the just one question project: question three.

Wow, so, hey…where to begin, right? I’ve been sooooo busy, guys; procrastination, general laziness, and sophisticated task-avoidance techniques really take it out of you. I’m exhausted from getting so little accomplished, really. So far this year, I’ve largely ignored the internet-verse, including all social media outlets and blog feeds. I’ve made completely unpalatable food (including a posh quick bread which looked like it had an “accident” all over my oven and a chinese dish which may or may not have made me physically ill), and written nothing, save for rambling notes on text docs and stacks of to-do lists on colorful Post-Its. Sometimes I take all the Post-Its and fashion a nest so I can have a quiet place of my own to feel entirely defeated. Ladies and gentlemen, I am killing it at January. KILLING IT.

So I’ve decided something: I’m taking the pressure off. January will not be the month I begin to rock the new year, but rather the month I really set aside to think about what I’m actually going to accomplish the rest of the year and get it all laid out in a way that’s most reasonable for my life. I broke my rule of sitting down quietly with my cookbooks this year, and it hasn’t served me well in the food department, so I’m fixing that starting today: as soon as this post is in the bag, I’m curling up with a big stack of them to get some inspiration.

I’ve managed to get a few things done in the meantime. I’ve been able to complete all the tasks in Apartment Therapy‘s annual January Cure, which I highly, highly recommend for anyone looking to do the normal freshen-up-the-house routine right now. I love it, because it’s not at all drill-sergenty, and you get to do things like buy flowers and break less fun tasks into manageable pieces rather than being overwhelmed by them and quitting. It’s nice to get a little objective help on housekeeping, because it forces you to look at what you actually need to do much differently than you would if it were just you.

I’ve also managed to compile this round’s Just One Question Project data; yay! And this one was an easy one for me, and hopefully for you (although you’d never know it by how long it took me to get the results to you) – thank you for sending your responses over what was obviously a busy holiday season. I promise now that everything has died down, we’ll get on a more regular schedule. Let’s begin.

This round’s question was about social media, and after reading your responses and remembering some of the conversations we’ve had in the past, social media seems to be a source of real apprehension. Most of us don’t feel like we know what we’re doing, but we do it anyway, and I’m proud of us for that, because doing scary things takes courage, especially when you’re doing it in front of an audience. Here’s the breakdown of what we like to use to get our words and photos and recipes out there:

As you can see (and I don’t think this is surprising in this group), Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest are the big winners here. We’re all the most comfortable with them, and we like using them to interact with each other. Next up seem to be the two biggies of food photography submission, Foodgawker and TasteSpotting, with a surprise showing from Serious Eats (I would never have guessed that many of us use it). Less-mentioned outlets included StumbleUpon, Google+, and Instagram, which I think, for varying reasons, are new and/or perplexing to lots of people, so no surprise there. Then there were one-offs people mentioned – left off for clarity – that only garnered one vote each: Tasteologie, FoodEpix, {Yum}goggle, FoodiePortal, DessertStalking, LinkedIn, Tumblr, FoodPornDaily, and FoodBeast.

In terms of when/how we use social media, it’s almost impossible to graph. Some of us do all of it right away, some of us wait for peak times on specific outlets, some of us do it haphazardly and without any sort of regular routine. Some of us are so organized we have things auto-posting, where others have realized that the pitfalls of automated posting are just not for them and would rather do it manually. No matter what we’re doing, it takes most of us anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes for post-production.

The percentages are even more interesting when you compare them to how much traffic we generate from each outlet. Let’s take a look:

So this is the pie version of the bar chart above: same data, but broken down by percentage. If I were to be asked to interpret this, what I see is three different zones:

