Step-by-step guide to getting started as a food blogger - Step 1: Blogging overview

Being a food blogger is a lot of fun. Through it you can tell the world who you are and what you are interested in; plus you can (and invariably will) make new friends and learn a lot about food. The food blogging community is a friendly one and far larger than you might think.

It is easy to get started with food blogging and it doesn’t require a University degree in computing, however it can be a bit confusing at first if you don’t know where to start. So here is the GetMeCooking step-by-step guide to getting started as a food blogger. This series will give you some great tips on how to attract more visitors to your blog, convert visitors into followers and how to monetise.

Note that these steps do not all have to be completed in the order shown.

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

• Step 1: Blogging overview
• Step 2: Choose a blogging platform
• Step 3: Choose a hosting provider
• Step 4: Buy a domain name
• Step 5: Promote yourself (and your food blog)
• Step 6: Monitor your blog content
• Step 7: Set up social sharing (Internet word of mouth)
• Step 8: Get people to follow your obsession with food
• Step 9: Branding - start with a logo
• Step 10: Site design (content is king, design is queen)
• Step 11: Meet other food bloggers

Step 1: Blogging overview

The article ‘Why be a food blogger?’ gives some reasons why you might want to start blogging about food.

It helps if you know up-font exactly what you would like to blog about, as this will help set the tone and direction of the blog. Having said that, in most cases the direction will change and the blog will evolve (and that’s okay)! If you keep writing about what you are passionate about, you won’t get bored and your readers will see your enthusiasm.

The video interview ‘Blogging for Startups’ (which is broken down into sections) is well worth watching as they discuss: 

• The benefits of blogging (from a business perspective)
• Which software to use (see section 2)
• How to generate traffic (visitors to your site)
• How to convert traffic into followers (such as e-mail subscribers) and customers 

Step 2: Choose a blogging platform