Are your sinful desserts the talk of the whole town? Or maybe your guests gush about the magic you do with veggies? Or maybe your friends are amazed by how easily you can sniff out every ingredient from a dish! Well, if you are planning to start a food blog, all of this will help. But it’s not enough. You should also know how to combine the right language with yummy pictures and smart recipes to get your readers yearning for more. Remember that the reader is miles away from the dish you have put together in your kitchen and cannot actually see or taste it. So, a good food blog should be able to make that experience as real as possible, so that your target audience looks forward to your every post. And in case you run a restaurant or home delivery service, such a blog will drive more visitors to your site and boost conversions as well. So, here are some tips that can help you start an engaging food blog. 1. Decide on a theme first Since food or cooking is a vast field, it will be a wise move to focus on a particular style of cooking or maybe a specific region’s dishes. You can also decide if you want your theme to be desserts, savory dishes, healthy foods, weight-loss foods or something else. While crafting content for a food blog, if you are concentrating only on South Indian cuisine, non-vegetarian preparations or recipes for those suffering from lifestyle diseases, you will quickly emerge as a domain leader. Your target audience will be well-defined as well. 2. Be aware of the latest food trends These days, readers have little time or patience for complicated recipes or a super long video. They also like knowing about the calorie count and nutritional value of different dishes. Sometimes, foodies also look for information on how to prepare a vegetarian or vegan version of a non-vegetarian dish. Or, they look for recipes that have a continental vibe and are quick to prepare for office meals. These days, many households are shifting towards cooking with organic produce too. Many people look for sugar-free desserts, energy shakes and such items. So, stay aware of the cuisines, flavors and dishes that are gaining popularity and the kind of content formats that work. For instance, simple videos that are less than a minute can work wonders. Bulleted list of ingredients and images of every step of cooking are some other great food blog content ideas. You can also include colorful infographics in your blog posts as they are easy to scan and recall. 3. Get the setup basics right If you are wondering about the technical aspect of how to create a food blog, take a look at the top hosting platforms like Bluehost, WordPress, Medium, HostGator, Tumblr, Squarespace Blogger, and Wix. If you are new to blogging, go for a platform that doesn’t require technical or coding knowledge and is easy to set up. It should also be flexible and come with various themes and plugins, so that you can customize your blog just the way you want. Also, consider how you want your blog to develop or grow in future, and if you wish to make money out of it (most bloggers do). Choose the platform accordingly. It should be secure, easy to integrate with a website or online store, and affordable too. Remember that you will need a “tasty” domain name as well, something which is ideally optimized for search engines. This will help you rank high on the search results page. 4. Design a smashing website or get help For a food blog to build brand awareness and bring in traffic, a stunning website can go a long way. If you know how to design and get started with one, great! If you don’t, you can either get help from a friend who is a pro or learn how to do it yourself. The latter option is a little time-consuming, but will boost your knowledge and you can easily tweak your site in the future too. When it comes to website designing, remember that the top hosting platforms offer a variety of paid and free themes you can use for the most attractive look. Or, you can check out famous food blogs that have great designs. To know what theme they are using, just right click on their site and view the source. 5. Make your blog functional with plugins A food blogger can use these latest plugins to make their blog search engine friendly, attract organic traffic and rank high on the search results page. After all, you want as many people as possible to find and love your blog, right? WP Recipe Maker – You can add visual recipe cards to your blog posts with this option, even if you don’t know coding. It lets you add a label for nutritional facts (in the premium version), insert a call to action, templates that you can customize, and add images or videos. This plugin works amazingly on any device. VaultPress – This plugin backs up important data on your site every day, like media files, posts, and dashboard settings. This is also useful in case of cyber attacks. Advantages include unlimited storage facility and scanning of the site for cyber security issues. Yasr – If you want to gain your readers’ trust, use this plugin. It allows readers to click and rate your recipe or post, which can build your brand value over time. The plugin lets you customize the look and size of the stars and help you to appear in Google’s rich snippets too. And this can boost your ranking. SocialSnap – With this plugin, you can embed buttons for social sharing on more than 30 networks and pick from various display options. Readers can share just a photo from your blog post easily, even if they don’t read the entire recipe. Plus, this plugin allows
