Crafting Engaging Content: A Guide for Food & Beverage Influencers
In the ever-changing and saturated landscape of social media, creating engaging content has become more competitive. With the rise of short-form video content, our attention spans have less room for fluff. Whether you are a food and beverage influencer looking for ways to elevate your content, or someone interested in starting out, here are a few tips for crafting the most engaging content.
Visual Appeal
The first and most obvious rule for food content is to make it as appetizing as possible. It is important to showcase the food at its best, and there are plenty of photography hacks to achieve this. (Let us know if you want an article on that too!) Make sure all props being photographed such as kitchenware, utensils, plating, and the general background, are all clean and clutter-free. The main focus of your image or video should always be the food. A good way to measure this is to decide whether your video is interesting just off of the visual, without music, text, or a voiceover. If the answer is yes, then you are ready to add in all the edits.
Content Mix
Having a range of content is an excellent way to keep things interesting for your audience. This doesn’t mean completely changing your style of content from post to post, but instead, keep to your style and find ways to expand on it. For example, if you typically only post straightforward recipe videos, try a tips/tricks video or share some behind-the-scenes footage. This is also a great way to A/B test your audience and see what type of content they respond best to.
Collaboration
Exposure to someone else's audience is a great way to gain visibility, especially when it’s within your same niche. Try and reach out to fellow food and beverage influencers with a similar-sized following and propose a collaboration. It could be a joint giveaway, a themed challenge, or something as simple as cross-promoting each other on your platforms. Don’t be afraid to reach out, just make sure you are genuine in your approach.
Educational Value
Offering your expertise can provide your audience with more than just entertainment and create a more engaged community. Sharing helpful tips, hacks, techniques, recommendations, and equipment are a few ways to incorporate educational value into your content. Again, having dimension and layers to your content is key. Not to mention, establishing yourself as an authority in your niche will increase your credibility with your audience.
Keep up with Trends
Like any other industry, the food and beverage industry is constantly evolving. It is important to stay up-to-date to appear relevant and tap into the current culture. You decide how you can participate in a trend and stay authentic to your content. Remember not every trend is going to be relevant to you. Engaging in a trend could be as simple as using trending audio, recreating a celebrity recipe, or even incorporating a viral ingredient (cottage cheese anyone?). Trends come and go quickly in today's fast-paced social media landscape, so make sure to strike while the iron is still hot.
While trying to navigate the fast-paced world of social media, being a food and beverage influencer could be overwhelming, always keep your focus on creating content that is authentic to you. It is easy to lose sight of your craft with all the noise of social media. Creativity and originality are your greatest asset to making engaging content – that is what sets you apart! Keep these tips as a friendly reminder when you need help to refine your content and take it to the next level.
If you’re a brand and looking for a little help (or a lot of help!) creating social media content that drives awareness and conversions for your business, we’re here to help! Reach out to us here, and we’ll schedule a chat to talk about all things social media and content for your brand.