Step 8: Get people to follow your obsession with food

This is part of the series ‘Step-by-step guide to getting started as a food blogger’.

Step 8: Get people to follow your obsession with food

As well as allowing visitors on your site to actively share your content, you need to be able to allow them to effortlessly subscribe to your content.

Methods for subscription include:

E-mail

E-mail is deemed by most experts as being the best way to engage with users. This is because people are used to monitoring and managing their e-mail inbox on a regular basis. When someone receives an e-mail, they will do one or more of the following:

• Read the subject
• Read the subject and then delete/ignore the e-mail
• Read the subject and the message
• Read the subject and the message – and click on links which will direct them onto the blog

It is unlikely that most people will ignore the subject and at least have a quick peek at the message.

Mailing Lists

You might want to set up one or more mailing lists for your blog. For example:

• Any new content
• General Newsletters and Blog Updates
• Event information

Managing e-mail lists can get complicated if doing it manually via Outlook, Google Mail, etc.

MailChimp is a really good solution that allows you to:

• Create multiple mailing lists
• Create and manage campaigns
• Send e-mails in HTML and plain text formats
• Integrate functionality with your blog, facebook, twitter and RSS.

Plus it gives you a whole host of analytical information, including:

• Which of the members on your mailing list has opened the e-mail and which haven’t
• It rates each of your members based on their history, so you can see how interested/involved each member is with your content
• Which countries the members are from
• If the members have opened links from within the e-mails
• If the members have shared the e-mails and links

MailChimp gives you all this functionality – and it is free for up to 2,000 e-mails per month.

Facebook

Facebook is at present the largest social media platform, so it may be a good place for you to attract, engage and collaborate with your audience in a way that may be less restrictive than on your blog.

You can set up a Facebook group in minutes and it won’t be made live (published) straight away, so you can customise the look and features of the group before you make it live, or you can simply register the name without ever making it live.

Google+ (Google Plus)

Google+ is Google's social networking service. One of the main advantages of Google+ is that you can follow individual people without having to be ‘friends’ with them. This makes it a lot more open and easier to share data (while still having privacy – in the form of social ‘circles’ in place).

You can set up an account as an individual and/or as a business. If you are a food blogger it is advisable to register a Google+ account in your blog name, at least to reserve it, but also to actively use it as a point of engagement with people on there.

Twitter

Twitter is a great micro-blogging tool for ‘tweeting’ out short (140 character) messages to individuals, or as a broadcast to all your followers.

You can promote twitter on your blog to attract people to follow you. You can also join Twitter directories such as WeFollow.

People can then choose to follow you (subscribe to your twitter feed) and optionally add you to a list. For example, our visitors might add the GetMeCooking twitter account to a list called ‘Recipes’. Lists are useful as it allows people to quickly catch up or focus their attention on a specific group of people/companies/events.

We have created a number of lists for the GetMeCooking twitter account, including ‘Food-bloggers’, ‘Food-Events-and-shows’ and ‘Food-photography’. These lists are available for everyone to see.

RSS

What is RSS?

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a tool that allows people to have new content from multiple websites delivered into a central location, making it quick and easy to read.

With RSS you can monitor your favourite websites, so that when they produce new content, the new pages will appear in your RSS reader (similar to receiving an e-mail). Then, from within your RSS reader, you can skim through the content from each website and then selectively view what you want.

The content will be displayed either in part or in full within your RSS reader (depending on how each website has chosen to present it). At any time, you can decide to read the content within your RSS reader, or click on a link which will take you to that page on the website.

Benefits of using RSS to consume content:

• View all of your favourite websites in 1 place
• Easy to search the content of many websites for specific words/phrases
• No need to visit many websites to look for new content – all new content comes to you!
• Get content in your RSS reader as soon as it is on the website – so you know about it sooner than if you were to check the website twice a day/week
• Easy to skim through content and then optionally click through to the website
• It is free
• There are RSS readers for most types of computers, mobile phones and World Wide Web
• RSS readers can be configured to download the RSS feeds on a regular basis (e.g. every 30 mins, hour, day) so you can read the websites even when you do not have an Internet connection

Screenshot of Google Reader:

What does this mean for content producers?

You should be using producing RSS on your blog, to support your visitors who want to use RSS.

The good news is that it is usually very easy to be set up and can be done for free. In fact, if you are using blogging software (such as Blogger, Tumblr or WordPress) you probably already have RSS automatically set up and in use!

Generating RSS feeds can increase your readership because they remove the need for your visitors to remember to visit your site on a daily/weekly basis – instead, your new content will automatically appear in their RSS reader. It also means that you may get faster feedback from those users – which in turn means more instant (often higher-quality) feedback for your blog.

Many RSS readers make it easy to share content over social networks (it is often easier to share it this way than by clicking on a link within the website). So if a visitor sees something they like, they might be more willing to share it; which in turn gives your content a wider audience – and some of that extended audience might like it and share it to their friends…

I produce content – what should I do?

On your blog, you should:

• Configure – set up one or many RSS feeds (you could have a global feed which contains everything plus/or individual feeds for certain topics e.g. baking, soups, recipe of the day)
• Promote – promote your RSS feeds. Let people know you have them and encourage people to use them
• Measure – monitor the number of people who subscribe to your RSS feeds. Which of your feeds get the most subscribers?
• Monetise – yes (depending on how you define your RSS feed) you can add adverts to your RSS feeds!

When promoting your RSS feeds, best practices are:

• If you have multiple RSS feeds, have a page on your site that   and explains what each one is for lists each of the RSS feeds
• Promote them on your website and in e-mails
• Make use of the standard RSS logo (or a variation of it). This will be instantly recognisable to visitors

Examples of RSS icons:

• Standard:

• Custom:

Recommended RSS readers:

Google Reader is a really good web based RSS reader.

You can get RSS readers for your PC, Mac, iPad, Android, Blackberry, iPhone, Windows and other mobile phones.

Examples of RSS feeds:

• BBC Good Food: BlogCake of the weekRecipe of the day
• Dirty Kitchen Secrets: All posts
• Food Blogger Connect: All posts
• GetMeCooking: All content, Articles, Blog, Recipes