• The Familiar/No Judgement Zone: Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter. No one is rating or rejecting your photos, there’s more of a conversation going on between individuals (except for Pinterest, but I’d argue that there’s almost a picture-by-picture conversation which goes in between people who follow each other), you have 100% control over what gets posted and what doesn’t, and it’s what almost all of us use in our personal lives to interact with friends and family. There’s lots of crossover here with these three avenues from professional to personal, so it’s a natural fit for lots of us.
• The Beauty Pageant Zone: Food photography sites are difficult and nerve-wracking, and no matter how good our photos are, there’s always some hand-wringing and generalized apprehension when we submit to Foodgawker, Tastespotting, and Serious Eats. We just want to be included, much like in high school, and it mostly feels like waiting to find out if you’re going to get asked to the dance or not. I hate it too: although some of you really seem to enjoy my photos, let me tell you: Tastespotting and Foodgakwer think my photos are the most upsetting things they have ever seen. As far as they’re concerned, I am regularly called out for having white balance and underexposure issues, my photos are poorly laid out, and one particular comment advised me that they “would rather not see food with bites taken out of it.” Although I’ve never had a photo rejected by Serious Eats, I know it happens. I can say don’t take it personally, but we all do, don’t we? Yes.
• The Stranger Danger Zone: StumbleUpon? Instagram? Google+? It’s safe to say we either don’t know what we’re doing on these and just feel like we’re winging along on a roller coaster, or we’ve over thought them to the point that we’re refusing to use them. Someone “stumbled” (is that right?) my Momofuku Perfect 10 Cookies and they blew up my stats: I got a crazy amount of hits from it, so immediately I went and created a StumbleUpon account and stumbled one thing and then…I froze. Because I didn’t even get it, and here I was with an account that people would see and OMG I can’t do this it will ruin me. Irrational? Certainly, but we all try to keep professional around here in a little bit of a way, and I think the idea that we could be doing something without fully understanding the ramifications sort of freaks us out. Instagram I love, but that’s because I’m so comfortable with all of you that I don’t mind sharing things on it. I loathe Google+, but this could easily be misdirected self-loathing at just not understanding what the heck it is and why I’d want to bother with it.

With that in mind, let’s look at the feedback regarding where we see the most traffic coming from. I think a majority of us would agree that much of our traffic comes from search engines: I am no different there, so let’s include that as the understood #1 source of traffic. Here’s the breakdown of what you mentioned as being your best sources of blog traffic:

Interesting, yes? I think so, because Pinterest, friends. How awesome and wonderful is it that the thing which takes us arguably the least amount of time is huge in terms of most of our hits? So awesome. Some of you mentioned you weren’t on Pinterest, and to those of you, I say: get on it. It’s fun. A well-organized (and routinely reorganized) Pinterest space is a wonderful resource to have, both for you personally and for your blog. In fact, if you have any questions about Pinterest, shoot them my way and I’d be happy to try to answer them; I’m no expert, but I’ve been using it awhile and I’ve learned – at least for myself – what seems to work and what doesn’t. And I can point you in the direction of some excellent people to follow; i use it for everything from food, to fashion, to home improvement inspiration, to art, and everything in between. I could spend all day on it.

Tangent! Sorry, back to it: What I also find interesting is how much we’re all trying to be on Twitter, but yet we’re not getting much kickback from it. I’m actually relieved at the findings here: Twitter is hard for me, because I don’t feel like people always care about what I think, and I don’t want to become a nuisance (thanks especially to Deb for wondering that same thing). It’s hard to find the balance on Twitter, in my opinion: how much personal versus food-related? How much sharing/re-tweeting? What if I offend someone? The list goes on. You don’t want to be a machine just regurgitating others’ post links, but you probably don’t want to start a war over politics or religion, either. Seems as though something’s not connecting, however, because none of us are seeing much traffic from it, so I wonder if we should take some of the pressure off of ourselves with this one.

I’ll always say Facebook, even with its continual aggravation regarding sponsored posts and population selection, is a solid way to get some comfortable exposure, and it’s a great way to have conversations and connect with readers; something you don’t always get in real-time when it comes to the post/reply world of blogging. For me, it’s been nice to be able to ask of-the-moment baking and cooking questions of people, which is supremely helpful in times of crisis, let me tell you; you all have saved my tuckus a few times thanks to Facebook.

And then there’s Serious Eats, TasteSpotting, and Foodgawker: seems like we get a good amount of traffic from these avenues…when and if we actually get accepted, which is not a given. I don’t know much about the quality of this traffic either, or where it comes from. I’ve never used what is predominantly a “beautiful photos only” site for recipes: maybe I should? I think of them more as art sites that can, frankly, get me some traffic. And maybe the right people see it and actually like me. Serious Eats I think of less like this, because there’s something more genuine to me about them and their approach to good food rather than pretty food. I should mention that this is maybe more in reference to the weekly Share Your Sweets slide shows (which both myself and Natalie participate in when one of us thinks to remind the other) and the Weekend Cook and Tell, which Elizabeth mentioned she utilizes. Maybe it’s just my personal experience talking, but it seems as though the Serious Eats community is way more of a “community” than the other two.

