Eye-catching, mouth-watering, craving-inducing—but first of all, thumb-stopping. If you follow food industry-related accounts on social media, chances are, you’ve seen these photos on your feed. And for good reason. With customers becoming digital natives and their behavior becoming digital-first, savvy business owners are going online to communicate, convince, and convert potential patrons.
For the Heny Sison Culinary School, growing awareness for the brand meant producing better posts on their Instagram account. “Based on demographics alone, we knew that a lot of potential students are on Instagram, but the challenge was to attract them,” shares Singson. To address this, the social media team started standardizing the school’s feed with editorial-style photos and populating the IG TV, Stories, and Highlights sections with videos that are both aspirational and informative.
“As a startup, it was our goal to expand our client base, but we also wanted customers to know that there is more to the box of empanadas they order,” says Trina T. Cancio, the entrepreneur behind Mama Empanada.
On the other hand, when questions and complaints are handled in a positive, timely, and knowledgeable way, “clients feel valued, while the business is able to show its dedication to customer satisfaction,” he adds. In terms of actual numbers for the business, Singson says one gauge of success for their social media posts is the drop in the number of classes that close due to the lack of enrollees. “Lately, we’ve seen that number go down to one or none at all per month,” she shares.