I happened to fall on Hellmann’s Real Food Movement Web site this morning. Hellmann is using social media (blog, Twitter and Facebook Connect) to raise awareness about the need of eating local food. Using a higher social motive to raise the profile of a brand is nothing new. What is new is how brands tap into our social networks to achieve their goal.

I wish to talk about is the execution of the campaign. It is an opportunity to learn the good and the bad.  There are lessons that any brand or blogger can learn from.

What They Did Right

The #RealFood hashtag campaign linked to a $25,000 donation to Evergreen is a good start. They are raising the bar today (July 29, 2009) by quadrupling all day how much they donate per tweet showing the #realfood hashtag. But it is not enough to raise a movement.

On their blog what I assumed to be their blog section (Real Food Conversations), they are not only talking about themselves. They are linking to other blogs. This is one thing that I always tried to emphasis with brands that try to build a community. You have to talk your movement in a larger spectrum. It cannot be just about what you do. Update: the principle that I wish to convey is what you have to remember here.

The same is true for the Twitter account of a blogger; you have to promote stories and content done by others on the topic you cover. As the blogger and promoter of the movement, you must act as an inspiring figure, be a leader.

Where There is Room for Improvements

It is ironic that their blog section is called Real Food Conversations but that we cannot comment on their posts. Many brands made this mistake. It is Blogging 101: you MUST allow comments.

All their posts are written by Admin. Ideally, you should put the name of the spokesperson. A first name can be sufficient but the full name is better. At least, display a username more engaging than Admin. Naming a person humanizes the process; it increases your chances to connect with them. Remember that we are more comfortable talking to a person than an organization.

Finally, the tweets are not engaging. It seems that all actions stopped at “I am supporting Eat Real, Eat Local”. It is missing passion, commitment on both sides. It is up to the brand to seed the passion. I suggest them to expand more about their movement on the Bio message. The same as with the blog, naming the person who is writing the tweets will enable you to build stronger relationships with your customers.

On a marketing side, I see too many angles. The URL site and twitter account are EatRealEatLocal but the movement is call the Real Food Movement. And then, they is a Choose Canadian ad campaign. I am not a marketer but it seems confusing.

MORE:
+ Eat Real, Eat Local on Twitter
+ Real Food Movement’s Web site

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Foodies are amongst the early adapters in the general public to Twitter. It is a vibrant community. People that do not use Twitter often laugh at the idea that we talk about mundane topics like “What you ate for dinner?”. To these detractors, I respond that Twitter is a fabulous tool to:

1. get informed
2. socialize, talk to people with similar interests
3. exchange ideas, add value to the conversations
4. ask questions
5. promote your brand.

Be Creative

Take this cool initiative by Maureen, a 27-year-old from British Columbia who presently studies in Belfast. Maureen found a clever use to communicate on Twitter. Using her twitter account @cookbook, she published entire recipes for 3-4 persons in 140 characters. To my surprise, her recipes are beyond the basic.

Chocolate Cupcakes: cream4T buttr/8T sug; +egg. Sift1/8t soda&salt/6T flour/4T cocoa/.25t bkgpdr. Mix all+4T milk; fill6cups. 20m@375F/190C.

Lemon Lentil Soup: mince onion&celery&carrot&garlic; cvr@low7m+3T oil. Simmer40m+4c broth /c puylentil/thyme&bay&lemonzest. Puree+lemonjuice.

Strudel Pastry: cut 2T butter/1c flour/mash tater. Knead w 2t yeast/2T h2o; rise 1h. On flour cloth gently pull 17×25″; trim-1″/butter well.

Maureen heavily relies on abbreviations so it is a brain exercise to figure out the meaning. You have to admit that what she does is impressive. So far, she posted 243 tweets. 8775 Tweeple, including me, follow @cookbook. Plus, the New York Times published an article about her.

She may have a little help in fine-tuning this idea since she is the partner of Blaine Cook, who was Twitter’s lead architect. But this story illustrates that we only have seen to tip of the iceberg of what is possible to accomplish with Twitter.

If you are looking for more recipes, I talked about three easy living chefs today on At Home with Kim Vallee.

CREDITS:
+ Take 1 Recipe, Mince, Reduce, Serve by Lawrence Downes on NY Times
+ Via Ricardocuisine tweet

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1. the rapidity at which a blog is referenced is second to none
2. people can more easily figure out about who you are and build credibility through your blog writing than a corporate Web site.

A Case Study

I published a review about Cabane a sucre du Pied de Cochon (April 4: put the new URL) on At Home with Kim Vallee last night. I now appear 3 times when you do a search on “Cabane a sucre du Pied de Cochon” on Google.ca. All the times, I am in front of the official site of the sugar shack.

I do not use any fancy SEO tricks. I simply make sure that my keywords are on the post Title, I repeat the keywords several times on my post and I insert my keywords in the ALT text of the image. All that takes less than 30 seconds to do.

They are other concerns and elements to consider before making a decision of whether to build a blog or a Web site but one thing is for sure Google loves blogs.

Montreal Girl Geek Dinner is Thursday

If you wish to learn more about SEO and how to write good Web content come to diner with the Girl Geeks of Montreal. This month, two SEO specialists will share her insights. Click here to reserve and know the details March Montreal Girl Geek Dinner with Kathryn Presner & A. Charlotte Riley. There is a Facebook event.

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When I first read about The Ideas Campaign I was excited. An Irish businesswoman launched the campaign two weeks ago. The goal is to ask Irish citizens what can be done to stimulate the economy. My deception comes from the lack of proper social networking skills. As I researched the story, this post transformed into “What a great idea” to “What NOT to do”.

The Great Idea

Forget the long public meetings all over the country. In these days of age, a social networking Web site can serve that purpose more rapidly and more effectively. The fact that you can give your opinions 24 hours a day over a few weeks means that more people can participate than with the traditional ways. This is another example of how the Web improves our life.

Besides the reported popularity of the site, lessons can be learned about how The Idea Campaign missed the target on different fronts. I believe that they could be more popular if they done things right. And it would not have cost more.

A Need for a True Social Networking Site

First of all, I wonder why they did not use a proper social networking application to build their Web site. They are many free open source tools to build such a site. You will need some customizations but it is still inexpensive if you stick to basic needs. Take Pligg for example. Citizens could submit their ideas and anyone could browse them. People could write a comment or vote a la Digg on the ideas.

Building a true community site stimulates people who submitted their ideas to spread the word about your project since they want to reach the Top Ideas status. Moreover, people could develop their ideas on their blogs, which spread the word further and build you page rank.

If you wish to build something like this, you must use the right tools for the job. They are no excuses for not using social networking software. It will be easier for you to manage and more engaging for your users.

My Two cents

How does The Idea Campaign perform on using social media for marketing? Let say that they still have a few things to learn on the art of using social media. They need a skilled Community manager to better promote their brand.

Use the above pointers to create awareness about your personal or corporate brand on Twitter or Facebook. First, start by following more people on Twitter. It is beyond me why any organization does not follow back most of their followers.

To be successful on Twitter, you need to engage in conversations. Do not rely on predictable marketing pitches like “Visit http://www.IdeasCampaign.ie today to submit your ideas that will help rebuild the Irish economy!”.

Instead, stimulate the discussions in your tweets. You could:

• summarize an idea and ask for comments to refine the idea (would be easy to do if they had a social networking site)
• provide external links to economic news happening in Ireland, the European Community and the World
• request people to contribute in a category where you are missing fresh ideas
• Retweet (RT) stories of members of your community that are on Twitter
• these are only the tips of the iceberg.

I would not even start on how they mismanage their Facebook presence since they created a user profile instead of a Facebook page for their campaign. Even a group would have been better. The fact that they need to approve me as a friend is against marketing 101 for any organization.

Even with these drawbacks, over 2500 ideas were submitted in the first two weeks (but we cannot verify these numbers since we do not see most submitted ideas). The appeal for crowdsourcing on economical issues is there. If you wish to send your ideas, you have until March 31, 2009 to do it.

