Social Media Campaigns and Food ? Social Media is Always Ready ...

Social media has restructured, both in conceptual and practical terms, many aspects of human communication and activity. Admittedly, not all changes are to be considered value adding upgrades. Social media provided the necessary digital infrastructure for the protesting masses in the Middle East and elsewhere, created a new venue for showing off ?expressive? pictures and for making instant celebrities, and established new revenue streams for dying charities. Let?s look at how social media has impacted our eating habits.

The story starts with the advent of the Internet. According to Just Eat CEO, Klaus Nyengaard, smart entrepreneurs quickly took notice of how rewarding the Internet could be for the hospitality industry beginning in mid-90s. One of the first large scale efforts came in 1998 and 2000 in the form of online take-away aggregation sites. The sites Alloresto.fr of France and Yemeksepeti of Turkey were the pioneers and were promptly followed by many others. This infographic shows that ?foodie sites? like Yelp and Urbanspoon followed suit and established an ever-growing online foothold since 2004. ?Eating? and ?food? have been gaining significant online traffic and presence over the past decade, and social media sites and communities came into existence in a time when the Internet had already been revolutionizing the way people were consuming food.

In the February 2012 survey cited by the aforementioned infographic, 49 percent of surveyed American consumers say that they learn about food via social media, and 46 percent claim to spend more time looking online than looking at print for food research. The survey has even more eye-popping results. For example, 48 percent of consumers have been online and active on Facebook and/or Twitter during a meal. Young consumers aged 18-32 are the most inclined to keep social sharing live during a meal as they keep on texting, tweeting and chewing on their delicious food at the same time! In fact, 47 percent of the ?millenials?, as the survey puts it, keep a virtual presence and share live during mealtime. Recipe research was also covered in the survey and 21 percent of consumers seek recipes before and during a meal. Social media and eating are getting more and more intertwined.

The sheer volume of online traffic and activity was something food producers could not ignore. Interesting and fun examples of social media campaigns are aplenty, popping up all over the world as companies are almost obliged to have a strong social media presence for their products. A current example comes all the way from Australia. KFC and the Madden Brothers partnered on a Facebook-based social media campaign celebrating Australia. Eating fresh and good food, they say, is a fundamental part being a member of the Australian community and, therefore, in connecting with other Australians. ?The ?Good Times? campaign, as KFC named it, has been recently launched and hopes to capitalise on the growing usage of social media. There are many more examples of the effective use of social media, and a quick Facebook search could give a clue or two about the dimensions of this popular social media trend.

Eating is a must for survival. Sharing what is going on around you is becoming a must for acquiring a rationale for social survival and meaning. Linking these two will definitely have consequences in the long run. Let?s see where social media moves next.

Source: http://www.business2community.com/social-media/social-media-campaigns-and-food-social-media-is-always-ready-to-serve-0355792

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