7

Let's compile a list of food blogs and press to tell about the public beta. Ideally the writers would come participate in the site as regular (and hopefully avid) users; publicity would naturally follow. Do you know anyone at these sites? And if so, would you drop them a note? If you have contacted anyone of note, add them here and add your name underneath so we can have a concise list of who's been contacted. Please edit this list as you see fit.

Cooking Blogs (mostly from the NYT cooking blogroll)

Other websites

THE FORM LETTER (Feel free to tailor this to your needs)

What should we say when contacting any of these site? JustRightMenus proposed getting a letter together that we can send. I think it's appropriate to edit it, community-wiki style.

[Dear whoever],

[EDIT ME SO I AM AN IMPRESSIVE LETTER TO SEND TO A RESPECTABLE WEBSITE.]

[Sincerely],
[Us]
5
  • You should make it a community wiki question, so others can edit.
    – Pulse
    Commented Jul 16, 2010 at 18:17
  • good idea, i've made that change
    – Matt Sherman Staff
    Commented Jul 16, 2010 at 18:26
  • This is fantastic! This is exactly the type of activity we need to make this site great.
    – Robert Cartaino
    Commented Jul 24, 2010 at 2:51
  • Does anyone know (or are you) someone involved in marketing? I am a grammar nut and could come up with something intelligent-sounding for the form letter, but I'm sure it would be better to get professional advice. First impressions mean a lot!
    – JustRightMenus
    Commented Jul 31, 2010 at 5:30
  • 2
    Can we please decide on a name before we start soliciting the world? I'm finding it hard to get people interested with out a name to stick in their heads.
    – sarge_smith
    Commented Aug 23, 2010 at 22:31

10 Answers 10

Reset to default
4

I just posted a message on the Cook's Illustrated forum.

I'd like to introduce the members of this board to a new website tentatively titled Food & Cooking.

This site is a cooking Q & A site that is free. Free to ask questions, free to answer questions, and free to read. You can register if you want to collect karma and win flair that will appear next to your name, but otherwise, it's just free.

The site is run by us, the community. It is collaboratively built and maintained by fellow cooking enthusiasts. Once the system learns to trust you, you'll be able to edit anything, much like Wikipedia.

Our members run the gamut from cooking enthusiasts to amateur and professional chefs. We're just under two months old, but we already have over 2,000 users, 1,200 questions, and nearly 5,000 answers. Our goal is to become the go-to internet location for expert answers to objective questions. This requirement that questions be objective helps maintain the quality and expert appeal of our site. You won't ever have to dig through tons of questions like "Help I need a recipe for ...".

Here are a few examples of the questions that have been asked and answered on our site:

  • How can I pan fry zucchini without making it soggy?
  • How do I chop onions without crying?
  • Is it safe to eat potatoes that have sprouted?
  • What's the proper way to dispose of used fats & oils?

Some of our topics include:

  • cooking & food preparation methods
  • food handling & storage
  • ingredient selection & use
  • recipe comprehension, improvement, and repairs
  • many more

Please stop by and check us out. It doesn't matter if you're a beginner or a professional, you are most certainly welcome. I look forward to seeing new faces!

-Dave

3

I've written it up in my blog - posting at 10am EST 7/23/10.

jessica.mcrackan.com (or, more memorable, JustRightMenus.com/menus)

3
  • Awesome. Nice article, well written. Thank you.
    – Robert Cartaino
    Commented Jul 24, 2010 at 2:56
  • Quite welcome; I'm excited about this site!
    – JustRightMenus
    Commented Jul 24, 2010 at 2:58
  • That meat question mark would make a great logo for this site ;-)
    – Ivo Flipse
    Commented Aug 4, 2010 at 6:12
2

...and... posted to metafilter.

3
  • excellent, Metafilter is great
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Jul 16, 2010 at 19:59
  • Apart from the fact that I fubared the telling of it, and I've a feeling things are going to go south.
    – seanyboy
    Commented Jul 16, 2010 at 20:44
  • Lesson 6. Never care too much.
    – seanyboy
    Commented Jul 16, 2010 at 20:45
2

Other possible sites, but some are less food related:

  • Chowhound
  • Cooking for Engineers
  • Digg : Food & Drink (but it looks like there's quite a few other stackexchange messages in there, so we'd need to make a concerted effort to digg it up all at once.)
  • Fark : Drew's a foodie; in the Farkback page, one of the comment types is 'cooking tips and/or recipes'... but I don't know how receptive he'd be to a comment from me ... we had a falling out about 10 years ago.
2

Also, make use of the ..

.. I know I did!

http://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/18710412052

(I also dm'ed Anil Dash to see if he'd tweet about our cooking site!)

We also recommend sharing any particularly great questions; we've added two buttons to each question page which make this sharing easier:

alt text alt text

1

I've used word of mouth to friends and family via email, in conversations, and on Facebook.

1

I just created a Twitter account for the site. I used the most popular domain name for the acct name. I've tweeted our highest rated questions for now, and followed a few dozen well known members of the cooking world.

http://twitter.com/seasonedadvice

I've also been searching twitter for "cooking" and @replying to random people who might be interested in the site.

I've also directly asked (via twitter) a few celebrity chefs to check out the site and spread the word if they think we rock. If just one retweets it could be a huge boon, they tend to have 200k+ followers.

0

As I don't see any comments about anyone having contacted these blogs, I'm assuming no one has personal contacts with any of them. What do you think about just starting to send out emails to them? What do you think we should say exactly? I'd love to help with this.

2
  • this should really be a comment so it's a the top of the post and not buried here at the bottom. With that said, I'm adding this suggestion to the post so we can CW style a form letter.
    – Mike Sherov
    Commented Jul 30, 2010 at 22:27
  • I think this a good idea. I know some of the author/owners of the listed blogs and I am sure among all of us we could cover them all.
    – papin
    Commented Jul 31, 2010 at 5:13
0

What about forums rather than blogs? This seems like the sort of site that might interest the people over at egullet. They tend to be very technical and overall, fairly hardcore. I assume any introduction would be better coming from a user over there rather than a new face.

4
  • It's usually against the rules on a forum to promote outside sites, unless there's actually a dedicated area or thread for it. Many of those people would make great members, and if there's a way we can introduce them to this place then that's great, as long as it's not simply being spammed there. Probably the least objectionable path would be to actively participate there and tack cooking.se on your user profile, much like the way some people here promote their own blogs/sites/etc.
    – Aaronut
    Commented Aug 20, 2010 at 16:54
  • @Aaronut, yes, I agree about avoiding spamming forums. However, egullet has a Cookbooks and References section described as "Cookbooks and references for cooking, eating and drinking; on-line resources in a similar vein." Sounds like this site would fit there. Ideally, there's a user already active in both places who could start the thread. Their Sous Vide thread (for instance) has a ton of great information in the unusable form that helped spawn SE. Having even a small influx of users from over there would be a huge addition to this site.
    – yossarian
    Commented Aug 20, 2010 at 17:02
  • Turns out there's already a post about it there. Little discussion on it though. Looks like they last took a look at the site a month ago. forums.egullet.org/index.php?/topic/…
    – yossarian
    Commented Aug 20, 2010 at 17:12
  • The comments in there seem rather transparent, basically saying "we're better." I think that's the problem with forums; they have a vested interested in keeping members on their site. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try, but I'm skeptical of how successful we'd be...
    – Aaronut
    Commented Aug 21, 2010 at 2:29
0

Shared on a food chat online at the Washington Post website. If there are similar things at sites you visit and they allow it, try it!

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .