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No matter what your background or training, you can take concrete steps to start a career as a food writer today. Do it, start here. Start now.
If you’ve read the two previous posts and worked along with the assignments, you’ve made some choices and decisions in finding your why and narrowing your niche.
Now it’s time to move forward. We’ll cover three areas in this article. First is branding and marketing, second is content creation, and third is technical. For all of these areas, all you want right now is to start. You won’t necessarily have goals like growing your following or increasing readership. First, you need to determine your brand, start creating content and establish a website so that readers can find you.
Much of this is simply you making choices but there are some actions where you’ll need to use services to accomplish your goal, such as registering your domain name or setting up your website. We’ll include as many free resources as we can. Most services have free trials for 30 days or free accounts with limited features. Take advantage of those if you can. It lets you see if you like the service and it meets your needs before you pay for a month’s or year’s subscription.
Table of Contents
BRANDING AND MARKETING
The goal of branding and marketing is to create a consistent image and feel across all the platforms where readers will find you. A reader should be able to recognize your brand.
Think about Coca-Cola. You recognize the brand from the distinctive red color and font used on the logo. When readers see your website, your Pinterest pins, or Instagram posts, they should recognize your colors, fonts, and style.
First, take a few minutes to make a list of qualities that you want to express in your brand. Do you want to be perceived as being friendly? Serious? Happy and helpful? Funny? Maybe you want to be known for providing well-researched information or giving quick tips. Put together ten to twelve words that describe you and your brand.
Now make a list of keywords that describe you, what you want to do and who you write for. Keywords are terms used to search in Google.These aren’t qualities like helpful or friendly; these are elements of your niche like easy recipes, busy parents, or plant-based cooking.
For a recipe writer, keywords might be chicken recipes, easy recipes, baby food recipes.
At this point, you’re not doing keyword research (more on that in a later post), you’re just thinking of words that describe your brand and your content.
You’ll use these lists throughout deciding your brand.
Brand Name
The most important choice you’ll make in branding and marketing is your brand name.
Before you ask, yes, it’s possible the name you want may already be being used by someone else. You might be lucky and the name you want is free. If it is, consider it a sign from the brand powers that be and celebrate.
If it isn’t, no problem. If you’ve narrowed your niche, you have a good idea of what you want to write about and who you want to write for. That information will be a solid starting point for your brand name.
Lots of writers use their proper names as their brand (think Martha Stewart or Rachel Ray). You can do that, too. Sally Garcia is fine but it doesn’t really tell readers much about what you do. Maybe Sally Garcia Cooks. In the Kitchen with Sally or Cooking with Sally Garcia.
Try adding elements of your niche. Grilling with Sally and Meal Prep with Sally. There’s also Baking with Sally or Sally Garcia Bakes. You get the idea.
Maybe you’re a recipe-based writer and your niche is easy and elegant brunch recipes. Easy and Elegant Brunches is a good starting point but it’s rather specific and doesn’t give you a lot of room for growth. Chances are that your niche will expand and change over time.
Hmmm. Maybe Easy and Elegant Eating. That gives you room to grow but it’s a little clunky. Easy and Elegant Eats? A little too casual. The Easy and Elegant Table? That sounds about right.
Some writers give themselves a title, such as The Mediterranean Chef or The Pancake Princess.
Write out a list of possible brand names.
Keep in mind that your brand will most likely also be your website address. Test your name in a .com format, such as www.sallygarciabakes.com or www.mediterraneanchef.com. You want to avoid any unfortunate formatting accidents.
Go at It with Gusto, for example, becomes www.goatitwithgusto.com. Goat it with gusto? Ah, no.
And Sally’s Kitchen becomes www.sallyskitchen.com. Sally Skit Chen? Again, no.
Do’s and Don’ts
- Do keep it short. People will need to remember it.
- Don’t use atypical spelling. www.cookingforU.com is a no-go.
- Don’t use numbers. www.cooking4you.com is also a no-go.
- Don’t use buzz words. Like styles, they come and go. If your name includes last year’s buzzword, you’ll seem out-of-date.
- Do keep your list of brand qualities in mind. If you want to project a happy, fun image, make your brand name happy and fun.
Once you decide on a brand name, register your domain name, that will be the name of your website.
You can register a domain name separately at a domain registry site such as domain.com or you can get one as part of a website hosting package (see more on that later).
Most domains cost between $12 and $20 a year.