Big Takeaways:

Let’s relax with social media, and do what feels right, because although some of us are pros at faking it until we make it, none of us are experts at using social media. I daresay there’s a good many people in the world, some of them employed as social media directors, who have no idea what they’re doing either. As with everything having to do with blogging, I think it’s most important that you go with your gut and stay true to yourself and what you think is best for your own routines versus being worried about “keeping up with the Joneses” in terms of social media. And we seem to have a good group to ask questions of in this crowd: Rachael, for instance, is excellent at promoting other people’s blogs on Facebook: like truly she does it the best of anyone I know, and I have her support to thank for a good amount of my own traffic. Jennie is a constant presence on my Twitter feed, which means she’s gotta know something (because I’m notoriously losing people I follow from my feed) the rest of us don’t. Natalie and I met via Serious Eats, and although we’re sporadic in our activity levels over there, we’re both pretty good at knowing how to use their site. And the list goes on: we all seem to excel at some more than others, and that’s okay: if we were all good at the same things, it would be super boring (not to mention super competitive) over here.

And another thing: you’ll see Emma mention this in her answer below, but I’ll echo her sentiment about how sometimes  a big source of blog traffic can be completely random and unexpected, and based on nothing you yourself did aside from just having solidly good content. She mentions being featured on HuffPost Taste, among others (a few of us have had that particular honor), and that can be an invaluable source of short and long-term blog traffic. Sure, it’s going to be a mega hit day for you the day it happens, but there’s some aftershock value to that, and it exposes a whole untapped portion of the population to your work, which can (and has) led to long-term followers. You know what my biggest source of traffic is, still? This pie. Because not only did Serious Eats and Instructables feature it, but every single geektastic website in the universe picked it up, including Today.com, which was crazy. When Pi Pie Day rolled around again the next year, you know who wrote it up as   “elegantly insane”? Bon Appétit. Ever hear of them? Right. My life was complete that day, and it serves as a decent reminder of how just having standout content (even just every once in a while) can really have a lasting effect in terms of readers and traffic. You never know who is going to see your stuff, or when it will happen. Just be you. Things always go better that way.

Before I actually bust the limits of word count here, I want to throw out the next question. Here it is, and it’s not a surprising one.

It’s the new year: for many of us, that means not only personal resolutions, but  a laundry list of blog-related resolutions as well. I want to know what your top three blog-related resolutions are for 2014, and out of those, which one you consider to be most important. If you’re willing to share, talk about what steps you plan on taking to accomplish your #1 goal.

So while you ponder that one (and send me your answers, say, by January 20 or therabouts), let’s away to the responses:

Brianne, Documenting Our Dinner:

“I immediately publicize my posts on my blog’s Facebook page (but not my personal one—I feel weird bombarding my friends and colleagues news feeds with my blog), my Twitter feed, and my Google+ page. Somehow I ended up in a bunch of other food bloggers G+ circles! I don’t think I get any traffic from G+, and I only use it to post blog updates, but I do it anyway. I get very little traffic from social media in general—my audience there is pretty small. I’d like to start posting photos on Instagram of each post, and I’ve considered starting a Pinterest board of photos from each blog post. I think I’d get good traffic from pinning my posts, but I’m curious to hear other’s experience with that. When I was posting regularly, I’d also submit my photos to Tastespotting and Serious Eats. I was getting fairly decent acceptance from Tastespotting, and a lot of traffic from them, too! Serious Eats also provides a nice bump in blog traffic. But Foodgawker is some next level business. My photos aren’t at that level. I may not get a lot of traffic from most of these outlets, but if you’re trying to (I’ll say it) “build a brand,” taking an extra 10 minutes after publishing to get the word out about each post is worth it.”

