Food Blogging FM 018:
101 Ways to Promote your Next Recipe on your Food Blog Brought To You By: RecipeThis.com
Introduction Welcome to our eighteenth food blogging Podcast. Yesterday our food blog RecipeThis.com hit its first anniversary. After creating more than 200 recipes all of which were personally tested by us we have reached the year mark. The first year is over and not only do we have a shedload of content but we have also received thousands of visitors to our food blog. Over the year we have spent a lot of time promoting each and every recipe, each and every cooking tips post and not to mention our podcast and other content we have featured. We have done this with a lot of hard work and dedication. There was the day our son was born when content still went out on our blog on time, social media was still done that day. The same can be said when we were on our summer holiday in Spain or when it was the 4th of July and we were heading out to the local waterpark. Some people believe that running a food blog is an easy task and that you just put together a few recipes and that is all there is to it. Of course there is a lot more to it and it is very easy, when running a food blog full time to be doing 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. But the biggest issue for many food bloggers is building up regular traffic. This is when the jealousy often comes into play as I have made a few enemies along the way and when I have looked into this its being from people that have 10 year old food blogs and have a fraction of our traffic. At the same time I have made some great friends and it has been great fun. But if you want to build your traffic further and you want to grow it from today onwards then this Podcast is personally for you. We wish you the
best of luck in making sure your food blog gets the traffic of your dreams. Understanding Recipe Promotion
First things first let’s think of this like a physical business. If you had a shop selling food produce then you would have a Facebook page promoting it, newspaper advertisements, a website that would be used for building up your brand and word of mouth would be top of your agenda.
You would also have great posters in your window, a great window display and business cards so that when you are out and about you could spread the word. Yet as food bloggers way too many people fail to spread the word, they post to their blog and then maybe to Facebook and Pinterest then that is where it starts and ends. There is no follow up, there is no further promotion and the content disappears into your blog without any further thought. You need to be looking at as many places as you can to promote your food blog. The old blog promotion rule used to be for every hour you spend on a piece of content for your blog you should spend four times that amount of time on content promotion. So if it takes you 3 hours to create an amazing recipe for your blog then you should be spending 12 hours promoting it. I would go as far as saying that instead of following this 12 hour rule you should have a plan of action, or a list if you would prefer, of exactly what you would do for every recipe that you publish on your blog. This is exactly what I have done and in this Podcast I will be giving you a count down of exactly what works and what doesn’t.
When I originally wrote a post back in December, I shared 75 different ideas, but as my food blog has progressed I have improved this list and this is my 2016 fail safe list for you to follow. Ways To Promote Your Next Recipe
Let’s start at the beginning and think of what you should be doing when your blog post first goes from scheduled to published:
1. Share your recipe on Pinterest – this is the first thing I ever do and I place it on the most appropriate personal board of mine. Never put it on a group board first because you want to be in control of the original Pinterest source. 2. Share it on Twitter – Many food bloggers don’t even have a Twitter account and its so quick to share. Though make sure you include some useful hashtags in order to appear in the Twitter search results.
3. Share it on Google+, LinkedIn & Facebook – I use Hootsuite in order to share to multiple places and to schedule future content. Don’t use automated plugins to do this for you as they are very spammy and give out a bad opinion of your site.
4. Share it on Instagram – When you do this make sure you include at least 10 useful hashtags and stick to ones that are specific rather than broad. Avoid keywords such as foodie, food porn, yummy as they are over used and you wont get any traction. Instead use keywords associated with diets that fit in with your recipe i.e. Paleo for Paleo recipes or Gluten Free for gluten free recipes. Or even better ingredients of certain foods that are included in the recipe such as beef, tomato, cheese and so on. 5. Share it on Medium – Medium is a fantastic site that is very similar to social media. You can have it linked to your other social media sites. The best thing about it is that if you post to the site your followers from Twitter will be informed by email about your update. This in reality can bring you a lot of extra traffic with very little effort. 6. Tumblr – I have always been asked what Tumblr is like for submitting your recipe to. Well Tumblr is like a mixture of Instagram and Twitter. It is very good for traffic and is one of my top 10 traffic sources. 7. Share it on social bookmarking sites – these are a genius and can bring you a lot of traffic. You also are not required to be active in the communities in order for you to get traffic back in return. They include Stumbleupon.com, Flipboard.com, Paper.li, Scoop.it, 11. Share your recipe images on image sharing sites – These can also be overlooked and are great for spreading the word about your images. Submit to imgur.com, photobucket.com and Flickr.com. But before you do make sure you have your web address on your image so that you can get traffic back to your site. 14. Suggest your content – Via Scoop.it and Paper.li you can also suggest your content to other members. Then all they have to do is click one button and your content will not only be on your account but on theirs too. Just imagine if you have a decent following. 15. Submit your content to recipe sharing sites – These places are like dynamite for food bloggers and even though this traffic is not as good as it was in 2013 it is still good traffic that adds up. Plus a lot of