+ Via Springwise

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I attended the launching party of a special Webisode series last night. It is special for two reasons. First, this is the adaptation of a mom blog chronicles. Caroline Allard did not imagined when she started her first mom blog in 2006 that it will lead to an award-winning book and now a Webisode series. On top of that, her second book is fresh from the press.

The second reason is that the Webisodes are presented via the Web site of a major TV channel in Canada, Radio-Canada. It is really an accomplishment that the traditional media does an adaptation from the content of a blog. The Webisodes are played by professional actors.

The Webisode series is called Les Chroniques d’une Mère Indigne. Caroline Allard uses humor to talk about her ups and downs of motherhood. Caroline started her blog because she had enough of the perfect mother image that the society seems to impose these days.

The launch was a success. We watched 3 episodes. The series contains 9 episodes of 3 minutes each. The Web series is well-done. If you understand French, I strongly suggest that you go check Les Chroniques d’une
Mère Indigne on Radio-Canada. You do not have to be a parent to laugh or enjoy the depicted situations.

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Why a Blog Revamp?

In short, my wish list for the new blog can be resumed in those terms:

• Increase the time my readers pass on my blog
• Make it easier to navigate between categories
• Migrate to a Wordpress platform
• More flexibility on ad placements while keeping as much as possible the ads separated from the content

As we worked on the blog mock-up, it became evident that I need a new logo and the color palette. We did those first and we are back working on the mock-up. I aim for a unique look. One solution can be to customize a Wordpress theme. We could tailor it to fit the look and feels I am looking for. Therefore, I am looking at Wordpress themes available on the Web.

We see more and more magazine style blogs. At first glance, the magazine style looks impressive and more polished. I particularly like the magazine themes of Woo Themes. I am leaning towards News Press or Flash News.

News Press by Woo Themes

I also like Arthemia; they have a free version. Mom2Mom Lounge started using this theme a few months ago.

Mom2Mom Lounge

The technical aspect of the implementation and the maintenance is not an issue for me. I have access to an experienced programmer (my husband). I hired a graphic designer. Plus I can discuss the new design with my mentor.

I keep current on the experience of other bloggers who made the switch. Some bloggers reported that they lost readers after they switched to the magazine style. I suspect the effectiveness of the magazine style to be linked to a blog niche and particular readership. In any case, this fact is a cause for worries. Since we can achieve my requirements with either style, the real question is: Which style my readers will like better?  I ask you to vote for your blog layout preference

My Reflections So Far

If you are not familiar with the pros and cons of the magazine style, read this excellent article by Smashing Magazine. With a target of 4 daily posts on weekdays, I feel I can reasonably fill the homepage with fresh content. Magazine style is appropriate for blogs with the several categories. At Home with Kim Vallee is split in 7 main categories surrounding entertaining and home decor.

One problem with the magazine style is that you lose the friendly feeling that comes with the traditional blog style. Some users can be confused since At Home with Kim Vallee is not a print publication. There is nothing wrong with being a blogger. My mentor told me that the key factor is credibility and credibility comes from great, unique content.

Need for Intelligent Excerpts

I hate the short excerpts of the magazine style. I used long excerpts (at least 500 characters) on At Home with Kim Vallee. I already acknowledged the needs for a shorter home page but I wish to keep it simple for my readers.

My programmer created a sophisticated excerpt function for me. As a past software designer, I am used to the benefit of intelligent automatism. The excerpt I used is dynamic; this means that if I change my text, the excerpt will automatically be updated. The program cuts after the first 500 characters but always terminated the paragraph. Since I use subtitles in my posts (better for usability and SEO), the function will add the first paragraph after the subtitle (or split before the subtitle, I cannot recall which one). I wish to migrate that function to Wordpress. I am delighted to have an easy access to a brilliant programmer.

I contemplate the option to feature my long excerpts for the first 4 posts and then, to have short excerpts like we see on the Fresh News Press Theme.

Fresh News Press

I explore only the tip of the iceberg. But so far, what do you think? Do you have a preference for At Home with Kim Vallee?

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