Natalie, Wee Eats:

“Usually, once I post to the blog I will then also post a link and photo on Facebook (sometimes immediately, sometimes not). My tip to those of you who do this is to post it as a picture, and not a link. People like pictures, they are pretty and fun to look at. (Plus, when you realize you misspelled something, you can easily edit the caption of the photo rather than deleting and reposting the link!). Since I’ve already got a photo made, this process takes about 20 seconds, maybe 30 if I have to think of something witty to say.

Originally I was letting Facebook just automatically post to my Twitter feed (LAZYBONES!), because I wasn’t really using Twitter. Lately, I’ve been trying to focus more on Twitter (aka, remember that it exists and figuring out how it works), so I find myself re-posting in separately on Twitter instead of just letting Facebook do it for me. Here is another 20-second step, unless I have to shorten the link via bitly which can increase it to 25 seconds or so… Bitly is great because it not only shortens the link for you, but will follow the stats of that link.

If I decide to pin it, there’s another 2 seconds which I can do from directly within my website. Maybe a few more minutes if I decide that I want to make a “pinnable” picture with text overlay (I use iPiccy, it’s free and super user-friendly!) and then pin the item as well….

So, we’ve covered 3 outlets at a total approaching about 1.5 minutes.

Occasionally, I may upload a relevant post to a Serious Eats slide show (which takes literally like 1 minute out of 1 day every week, on the weeks that I remember to do it). I’ve also submitted a few to FoodPornDaily. These are all pretty randomly done though, and not part of any greater strategy.

I will also go through phases where I upload a bunch of stuff to Tastespotting, who rejects them for a generic reason (“composition”) and then I cry and throw my computer and resubmit the same unchanged photos a few months later and they are magically accepted despite their previously “poor” composition… Pretty sure they just throw darts there.

I also post for FoodBeast, she’s my “lady on the side”. Usually this involves copying and editing an existing recipe post and photos, about 15 minutes total. Occasionally, though, they do get “exclusive” recipes as well. They do accept reader submissions as well, so go ahead and check them out.

Let me just say that I really don’t get a lot of traffic from any of these avenues. The *MOST* traffic I’ve received from any one external post was a random comment on a post on TheKitchn where I mentioned growing basil on my windowsill… Random, right?

As far as traffic goes, most of my traffic actually comes from search engines (why do I even bother with all that other stuff!?), Pinterest is in second place, which appears to give the biggest “bang for its buck” since it takes like 3 seconds to pin something.

Facebook and Tastespotting come in a little further down the line, and Twitter even lower on the totem below those – granted, since I migrated my web page to a new host earlier this year, all of these stats only apply to March and later of this year.”

 Deb, East of Eden Cooking:

“After publishing a blog post I will Tweet one notification. I am not involved in food community or photography sites as I always thought it would be a time burn in terms of any viable results. I am very interested in finding out if other bloggers find the extra time and effort worth the results. I am also curious about Twitter “etiquette”. How many times does one self promote their own blog before becoming a nuisance to the Twitter community? The majority of new visits to my blog are from Pinterest, confirming the importance of excellent food photography. Web searches are the second highest source of new traffic.”

 Elizabeth, The Manhattan [food] Project:

“Post-production: to be honest, I’ve gotten really lazy about post-production these days. When I was really into promoting the blog, I would tweet an update, I would post onto my personal Facebook page, I would try to submit to Tastespotting and Foodgawker (with very, very limited success), and if a post fit in with the topic of the week for Weekend Cook & Tell on Serious Eats, I’d post a link there. While Tastespotting/Foodgawker would get me some traffic, I seldom felt like it was good traffic (i.e., quality traffic) for all of the hoops they make you jump through and how arbitrary the rejections are. My other issue with them is that because they have a specific aesthetic–something that they are absolutely entitled to have, I should emphasize–but that encourages everyone submitting to them to conform to that aesthetic in the ploy for traffic and does it ever get boring. To be honest, while the traffic spike wasn’t quite as high, whenever I’d get mentioned on Serious Eats (and especially when a photo made it on the round-up post) I would have a goofy smile on my face for the rest of the day.

