What a restaurant can teach you about blogging.
Tools
In a kitchen you need special tools for everything you need to do. With certain tools you can not just use them no matter how great they are. Because they will just not work for what you are trying to do. You cant cook in a fridge no matter how great the fridge is, it just wont work.
The same goes with blogging. You really should use something like Wordpress that is MADE for blogging and not something else that you can use for blogging but its not made for blogging. A good example of this: When I started blogging I preferred to use Drupal, which is a great cms but its not made especially for blogging. Its made for websites in the general. So since I am not a genius when it comes to Drupal I did not know how people can leave their url in the comment when they leave a comment. That resulted in less comments because why would they comment if they cant leave their url or email address. Like I mentioned I am not a genius when it comes to blogging I did ask for help on Drupal.org but not getting it I had to change my entire blog to something that had everything I needed like the comments. So going with Drupal which is made for blogs I learned it and now I would not use anything else to blog with. Because the tool fits the needs and the end result is better because I used a tool made for what I wanted to do. Dont get me wrong please, I use Drupal for many of my sites. Drupal is the best CMS for websites out there, but Wordpress is by far the best BLOGGING cms or whatever you call it.
Timing
Knowing when to bring food out and when to ask your guests questions is very important. You dont want to interrupt them while they are busy. Especially if they are still reading the menu. You should give them time to read the menu first before asking them what they want.
Posting your content at the correct time does matter. You can post in the middle of then night but then you might miss the immediate buzz that posts get when they are fresh. Posting content at the correct time is very important. Also posting seasonal things when its the season. Posting things relevant to Christmas when its Christmas will also give your blog a seasonal boost. Just like restaurants have seasonal traffic.
Clean
Of course a restaurant has to be clean, would you go to a filthy restaurant? I wont. If those things are on the wall and floor just think what would be in the food.
You see if you have really ugly and annoying ads all over your site that would show a preview of what the content would be like. Annoying flashing ads show a dirty blog that wants to make money more than focusing on great content.
Multitasking
Working in a kitchen you must be able to multi task. You have to check the timers, do ten things at a time, prepare 100 meals in a short space of three hours. Kitchen multitasking can also be stressful since you might not know where to grab first and you also have to check that nothing gets burned and the temperature is correct for all things that are busy cooking.
If you are a new blogger the work is even harder. Because you are not used to it. Blogging involves multi tasking. Checking your emails, reading your comments and moderating, checking your ads and stats, coming up with great content and writing that content, making new friends, promoting your blog on social bookmarking sites, focusing on getting traffic. There are so many things you need to do. Especially went it comes to full time blogging. Then this becomes your job!
Spices
Without spices we have to understand that some foods just wont taste that great. Some foods are made for the spices they come with. A great example of this is chicken tika. It would just be plain chicken without the tika spice.
If you write long paragraphs with no spaces or bold or italics you might not get the attention your blog deserves because people can only focus so long on content without the “spice” You have to make it easy for your readers to actually read your content. Make things bold where you can, add spaces and write certain things in italics to separate them from each other and to avoid one long paragraph looking the same through out.
Hot or Cold
Nobody likes Food that must be hot and is cold or food that should be cold that is hot. Imagine serving someone frozen pie. The chances are that they would ever come back to the restaurant is basically zero. Knowing when exactly the food is the correct temperature is sometimes hard because everyone has different levels they like their food. But knowing more or less when the food is ready is very important.
Knowing how often to post is not that hard if you look around on your niche, just look at the posting regularity of other blogs in your niche that is doing great. And use their time frame of posting for your blog as well. Posting to much would make your visitors annoyed, sort of like over heated food, and not enough posts would be like food that just has not come to the table quick enough. Usually big blogs post 2 or 3 times a week and maybe throw in a snack between the meals.
Healthy
Making food with to much oil is bad for you. Serving oily food in a restaurant might just be the last time you will see those visitors you serve it to. No one wants a plate where the food floats around in cooking oil. A plate full of oil shows a bad cook or chef.
Do you know what you are talking about on your blog or are you a chef that does not know your spoon from your cup? Trust me, not knowing the topic you blog about can make you look a bit unprofessional.
Space
Dont you just hate it when entering a restaurant and you finally get to your seat to discover that the guy behind you basically sits with you at the table because there is just no space to move? Or a really small restaurant has way to much tables to make more money but then it’s really cramped?
Well the same goes for your content. You need to have some open spaces in your content. Maybe not on your frontpage but when reading a article on your blog people do not want 100’s of things in the middle of the content. Put it on the side and they will go there if they have the need to, but dont try to rub things in your visitors faces by shoving it in your content.
