recipes – and much, much more

Try this experiment.  Logon to Twitter and tweet something negative about Charter Communications.  Chances are that within 20 minutes, a Charter Communications representative will send you a direct message asking if they can help you with your problem. Everyone knows that Charter has a reputation for poor customer service, but consider for a moment the psychological impact to a customer if Charter actually scheduled a service call during a conversation on Twitter.  Given their current service reputation, its an inexpensive yet fairly profound method for redirecting the reputation by creating an experience.  Its a great PR move.

Lets look at some other thoughts for using Twitter.   Recall in my last post the fictitious client, Acme Ingredients, who processes and creates healthy ingredients.  What if we created a role for an Acme employee on Twitter who would employ a communication strategy focused on recipes which include their ingredients ?  What would this person tweet about?

• Tweet on recipes using the ingredients found on the Brand’s website
• Research and retweet other recipes containing the ingredient
• Occasionally discuss the healthy benefits of the ingredient
• Announce special offers co-branded products featuring the ingredient

What would be some of the potential outcomes from employing this type of strategy?

Ultimately, we believe the outcome would be the creation of a Twitter micro-community (called followers) who are genuinely interested in recipes containing the ingredient.  Okay, so what do we do with the micro-community once it’s established?

• Lets assume the ingredient company has a program for taste testing (most do).  Doing some quick research, most ingredient companies are prone to hiring an outside agency to find taste testers and using their own website.  Our recommendation would be to leverage the micro-community as a more cost effective  means to solicit the brand’s Taste Testers.  It would also yield a more genuinely interested panel of testers.  Consider the value, for a moment.  This micro-community is a voluntarily opted-in community of end-consumers who are interested in the ingredient.  Therefore, it’s highly probable that they would also be interested in taste testing new ingredient based products.
• This micro-community may also be an excellent candidate to solicit and harvest consumer insights.
• Word of Mouth for special offers on co-branded products, Promoting the healthy benefits of the ingredient

Can we create recipe strategies for Acme using Facebook and other social communities?  Yes.  The context for each is different, but strategies can definitely be developed.

The next questions may be, how much would developing a Twitter recipe communication strategy cost Acme?  Is it worth the investment?  Some major F500 companies are hiring communications specialists using an emergent strategy (let the strategy emerge they figure it out)   This “try it” approach obviously represents a significant cost.  I have created an innovative social communications services approach that can be leveraged at costs much less than hiring an employee.