
Reading: How to Start a Food Blog
good like many other popular niches, such as travel or manner, food is a broad subject, and with the right set about and a well-formulated plan, you should be able to find your unique voice and fill a gap in the market. Food blogging is not good about posting recipes : other contented, such as restaurant reviews, tips and tricks, shopping guides and even strictly ocular contented can besides find a put on a successful blog .
Why Start a Food Blog?
There are many pros and cons of starting a food web log but, with the right approach, many of the drawbacks can besides be seen as advantages. Since everyone ’ randomness tastes are very different when it comes to food, you ’ re apprenticed to end up dealing with both praise and criticism in more-or-less equal measures, but it ’ s a highly social subject that people love to talk about. Most importantly, blogging about food presents the perfect complement to your hobby, since it motivates you to experiment more in the kitchen and further your cognition in the subject. You ’ ll catch ideas and inspiration during your research ampere well as through the comments your readers leave on posts. once your blog becomes widely known, you might flush have businesses offering you a spare meal in return for a write-up. Alternative, you may even end up being able to use your web site as a floor from which to write a cookbook or take advantage of other opportunities such as writing for a newspaper or magazine .
Who Should Publish a Food Blog?
Some people are great writers and others are great cooks or food connoisseurs, but you don ’ t need to be either to have a successful food blog. What is necessary is a genuine love in your hobby that will keep you cooking and sharing your experiences with your readers. For a wide reach, you can often merge food with another recess, such as travel or life style, to narrow your concenter. In terms of the more technical aspects, such as registering a world wide web address and setting up WordPress, starting a food web log is just like starting any other web log. however, unlike some niches, food is particularly ocular in nature. If you ’ re planning to show off your own recipes and ideas, you ’ ll actually need to hone your photography skills, since you won ’ triiodothyronine be able to just lift images from elsewhere on the Web. You ’ ll besides need to distinctly define your prey audience and be wary of deviating from your established plan. last, and most importantly, you ’ ll motivation to keep on cooking then that your readers will have fresh capacity on a regular basis .
How to Start Your Food Blog
once you ’ ve decided on a particular topic to blog approximately, you ’ ll be ready to register your knowledge domain diagnose and buy a host box. To help maximize your visibility in the search engines, be sure to choose a short and relevant sphere list that people won ’ t have any fuss memory. An excellent domain name for your food blog should be creative while besides being descriptive. See Step # 1 of my usher for more information on finding a good blog name. Having a self-hosted WordPress web site is by far the best choice for starting a blog. Powering around a one-fifth of all websites, WordPress is the most democratic and user-friendly print chopine for bloggers. It features numerous themes and plugins, and it ’ s completely loose thanks to its open-source nature. To make things easier, many major hosting companies, such as Bluehost, provide a one-click WordPress host service whereby your web log will be up and running ampere soon as you ’ ve registered a domain and chosen your hosting software. A self-hosted WordPress blog provides numerous advantages including excellent customization options. In fact, WordPress is used not only for blogs, but besides for e-commerce stores, online news program portals, static webpages and much more. Being open-source and frequently updated, WordPress sites besides tend to do well in the search engines. You can further enhance the platform ’ s search engine optimization ( SEO ) capabilities by installing the free plugin WordPress SEO by Yoast. Just make sure to keep the chopine and any themes and plugins you use up-to-date at all times. You will receive an alert in your administrator splashboard whenever newly updates are available .
Recommended Themes for Your Food Blog
once you have WordPress up and running, you ’ ll be ready to start customizing your web site and print capacity but, before you get started, you ’ ll want to improve its exploiter feel and give it a distinct expect and feel by choosing the perfect theme. There are literally thousands available, including a number of premium themes. The plain come of options can make it difficult to find the mighty theme, so feel release to experiment a bit. Most importantly, always stick with reactive themes that scale automatically to different blind sizes so your blog remains user-friendly and easily readable on all Internet-enabled devices. If you ’ re having trouble finding a desirable theme for your food web log, take a look at the following for some divine guidance :
Food Blog
One of the few premium themes specifically designed for food bloggers, the competently named ‘ Food Blog ’ theme is in full responsive and built using the latest HTML5 technology. It besides comes with the Recipe Card plugin, which can help significantly when it comes to food-related keyword optimization.
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Publication
Although this free theme for WordPress is desirable for a broad range of lifestyle-related niches, the large header it provides makes it excellent for food bloggers seeking a magazine-style design featuring an attention-getting header persona. Highly visually orientated, it besides sports a commodious reactive design .
Foodeez Lite
While designed with restaurants, hotels and other such venues in thinker, the highly ocular nature of Foodeez Lite besides makes it an excellent choice for a food web log, peculiarly those that bargain with prototype slideshows and other prototype content. It sports a full-width header visualize and thumbnail previews for posts .
iCook
Featuring plenty of whitespace to help showcase your posts and recipe photos, this premium theme sports a filterable recipe gallery and a sidebar doodad for mechanically displaying your most popular recipes. It ’ second besides extensively customizable and reactive .
Zylyz
A rid subject specifically designed with food bloggers in judgment, Zylyz is an excellent choice for any recipe web site. You can display boastfully images of your sport recipes in the slideshow header, and it allows you to create custom station types, taxonomies and meta box data .
Recommended Plugins for Your Food Blog
Plugins can enhance the functionality of your web log in a battalion of ways. While there are some plugins that every web log should have, such as WordPress SEO, XML Sitemaps and W3 Total Cache, there are a few others that are particularly well-suited to food blogs :
WP Ultimate Recipe
The appropriately named WP Ultimate Recipe is one of the most popular complimentary plugins for food bloggers. It provides everything you need to attach recipes to posts and, using shortcodes, you can embed multiple recipes in the lapp post. You can besides add ingredients, courses and cuisine types to your tag cloud doodad .
Pinterest Pin It Button for Images
This humble and elementary plugin provides an necessity functionality for your blog in the form of a Pin It button on your images. Rather than relying entirely on social share buttons at the bottom of posts, this plugin allows your visitors to share images on Pinterest plainly by clicking on them .
Nextgen Gallery
Being a visually demanding subject, any plugin that helps to enhance the images and the means they are displayed can be very utilitarian for a food blog. Nextgen Gallery is a herculean tool for upload and managing your visualize collections vitamin a well as displaying them in the shape of slideshows or thumbnails accompanying your posts.
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Unit Converter
A successful food blog normally targets a global audience, making it important to provide both metric unit and imperial measurements. This plugin mechanically detects units of measurement written in your posts, and it will convert them mechanically when readers mouse over them .
Promoting Your Blog
Starting your food blog is only the beginning contribution of the battle. You ’ ll have to focus on providing regular timbre content to your readers a well as publicizing your blog. Becoming a master of the ocular sociable media sites, such as Instagram and Pinterest, is particularly authoritative at this detail, and you ’ ll need to maintain an active presence on both of them to give yourself the best chance of success. Check out Step # 6 of my guide for more information on how to promote your blog .