Seven million foodies visit blogs every month to find recipes

NEW YORK, March 11 -- The leading independent food blogs attract over seven million food lovers a month. This is according to The Top Independent Food Blogs and Bloggers report, compiled and published by Konector, the first company to use detailed audience analysis to rank the most influential blogs.

Using blogs for brand promotion is extremely powerful. “Seven million visitors a month who read 15 million pages is very large and engaged audience” notes Mathew Ryder, the Communications Manager at Konector. “These visitors have made an active decision to read the blogs. They are not driven by advertising and have a genuine interest in the content. To add to this they are often themselves seen as influencers, continuing to spread the word.

“Food companies can position their brands in front of these targeted consumers, all 7.8 million of them,” Ryder says. “They can then benefit from being able to monitor the conversations on a regular basis, gather all the feedback and measure the real success of their marketing campaigns.”

Although the number of visitors is important, it is not the only requirement to make it in to the Konector list. “When ranking the blogs we focus on three main criteria - reach, frequency and interaction,” notes Kingsley Maunder, a director at Konector. “We therefore use our proprietary Online Impact Factor to measure how many people visit a blog, how frequently they visit that blog, the time spent on the blog and how active they are once they get there.”

“For example Smitten Kitchen and A Year of Slow Cooking both rank in the top three, even though they don’t have the highest number of visitors,” continues Ryder. “This honor is taken by 101 Cookbooks, published by Heidi Swanson and read by over half a million visitors a month.”

So what separates the top Food blogs from the others?

Many of the leading food blogs are keenly focused on a specific topic and a select audience. For example Stephanie O’Dea from A Year of Slow Cooking has a self confessed “unnatural obsession” with her slow cooker, while Baking Bites, Joy the Baker and Ezra Pound Cake focus on the art of baking.

The blogs that focus on a select audience include Startcooking.com, the “go to site” for beginners, The Grocery Cart Challenge for families on a tight budget, while Kath Eats Real Food and Nutrition Data focus on healthy eating.

"Food journal style blogs such as 101 Cookbooks and Smitten Kitchen also ranked highly in the report,” says Maunder. “They connect on a personal level, both blogger and reader together in ways that a 30 second TV spot or glossy magazine advert can’t possibly match. Bloggers offer personality and inspiration like celebrity chefs, as they offer cooking tips, new recipes, food news and appetizing photos. It is this immediacy and intimacy that makes this particular style of blog a very effective and highly influential medium for brand communications. Bloggers can interact and share their experiences with brands in ‘real time’ influencing their readership and others to engage with a product.”

Another factor that differentiates the leading blogs from others is their use of social media to spread information. “The majority of them use Twitter while some, like Savory Sweet Life and The Paupered Chef, also use Facebook” says Ryder. “In addition several of the leading food bloggers use rich video content to great effect, as shown by Startcooking.com. The huge advantage of this is that food companies can also work with bloggers to promote their products on blogs and on popular social networks, significantly increasing brand awareness.”