The Balancing Act of Food Blogging

Food Blog for Starters is Lost in Flavor's online hub of information and insights about starting a food blog and beyond.

Now that you’re done pointing out the purpose of your food blog, the next thing you need to do is evaluate you motivation and level of dedication.

Vegetable Soup | MorgueFile
Photo by Mark Straeten

Come to think of it, the Internet is already saturated with thousands of food blogs there is. That’s why it is important that you identify the reason behind your food blog. Otherwise, it will be “just another food blog” registered on the Web.

Before You Begin: The Things You Need to Learn

Speaking of the Internet being saturated by food blogs, this only means that you’ll be entering a highly-competitive industry. Thus, you have to make sure that you have enough strength not to back down—especially when you’re seeing that your food blog is not growing in a pace and towards the direction you expect it to be.

The truth is that a food blog is quite tough to maintain, regardless if you have plans of monetizing from it or you just want to share your food trips or recipes online. For one, you need to keep on improving your writing skills. That’s because too much grammatical error here and there can turn your readers off. Plus, they will just end up finding mistakes on your post rather than focusing on your content.

You also need to be consistent if you want your food blog to gain traction and succeed. By posting an entry regularly, you’re letting your readers know—whether they are newcomers or returning audience—that they will see new and fresh content the next time they visit. You also need to be consistent with the voice that you’re using on your blog. The littlest of change could be unwelcoming for your readers, and you don’t want to them to feel that way, do you?

Bread and Soup for Dinner | MorgueFile
Photo by John in BKK

Another thing you need to learn is food photography. Images of food you eat or cook adds color to your content, which is obviously will be full of text. Moreover, it helps break a huge chunk of black-and-white print that could drive your readers bored to death. But more than alleviating you audience’s boredom from too much reading, a food photograph must be able to whet their appetite. It should entice them to cook or eat that meal you’re writing about.

What do you think is the reason restaurants and fast foods post pictures of their latest addition in the menu on the wall? Of course, that is to attract more customers to try whatever their kitchen has to offer. The same thing goes for adding food photography in your blog. Plus, an image can help with your Search Engine Optimization efforts.

Soup and Appetizing Meal | MorgueFile
Photo by Ghammond06

Sure, nobody would care if you start a food blog, but publishing a high-quality and informative content regularly is the best way to cure this indifference. This is the way to get people returning to your site, as well as attracting new readers.

Finding the Balance

However, a well-written food blog entry has its own caveat. You need to find the balance between knowing your worth as a food blogger and shrugging it off when the feedback isn’t as good as you’ve expected.

The next entry you’re going to post must be important enough that it will motivate you to write well; but you mustn’t be emotionally attached to it that you’ll whine when it doesn’t receive huge response. This is what it means to treat you food blog as a business.

Instead of feeling awful, you have to keep on moving forward and learn how you can acquire and maintain readership. Tough job, I know, but someone’s got to do it.

Soup with Beer in Can | MorgueFile
Photo by Mantasmagorical

Unless you’re willing to start a food blog and treat it as a business, unless you can find the time to update your site regularly, unless you are willing to learn how to improve your writing and food photography skills, and unless you’re comfortable with strangers coming in to your blog and sharing their good and not-so-good comments, then you cannot start a food blog. Because if that's the case, it is more likely that you motivation will evaporate.

Indeed, sustaining and keeping a food blog moving forward is tough. That’s why it is important that you have the right motivation and dedication in starting this kind of website. Because even if you started a blog “just for fun”, publishing your thoughts in a democratic medium rather than a secret journal would bring in a loyal reader or two. And in order to keep them coming, you have to give them the best food blog entry that you can offer.