Beeting the Dairy Crisis

For all you guys that don't live in Australia, in the past week or two, the topic of farmers and milk have been a hot topic all over social media. Basically, our farmers are being ripped off by the government, and are earning less from their milk than what it costs to produce, sending them into huge amounts of debt.

The power of social media has been crazy for this campaign. The fire started when Waleed Aly, presenter on The Project discussed the topic in a segment on TV. The clip was uploaded to Facebook, and was spread around and seen by thousands of Aussies. It was shared across multiple platforms, being YouTube and Twitter. Aly explains the milk crisis, sharing interviews with farmers, getting Australia to really understand the importance of backing Aussie farmers.

This is a perfect example of viral marketing - Not only did the video go viral, but it has also sparked a movement; people are swapping supermarket brand milk for SA produced milk in order to support the local dairy industry.

For more info, you guys can visit this link, or view the Wahleed Aly's video below.
What will you do to help?

Maccas Getting Jalapeno Snapchat

Snapchat has become one of the most popular forms of social media, and now has more uses than just sending sneaky dirty photos. Geofilters are a design, mostly used to broadcast your location - once you've taken a photo in Adelaide, you can swipe right and a geofilter of the city of Adelaide will come up. However, more recently they've also been used for advertising.

Earlier last week you might've seen a couple of Geofilters from Maccas. One put you in a thing of fries, and the other had a picture of a bag, saying you'd been on a Maccas Run. It's actually pretty originial, and hasn't been done much before, particularly by an individual brand.

What makes it so different, is that you didn't have to be at a specific location - these photos were taken at Flinders University, where there isn't a McDonalds on campus. While general geofilters rely on your location, it's a pretty smart marketing move to be able to put Maccas filters on yourself when you're not even there - what could make you crave some delicious, fatty, probably-really-old fries more? It draws people to the restaurant, making you want to go there, or actually do a Maccas Run!

Butter Get On Board With Apps

Diet and Foods apps - there's hundreds of them. Whether you use them to keep track of what you eat, get nutritional facts about certain food products (yes, as much as I hate to admit it, that bag of Grain Waves really does have 837 calories, just because they have fiber, doesn't mean they're healthy), or just have it on your phone to make you feel better about yourself (because you're GOING to start the diet soon, right?), they're an insanely popular type of app to download.

For example, Fooducate is an app that allows you to see the nutritional value of food after you scan the bar code (or manually search) using your phone. You can also see reviews of food by other app users, see alternatives that are a bit healthier than what you look up, track what you eat, and get diet advice. Another example is Diet Butler, who can tell you your ideal calorie intake ever day, based on your 'physical' data. Then, it has different features that keep people inspired, and sticking to their diet.

Using an app instead of a website to reach an audience can be a really good option. It's super easy to track it's success - just look at the amount of downloads. Plus, people can easily leave reviews and comments about the app, so you can improve it to make or more user friendly. It can also be harder to track your eating habits/your diet on a website. Apps make it loads easier and you don't have to go searching through the web to find your details, simply open the app, and all your stuff is there. Fooducate enables you to scan a bar code and receive information about the food - whereas otherwise, you'd have to go look up all that info online.
The only issue is, how do you make yours different from all the others?

Just Some Food for Thought

KFC's one of the biggest fast food chains in the world, and have shops in hundreds of different countries. Here's a quick video from 2014, explaining how they had a super successful social media campaign, and managed to majorly boost their online presence, and build a big audience. Leave a comment saying what you think!

Tipsy Bartender's Not a Whiskey Business

If you're in uni/college and even a little bit of an alcoholic, you've probably watched at least one - or all - videos by Tipsy Bartender on YouTube. They basically make all kinds of tutorials and recipes for amazing alcoholic drinks, their most famous of which has over 6 million views, and is called 'How To Make Rainbow Shots' which you can see below!

Like Mamrie Hart in a previous post, Tipsy Bartender has lots of social media accounts, using Google +, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, so it's super easy for them to get their content out their and seen by lots of people.

