Written by Carrie Gardner
Social media is huge. Like, status update, wall post—all household vocabulary in the US, thanks to our third largest country, Facebook. 3 billion photos are uploaded monthly on Facebook, 20 hours of video are uploaded each month on YouTube and there are 2 million tweets on Twitter PER HOUR. Those are pretty staggering numbers.
Whether you, your spouse or children, we engage with friends and family, even re-connect with long-lost college roommates, or old teammates. And it isn’t just those of us with digital marketing accountabilities. We constantly hear from the c-suite about “that Facebook thing” and how we need to do something with it.
Working professionals are engaging with B2C brands on a regular basis in their personal lives. Depending on the industry, some are starting to engage in their business and educational life too. In fact, we’re seeing a 40% increase in Social Media investment in B2B Marketing.
Chefs are not typically early adapters of technology—93% are still using industry trade magazines as a source of information. They use internet, but their average 5 hours a week are primarily spent running the business. We know Chefs are using Social Media in their personal life, probably just like you and I. With new media platforms, and the lines between personal and professional media consumption increasingly becoming blurred, technology is creating the perfect opportunity for our channel.
By many account Kraft is the leader in Food Away From Home Marketing, and building on that leadership positioning, they’ve embarked on a B2B Social Media Strategy. If you take a look at their Facebook, it seems they’re doing all the right things—posting pictures, asking questions, links to recipes. The reality is, they’re getting little to no engagement from chefs, beyond their own corporate chefs, who aren’t their target audience.
How do we make this work for our channel? How do we engage in peer-to-peer communication with our customers and prospects?
- Think about the mindset they’re in when on Facebook—we have to remember that they aren’t currently going onto these sites for their professional life.
- Create an engaging opportunity they can instantly see value in along with a reason to return.
- Continue the conversation in a meaningful way to them.
So what does this mean? Now is the time.
- Develop your Social Media Strategy—Who do you want to be? Who do you want to engage?
- Do your initial homework—Where are they already engaging?
- Lay out your plan, but be flexible—Remember that Facebook and Twitter aren’t strategies, they’re merely tactics to execute your strategy.
- Get rid of your fear of failure—Not everything that you are going to do is going to result in the desired response. Something that works today isn’t necessarily going to work tomorrow.
- Re-Evaluate—This isn’t an annual print plan you plan in the beginning of the year and then let it run its course. You may not be investing as much financially, but the resourcing and time will be significantly more.
- Have fun—Remember if you step back and look at all of the other career options out there, ours still looks pretty cool—let’s keep it that way.
Chefs get us to move beyond our comfort zone by trying menu items and LTO’s we have never had before. Now it is our turn to return the favor.
