FNCE Reflections -- Melissa Grindle

This year I was fortunate enough to attend the 2012 Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo in Philadelphia.  A wide variety of sessions were available, including an entire track on informatics.  One session, “Calling All Food Bloggers”, caught my attention as I have been writing my own blog for two years now.

The moderator and speakers, all well versed in the blog world, gave helpful insight into the world of food blogs for dietitians.

As dietitians, we compete with the voices of so many self-proclaimed experts in health that populate the World Wide Web.  Many bloggers who write about food, nutrition, and health have no such background, which shows there is a need for the experts to break into the conversation.  It is our chance to get accurate and credible nutrition information out there. 

So where to start?

Toby Amidor and Dana Angelo White of the popular Healthy Eats blog gave strategies on how to set up and maintain your own blog.

·         First:  Figure out what you have time for.  Readers like regularity, so figuring out early whether you have time to devote to 1 post a week or 5 is important.  Take into consideration how much research you will need for each post.  Recipes may take less time, while giving information on a hot topic such as coconut oil may take more time with research and fact checking.

·         Second:  Find the best tools for you.  Many different blogging platforms exist: wordpress, blogger, etc.  Which one will you use?  What will you do for pictures?  Buy stock photos or take your own?

·         Third: Engage your readers.  Twitter and Facebook are great ways to inform readers of new content or to reach out to new readers.  While you could just tweet a link to your newest post, there are better times of day to reach viewers:  morning, lunchtime, and after dinner.  These are the times when most people are checking social media and actually have time to read blogs.

These three things are a perfect jumping off point for creating and starting your own blog.  Other tips?  Make sure you write about topics that interest you!  Only then will you engage your readers, because you are engaged in your topic.

Now…what will you blog about?