Since the dawn of social media, the foodie, and foodie post has become a staple in everyone’s News Feed staple. The popular saying “You eat with your eyes,” is now truer than ever, and could even be reworded to “You eat with your Instagram.” #Foodporn has gone mainstream with over 36 million instances. These tantalizing images you see in your feeds also helps drive sales to the brands they represent, and it is for this reason that the brands, and their social photography is more valuable than ever.At Socialtyze we are lucky to partner with a handful of clients in the casual dining and QSR verticals. Developing social content for these brands means bringing their menu to life in a way that connects and drives engagement across all social networks. It also means scale - with multiple posts going out daily, a food brand can gobble up 300 images in 2 months. Meeting this demand requires dozens of photo shoots in a variety of challenging locations, and it also means making sure each shot has an impact. Using that experience, I created this guide to help you craft your own successful foodie posts.
All NaturalThe recipe for a successful food post changes with each client but there are a few techniques that consistently drive engagement. Diffused natural is the secret ingredient to getting food images to shine. Shooting under a canopy outdoors or in front of a window with a diffuser provides an interesting light for your food to shine.
Backlight SuccessWhile we’re at it - make sure the food is between you and the light. Keeping the white balance honed in on the foreground will make sure the food looks soft, balanced and will highlight all the subtle details that appear in the dish. The rim lighting created with this technique will also give your food an elegant frame and.
Double TakeWhen you’re shooting social content for a brand - it’s important to understand their execution. Often times the food shots we create are later edited to highlight a promotion for the restaurant. To prepare for that use case, I typically will shoot the dish twice; once filling the frame and again with a big frame crop (usually above 60%). I want to make sure the angle I have will hold up after the design team has began working their magic.
StagingShooting food affords a pretty cool flexibility that most photography doesn’t - anything can become a stage. I’ve used patio floors, window sills, podiums, park benches and other non-traditional spaces as photography spots. The tightness of the shot lets me focus on the food and transform the unconventional location into an interesting back drop. Experiment and try shooting in random locations - I think you’ll be surprised.
The LensOn the subject of tight shots - there’s only one lens I count on for my food photography. The Canon 100mm 2.8L Macro lens is my work horse for foodie clients. This lens allows me to operate within inches of the food and lets all the little details shine. The prime lens means crystal clear shots and the open aperture gives me the flexibility to add bokeh or give the image a unique depth of field. The creative flexibility and the utility of the short focal length make this the perfect food photography lens.
Camera SettingsSocial posts perform best when they are light and bright. In the camera that means as wide as possible without losing your dish. Most of the time I shoot in the f/5 to f/8 range. For top-down shots (pizza, pasta) or a tall dishes (hamburgers, sandwiches) I can shoot as wide as f/3.5 and the food will stay sharp. Complex entrees or multi shot dishes may require f/10 or higher.
Angle of AttackThere is not one perfect angle for shooting food. Different dishes have a complexity that warrants understanding and adapting to. Big dishes like pizza and flatbread look more interested when cropped in the lens. People are used to seeing an entire pizza from a higher distance, when you crop half the pizza out of the frame and get closer to the toppings, it becomes a more unique and enticing proposition. Burgers and beverages look great when you get low and shoot up, making them larger than life. With social content, the images are often smaller and square - use that to your advantage. Round items contrast well with the Instagram square. Facebook and Twitter cover photos are both very wide and short - framing for this unique proportion will ensure your images look great in their final destination.There is No RecipeWith food (and really all photography) - the best shots are the least expected. Move around, grab different angles, shoot in different places. There is no perfect recipe, but hopefully some of these techniques will be useful to you in your next shoot.Part II - EditingIn part two of this blog, Geoff Roseborough will show some tips on processing and editing images for the social space.Want more tips and tricks for how to dominate social this year with Data, Creative and Amplification? Download our 2016 Social Media Survival Guide.
