to other bloggers, food products you find interesting, the best recipes, food information etc. It’s not like there’s nothing out here to link to. After you’ve written a recipe look at the words you’ve used and do some googling, you’re guaranteed to find something interesting and useful for your readers. Besides all that, links give readers’ eyes something to fall on if they are skimming, and may pull them into reading in depth.