Blogger Spotlight: Marie Rayner, The English Kitchen

The English Kitchen exists to de-bunk the “myths of English cookery one recipe at a time”. Marie Rayner decided to create the blog in 2009 so she could share the successes and failures of her kitchen experiments. Besides from her love of baking, Marie also enjoys to paint and also creates cookbooklets such as The Great British Picnic and Christmas in The English Kitchen, which include beautiful artwork and recipes by Marie. In this spotlight we chat with Marie, who recently featured on our top ten baking ranking about the success of her blog, what advice would you give to someone who wants to start a blog, and how she likes to work with PRs.

Why should people read your blog? What makes it different? I think that if people are looking for honest and delicious cookery, without a lot of faffing about or glitzy faddish cooking, they will enjoy my blog.  I believe in using locally produced, seasonal, simple and honest ingredients. I do like trends and will play with them a bit, but mostly I do my own thing.  I do love to take traditional recipes and put a bit of a spin on them, such as my Bakewell Whoopie Pie recipe I developed a few years ago. Because I have a lot of North American readers I try to always make sure that my measurements are in both imperial and metric measures and all of my recipes work because I have actually made them myself and I let my readers know what works and what doesn’t. On my blog the food is the star. It’s as simple as that. I do think that my honesty with my readers helps. I want them to feel like they are sitting down in my home and we are having a visit when they drop onto my page.

How do you measure the success of your website? I have never really measured my blog in terms of success. I quite simply enjoy doing what I am doing immensely. I love to bake and cook and I love to eat and I know I am not alone in that. The fact that people want to read me at all makes me happy.  Anything else is the icing on the cake. I like to answer all questions asked. It really bugs me if I go to a blog and then ask the author a question and they don’t bother to respond at all. That tells me that they really aren’t interested in me the reader. I am interested in my readers, and I want them to know it.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to start a blog?  Develop a brand which says “you” and then stay true to yourself. Also be consistent.

How do you work with marketers and PRs? I am very choosy about what I decided to highlight on my blog. I will not write about anything I haven’t tried myself. I don’t do a lot of sponsored posts other than the ones where I have been given ingredients or equipment to try out in my home. I am honest about what I write about. If I don’t like something, I will say so. Most of them contact me via e-mail.  If I want to work with them I will respond in the affirmative, if not I will politely decline.

How do you use social media to promote and share content? What are the challenges?  I recently went onto Instagram, which meant I had to get a new-fangled phone. I am quite enjoying sharing a photo a day of what I am cooking and a few bits in between now and then. I have a fairly popular Facebook Page and Pinterest page with lots of followers. I am not so big on Twitter yet but I am working on that. The largest challenge for me is that I tend to respond individually to each comment etc.  Sometimes this can take a lot of time, but I figure if someone had taken the time to write to me I at least owe them the courtesy of a return response.

What can PRs do in working better with you? I like it when they spell out exactly what they want in a direct way and then give me the tools I need to work. I hate being treated like a mind reader. Also, I live on a pension and I do not have a lot of money to use in travelling down to London and places like that.  That is not in my budget at all. And the times required for a lot of these “events” means that I either have to leave very early in the morning to get there or I get home very late at night, so travel is very inconvenient for me.

What will be big in your blogosphere in the coming months? No doubt about it the holidays!  You can look forward to a lot of holiday baking, both traditional and otherwise, with a few twists thrown in for good measure.