PR agencies that are looking for bloggers to work with will often use these sites as an ideas zone. We have exhausted the possibility of a lot of different recipe sharing sites and we have found that the ones below have been the ones to bring us regular traffic at the same time as being easy to submit to:
http://tastespotting.com http://healthyaperture.com/ http://dishfolio.com http://foodgawker.com http://Fridgg.com http://FoodPornDaily.com http://myrecipemagic.com http://OhMyVeggies.com http://FindingVegan.com http://Recipeshubs.com
Out of all of them I have found that the 3 best ones for traffic have been Tastespotting, FoodGawker and OhMyVeggies. The benefit of Oh My Veggies is that they choose from the regular submissions those that feature in their round ups so you can end up with good traffic from a submission a year down the line. 25. Share your post on Reddit – Reddit is a fantastic social bookmarking come social media style of site. It gets a lot of traffic and as long as you interact in the community then you can expect to get excellent traffic from your recipes. But they are very strict about self promotion so read the rules before posting. 26. Share your recipe further on Reddit – You want to aim for every recipe you create on your blog that it goes on 10 different subreddits so that you can spread the word and build up your traffic on there. You’ll find that you will need to invest in your time so that you have at least 10 subreddits that you really like that are your go to list. 27. Share on Google Plus Communities – Not only do you want to post directly onto Google Plus but also on the different communities. There are many of them to join and you want to be on at least 50 of them that you can promote your content to on a regular basis. Aim for 10 Google
Plus communities that each time you have a new recipe it goes onto them. 28. Share on LinkedIn Groups – There is also some great groups on Linkedin that you can also be sharing your content to. Again aim for 10 groups that each time you have a new recipe you share to. 29. Share to Facebook Groups – There are a lot of Facebook Groups out there and they are great for sharing your recipes. Share them directly from your blog using your social share buttons and aim for 25 groups for each recipe. It can of course take a while to get on a decent amount of groups as you are waiting on group approvals but once you are there you can see excellent results. 30. Share to Facebook Pages – There are a lot of very high traffic Facebook pages that really don’t mind you sharing your recipes to them. Compile a list of 200 and target 10 for each new recipe you create. 31. Share your recipe to Tumblr recipe submissions – Like with recipe submissions there is such a thing for Tumblr. But what is better here is that you don’t have a zillion log ins to do as you just need your Tumblr log in only. The ones we personally use are: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
http://guardians-of-the-food.tumblr.com/submit http://foodffs.tumblr.com/ http://createbakecelebrate.tumblr.com/ http://intensefoodcravings.tumblr.com/ http://foodpoorn.tumblr.com/submit http://kin-eats.tumblr.com/submit http://youwillbehungry.tumblr.com/submit http://youarenowhungry.tumblr.com/submit http://thetastycravings.com/ http://candyexpress.tumblr.com/ http://sweetoothgirl.tumblr.com/ http://thegirlthatbakes.tumblr.com/ http://bakingmouse.tumblr.com/ http://omgsexyfood.tumblr.com/ http://beautifulpicturesofhealthyfood.tumblr.com/ http://veganfoody.tumblr.com/submit
•
http://veggiecomfort.tumblr.com/submit
This is our traffic thanks to Tumblr recipe submissions and basic account maintenance:
48. Share your recipe on all relevant Pinterest Groups – Did you notice that I mentioned the word “relevant”? This is because there are thousands and thousands of Pinterest groups out there and you want to make sure they A) fit in with your niche B) are likely to get you lots of repins. In an ideal world you want to be on about 300 good quality Pinterest Groups and it is really a long term task in finding the good ones and then getting accepted on them. I always say go after groups that have at least 10,000 followers and are going to be groups that you are going to regularly submit content to. For example I am always getting requests for cupcake boards and when I have produced just 2 cupcake recipes in 12 months it’s just not worth my time. Yet I am on a chicken board and I would say I have about 1 in 6 of my recipes featuring chicken. When you are on some groups use something like Tailwind to share your recipes to all relevant groups in a click of the mouse. I personally have it set so that on the day I publish a new recipe that it is drip fed through my Tailwind account at the rate of 1 every 5 hours at the optimised time. If you look at the screenshot below you will be able to see our traffic increase through July to September after increasing our pins to groups:
49. Share your recipes on all relevant Tailwind Tribes – Tribes are a Plan B for Pinterest Groups and are what is perfect for if you are starting out on Pinterest. Basically, they are easier to get on than Pinterest Groups and have a better reshare rate. They are also free to join as new members of Tailwind. 50. Share on Yummly – Yummly is like the social media channel for food recipes only. This means that it is very relevant and you can get some excellent traffic from there. There is also no such thing as interaction on there so for the time you spend on there to the traffic you receive is truly amazing. 51. Set up MailChimp – Open up a Mailchimp account and add a subscribe for the latest recipes on your blog. Mailchimp is free for the first few subscribers so it is a free way to kickstart your mailing list if you are lacking in time. Then set it up and each Saturday it will inform your subscribers of what you have posted to your blog on a specific week. 52. Share your recipe with your friends – Facebook gives priority to updates about your friends rather than pages and groups you are members of. This means that just by sharing your recipe from your Facebook account to your own personal feed can get you a lot of shares and interaction. 53. Take part in round ups – A lot of people are looking for recipes to share on their own social media or on top 10 round up posts about a specific type of food or drink. Therefore they are perfect for using to grow your blog traffic and to spread the word. These are the ones we currently use: Bloggers Sharing Links Blog Post Round Up Database Blogger Round Up Requests
