How to become a successful food blogger. What is food blogging and what is it used for? How to write posts

New accounts and channels regularly appear on Instagram and YouTube, where people share useful (and not so useful) food tips. But not every such project becomes popular. Let's find out why this happens and how to start making decent money from a food blog.

How to choose the right niche and target audience

Food blogging is a fairly specific topic, and to work with it you need to be an expert in this area. A good example is the author’s blogs of Ukrainian chefs and winners of delicious shows, who position themselves as experts in preparing first and second courses, pastries, desserts, confitures and sweets. They just found their niche and the audience they are interested in, and today individual bloggers have at least 160 thousand subscribers.

To repeat similar success, first of all, you need to determine your niche and specialization as accurately as possible. Popular destinations today:

• healthy eating;
• sports nutrition;
• baby food;
• cuisines of the world;
• reviews of restaurants and unique food from famous chefs;
• liquor reviews;
• author's cuisine in a unique style.

The main platform for attracting audiences today is YouTube, as people have quickly become accustomed to receiving information in video format. Moreover, for filming at the start, you do not need to rent an expensive studio; you can start from your own kitchen, which should be prepared in advance.

How to prepare a location for filming a food blog

People like an attractive picture, which means the main task of a food blogger is to provide a beautiful shot. To do this you will need:

• good camerawith a lens for macro photography of the finished dish at close range;
• modern kitchen gadgetsand beautiful dishes;
• functional area, which will become the main filming location.

Experts from the Ukrainian company BEVERS MARMYR suggested that the best solution for organizing the kitchen work surface would benatural stone countertop . This material looks amazing on camera, does not lose its gloss with daily use, and can be an excellent backdrop for filming both the cooking process and finished dishes.

How to work correctly with your target audience

When everything is prepared for filming, the main questions remain - the idea and its implementation. And while most novice food bloggers have no problems with ideas, almost everyone has problems with quality implementation. What to do in this case? Of course, seek help from professionals.

Today, according to bloggers, the best mentors in Ukraine are those who know exactlyhow to become a video blogger are considered teachers of the video blogging academy - AIR academy. They quickly and effectively explain the specifics of YouTube to beginners, help significantly improve their existing knowledge, and teach them how to create truly high-quality, and therefore in-demand, content.

So, to summarize: to become a great food blogger, you need to decide on the right content, prepare the right location and organize the launch of your blog with the help of professional mentors. Well, then you’ll just start making good money doing something interesting to you. Go for it!

editor-in-chief of the website "M.Vkus"

If you like to cook, photograph food and post pictures on social networks, then you have probably thought about becoming a food blogger. In this article we will not tell you how to do this easier, but we will start from the very beginning. So, a food blogger’s kitchen is not at all like the kitchen of an ordinary housewife. Or rather, it is similar, but it contains such items and devices that you would never even think of purchasing. However, many successful food bloggers admit that these are the things that help them create interesting compositions and memorable photos. So, what is the bare minimum?

1. Photophone

A well-worn kitchen countertop is not the best backdrop for a beautifully decorated dish. Moreover, old, untreated wood is in fashion now. Ideally with moss or traces of bark beetles, the older it looks, the better. If at the dacha or outside the city you can put such a table in an open gazebo and film your culinary compositions on the street, then in a city apartment, and even in winter, you have to think about how to get out of the situation. The easiest way is to have a special board that will serve as a background for your photos. You can build it yourself or buy it from numerous online stores on Instagram using the hashtags #instaphone or #photophone. Usually these are several boards nailed together and painted a certain color. Most often, one side is one color, for example white, and the other is another - black or dark brown. Even simple photos against such a background look stylish and interesting.

2. Kitchen towels

“The Naked Chef” Jamie Oliver introduced the fashion for photographs of pots and pans standing on the table on a crumpled towel. It’s as if you were cooking, took it off the heat and grabbed the first thing that came to hand. The towel, of course, is not particularly new, and not very clean either - a work item that is used all the time. This trend quickly caught on and has not gone out of fashion for many years now. It is clear that you save this towel, bought at a flea market or found in the attic at the dacha, and do not use it on the farm except for staged photos. In the frame, everything looks deliberately careless and very homely.