Now, I have my LinkedIn, Twitter, and Tumblr accounts automatically publish an update for me, and I’ll pin the post to my recipes board, but honestly, I’m largely over the shameless self-promotion. I find myself on the lookout for online friends who love food, which prompts me to comment on blogs (hoping they can return the favor and we can actually become blog friends), but I have yet to hit “publish” on my Facebook page, largely because I keep my FB stuff relatively locked down and I’m petrified that I’d get all of five likes and that’s it.

To be honest, now that I’m writing more for me, I’m not aching for the big hit days like I used to–I’m happy to have the readers I do, and engaging in comments and the like.”

Emma, of agates and madeleines:

“Back when I was unemployed and lonely-at-home in early 2012, I broke my self-imposed No Social Media rule and signed up for Facebook so that I could create a page for my blog. Best decision ever, since I am often still quite lonely. I share my posts there, and usually send a photo into Tastespotting as well. My photos always look so evenly-colored and nice until they pop up in the little Tastespotting submissions square…. then they look funky and uninviting. I wonder if there is a Tastespotting filter I can apply to my images to make them look prettier?

I don’t do anything else to advertise my blog, really…. I’m always a little short on time. Post-production takes me ten minutes, tops.

The sites that have pumped me up most as far as traffic and visibility are concerned have always been very random – – being included on HuffPost Taste recipe roundups, being Freshly Pressed on WordPress, and Facebook sharing from pages like Wild Blueberries and Angostura Bitters (USA) come to mind.“

Ashley, Hops:

“I must admit I don’t do anything after publishing a post.  I don’t have any other social media accounts for my blog (in fact, I only recently made a personal Instagram account that features a lot of food-related photos from me).  If I was more established, I would consider creating a Facebook page for my blog.  But I would probably limit it to that…unless I magically developed crazy good photography skills overnight!”

Faygie, Life Tastes Good:

“My “post-production” take no more than a few minutes. I share on facebook, twitter, and pinterest (to my Life Tastes Good board), and that’s it. Usually what I’ll do, if it’s a post with more than one picture, I’ll post each of the pictures onto my pinterest board, but I spread them throughout the day.

I actually don’t get a ton of traffic from facebook and twitter, but oftentimes it will start a discussion on there, which can be fun! I do get a lot of my traffic from pinterest, although not necessarily from the pins that I pinned. I think the great thing about posting to pinterest is that it gets your post out to those who are just browsing the site; they don’t have to be one of your followers.”

Dana, Whisks & Words:

 Allison, Spontaneous Tomato:

“Right after I put up a new blog post each Thursday morning, the first thing I do is add Pinterest buttons under some of the (nicer) photos. (I can’t use plug-ins or Javascript to have this done automatically because I’m using free WordPress.) I also haven’t yet figured out how I could do this in advance of posting (since I’d need to know the exact future URL of each photo), so I always do it immediately after posting—it just takes 10 minutes, but it means I can’t schedule my posts to go up automatically if I want the Pinterest buttons to be ready to go before most people view it (and before the Feedburner e-mail goes out). Then I pin a few photos to a few boards of my blog’s Pinterest account (a separate account from my personal one), and hope for the best. I do often get quite a few hits from Pinterest compared to from Facebook or elsewhere, at least according to the WordPress stats page.

I also post a photo to my blog’s Facebook page, with a link to the recipe in the comment rather than in the post itself, in the hopes that Facebook will then show it to slightly more of the people who have liked the page. Facebook is frustrating though, because it wants to charge pages money to show our posts to more than just a small fraction of our page-likers, and that’s never going to happen. I sometimes consider posting a recipe link twice, but I don’t want to spam the same 20 people who saw it the first time.

That’s it! Beside the automated publicize-to-Twitter option in WordPress… so I guess I’m sharing every link on Twitter these days, too. But I still haven’t gotten into actually Twittering like a normal person, even though I know it’d be great for blogging, social networking, etc… I just don’t want to have my laptop in front of my face any more than is absolutely necessary I guess.

I’m actually really looking forward to reading everyone else’s answers to this one, to hear if people have had success with particular websites (especially sites that automatically pull from food blogs’ RSS feeds, since I’d much rather spend my time working on my next blog post than promoting the one I just posted!).

Back when I first started blogging (and my photos were AWFUL), I was somehow nevertheless happy with my photos (because maybe I hadn’t started reading/comparing myself to too many other bloggers yet), and I submitted a bunch of photos to a few sites like Tastespotting and got rejections for all of them.

