This panel consists of Shuna Fish Lydon (S) (Eggbeater), Jasmine (Cardamom Addict) (J), Nupur Kittur (N) (One Hot Stove), Susan Voisin (Fatfree Vegan Kitchen) (V), Alanna Kellogg (A) (A Kitchen Parade), and Kalyn Denny, (Kalyn’s Kitchen) facilitator (K).

K: We are thrilled to see people here and faces we don’t recognize. Foodbloggers are a community oriented group. We’re going to pass something around and if you want to write your blog down go ahead. We are celebrating the diversity of food blogs…you’ll realize there isn’t just one way to do a foodblog. Different recipes for a successful foodblog. We’re going to tell you what we think makes a successful blog.

Follow up:

K: I’m Kayln from Kayln’s Kitchen.

Panel introduces themselves.

K: Who is a foodblogger (fairly even distribution in audience)? (Asks questions about the audience’s experience). I’m picking three people at random to hear what you want us to talk about.

Audience: I’m the wrong person: The Pioneer Woman cooks. I’m just here to absorb your greatness.

Audience: I have no idea I’m here to meet you guys and listen.

Audience: Tips and tricks about how to write about food.

Audience: I have a food blog that is also a Mom blog. I’d like to know about integrating food and other content, not just food blogs.

K: Let’s start with targeted questions. S - we’re starting with you. Can you tell us a bit about, why did you start blogging because you were already in a food career?

S: This is very interesting, I spoke a bit about this last year. In my industry no one knows how to use a computer. No one can open an attachment. I’ve never used a computer, I knew about the Internet because I lived in San Francisco. I’m the proof that if I can do it, you can do it. I’ve been cooking for 15 years, self-taught, no culinary school, you’ll see strong opinions about that on my site. It’s interesting because we blog because blogging is democratizing media, we get to hear from people I would not be able to hear voices from, they’re not going to own newspapers or write for newspapers. I get to be the voice that is anti-Food Network. I’ll go on record for saying the Food Network does a disservice to my industry. I know farmers, I pick fruit, I’m from NY so that’s a big deal. I felt passionate about these things, blogging really exposed me…I didn’t know there would be people reading my blog. Food is about class, race, our culture, language, privilege, a lot of things. That’s my take.

V: Just as background, I have a website with a collection of recipes and people submit them. Someone told me I should have a blog, and I couldn’t figure out why since I had a website. I started a blog and because it was an offshoot of the website. I renamed it. Having a very focused blog has its advantages and disadvantages. It forces you to be creative, to take the ingredients and put it together in unique ways. It’s forced me away from other people’s recipes. On the other hand, some people don’t feel like they need to look at the blog. Some people will say about recipes “It’s better than it sounds.” Having a focused blog can be a good thing. I suggest having a degree of flexibility and every now and then breaking out of it. I think breaking away from it a little bit helps people see you do other things.

K: How does food writing intersect with food blogging?

A: I’ve been surprised how different they are. Even though I have 20 years of branding experience in the corporate world, I’m having trouble separating my KitchenParade.com from A Veggie Venture. I want people to be able to understand what they are getting from my recipes, I do nutrition analysis on every recipe. It’s about giving people the information. I’m passionate about making it quick for people to find my recipes. By the time you have more than 5 beef recipes, people have to scroll through the whole thing…I take a lot of time making my recipes easy to get to. I have a more authoritative voice in my food column. On my blog I can be more playful. On the website I have 500 words, on the blog I can make it as long as I want. The blog has made me a better writer and made me realize who I am as a cook. Not being shy about shortcuts, and passionate about eating certain foods, and seasons, and weeknights. It took me a long time to figure that out.

K: I discovered N’s blog when she was living in NYC. I love Indian food and am intimidated by it and resort to using jarred spices. How has the focus of your blog helped you form connections?

N: I come from a certain state in India, but the cuisine is not known outside of the state (area). I wanted to talk more about MY cuisine. I got some unexpected feedback, I realized how powerful food blogging can be. I’ve been contacted by parents who have adopted a baby from this area of India and they want to help this child get in touch with her roots. This was so touching. I touched someone’s life in a small way. I got an email from a woman who said that my blog had deep meaning. She had lost her mom and grandmom within two months of each other. She couldn’t ask them for recipes anymore. She said, “your blog gave me recipes, and I could make them.” That’s the power of blogging.

K: That’s the power of foodblogging. J, you’re lucky because I live in Salt Lake City, and they’re only 4 foodbloggers. You’ve had some experience being “an expert” speaking to marketers and PR people as to how to market to bloggers. We’d love to hear from you.