The way they market themselves on YouTube is great - they know their target audience and often post slightly nerdy, and unique drinks that they know their viewers will love. They also post a wide range of drinks - different types like cocktails, shots, and martinis, as well as different types of alcohol - gin, vodka, and whisky. So no matter what your tastes are, you'll definitely find something you like.

Because the videos contain a lot of relatable comedy, and lets get real, has alcohol in it, the videos are very popular online. Not just on YouTube, but they also get shared a lot across other social media. Have you ever seen this video above, or others like it, on your Facebook page? Probably. Chances are, someone's shared it, or tagged a friend in it, or one of those pages that you liked back in 2010 has posted it for everyone to see.

Twitter in the Lime Light

We can all appreciate Twitter as a place to stalk our favourite celebrities. But we know that it can also be a brilliant way for restaurants and cafes to reach their customers, and share their business - by doing some of the following steps!

1. Tweet and share plenty of photos
Although Instagram's the main place for sharing photos, Twitter's also a great place to do it because you can share information, and, unlike Instagram, links to websites.

2. Hashtags

I've talked about this in previous posts - but to sum it up, hashtags can create a wider reach, and allow people to see all the different things people have thought about the business in one place.

3. Links

Post links to other social media forms (such as Facebook and Instagram), websites, and online menus that people can see. That last one is particularly good for restaurants that offer take away/delivery, so then people only have to check the Twitter account for a menu, instead of searching around online

4. Use the 4-1-1 Theory
If people are following a Twitter account, chances are, they'll be interested in more than just photos and a menu. Posting about a range of things related to the restaurant, like four relevant posts about the business, one retweet, and one self-serving post, will generally increase how people that like the post will engage with the account. 

Penne for Your Thoughts - Or in This Case, Your Hashtag

Especially since Instagram has become popular, the influence of social media has completely changed the way food is marketed. In 2014, Virgin Mobile started a huge charity campaign with OzHarvest. They created the hashtag #mealforameal, where every photo that was shared using that hashtag meant that Virgin would donate a meal to someone in need.

This is a great campaign via social media because the hashtag means they reach a wide audience, as it means everyone following someone can see what they post, and can follow the hashtag to get more photos and information. Because it's a new hashtag, it also creates curiosity from the audience, as they'll wanted to know what the campaign is, and what the hashtag means.

It's also smart because it involved very little audience involvement - people constantly share photos of their food with lots of hashtags anyway, so one additional hashtag doesn't involve a lot of effort. People can also be hesitant to share posts, donate money, or write a whole new post -  things that they may not usually do. But because people understand the amount of food that gets wasted - just by looking in their own bin at the end of the day! - and know and recognise OzHarvest as a great charity, it means they're very likely to get on board with the campaign to make it successful.

You can find out more information from the video below, or having a look at Virgin Australia or OzHarvest's website. I really encourage you guys to use the hashtag - the campaign's still going on, it's a really good cause, and it's so easy to do!

Assalted By Hooking Titles

If there's one thing we're all familiar with, it's sites that have super exciting link titles, but really boring content. They have that line that hooks you in - "Girl Does a Thing... You Won't Believe What Happens Next!" And what does happen next? Not much, probably. Or at least, something that you don't care about. And it happens on every form of social media, from Facebook to Instagram, because people actually click on these links - which is exactly what advertisers and companies want to you to.

Having that hooking line is pretty common on YouTube, particularly as people get paid based on how many views they get - so getting people to click on a link is pretty important for people who make a living from it. Obviously, heaps of Youtubers do it, and one person who does is Joey Graceffa, who's a pretty popular person in the Youtube community.
One example of this was one of his video's called "EATING DOG FOOD!"

Pretty gross right? You might be expecting a video of him testing some dog food, maybe different types - lots of grossness, lots of laughs right? Wrong.

