Singapore Food blogger Brad is the owner of ladyironchef.com, a Singapore Food Blog that features dining guides with restaurant reviews and food photography. Started in March 2007, the man behind this sugar-coated blog has created a name so powerful, everyone visits ladyironchef whenever they’ve a craving for food!

We are excited to feature him in our first Getting Cozy session.

Getting Cozy is a series of post featuring the great, the popular, the unknown and the hidden gems out there. We hope you will get to know them better through our cozy sessions with them.

Do you live to eat or eat to live?
Honestly, I do not like this question. Many people will tell you that they live to eat and I think that the “I-live-to-eat” quote is a cliché. The only thing I know is, whatever I do, it has to involve photography, writing and food.

As a notable food blogger in Singapore, is life as easy as a pie?
There are some restaurants that will take note when I bring out my camera and take photos of the dinner. Some of them will come up and we will discuss and share our thoughts on the dining scene in Singapore. Once in a while, they will send a complimentary dessert our way, but other than that, I get the fair treatment as the other diners most of the time.

What is your secret recipe for successful food blogging?
There’s no secret to food blogging, always be true to yourself and write from the heart. Learn how your camera works, take good photographs of food and write in a descriptive manner so that others can taste the food through your words.

Many people think that writing a food blog is easy, but they have no idea about the hard work and effort put into the blog. During the past year, there are so many new food blogs; only time will tell if they will last. But I think people shouldn’t be doing it because they want to get popular. Blog with passion, enjoy what you are doing, and naturally people will want to come and read your blog.

Sweet? Sour? Bitter? Spicy? Which taste best suit your palate? Why?
Definitely sweet. I have a pretty adventurous palate, and love to try all sorts of food, but I must have some desserts to end the meal on a sweet note. Like they say, there’s always another stomach for desserts. And oh yes, I eat desserts first.

I’m sure you’ve got many invitations and requests to review restaurants, how do you select which to attend and which to turn down? Why?
In recent times, PR agencies and restaurants are starting to be aware of the influence of the new media – food blogs. It’s a very exciting time right for food right now. The evolution of the web 2.0 is making PR agencies and restaurants to embrace changes and look at things from a different angle.

Even though PR agencies and restaurants are starting to put in conscious efforts towards blogs, but I felt that many of them do not really understand how to approach and embrace new media. Most of them seems to be in it because everyone else is doing it, and I feel to some of them, having a food blog review on their restaurant is actually a very cheap form of advertisement for them; it’s thousands of dollars when they advertise in the traditional media, compared to just a free meal to get their coverage on blogs.

I do accept invitations for an invited food tasting session, but such tastings are non-obligatory; I reserve the right not to blog about it, and the restaurant has no say over whatever I wrote. The reviews written for food tasting sessions will only be the ones I enjoyed. Therefore, I will always accept invitations that are sincere and come with no strings-attached, as well restaurants that have a particular theme or cuisine that interest me.

What’s your take at bloggers trying to make extra pocket money from their blog? Do you think its ok to do it? Why so?
People enjoy reading blogs because they are independent and deem as trustworthy. But we have to remember that bloggers are also human beings who have family to look after, and bills to pay every month. If it means that bloggers are able to make extra pocket money (without compromising on their original blog direction) and have more time to blog, then I don’t see the big fuss about this.

What dish you cannot live without?
There will be too many dishes that I enjoy, like dim sum, brunch, and desserts. But if you ask me which local food will I miss the most if I go overseas – it will be Char Kuay Teow and Hokkien Mee.

Rate yourself as a foodie.
I don’t really like the term foodie, because too many people like to use this to describe themselves. Like what I’ve mentioned in the first question, I enjoy food in the company of my friends, I like to take photographs of them to capture the precious memories, and I like to write about food to let others taste the food through my words.

Continue the following sentences:

If I am a cooking utensil, I would be…
A baking spatula. All the delicious desserts have to be made with a spatula.

