Food Blogging 101: How to Start a Food Blog

Published by Friday, May 1, 2015 Permalink 2
Follow us!Follow on FacebookTweet about this on TwitterFollow on Google+Pin on PinterestFollow on TumblrFollow on LinkedIn

Food Blogging 101: How to Start a Food or an Author Blog

by Jonell Galloway

In today’s Internet world, all writers need an online presence in order to connect with other writers and build up a readership. Blogs are one way of doing this, but writers are often intimidated and overwhelmed by the technical skills required. I still am after all these years, but I’ve learned from my traumatic experiences, so stay calm. I’m going to walk you through some basics to familiarize you with the process, and you’ll walk away feeling more confident.

Blogging requires many skills other than writing. Publishers expect food writers, like other writers, to have a writing platform these days. That is the way of the world, whether we like it or not. In this series of articles, you will discover the power of blogging, and I’ll guide you through the process of starting your blog, step-by-step. We’ll then look at how to develop your content and manage the multitude of technical and scheduling aspects involved. We’ll cover the following steps:

  • Choice of your blogging platform
  • Hosting
  • Technical skills required to operate it
  • Definition of reasonable goals that you can manage yourself
  • Defining your niche and purpose
  • Cost
  • Building your blog, by you or an outside developer
  • Defining the structure
  • Defining categories and tabs: the importance of the About tab
  • Ideas for posts to promote your work or book
  • The importance of linking
  • Choosing titles and tags
  • Choosing keywords and branding yourself
  • Time management and scheduling, posting to social media
  • Some knowledge of technical maintenance and upkeep
  • Building an online readership and community
  • Search engine optimization of posts so that we can easily be found by search engines or publishers
  • Incorporation of your blog into social media

Starting a blog sounds much harder than it is. Writers are not technicians, anything but, so we have to be careful to stay within the limits of what we can honestly manage without adding even more stress to our already stressful lives. Stay tuned over the next few weeks if you’re thinking of starting a writing platform of your own. We’ll walk you through it.

 

Never miss a post
Name:

Your email address:*

Please enter all required fields
Correct invalid entries

About Jonell Galloway

Jonell Galloway grew up on Wendell Berry and food straight from a backyard Kentucky garden. She is a freelance writer. She attended Le Cordon Bleu and La Varenne cooking schools in Paris and the Académie du Vin, worked for the GaultMillau restaurant guide and CityGuides in France and Paris and for Gannett Company in the U.S., and collaborated on Le tour du monde en 80 pains / Around the World with 80 Breads with Jean-Philippe de Tonnac in France; André Raboud, Sculptures 2002-2009 in Switzerland; Ma Cuisine Méditerranéenne with Christophe Certain in France, At the Table: Food and Family around the World with Ken Albala, and a biography of French chef Pierre Gagnaire. She ran a cooking school in France, and owned a farm-to-table restaurant, The Three Sisters’ Café, with her two sisters in the U.S. She organizes the Taste Unlocked bespoke food and wine tasting awareness workshops with James Flewellen, is an active member of Slow Food, and runs the food writing website The Rambling Epicure. Her work has been published in numerous international publications and she has been interviewed on international public radio in France, Switzerland, and the U.S. She has just signed on at In Search of Taste, a British print publication, and is now working on a book, What to Eat in Venice.

Never miss a post
Name: 
Your email address:*
Please enter all required fields
Correct invalid entries
Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Comments are closed.

UA-21892701-1