When two foodies work on a food theme project. There is no limit for imagination, This project SimplyMakans is a true example of our food adventures in Instagram. Nurul, My friend who loves baking and she is malay. I am Padmaja and I am an Indian, I love cooking and I just don’t stop with Indian, I make Italian, Persian and fusion foods.
Also , I love taking food photography after I cook my meal.During my free time, I enjoy watching cooking shows. I have a weird habit to collect beautiful props like cups, plates , bowls etc for food placement.
When the project brief was given, We were the happiest team among our class. We wanted to plan for a business model that can sustain organic growth by sharing our love for food.
Tools Used:
Memes Creator: imgflip
Hashtag: allhashtag.com
Emoji: Online resources
Instagram Scheduler: Facebook creator studio
creatives: Canva
Singapore is the favourite holiday destination among many people living in the South Asia. Last year alone there were more than 18 million people who visited Singapore in 2018 via land, sea, air to be exact 18,508,302 million passengers visited singapore and stayed about 2 days. Last year, Changi Airport has handled 65.63 Million passengers. There is an oppurtunity to introduce asian cooking class in Singapore at affordable price so that it could be a new must do activity for travellers visiting or transiting thrrough Singapore.
Singapore has multi-racial culture and we have Peranakkan cuisine, Chinese, Indian, Eurasian,Malay cooking. Also we have different markets like china town for Chinese, Little India for Indians, and Gelang Serai for Malay Community serving differnet unique vegetables, food for the local community.
Since, we live in Singapore, we planned to make this presentation more colourful with our local cuisine. We researched about the the Food culture in Singapore using Google trends and Barometer. We were surprised to see the people of Signaproe researched more for how to cook? tems than Best food in Singapore?
Not to forget the small kitchen nook in the latest HDB housing. People get frustrated to cook at home.
Surprisingly, when we did the keyword research based on the food industry and with the help of grab and deliveroo food delivery services “Millennials” enjoy food than ever before. we have found there were actually 1,428,830 looking for food reviews to eat outside. This number is much higher than the total search volume for how to cook at home. This makes it clear, Singaporean’s love their hawker and dining out food.
Audience Insights
By using Facebook Audience Insights, based on the Food interest, and hobbies. We found out 50 % of men and 50% women are interested in food between the ages group of 25-44 years old. mostly marriend, have completed graduation degree. Categorized people into two segments. GEN X and Millennials. Their behavioural pattern is similar and they spend more time on mobile with internet.
Competitor Analysis :
We wanted to study who are the competitor for SimplyMakans in Singapore. Then we did a comparison study of the Instagram insights. 1% to 3% is a good engagement rate in Instagram.
This comparison, we understood the influencers are having a low engagement rate for the followers they have. So we wanted to use this as our strategy to have a better engagement rate. Our aim is to achieve 100 followers a week.
SimplyMakans Business Objectives :
Phase 1 is all about awarness and Phase 2 will be conductiong a food tour and conduct cooking lessons and selling of singapore based homemade souvenir. As a part of cross selling.
Content Planning:
To come up with a strategy on how to place content on Instagram and find other channels that we could use to grow organically. Then I researched the
hashtags, Since food photography, International reach and targetting overseas tourists to learn to cook Singaporean dishes being the objective. Creating awareness was our first goal. We came up with a framework for phase 1 and Phase 2.
6 posts a day and wanted to educate and suggest food choices that followers can make for lunch or dinner. Also food recommendations and hashtagging the restaurants. We were asked to one person to handle community building and another person to post on Instagram. But, we wanted to see what is it like for us to try both. We split our work, I took in charge of the morning Breakfast ideas, posted around 7 -7.30 am, Lunch recommendations around 11.30 am, so followers will have better decision to choose what they wanted to eat for lunch! 3 pm will be a light snack idea or combination of food that goes well with tea time.
I was also involved in community building. Where I would go and visit people's posts on Instagram and if I like their postings and if that was related to what we do, I will like their post and follow their account on Instagram. I will also leave them an Instagram message introducing SimplyMakans and ask them to check on our postings.
After the third day, we received new followers who were professional chef’s and food photographers and wrote comments on the food presentation and photos. I engage with them replying to their comments within 3 hours. To keep them engaged and also post questions after visiting their Instagram account. They were very helpful to answer questions like how to get a better composition for the photo on food presentation. Tips and tricks to master the skills.
It was addictive and time consuming to constant check the instagram and create new follows. Our account started to grow organically without us inviting our friends and family to like and follow our page. In one week we reached 135 followers.
With all the strategy in place, we were able to come up with a paid social media ad-media plan for focusing on getting leads for the course signups.
#simplymakans Achievements
Our follower's numbers started to increase and we reached 100 followers and from the Instagram audience insights, we had followers from many countries. This would help us narrow down paid ads to target audiences from certain country based on their facebook or Instagram intent about travel planning or likes. Therefore, reducing our paid ads budget and avoid blanket targeting.
The audience was 25% men and 75% women, from The USA, UK, Ukraine, India, and Singapore.
Also, we got more interest from the company which organizes a day trips to the nearest market and tries new food, food photographers looking forward to teaching food photography, reputable chefs looking for inspirations and sharing tips. Finally, we decided to grow #simplymakans will all our postings and able to understand best performing hashtags.
Low performing postings and memes performed poor and we had to eliminate it from the postings schedule and replace it with good quality content.
To increase the engagement rate, under Instagram stories, I conducted quizzes and polls. I received excellent responses from people, and In the Instagram bio url space, I posted food safety and avoid plastic food packaging messages. Every available real estate was used efficiently to voice out Simplymakans' brand message, Which is “to eat mindfully and avoid plastics”.
Closing Thoughts:
Nurul has retired from Simplymakans and I have taken over the Instagram account. I will reduce the posts per day, will grow the account as a hobby. Meanwhile, Chopesg has sent simplymakans a private invite to join their facebook group whichwas launched last weekend, as the first close circle of food influencers.
What started as a fun project in two weeks' time transformed to be a business model from the insights we collected from the social media tool. That pushed us to move forward for phase 3 and phase 4 for SimplyMakans.
Also, I have realized when you share goodness you receive kindness from people. there were few creepy dudes in the channel who wanted to chat but we stay clear with our mission and successfully completed the project and Simplymakans is still getting new followers and many likes on our posts.
