Kristy Wenz, Author at International Food Blogger Conference

Modern SEO Tips for Growing Bloggers

August 20, 2018 by Kristy Wenz

Thank you to Bloomly for providing the following post on SEO tips to the IFBC. Bloomly is a sponsor of #IFBC18 and will be attending the conference this Friday – Sunday in New Orleans. And the best news – you can still register!

As a blogger, you probably have a good idea of what SEO is and how it plays a vital role in your blog’s organic traffic. Implementing an SEO strategy, on the other hand, may still seem daunting to some. The principles of SEO can be boiled down into the charts below and can be used as a guide to navigating the space.

Regardless of whether you’re a food or fitness blogger, whether your blog is big or small, built in WordPress, Squarespace, or custom-built it PHP, the following tips can benefit any website, and have been proven to make existing content rank higher. These tips take advantage of existing Google Search hacks and don’t involve sketchy backlinks, deleting content, cold outreach or complicated math.

Improve Your Website Speed

Boosting the speed of a slow website doesn’t just improve your search ranking on Google, but it also keeps visitors happy, which results in longer sessions spent on your blog. There are a few easy ways to increase site speed, such as using free tools that help boost page speed.

Resize Images on Your Blog

Large images or pieces of media are often forgotten culprits that slow down the speed of a page. If you’re unsure whether the pictures on your blog are too big, Google PageSpeed Tools will indicate which images should be optimized.

If you’re using a WordPress plugin to optimize your images, you may still get penalized for large images. To ensure that you don’t fall victim to this, make sure you manually resize or compress the images using Photoshop or Optimizlla.

Here are three easy rules to follow when resizes images

Keep the size of an image under 100KB.
Images should be no wider than 1000px.
Start with images on top landing pages.

Focus on Low-Hanging Fruit

So many factors go into SEO, and it can be difficult to pinpoint a place to start. To maximize your time and energy, use a tool to help you find high volume keywords that are ranking outside of page one, but below page 30. Once you identify these pages, augment the content with query-based H2’s, new images, and new content related to targeted keywords and find out what other opportunities may be available for those keywords.

Wrapping Up

Now that you have these modern SEO tips for growing bloggers, spend some time improving your website and watch your organic traffic grow. For more information and further detailed instruction on how to implement these tips, you can watch our webinar here.

Are You Ready? Let’s Get Trending #IFBC18

August 17, 2018 by Kristy Wenz

One week from today we’ll be learning, eating, laughing, dancing and perhaps even lounging poolside at the Royal Sonesta Hotel New Orleans – and of course, we’ll be trending! Get ready Twitter and Instagram!

As you know, we have an outstanding line-up of content this year including Michael Twitty, two Influencer Network CEO’s, Pinterest and many, many social media, blogging and influencer experts. This IS the IFBC not to be missed. We have pulled out all the stops for this 10th anniversary event! And lucky for you, there’s still time to join us. Just click here to register now!

But…all of this would not be possible without our outstanding and generous sponsors and partners. So let’s show them how much we appreciate their support and energy. It’s easy:

Pre-Conference:

Follow our sponsors and partners on social media
Tweet, Post and Link to our partners on social media – let them know how excited you are to see them in NOLA
Sign-up to meet individually with Arctic Apples or Freshly Pressed Olive Oil Club
- For a more intimate Arctic Apple tasting book a 10 minute consultation on Saturday by clicking here.
- To meet with The Olive Oil Hunter book a 15 minute consultation on Friday or Saturday by clicking here.

During the Conference:

Take photos and videos and share them with your followers tagging our sponsors and partners
Go live! And give a shout-out to your favorite sponsors and products
Post to your blogs about anything and everything – the conference, the hotel, the City of New Orleans, sponsors, partners and all the amazing restaurants participating in the Taste of New Orleans! (Link your posts here.)

Post-Conference:

Thank our sponsors and partners by tagging them in your videos and photos
Share your stories to social and with your blog followers

We truly couldn’t do this without the support of our conference sponsors and partners. Not to mention this is a great opportunity to make connections, network and potentially see how you can work together. We hope you’ll join us in sharing the love. And of course don’t forget to tag everything with #IFBC18 and #OneTimeInNewOrleans.

See you next week!

It’s Time to Maximize Your Influence and Income

August 9, 2018 by Kristy Wenz

“Many people think of influencers as just pretty faces who take nice pictures, but they don’t realize influencer marketing is a multibillion-dollar business and that the Social Media Millionaires club is real.”
–Brittany Hennessy, Senior Director of Influencer Strategy & Talent Partnerships at Hearst

Ms. Hennessy goes on to say, in a recent Business Insider article, that influencers can be paid anywhere from $250 to $30,000 per post (depending on their reach and impact), and that she expects the influencer industry to range between $5 to $10 billion by 2020.

So, food bloggers and influencers, are you ready to join the Social Media Millionaires club? Join us at #IFBC18 in New Orleans this month from August 24 to August 26 for our influencer marketing sessions geared toward getting you into and ahead of the game. You can’t afford to miss this event. Join us at #IFBC18 for the latest information, how-to’s and takeaways you need to be a successful influencer. Register now to hear from:

Pinterest – Pinterest has partnered with the IFBC to bring you the latest on best practices for content creators. We’ll be hearing directly from Aaron Ru who leads Content Business Development and Strategy at Pinterest.

Facebook – Rachel Miller, aka the Moolah Marketer and an expert on turning page views into a paycheck, will teach us how to organically grow a following and go viral on Facebook.

