How to be heard on social media

How to be heard on social media

Social media is unavoidable these days - even as I type they're discussing its influence on the radio.

For small businesses or your own personal brand it's a high impact and low investment way to raise your profile.  It's an opportunity to reach new audiences, develop fans and be seen by buyers, journalists and potential customers.

But it can be overwhelming - Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube where do you start? And how do you avoid making social media a full time job in itself?

Here are my top tips for getting started on social media:

1. Don't spread yourself too thinly. You don't have to be on every single platform. It's better to focus on one or two and do it really well.

2. Keep it personal. My old mantra is 'People tweet not businesses' and the same goes for the other platforms. If you're a tiny business use a picture of yourself in your profile rather than your logo so people get to know you as an individual.

3. Think about your tone of voice - social media is just a new way to chat and gossip with friends - so don't come across as corporate or monotone - you need to sound genuine, authentic and interesting with a variety of content.

4. It's not a one way street - continually plugging and pushing your own products or services will be counter productive and put people off, like a pushy second hand car salesman! It's ok to slip in the occasional plug but mix it up with behind-the-scenes insights, sharing other news or links to press articles and blogs you think would engage your followers.

5. It's all about conversation - listen to and engage with other people, comment on their posts, ask questions and don't forget to reply to people who talk to you.

6. Sometimes things you find mundane about your work can be fascinating to others. Behind-the-scenes content is always popular - people like to be nosey and have an insight into your daily life or the process of making your product. 

7. To find people to follow (and hope they follow you back) look at some of your competitors followers - if they're interested in one gin-distiller or cheese-maker chances are they'll be interested in you too.

8. Twitter and Instagram are particularly strong and useful in the food and drink. Instagram is growing hugely but is still a relatively small community so it's easier to get noticed here than Twitter or Facebook.

9. To be noticed on Instagram you do need to use good quality photos. Photos taken on your phone are fine but perhaps spend a bit of time editing them before uploading, cropping, or brightening. Don't use the Instagram filters - they won't do your photo any favours.

10. You can automatically share your Instagram posts on Twitter and Facebook - but don't bore your followers with the same content on all platforms all the time.  If you tweet from Instagram your followers won't see the image only a link to click through so I would recommend posting images separately on each.

11. Don't be intimidated by hashtags! They seem to be being used less on Twitter these days but they can be really useful for increasing reach on Instagram. Don't clutter up your post with loads of hashtags, but you can put in a few paragraph returns and hide them below the fold. There are lots of websites out there that will tell you the most useful hashtags in food and drink. But have a look at what other people are using and find the ones that appeal to you.  

12. If you're more confident with words than images stick to Twitter. Use it to join conversations and demonstrate your knowledge and expertise in what you do.

13. On Facebook you will need to create a business page and make sure you put useful business info and some photos in. But Facebook has made it harder to get reach and engagement without paid for content and I'd suggest if you're new to social media focus your efforts elsewhere at least to start with.

14. Facebook wants people consuming content so will reward brands creating engaging content and penalise those that aren’t by limiting their reach. While once it was better to post something every day now it’s more important to focus on quality.  

If you need help getting set up on social media or just to reboot your presence and get more followers give me a shout >

10 PR Tips for food & drink brands

PR is a powerful and effective way to raise awareness of your brand or products, to build loyalty and to drive sales. But with so many people fighting for so few column inches, how do you make sure your story makes it to the top of the page?

Here are 10 Tips for a winning PR campaign:

1. Be organised

Sounds obvious, I know, but really:

Do your research. Buy papers and magazines and read the online ones so you know exactly what they each cover - and just importantly what they don’t. Does your story fit?

Make a list of the editors and writers covering the most relevant sections - you can often find their contact details in the magazine or contact pages on their websites. You can always pick up the phone to the switchboard and ask who is the right person to contact.

Keep a record of all of the journalists, bloggers and writers you want to approach and a note of what you’ve sent them, when, and how they responded. This will help you next time you want to contact them.

2. Be timely

Build a PR plan or calendar including at all the news stories you have coming up ahead - for example, product launches, new distributors, new locations or events. What are the most important and interesting news stories how do you time it so you don't have three stories going out in the same month?

Remember that monthly magazines work to long lead times - often six months ahead. This means if you have a Christmas product you need to get the story out in June or July to be confident it will get picked up in the Christmas magazines.

