FNCE Reflections -- Jennifer Vargas

A few weeks ago at the 2012 FNCE conference (Food & Nutrition Conference and Expo), one lecture I was excited to see and attend was “Calling all Food Bloggers: Stay in the Game”.  Why is blogging important to dietitians?  Well, blogging is important for many reasons, all of which were covered by the presenters Toby Amidor and Dana Angelo White, both successful bloggers.

The first reason is that we are Registered Dietitians - or RD(s)to be!  We are the nutrition experts and we need to get our expertise into the world.  There is so much misinformation available in the media today that we need to make sure the correct information is reaching the public.  The Internet is one of the best ways to accomplish this because more people find their health information from the Internet today than ever before.  However, there several points we need to keep in mind when blogging: here are a few from the speakers:

n  Keep it short.  No more than 250 – 600 words.  People are looking for the quick, take-home message.

n  Link out!  Always give credit and a link to any information that is not your own.  For example, if I want to talk about the UMD Dietetic Internship, I need to provide you a way to get to it… like that.

n  Get a conversation going.  Open up your blog to comments.  Many comments can range from agreement to criticism to questions about nutrition news in the media and are food for new blogs.

n  Have fun!  Blogging doesn’t need to be a chore.  It should be something fun that you look forward to doing, so write about topics that are fun and interesting to you.  Put some humor in it and use contractions!  It’s ok to use every day speech; people will relate to it better.

Hopefully this helps you figure out your niche in the blogging world.  So give it a try and promote it on social media.  Don’t worry if you don’t think you’re that great of a writer.  Practice and gain some confidence in it… you’re probably a lot better than you think.

Happy blogging!