56. Take Part In Social Share Threads – These are like gold dust for both new food bloggers and old established ones. I even see food bloggers that get millions of monthly visitors to their sites taking part in these, which clearly shows that they are worth the effort. If you have not heard of them before, then they are basically a social media share exchange. You share someone else’s Yummly, Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest url and then they will share yours. Here are the ones we personally use:
Yummly Sharing Group For Food Bloggers Yummly Savers Bloggers Social Media Support Blogging Boost Tips For Optimizing Pinterest Pinterest Promotion For Bloggers Food Blog Stars Power Pinners Foodie Tweets Twitter For Food Bloggers
66 Re-Tweet A Week Later – After your initial promotion of your Tweet on the day your recipe went live you want to repromote it a week later. Twitter moves so fast and with people being on different time zones it is great chance to recreate attention to your content. 67 Re-Tweet A Month Later – Then do the same thing again but a month later. This will again remind people about the recipe and encourage them to read and share it. 68 Have a social timetable – A social media timetable is a great way to keep your recipe in the public eye and also to increase engagement on your different social media channels. I create a social media timetable and then load up the content once a month. It will include a daily post to Facebook, a daily post to Twitter, plus a follow up post to Twitter.
It will include engagement posts for Facebook that will often include old recipes that we have had featured on our blog. Then for Twitter it will be a mix of engagement content as well as old recipes. Nigella Lawson does a great job of this as she uses the hashtag #recipeoftheday and you could do something similar to highlight an old post. Also it never hurts to ask in these follow up tweets for a RT – you’d me amazed by how many people will give you one. 71. Use food holidays to promote old recipes – There is an endless supply of fun holidays throughout the year such as National Potato Month and this is your opportunity to use that hashtag to get yourself out there further on social media. 72. Link to old recipes in new ones – How often do you link from an old post to a new one? Well if it is relevant to the recipe then make sure you do. Your readers will love it if you make a suggestion for a good side dish to go with a main meal or vice versa. It then brings an old one back to peoples attention. 73. Click To Tweet – Add a Click To Tweet button to your recipe posts. You will be amazed by how many people will use it and help build up your Twitter shares. Here is an example of one on a recipe post:
74. Blog Outreach – Blog Outreach is an amazing way to spread the word about your blog. Connect with 100 different bloggers in your niche and tell them about your content. Tell them what you like about their content and you’d be amazed by how many people will share your content and the conversion rates. 75. Do A Buzz Feed Round Up – You have a great recipe and it features pumpkin. You then create a Buzz feed round up focused around pumpkin with a top 10 of different recipes. Your recipe is number 1 and
because other people want to be featured they will happily share the round up. Then do the same again but for community table. 77. Turn your recipes into ebooks – This has to be one of the best ways to spread the word and build up your traffic away from your site. Feature 20 similar recipes and then inside the recipe ebook have a call of action to join your mailing list, visit your blog or follow you on social media. I recommend submitting the ebook to: Amazon Kindle Draft 2 Digital The best thing about Draft2Digital is that it submits your ebook to a lot of different ebook sites such as Ibookstore, Barnes & Noble & Nook. Here is a screenshot of the last 90 days on the Kindle just from recycled content from Recipethis.com:
79. Submit To Ebook Directories – as well as selling packs of your recipes as ebook content you can also create mini recipe ebooks of single ones. Then submit them to all the top free ebook submission sites. Again, make sure that they link back to your site so that you are getting something back from them. Here are the ones we suggest that you use: http://issuu.com http://scribd.com http://pdfsr.com 82. Recycle your content further – you don’t have to start and finish your recycled content with ebooks. Some of my favourite types of recycled content include: SlideShare.net – create a slide presentation of your content and submit to slide share sites. Make a video and submit to You Tube and other video channels – it could either be a video of the actual recipe or a how to video showing a particular element of the video. Make an audio version – create a Podcast specifically for your recipes and talk people through actually making them. This is also perfect for those with eye sight problems that want an audio option. 85. Create extra social media graphics – One option is to look at what extra social media graphics you could do. These could then be used for extra promotion via Pinterest and Pinterest Group Boards. Though when you do it aim for graphics that are different from what everyone else is doing. Remember the quote “stand out from the crowd”. Well that is exactly what you need to do. Forget everyone else that does the same text on the same skinny version of their graphic and instead create something unique that shouts “look at me I am unique”.
