Megnut offer’s advice to Gourmet’s advertisers “My little pile of ads that I so carefully tore out of Gourmet for research purposes is now headed to the recycling bin. I’m moving on to websites that actually provide information about the products I’m interested in.”
Just Hungry’s Free Advice to PR people “Hi there, intrepid PR person who wants to get in on this new “blog marketing” and “viral marketing” thing. I have some free advice for you, especially if you are trying to sell some kind of packaged, manufactured thing that only vaguely resembles real food.”
Follow the link on the previous link to Elise’s The Do’s and Don’ts of Marketing to Bloggers Elise of course is the writer of the very food focused Simply Recipes. “Form letters result in promoting pork sausages to vegans or pitches for ready-to-eat cheesecake filling to gourmet scratch cooks, people who would sooner shoot themselves than use your product.”
Restaurants: fix your websites! Professional local blogger Andrew Huff lists every no-no that I’ve been trying to talk clients out of for years (food-related or otherwise). No contact info when the majority of visitors are looking for just that, Flash used just to show a few pictures, important info like menus buried in PDFs, and worst of all, music.
If I had a dime for each time I’ve had to explain this, I’d be retired. Imagine how many people do their evening out planning from work (or their shopping or even their home-buying). Now imagine that person reaching your site, and some blaring U2 (why is it always U2?) music starts up. That person, in some cubicle farm somewhere, scared for their job (or just plain embarassed for blaring U2 from their desk) closes the window to your website AND NEVER COMES BACK. If, after imagining that, you still want music on your site to ’set the mood’, you’ll want to reavaluate what your website is for.
Not really food related, but since we’re on the subject, Andrew also has some words On PR and blogs.
Almostvegetarian also has advice For all the food bloggers who have ever, or will ever, encounter a public relations person.
Addendum:
Found another on the subject: When Good Restaurants Do Bad Websites
3 responses so far ↓
1 almost vegetarian // Oct 10, 2007 at 12:20 am
This is a great round-up of information. If anyone has any questions, they can just leave me a comment at my site and I’ll try to help.
And, hey, I’d love to see Almost Vegetarian on your list of food blogs (which, by the way, is a really handy resource and a truly fun read)!
Cheers!
2 Christina // Oct 10, 2007 at 4:18 pm
Great info…I particularly enjoyed the “restaurant no-no’s”
3 Foodizmo // Oct 12, 2007 at 9:51 am
Tnx for these links. I’m just doing a research on online marketing approaches and Blog marketing would sure be worth considering as a separate topic.
I also think that blogs and online social networks are becoming the most complex ‘markets’ nowadays.
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