I’m purty darn pumped about this new course we just launched on Food Blogger Pro. It’s an Essential Plugins course called WordPress SEO by Yoast.
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Why am I so excited about it?
Because it has to do with something we hear about all. the. time. from bloggers: Increasing Traffic.
True fact: The most important source of traffic for Pinch of Yum and Food Blogger Pro is Google.
Here are some screenshots that show the growth of SEO traffic to our two sites over the past few years:
Start the chant with me?
NEW-COURSE, NEW-COURSE, NEW-COURSE!
Today we are releasing a new course on props for food photography which includes 16 lessons on all kinds of food photography props – from backgrounds to essential dishes to those extra pieces that can give your photos a distinct look and feel.
This course is called Props for Food Photography and you can find it in the Food Photography module.
Choosing the right props for your photograph can be an overwhelming process.
It’s hard to know what will make your food stand out, what won’t break the bank, and what will fit your distinct food photography style.
Exciting news! Today we are releasing a new course in the Food Photography module that includes 12 lessons on composition. It’s called Composition for Food Photography.
Why composition? What’s the big deal?
Does anyone really care about the arrangement of props and food items in a photo?
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When I first started taking pictures of my food for Pinch of Yum, the concept of composition was such a mystery to me.
I thought that the arrangement of food and props in food photography was a completely artistic process that was only for the super creative food photographers of the world. I didn’t think that it was possible for me (a self-perceived non-artsy person) to learn composition in simple steps, like a skill.
Maybe even more importantly, I didn’t understand that this one simple thing – composition, or the arrangement and layout of my photograph – was an element of photography that could make my food photos go from blah to eye-poppingly yummy.
For as long as I’ve been taking pictures of food, I’ve believed that beautiful food photography requires natural light.
But here’s the question – does it really?
What I’m finding is that even as a full-time blogger who has access to natural light all day long, the quality of natural light is always unpredictable. We live in Minnesota (don’t even get me started on the whys), and the natural light in the winter months is… well, I’m looking out the window right now and everything is just sort of a murky grey.
Over the last few years I’ve felt like there had to be a better way than waiting around all day for those three minutes of perfect natural light.
And I have good news – there is a better way!
Who's excited to continue in our essential plugins deep dive courses?
**cheering children**
Here's the down low with our most recent course:
Spam is a hassle. If not kept in check it can negatively impact the overall look, feel, and performance of your food blog. But managing spam doesn't have to be a hassle. In this course we'll install Akismet, a service that will make spam management a breeze. Not only will we learn how to install and setup Akismet, but we'll also learn how Akismet works, the difference between ham and spam and a few tips and tricks for utilizing the different features that are available with Akismet.
In last week's post I shared six essential plugins that every food blogger should install on their blog. The first (and most important) plugin from that list is called VaultPress. VaultPress is an important plugin because it automatically creates daily backups of your entire blog. If you're lucky, you'll never have to use it. If you're like me, you'll use it a couple times every year, and each time you use it you'll be incredibly thankful that you took the time to set it up.
We cover working with VaultPress in the WordPress Deep Dive course, but in this new course we cover all the different aspects of VaultPress, including setting up FTP and performing an example site restore after our blog goes down.
Giveaways are an incredible way to grow your social media following, attract new readers, and even do market research.
In this course, we cover the basics of getting up and running with a giveaway, customizing your giveaway with pictures and additional entry options, promoting your giveaway, and closing your giveaway once it has ended.
Ready to jump in? Head over to the Giveaways course page.
Want to learn more? Check out the video below to learn about what we'll cover in the course.
The growth of microblogging sites like Twitter have pushed URL shorteners into the mainstream. Owl.y, Goo.gl and Bit.ly are examples of sites that offer URL shortening services.
In this course we use Bit.ly to create a basic short URL, track the stats for that URL, and then create our very own custom branded short URL.
As we say in this course, short is good!
Ready to jump in? Head over to the URL Shorteners course page.
The list of responsibilities you have as a food blogger can seem endless. You're the photographer, the food stylist, the author, the recipe developer, the dish washer, the IT person, the social media manager, and the marketer. Did I miss anything? I'm sure I did.
One thing you don't have to do on your own is public relations. You can use Google Alerts to help.