How To Start a Cooking Blog? All you need to know
A cooking blog is a fun, lucrative, and rewarding way to become a member of a massive community that shares a similar sense of love and passion for your most desirable hobby.
If you possess good writing skills, you certainly have zero excuses to enter, become a part of and prosper in this incredibly popular niche, mainly if you focus on a specific area or cater to a chosen audience.
We all know that cooking is an extensive area. So, if you are a food buff who loves to cook and takes absolute delight in reading through food blogs, combine your love for food and interest in food blogs and start sharing your own delectable food recipes with the other bloggers.
Using a carefully thought-out plan and the right approach will help you find your own inimitable space and voice in the bloggers’ community.
Don’t know where or how to start and how to share that mouth-watering recipe with the world? Surely the challenges and exhaustion associated with starting your own cooking channel or blog can be a bit too daunting and overwhelming.
Nevertheless, with the help of our ultimate guide on how to start a cooking blog, you can easily follow all the steps to set up and start running your own one-of-a-kind cooking blog in no time.
Table of Contents
Steps to Starting a Cooking Blog
Before starting your own cooking blog, it is vital to know and decide which specific area you want to center your blogs on. For starters, you must choose a topic of your particular interest. Indeed, there might be some objectives or a specific theme you wish to turn all focus to.
Deciding what kinds of content you want to generate for your target audience is a fast and hassle-free way to stand out from the other renowned bloggers. Without further ado, here is what you should do to start a cooking blog:
1. Choose a Valid Domain Name and Dependable Hosting Site
The first and most essential step is to choose an exclusive domain name for your cooking blog. A domain name refers to a web address through which different users can find and reach your blog on the web.
Find a prospective name for your blog till you land on one that ends with a “.com,” which is the most standard domain suffix.
Hosting is the center of where all your cooking blog-related information, contents, and articles are stored. BlueHost is an ideal hosting company preferred by more than 90% of blog writers due to its exemplary customer support.
Luckily, you can access a free domain name by purchasing a feasible hosting packing from BlueHost for your blog.
After signing up for BlueHost, you can acquire a free domain. Next, you will need to install WordPress and start creating your own eye-catching and drool-worthy food blogs.
- BlueHost will ask you to choose a hosting plan that best suits your needs. The basic one is generally the best plan for blog writers.
- After selecting your plan, you are redirected to a page where you get to choose your domain name. Try developing an impressive and distinctive name to make your cooking blog stand out.
- Now, insert your basic details, including your name, city, country, email id, and home address, on the page that pops up.
- This is followed by package information selection. For this, you should go for the most budget-friendly and preferred account plan for your cooking blog, such as a 1, 2, or 3-year plan.
- Under the billing section, use a card or PayPal option for purchasing your hosting bundle. After accepting the terms and conditions, submit.
- You will receive a notification stating your purchase was successful. Now click on the “Create Account” tab to proceed forward.
- Enter your unique domain name on the following page and establish a secure password for your account. This ends the account creation process, and you are good to start.
2. Install WordPress
After setting up your BlueHost hosting account and getting a unique domain name for your cooking blog, install WordPress as follows:
- Enter your domain name and password for logging in to your BlueHost account.
- Type the name you have selected for your cooking blog, along with an attention-grabbing tagline. You can view a section stating, “Display blog post on.” Tap on “my homepage” to proceed. Tick on all the boxes on the following page and choose a theme of your liking.
- Next, you must tap on the Word Press option on the upper right end, after which you will come across your BlueHost dashboard.
- Now you are ready to create your blog posts, add plugins, choose your theme, and customize everything to your liking.
After installing WordPress, think of all the unique and distinctive ways in which you can personalize and stylize your blog.
3. Design and Personalize your Cooking Blog
Giving your blog a unique, creative, impressive, stylish, and contemporary look are some of the fundamental steps to creating and designing your blog. If your blog appears unappealing, dull, and vague, no user will be attracted.
Even those who land on your blog will instantly leave. This will not only make you lose your followers’ attention and count, but it will also hamper your blog’s search engine optimization (SEO).
Here are some essential tips to beautify your cooking blog and make it more customized, close to your heart, and worthy of drawing in an audience.
● Modify the Theme
Modify your blog’s theme by changing it from the “Appearance” tab on your Word Press dashboard.
You can start off initially by using the free themes and eventually move on to paid themes once your blog grows and generates more traffic.
● Install Basic Plugins
Plugins help add more power and flexibility to your cooking blog. They assist in SEO and enhance the speed of your site.
There are 4 standard plugins that generally all blog writers need to install for their blogs, namely Yoast SEO, Contact Form, Jetpack, and W3 Total Cache.
● Create Assist Pages and Navigation Menu
Pages like About Us and Contact Information are must-haves for all websites and blog pages as they are means of assisting your followers. A navigation menu aids in organizing various categories and topics to present to your followers. This makes it easier and accessible for them and gives them a clear sense of direction around your website.
4. Generate Meaningful and Attention-grabbing Content
Unquestionably, this is the most essential part of creating and maintaining a successfully running blog. Generally, the success of your cooking blog typically depends on the kind of content you generate.
Most individuals prefer writing every day or at least 3-4 days a week at a minimum. This enables your blog to rank efficiently and quicker under the search results.
To start writing your food-related posts, you must go to the posts segment on the WordPress dashboard and tap on “Write a new post.” Use your time wisely to create an abstract and execute the best possible content strategy.
Users like engaging, meaningful, and relevant content. Focus on giving them exactly what they need to outperform other blog writers. The only way to keep your users interested and active is to have a vivid concept of your forte.
● Focus on Details
Details are essential. Focus on generating your content most merely so that your users can easily perform those steps at home.
● Research on Competitors
Thorough research and analysis on your competitors are necessary to see what other food and cooking bloggers are doing to keep up with the competition. Identify and list down their strategies to see what you are missing and use them to your advantage.
● Make it Eye-Pleasing for your Viewers
Lastly, your blog page should be visually appealing and must exhibit the delectableness of your food.
The more eye-pleasing your blog is, the higher the chances of successfully gauging your followers’ interests.
Use a good camera, brilliant lighting angles, excellent writing skills, and an eye for creativity and details.
Frequent writing and practice will lead to higher views and better and more user-engaging posts.
Conclusion
Now that you are done with everything, you can start blogging and create engaging posts.
It is also good to endorse your cooking blog and share your blog posts on various social media channels to drive more consumer traffic.
If you wish to enable the comments option on your posts for your followers to comment, make sure to respond to their queries and moderate them.
Regular cooking inspirations and blog posts will keep your followers coming back for more.