The best dish I can whip up is…
Fried eggs. I like all kinds of eggs, and while it may seem easy to fry an egg, it actually requires skill to do it well.

A key ingredient of a good food blog is…
Definitely the gorgeous food photographs. You need to make readers feel that they are eating vicariously through the photos. My greatest satisfaction lies in getting people hungry.

Mmm.. Getting cozy with Brad makes me hungry. You? For the delicious in you, hop over to Ladyironchef’s tantalizing blog right away! But don’t go with an empty stomach! His food photography and reviews will make you drool for more!

If you have a blog that you write regularly, you’ll know how tough it is to come up with creative and interesting topics to post about. That happens to the best of us and it’s termed as writer’s block. It can be challenging to keep your content unique and fresh throughout your blog.

Most great bloggers have an idea file. It is a document that they use as a dumping ground for ideas and inspirations for that next blog post. Personally, I have a page full of ideas, some are better than others but religiously I plough through the list to get me thinking of the next great topic.

However, you need to constantly update your idea file by finding fresh ideas, otherwise it’ll render useless. As for me, I have a series of places that I go to generate new ideas when my idea file starts to wither. With any luck, I hope you’re able to overcome the infamous writer’s block the next time it hits you.

1. Television & Movies

The great thing about blogging is the ability to write whatever interests you without being bound to a certain topic. Maybe recently, you caught the latest series of Big Bang Theory or going to catch the upcoming Alice in Wonderland in the cinema, write about it. Share with everyone how you feel about the shows; throw in pictures and posters of the show into your post to further raise interest amongst your readers.

2. Social Networking Sites

Are you on Twitter or Facebook? If you are in either one of them, good but if you answer yes for both, great! Time to time monitor the news stream from these sites for topics that catches your attention. I’m blessed to have a slew of fantastic posts written by creative professionals filling my stream of news, and that helps me a great deal for my own writing.

3. Comments

Comments on your posts are there for a reason; they’re not just to prettify or glorify your blog but their main purpose is to kick-start a discussion between the author of the blog and their readers. Read every comment that you have on your blog and other social networking sites because there are occasions that some of these feedbacks and discussions may provide you with new ideas that you might not have thought of.

4. News, Books & Magazines

Do you keep abreast of news happening around your area? Time to time, things happening in the world or locally, may provide timely post ideas; such as The Killers cancelling their Asian tour. I use Google Alerts to keep track of chosen keywords that I wish to be updated on. On top of that, you need to be disciplined to scan the day’s headlines in order for an idea to spark off.

5. Other Blogs

Don’t just read your own blog and just that other one but expand that reading list of yours. Subscribe to couple of blog feeds that interests you and use a RSS reader like Google Reader to keep up with the latest updates from these blogs. Even though you may not have the time to read through every new post, skimming through will often lead to new ideas for you to write that next blog topic of yours.

Image courtesy of Malinkrop.

After a year of dashing around in the field of digital media/ social media / blogger media or whatever you want to call it, I came to learn to live in reality. Gone were the days where bloggers are blogging for passion. Yes for a start everyone is doing it because they love it. But looking at the long tail of blogging, in prospective of the blog owner, our full time job, studies or our important time will soon be overpacked by more important things. Sometimes, you’ll want some sweetness to spice things up a little. (Stop lying to yourself! You know you want those extra pocket money to pay for coffee, hosting, domain or your flickr pro account!)

If you want to be engaged by agencies/ folks from PR / companies / advertisers or whoever, please state clearly on your blog.

