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One of the best compliments a cook can receive is, “This is delicious! Can I have the recipe?” Once upon a time, that recipe might’ve been an old family secret passed down through generations. These days, it’s more likely the cook found the recipe online. This is why you should think about implementing recipe content marketing.

Plenty of people are content to go to cooking websites and gawk at tasty-looking pictures of food. However, there are others who’d love to go beyond passivity. Some would like to find out how they can reproduce that delicious-looking food in their own kitchens.

A survey from ReportLinker found over half of respondents cook at home anywhere from three to six days a week. People cited the lower cost, being able to control what they eat, and health concerns as being among the top reasons why they cook at home. About 17 percent of home cooks were likely to find inspiration or recipes to try online. Among millennial respondents, the number jumped to 32 percent.

According to Google, nearly 60 percent of millennials (people age 25 to 34 at the time of the study) kept a mobile device with a recipe on it handy while cooking. Those over the age of 35 at the time of the study were more likely to print out a recipe.

Whether your brand sells food, produces food, or has some other connection to the food and drink industry, there’s a real benefit to getting started with recipe content marketing, creating tips and instructions for meals people will love to try at home.

Why Should Your Brand Use Recipe Content Marketing?

Whether you run a grocery store, an artisan food company or work for a major food-focused corporation, there are multiple reasons why it’s worth your while to give recipe content marketing a try.

Recipe content provides people with useful, usable information. When people search for recipes, they are usually looking for something specific. The Think With Google blog, said people tend to search for “best _____ recipe” or “how to make the best _____.” They are also likely to search for specific recipes by name, such as Rice Crispy treats, “dump” cakes or quinoa salad.

Regularly publishing new recipes on your website or blog helps to keep your content fresh. Fresh content is a must for your site’s SEO. It also encourages people to keep coming back to your site for more information. If a website looks abandoned or hasn’t had new posts in months or (worse) years, then people are going to be less likely to consult it as a source of information or recipes.

Creating recipes also gives your followers and fans something to share. Every time your brand launches a recipe you can create a custom hashtag for it and ask your followers to share their creations.

Recipes can help build community. If you allow comments on a recipe, then it’s very likely people will share their experiences making it and offer tips to other users. In some recipe comment threads, the creator of the recipe is able to jump in and address any questions people have about the process.

Learn From the Best: Examples of Recipe Content Marketing

King Arthur Flour

King Arthur Flour has a reputation for creating high-end flours and other baking products. It transfers its passion for baking to the recipe section of its website. Professional bakers have tested all of the recipes on this section of the website. Each recipe lists step-by-step instructions and offer tips to help simplify the process and get bakers the best results possible.

The comments section of each recipe is usually full of advice, questions, and opinions from those who have tried it. Someone from KA usually jumps in to address any concerns people have. In addition to the recipe section of its website, KA has a blog. This is where it occasionally hosts bake-alongs of select recipes or dives deeper into a particular baking concern.

Whole Foods Markets

Whole Foods’ website says it offers close to 4,000 recipes. The recipes are sorted by ingredient, type of dish, occasion and “healthy recipes.” You can also search for top-rated recipes, the newest additions to the site, special diets or recipes by collection. To make it even easier and more fun for shoppers to find a recipe, the grocery chain introduced a chatbot in 2016. It can recommend dishes and meals based on the words or emojis a person types in.

Blue Apron

Blue Apron offers a meal kit service that delivers ingredients and instructions for meals to people’s homes, weekly. Given that the brand’s claim to fame is offering easy-to-prepare recipes to home cooks, it’s little surprise it also offers most of its recipes online for free. By giving anyone access to its recipes, Blue Apron lets people see how tasty its meals can be, potentially encouraging people to sign up for its service.

You Don’t Have to Do It Alone: How to Outsource Recipe Content Marketing

The benefits of recipe content marketing appeal to you, but you don’t really know the first thing about creating recipes. Don’t worry, you don’t need to do that on your own.

In fact, outsourcing your recipe content marketing can help to streamline the process, guarantee you get some great recipes and help your brand save money. A content marketing services provider can handle everything from developing a recipe content strategy to finding people to create and test recipes.

When looking for a content marketing provider, you should ask a few questions. How long has the company been in business? How is the company’s experience offering recipe content or other food-related content? Ideally, the company will have years of experience writing and producing recipes and executing content marketing strategies for food-centric brands.

Another question worth asking is what service levels the company provides. Some service providers are designed for brands that want to take a more DIY approach to content marketing. Others offer a full-service program. Some offer scalable services where you can start with a full-service option and downgrade as your needs change, or start with limited services and scale up as your content marketing program grows.

It’s also worth investigating which content creators are used by a content marketing services provider. The creators should have experience as writers but also as cooks, bakers, and recipe developers. A reliable service provider will vet its writers and won’t assign just anyone to a food-related project.

If you’re running a food-related business, then a recipe hub can make or break your relationship with your customer base. Populate the hub with successful recipes and you’ll build trust with your consumer base. Not to mention a fan base that returns for each new recipe that you launch.