Instead, what you get is a ten and a half minute vlog of his day, with the part about eating dog food lasting a whopping fifteen seconds. Plus, he doesn't mind how they taste, so the whole thing's pretty undramatic.
But whatever gets view right? Unfortunately for all us suckers, it actually works, so it's pretty unlikely to stop any time soon, by Youtubers, or by any other marketing/advertisements.

Hungry Jacks' Egg-straordinary App

Hungry Jacks are obviously one of the biggest fast food chains in the country. They've had a super successful social media campaign surrounding their app (don't lie, we all downloaded it, hoping to get a free burger, only to end up disappointed when we only got a $2 discount).

Basically, you download the app, shake it, and you get a discounted or free item from the menu, after you post a 'check in' to your Facebook page.

This was huge a couple years ago, and was super successful for a couple reasons - 

1. Everyone's Facebook feed was filled with these kinds of posts - they were EVERYWHERE, which meant that people were constantly reminded of HJ's, and a bunch of people were seeing not only an Ad for Hungry Jacks, but getting a download link so they could check in to HJ's too.

2.  Lets get real, when you go to a fast food restaurant, you're not looking to be a 'little bit fancy,' you want a greasy, cheap burger, preferably with bacon. So, unless you're super picky with your food, there's not a big difference between Maccas and HJ's. Why go to Maccas to get a burger, when you could get a free one, or a discounted one at Hungry Jacks?

Get a Pizza Mamrie Hart's 'YDAD'

One of the funniest personalities on YouTube, famous for her puns, is Mamrie Hart. Mamrie runs two channels, called Mametown and You Deserve a Drink (YDAD). YDAD  is a brilliant show, where Mamrie makes cocktails for celebrities/movies/tv shows that she thinks deserve a drink, throwing in puns, and general hilariousness, that makes her videos so entertaining. 

For a YouTuber their entire career is on social media, so it makes sense that Mamrie, like other YouTubers, are on most social media platforms.
Mamrie has a big following on all of them - over a million subscribers on YouTube, almost 900,000 followers on Instagram, 500,000 on Twitter, and 32,000 on Facebook, and the way she, and others like her, use these platforms to market themselves is super successful.

Being across so many forms of social media, Mamrie uses it to promote her videos (and let people know when new ones are uploaded), and to connect with people all over the world. Aside from the regular ways to promote, because YouTube is also a kind of community, it means that YouTubers can make videos with each other, promote their channels, and reach an audience similar to their own - which means they can grow their own channel.
The fact that social media has grown so much means that not only can YouTubers make a career out of it, but it has also lead to world tours (The No Filter Show) and bestselling books (You Deserve a Drink: Boozy Misadventures and Tales of Debauchery).

Know Where Your Food is Cumin From

Even if you're like me, and haven't posted a Facebook status in about 4 years, everyone still checks their Facebook account pretty much every day, if not more. It makes sense then, that Facebook is still the biggest social media platform in the world, which means, you guessed it, that it's a great place for advertising. Obviously, because so many people are on Facebook, any sort of advertisement is going to reach a lot of viewers, which can also mean it's good value for money.

The good thing about Facebook likes, is that with website cookies, when you like a page, or visit a website, a lot of advertisements will be related to those pages. For example, if you visit the page of Cafe Montagna, other resaurants and food ads could pop up on your home page. Because there are so many cafes, restaurants, and general food products being advertised, this is actually a really effective way for any business involved in food to advertise.

For example, the other day, I went on a website talking about food in Australia, and then I started seeing ads for the Country of Origin Labelling for Food. Basically, they're spreading the fact that new stickers will be put on foods so that we'll be able to tell where it comes from more easily.

Given everyone's recent obsession with organic and healthy food, it's pretty logical to assume that people care about where their food is from, and if it's an Australian product or not. So, making sure people know new labels are coming, and what they mean is a pretty smart idea, and advertising it on Facebook ensures people will be in the know.

