Tips to be a successful food blogger

Background

Today, people live such busy lives that they all to often miss a meal (or two). Because of their hectic schedules, people are dining out frequently. According to U.S. News, although most foods served in restaurants are nutritious these days, they contain high amounts of fat and calories, and can be detrimental to your health if consumed on a regular basis (Kandil). While people realize that eating out is harmful for their health, they are starting to seek information about how to cook at home. Food blogs are beneficial resources for these people because the blogs value information about nutritious foods, effective eating strategies, and contain a lot of recipes which people can follow at home. In addition, cooking at home promotes new habits as well as developing a new skill.

If you like food and you like to write, you may consider starting a food blog to showcase your passion. Or, maybe you have a food blog already, and you want to take it to the next level. It doesn’t take anything fancy to start a food blog, or to make a food blog successful. You don’t need an expensive camera or a web designer or a diploma from a culinary school. All you need is a passion for food and a desire to share that passion.

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Purpose

The purpose of this wiki is to inform current bloggers how to better effectively communicate (i.e. using the ethos, logos, pathos) to their own audiences. We give suggestions that that blogger may change and tailor to their audience as they see fit.

Our audience is made up of people who are already food bloggers. They might be interested in learning new techniques from us, or other bloggers, on how to pass on information more effectively through their writing. They could also be interested because they may be losing some of their own audience or want to attract a different demographic. Our audience is those who are bloggers and have some background in the food industry. If they’ve been cooks, waiters, teachers, farmers or anything that gives them credit to let others know that they know food.

We hope our audience will use this wiki to help themselves keep the attention of their audience as well as learn new effective digital writing skills. Our hope is that they get effective skills of communication to keep their audience as well as give them more reliability and become more understandable, so they are able to build their audience and keep the one’s they have. Understanding digital writing from an academic standpoint would be good for our audience because they may be skilled in one area, but may lack on how to translate that to their viewers. For example, they may know about many fruits and vegetables that go well together during the changing seasons, but if they are poor are being able to write that to their audience then it doesn’t matter how much they know because the general public wouldn’t be able to understand. This is where we come in handy by helping them achieve that goal of passing their knowledge in a way that can translate to everyone who decides to go read their blog and hopefully take their advice on a restaurant or recipe.

Articles

According to Aristotle, rhetoric is "the ability, in each particular case, to see the available means of persuasion."

In order to be a more effective food blogger who can persuade or motivate his or her audience to participate actively in the blog, you must understand the rhetorical strategies - the way the author manipulates the text’s content, structure, or style to achieve his or her aim. Since the purpose of this page is to inform you how to effectively communicate by using the pathos and the ethos with your audience, this site will help you understand their meanings and it will also show you how to make your writing more persuasive.

We suggest reading the articles on the rhetorical strategies that follow:

How to use ethos in food blog

  • This page illustrates the importance of using ethos appropriately in food blogs. Ethos helps food bloggers establish credibility and communicate with their audiences well. This page also compares two food blogs and analyzes which one uses ethos more effectively.

How to use pathos in food blog

  • This page explains how food bloggers can create a rhetorically effective blog using pathos. This explains the appeals of pathos which is one of the rhetorical strategies food bloggers need to use in order to persuade their audience. This page gives tips and techniques while using examples of several popular food blogs.

Overview of uses for pathos and ethos in food blogs

  • This page will help further explain why rhetorical strategies such as ethos and pathos are important in your food blog. Also will give an overview of putting it all together when writing food blogs.
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