Social media reveals an ever-expanding amount of detail and insights about consumer preferences and attitudes – what they watch, what they buy, who they vote for, and much more. The ongoing online conversations can be informative, but how do marketers and agencies sift through the noise to extract meaningful insight about consumer attitudes? Some agencies are developing proprietary measures, and marketers' increasing focus on Facebook as their primary social media marketing vehicle is fueling a number of startups seeking to cash in on the consumer insights to be gained from Facebook. A number of firms are launching Facebook contests and surveys, segmenting the large Facebook user base into focus groups. Others are adopting big data techniques to create algorithms to mine insights from Facebook social traffic.Facebook is by far the largest social network with 900 million users; almost three times the number of Twitter users (310 million) and four times the number of users in LinkedIn (255 million) and Pinterest (250 million). Facebook has global reach and demographic diversity so it's the perfect social medium to tap the consumer conscience.Here are just some of the options available to marketers seeking to tap Facebook for consumer research.Monitoring Real-time Consumer EngagementSproutSocial, Oktopost, Hyperactivate and dozens of other emerging social media management platforms all provide the means to measure consumer engagement, and can be used to gauge consumer attitudes if you know how to apply the analytics. Chicago-based SproutSocial is one of the companies that is using Facebook as a means to monitor consumer interest as it relates to real-time brand data. SproutSocial provides a central platform to manage Facebook interaction, publishing content, measuring social engagement, and then using analytics tools to improve performance. The company's customers include top brands such as AMD, McDonald's, Nokia, and Pepsi. While this kind of platform is ideal for managing social media marketing campaigns, it can be useful for monitoring consumer reactions as well.Benchmarking Facebook PerformanceOther companies like Simply Measured are providing more sophisticated social media analysis tools. Simply Measured has a cross-platform social media monitoring platform that lets advertisers analyze engagement on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and other social media channels. And its dashboard technology provides a visual snapshot of engagement to better understand what interests Facebook followers.What makes Simply Measured interesting is its ability to benchmark performance against competitors and monitor for consumer interest. The system can generate reports that can measure consumer social media traffic against the competition. It also can track keywords and hashtags to determine what is trending on which social channels; all useful information to see how you can use Facebook for marketing.Extrapolating Facebook LikesFacebook users leave a trail of areas of interest, their politics, income, and more through their online activity. What an individual "Likes" and the content they post tells you a lot about them. Analytics firms like Socialtyze and Cubeyou are extracting that information and aggregating it across the Facebook user population.Socialtyze has been using Facebook Data for two years to identify brands' super fans, as defined by three criteria: Engagement, Sentiment and Influence. The company's proprietary Qu technology analyzes the demographic and psychographic characteristics of a Facebook Fan Page and then uses the data to run look-alike audience targeting. John Bohan, Socialtyze CEO, advises "super fan look-alike targeting has been extremely powerful -- it always outperforms almost other ad target groups as it relates to cost-per-download, video view sign-up, sale, etc… We are essentially looking at the most powerful vocal advocates of a brand and locating people who look just like them in terms of age, gender, likes, interests and many other categories." Specific Socialtyze "Super Fan" examples of return-on-investment performance results are shared below.Cubeyou is a research startup with offices in Silicon Valley and Milan, Italy, that has developed a means of mining Facebook for detailed insight into consumer attitudes about almost any brand. The company's proprietary algorithm correlates Facebook content to reveal patterns about specific types of consumers. Cubeyou's research premise is that "you are what you like," so they track more than 250 million active Facebook users across the globe to determine what they like, and how those likes reflect brand preference and buying patterns.Cubeyou monitors Facebook activity to create a cross-section of consumer preferences that can be assembled for market research. Cubeyou has created 150 specific data points spanning demographics, psychographics, personality types, areas of interest, and other metrics. These data points are mixed and matched to provide profiles of target consumers.For example, if a marketing manager at Nike wants to benchmark customers against the athletic shoe industry, a Cubeyou report reveals customer demographics (gender, age, geography); preferences in music, books, television programs, etc., and reveals the types of sports they follow and the fact they have an environmental conscience and tend to like outdoor activities.What Cubeyou has discovered is that consumers are willing to tell you almost anything you care to know about their habits and attitudes through their online activity. Compared to conventional market research strategies, Cubeyou has tapped into a rich vein of market research that delivers actionable insight quickly.As consumers continue to share their likes and dislikes on social media it will revolutionize market research. Companies like Socialtyze, SproutSocial, Simply Measured, Cubeyou and several others are exploring new ways to tap consumer attitudes.Socialtyze Super Fan Performance Return-on-Investment Provided by Socialtyze exclusively to MyersBizNet1) Client: Entertainment WebsiteObjective: App InstallsFacebook Ad Results by Target Audience-Super Fan Look-alikes: $0.81per installFans: $1.17 per installKeyword Interests: $1.84 per installFriend of Fans: $4.34 per install2) Client: Concert PromoterObjective: Sell Tickets to a 3 Day Concert WeekendFacebook Ad Results by Target Audience-Super Fan Look-alikes: $13.36 per saleKeyword Interests: $26.26 per saleFans: $29.93 per saleCustom Audiences from E-mails: $46.48 per saleFriends of Fans: $224.72 per sale3) Movie StudioObjective: Trailer ViewsFacebook Ad Results by Target Audience-Super Fan Look-alikes - $0.13 per viewFans: $0.27 per viewFriends of Fans - $0.34 per viewDisclosure: MyersBizNet chairman Jack Myers is an advisor to Socialtyze.Want more tips and tricks for how to dominate social this year with Data, Creative and Amplification? Download our 2016 Social Media Survival Guide.
