4 Food Influencer Marketing Tips to Dazzle Followers and Brands

Do you have a passion for cooking? Is reviewing local restaurants a hobby? If so, becoming a food influencer might be in your future. Food influencers share their love of all things food with others. 

Food influencers often narrow their focus by concentrating on a specific cooking method (like grilling), a certain kind of food (like desserts or appetizers), a type of diet (like clean eating or keto), or a tailored audience (like recipes for busy moms). 

No matter what your focus is, food influencers create and share content. To do so, here are a few tips to amp up your food influencer marketing game. 

Schedule posts out for two weeks

As a food influencer, you want to maintain a consistent presence in your followers’ feeds. However, it’s not always easy to create and share day-of content, especially if influencing is a side gig. 

Create and schedule content for two weeks at a time. Scheduling tools like HootSuite or MeetEdgar can publish content on selected dates and times.  

You can still add posts during that time, but if you don’t have time to post, you won’t ghost your followers.

Use a combination of broad and niche hashtags

Hashtags are searchable keywords for your posts. To help new people find your content, use a variety of broad and niche hashtags. For example, when cooking influencers like Lindsay Ostrum share a taco recipe, broad hashtags like #easyrecipes and #tacotuesday are used, but so are more specific hashtags like #salmon and #tacos.  

Get to know your audience

To succeed with food influencer marketing, you need to create and share content, but you also need to interact with your audience. It’s easy to get swept up in taking mouthwatering photos or providing baking tips, but creating a social community is important too. 

To start, make a point to respond to questions and like comments. As your channel grows, you can plan engaging events like live cooking demonstrations or a Q&A with your audience.

Up your photography and videography skills

To showcase food, especially for food brand collaborations, you need picture-perfect photos or videos. Consider investing in photography or videography classes and a handful of editing tools, like Adobe Creative Cloud, Snapseed, or VSCO. In addition, use these content tips that even famous food influencers use: 

Take pictures from different angles

When you take pictures, move around. Take pictures from the top, off to the side, or at an angle. Which angle shows off your food best? For example, a layered cheeseburger looks great from the side, while a pizza looks great from the top. 

Break out a few props

Before you snap a picture or take a video of the final product, consider adding props to elevate your aesthetics. Look at the tomato soup shared by New Jersey food influencers Larisha and Andrew. Notice the croutons and basil that are on the soup and on the table. There’s a spoon and a towel added to the scene too. 

Here are some common props to have on hand:

• Decorative plates, bowls, glasses
• Cutting boards
• Cutlery and utensils
• Small ingredient bowls
• Decorative napkins or towels
• Fresh herbs

Add a human element

Your food photography should include a human element too. Besides snaps of pristinely-plated meals, take pictures with a hand holding a spoon or a video of you making the recipe. 

Use food styling tricks

There are entire books written on styling food to make it fit for paparazzi. From food influencers on Instagram to influencer marketing for restaurants, you can style your food to maximize its appearance. 

Some styling tips make food inedible. For example, you might overcook a steak to show dark grill lines on its skin or use glue instead of milk when shooting a bowl of cereal. Why glue? Milk makes cereal soggy. The glue looks like milk and doesn’t turn whole-grain flakes into mush.

For those who don’t want to make inedible food, here are a few styling tips that won’t keep you from eating:  

• Add a steaming bowl of water behind your dish to add steam to your shot.
• Put a glass in the fridge and pull it out right before you shoot to have condensation on the glass. 
• Use fake ice cubes in drinks instead of real ones to avoid melting.
• Use a frozen pad of butter so it melts by the time you take the shot. 
• Mist salad greens with ice-cold water to keep them from wilting.

Food influencers new and old can use these tips to generate better content, engage with followers, and entice food brand collaborations.