The key to using these social networks is to become a real user, avoid spamming by providing links to quality, relevant sites (including your occasional blog post). Make the effort to build up a profile on at least three other social networks, and engage with other users in order to take full advantage of the strength of these online communities. If you are familiar with popular foods sites such as Epicurious and Chow, these will be a breeze to get started on.
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Reddit: Food and Wine subreddits
Reddit is one of the oldest social bookmarking sites around, and has millions of subscribers who post, comment and vote on links. Subreddits are categories created by users and these cover topics such as Frugal, Conspiracy and of course Food, Recipes and Wine.
The Food subreddit currently has 72 335 readers who post, vote and comment daily. Submit your food related blog posts here, if you’re promoting your own blog, the moderators kindly ask that you limit self-promoting posts to one in 10, so take the time to build up a proper profile and earn link karma. It has a generally positive readership and you could make a lot of friends here who provide constructive feedback, or sometimes just a silly comment to make you laugh… or cringe.
Check out these subreddits:
Snooth
Snooth is a wine social network that focuses on sharing wine experiences and rating wines. If you’re looking to promote your wine blog, make new contacts and engage in interesting debates with wine lovers around the world, check out the Snooth Forums.
Digg — Lifestyle
Similar to Reddit in the way links are shared, but not nearly as great as it used to be, Digg has a lifestyle category that’s broad enough to include your food and wine posts. Take care not to over post and spam, rather make the effort to spread out your posts and build up a following.
Foodbuzz
Foodbuzz is a huge food blog aggregator similar to Digg. It’s easy to register, you can simply login with your Facebook or Twitter account and start submitting your recipes and include a link back to your blog (or the original recipe on your blog).
Bakespace is an online community for foodies that is so much more than a recipe sharing site. Bakespace users are extremely active on the forums making it a great place to swap recipes, find new contacts and share tips and tricks. The site has also been nominated for Webby Awards in 2010 and 2009 in the “Best Social Network” category.
The new Mentor program on Bakespace connects those with a particular cooking skill to those who want to learn. The bonus part is that you get to submit your blog and articles to the Conversations section, if the moderators like your blog it goes into the Featured Blog section — a good link back and source of traffic!
Food and Fizz
Food and Fizz is purely a food photography/food porn website. It is free to sign up and submit photos of your lovely kitchen creations, approved pictures will be showcased on the home page including a link back to your blog. It’s also visually inspiring if you’re looking for some ideas for your next blog post. An added feature is the Food and Fizz plugin that allows you to add automoted daily images on your website if you are short on content.
SpitorSwallow
Rate and review South African wine estates in and around the Western Cape. This cheeky, innovative site allows you to login using your Facebook account, write honest reviews of wine farms you have visited and give them ratings out of ten. The site also provides a comprehensive list of wine farms to visit in areas such as Stellenbosch, Franschhoek, and Garden Route.
