The International Food Bloggers Conference was simply amazing. I've spent the last few days ruminating on all the great tips and techniques that were shared along with all the great food that was served.
There were two sessions on finding your voice as a writer and I was reminded that personality is an important factor in blogging. The panelists also mentioned persistence, passion and platform as other important factors.
If one does not have an interesting personality that they share along the passion and persistence to blog, then they won't succeed even if their platform (blog) is the most amazing thing out there. I think this is true of life. It's like dating or interviewing for a jog. If you don't show the other person that you have a great personality, passion for what you are doing and the persistence to do it, then why would they be interested in you? But you have to remember to present all of those things on a great platform, be it a stellar resume or a fantastic outfit.
The platform problem is one I often struggle with. I want to have the most amazing, awesome, best website out there but I'm not a web designer and nor do I want to hire a web designer. I can however learn more about web design and pester Scott to help me with web design as he knows a lot about it. I just need to work to solve my platform problem while remembering the other P's.
Other panels covered topics such as technology and blogging, ethics in blogging and photography. The technology panel really brought out my inner geek. I get a little bit excited talking about SEO and how to best monetize your blog. Elise from Simply Recipes talked about how she best uses ads on her site to make money at blogging. Elise's blog is her job and where she makes her income so I was very interested in how she does this. Her site is wonderfully designed and she has taken careful steps to place ads within her site without taking away from the look and feel of it.
The ethics panel brought up a lot of passion. Some bloggers believe that they should be held to the same ethics as professional journalists while others don't see themselves as journalists and don't understand why they should be held to the same standards. I am trained as a journalist so I am a bit biased here. I do believe that bloggers who want to be taken seriously as authority figures should be held to the same standards as journalists. They should be transparent and honest.
The photography panel got me thinking. They talked about using the right props to make your photos pop. They reminded me off how a surface can make or break a shot. Unfortunately there was not a photographer on the panel so I didn't get as much information on food photography as I would have liked.
I'm looking forward to the next conference and all the information I can gain professionally and personally. I realy enjoyed learning more about how food bloggers think and how they want to work with companies. It was great to see that blogging is gaining a professional view. I think some bloggers will continue to use their blogs as personal vehicles but it is great to see bloggers taking the bull by the horns and working to make their blog into their jobs. I can't wait to see what the future of food blogging looks like.
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