Blogs are a wonderful and personal thing and it is not for
us to judge the content.
This said, we do have a few criteria that we look for when
featuring a blog higher up on our pages and there are certain elements that we
need for it to be a perfect fit for food24.
Photographs
They need to be of high quality. Not everyone is a stylist
with a great camera and often the only time to cook and blog is in the evening
when it is not ideal to take good photographs.
People ‘eat with their eyes’ and it is without doubt the
most important part of a recipe in the print and online world where high
quality graphics can be showcased.
Tips:
– Photograph your food in good light, it makes the
world of difference.
– Try to style your dish to make it look as appetising and lick-able as possible.
– Photograph your food in landscape as well as
portrait – our front page main ticker spot is a long landscape shot and a
portrait shot can be the reason as to why we don’t showcase it.
– Try not to get too close-up. Close-ups are
great, but not too close. Sometimes you can’t really see what it is and then your
dish looks un-appetising.
– Keep things in focus, it is important to have
crisp high resolution pictures. Anything slightly blurry is a no-no.
– Try to have most of the picture in focus.
– Keep things colourful, it is eye-catching. With
that in mind, if your dish is not very colourful (which it can’t always be) use
garnishes/bright props to add some colour.
– Props: don’t go too crazy – simple is always better.
Focus on the food and pick up colours in subtle ways like a napkin/tablecloth/background.
– Take lots of different angles and you can choose
the best when you download to your computer. Think of your composition and go
with your gut on what looks good.
Recipe writing
– Use the correct measurements eg: A tablespoon = tbsp and teaspoon = tsp.
– Use a simple template and stick to it, don’t chop and change.
– Explain things as simply as possible and don’t expect the reader to know what you’re talking about. You are used to cooking and the techniques but remember that some people are not.
– Include the number of servings your recipe makes.
News24 and other
platforms
Food24 is showcased on www.news24.com,
www.mweb.co.za and www.24.com
.
There is a vast difference between the audience of news24
and food24. News24 has a large and decidedly un-foodie audience. Through trial
and error and lots of stats crunching we have realized that it’s the staples
that work.
Things like macaroni and cheese and anything curry or braai
does well. A great spag bol or pork sausage dishes fly (in the thousands) where
things like risotto or hollandaise sauce will return only a few hundred hits.
So if you’d like to see yourself on news24.com or any of our
other platforms, do a couple of blogs that showcase simple, easy-to-make food
that is traditionally popular. Use ingredients
that are not unusual, can be found anywhere and keep the name simple.
We use the same idea when choosing content for 24.com and
mweb.co.za.
Easy weekday meals
This is a newsletter we send out weekly on Mondays – sign up
here if you’re not already. It goes out to about 8500 subscribers and it gets
us a lot of traffic. We like to include recipes from the database and that
means blogger recipes if they are simple, easy to make and can be prepared and
cooked in 30 minutes or less.
If you have any questions, an opinion or just want to say
‘Hi!’ Please mail me at caro@food24.com.