Be unique by stirring up your online food content
Food blogging has become massively popular over the past decade. To some extent this is due to the rise of celebrity chefs and the hugely popular reality cooking shows, but it’s also because when you have to provide three meals a day, every single day – inspiration becomes a necessity and an online food resource is now a hot commodity.
There is so much ‘foodie blogging’ out there though that the type of content you serve will determine whether, through the myriad food related pages online, people find you easily, as well as love your content enough to increase dwell time by engaging with it.
So how do you stand out?
The only way to ensure people get a taste of your content is to be recognisably different. The way to achieve that is to come with a brand that is unique to your personality, and present it the same way each time. If you post a recipe or a video you want people to instantly recognised it as yours.
Mouthwatering recipe posts form the basis of the online food industry. Recipes are the most popular food posts, with many bloggers going to extraordinary lengths to win hearts and followers by posting perfectly stylised photographs of their creation. In reality there are hundreds of beautiful pictures of the same thing from as many different angles. Show the “personality” of your brand by using cleverly designed graphics that use interesting fonts to present your recipes. Your cooking videos could be quirky and use humour to get people laughing and sharing. Suzelle DIY is a perfect example of how to do this.
Stirring the pot
Finding the missing ingredient to stir into your pot when there are so many others posting great content is not that different from trying out a new recipe, with a little pinch of ‘this’ and a huge dash of ‘that’. It’s actually quite hard to be unique, yet some foodies are managing to do just that.
Samantha Lee is an international food artist with over 600 000 followers on Instagram. Not by serving filtered shots of everyday dishes though, she gets creative with the rice and vegetables that she serves to her family by fashioning them into little plates of art. Of course not every food blogger has time (or the flair) to get that creative, but it’s a great example of being unique in the ever-growing online food content business.
Cleverly tapping into the crazy world of pop culture can get you an instant following. Movies and television series already have enormous numbers of followers, and finding a way to use them can greatly benefit your site, all it takes is a bit of creative thinking. Like this Iron Throne cake tutorial for example, which has been viewed by over 61 000 Game of Thrones fans, or the amazing phenomenon of local barista Dayne Levinrads #coffeeinacone which immediately became one of the most Instagrammed coffees in the world.
People also love the private side of a person or business, so interviews with chefs from popular local restaurants or videos of celebrities cooking something simple for their family at home is always an instant shareable hit online. As food is essential to our survival, and is required at regular intervals throughout the day, it is probably safe to say that at any given time there are millions of people online searching for food inspiration. Stir something extra special into your pot, be distinctive, and make sure that they find you.