J: Gee, go from heartwarming story to callous…I’m from Canada, I’m lucky because I’m not too far from Shauna, you start to talk about commonalities about what you get in email. Only you control the content of your blog and with that comes responsibility. Guard yourself, guard your blog, guard your readers. There are the legal aspects, the safety issues, and companies are now searching the blogs for mentions of their own names and their employees, and people are getting sued successfully for comments. “Scalping” and “content theft” – keep up where you’re being mentioned. If you find your body of work on another site, I found almost two full posts of mine on a company’s site and my photographs on a company site. I sent them a little note, and the posts were gone within a couple of hours. You have to be vigilant and I’ve seen that company stealing from other bloggers. I send email to that blogger. I use Google search. Don’t only look for the first line, pick out a line in the middle of the post.

A: Plagiarism.org is a great website. You have to keep working on it to keep it protected.

Audience (SimplyRecipes): If you have a link to your site in your post you can find out through Google Alerts or Technorati. Alert every time someone mentions you. I check blogs to see whose stealing my images.

K: Another thing that is effective is that you can put something in your feed. In Blogger, it says “contents of this feed are property of KK, probably the site you’re viewing this in is guilty of plagarism. Google “stealing content".

J: As you become more popular or more well read, marketers and PR are going to send you requests, some are appropriate, some are not. Put together a review policy. There are some people who are totally out there for the swag. If you’re sending me a product, it has to be available in Canada. I’m getting things for events in Tennessee. Whenever I get a request, I say, “this is my review policy.” If you feel your product or service falls within this, go ahead. It gives them the rules you play by. The last thing is that to guard your readers, by that again, marketers and fundraisers…I’ve been asked for contact lists, of all the people who read me. No, NO. I’m not doing something as horrible as that. I don’t put people on mailing lists. With your readers there is a trust level that begins to be developed. They know you in a sense. I’ve read blogs where the tone has begun to change. Oh, they’re being paid for the post, they’re being paid by the company, and sometimes the tone changes. You become less yourself. You have to be aware how pay for play changes…can influence the evolution of your blog. It may give your new readers especially, the ones without an ongoing relationship, they may see you as something you don’t think you are.

Audience: I have a question, I’m going to be talking about cheeses. How do you in general handle that? If you like a specific cheese…I’m not there to create a sales pitch, I’m not there to pitch the cheese, but it’s a great cheese…

J: I did something very similar a while ago. I very rarely mention brands. I’m writing a recipe, I don’t say use such and such a brand. But with this particular cheese, I was so taken by the entire story of this cheese, they had a picture of the cow, I fell for it all, and the cheese is really good. It came out in the way that you write it. I think I said “I went into my local shop and there was this lady there and she had a picture of a cow…”

K: Can I interrupt? I do mention specific brands. I don’t think it’s right or wrong.

J: I see branding someplace, and I know I can’t get it where I am, and that stops cooks. I don’t have x, what can I do? I’m very careful about naming brands. I did a recipe recently, I said “go buy this type.”

Audience: Are people coming to your sites for recipes, community or your outlook? I want to know what people are loving and not loving…I think it’s a different thing to mention a product.

Audience: To me it’s not whether you mention a brand, it’s whether you’re being paid or not. Is this an advertisement or your opinion?

J: I’m fully in favor of full disclosure. When I review books and products, I’ll say “thanks to the generosity of this company I’m able to do this"…I make it very clear if I’m paid to write this…this post is a paid post. We do cookbook events where bloggers participate, they will say, thanks for the generosity of a particular publisher.

K: I don’t think we answered your question. Absolutely they are coming for the recipes, some of them kind of like me. But they don’t want to hear five things I think.

N: I think my readers are coming for the recipes. The blog is there for me, writing is my hobby.

S: Well, something different. It’s funny because all of us who blog…I have a list in my sidebar of all of my recipes, the easiest way to get there. If you need the tapioca recipe, it takes two clicks. Having your site easily get navagatable…for me I only offer recipes that I know work implicitly. Because I’m a professional chef, I teach, I always get products that anyone can get. There are a lot of recipe blogs out there, but people come to me because of my voice. I talk about some hard core workplace issues, some personal stuff. People want to hear what it’s like being a chef. I don’t want to just put recipes. To me what I say is a recipe is a guide. What I try and teach in my class, if you know what the butter is doing, you can take that cake and turn it into another cake.

K: There is no right way or wrong way to do it.