This is an example of one of ours:
86. Create an infographic – You could also create an infographic for your recipe focusing on a certain element or giving the readers of the recipe more than what they have got from the recipe. For example if it is a recipe showing people how to use turkey leftovers you could then do an infographic with a further 10 recipe ideas. Here is an example of one of ours for people that want to know more about butternut squash: https://recipe-this-security-samanthamilnerco.netdna-ssl.com/wpcontent/uploads/the-ultimate-guide-to-butternut-squash1.jpg 87. Pay For Promotion Of Your Recipe – The next thing to be focusing on is a paid promotion of your recipe. There are many different ways to do this and below are our favourites:
http://Reddit.com http://Stumbleupon.com http://Facebook.com http://Pinterest.com Bing Ads
I particularly love the Bing Ads because you can have them set up for an extra 100 clicks for less than 5 cent per click. They also happen to be really good at social sharing for the posts. Reddit is also incredibly good thanks to the position you have on the site and its particularly good for subreddits that don’t allow you to post your recipes. 92. Facebook Commenting – I am a big fan of Facebook and its great as a search engine and is full of people wanting information. Join some groups with high interaction that are looking for specific recipes. Whenever they are asking for specific recipes make sure you are the first one there with yours. After commenting on Facebook also comment via the following sites:
https://answers.yahoo.com/ https://www.quora.com/
After you have done this, also find a group of forums you can comment on regularly. Then spend an hour a week going through the threads seeing what you can comment on that is relevant to your site and spreading the word about your site. 96. Comment on Pinterest Pins – Regularly comment on Pinterest pins. It gets your name out there and makes people think of you whenever they see specific content. 97. Follow Similar Pinners – Another great option is to find your competitions pins. Then see who has shared it and comment and follow that person. They will be interested in the same thing as your content and you are more likely to see results from it. 98. Do A Guest Post – Write a guest post for a fellow food blogger and then at the end of the post link to your recipe. I find the easiest way to do this is to do a guest post about avocado benefits that then links to your avocado recipe. It works well because you don’t actually need to produce a recipe for the other site yet they will love you as you are still spreading the word via their site about the benefits of a health food that their readers love.
Then create some guest posts surrounding the infographic as well. Plus aim for being featured in some interviews and other similar content. Aim for a mixture of 5 pieces of content away from your site. 101. Create A Follow Up Blog Post – This is my favourite way of spreading the word further about your content. You have just created a delicious chicken curry recipe. Now as your follow up you would write a post featuring this chicken recipe and others you have on your blog. You would then link to the recipe and let it have centre stage on your new piece of content. That’s A Wrap Thanks for listening to our Podcast and we have loved sharing with you our top ways to promote our recipes. Try out the different options on this list and also add a few of your own. You may find that you have 60 or so of your favourites that you use every time you add a new recipe.
Subscribe To Our Food Blogging Podcast If you would like to subscribe to our weekly Food Blogging Podcast then you can do so below: Join our mailing list and you will be informed whenever we post a new Podcast Access All Our Past Food Blogging Podcasts Subscribe Via iTunes
Your Feedback Is Welcome If you get the chance, please leave us an honest rating and a review on iTunes by clicking here. We would really appreciate the feedback and it will help our Podcasts grow. We appreciate it and we hope you enjoy our Podcasts!
How To Get Involved In Our Podcasts Our Podcasts are easily accessible no matter how you prefer to access them. You can download them as a PDF from our blog by going to recipe this dot com and visiting the Podcasts category. This is also very good for getting the links to material that is mentioned in the Podcast. Alternatively you can listen to them like you are now. You can also subscribe to our iTunes feed or you can be kept in the loop by joining our mailing list at recipe this dot com forward slash the food blogging newsletter.
Thanks again for listening and best of luck with your food blog.
Samantha & Dominic Milner http://recipethis.com And don’t forget to connect with us on social media: http://facebook.com/recipethis https://twitter.com/recipe_this https://pt.pinterest.com/recipethis/
 https://www.instagram.com/recipethisblog/ And to get regular updates from us sign up for our free food blogging newsletter below: http://recipethis.com/thefoodbloggingnewsletter/ We also have a food blogging group on Facebook that you can access at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/472542536277443/