3. Wooden cutting boards

Preferably not new either, maybe burnt somewhere on the side, with deep knife marks and abrasions. Ideally, if not yet factory-made, but handmade - with uneven edges and a not very regular geometric shape. If you are seriously interested in food photography, then have a couple of such boards in stock - and your gastronomic compositions will always be in trend.

4. Long tweezers

Take a close look at the food photos in expensive cookbooks or restaurant profiles. What you take for deliberate negligence is labor-intensive work to build a composition on a plate, which can take the chef more than one minute. That is why many of them always carry long tweezers in their pocket, most often also with curved edges, which allows them to beautifully arrange everything on a plate without fear of spoiling the food with their fingers. Here - a mint leaf, there - a crystal of sea salt or pink peppercorn. In general, you can’t go anywhere without tweezers.

5. A skein of twine

It may sound far-fetched, but a simple roll of twine will transform your food photography. It can be used for a variety of purposes: tying bunches of fresh herbs (for example, rosemary) with twine, hanging homemade tags on glass bottles of oil or jars of spices on strings. You can also beautifully unravel the string somewhere at the edge of the frame and casually put antique scissors nearby (you can even use rusty ones that haven’t cut anything for many years). It will look very stylish!

6. Vintage dishes

We know very well that cooking in modern cookware, for example with Teflon coating, is much more convenient. However, if you dream of becoming a food blogger, then you can’t do without your grandmother’s well-worn duckling pan, an old cast-iron frying pan or a battered saucepan. You may not be able to look at this utensil without tears in real life, but in photographs such utensils look very interesting and attract new fans to your account. If you don’t believe me, look at popular food profiles on Instagram, likeFood52 or Jamie Oliver.

7. Set of spices

Try this experiment. Place a plate of food and take a photo - from the side or from above, you can just use your smartphone. Now take a couple of colorful peppercorns, a cinnamon stick or star anise and scatter them carelessly around the plate. Take another photo and compare it with the first one. That is why real food bloggers, in addition to beautiful interesting dishes and original cutlery, various boards, towels, potholders and all sorts of other things that look stylish in the frame, always have a supply of different spices to give even the most ordinary dish and simple composition an interesting look.

As you can see, to become a food blogger, you don’t need anything supernatural or any large-scale investments. You can easily make many of today’s fashionable accessories with your own hands, find them in your dacha or in your grandmother’s chest.

Today, food blogging is becoming no less popular in Russia than beauty, fashion or fitness blogs. This phenomenon is explained very simply - people love to read about simple and understandable things, and what could be more understandable and practical than cooking recipes, because if desired, anyone can repeat this in their kitchen.

However, in the apparent simplicity of the task - creating a popular food blog - there is also a big problem hidden. The fact is that today there are no ordinary sites with recipes on the Internet, and therefore, in order to stand out from the crowd of your own kind, you need to take a number of points into account. Let's talk about them!

So, there are a lot of recipes on the Internet, so your attempts to surprise the public by cooking something that no one has cooked before will, as a rule, be doomed to failure. To interest your audience, start your story about a particular dish with a personal story, and the more touching, funny, naive or unusual story you tell, the more people will come to your post.

By the way, an excellent illustration of this principle can be the bestseller of the Mexican writer Esquivel Laura “Chocolate with boiling water”, however, everything was the other way around - every milestone in the life of the main character of the novel was preceded by a traditional recipe for Mexican cuisine. However, all aspiring food bloggers should read this book to understand how quickly personal stories combined with a recipe hook the reader, and why a recipe presented in this way will interest the audience many times more than a dry listing of ingredients or a meticulous description of the process cooking.

The main thing that distinguishes a professional food blog from a low-quality one is the presence of good photographs. Unfortunately, photographing food is not an easy task, because even a dish designed by a food stylist, if shot with an iPhone and in low light, looks, to put it mildly, unappetizing in the photograph. Therefore, make sure to purchase a high-quality camera, a tripod and a 24-inch softbox with a flash with 1/4 power. Attending photography courses will also not be superfluous, but you must remember that in the case of photographing anything, the following rule firmly works - quantity always turns into quality, so if you are not ready to attend photography courses, then watch photo lessons online, more often cook and shoot more. The result will be noticeable within a couple of months.