Dailies and weeklies work to shorter lead times but don’t expect to send out a release one day and get coverage the next. 

Think about the wider context - seasonal events and trends like healthy or dry January; big news stories (food & Brexit); or new research finding and link your story to those events.

3. Be yourself

Tell your brand story with confidence - what is special about your business or product and why should journalists listen. Imagine you've got just a few seconds to get your readers' interest - practice telling your story in words and writing until you are happy with it. Then, try it out on friends and family until you've got it down to a tee.

Think about the language you use or 'tone of voice'. How you write a press release, tweet, blog or speak to a journalist has got to be consistent with who you are and your brand values. Whether your brand is fun and playful or considered and corporate - make sure you have one voice across all your communications. There's no need to adopt a bland impersonal tone in your press release.

4. Be interesting

You have seconds to get a journalist’s attention, just as you do with a consumer browsing the shop shelves.
 
Journalists receive dozens of emails a day and many will go unread so make sure you get a compelling heading in the email subject line.  Make your email personal, greet them with their name and tell them why you think your news story is relevant to them..

5. Be concise

A press release shouldn’t be more than a few paragraphs long and fit on one side of A4 (and this doesn’t mean size 8 font!). Make it easy to read with 1.5x or 2x line spacing. You can add more detailed notes on a second page. Don’t forget to include your contact details!

Include the key points of your story in the covering email: and don’t forget the what, where, why and when.

Copy the main content of the press release into the body of the email, don’t rely on your attachment getting opened.

6. Be visual

Photographs are crucial so make sure you have high-quality photographs to accompany your story. They need to be high resolution (minimum 2mb) to use in print or online. Think about what photographs are relevant - a product pack shot, a lifestyle shot or a team line up. Remember to label photographs clearly and state any credits or acknowledgement that needs to be given to the photographer.

Include one or two photographs in the press release and either attach a high-resolution image to the email or create a folder of a few images on Dropbox or Google Drive and share the link in your email.

7. Be relevant

A scattergun approach doesn't work. Think carefully before sending your news - is it relevant to that person or publication - what’s your hook, where does it fit in their publication.

Have several angles of your story up your sleeve - what’s relevant to a monthly consumer food magazine isn’t for a weekly grocery trade newspaper - tweak your story for different audiences.

8. Be factual

A press release is not a sales pitch and journalists will not respond well to over exaggerated claims and hyperbolic language. Write objectively (but not without personality see Number 3 above.)

Journalists like facts and data - is there research to back up your claims.

9. Be opinionated 

You are an expert in what you do so share that knowledge to build credibility and authority with the media.

10. Be tenacious but not a pain in the a**e!

Silence doesn’t mean rejection - journalists are busy and often inundated. If you don’t receive a response it’s fine to follow up after a week or two, but don’t over do it - it’s a sure way to make sure your next story ends up in up in the junk folder!

I have years of experience of food and drink PR, so get in touch for advice or to find out how I can help you.  Contact Polly Robinson food and drink PR >

Examples of successful PR campaigns I've worked on:

Top digital Shopping Trends in 2017

Technology is changing how we shop.

We go online for inspiration for what to cook and eat; the web is the go-to place for product information and it is increasingly where we buy our groceries. Almost half of UK consumers shop online for groceries now with younger shoppers more likely to choose online over in-store.

For brands it is crucial to understand how consumers are using online anytime and any place to buy their groceries, and to ensure that their products are front of mind and interest is converted into sales.

Researching products

The web is the go-to place for product information and comparison.

61% searched for a product online, but for brands and retailers this creates a challenge as shoppers flip between sites comparing prices and availability.

Price is the priority but other factors hold sway, including access to detailed product information and ingredient labels with 25% of online shoppers saying lack of details drove them to shop elsewhere.

Brands must optimise how products appear online especially on a small mobile screen - shoppers expect larger images, close ups and 360 degree views (if relevant) and engaging and informative copy with all the facts they’d expect to find when picking a pack up in-store.

Shopping

Online grocery is set to top £11bn sales in 2017 as more shoppers turn away from the weekly supermarket trip but how we shop online is shifting too, away from desktop to mobile, with 40% of all grocery purchases made online in the UK being via mobile phones. Consumers are now more comfortable with mobile commerce as conversion rates improve and basket values increase.