Tasting
Have you ever watched a movie where the chef in the kitchen tastes his food and making weird noises saying how great it tastes? What if he does not taste it first? How would he know that it’s ready for hungry people to consume? How will he even knows that his recipy has worked if he does not at least taste a spoon full?
The same goes for blogging. You have to know what works for your audience. You have to taste it yourself and see if that is really what they want. You should really check if those things you have contained in that one article really works or if you are using your readers as lab rats.
You should see if that what you are writing about now really works, check your stats and if it does not bring you visitors change your recipe. Change the way you do things and test it before going final.
Washing up
Dirty dishes makes a kitchen look cluttered, Inside the restaurant it makes your tables look dirty and unattended to. When having a restaurant clean tables should be one of the highest priorities because people compare how things look on the outside of a kitchen with how it looks on the inside of the kitchen. Even the bathroom. If the bathroom is dirty in restaurant you can expect the kitchen to look the same.
You cant just leave your comments to let them be. You need to reply to those who have digested and eaten your content, and actually took the time to post a comment. You also have to remove spam comments from your blog as soon as you see them because this looks like dirty dishes as the example above. Clean comments makes a clean and inviting blog.
Eating
Have you ever had a steak or meat, so hard that you were even embarrassed you actually took people to that restaurant you got that food at? Have you ever ordered something that you just could not swallow? I know I have.
That is why it is important to find out first who your audience is before you prepare your content. Finding out who your audience is will give you the opportunity to prepare that content in a easy way for them to digest it.
A good example of this is: when you write about blogging tips and you start talking about <h1> which is better on search engines than normal text and all that stuff that’s actually got to do with more than just basic tips. If you have just basic readers that wants tips like: write a list and get more traffic. You will be missing it. Provide the relevant content for the audience you are targeting.
Clean hands
Having dirty hands while preparing food is just wrong, as well when eating food your hands should be clean. Bringing in your daily life with you, all those germs and then someone has to eat it?
Clean hands is equal to original content. Do you live from someone else’s content? Do you write about what other people write all the time. Do you copy content that you really dont have permission to copy it? The reason I use germs and clean hands to compare these types of bloggers is because they are parasites and live from other people’s content much like some germs do.
Sauce
Would those chips taste that great without ketchup? I thought not. Even if the chips are some of the best ever made, if you are such a big fan of ketchup as I am you would still want that bottle of ketchup. Some things just taste better with sauce, even though it might be great without it, it will just not be complete without it.
Same goes for blogging. If you have images in your posts, its just that one thing that makes great content complete. Using those images to express your post will benefit your blog more than you will think. They say a picture says a thousand words, now if you can find that perfect picture that would say a thousand words about your content you have found the correct image.
Passion and inspiration
Inspiration and passion is what drives most chefs to do what they do. Standing for long hours in a hot kitchen working with people that in most countries speak another language than that of the country. For instance in the UK most people working in the kitchen speaks Russian for some reason? Ok back to the point. Passion and inspiration is what drives most chefs. They like what they do. (most of the time)
It should be the same with blogging.
What kind of food you serve
On most if not every restaurant you will see somewhere close to their logo what their restaurant is about. What food they serve or such. A example of this would something like esvl’s pizzeria. By looking at that you know what my restaurant would serve and who would benefit from it. As well who would be my potential visitors. In this case they are all after pizza and that is what my restaurant is about. ( I dont really have one)
Here is where your about page comes in hand. Your about page tells people what they can expect and if they would find anything they are looking for. Your about page is basically your logo’s slogo saying this is “type” of restaurant and food you will find.
Dress code
Having all the waiters wearing the same clothes might be a great but degrading idea. It works for the restaurant if you think about it. Whenever you see someone with a shirt that represents the restaurant.
Your writing style matters. Stick with it and people will get to know exactly when its you writing.
Noisy kids running around
Have you ever been to a restaurant where little kiddies run around screaming the heads off people. Like they dont have parents or maybe they ate them and now they are like little bulls chasing down every form of peace in the restaurant.
Well this reminds me of those trolls that just comes to your blog to troll and show you how wrong your post it. Instead of saying something positive they start a argument. Making it unpleasant for everyone else.
Microwave
Do you know even restaurants microwave frozen stuff to get it on your plate. When I worked in London we constantly would defrost something that has been in the fridge for a while and then 5 minutes later it would be on the plate ready to eat.
Repost your old stuff. Change the date and make it new, dont change the entire article, just some of it. Especially things that you really liked about your previous posts or articles that you can fix, give them some work and you can take a old idea to create a new article.
Bugs
Most restaurants pay thousands of $ or R or GPB to keep bugs out of their food and out of their restaurant. Rats steal your food and mess up your restaurant. You need pest control if you want a successful restaurant.
Splogs and Spam will kill your content and your blog. You need to make sure that you at least have some form of fighting against them. There is a plugin that you can download where you add “copyright” messages in your posts. Use that, use akismet or spam protection. Protect your blog.
