Blogs have proven to be a tremendous platform for cooks who wish to share their recipes with the world. There are thousands of them online with different takes on preparing food and what exactly to eat. Everyone from the gourmet chef to the creative housewife to the hipster in Brooklyn has given it a shot. What separates the best from all the others is the content these bloggers are cooking up, as well as the methods they’re using to get it out there.
Every marketer can learn from these bloggers’ success. NewsCred talked to three popular food bloggers about what lessons they've learned and how you can apply them to your own content marketing strategy.
The food bloggers that stand out are masters of their specialties. Whether they’re posting about Paleo, cooking up kosher, or catering to the college crowd, the ones who know their audience’s wants and needs are reaping the benefits.
Take Gaby Dalkin of What’s Gaby Cooking. The blogger, who has nearly 24,000 Facebook fans and 16,000 Twitter followers says that her site “is really all about living this California girl lifestyle where we can indulge one day and have a gorgeous salad the next.”
Iowa Girl Eats founder Kristin Porter has about 95,000 followers on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram combined and focuses on recipes for parents. “They may or may not have kids, but they care about cooking fresh food for themselves and their loved ones,” she says. “They've had a long day at work and don't want to be in the kitchen for two hours making dinner, but they also don't want to sacrifice flavor or freshness. My recipes are simple to prepare, use in season, easy to find ingredients, and can be easily made by both cooking novices and experts alike.”
By creating content for everyone, you’re creating content for no one. You need to produce content for each of your demographics. They all like different content and prefer to view it in various formats. There is no “one-size-fits-all” formula.
For Dalkin, first came the content, and then came the numbers. Though she has a huge audience today, it was not her number one priority when she started her blog.
“I never focused on building an audience,” Dalkin says. “I always just wanted to produce amazing content that people could take into their kitchen and then create a beautiful meal.”
Christy Denney’s blog, The Girl Who Ate Everything, garners 2.5 million pageviews a month and boasts 146,000 Facebook likes. She attributes her large readership to her passion for her work. “I think people can tell if you're being authentic or if you're just doing it for the money,” she says. “If you really love food, your passion will show through.”
Though it’s tempting, don’t obsess over the numbers. If you consistently release great content, in time, people will start to notice. If you’re creating content specifically with traffic and sales in mind, you won’t get very far.
Porter says that when Facebook changed their algorithms, it took a huge toll on her fan page.
“I spent a lot of time building that community only to have my reach slashed by 99% seemingly overnight. It was a good lesson to not put all my eggs in one social media basket though, and to diversify my marketing efforts.”
Porter has since learned her lesson and tried other distribution methods like Pinterest and email newsletters. Dalkin uses a mix of Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter to reach her fans. “Twitter I use to promote my content along with other awesome recipes I find from my fellow food blogging friends. The other platforms are so fun because they are so visual, [which is] something very important to the 'What's Gaby Cooking' brand.”
Denney finds that her images are a hit on social media. “Most of my traffic comes from Pinterest and Facebook. I think for every blog a different social media channel works best. I think people do like my photography and therefore are drawn to it on Pinterest.”
Don’t get sucked up into a distribution vacuum. Expand upon your distribution tactics and find your audiences on distinctive sites. Everyone has a favorite social media platform. Your brand needs to have a presence on more than one of them so that people can discover you and your content more easily.
So what can you take away from these bloggers besides an increased appetite? Know your audience, study your buyer personas, and create content for just a handful of readers instead of striving for broad appeal. Create content that you love - that you would share and care about if you came across it in any other context. If you don't care - why will your readers? And finally - don't build your castle on someone else's land. Social platforms are a necessity for distribution, but be agile and ready to shift gears across platforms if necessary. Stick to these guidelines and your content strategy will be a piece of cake!