Shoppers enjoy the convenience of online grocery shopping. Click and Collect is one of the major drivers in the growing online grocery market along with more flexible delivery slots.

Consumers typically shop from archived baskets or use auto re-ordering. This makes it difficult for new products and brands to get seen. Brands need to support their products online to ensure greater visibility. Using paid search, sponsorship or cross-selling on retail sites can draw attention to products on the crowded online shelf, where shoppers otherwise have a very narrow field of view.

Top digital Shopping Trends in 2017.

• 48% of Brits are online grocery shoppers
• 11% do all their grocery shopping online
• 12% do most of their grocery shopping online
• 19% 25-34 year olds now do all their grocery shopping online
• 24% of Brits have never bought groceries online and have no interest in doing so
• 38% over 55s have never bought groceries online and have no interest in doing so
• 29% of UK online grocery shoppers are shopping for groceries online more than 12 months ago
• Why are we doing more online grocery shopping?
• 60% shop - it’s more convenient than visiting stores.
• 33%  - it’s easier to track how much they’re spending.
• 32%  - increased delivery slots available.

What stops us grocery shopping online?

• 38% its lack of control of choosing fresh products
• 26% high delivery charges
• 25% shopping more at discount retailers.

Mintel Report: Online Grocery Shopper 2016

The importance of mobile

• 40% of online grocery purchases are made on mobile phones (
• 40% used mobile to find the best prices (within last 6 months)
• During the 2016 Festive Season, more shopping was done on mobile devices than desktops.

Criteo Browsing & Buying Online Survey 2016. criteo.com

The Connected Consumer - Going Online for Inspiration

Today's consumers are constantly connected. The mass adoption of smartphones, tablets and social media result in an always switched-on culture. Online has overtaken cookery books as our primary source of inspiration for what to buy, cook and eat. 

For brands it is crucial to understand how consumers are using online anytime and any place and be part of the dialogue. So how are consumers using the web in their kitchens:

1. Online Inspiration 

Over half of people say they have searched online for recipes or ideas for what to eat. 

Instagram as well as other social media channels inspire people and drive trends - think avocado on toast with nearly half a million tagged posts. One in five Brits have shared a photo of food on social media or with friends in the last month (according to the Waitrose Food & Drink Report 2016)

The impact of bloggers, vloggers and other influencers is significant with 20% saying they would take advice from them about a product - this rises to 34% among the under 35s. Once in the kitchen we turn to YouTube and other video sites to find and follow recipes.

People will follow brands they like on social media and say they will buy a product as a result of seeing a social media post. Brands must engage with all social media channels including creating video content and remember to include direct calls to action to shop now.

1. 61% will search a product online in the last month
2. 56% searched for recipes
3. 45% liked or followed a brand they like
4. 22% said they’d buy as a result of seeing a social media post.
5. 20% said they’d take advice from vloggers & bloggers rising to 34% month under 35s

Savvy, shopper survey of 1000 UK households April 2017.

Where do we turn to for recipe inspiration?

2 in 5 people say they’re looking to increase their repertoire through trying new recipes. Food website have overtaken cookery books as a source of inspiration - so where do we turn for new recipes:

1. Food Websites- 41%  (43% of 18-24s but only 29% 55s+)
2. Cookery Books 39%
3. TV 18%
4. Tend to come up with myself 17%
5. Food Magazines 15%
6. Friends 14%
7. Parents 13%
8. In store leaflets 13%
9. Other family members 11%
10. Celeb chefs 10%

YouGov AHDB Consumer Tracker April 2016

Why video matters.

1. 23bn view of food videos online in 2015 - 170% rise on 2014. Nearly all on YouTube or Facebook
2. 70% share of that audience in 18-34 age range.

Food becomes key ingredient for digital media groups, Financial Times.

Tips for planning your website

If your business isn't online, it doesn't exist. 

Whether you're starting a new business or managing an established brand you know it's vital to have a website - but where do you begin?  What is involved or what is it going to cost?