1. What kind of engagement do you accept?
   Product reviews? Media engagement? Invitation to party? Time for coffee? Or purely show-me-the-money-if-not-don’t-come-waste-my-time?
2. If you want money, show that you deserve it!
   If you hide your (real) stats, blog content sucks, blog nothing but crap, or think you are oh-so-mighty-celebrity-blogger but is in fact nothing but a piece of crappy blog, then what makes you think any company would want to pay to advertise on your blog?
3. How to get in touch with you?
   If you do no want to be engaged, state so in your blog. If not, the smart folks will just post a comment somewhere in your blog and wait for you to response. Yes, there are such people out there who don’t know what is facebook, twitter nor plurk. They think getting in touch means leaving a comment on your blog. So to prevent such incident, please leave a contactable email or have a contact form on your blog. Or simply shout “I do not entertain requests for any kind of shit you may have for me. Don’t disturb me please.” Or something like that lah! (Else don’t complain when you see invitations posted in your comments.)
4. Show your archives and allow linking to your posts.
   Please don’t remove the direct links (permlinks) from your blog, you want others to be able to help give you incoming link love, you’ll need to have your links accessible. And categorize your posts can? A properly maintained and organised blog is much more attractive to encourage return visits (and engagements).Also make sure your blog is neat and contain is searchable.
5. List down where to find you.
   Instead of embedding irritating and useless music on the sidebar, add your twitter feed, put up a facebook badge or simply list and link to places where you can be found in the digital world.

Not that tough isn’t it? Don’t be lazy now, go get these things up and set if you mean business!

Think about fashion, art, architecture – what do they mean to you? How do you want to excite and inspire the Harper’s BAZAAR reader? Perhaps you want to record a fashion moment or reference the trends of the spring/summer 2010 collections. You may be inspired by a painting, a novel, a song or a film that captures what you wish to convey.

Now’s your chance to showcase your creativity at the inaugural photography awards by Harper’s BAZAAR and ION Orchard.

Contest is on now till April 5th, 2010. More information here.

There are all sorts of events that bloggers get invited to. Launch parties, food tasting, network sessions and many more. Blogger events are aplenty in the local scene and as brands and agencies reach further out in the pool, you should expect to be engaged soon if you have a sizeable readership.

Which events should you go for? What should you prepare?

Before I provide my view on the questions above, I have one thing that I must absolutely let you bloggers know.

Imagine this. You have been blogging for 2 years. You attract tens of thousands of readers to your blog every month. Your blog posts are so interesting that people share and comment about your posts almost on a daily basis. A very famous brand decides that they want you to grace their upcoming event and discuss the possibility of you being an ambassador. They get their agency to contact you and guess what….

…They have no means of contacting you because you simply didn’t leave any avenue for them to.

Email is the most common medium for brands and agencies to contact a blogger and you should either publicize your email or have a contact form. So don’t let opportunities go to waste and provide means for people to contact you through your blog!

Which events should you attend?

For a start, I am guessing that most bloggers will like to jump at every opportunity that comes to them just to “get your head out there”. But as invitations start streaming in, it’s important choose carefully which event you should invest your time in. There is no point attending an event about the launch of sanitary pads that can absorb a gallon of fluid when you are a guy.

I am being extreme here, but my point is that you shouldn’t attend an event that:

• is about a brand that you dislike/hate
• you don’t have any interest in
• your readers have no interest in

Ultimately, every event organizer wants you to blog positively about them and how difficult it must be if you attend events that are irrelevant or uninteresting to you.

What should you prepare?

So you have decided to attend a launch party with the good folks of Brand X next week. What now?

Research – Many bloggers attend product launches without an inkling of the product/service that the brand is launching. It’s fine that way but if you would just spend some time with a search engine, you will most likely arm yourself with interesting tidbits that will help you understand the product/service during the launch. It may even help you ask the right questions (or prevent you from asking stupid ones) during the event!

Namecards – You are going to meet brand representatives, PR practitioners, marketing folks and bloggers during the event. It’s important to provide the people you meet with something to help them remember you by.

Suitable attire – You wouldn’t want to be caught in jeans and a “I Love You Mum!” t-shirt at a formal event, so check and double-check the dress code!

Camera – Apart from using it to capture moments and decorate your wall-of-text for your post, I think pictures also help to jog your memory on what happened at the event.

[Disclaimer: All opinions are of the author's own and please do not blame him if he sounds like Captain Obvious most of the time. "Some things are obviously not very obvious."]