A: If you’re interested in the difference between food writing and food blogging, I’m launching kitchenparade.com…you can see I’ve written about Moms. It might have something to do with my recipes, or not. But my new site visually presents the columns in a way that the writing makes more sense with the recipes. I think my columns are going to make more sense.

V: I really thought for me it was all about the recipes. I also have people who come and say that they like it when I talk about my daughter. I was hesitant to do that for a long time, but got more comfortable with it with time. Whatever you do, just having your own voice and style is what matters.

J: My online life is different…I started off on Usenet. I’m used to my life being an open book. I look at it more as my experience with food, with going shopping. I’ll show you a bunch of photos from a farmer’s market. They all said (when I asked my audience) it’s the personality and writing style they like. It all relates to food but it’s not all about recipes.

K: There’s no one way to do it.

Audience: I think I have two recipes, one of which is fried Cheerios. The other is cookies. My blog is about having fun. I’m a pop culture geek. They enjoy the things I enjoy. I had 10,000 unique visitors for Lost Fish Biscuit.

K: I’m going to interject. One aspect of focusing your blog is whether you want to make money or you’re doing it for the fun.

Audience: My name is Kim (Scrambledcake.com) I write about my experience about cooking with kids. I’m looking for advice about copyright.

Audience: Elise Bauer, SimplyRecipes.com. The law is that recipes are considered methods (US Law), and the basic set of instructions and ingredients are not copyrightable, but a cookbook, a collection is. What is practice is if you’re copying someone’s recipe, is you source it and write the instructions in your own words. If you refer to yourself in your instructions, that’s copyrightable. You can’t copyright ideas, only the expressions of them. I’ve consulted lawyers on this.

S: As a professional chef, we have an etiquette in every kitchen I’ve ever worked in. I can put something on my menu that I created with a chef I worked with if I don’t do it at the same time they have it on their menu at the same time. (Discussed Chicago case of food plagiarism). You need to say “adapted by", you have to credit.

Elise: Your photos are protected by copyright - they’re totally copyrightable. You should not be taking other people’s photos. Most people who are bloggers, most people who blog don’t know it’s not cool and not legal.

K: A number of times I’ve seen my photos other places. I send them a nice note saying please don’t use the photo.

(Discussion of taking photos, some restaurants don’t like it).

K: I ask before, no one has ever told me know.

Audience: I try and let them know I’m a food blogger and I’m interested in taking pictures. They love it, you’ll be surprised that what will open up for you.

V: I’ve never felt like I need to ask, so now I’m going to do that.

Audience member: I was wondering if you have any feelings about Mario Batali’s recent diatribe against foodbloggers.

S: I feel very strongly about this. (Explains background of controversy). We have power as foodbloggers, we have more power than we think we do. We have power, if you choose to use it to close a restaurant or use it to uplift someone, that’s your choice. You are coming into my restaurant, I get it, I get why people are railing against food bloggers. I don’t review restaurants, I’m not the average diner.

Audience: I’m an organic farmer from California (ladybugletter.com), the Internet has helped sell my vegetables, I turn chefs away. So, I write and my husband writes to sell our vegetables but it’s become much more than that.

Audience: My name is Holly Hoffman, but these days I take pictures of food but don’t blog. It’s about what the panelists think about this session being sponsored by Butterball.

K: We’re not here to bash our sponsors. We checked with everyone to see that they were aware of that.

V: I paused, but I thought that I wasn’t going to let Butterball silence me. (laughs)

N: It’s important as a food blogger to talk about…everyone is intelligent here.

J: I used to be in nonprofit, I know the importance of sponsorship to keep events like this going. For me, the money the sponsors are giving us are what’s making it possible to make registration rates lower. What it’s doing to get panelists here and keep things going, so I’m looking at it from that point of view.

K: I want to go on and talk on something else.

Audience (Edelman PR rep): Butterball wants to know how to reach foodbloggers. They have no clearcut way of how to reach them. There’s no book as to how to reach bloggers. It’s more curiosity, it’s not to get you all to eat turkey.

K: I see blogs all the time, but I say, “Ugh, I want to send them an email and say don’t do that.” What shouldn’t they do?

A: These are 40 something year old eyes, no small fonts, make background light, and dark font.

J: Don’t ask for reciprocal links. This is my personal recommendation, I read certain blogs. I’ll visit, don’t ask.

Audience: Is there a good font for fractions?

V: It depends on the computer. Stick with the basic fonts.

K: Don’t leave a comment that says “check out my recipe.”

Audience: I write for Self Magazine, I want to know how that list could be distributed.

A: We’ll make it happen, watch BlogHer. We’ll get it out.

S: Try Foodblogschool.com.

K: We are out of time.