Have a cunning plan

Before you start to design a new website you need to have a plan. This is just as true if you are revamping an existing website or starting from scratch. Answering these questions will help you to put together a brief to work to or pass to a developer. Here are my top tips for planning your website:

1. What's the purpose of your website

First ask yourself the purpose of your web site. This might be:

• To sell products online.
• To raise your personal or business profile
• To tell customers and potential customers where your bricks & mortar shop or restaurant is.
• To share news about product launches.
• To get people to book events, tables or workshops.
• To publish a blog or journal about what you do, your recipes, your travels etc.

2. Who is your audience?

• Consumers and customers 
• Other businesses
• Journalists and the media

What do you know about them?  Are they in the UK or do you have an international audience? How old are they? Are they digitally savvy or not? Are they adventurous or more conservative?

As with all marketing, the more you know about your customers the better, to enable you to communicate with them in a relevant and engaging way.

3. Why do you need a new website?

Are you launching a new business or revamping an old website? If you already have a website make notes about what is good about it and what isn't. How does it work for you and your team to manage and keep up-to-date.  If you have any details available (like Google Analytics) find out what content is popular. If you sell stuff online how smooth is the process for shoppers - how many steps are there to complete a purchase. You could even ask a friends or customers what they think of the site and what improvements they'd suggest to the user experience.

4. What's your style?

A good place to start here is to have a look at websites of similar businesses and competitors or other websites you use in a different area - make a note of the elements that you like or dislike and why.

5. What's your brand look and feel?

Do you have a strong brand identity already or do you need to build one? Do you have a logo, and colour scheme that you use in packaging or brochures?  If not think about what colours you like that fit your product or style.

6. What photographs do you need?

All websites need good strong photography - especially if your product is food. What photography do you have already or do you need more?  Be warned poor photography can let your brand down and there is nothing less appetising than bad food photography. A professional photographer is well worth the investment.  

Video is also a great way to engage people with what you do. If you have any video think about how you use it on your site.

7. What key content do you want to include?

Once you've worked out your objectives, what you're trying to say and to whom, then you can start to think about how you say it. If you have a website already resist the urge to just replicate the layout and existing content; it's much better to stand back and start with a blank sheet of paper.  Things you will probably want to include:

• A welcome page to introduce who you are and what you do
• About Us - a more detailed page telling your story
• What you do/What you sell - details of your products or services
• Contact information and your social media links

Extra pages and elements to consider:

• An online shop
• A blog or news section to keep people up to date
• Event listings
• A list of stockists - perhaps searchable by location or on a map.
• Sample menus
• Tips & Expertise - share content to establish you and your brand as experts at what you do, this might be recipes
• A newsletter sign up box

8. What layout or navigation do you want?

Plan what content you want to appear where and how it's structured. What do you want to show in the header or footer of each page? Try to draw a map or family tree showing the pages you want to show in the main navigation and any sub-pages.

9. Get a domain name?

Your domain name is your website address or URL. You need to claim or register your domain and it's important to choose the right one from the start. No matter how your business changes or if you redesign your brand or your website, your domain name should be consistent.

Obviously your first choice would be your brand/business name but if this is unavailable you may need to be a bit creative either by creating a compound name like EatBrand (for a restaurant) or WeAreBusiness. A dot com is the most popular domain level, especially if you are setting up an online shop or targeting an international audience, or co.uk if you are UK-focussed. But there are lots of other options available like .co, .net, .london to consider.

Make sure your domain name is short, relevant and recognisable. Although these days most people use a search engine like Google to find any website now rather than remembering a URL and typing it out from scratch. Spend some time looking at what domains are available and playing with different variations

There are many services available for buying your domain and checking availability - 123.reg, names, nominet. I like 34.sp and GoDaddy. You can also buy your domain through Squarespace and Shopify if you are using those platforms to build your site.

10. Do you need a web host?

Yes. Think of website hosting as paying rent for your space on the worldwide web, like rening a physical building as your home or shop, your web host houses your website files. There are many options for hosting, if you're building your own website in Squarespace, Shopify or similar, hosting is included in the package and you don't need to buy separate hosting. If not you can buy hosting through your domain provider but don't choose it on price alone. You need to look at their level of service, security, and uptime - here are some detailed tips on choosing your web host. If you are using a developer they will be able to advise you further on this.

11. How much does it cost to build a website?

This is a 'how long is a piece of string' question! It can cost next to nothing if you build it yourself, or a thousand or several thousand pounds if you want a complex, bespoke, ecommerce website built by a specialist developers.

