Social Media Follow & Share (For Food Bloggers)

Calling all food bloggers! I’ve got a brand new Facebook group called Social Media Follow & Share (for food bloggers). I wanted to create a space where food bloggers can organically grow, through sharing quality content and authentic reciprocation.

If you are reading this, it is highly likely you are a food blogger. If not, I can’t imagine you will get a lot out of this post. You’re much better off looking at my delightful Swedish lime and blackberry mud cake, or cherry and lemon soda bread. 
 

Would you like to get your recipes seen by more people?

But, if you are a food blogger, you’ve come to the right place. Do you ever feel that it is impossible to get your recipes noticed? Do you spend a long time creating quality content, only for hardly anyone to see it? I do. It’s particularly frustrating for me because this is the second blog I have created (my original blog, The Culinary Jumble, was started almost ten years ago), and had to grow from scratch. Not only that, but a couple of years ago I moved, and couldn’t take my little studio with me. I had nowhere to take my pictures (to the standard I wanted to, anyway), and decided to quit. Thankfully, the passion was reignited. However, in the meantime, all the hard work of establishing regular readers, a social media presence, and traffic from Google went up in smoke. 

This time around, it has been much tougher. Success on Instagram now seems to come to only a small minority, and Pinterest algorithms are a complete mystery to me. Despite having 7k followers, I now have only 45k monthly views, when a couple of years ago it was a million. Not to mention my beloved Foodgawker is up for sale and no longer showing content. So, I definitely felt a need to fill a space, and this is where my new group Social Media Follow and Share comes in.

Social media sharing on Facebook

In the past, I have participated in many social media groups on Facebook. I’ve never really enjoyed mass, random sharing just for the sake of it. It often felt fake, tedious and laborious. And I really didn’t want to be committed to sharing all posts in a thread, which always felt like a struggle, especially due to the time difference for me compared to the other members. I wanted real engagement and interaction with people who understand what it is like to be a food blogger, but none of them have ever been quite right. So, if the mountain won’t come to Mohammad…..

So what’s different about my Facebook group?

I think the biggest difference is that there is no commitment to sharing a certain number of posts in one day (or at all). The group will have two separate functions: following and sharing (or liking and commenting on Instagram).

• Following accounts

Unlike other groups, the follow threads will run continuously. New members can drop their social media account link in the relevant thread. They then reciprocate by following one person already in the thread. This means that they can look through and choose a blogger who they feel is a good match. I really enjoy following other food bloggers, so this also means that I personally will be following way more than just one. However, the emphasis is on not needing to do that. 

One great thing about doing it this way is that you don’t have to follow people who don’t quite align with how you see things. Everyone will be a food blogger with their own blog (I will be approving all requests). I love stunning food images (who doesn’t?). So, the photography is a huge part of the enjoyment of blogging for me. I look for others who also have quality images. For example, I found it challenging to pin sub-par images to my own Pinterest. And there’s no judging here. We all start somewhere, and improve over time. The main point is the choice, rather than feeling obliged. 

• Shares, likes and comments

Bloggers will drop links to social media posts. They can leave three on any one thread, but for each time they leave one of their own links, they need to reciprocate by sharing (or liking) two from other people. These threads will have a definite time frame. Right now, with me as the only member, I think it will be once a month. However, as the group grows, this can be increased to once a week (or even a day). As with the follows, bloggers get to choose who they are going to pin, slip, share or comment on. 

So, what do you think? Right now, the group is very much in the embryonic stage, so things may change. If you’re interested, go and have a look: Social Media Follow & Share (For Food Bloggers), and I will see you there.