Boldly going … where millions of food bloggers have been before

When I originally started this blog in October 2012 (nearly half a year ago, how time flies eh?), the idea was to firstly see whether I had actually managed to maintain it by Christmas, and secondly read back through it to decide whether it was suitable to launch on an unsuspecting public, or more akin to re-reading your teenage diaries where you cringe in shame about your pathetic writing ‘style’.

Well, I am still not sure – reading it back, I don’t think it’s completely awful, and the few people I have shown it to have been complimentary (although they have been my friends so possibly not entirely trustworthy … they’re a nice bunch so probably wouldn’t say if they thought it was dire).

But it’s about time I started sharing my moments of greed, to see whether people will actually read the blog, and also (warning: excuse to justify failure coming up) to see what effect twitter, facebook, google+ etc have on generating traffic to websites. Because I work in web comms for financial services it’s hard enough getting regular content to update the website once a week, let alone getting the compliance team to let us send a tweet, so a personal blog experiment seems like the only way to pad out my social media experience. That is my story and I am sticking to it.

But I am a bit scared about telling people I know in real life about the blog, even though in reality most of my friends will ignore it; one or two might take a little look but then forget about it; my brother will probably write some shitty but witty comments on facebook about how crap I am and that will be it. So I am going to pluck up the courage and add the link to my personal facebook page, and send it to a few pals on email.

The plan is to spend this weekend tidying up the blog, write a couple of posts about my Easter baking eggstravaganza, sort out my facebook page and g+ account and then share a link and wait (no more than a few weeks preferably) for a cookbook deal or something that will mean I can give up my job and earn a fortune through not doing much more than eating nice food. That’s the plan anyway.

So first step is to try and have a theme to each blog as opposed to general waffle about what I have eaten over the course of the last week (although that’s easier said than done because I am an expert in waffling), and a proper recipe instead of lazily posting a link to someone else’s website (as Joel from work – who I shared the blog with on Friday – said that he couldn’t find any recipes even though he obviously wasn’t looking properly (typical man) as there was one right at the top of the link I sent him).

I am making these little tweaks because I came across Esther Walker’s fabulous blog this weekend and immediately wished I wrote like her (I tweeted her to tell her that and she told me to feel free to copy her exactly, which made me love her more). I then realised that I had previously received a tweet from  her sister-in-law Victoria Coren (who I tweeted to say I loved her book, even though it was about poker, because the bit at the end about her dad made me cry), and then realised that I had ALSO received a tweet from her husband Giles Coren (who I had tweeted years ago to ask for recommendations about restaurants in San Francisco – he gave some great recommendations for The Slanted Door and Taylors Automatic Refresher, which were both awesome, but his tweet was slightly forgotten by me because my hero Stephen Fry had also tweeted me to recommend visiting Chinatown when in San Fran. My greatest ever twitter moment, getting that tweet). So I have basically twitter-stalked the poor woman’s family and am now copying her blog. But she’s a good writer and I’m not really (although I think I have my moments), so I doubt anyone would even be able to tell.

But as this blog entry is basically me waffling away about stalking people and not providing recipes or anything, I have already failed. Things can only get better … maybe.