It's important to set yourself a budget before you start speaking to developers and give them a ballpark figure of what you are prepared to spend so that they can propose a solution to fit your budget.

12. How much time do you have to work on your site?

Ask yourself early on how much time do you have to manage your site, will you be doing it yourself or someone in your team or do you need someone to manage it for you? Are you confident about using websites or does the idea send you into panic? Will you have time to upload all the content on the new site or do you need someone to do that for you? This will impact how the site is built.

13. What platform or CMS should you use?

If you have a limited budget and are confident about managing a website (or even just a computer), then I recommend using one of the DIY web platforms like Squarespace (for a content /marketing site or blog) or Shopify for an online shop. They come with a wide range of ready built templates so you can create a beautifully designed website for very little money. It puts you in full control and they are incredibly easy to manage and keep up to date.  Here's why I love Squarespace.

If you like the look of these options but don't have the confidence to do it all yourself there are freelancers who will build a site for you in one of these platforms. If you need help with Squarespace I'd love to help you, or Shopify have a list of their recommended developers here. A specialist can help to make the standard templates look more unique to you.

Alternatively you may need to bring in a specialist developer to to build your website for you. Start by asking friends or contacts in your business network who they would recommend locally. Put together a detailed brief covering all the points above and send it to two or three developers asking them how they'd approach the project including their costs. It is worth meeting any potential developer in person as it's important to find someone you like, trust and can work well with.

Make sure you've agreed a detailed plan with them upfront as if you decide to make last minute changes it can end up costing you a lot more time and money.

Please don't let developers talk you into using their exclusive content management system (CMS) that are unique to their business, it can be very expensive and very restrictive.  Go for something opensource (i.e. available to everyone) like Wordpress, Magento or Umbraco.

14. Pull it all together

It makes life easier if you pull everything together before you start. This includes writing all your content, collating a list of products or events, writing a few blogs (and/or recipes).  Create a file with all the photography you want to use (and remember to crop and resize if necessary before uploading it to the site).  You'll also need your logo, and a scaled down version to use for the favicon, the little icon that appears in the tab of your web browser. If you're an existing brand do you have guidelines about the colours and fonts you use - make sure you share these with the web designer.

15. Set yourself a deadline

Whether your building your own site or working with a developer agree a date when you aim to launch the site. Even if you don't hit the deadline, it's good to have goal to work towards!

16. GO!

Why Squarespace is great for small business websites

When I launched Food Safari back in 2008 I knew I needed a website and I knew what I wanted it to look like, but like so many small and start up businesses I didn't really know where to start. I spoke to designers and web developers and had to learn a whole new language, and I'm not talking about HTML, just web developer talk. My basic website became the biggest investment in starting a business.

Eight years on I no longer find websites intimidating, I've learned the lingo, I understand the basics, yet when I speak to other people (from start-ups to established brands) the topic of websites is always greeted with a nervous sigh. But things have moved on a long way in the last few years and I don't think people need to feel so daunted by building a new website, even a full ecommerce site needn't cost thousands and take months of work.

Before you start do ask yourself what is the purpose of your website and who is your primary audience?  (See more of my tips on planning a website on the separate bog). Do you want to sell stuff online? What's your budget and timeframe - yes this is a 'how long is a piece of string' question but it will help you decide the best way forward.

If you have complex requirements and a generous budget then I recommended speaking to a couple of web developers to get different views on how to approach your project. But what are your options if don't have lots (or any) money to spend on a developer?  The answer lies with the arrival of DIY platforms like Wix, Weebly, Squarespace and Shopify it's possible to build a website or online shop yourself.

Shopify is the way to go if you need an online shop and offers sophisticated ecommerce, customer management and stock-management that only few years ago businesses would have paid thousands of pounds for! But if you just want a simple information site or blog, I don't think you can do better than Squarespace.

All these sites provide lots of "How to' instructions as you go along and you'll find plenty of blogs too with tips and comparisons between all of these options so I'm not going to cover that here.

Here's why I love Squarespace:

1. Great design

Squarespace has a growing portfolio of beautifully designed templates for you to build from. The designs are contemporary and fresh giving you a site that looks as good as one that has cost thousands of pounds.

