It may seem odd to some that I occasionally publish recipes here on First Today, Then Tomorrow. Some have criticized me as being “all over the content map” and that I should stick to a single topic. But I’ve discovered a number of things while writing here and for my customers. It boils down to this: being laser focused on a topic will eventually and inevitably bore your readers.
Variety, however, attracts a wide audience. The recipes that I’ve published in the past are strong search engine magnets. Every time I look at the reports I see strong inbound links for Swedish Coffee Bread and Antipasto Vegetables. And these visiting readers stick around and explore, reading more.
But I don’t do recipes for SEO. I publish them because I love to cook and I find them personally interesting. Cooking, for me, is a form of meditation, a creative outlet. And it ties in to my theme of mindfulness, both of what we put into our bodies and how we spend our money. Cooking can be an excellent way to play the Spend Nothing Game. I like writing them because they tie me to my roots of growing up on the farm, of family, and oddly enough, as procedural technical writing, where I started my career as a writer. User manuals and cook books are not so far apart, at least the good ones aren’t.
If you are publishing a personal blog, publish anything you like. And if you’re publishing a business blog, be sure and understand what your readers, customers, and prospects want and need, but understand that they want and need more than your product and service. Your customers have wide interests, even as business people. Find a way to provide interesting content that is variable, ranging, and occasionally personal, humorous, and even outside the ordinary.
Variety is the spice of life. And what could be more varietal, more human, than to share an occasional recipe?
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