Tagline
Along with your brand name, create a tagline – that’s a sentence that succinctly describes what you do.
For The Food Writing School, our tagline is: We take you from foodie to food writer with online classes, webinars, how-to guides, and more. Readers know exactly what to expect from us.
Your tagline should address your ideal audience and identify your topic. Keep your brand qualities in mind.
Colors and Fonts
More on your branding to-do list is choosing the colors and fonts you’ll want to use on your website and marketing materials. Keep is simple; pick one font for headlines (something bold and very simple to read), another for subheads and another for the text. You’ll also want one script font for emphasis.
Choose three related colors. One will be your primary, another secondary and another an accent color.
Be sure to write down your color and font choices. We promise you, you won’t remember the name of that great font you found in a couple of weeks when you go to create some social media materials.
Doing Business As (DBA)
You may also want to apply for a Doing Business As name. A Doing Business As name or DBA, also called a trade name or fictitious name, is usually registered with your county or state. In some states, if you use your full name as your business name, such as Sally Garcia Bakery, you won’t need to register for a DBA. Check DBA requirements in your state for more information.
There are companies that will register your DBA for a fee. That’s unnecessary. Individuals can register a DBA on their own. You fill out a simple form and pay a registration fee (usually less than $20). DBAs may expire after five or ten years, depending on your state. Some states have no-expire DBAs.
You’ll use the DBA to open a business checking account and other financial accounts. Having a separate banking account for your brand will make things much easier when tax time comes around.
Try to find a free account if you can. In Texas, where The Food Writing School is located, a few banks offer free business savings accounts. That would work if all you need is an account for PayPal deposits with only occasional withdrawals.
Open a domain-based email account for use with all of your business correspondence, yourname@yourwebsite.com. Your social media accounts and other services will require confirmation that you control that domain before you can open a business account as that brand name. We recommend Google’s Workspace.
Social Media Accounts
As soon as you register your domain name, sign up for all of the social media platforms with your brand name. Make sure you create business accounts, not personal accounts. Business accounts offer different features than personal accounts, such as analytics and advertising capabilities.
Some platforms have a limit on the number of characters or other configuration limits on your user name so you may not be able to register your brand name exactly but you should be able to get something relatively close.
Sign up for all of the platforms even though you might not intend to use the platform immediately. You might use it later and even if you don’t, you want to have control of the name and prevent someone else from taking it.
We recommend that you select only one or two social media platforms to actively work on at the beginning because you’ll have to build up each account with followers and posts.
The main social media platforms are:
Logo and Profile Image
You’ll likely need a logo. It can be something as simple as your brand name or initials in a particular font.
We suggest you use the graphic design platform Canva to create your logo and other marketing materials. Canva has a powerful free version for individuals, but if you find you want even more features it has a paid version at $9.99 per month/$119.99 per year. The paid version has millions – yes, millions – of stock photos, videos, and stock images, more than 400,000 templates, and the ability to schedule images directly to seven social media platforms. Canva, of course, offers online tutorials for new users.
In addition to the thousands of templates Canva provides, hundreds of designers offer Canva-based templates for social media posts, workbooks, online courses, and more. While most templates are for sale, many designers offer a few templates for free.
If you’d rather have someone else design your logo, check freelance services like Fiverr.
You’ll need a profile image for your social media. Similar to the profile photo you use on Facebook or Pinterest, it’s a small image attached to your brand profiles. It can be a photo of you or a photo of a dish, maybe your signature dish.
CONTENT CREATION
Your content should answer your readers’ questions, solve specific problems for them, or get them to take some action (like eat healthier, shop smarter, or cook more adventurously). Always write with your readers in mind.
You can launch your website with one or two blog posts but that won’t give your visitors much to look at and they’ll quickly leave. It’s a better idea to have at least five to ten blog posts or articles before you start trying to attract visitors.
Write your articles in Google docs or some other application, then copy and paste it into WordPress. Don’t write in WordPress. Google docs auto saves and offers spell check and it’s easier to go back to previous versions or make editing notes for yourself.
Use a grammar and spell-check program like Grammarly. There’s a free version that should suffice for most writers but there’s a paid version if you want even more features.
Your first article could be an introduction to you and your work. It could be the story of why and how you’ve started the website. You could also talk about what you plan to do in the future. Make it personal, make it professional.
Think about what you want to cover in the first six months of your website. As a food writer, you might focus on recipes. Eventually, you’ll need an editorial calendar but to start you can just pick a few topics.