After all of those rejections (on that one day), will I ever go back to Tastespotting? It remains to be seen… (On a related note, will I ever find a young, tech-savvy unpaid intern willing to solely spend their time cropping my photos into squares, submitting them to Tastespotting for me with all the right tags, and in their extra time attempt to make my Twitter presence seem “active”? Probably not…)”

Amy, Elephant Eats:

“I kind of touched on this in the last question you asked us, but usually I schedule my blog to post the morning after I compose it, so I can’t share it immediately on social media since it isn’t live yet. It publishes while I’m work so when I get home I’ll submit to foodgawker and tastespotting which are the only two food photography sharing sites I knew about…but now that you’ve alerted me to these others, I will check them out! Next I pin my recipe to my blog’s recipe board on pinterest. And finally, I share my post on my blog’s facebook page and my personal facebook page. This whole process takes maybe 15 minutes, but I usually don’t do it all at once because I get distracted 🙂

As far as traffic is concerned, I usually see a bunch of views from Foodgawker the day it goes up. It really depends on the recipe though, as some are definitely more popular to “the public” than others are. The views from that particular post dwindle within 3 days and then will just get occasional views here and there for months after. Tastespotting doesn’t really get me many views. My main source of continuous traffic comes from Pinterest. Things on that site get shared and shared and shared, and just when i think a post has lost it’s spark, someone will share it again!”

Elizabeth, Eating Local in the Lou:

“After posting, I am so relieved to be finished, I first let out a huge sigh of relief. Pinning is easy, so I pin to Pinterest on my blog board and to a Cooking Light board to which I’ve been invited to pin. I get a fair amount of traffic from Pinterest on a regular basis. A tweet goes out automatically via Networked Blogs- can’t say I get much visibility from this but I still do it. I post a link & pic on my Facebook page, but often do this later (trying to hit the better times of day to post). That is all I do right now. In the past, I would try posting on other sites to increase visibility (BlogHer, erecipe, Feastie and Allrecipes, etc) but did not see a big enough payoff in traffic to warrant the time it takes.”

 Abbe, This Is How I Cook:

“After I post… I tweet to my one million followers. Just kidding. I probably have 10. Maybe. but I’m supposed to tweet so I do, but I still don’t get it. Then I post it to Facebook. Which I still don’t get. I call this age related quandries. Then I share on Google+. I feel so good sharing… Then I give out plusses, so they feel good and I feel like I’m a teacher giving out A’s to the entire class. Then I pin, which I am just starting to understand. I’m actually beginning to like this and understanding the whole bulletin board thing.

Then I submit which is like sending off bad photos to martians. Some like them, most don’t, but it does increase my traffic, if they accept me. Accept being the key word. Luckily my feelings aren’t easily hurt. But sometimes I know they are like WAY wrong and I took a good photo! Their loss. Right? I send to Food Gawker-why? I’m not sure. I’ve only ever gotten one photo there, though I do admit to not sending out any photos for probably my first 90 posts. I should try again. I then send to Tasteologie and Tastespotting where I have better luck. Serious Eats is in there and Foodepix. YumGoggle, and FoodiePortal. I do StumbleUpon, too. I think that’s it. I have done DessertSpotting, since they asked me to submit. The first one I submitted, I believe they turned down. So much for that. All of them appear to be very subjective and I laugh when one accepts a photo and the others don’t. It would be nice to hit a home run and get them all. I think I’d die of shock if I ever did!

This takes anywhere from 15 minutes to hours, depending on how much I get held up by my computer and their sites. Also, by how much extra reading I choose to do! I would be curious if the bloggers that form groups based around food themes and then post and publish all the photos on each site-well, I would be interested to see if this drives traffic to their site. I read a few of them like Sunday Supper and a few others, but generally I never go to the other sites unless it is a recipe I am interested in.

I do fairly well when I get on Tastespotting or FoodEpix. Tasteologie is decent, too. Pinterest can be really good. Right now I am in a holding pattern. My numbers haven’t changed much in months. If I get lucky and get a few photos on, then the numbers really shoot up. That works about a month and then they fall back down again. I really hope to take a photography class this year. It always gets me that your recipe could be total crap, but if the photo is good, then that is what matters!