Last week I had the opportunity to go to the iMedia e-Commerce Summit in Salt Lake City.My main take away - Marketers are no longer in the Ad business; they are in the Relationship Business. Brands need to spend less time advertising to their customers and more time connecting with them.Building a brand-to-customer relationship is very similar to someone building a friendship. Both are developed over time with casual, light conversations leading to bigger events.Charlie Cole, CEO of The Line (www.theline.com), has started a new company that is a cross between Vogue and Gilt.com. He is engaging people in world-class fashion content, then slowly converting them over to buying products. His fashion magazine / e-commerce site takes a four-step approachto converting consumers:Step 1 - Read an article
Step 2 - Get them to come back because they like the content
Step 3 - Capture their e-mail or some type of CRM
Step 4 - Convert to Sale
Consumers who visit The Line are first presented with a beautiful image to entice them to engage within content.
The whole premise of the site is the antithesis of the hard sale. It's all about building the relationship by gaining trust through content, leading to the eventual and continuous sale of products. The average transaction on The Line is $500 with some months averaging $850.Laston Charriez, SVP of Marketing for Western Union, also understands the value of content creation leading to sales. He realized that his customers were big fans of animated movies so he produced a collaborative, multimedia, and global marketing partnership with the movie, RIO 2. The content captured the attention of customers then led them down the sales funnel. Revenue saw a nice uptick during the campaign.Laston also made reference to his past job at P&G where he transformed Charmin's advertising from 21 years of Mr. Whipple commercials (remember "Don't Squeeze the Charmin") to a different type of marketing, one that asked:How do I make my customers lives better while remaining relevant to my brand?His answer:Solve their number one consumer bathroom problem--dealing with dirty public restrooms. Laston's solution involved the creation of Plush Porta Potty trucks that were driven into highly trafficked areas such as NFL football games and crowded holiday shopping areas to make both experiences more enjoyable. These luxury porta potties were the rave of both tailgaters and holiday shoppers who were given the opportunity to avoid ugly public restrooms in exchange for a Charmin Posh Bathroom experience.
Just like The Line and Western Union, Charmin sought a softer approach to marketing, one that connected with consumers by solving a problem in their lives, leading to more sales and massive word of mouth marketing.Carlos Gil, Head of Digital and Social Media for Save-A-Lot (a 1,300 grocery store chain in St. Louis) is also passionate about the "Relationship Business". In my conversation with him over dinner, he had many quotes worth repeating. Here are two that I particularly like:
"If someone does not engage with it, it's advertising" (versus more authentic content marketing that builds connections with consumers).
"Not responding to tweets from customers is the equivalent of going to The Cheesecake Factory and not being greeted."
On the flip side, I did speak with a Fortune 50 VP who thought it was was crazy to answer more than a very small percentage of direct fan questions in Social Media. "Do you know how many people ask us questions, and how much it would cost to answer all of them?"To that, I asked him what's the cost of not answering them and what if your competitor is? I continued, "If someone was in your aisles and asked a question to a store clerk, would the clerk turn his back and walk away? Now think of that clerk turning his back with an audience of 10,000 customers watching. That is social. Think of the risk as well as the lost opportunity of not investing in the Relationship Business." At the end of the conversation, he seemed to agree.While developing long-term relationships with customers with the intention of sales is nothing new, I think we are at a tipping point where brands are just starting to really get it. Whether it's delivering Plush Porta Potties or answering every question in social, I believe brands will begin to shift their focus away from delivering an onslaught of inauthentic, self-serving ads and more toward offering value that improves people's lives, and makes the world a better place.Why should the brand-to-consumer relationship be so different than friendships among people? Should we live in a world where brands advertise, persuade, manipulate and hard sell in order to receive?Or, it is simpler than that - You give, you receive.As marketers, if we can begin to think more about how to make the lives of our customers better while staying relevant to our brands, think of the value we could create while simultaneously, making our brands more loved and much more successful.Want more tips and tricks for how to dominate social this year with Data, Creative and Amplification? Download our 2016 Social Media Survival Guide.
As an analyst, the number one question I get about a brand’s page is timing; “When is the best time to post?” “What day of the week is the best?”. Those are the requests that litter my inbox, and they are reasonable requests. Why wouldn’t you want to know the best time to reach your fans? But as we get smarter about social, it becomes more and more clear that what you post matters so much more than when you post it.
That’s the crux of the problem with the Day of Week/Time of Day request. If I post my best content on Wednesday and get a ton of engagement, that does not mean my fans are most available on Wednesday. At Socialtyze we run regression after regression to see what variables are significant predictors of success. The most common results are:
1. The Media attached to the post (Photos Vs. Text Vs. Video Etc)
2. Post Type (Questions Vs. Products Vs. Fill in the Blank)
3. Whether or not there is a CTA to click
4. Time in Between Post
5. Photo Type (Young Women Vs. Family Vs. Product Photo)
6. Character Count
The order varies by brand, but Time of Day never makes that list. Neither does Day of Week. It goes back the great Guy Kawasaki quote about SEO “The best SEO tip is to write something good,”. Because of its algorithm, Facebook is a meritocracy. Create a something that people love and it will find a way to your fan’s news feed.
