In addition to heading Revelation, I also run a dining guide called EatDrinkMadison.com. Today, the local daily newspaper ran a long feature story on the prevalence of food bloggers in town–yours truly included–called “Eat Drink Blog” (I’m hoping that my guide’s name influenced the title of the article).
What’s not printed here that I discussed in my 30-minute interview with the reporter is why bloggers are starting to be taken more seriously:
- Content has improved over time. We’ve gotten away from the weblog (or journal) and moved more toward reviews and op-ed type blog posts.
- Bloggers have been better at using multimedia such as photos, videos and even audio to enrich their posts.
- The advent of social media has changed consumers to producers of the news. That, coupled with shrinking newsrooms of the traditional media, has made blogs and blogging more popular.
- Blogs reach the hyperniche market. Targeting blogs for earned or unearned media opportunities can be cost effective when you know the 40 or 50 readers are all super fans of whatever the topic of the blog is.
To me, it’s not surprising how many food bloggers are out there. Some do it as a hobby, some for money … I added a blog to EatDrinkMadison.com (and started a Twitter account) to connect more with both residents and visitors of the area.