Since the beginning of time, human beings have been talking about the one thing that everyone needs: food. In our increasingly connected world of social media, it’s never been easier to create a business around food, and get people talking about it!
Consider these three ways to use social media for your food business.
1. Build relationships
The most important (and often underused) benefit of social media is that it allows a business to build a relationship with its customers. Many businesses shout too much and sell too often, when they should be doing what great offline businesses do: ask questions, listen to answers, socialize like friends do, and as a result, build relationships.
2. Get visual
It’s no secret that images matter. It’s been noted recently that a majority of things that are shared on social media sites like Facebook are visual. That makes sense, because photos convey a lot of information that words don’t do as well or as effectively.
As a result, entire social networks have been created to operate primarily on the basis of photos and videos alone. YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine, and photo sites like Pinterest and Instagram are surging in popularity and usage.
Facebook has revamped its entire look, on both the mobile platforms and desktop platforms, in order to bring photos to higher prominence in the user experience. Take advantage of that by shooting high-quality photos of your products, and by using the captions of those photos to link to your desired outcome, whether that’s a form that captures the customer’s email address, or a page where you sell the products!
3. Experiment with different ways of displaying your products
Whether you’re displaying your products on social media sites or your own, don’t forget to experiment with different approaches to displaying your products. For certain types of products and consumers, displaying only one item at a time is a great way to drive conversion.
But in many cases, displaying a wide variety of products (such as this healthy snack foods section) is a solid way to show customers that whatever they want, you’ve got it.
It’s also possible to do both formats (individual selection and variety/mass selection), then take a look at your analytics to see which is working best.