Hashtags are a Great Way To Crack Onto New Customers

If you're with a group of people at dinner, and you all get a fancy looking meal at a restaurant or cafe, odds are, someone's going to take photos of it and post it on social media. Everyone makes fun of us Gen Y people for doing this, but let's get real, we all do it. Hashtags are a brilliant way for businesses to get marketing coverage, and take advantage of this trend. A hashtag specifically for a business, for example, #caffepaparazzi means people can search for that restaurant and see what food they have on offer. It's  not uncommon for people to search a hashtag of a cafe or restaurant when they're making up their mind where to eat to check out the food that other people have been getting, so hashtags can be a great way to bring in new customers.

However, generally when people post a photo of food they will also use more generic hashtags such as #food, #brekkie, or #healthy, which means that people who search those hashtags will also get photos of food from a specific restaurant. This means the business will reach a wider audience, and could make them want to visit the restaurant even though they might not have heard of it before.
The good thing is, while Hashtags started on Twitter and Instagram, they're now used on Facebook too, so a hashtag can get a business marketed across more social media platforms, and reach more potential customers.

Dipping into YouTube Advertising

If you've ever watched a YouTube video, the chances are you've been stuck watching an ad before your video begins.
There's two types of ads, ones that can be skipped after 5 seconds, and ones that you're forced to watch for 30. The latter annoys the best of us, but is actually a pretty good way to market. YouTube has a very wide audience, so a company can reach more potential customers.It can bring out the more creative side of advertisers, as their goal is to keep the viewer entertained. This is more effective than marketing through YouTubers themselves because the ad's are specific to the country the viewer is in; Australian viewers won't get ads for products only available in America.

The problem is that it can be difficult to hit your target audience, particularly if that audience is to do with age, as you can't tell how old a viewer is. However, you can make sure your product is advertised in the lead up to videos have a connection to the product/brand.

For example, Hannah Hart's YouTube channel, My Drunk Kitchen, revolves around cooking and food. Therefore advertising, for example, Red Rock Deli Chips, Or McDonalds is a great way to market their product, because chances are, the viewer will be interested in that product, because it's related to what they're watching.

Another problem is YouTube Red, which allows viewers to pay a certain amount, and not have to see any ads. This could damage the effect of advertising on YouTube, as the audience is more limited, but for now, this is a pretty good method of marketing on social media!

People are Nuts About Kayla Itsines' App

Fitness and healthy eating is a recent trend that all of us at least pretend to be on board with, even if we secretly eat a large slice of cake after a 5 minute run. Don't lie - we all do it.
Workout guru Kayla Itsines has recently hit her fame for her workout routines, and healthy lifestyle. Her app, Sweat With Kayla, doesn’t only give workout tips, but daily recipes for healthy eating for a range of diets, how to make an unhealthy meal healthy, and how to shop without buying unnecessary bad food. Kayla promotes her app a lot on Instagram, where she shares photos of recipes and foods that are available through the app, with a download link in the description.

Instagram is an especially good way to market her healthy food recipes, because she can share a wide range of dishes for followers to see and make them look appealing. While she doesn’t use a lot of hashtags she still gets her followers to engage and act by downloading the app. Instagram is also a good way for her to market because she knows that all her followers are interested in the content she has on the app, and when people like the post, all their followers can see it which generates more publicity. 

Snapchat's Brewing Up Marketing Opportunities

It turns out Snapchat has more uses than sending sneaky photos that you really don't want to see the light of day after those 10 seconds are up.
Live feeds on Snapchat have quickly become a popular way to market; different from ‘Discover,’ they’re only up for 24 hours, and generally involve travel, festivals, and events. People in these places can send in their related Snaps for everyone to see. Just last week, everyones favourite unofficial holiday “Beer Day” was celebrated, and was one of the live feeds. People sent in anything from beer drinking contests, how to brew beer, or just having a drink at the bar to celebrate the glorious invention that is beer.

