As you may already know if you are reading this online, the days of meeting a bloke in a pub who then gets you your dream job based on you saying you’re a great chef, may be drawing to a close.

Like it or not we’ve all got to start jumping through new media hoops to get anywhere.

Online presence and online profiles are extremely important – you should all have Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts and perhaps a web site – here’s how to make them work.

1) Take great photos

We are all too lazy to read these days, so photos are of the upmost importance. Post photos on all your sites and make sure they are good quality and interesting photos. To make it clear that you are a chef and not a robot; take photos of you, your work environment and your leisure time; as well as your food.

You want your followers to understand you as a personality – a character – as well as a chef. They want to live vicariously through you.

2) Have great hooks

Hooks are what I call things that draw the audience in, and make them want to read on. It’s like fishing.

Generally I split hooks up into 3 categories: a) humour b) visual beauty and c) poignancy.

1. Humour always works as people enjoy the ease of interacting with a humorous post. Ha ha.
2. Similarly for beauty- say a beautiful tarte tartin or something – it’s incredibly easy to engage and want more of these kind of posts.
3. Finally the other hook is the opposite, something a bit more quizzical, a bit more philosophical that will make the reader stop and think and ask themselves some questions – this also makes them want more from you

3) Try and stick with a theme

Be a certain type of chef and appeal to a certain type of audience. What kind of chef are you? If you are just a chef- who is going to come to you for specific advice and information? People are incredibly varied. Some people like fish. Some people like vegetables. Some people like cooking exclusively with yak’s milk.

If you represent a niche, you can tap into a niche that believe-you-me most definitely exists somewhere within the vastness of the internet.

It doesn’t have to be super specific if you don’t have one, so don’t panic.

It just has to be something additional to chef. Say chef and pastry enthusiast or chef and seafood connoisseur: something that strictly defines your identity and your angle.

4) Link up with other chefs

Stealing other people’s followers is great. If you do a small project with a chef mate of yours and link it all up on social media channels you have just exposed yourself to all their followers. And so the ball rolls.

 5) Link up with organisations

Hopefully at this point after having done all of the above the organisations and blood sucking advertisers will have come for you, wanting your fan base.

But if they haven’t, go to them and say “hey these people are all following me. Give me your product and I will help get it attention.”

This will turn your online efforts into tangible profit and can be a nice extra bonus to your wage that can help pay for your family and home – and yes even a little beer money!

 

Simple stuff really. Just got to do it.