I haven’t even heard about FoodBeast or Kitchen Artistry, so it will be interesting to see what others turn up.”

Willow, Will Cook For Friends:

“After I’ve published a blog post, the first thing I try to do is post a link to Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google Plus, and Stumbleupon. Sometimes this doesn’t happen until later in the day, but it almost always happens. Sometime later, when I have the time, I’ll submit the recipe to foodsharing sites. The main ones for me are Foodgawker and Tastespotting — in the past, I’ve submitted to as many as a dozen different ones, but I found that many of them weren’t driving any (or barely any) traffic to my site. Having too many to submit to made the task incredibly tedious and time consuming, so eventually I pared it down to just the big ones. Of all the places I submit to, I get the most traffic from Pinterest and Foodgawker. Of course, that all depends on if my photos are good… if they aren’t, sometimes I won’t even bother submitting/pinning them.

Other than that, I don’t do very much. There are a few places that have my RSS feed, which means they automatically update when a post gets published. I think the biggest one for me is Triberr, which helps get my posts out on twitter more (which is great, because I suck at twitter). After that, I have a mailing list which sends an email out to my subscribers the morning after a post goes live, and that’s about it. I would say in total, all of my post-publishing stuff takes about 20 minutes or so.

I think one of the most important ways of putting yourself out there (not just after a post gets published, but anytime), is to visit other blogs and leave thoughtful comments. Interacting in the blogging community not only gets your name out there, but it helps you make friends with other bloggers. Plus it can be a huge boon to your own blog’s traffic if other bloggers know who you. One tweet or facebook mention, and they could be sending their readers your way. I feel like the twenty minutes I spend submitting my posts to different social media and gawker sites is a bit like “work”, while just being me and making friends with all of you is “play”. The internet has given us this outlet for getting to know one another, and to me that’s one of the best parts of blogging. Any extra traffic that comes from that is just a bonus!“

Shannon, a periodic table

“As usual, i gave away some of my answers throughout the post. I’ve been pretty lax about social media as of late, but I’m going to tackle that more this coming year. Typically, once I publish a post, I can muster enough strength to post the link to Facebook.

aaaaaand there you have it. *cymbals*

On an ideal day where I am bursting with motivation to get myself out there, I publish my post, share the link on Facebook and Twitter, and pin it onto my Pinterest board. Food photo sites are another beast entirely: I’d love to say I submit regularly, but I don’t. Sometimes I gather up my ten most recent posts’ photos and send them off to Foodgawker and TasteSpotting, and i have about a 10% success rate with that (although i haven’t submitted anything in awhile). Serious Eats is way less anxiety-inducing; that’s simply a matter of me remembering to submit it to their Photograzing section, because i’ve never had an issue with them accepting my submissions. My difficulty in photo sharing sites is the way I take my photos: what looks good in a normal landscape photo looks sometimes poorly composed when whittled down to a square, so if i’m planning to submit to food photo sites, it means i need to ready both versions or at least be mindful of the size difference when i’m shooting. Exhausting, really, because i could think of so many other things to care about most days. On any normal day, accomplishing this would take between 10-15 minutes of uninterrupted time.

I don’t even understand StumbleUpon or Tumblr or Google+ or anything like that: honestly, I think it’s because i don’t want to. Considering i spend a large amount of my time “running” this blog and i still feel perpetually behind. I have always enjoyed having conversations with people: through words, through photographs, through food. I feel like I can do that on Facebook and Twitter with actual back-and-forth conversation, and on Pinterest and Instagram with “visual” conversations: the latter two are more personal – although they all have elements of personal me in them – so it’s nice to share snippets of real life admist the blog life and have people share back. I mean, let’s get real, some of you crazies let me follow your personal Instagram accounts right back, so we’re like, tight now. And I prefer to keep it that way – to keep it meaningful and inspiring – rather than just be rolling out content on 93 different networks. I fear I would get watered down.”

Postscript: It was a busy, scattered holiday. I am normally very organized, but if for some reason you sent me a response to this and you don’t see it included, please let me know or resend it to me, and I’ll get it right in here for you.