Blog of Blogs?: Reposting Reviews

Perhaps this has been addressed elsewhere, but I couldn't find it.

With the decline of several of the general, national food discussion boards (such as eGullet and Opinionated About, but not us!!!), I am wondering if there are national websites where I could republish my longer blog entries and reviews. Since I will be in the Bay Area next year, I would like to reach those readers, only a few of whom are wise enough to have discovered LTH.

Any ideas?

Vealcheeks

yelp

Any good ideas?

Are you looking for discussion, or for traffic?

Serious eats? The "talk" part of the website where anybody can post doesn't seem to invite posts of real depth, though.

Most of the places I've found to drive traffic are photo-based sites: Photograzing, Tastespotting and Foodgawker.

I joined Foodbuzz, and the Foodie Blogroll, but have only very rarely received any reward for doing so and am not sure I should have in the first place.

Smithsonian Magazine has a terrific blog called "Food & Think," they do an open call called "Inviting Writing," where readers can submit an original piece on a theme of their choice, but it's more of a contest sort of thing.

Mhays wrote:Are you looking for discussion, or for traffic?

Fame and Fortune!

Twitter. Really. Put your name & stuff out there.

Vital Information wrote:Twitter. Really. Put your name & stuff out there.

Hate to say it (Phoenix food is married to Twitter and I hate it), but VI's absolutely right.

GAF wrote:With the decline of...national food discussion boards... such as Opinionated About ...

Reminds me of the fall of the Micronesian empire, the loss of power for the Unity Party of America, and the declining TV ratings for badminton.

My last review was 11,000 characters. A rather extensive Tweet. Oh well. I guess you will be the beneficiary of my logorrhea.

GAF wrote:My last review was 11,000 characters. A rather extensive Tweet. Oh well. I guess you will be the beneficiary of my logorrhea.

You can always give a quick take on where/what you ate and then a link to your full blog entry. This would be a nice change of pace, as most of the local food bloggers I follow (Sky Full of Bacon excluded) either tweet requests for restaurant recommendations or links to write-ups of media dinners.

GAF wrote:I guess you will be the beneficiary of my logorrhea.

u funy, he says in twitter speak.

I may be missing some important bit of info on the secret of effectively using twitter, but when I get tweets such as the following back to back I have my doubts it is worth the effort.

=-=-
#GourmetGirlMag#FF @spontwts @thespiceguy @kylepetty @HarneyTea @BasilMagazine @nytimesmagazine @TedsBBQWorld @slashfood @GrubStreetLA @LHJmagazine less than a minute ago via web

=-

# GG Magazine GourmetGirlMag#FF @DutchEdam @grillcharmer @Funfearlessbean @WillieCrawford @finecooking @Loews_Hotels @Greetums @paulbarron @French_Cooking 2 minutes ago via web

How nice to spend a year in the Bay Area!

Although we Chicagoans tend to view Chowhound with a mixture of resentment and disdain (given the history of the founding of this board), the SF CH board is quite lively, with plenty of solid and useful discussion going on among the endless touristic queries. Posters like Melanie Wong, Robert Lauriston, Ruth Lafler, etc etc are active and well informed. They also get together for dinners, have an annual picnic ... all that good stuff.

I think it's worth posting or cross posting or posting 'abstracts' of your Bay Area stuff on Chowhound.

GAF wrote:My last review was 11,000 characters. A rather extensive Tweet. Oh well. I guess you will be the beneficiary of my logorrhea.

You know, I can rarely keep the url's of local beet posts to under 140 characters, but luckily there are some snazzy sites like tinyurl.com that can take even the most verbose of web links and compress them into twitter-ese. Then, of course, people can still click on them to find what's on your site.

A year in SF?

I'll make you a deal: take me with you and I'll put your reviews on a sandwich board and walk up and down whatever street you name (during the day...)

A year in Palo Alto (where I will actually be staying) is not a year in San Francisco. No more than a year in DeKalb is a year in Chicago (well, perhaps the comparison is not precise, but . . . ). I hope to get up to SF once a week.

G Wiv wrote:

GAF wrote:I guess you will be the beneficiary of my logorrhea.

u funy, he says in twitter speak.

I may be missing some important bit of info on the secret of effectively using twitter, but when I get tweets such as the following back to back I have my doubts it is worth the effort.