Facebook’s recent addition of the story bump - where old stories that match particularly well with the user are brought back into the Newsfeed - further nullifies the timing analysis. It just does not make sense to labor about posting at 10AM vs. 11AM when Facebook’s own algorithm doesn't particularly care.
I’m not suggesting to post at 1AM, every recommendation is within reason. But if you have the luxury of working with an analyst, redirect his or her attention to content based analysis. The results will be more actionable for your community managers, and more fun for your data team.
With the holidays quickly approaching and Christmas just around the corner, consumers are not the only ones looking to find the best bang for their buck. Brands and marketers are beginning to increase their Facebook advertising budgets for the holiday shopping season, given the 375% jump in click-through-rates from the third quarter in 2012 to 2013. [1]Mobilize the ExperienceTo capitalize on what this holiday season has to offer and leverage the highest ROI for your brand, we leave you with a few stocking stuffers sure to optimize your campaign’s success.78% of Facebook’s daily users in the U.S. are on mobile devices, so it comes as no surprise that focusing promotion on mobile versus desktop is the way to go.2 Not only does mobile promotion help in driving traffic to online shopping sites, but it also provides consumers with their own personal guides when shopping in-store. Brands can further leverage mobile usage by promoting their retail-oriented applications living in Facebook to streamline user experience.Stay on TargetReaching the right audience is another critical piece to effectively market your product this holiday season. To really hone in on your most valuable customers, here are the top targeting methods to capitalize on.Facebook ExchangeFacebook Exchange is an increasingly popular method using cookie-tracking to re-target users on Facebook who have already visited your website. To glean the best results, it is important to start building the cookie pool a month prior to campaign launch in order to generate enough site traffic. Strategic pixel placement is equally important to consider, as a higher number of pixeled pages might yield a larger cookie pool, but limiting pixels to the most important pages of the site (e.g. checkout page) could also produce a more relevant targeting pool.Custom AudiencesIf time is of the essence, another way to capitalize on your already-established consumer base is through Custom Audiences. This targeting type allows advertisers to focus on users who have previously engaged with the brand via e-mail lists, phone numbers, Facebook user ID’s, or app user ID’s. It also opens up the opportunity to reach Lookalike targets, who are users likely to be interested in your brand based off the Custom Audience list provided.Keywords + Partner Category OverlayAnother effective tactic to maximize performance in your holiday campaigns is targeting users through traditional keywords with a Partner Category overlay. Teaming up with Acxiom, Datalogix, and Epsilon earlier this year, Facebook launched Partner Categories to give advertisers the chance to target users based on groups such as purchase history, lifestyle, and job title. Utilizing Partner Categories alone to target users can sometimes prove to be too broad, so the combination of keywords and Partner Categories allows marketers to really fine-tune their key audience.Keywords + Fans OverlayIn the same way that targeting users with a Partner Category overlay boosts performance, pairing keyword targets with a Fans overlay also helps contribute to campaign success. Fans targeting concentrates on those consumers who’ve already proven to be loyal brand advocates on Facebook. One of the advantages of running the Fans instead of the Partner Categories overlay is that there is less risk involved in predicting ROI performance. At the same time, however, if you’re looking to grow your consumer base Partner Categories is the route you want to take.Engage Your AudienceArguably the most important piece to the puzzle of holiday marketing on Facebook is the content used in the ads. Facebook offers a wide selection of ad types to choose from, but the challenge is to implement them intelligently.Unpublished Page Post Ads are a no-brainer when it comes to the optimal ad type to use this holiday season. These ads mimic traditional posts that live on brands’ Facebook pages, but allow advertisers to customize the content specifically for the campaign without over saturating users. With Facebook’s recent ad spec changes back in September, it is important to keep these key pointers in mind:
While there is no sure-fire recipe for a successful Facebook campaign, these best practices are helpful to keep in mind when considering how best to invest your Facebook advertising budgets this holiday season. Whether you’re looking to reach entirely new consumers or to simply capitalize on your current customer base, remembering to mobilize the experience, stay on target, and engage the audience will give your brand a strong base to help your campaign jingle all the way!Citations1 http://www.nanigans.com/2013/10/16/benchmark-report-retailers-facebook-advertising-roi-holiday-shopping/2 http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/13/facebook-mobile-user-count/3 http://www.nanigans.com/2013/06/17/how-page-post-ads-in-the-news-feed-drive-direct-response-and-roi-study/
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