Companies such as Guinness, or Golden Road Brewing took advantage of it, with people tweeting specific brands or breweries. This was a really smart way to market a product or brand, because not only does everyone of Snapchat have the opportunity to view these Snaps, but it would be very rare for negative publicity to come from it. Plus, everyone loves a good pint, so it gives everyone a good chance to get involved!

 Also, a lot of breweries had Snaps about how they make the beer, giving everyone a bit of an educational experience, which might make them want to visit their brewery to learn more about it, or just buy more of their brand after they've seen it.

Because if we're all being honest, we only need a little but of encouragement to have a cold one!

The Sugar Tax is Eggs-actly What the UK Needed

Jamie Oliver's one of the most famous chefs in the world, and he's managed to get us all addicted to his 15 Minute Meals. From late 2015 to early 2016, he's shown his support for sugar taxation on soft drink products in the UK. Oliver went on social media to campaign for the sugar tax.

He used three main platforms, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to promote the campaign to as many viewers as possible. Because of this, and the millions of followers he has across all forms of social media, his marketing strategy using social media was to aim for reach rather than frequency. He used social media to share his plan for success, show his support, along with videos and articles that support his point of view. By promoting his campaign three platforms, he was able to reach millions of different users from multiple social media platforms.

In September of 2015, Jamie Oliver did a live stream on Facebook about his documentary Sugar Rush. This was promoted on Facebook using the hashtag #SugarRush. This meant he was able to attract thousands of viewers to promote the documentary, and allowed people to get involved and show their support by signing a petition. This also meant he was able to communicate with viewers, and answer questions they had about the tax or his views.

His campaign across social media was very successful – on the 21^st of March the levy passed, and the UK now has a sugar tax in place. Again, Jamie Oliver went on social media to celebrate the success, and urge other countries like Australia and Canada to do the same.

Can Youtube Stars Ap-PEA-se Marketers?

As a social media platform, YouTube has grown massively over the past couple years. Along with it, people who post videos have become ‘YouTube celebrities,’ with millions of followers and views to each video they post. Because YouTube's become such a big platform, businesses have taken the opportunity to advertise their products. Companies can pay for adverts that appear before a video plays, but another way is through the YouTubers themselves.

Naturebox is a company that allows you to order healthy snacks online and have them delivered to your door, has used hugely successful YouTubers such as Tyler Oakley and Colleen Ballinger to promote their product in their videos. They talk about the brand in general, and offer a discount on purchases, and free shipping when a specific code word is used.

This is both an effective, and ineffective marketing strategy; these YouTube stars have a very large audience, so millions of people will see this promotions; Naturebox is clearly aiming for reach rather than frequency in their strategy. This is pretty successful, because a brand that might’ve been somewhat unknown by people not very interested in healthy eating is now known to millions of people across the world, in many different countries.

However, a lot of the audience of these celebrities are from the younger demographic, being under 18. A lot of them probably still live at home and therefore might not buy household food. Additionally, this brand, and home delivery service the YouTubers advertise are only available in the United States and Canada. So the majority of viewers that see these ads are unable to buy anything, and the cost of advertisements through the Youtubers might not really be that beneficial.

Let’s Taco ‘bout Snapchat

On Snapchat, there’s a small selection of companies that have permanent advertising under ‘Discover Story.’ This means they have a constant snap story that gives updates on different things companies are doing, or what they choose to share. This is a very effective way to advertise on social media, because it has a wide reach – everyone on Snapchat can see posts by these companies every day. Therefore, this marketing idea will appeal to businesses aiming for reach rather than frequency.

For example, The Food Network is one business that advertises via Snapchat using Discovery. They post anything from snippets of TV shows from their channel, pictures of dishes chefs have created, recipes, and cooking tips. They’re able to show their audience a wide range of information about cooking, and what their TV channel is all about. This way of marketing will is a great way to build their brand, as it draws people in, attracts people to their other social media platforms and websites, as well as get them to tune into programmes that broadcast on their channel.