A blogger who does not want to fall out of the top must write every day, and ideally twice a day, which, of course, is very labor-intensive. If you add to this the purchase of the necessary ingredients, cooking and a photo shoot for each individual dish, then it’s time to quit your job and devote yourself entirely to cooking, filming and writing posts. If you are not yet ready for such a radical turn of events, then at the initial stage it makes sense to use services for delivering products according to prescriptions.

One of the most popular today is SHEFMARKET, which delivers products according to prescriptions in Moscow and the Moscow region, St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region, Vladimir and Nizhny Novgorod. The service database contains 400 recipes, with its help you can easily plan what exactly you will cook and what you are going to write about. The recipe database also contains very rare dishes, for example, Asian, Libyan, Australian or Moroccan cuisine.

The service recently launched a mobile application for iOS, with its help you can not only quickly place an order via iPhone, but also easily manage information in your personal account, for example, track the status of an order, change the delivery time or address, view order history, or connect to the application social network accounts. Yes, app users will be the first to know about discounts and special promotions, and when they sign up for a weekly subscription, service users receive a 10% discount on smoothie sets and dinners.

4. Indicate the calorie content and target audience of the dish

It would seem like simple advice, but everyone forgets about it. At the end of each recipe, be sure to indicate the calorie content of the dish, and using tags - the potential target audience of your culinary masterpiece, for example, “Dessert for a romantic dinner,” “Dish for losing weight,” “To please your husband,” and so on. By the way, it is a clear category that will allow search engines to index your blog faster, and your readers will not be confused and will not get bogged down in an endless number of recipes.

Of course, it would be worth adding Youtube to the list, but, let's be honest, not all of us feel confident in front of the camera, even if it is a mobile phone camera and a loved one is filming. But Instagram and Pinterest are very convenient social networks, because here you can display only the best photos and accompany them with detailed recipes. However, if your goal is to promote a blog, and not an account on a social network, then you should not post only photos of dishes with a detailed description of the cooking process on Instagram and Pinterest.

This is good for the initial audience, but once you reach 5,000 subscribers, use social networks the way filmmakers use Youtube, that is, your publications can become a kind of trailer for a blog post. For example, on Instagram you publish a recipe for a sauce, and what dishes it would be appropriate in - you tell on your blog, or you publish on a social network a photo from a master class of a famous chef, but about what and how you cooked together, tell in detail on your blog site. It makes sense to prepare publications for social networks in advance, for example, a week in advance, so that updates do not take up much of your time during working days.

Just because your audience loves reading about food doesn't mean you need to feed them just recipes. Readers will find your travel posts, one way or another, related to gastronomy no less interesting, for example, a story about the cuisine of the country or region where you spent your vacation, a review of a new restaurant, an interview with an award-winning chef, or a report from a master class on cooking.

By the way, photographs from a mobile phone also look appropriate in such materials, and you can start going to culinary master classes for free by making friends with PR services involved in promoting the national gastronomy of different countries of the world, as a rule, they belong to the tourism offices of that or another country, and their contacts are available on the official websites of tourism offices.

7. Master the quick video format

It is impossible to imagine this girl in one form: TV presenter, journalist, food blogger, producer of the popular website Handmadefood, cook, and finally, a beautiful girl! We talked with Elena and learned how to become a culinary trendsetter and convert your talent into business.

F.: From the outside, the current food direction of your career seems like a sharp turn. How did your passion for food arise and where did it all start?

Usanova Elena: At the age of 17, I got married, gave birth to a child, and, as expected, became interested in preparing various dishes for my family. This continued exactly until the end of maternity leave, and then education, work, career - I forgot about the kitchen for 12 years. But one day, I was hooked by a beautiful photograph and a recipe with an unusual combination of products. I decided to try it, and again turned into a culinary religion, but this time in terms of style, ease of preparation and taste. Experimenting in the kitchen resonated with my family, thereby motivating me more and more. Even during the negotiations, I thought about how the ingredients and colors on the plate would be combined.