Charge
Have you ever gone to a restaurant and just not get a bill? Well you might not of got one but someone had to pay for the chef’s time spent making the food, someone had to pay for the rent of the building, and someone has to pay the waiters.
The same way as above people can not expect you to make a living from your blog without some form of monetization of your blog. If people just hate any kind of advertisement embedded on your site they are unreasonable. As unreasonable as someone going to a restaurant and not expecting a bill.
Tips
Tipping the waiter in some countries is a mark of respect and appreciation for their service, while in other countries its enforced and unacceptable if you dont tip.
Having a paypal donate button is not the end of the world. If you enjoy a blog you should tip them if you can. Tipping someone one a blog will ensure more great content from them and is a great encouragement.
Welcome
I dont know about other countries but I know in South Africa and UK when you enter a restaurant you get guided to the seat that would be best for you and your company.
When someone enters your website place the best content where they can see it. Make it easy for them to find what they are looking for and try to show and guide people to your best content.
Regulars
When someone goes to a restaurant for years it’s really the restaurant’s duty to get to know them. They should always look after their regular customers. Regular customers is more important than any other customer because if they leave they take a part of your business with them. A restaurant should always be loyal to his regular customers.
Its really your duty as a blogger to get to know those who regularly post comments and visit your blog. Get to know their names and more about them. Visit their blogs and support them.
Location
You cant open any restaurant in the middle of the desert. Crap example but location for a restaurant is very important.This could be the make or break for your restaurant. This also determines the kind of people that would come in there and should be according to their budget.
While the budget story might have nothing to do with blogging the location does. Having a name like www.I-would-like-to-make-a-living-online.com just sucks, rather use something that has personal meaning. For example Fromtheold.com might not make sense but it has personal meaning to me and its not like the weird domain name above. Also you cant use blogspot. That’s like borrowing a restaurant name.
Music
Going to some of the restaurants in the area where I live I find that they really love their music. But sometimes they just overdo the music. Who wants music in a restaurant so loud that you cant hear others speaking?
Two words - AUDIO ADS. Dont use them.
Specials
Restaurants often have specials, here where we live there is a pizzeria that has a all you can eat special and that attracts aadvertise their specials in newspapers and magazines. lot of hungry people. Often they even
Having a competition on your blog would be the same has ha restaurant having a special. You can attract a lot of traffic by giving something away for free or having a competition.
Roast
Roasts take long to make and require you to have patience. You need to know just when to pull it. Making a Roast would require you to focus on other things as well, while the roast is cooking. The roast will be ready when everything else is finished. The Roast usually should be the last thing you add to the plate.
Dont rush a great post. If you have a great idea, dont rush do get it out there. Sometimes we mess up a great post because of being over excited and not waiting till the post is totally finished and ready to digest. I do that as well sometimes. I have a great post but because I just want to get it out there I publish it when it is not really ready to be published. Then I think if there is something wrong I will fix it later. But you really make sure nothing is wrong before you post it.
Shop
Some restaurants have a small section where you can maybe buy something. For example when I worked just outside of London in a bar, they sold cd’s with the restaurant’s music on it. A lot of people bought it. And so they took their brand outside of the Restaurant.
Many bloggers have shops, they sell tshirts or caps with their logo on it. They even sell other things like custom logos or maybe something collectible. Getting your own shop on your blog might just increase the chances of getting your brand out there and making some extra cash with something you dont really have a niche for.
Keep it coming
Isn’t it great as a waiter when your customers say: Keep it coming. It means you are doing something right. Just keep bringing them what you have been bringing them and they will be happy.
So when you get comments of people saying they like what you wrote, just keep on writing.
Tea break
Every waiter deserves a tea break. In some countries like South Africa and UK it’s illegal not to get a tea break or lunch break.
If you are working on a long post, take a break for a hour or two, when you come back you might have more inspiration than straining yourself and writing one post finished. I sometimes stretch one post out in a few days.
Mints at the till
Here in South Africa in some restaurants it is a custom to have mints at the place where you pay for your meal, or sometimes they give it with the bill. They also have the custom of thanking you when you are finished eating and asking you to come again. This is both great manners and good people skills. Also when you walk out of the restaurant you still have a full belly with a nice refreshing taste in your mouth thinking of the great food you just had.
When you post something, thank those who read it and ask them if they would like bookmark it.
Closing time
Remember to take a break sometimes. Close down and go on holiday.
If you made it till here through this long post, thank you for reading. (well also if you skipped to this part.) Please bookmark or social something this post if you liked it. Oh and dont forget to join the rss feed. (I am tired so there might be some spelling mistakes.) Did i miss something? Feel free to add comments.