This is a sample of a simple editorial plan for a recipe-based writer. By focusing on just a few types of dishes – meatless, beef and chicken entrees, a veggie side dish, and a brunch egg dish – and then doing different versions of each dish – easy, quick, fancy, and healthy – the writer has filled out 20 content slots.
| Easy | Quick | Fancy | Healthy | |
| Meatless entree | May 1 | August 1 | June 1 | Sept 1 |
| Beef entree | May 10 | Aug 12 | June 18 | Sept 10 |
| Chicken entree | May 20 | July 20 | Sept 20 | June 9 |
| Veggie side dish | July 10 | Aug 24 | May 30 | July 28 |
| Brunch egg dish | June 27 | Sept 30 | July 1 | Oct 10 |
Instead of easy, quick, fancy, and healthy versions, the writer could focus on skill levels. So she might create beef entree recipes for beginner cooks, intermediate cooks, advanced cooks, and adventurous cooks.
Maybe your mix of topics will include cooking methods and ingredients.
| Vegan | Plant-based | Low-protein | Meat alternative | |
| Slow cooker | May 10 | June 20 | July 29 | Sept 8 |
| Freezer meals | May 20 | June 29 | August 8 | Sept 18 |
| Meal prep | May 30 | July 10 | August 18 | Sept 28 |
| Lunch box meals | June 10 | July 20 | August 28 | October 10 |
Can something like this help you organize your first few weeks of content?
Take advantage of your enthusiasm as you launch and knock out as much content as you can in the first few months of blogging. It takes about six months for Google to find, index, and trust your content enough to start listing it in search results. Similarly, readers will want to see several pieces of content before they become regular followers.
Two or three quality articles a week is the maximum most writers can produce without risking burnout. Notice we said quality articles. Don’t bother churning out junk. Google and your readers will recognize it as useless information and neither will trust you again.
Photographs
You’ll need images for your articles and social media materials. Luckily, you don’t need an expensive camera. You can get mid-range point-and-shoot with manual options camera for about $300. If you have a high-end phone, you probably won’t need a separate camera at all for a while.
In addition to your own photos, there are loads of free stock images available. Canva has photo options built into its platform and there are lots of other free sources including Foodies Feed, Pixabay, Unsplash, and Pexels.
Give credit for the images you use and donate to the creators if you can. (Most sites have a Buy Me a Cup of Coffee option which benefits the photographer.) Don’t grab images from unauthorized sources. Just don’t. In addition to your own photos, there are literally thousands of images available for free use.
Social Media Materials
For each article, you’ll want to create social media materials. Social media materials put your work in front of readers. Hopefully, those readers visit your website, read more articles, sign up for your newsletter, and follow you on the various platforms you use.
Each platform has its own specifications.
Your first social media platform might likely be Pinterest. After you write an article, you’ll create pins for it. (A pin is simply an image, usually with some text over the photo, that links back to a particular article or your website as a whole. (Find out more about Pinterest here.) Four pins per article is a good starting point (more on that later). Each pin will need a photo, a headline, and a description. Use a different photo for each pin making sure that at least one image is from your article. Vary your headline a bit and include your brand name and any appropriate keywords in your description.
You can post your pins immediately or schedule them for later publication. If you create your pins in Canva, you can manually schedule them for future publication. Planoly and Tailwind can take your pins and shuffle them for you.
Story pins, that is pins with several images that scroll, and video pins are becoming more and more common, even expected.
Instagram is also extremely popular for food writers. (Find out about Instagram here.) Like Pinterest pins, you’ll need different photos for each post and you’ll be able to schedule posts for future publication.
In addition, YouTube is a great platform for food writers. You don’t need a video camera to create some decent YouTube videos. Your point-and-shoot camera or phone should be enough. Good organization and planning skills are actually more important than fancy equipment. There are lots of tutorial videos for new users on the platform.
In the beginning, you can schedule your posts manually but it will likely soon become overwhelming. We suggest you use a scheduling tool. Planoly and Tailwind are both popular. They offer similar features.
Social media is a very hungry monster. A very, very hungry monster. It needs to be fed constantly. At the beginning, plan on working on just one or two social media platforms in addition to your website. And be kind to yourself and give yourself low goals when it comes to social media at first. Yes, you may one day be organized and skilled enough to create and schedule 20 or 30 pins for each article. Maybe you’ll master Instagram and posting daily will seem easy. That’s later.
