January 18, 2012 Can food bloggers help your marketing efforts? Katie Parla

Types of food bloggers ✤ Hobby bloggers ✤ Amateur Cooks (recipe-based bloggers) ✤ Freelance Journalists ✤ Chefs, food artisans & other food professionals ✤ Farmers & other agriculture professionals

All types of food bloggers can help in your marketing efforts, though they must be approached in different ways.

Hobby Bloggers ✤ These bloggers write and research in their spare time with differing frequency ✤ They likely earn little to no money from their blogs ✤ Open to collaborations, guest posts ✤ Open to social aspects of blogging (networking events, dinners, farm visits)

Amateur Cooks ✤ These recipe-driven blogs are written by people passionate about food with or without professional cooking experience ✤ Some make money and expect freebies while others are open to collaborations, guest blog posts, or just learning about new ingredients ✤ Offer to write a guest blog post featuring your seasonal ingredients or offer to supply ingredients for their next vegetable-based recipe ✤ Organize a cooking demonstration at farm or local market in which blogger cooks with your produce

Freelance Journalists ✤ These bloggers have to sell a story or a pitch to an editor. Subjects must be timely and trend-related. ✤ Open to hearing newsy items: are you trying out a new technique? have you started cultivating an heirloom variety? are you hosting farm visits or events? These are all newsy items a freelancer would be interested in ✤ Drop them an with news or invite them for a visit to the farm. Be friendly but not overzealous. ✤ Get them to write about issues that matter and affect farming

Chefs, food artisans & other food professionals ✤ Lots of chefs and food professionals have blogs or are on Twitter ✤ Observe how they work and market themselves ✤ Interact with them: follow their blogs and leave comments; follow them on Twitter and engage

Farmers & other agricultural professionals ✤ Follow blogs of other farmers and leave comments ✤ Follow them on Twitter, observe how they interact and engage with them

Matt Allison, Farmer & Social Networker ✤ Matt is a farmer, blogger and social networker ✤ Working in South Africa, he often felt isolated and sought ways to interact with others in the business ✤ He started a blog about farming and cooking ✤ He is on

Matt & Food Bloggers ✤ Collaborate ✤ Guest posts ✤ Interact ✤ Learn/Introduce

Get involved... ✤ Set up a free microblog (Twitter, Tumblr) ✤ Set up a Wordpress blog ✤ Interact with bloggers in a meaningful way ✤ Post photos, make it personal ✤ Use a smartphone for one-touch sharing ✤ Tips on effortswww.parlafood.com