I think it’s logical for any woman to cook and be in the kitchen, but turning it into a business project and making your hobby a trend is the sharp turn in my life that everyone is talking about. However, this is just another facet of Elena Usanova.

F.: Recently, cooking and gastronomy have become a new religion, what do you think is the reason for this?
Usanova Elena: I think that cooking has become a new religion for several reasons: lack of communication, the revival of family values, and as a result, the desire to create home comfort, including by cooking for your loved ones. It seems to me that we have simply returned to the roots, to the cult of food that our parents had. So, cooking is more like an “old new religion”. And the Internet is responsible for its spread; online we can observe global trends, learn new things, see what others are doing and get inspired.

F.: Tell us about the mission of your Handmade food website?
Usanova Elena: All my projects are educational. Handmade, from which many Russian designers grew, “Petevka v life”, and now the culinary portal Handmadefood. Food is a lifelong love. Our task is to show how to live deliciously and beautifully, at work, in restaurants and at home.

The personality of the creator also matters, I motivate with my example: everyone can cook - it’s interesting, but the main thing is that if I succeed, you can too. Therefore, it was important to make the site as simple and convenient as possible. It took more than 1.5 years, but the task was completed: excellent navigation and memorable design allow everyone to be involved in the process. Both for those new to the kitchen and for people looking for complex, interesting recipes.

F.: What is a taste for life?
Elena Usanova: This is a stable feeling of joy when you live every day with pleasure.

F.: All your projects are successful, how do you achieve this?
Usanova Elena: The formula for success is the same for any business. You need to believe in yourself, believe in yourself, and pursue the only benefit - your own development. If you have all this, then you are a full-fledged project in yourself; all that remains is to implement yourself in your chosen area, first of all, for yourself.

F.: What is most important for achieving success: chance, work or persistent pursuit of the goal?
Usanova Elena: Everything is relative, there is success in your personal life, in your career, in self-realization. It has different expressions - it can be recognition, family, money, or clear, inner peace and confidence in one’s success. Even with everything, some people feel unstable and vibrate all the time. For me, success is, first of all, balance and harmony, when you know what you want, do your best, are satisfied with yourself and have a strategy for the future.

F.: Share the secrets of time management? How to manage everything?
Usanova Elena: There is no need to rush to get everything done. My day is very busy, but logical. I wake up at nine in the morning, drink a glass of water, then turn on music and make myself a cup of aromatic coffee - this has been a long-standing ritual. Then I check my email for 30-40 minutes and make a work plan for the day, if it is not done in the evening. I take the time to look at comments on social networks and on the website, thereby preparing myself for the working day. Then breakfast, the absence of it is extremely harmful to appearance and family, but I usually have lunch at meetings. For convenience, I always schedule at least two meetings in one place. Sometimes during the week I stay at home: partners, agreements, pr planning, it turns out that it’s completely ordinary office work - every day from morning to evening! But I do it for myself, so I’m not in a hurry and I’m not late. This is my own process, where no one needs anything except me. I moderated the degree of responsibility because I realized that if something is not accomplished, the world will not stop! I urge you to approach your work without fanaticism, everything should be a joy!

F.: What is the best thing about your job?
Usanova Elena: I think it's satisfaction from what was done. And also when people become your followers. Every woman should have a continuation, for some it is in children, for others in employees, and for others in creativity and business.

Victoria Reshulskaya specially for FOODIKA.

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Everything is fine with bloggers in our country - just look at any closed preview of some anticipated film - there is literally nowhere to sit. But there is a category of bloggers who do not need to go out into the city to “catch” a topic for their new post. They draw inspiration from their own kitchen. Today we bring to your attention seven top food bloggers on Instagram, with whom life will become more interesting and tastier.

Daniya Altaeva

@daniya_alt

Perhaps the most popular culinary blogger in Kazakhstan. Denmark's Instagram following is inexorably approaching one million, and her skills are growing exponentially. The history of the account is very simple: after two years on maternity leave, a young mother decided to diversify her life a little and began cooking according to recipes from popular Western video bloggers. Her husband suggested that she make short and simple videos herself - she still cooks for the family every day... So 2.5 years ago this account appeared, which is now bookmarked by women and even men from many countries around the world.

