Demand Media, the soul-crushingly prolific supplier of SEO-friendly link-bait, has convinced celebrity chef Rachael Ray to join its fold. This is quite the coup for the company, which recently went public and which has also been battling all those newly-menacing Google algorithms aimed at lowering the rankings of content farms on search results. But enough with the unpleasantness. Cookies, anyone?
Ray joins Demand’s other celebrity partners, Lance Armstrong and Tyra Banks, and, like those folk, will be creating “co-branded” content on eHow. The move might be well-timed on Ray’s part, too. Although ratings for her syndicated daytime TV show recently hit a season high, circulation of Everyday Day with Rachael Ray was down 23.2% in the second half of last year. A little cross-platform visibility couldn’t hurt.
So, what sort of things will Ray be cooking up in the eHow kitchen? Among other things, she will “develop up-and-coming culinary talent that will create and be featured in high-quality, original programming produced by Demand Media.” In other words, expect her to pop up all over eHow’s recipe-heavy food channel.
Sounds exciting, right? Well, thanks to eHow, you too can take the first step toward celebrity chefdom. Allow us to direct you to eHow’s helpful “How to Become a Cook” entry, which, like most Demand Media content, is amusingly basic, but oddly on point in this case: Step 1. “Find out what being a cook entails before you think about doing it for a living.”
Good advice.