This is a topic I am passionate about, especially with social media having the potential to be a platform fuelled with content that can help others for the greater good. What I have aimed to do with my account personally, is to create a space where knowledge and information can be gained. Instagram for instance, is a platform that has incredible opportunities to help (and keep) your audience! Here are some ways to keep giving back. These tips are also inspired by what I really enjoy seeing on other people’s accounts.

Note: these tips will be food account specific, but can be related to other niches!

Be honest and detailed in your reviews

One thing that I have heard is to cater for the audience you already have – not for the audience you don’t have yet. You want to build trust with your existing audience to ensure that you are providing reliable and useful information. This can be done especially by posting unbiased reviews of items. We’re all full of opinions, so share it! Some great ways you can do a review is by recording a first impression of trying a product – this is the most genuine kind of review there is. Someone who can be straight up honest if they don’t like something and is able to explain why, is someone who I will end up counting on for advice.

My favourite kind of review: live first impressions!

Make your captions and recipes easy to read

Personally, I like seeing captions on Instagram posts separated into clear sections. If you are sharing a recipe – I would highly recommend listing all the ingredients and recipe in a step-by-step form just like it would be on a website. Some exceptions are meals that consist of different elements coming together like a buddha bowl, in which you can say ‘this bowl has roasted sweet potato, crispy chickpeas coated in paprika, salad mix and topped with tahini’.

Since there is a lot to be shared in a recipe related caption, I aim to clearly separate different subjects with emojis and full stops as paragraph ‘breaks’.

Structure follows this order:

• Name of the dish
• Personal insights and experiences
• Ingredients
• Method
• Optional: Question

Utilise your story features!

Drop the location of the restaurant that you’re at… Tag the accounts of the brand you’re using… There are some handy tools in the story feature on Instagram that can provide great value to your audience.

Use the question feature for your audience to share their insights. I have realised this is a super useful tool for your audience to share their expertise and your audience to also gain wider perspectives from others. For example, you could create a question on your stories like ‘What are the best vegan restaurants in Melbourne?’. After receiving some recommendations, you can share them to the rest of your audience and they may find it useful too. It’s all about maximising the ‘usefulness’ of these features.

Share your tips and tricks

Let’s be honest… a lot of fails happen in the kitchen that we don’t end up sharing or talk about how we fixed tiny things to improve the outcome. You must have some sort of expertise in something if you made an account dedicated to it. Share your insight. Do you take professional looking pictures? Know how to bake really well? Share all your tips! There have been times where I have refrained from sharing a ‘tip’ because I thought maybe it was obvious to everyone else and not worth sharing. That is not the case… someone in your audience will benefit from it.

Like this blog post, you can share really specific tips that people want to know but don’t really talk about that much. I love to share my tips on food photography because there are many strategies that can be implemented that some people don’t actually realise is effective! You can find the links to the informative blog posts here and you can also check out the photography BTS in my Instagram highlights.

Show yourself

I love to see personal insights and the faces behind food accounts. It gives a personal touch and can influence your audience to stick around because they find you interesting, insightful or funny. It is a privilege to have a space to be authentically yourself – so make the most of your space. I feel like at the end of the day, we are all just humans working this thing. After being online for a while, it can be easy to forget that it is an actual person with life experiences behind a food account. As social creatures, I think part of us wants to get a feel of this human connection. Basically, I want to see your face. I want to feel like I know you (and what your voice sounds like).

That’s it! Feel free to add or share any other tips you have. If you find this useful share this post with others who may benefit from it.

Until next time,

Pez