2. Easy to use

The simple WYSIWYG editing is really easy to use - if you've used Word or anything else on a computer in the last ten years you'll be able to work it out. You can add blocks for images, galleries, video, social media and many other things just by right clicking the grey teardrops that appear when you hover your mouse over the screen.  You can then drag and drop them to where you want them.

3. Secure and stable

Squarespace is a self-contained platform and which enables you to create a web property and hosts it on the worldwide web - one account, one payment. You don't need loads of plugins and widgets as you do with a Wordpress site. Nor do you need to update it regularly as you do on Wordpress - so your website is always secure and stable.

4. Mobile and tablet-friendly

Mobiles have been the most popular way of getting online since 2015 - smartphones are now responsible for a third of internet access, up from 2014, so if your website doesn't look good on a mobile, if the text is too small to ready or the buttons impossible to navigate you will loose customers. Not only that but Google changed its search algorithm in 2015 and if your website is not mobile friendly it will negatively affect your rankings. You can check whether your website is mobile friendly by using this simple Google test > Squarespace templates are 'responsive'. In other words they automatically adjust for a mobile user, retaining your overall brand look. You don't need to do a thing.

5. Easy Search Engine optimisation

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is a term you'll hear buzzing around a lot! Essentially it's about making sure that search engines - Google, Bing, Yahoo etc - find your site and drive traffic there.

Squarespace has all the elements you need built in and easy to set up: site descriptions, page titles, custom URLs. The automatically generated built-in sitemap that helps Google to crawl, understand, and ultimately, rank a website. 

6. Make it your own

Some people will tell you to avoid a template website so you don't end up with a generic site design that looks the same as everyone else has but remember there are a huge number of Squarespace templates with new ones regularly released.... play around with templates you can build a few pages is one template to see how it looks and then preview it in another template to see which works better.

Once you've chosen your template, don't forget to play with the Style Editor. Here you'll find options to change the look and feel of the site - typography, colours, button shapes and sizes. If you have a standard font that you use for your business you may find it already in Squarspace or at least find a webfriendly font that is close to it.  

7. Affordable

You get a 2 week free trial during which you can build your site, you only need to start paying after that.  After that there are options for a personal, business or ecommerce site ( wouldn't recommend Squarespace if you need an online shop. A personal site is adequate for most people and only costs $12/month if you pay for 12 months up front. This includes hosting the site, which in the old days you would have had to pay separately.

If you pay monthly there is no contract so you can move your website anytime without incurring a penalty. You can also upgrade or downgrade your plan at any time if your business requirements change.

In summary, I love Squarespace as a platform to build small business websites on, there really is no need to spend a lot of money with a developer. If you have more bespoke requirements Wordpress may suit you better, if you want an online shop try Shopify or Wordpress with a WooCommerce plug-in. But if you just want to build an online presence for your website start here.

If you would like to discuss your website requirements or need help building a website do get in touch >

Read my tips on planning a new website >

Delicious Producer Awards

I was really honoured to be invited to be a regional judge for the inaugural Delicious Magazine Producer Awards. There are numerous food and drink awards these days including the ubiquitous Guild of Fine Food Great Taste Awards which receives tens of thousands of entries every year seeking the recognisable gold stars to adorn their products.

But there were no national awards which truly celebrated the best best artisan food producers, small scale farmers or makers, recognising their dedication and skill as well the provenance and taste of their products. Back in January 2016 the magazine asked readers to nominate their favourite dairy farms, fishermen, butchers, bakers and farms - 650 nominations were received.

I was asked to judge entries for the East of England alongside far better qualified judges, food writer Thane Prince and chef Galton Blackiston. We spent an entertaining couple of hours reviewing all the entries to the area from tiny producers of chutneys and cakes available in a few local markets to some of East of England's most well known products from oysters to rhubarb. The process was rigorous scoring each entry on a number of criteria and Thane kept us all focussed and impartial! 

Our shortlist duly submitted to the final panel that included Prue Leigh, Peter Gordan and Sophie Grigson as well as Delicious editor, Karen Barnes and we all had to wait patiently until October when the winners were announced in the October magazine.

I'm delighted to say that one of our favourite entries from the region went on to win the From the Earth Category - Hodmedod's Organic Quinoa was praised by the judges who said "We love the fact that it's grown in the UK. Plus the flavour is excellent: buttery and nutty, with a texture that pops in the mouth."