By the way, Denmark does not bother with professional equipment and expensive ingredients - it buys dishes and food at flea markets and bazaars in Almaty. A worthy answer to those who believe that working as a food blogger requires a lot of investment.

Alia Orman

@aliya.orman

Aliya Orman is a mother of two boys who is expecting her third child and is not wasting any time. Her channel is both a food and “mom” blog. She talks about pregnancy, raising children (her own and in general), simple recipes for delicious dishes, and household life hacks. Recently, Aliya was invited to the first culinary TV channel in Kazakhstan, “Magic of the Kitchen.” Getting your own original show on a republican TV channel thanks to a blog on Instagram is not entirely common, at least in our country. Alia took advantage of the offer wisely. The “Easy Recipes for a Delicious Life” program is a treasure trove of the best recipes. But there is another important point here: both canonical kitchen traditions and super new trends in cooking - no matter what Aliya talks about in her program, it’s all very easy to prepare.

“During this pregnancy there were a lot of filming offers. But I had to turn down some because of toxicosis, I couldn’t cook at all, and some were postponed because some companies don’t work with pregnant women, such discrimination. And then the stars aligned so that "Everything was decided in one day! And now, a few days later, I am sharing with you the first episode of the program!" – Aliya excitedly shared her first television successes.

Ramina Almas

@ramina_almas

The girl began helping her mother in the kitchen when she was only one and a half years old. And since the age of three, Ramina has been cooking all her own. On her page you can find step-by-step recipes for a wide variety of dishes - from desserts to winter preparations. The little cook is not afraid to prepare multi-step and complex meat dishes, and also does dancing, gymnastics, acts in TV series and acts as a model.

The baby was walking in evening dresses on a professional catwalk at the age of four, which is not surprising given her unusual appearance. Open, mischievous and fearless, she fights in the kitchen with fire and frying pans, and we learn from her. To be honest, we don’t always manage to cook the same way.

Aigerim Sabdenova

@sabdenova_

If there is real homemade baking, then it is “baked” on Aigerim Sabdenova’s page. It's hard to believe that this slender, romantic girl is the mother of three children, one of whom is only six months old. A successful food blogger, he regularly goes offline and conducts master classes on cake baking and confectionery skills.

Aigerim’s page is a mix of traditional “mom’s” posts, simple recipes, memories, funny stories and observations from life. A special place on the page is occupied by a parade of culinary works created by Aigerim’s students. It’s unclear when she manages to do everything, but at night she also watches TV series. And he also leaves comments about this in his profile. In general, if you want family warmth and comfort, this is the place for you.

Jamilya Smayil

@jamichef

Jamila's video recipes are very popular and sell like hotcakes. She lived with her children and husband in Saudi Arabia for three years, and then returned to Astana. Jamila does not call herself a blogger and does not believe that she has the right to teach people how to live correctly. She simply cooks for her children, and so that successful culinary discoveries do not go to waste, she tells about them to her 93,000-strong audience on Instagram.

“Those who meet me in life say that on Instagram I’m more daring, but in life I’m calm. I don’t think it’s necessary to share negativity, there’s plenty of it on other platforms. You can look at my recipes and laugh. Not at people, of course Although I consider it obligatory for a person to be able to laugh at himself,” Jamilya said in Comode.

Polina Ldokova

@happy_poli

Polina Ldokova is a food blogger and food photographer. She conducts master classes on food photography throughout Kazakhstan, works with restaurants, confectionery shops, and glossy stores. Polina believes that photographs of food should evoke appetite. It is important to convey the atmosphere, and the photographs themselves should not be polished. They should contain life itself: rumpled pillows, if we are talking about morning coffee in bed, or aged furniture - if we need to convey coziness and comfort in the house.

It is not surprising that Polina Ldokova’s stylish page pleases the eye with a strict coffee color scheme. Here you will not see master classes on cooking lagman or recipes for homemade Bolognese pasta. Here - the beauty of food, strict compositions and a lot of coffee. Polina also realizes her talent - to perceive gastronomy not as a way to survive, but as art - in the chair of the editor-in-chief of Crème brûlée magazine.