Right now, creating and scheduling four Pinterest pins or one YouTube video for each of your first few articles might be more realistic. (We can hear the social media gods groan!)
CREATE YOUR WEBSITE
Think of a domain name as your phone number, your website is your phone, and your hosting company is your phone company. You need all three in order to function, but you can buy each from different companies.
Let’s go over the procedure of creating your website.
Buy a Hosting Plan
We recommend BlueHost for hosting your website. The company offers low prices but even more importantly, great customer support. BlueHost includes one year domain registration (for your domain name or website address) and free security for your website (the difference between https:// and Http://) saving you those additional costs.
Register a Domain Name
You can get a domain name directly from some hosting providers, like BlueHost which includes it in the price of website hosting. You can also buy a domain from a domain registrar like Domain.com.
Install WordPress Site with One Click
If you use Bluehost to host your website, you’ll be able to create the website with one click. Most other hosting providers also have very simple set-up.
Choose A Theme for Your Site’s Design
Themes are design packages, they control how your website looks and functions.
There are plenty of free themes and one or two default themes will likely be included in your hosting plan. Most are sufficient for a simple website. You can buy a premium theme. The advantage of a premium theme is that most include updates, maintenance and customer support.
Create and Customize Your Pages and Content
Your theme will determine how your pages and content look but changes are possible so you can add your brand fonts and colors with no problem.
Pages are static. You’ll have a homepage and a contact page. Your blog page is where you post your articles. Most websites also have resource pages (where you list equipment and services you use and recommend). You’ll also have a disclaimer page (with information about the limits of the website and its information’s liability), a cookies page (disclosure about the use of cookies on the website), and a terms and conditions page (detailing the use or terms of service). We suggest you use Termly which generates free statements you can copy and paste onto your website.
Choose and Install Plugins
Plugins are bits of software that can be added to WordPress. They improve your website’s functionality. There are free and paid plugins. At this stage, you will probably be able to get everything you need for free or very low cost.
From your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins. Select Add New and scroll through the offerings. To install, click Install Now.
We suggest Google Analytics Dashboard, Social Media Share Buttons, Jetpack, and WP Recipe Maker.
Almost every website collects email addresses of visitors and we recommend ConvertKit. It’s easy to use and affordable. You’ll be able to integrate it into your website with a WordPress plugin. Enable an email collection system as soon as you launch your website.
Add Content
Before you add articles, determine the categories for your blog posts. Your keyword lists should be useful here. Categories tell readers the general topic of each post. Your categories, if you’re a recipe writer, might be ingredients, cooking methods, dishes, or difficulty level.
We suggest having five to ten articles posted on your website before you launch.
Posting content is as simple as selecting Posts from your dashboard (along the left column). Click the Add New button and copy and paste your article into the blank page. Add your headline, some photos, and any live links that are appropriate.
Preview the post (there’s a Preview button in the upper right corner) in Desktop, Mobile and Tablet modes.
You can publish immediately or schedule it for future publication.
Launch
That’s it. Your website is live.
You’ll add more content, frequently, and you may add more plugins over time but at this point you should have a functioning, basic website.
There’s a learning curve to WordPress. It’s completely possible for users to install WordPress and manage a website on their own but expect to watch a few tutorials on YouTube. If you’d rather hand it all over to a professional, BlueHost has that option available.
CONCLUSION
Overwhelmed yet?
We know it can seem impossible to get all this done but break it down into small chunks. Pay attention to the order in which we’re listing these tasks. They build on each other.
Once you register your domain, you can get your email and sign up for social media platforms. If you sign up for social media before you register your domain, the name you selected might not be available. Oops! You’ll have to sign up for the social media platforms all over again. Save yourself the frustration and wasted time.
Yes, that’s an incredible amount of work. The good news is that much of it is just you thinking and deciding. Much of it is also at no cost. The point is you can start here, you can start now. There’s something on this list that you can do with no more training or skills than you already have.
You can be a food writer. Yes, you’ll need to learn some new skills as you go. And yes, it will take lots of effort and time, but remember why you’re doing this. Remember your why? Now’s the time to focus on what you want – a food writing career. Don’t let the amount of work you need to get there stop you from starting.
Start. Right here, right now, you can do something that will move you forward, move you closer to being a successful food writer.
Do it. Start. Start here. Start now.
Related posts: Step One: Find Your Why and Step Two: Narrow Your Niche
