How to promote a food blog post

Creating a blog post is a lot of work, especially when you’re developing a recipe, styling and shooting it before writing the whole thing up for your website. But once you’ve hit the publish button, there’s still a heck of a lot of stuff left to do!

We’ve created a checklist of the 10 typical tasks bloggers run through to make sure their latest post gets the maximum amount of love…

1. Linkys

• Check out all the foodie challenges being hosted on other people’s blogs and hook your recipe up to all of the relevant ones.
• You’ll need to check the terms and conditions of each challenge which usually specify a badge that you’ll need to display on your post, which site to link to and which hashtag to use to promote your post on social media. In return the host will usually comment on your post, give it some love on social media and hopefully include a link to it in their round-up.
• The more linkys you join in with, the more you’ll get to know the food blogger community and become part of the scene.

2. Facebook

• First create a post on your blog’s Facebook page, using a stand-out landscape image, a captivating introduction and tagging anyone relevant to your post. If it’s a sponsored post make sure you label the post with #ad.
• Share this post on your personal profile to make sure your friends can see it and share it too.
• Are you part of any Commenting Threads? Make sure you drop your link into the mix  and stop by other people’s blogs to comment in return. The etiquette with commenting threads can vary, but usually there are a specific amount of posts you should comment on and it should be done straight away.
• Are there any other pages or groups on Facebook that you’re a member of that you think would be interested in your post? Make sure you’re sharing it there too…
• Give it a boost! Even just spending £3 on boosting a Facebook post can increase the reach by thousands and you can be really specific about the type of people who get to see it – from how old they are, to where they live and what they’re interested in. Find out more here

3. Twitter

• Don’t just send out one tweet promoting your blog post, but drip feed the content a few times over the course of a few weeks using a power scheduling tool like Buffer to make sure your followers don’t miss seeing it. Make sure you write each tweet differently every time so you don’t bore the pants off your followers with the same automated tweet.
• Tag people who might be interested and use a meaningful hashtag that will hopefully attract fresh followers.
• Do a bit of research into hashtag hours as this is a great forum for promoting your content. Whether it’s topic based or regional, there are loads out there and are a great way to do a bit of digital networking.

4. Instagram

• Choose the most beautiful image from your blog post and put it on Instagram with an enticing caption that will urge people over to your blog for the recipe.
• Change the link on your profile to match that of the blog post to score more hits.
• Hashtag wisely – stay on topic, don’t use more than 10, aim for hashtags that are used by thousands rather than millions and keep across any that have been banned.
• Go like and comment on other people’s content using the same hashtag as you, as they might come back and return the favour.
• If you’re busy you can use a handy scheduling tool like Later.com to orgainse your posts for the days or even weeks ahead. It won’t actually publish the posts for you, but it allows you to create posts that will then pop up on your phone ready for you to copy and paste into Instagram at the designated time.

5. Pinterest

• Create a great pin using a simple graphics tool like Canva to stick at the bottom of your blog post for people to pin. They might even take a year to gain momentum, but once a pin takes off it can generate thousands of hits to a page every day.
• Take some time out each day to manually repin your content to relevant boards or you can use a tool like Tailwind which does it automatically
• Pro Food Blogger Sarah from Taming Twins has a brilliant post packed with Pinterest tips if you really want to master it: 9 Secrets that will explode your Pinterest blog traffic

6. Picture Power

• If your blog post contains beautiful pictures that you’ve taken yourself,  then you should use them to really boost your traffic by submitting them to sites like Tastespotting and Foodgawker. Be warned though, standards are ultra high and they can VERY picky about the images they choose. Don’t be too disheartened if your images get rejected, just take a note of any feedback they give you and keep trying!

7. Automation

• If there are social media platforms that you’re not checking into super regularly, but you want to keep a presence alive for your blog then make sure you automate your blog posts to appear on your profile as a bare mininum.
• Not everyone loves platforms like Linkedin and Google+, but it’s good for your digital profile to be on them!
• Again set up your posts to automatically appear as soon as you publish so it’s one less thing to

8. Yummly

• This is a fab recipe collection website where you can save all of your favourite recipes you’ve seen online – including your own. Not only is it a great way to organise recipes, it attracts other Yummly users to your blog posts! Check out Yummly to find out how to download the nifty bookmarklet so you can get started.

9. Flipboard

• Flipboard gathers content from social media and all over the web and presents it in magazine format, allowing users to “flip” through the articles, images and videos being shared. So if you’re creating awesome content, you definitely want it to get noticed on Flipboard – find out more in this article from Meer Social

10. StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is the smart hub of content that matches users with stuff they’re interested in while filtering everything else out. Get your blog post stumbled and see the page views spike! Get the lowdown on using StumbleUpon to boost your blog posts via the Kissmetrics blog

Don’t forget…

To add social sharing buttons onto your blog to make sure it gets promoted far and wide, you can use a WordPress plugin like Scriptless Social Sharing which is a light, quick loading plugin. But if you want social media sharing counts then go for Social Warfare.

What do YOU think?

Have we missed anything off the list? Let us know how you spread the love for your blog posts in the comments below!