Growing visitors to your blog doesn’t happen over night. It requires time, hard work, media knowledge, and bit of good luck to increase traffic to your site.
Beginning of Blog
As I mentioned earlier, the readers and supporters of Just One Cookbook for the first 2-3 months were all our friends. Nami started sharing her recipes on Just One Cookbook and didn’t know what else to do besides posting recipes to the site. Then she joined Foodbuzz and instantly met many bloggers through there, and some of them became her close blogger friends.
Social Networking
If you wish your site to have more readers, promoting your site is inevitable at this stage especially no one knows your site yet. The fast and easiest way to get immediate connection is to join the food bloggers community.
G+ Food Bloggers Community organized by Chef Dennis Littley is a wonderful network and resource especially for food bloggers. You get to learn tremendous amount of tips on food blogging, SEO, Social Media, Photography & Styling, and more from fellow blogger members and you can also put any question you may have on the discussion board. You will meet a lot of knowledgeable bloggers there.
Besides joining the community, Nami started to visit some food blogs that she finds interesting and leave a comment about their post. Some bloggers may respond to your comment and you may start talking to each other through commenting on each other’s post (blog hopping). In a way, blog hopping is more personal approach than talking in the Food Community Board, and you might feel easier to ask questions to your new blogger friends. Nami started to learn a lot about blogging from her fellow blogger friends. When some blogger comes to your site and leave a comment, it’s a nice gesture for you to do the same for him/her. If a commenter is a non-blogger, be sure to respond to their feedback, especially if you want to grow your readership.
In earlier days when Nami received a guest post request by her fellow bloggers, she never turned down and took the opportunity for her site to be exposed to a new crowd. She doesn’t guest post any longer due to two children needing more of her time, but she still appreciates her initial guest post opportunities on blogger friends’ sites.
At this early point, most of the readers were our friends and food bloggers and our site had very few readers from Google and other sites.
Keep on Improving Blog Skills
While you continue promoting your site, it’s important to constantly improve your site so that readers can easily navigate your site and find what they are looking for. If they enjoy your recipe and content, they will more likely come back to your site or even subscribe to your blog. Here are some of the elements that we are constantly working on.
- Food photography and styling
- Writing skills
- Unique and resourceful content
- Layout and functionality of the site
- SEO
- Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and Instagram)
- Recipe development
- Learning Japanese cooking culture and knowledge
As your photography gradually improves, start sharing your food photos on Foodgawker and Tastespotting. It’s a good way to raise awareness for your recipes and website to the general public on the Internet.
At the same time, make sure you understand the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Google for your site, as well as the power of Pinterest. Here is a good article on importance of SEO.
Currently, most of the readers of Just One Cookbook comes from Google search result.
*****
Our hobby has turned into hours and hours of hard work. Nami typically works on the blog at least 40-50 hours a week. She cooks, photographs, writes posts and replies to all the readers’ questions and emails she receives everyday. We are really glad that we started Just One Cookbook and get to share Japanese recipes with readers like you.
Thank you for all your support and we hope we learn more things this year to share with you.
– Shen
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You guys are awesome this was a very straightforward and helpful post. Thank you very much.
Thanks so much for sharing Shen and it’s great to hear from the other person behind such a wonderful and successful blog. Congratulations on all your success and thanks for sharing with us how you have achieved so much in such a short period of time xx
These posts contain such a great wealth of information! I will refer back to these when I have time to really go through it all and try to apply some of this to my blog. I wish that I had more time to invest because I love it so much! My husband and I run a small business so I can only fit it in when it works. Thank you for sharing your experiences and all of this helpful information 🙂
You two have both put in a lot of work and it really shows. Keep up the good work and I know I love learning more about the food and the bloggers that make it happen.
-Gina-
This is very helpful info and I’m glad you shared it with us. Whether we’re old timers or newbies on the blogosphere, there’s always something new to learn ~ and that’s how you improve. Thanks for generously sharing these blogging tips. I’m bookmarking everything. Have a great Pres. Day vacation, Nami and family!
The “people” aspect of blogging is the best part of all. I’ve met so many wonderful friends and my “world” has expanded exponentially, all because someone took the time to share a story, recipe, photo, experience, or something that touched their heart. Tremendous series you two “cooked” up! 🙂 Thank you.
You both have done an amazing job on your blog!! I can’t believe it’s only been two years for you… I would have guess you have been around for more years than that with the quality of your work. Thank you again for this series of blogging 101. I enjoyed reading it all. 🙂
Thank you for this sincere post. It’s very inspirational!
Great story and wonderful insights. I have been blogging for a similar amount of time to you and I have recently started writing a similar series to you. It is lovely how experienced bloggers are always happy to help the new ones coming through.
The single best piece of advice in this article to me was that if you receive a comment from a fellow blogger, it is good manners and grows a sense of community if you respond to them on their blog. If they brought a smile to your face, return the favour 🙂 I will keep reading the rest of your tips, thank you for sharing your knowledge.
Shen and Nami-san, thanks so much for your overview of very helpful hints that you would have never been able to share with us unless you had the fine opportunity of experiencing the joy, pain, sweat and tears of food blogging. Thank you for putting everything in a very concise format for future reference. I have so many areas that I want to work on and you have given me the knowledge and the inspiration to move forward. What an awesome husband and wife team! Take care, BAM
This is such a great post, Shen and Nami.
I remember n will always remember how you supported me when I started my blog. Blogging is definitely a journey n this post is going to help so many new comers who really feel lost n confused in this big blogging world.
Nami/Shen,
Thank you for sharing the tips (really usefull especially for newbie like me) ! Really love the blog. Wishing both of you a great success.
You are right: Blogging has a lot of hard work involved. Sometimes it can be overwhelming. Thanks for sharing these valuable tips with us. Some of them I have learned on my one-year journey but others, now. Wishing you and Nami always the best.
Thank you so much for sharing all of these valuable tips! Nami, you are a rockstar! 🙂
Thank you so much, Shen, for this wonderful guide to blogging; I really appreciate reading all of these tips (on the previous pages, too)!
And Nami, I can’t believe you work on the blog 40-50 hours a week… otsukaresama desu! Your blog is so inspirational to me; you make it all seem quite effortless! 🙂