Instagram – Stefani Pollack will join us for a dynamic session on Instagram marketing. She’s grown her following to 750,000 and it’s still going! Learn how to maximize your presence on Instagram and put it to work for you.

Smart Phone Photography – The Couple in the Kitchen will teach us how to take photos that will grab us attention on social. They have tips and tricks up their sleeve that are sure to make us all better photographers instantly!

Influencer Networks – This is one not to be missed – we have the CEO from Chicory.co and the CEO of Izea with us to talk influencer marketing and networks. In fact, they’re planning to share some exclusive new research with IFBC attendees!

Whether you’re new to blogging, thinking about becoming an influence marketer, or have been blogging or influencing for a while and want to up your game, #IFBC18 is an event you won’t want to miss. There’s still time to register and join us in the Big Easy for our best IFBC yet!

Yes! You Should Know About FTC Disclosures

August 1, 2018 by Kristy Wenz

Today’s post is from #IFBC18 speaker, Stacy Brooks from Tangled Up in Food. Stacy will be sharing the importance of understanding FTC rules for bloggers and influencers at the 10th anniversary conference this month and she’ll share takeaways we can implement immediately! Join us in New Orleans to learn more! Register here.

I’m honored to be speaking at the 2018 International Food Blogger Conference! It was the first blogging conference I attended back in 2014, and I’m looking forward to presenting about the FTC’s disclosure rules for bloggers.

I’ve been blogging since 2011, and I also freelance as a food and travel journalist. Before making the leap to writing full time, I worked in the legal field for several years as an intellectual property paralegal—I’m fluent in legal jargon and enjoy delving into government rules and regulations like the FTC’s disclosure guidelines.

But what is the FTC, and why do they care about your blog? FTC stands for the Federal Trade Commission, a government agency that’s in charge of protecting consumers and maintaining competition. Part of how they do this is by ensuring that statements made to consumers are truthful and not deceptive—it’s commonly referred to as the “truth-in-advertising principle.”

What does this mean for bloggers? Like magazines, newspapers, TV, and radio, your blog is a form of media that the FTC’s rules cover. If you have a relationship with a brand—you were given a free product, you’re receiving compensation for a blog post, you’re part of a brand ambassador program—you’re considered an “endorser.”

There are specific rules about what endorsers can and can’t say. Most importantly, you need to tell your readers that you have a relationship with a brand (a “disclosure”). The FTC has specific guidelines for how to do that, and in my presentation I’ll outline best practices and common mistakes.

If you’re on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or another social media platform (and what blogger isn’t?) the FTC has guidelines for social media disclosures to your followers, which I’ll also discuss in my presentation.

But why bother? It’s unlikely that the FTC is monitoring your food blog or Instagram feed. However, most contracts with brands and PR firms require that your posts include a disclosure in compliance with FTC guidelines—it’s up to you to be informed and make sure you’re meeting the terms of your contract. In addition, the FTC disclosure rules ensure an even playing field, and most importantly, they’re the law.

I’m looking forward to sharing more information at my breakout session on Friday, August 24 at 2:15 pm. Whether you’re currently working with brands and destinations or would like to in the future, this session will fill you in on everything you need to know in order to follow the FTC’s guidelines. We’ll also work through some hands-on case studies so that you can practice what you’ve learned.

See you in New Orleans!

Put Your Food Photography To Work For You

July 26, 2018 by Kristy Wenz

We’re pleased to share today’s guest post with you from Christina Peters. Christina will be presenting at #IFBC18 next month. Make sure to say hello, ask her your burning questions and of course, pop into her session! Not yet registered for this amazing event? Don’t delay. Register now.

I’m so excited to be speaking at this years IFBC’s conference. I’ll be talking about how to put your food photography to work for you WITHOUT developing a single recipe or writing blog posts.

I’ve been a professional food photographer for 25 years now. I do not do any recipe developing, I don’t do any food blog posts either. I actually photograph food that was made by somebody else.

I don’t even style my own food. I hire food stylists to do that for me. My clients understand this way of working and expect this. Sometimes they even have their own stylists that they want me to work with. These stylists create the food, and then I photograph it.

What I’m really excited to talk to you about is all the different types of food photography clients that you can have. Many of whom I’m sure you didn’t even think about that could be right in your neighborhood.

These types of clients can help you create an additional income source for your food photography.

COMMISSIONED WORK

These types of job are called “commissioned work”. This is where you are being hired to shoot a job and paid a commission to do so on a project by project basis.

There are two types of clients that I will go into a lot of detail on. There are 15 different types of clients that fall into two categories. We have Client Direct and then we have Agency Clients.

CLIENT DIRECT

Client direct clients are those that you will be working one on one with. There is no middleman here. Many times you are actually working with the people who are writing your pay check, or they tell their accountant to write the check. You get the idea.

I have a list of 10 different types of Client direct businesses that need YOUR food photography skills, right now.

For those of you that are confident with your food styling, many of these client direct businesses can also use that, if you want to style the food you shoot.

AGENCY CLIENTS

Agency clients are the other businesses who hire someone else to handle all of their advertising needs. Agency clients are very used to hiring photographers and do so on a regular basis. They are constantly needing new photographers.

I have a list of 5 different types of agency clients to share with you. One of them I’m pretty sure you might not be aware of, so I can’t wait to tell you all about that.

HOW TO FIND AND CONTACT ALL THESE CLIENTS

It wouldn’t be very fair of me to tell you all about these clients and then not tell you how to find them, who to contact in that business, how to contact them, and what to say, so I’m also going to talking about that as well.

So please come and see my breakout session on Friday August 24^th at 3:30 pm so I can help you do a lot more with your food photography than you ever thought of doing.

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