Why SMM Isn't Everyone's Cup of Tea

It can be difficult to target a specific audience. Unlike more traditional forms of media such as TV, magazines, and radio, it is much more difficult to direct a product towards a specific target market. As such a wide demographic of users are on all forms of social media, selecting a single demographic to target is a challenge. A product/brand can be targeted to an extent – perhaps a café wants to target people under 25 who are interested in coffee. A large amount of users on Instagram are from a younger demographic, and therefore the café could choose that platform to market their product. However, there is no means to be any more exact in targeting to their audience, and therefore advertisements may be unrelated to the audience it actually reaches.

It’s a public place. All social media platforms mean that users have the ability to comment, and share their point of view. Therefore, people can comment negatively on the business, creating bad publicity. If a customer from Woolworths buys fruit and vegetables and finds a bug inside/in the packaging, they can post on the Woolworths Facebook page to get a response from the company and share their experience with other Woolies customers. Another customer could see this, and choose to then purchase their fruit and veggies from Coles or fruit and veg shop. Companies can censor such posts/comments, but this could create distrust within other social media users searching for reviews if they know the company is purposely hiding bad reviews.

It can be hard to measure the complete success of a marketing scheme. While posts from businesses often result in likes, comments, and shares, conversation on the product will generally continue offline. There is often no way to tell if people have gone on to talk to their friends and family about a business, so the methods used to measure the success of a social media marketing campaign doesn’t account for word of mouth, and the campaign may be more/less successful than a company thinks. For example, someone might see a post by Café Primo on Twitter advertising a new special, think its great value and talk about it with 5 of their friends. But Café Primo hasn’t registered any extra likes or views on their post, even though 5 extra people now know about their specials. Alternatively, someone might see the same post, not agree that it is a good deal, and forget about it completely. The Café still won’t have gained extra likes or views, but no extra people have heard about the deal. Therefore, there is no way to judge the exact success of a marketing strategy on social media platforms.

Why Social Media Marketing is A-PEEL-ing

Marketing on social media gives you the ability to reach a wide range of people, from multiple demographics. A great example of this is the use of hashtags. Hashtags allow people to view other posts connected linked with that tag. This is especially useful with restaurants and cafes marketing and promoting their businesses. It is very common, particularly among the younger demographic, to share photos of dishes they purchase when they go out to eat. This is specifically seen on Instagram and Twitter, though also on Facebook. If a restaurant has a hashtag that is known by people that dine there, they will most likely use this in their post, which will then be seen by every user following them.

It is easy to see whether your marketing has been successful. Unlike traditional marketing means, using social media as a platform to market a product makes it easy to monitor the success of a campaign. For example, Hungry Jacks fast food chains in Australia use their app to let people ‘check in’ on Facebook, and in exchange they receive a discounted or free item from the menu. Hungry Jacks is therefore able to track how many people have checked into stores and used the app as a result of their marketing. The success of other advertisements on different platforms can also be measured by the amount of time people from that platform click on their website or app download link.

It is cost effective.
Creating an account on social media is free. Companies of all different sizes can create accounts on multiple social media accounts free of charge, and then use these platforms to attract customers. This means marketing on social media platforms is particularly good for small organisations, for example, small cafes, that are just starting out and want to let people know about their business. Such a café might create an account on Twitter, and then share photos of the café itself, food products/dishes unique to their business, or events that happen at that café to attract consumers. Additionally, advertisements on social media are cheaper than running ads on TV, or in newspapers and magazines. Therefore if a company has only a small marketing budget, they can still afford to market their company/product on a platform seen by large amounts of people, but for less money.

Welcome to my Blog!

Hi everyone,

Welcome to my blog!

The purpose of this blog is to discuss how businesses market their brands/products on social media as part of assessment for a Social Media Marketing course at Flinders University.

I will be focusing on the theme of food - anything from TV shows (MRK anyone?), restaurants, and the food products themselves, and how brands market them on any social media platforms. Posts will include marketing that is done effectively, poorly, as well as relevant, interesting things I find along the way.