Hello Friday!
Welcome back to our weekly blog column about food and restaurant industry news! From Grammy wins (on Twitter, at least) to Domino’s fun pizza deal reveal, we’ve got the latest in the food PR industry. Here’s a little slice of this week’s news:
Social Spotlight
How far will you go for a deal on pizza? Domino’s Pizza revealed a pizza deal this week with a fun and engaging Instagram post, but instead of just announcing a coupon code for fans to order with, customers had to go two steps further to get the deal.
In order to see the code, followers had to screen shot the photo and apply a filter to to the image to allow the text to show up. Naturally, we couldn’t resist:
We love how this post required some unique engagement and changed up the usual promotion posts that food brands frequently use. Whether you followed Domino’s instructions because you wanted a pizza coupon or because you wanted to see if it actually worked (both were reasons for me), this was a great post that’s perfectly in line with Domino’s humorous and fun brand voice. Unfortunately there’s no way of knowing how many people actually engaged with this post by screen-shotting it and applying the filter, but usual measurements can be used to see how successful it was, including how many people ordered with the special code. We loved seeing something new in our feeds this week!
Trend Watch: Food + Restaurant Industry News
For any major event, Twitter tends to be one of the best go-to social media networks to engage in real time. Even though the Grammy’s have pretty much nothing to do with food, food brands still got in on the action.
Congratulating winners, suggesting recipes, cracking jokes; food brands continue to seek ways to capitalize on major events through real-time marketing. Live tweeting an event has been a hot trend for a while, and shows no sign of going away any time soon. It’s the perfect chance for brands to have a little fun, engage with their fans, grow their following, or maybe even have the next “Oreo moment.”
People or brands live tweet nearly anything: award shows, big sporting events, Apple’s product launches – even snow storms. Twitter users love engaging with TV shows. According to Twitter, there were more than a billion TV-related tweets last year. Social media is all about the now, and tweeting about an event in real-time is one of the ultimate ways to bring people together and engage with your fans.
PR Lesson of the Week
Live tweeting is fun, but also comes with risks. It is possible to tweet too much and overload your followers’ feeds, and there’s always the risk of moving too fast and making a mistake. Here are some tips to make the most out of live tweeting:
1. Use an aggregator tool
There are tools that exist for the purpose of easily following, replying and watching live Twitter conversations. Tools like TweetChat or TWubs help you easily track a hashtag, continuously updating your feed with all the tweets containing that hashtag. This makes engaging and following the conversation much easier.
2. Know what hashtag to use
Research ahead of time what hashtag you should be using. Sometimes this can be unclear at the start of an event. For example, it might have been hard to tell at first if more people were using #Grammys or #Grammys2016. One of the best ways to initially figure it out would be to check what major accounts have been using leading up to the event. In the case of the Grammy’s, the Grammy’s official Twitter account was using #Grammys prior to the event.
3. Don’t attempt this alone
For big brands and big events, there’s a whole team behind a social media account to live tweet. If you can have other people on your team to help you create content, retweet people and create images to share, you’ll be able to interact more and push out better content. Having other people helping can prevent any mishaps, like spelling errors or tweeting something that you might regret later. If you’re part of a small social team – or maybe the only social media person – then try to have multiple devices open to help you view everything at once.
4. Keep your content on point
Your live tweeting content should be brand consistent, should contribute to the overall conversation, be relevant to the event and the online conversation and shouldn’t be a sales plug for your product or brand. The brands shown above still sometimes featured their products, but kept the content relevant to the Grammy’s.
Hungry For More?
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- 14 Instagram Tools for Marketers
- #Lobsterworthy Shirts Come Week After Beyoncé Name Drop
- Google Adds Fresh Food to Express Delivery in Crowded Field
Thanks for stopping by for an A La Carte dish of Restaurant + Food Industry News!
Have you ever live tweeted an event before? How did it go? Share with us in the comments!
