January 18, 2012

Can food bloggers help your marketing efforts?Katie Parla

Types of food bloggers

✤ Hobby bloggers

✤ Amateur Cooks (recipe-based bloggers)

✤ Freelance Journalists

✤ Chefs, food artisans & other food professionals

✤ Farmers & other agriculture professionals

All types of food bloggers can help in your marketing efforts, though they must be approached in different ways.

Hobby Bloggers

✤ These bloggers write and research in their spare time with differing frequency

✤ They likely earn little to no money from their blogs

✤ Open to collaborations, guest posts

✤ Open to social aspects of blogging (networking events, dinners, farm visits)

Amateur Cooks

✤ These recipe-driven blogs are written by people passionate about food with or without professional cooking experience

✤ Some make money and expect freebies while others are open to collaborations, guest blog posts, or just learning about new ingredients

✤ Offer to write a guest blog post featuring your seasonal ingredients or offer to supply ingredients for their next vegetable-based recipe

✤ Organize a cooking demonstration at farm or local market in which blogger cooks with your produce

Freelance Journalists

✤ These bloggers have to sell a story or a pitch to an editor. Subjects must be timely and trend-related.

✤ Open to hearing newsy items: are you trying out a new technique? have you started cultivating an heirloom variety? are you hosting farm visits or events? These are all newsy items a freelancer would be interested in

✤ Drop them an email with news or invite them for a visit to the farm. Be friendly but not overzealous.

✤ Get them to write about issues that matter and affect farming

Chefs, food artisans & other food professionals

✤ Lots of chefs and food professionals have blogs or are on Twitter

✤ Observe how they work and market themselves

✤ Interact with them: follow their blogs and leave comments; follow them on Twitter and engage

Farmers & other agricultural professionals

✤ Follow blogs of other farmers and leave comments

✤ Follow them on Twitter, observe how they interact and engage with them

Matt Allison, Farmer & Social Networker

✤ Matt is a farmer, blogger and social networker

✤ Working in South Africa, he often felt isolated and sought ways to interact with others in the business

✤ He started a blog about farming and cooking www.imnojamieoliver.com

✤ He is on Twitter @mattallison

Matt & Food Bloggers

✤ Collaborate

✤ Guest posts

✤ Interact

✤ Learn/Introduce

Get involved...

✤ Set up a free microblog (Twitter, Tumblr)

✤ Set up a Wordpress blog

✤ Interact with bloggers in a meaningful way

✤ Post photos, make it personal

✤ Use a smartphone for one-touch sharing

✤ Tips on www.parlafood.com/can-food-bloggers-help-your-marketing-efforts