According to Fine Dining Lovers, there are an estimated 3 million food bloggers. Whether you’re a chef, a foodie, or part of the growing army of professional food writers, you know that blogging about food influences what people eat and how they find recipe or restaurant recommendations.
If you’re a food blogger, your site should show off your content and images. In this post, you’ll learn about the Jetpack features that can help you accomplish this. With a visually appealing and welcoming site, you’ll increase reader engagement and earn a loyal following of food fans.
Let’s get started!
Make your content and images stand out
To stand out in the crowded food blogging landscape, your pages really have to shine. This entails writing content that people enjoy reading, making it easy for them to find your posts, and including photos that make mouths water.
Jetpack has tools to help make these tasks a little easier:
- The Top Posts & Pages Widget will direct readers to your most popular content.
- Image options like Tiled Galleries and Carousel will make your food photos look especially delectable.
Let’s look at these a little closer.
Use the Top Posts & Pages Widget to show off popular posts
Just as every dog has its day, every blog has its post. If you want new readers to engage with your blog, direct them to your most popular posts.
These posts are likely the ones with the most comments — which validates that you have an active community — and are well-written and informative — which encourages visitors to read more of your content.
Add Jetpack’s Top Posts & Pages Widget to your sidebar or footer (or both) to make it easy for visitors to find your most popular posts.
This widget will show off your most popular content, allowing new visitors to easily find posts they’ll enjoy reading.
Enhance your images with Tiled Galleries and Carousel
Who doesn’t love looking at appetizing photos of food? These are sure to keep readers coming back for more of your work. If you’re already uploading photos to your blog, Jetpack’s features will make them stand out even more.
Activate the Tiled Galleries feature when creating a gallery within a post or page to display multiple images in a way that’s much more interesting than a standard grid of images.
Display multiple photos in a tiled gallery, as shown here.
If you really want your images to stand out, consider using Carousel. This feature enables visitors to click on images within your posts to see a full-screen, distraction-free carousel of each photo.
This feature allows visitors to view each photo individually, in a large, distraction-free interface. Yum!
Both of these features will give your site visitors opportunities to further appreciate your images, inspiring them to read more about your food and business.
Engage your audience and encourage sharing
The key to a successful blog is having loyal, engaged followers who are eager to read and share every one of your new posts. You can boost reader engagement on your site with the following Jetpack features:
- Social Sharing and Likes make it easy for your readers to tell their friends about your great content.
- Comments give you the opportunity to start conversations with readers and fans, creating more authentic relationships.
Activate Social Sharing and Likes on your blog
You can add both Social Sharing buttons and a Like button to each one of your posts, allowing visitors to show their appreciation and share your content with anyone they like.
Social buttons and the “Like” option will let your followers show their appreciation… and possibly bring in new readers for you!
People love hitting a “like” button. It allows readers to show their appreciation for a post, and it’s often easier than posting a comment.
Also, sharing helps spread the word about your content. Making it easy for readers to share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks will increase the number of people who see your posts, including future fans or customers.
You can also use the Publicize feature to automatically post new content to your own social media pages, saving you from manually having to do it and ensuring that your followers receive your latest and greatest as soon as it goes live.
Use your comments to grow a community of readers
The most successful blogs bring together a community of people who love reading and talking about a certain topic. Your readers are food lovers like you, so encourage them to leave comments and add their own ideas.
If visitors ask questions, be sure to answer them. This will help readers feel connected to you, leading them to develop a sense of loyalty to your blog.
With Jetpack, your users can log into their existing social accounts to leave comments on your posts. This makes it easier for them to contribute and share, as they will have one less login to remember and won’t have to sign up for your site.
Configure Comments via your Jetpack settings, and visitors will be able to leave comments using their Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or WordPress.com accounts.
One less login to remember: Jetpack allows you to enable social logins, so visitors can leave or respond to comments using their existing Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or WordPress.com accounts.
Anything that you can do to promote community engagement will increase your readership. You’ll know that you’ve hit blogging gold once your readers start replying to other comments!
Create an amazing food blog with Jetpack
If you want to grow your audience, make sure that your content looks fantastic. To curate a real community of readers on your food blog, activate the Jetpack features described above and observe how they affect your blog.
Can you think of any other tips or tricks to offer the food blogger community? Share them with us in the comments section below.
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