Not for the posts themselves... c'mon, guys. And I know you're vehemently anti-Twitter, Wiv, and the way many people use it drives me nuts too, but to ignore what benefits it does have is substituting blind dogma for pragmatism. It sounds no better than a curmudgeonly newspaper critic bashing online food boards. There are people who post stupid, useless stuff back to back here, too.

What Twitter does well is propagation. Both in terms of design and culture, there is no quicker way to get eyes on pages.

You run you blog as you always have, GAF. And you start a Twitter account and try to occasionally post something, even if it's through gritted teeth. Then every time you post something on your blog, you tweet a quick intro with a shortened URL to the blog post:

"Small town joy at Town House: http://bit.ly/aWvLpJ"

Something like that. People who follow your Twitter account see it immediately, and those who really like it retweet it, bringing in more followers, more retweets... snowball effect.

That Twitter does this very, very well is undeniable. You don't put content there. It's terrible for that unless you have things to say in 140 characters. I don't, and neither do you, GAF. But it's an excellent gateway to reach a lot of people and draw them in to where you content actually resides.

Well, but if GAF wants to interact with Bay Area folks serious about food, how will they know to follow him in the first place? One first has to join a community, which is why I suggested posting on Chowhound.

Incidentally, this has the added benefit of not reposting your actual content all over the place. There's still one spot to read it, it's still on your server, and in the format of your choosing. Effectively, you're sending out tentacles to grab people and bring them in rather than throwing your content to the wind.

If you're a bit of a control freak when it comes to your content, this is a big plus.

Amata wrote:Well, but if GAF wants to interact with Bay Area folks serious about food, how will they know to follow him in the first place? One first has to join a community, which is why I suggested posting on Chowhound.

A fine way to sow some seeds, agreed.

Chowhound it is. That was how I discovered LTH BTW. Given that I ignore my friends on Facebook, I guess that I could ignore them on Twitter as well.

FWIW, I will second Amata's suggestion. Several years ago, before the Lovely Dining Companion and I set out for SF (not the Bay area), I posted to Chowhound seeking advice. Got lots of helpful suggestions from a very active community there (including some of the very names Amata listed). And, when posting my "thanks" by way of posting my LTH review on Chowhound, I got some nice feedback as well. All in all, a wise suggestion (Chowhound, that is).

G Wiv wrote:I may be missing some important bit of info on the secret of effectively using twitter, but when I get tweets such as the following back to back I have my doubts it is worth the effort.

=-=-
#GourmetGirlMag#FF @spontwts @thespiceguy @kylepetty @HarneyTea @BasilMagazine @nytimesmagazine @TedsBBQWorld @slashfood @GrubStreetLA @LHJmagazine less than a minute ago via web

=-

# GG Magazine GourmetGirlMag#FF @DutchEdam @grillcharmer @Funfearlessbean @WillieCrawford @finecooking @Loews_Hotels @Greetums @paulbarron @French_Cooking 2 minutes ago via web

So, the #FF means it's for "Follow Friday" - where some people will, on Fridays, tweet the names of accounts they follow. It's shorthand for "Hey, it's Friday, here are people I follow and I think if you follow me you'd be interested in these folks too" - and the idea is that you don't just regurgitate your entire follow list, but shout out a few gems.

I don't generally do it, but some people like it.

leek wrote:I don't generally do it, but some people like it.

I stopped following all of those people several weeks ago. I think it was a Friday.

I was actually serious about yelp. If you want to reach as many bay area folks as possible yelp is probably your best bet. I can't guarantee anyone will read the posts, but that's kind of a given at any of these places.

Gleam,

I still have a shred of pride. Not much, but a shred.

Gary

Just saw a twitter about Foodspotting, which appears to be a more restaurant-based version of the other big foodporn sites (Tastespotting, FoodGawker, PhotoGrazing, which generally focus on cooking, though you can post photos that link to a post about a restaurant.)

Mhays wrote:Serious eats? The "talk" part of the website where anybody can post doesn't seem to invite posts of real depth, though.

I think Serious Eats is an interesting suggestion, but not in their "talk" section. I'd contact them directly and see if they have interest in hosting a column on SF-area dining. They have a ton of columns.
http://www.seriouseats.com/columns/

I'm sure if you talked to the right person and presented your history of writing about dining, they'd entertain the idea
http://www.seriouseats.com/bios/

Best,
Michael