You can see the full list of winners on the Delicious Producer Awards Winners.

Enough Food Festivals already

It would be possible to spend every weekend of the year at a food festival - every city has one and most counties have more than one. Newspapers regularly recommend the best and there’s at least one website dedicated to helping us navigate them - it currently lists 338 - almost one for every day of the year. There’s sausage festivals, oyster festivals and local to me there’s an irregular Herring Festival and even the Peasenhall Pea Festival.

While I’ve overheard many a punter complaining about having to pay to go into a “glorified farmers market”, we still flock to food festivals in our thousands, they’re the new local fete or day at the fair and the civilised festival experience for those who don’t like camping and smelly loos.

But what do we find to do at these festivals? We get stall upon stall of indistinguishable jams and over-the-top cupcakes swamped by people eating their body weight in samples with no intention of parting with any cash. We fight our way through a stampede of buggies only to decide it’s too far back to the car to bother buying any meat and veg and we’ll stop off at Tesco on the way home.

We see the same band of hungover chefs, touted out by their publishers to publicise their latest book, being marched bleary-eyed onto the stage only to burn the onions because, after a night of boozing, it’s as much as they can do to string sentence together, let alone cook at the same time. Even without the help of hangovers the demos can be chaotic with missing ingredients, stoves that don’t work and interruptions from crying kids, snoring grandpas and ringing phones. If you’re really lucky they’re might even be a video screen focussed on a pile of washing up!

Don’t get me wrong, I am a great fan of food festivals, particularly the old guard and the innovators. Ludlow, the first in the UK founded in 1995 and Abergavenny, four years later, still have their hearts deeply rooted in celebrating local, seasonal food and drink - a harvest festival for 21st century. There are innovators like Bristol Food Connections which engages the whole city and both entertains and educates. These festivals are run on shoe-string, dependent on funding and hard-working volunteers to make them happen.

But there are too many that have just jumped on the band waggon with high ticket prices, corporate sponsors and an army of street food vendors serving raw burgers, warm beer and over-cooked paella with no local connections and ingredients from the cash and carry.

Meanwhile dedicated farmers and producers get up at crack of dawn come rain or shine, drive hours every weekend, to farmers markets which struggle to keep going because we’re not using them. You’ll find them there every weekend - because we need to eat every day not just on food festival day. You don’t have to buy a ticket, you can park close by and you can buy fantastic meat, veg and bread - quality everyday food, not just for treats.

We need to stop seeing food as entertainment, going to food festivals to scoff all the samples andspot our favourite celebrity chef in the flesh. Neither should it be the one day of the year we choose to shop from local food and drink producers - we should support them all year because they are there for us all year and we need to eat everyday.

Long live food festivals - but longer live farmers markets!

The original version of this article appeared in Delicious Magazine September 2016.

School of Artisan Food: Food for Thought

School of Artisan Food: Food for Though Lectures

It's a long old way to drive from east Suffolk to the depths of Sherwood Forest and beyond to the School of Artisan Food, but the annual Food for Thought Lectures have become a firm fixture in my calendar.

The School of Artisan Food was founded around the same time I started Food Safari with a similar ethos to teach people about food with hands-on courses with a particular focus on fermentation - from bread, to cheese, beer and curing meat. Its home is an incredibly grand building which housed the fire engines for the enormous (15,000 acres!) Welbeck Estate, home to the Dukes of Portland.

The Food for Thought Lectures run over a May weekend as two days of talks and discussions with some of the country's most interesting and engaging food writers, journalists and chefs. The audience is small, intimate even, and it's a lovely opportunity to meet new people and chat with old friends. The programme has no specific theme and discussions including the inimitable Jeremy Lee of Quo Vadis entertaining us with food memories and some favourite food books from Eliza Acton, to Florence White and Dorothy Hartley.

Joanna Blythman talked on the subject of her latest book Swallow This about the problems of processed food and so called 'Clean Labels'; Bee Wilson spoke on her brilliant book First Bite: How we Learned to Eat and the inspiring school food campaigner, Jeanette Orrery, talked about her in-the-field experience of school food and the incredible work she's done on the School Food Plan.

We also heard from some of my favourite chefs and food writers, Olia Hercules, Itmar and Sarit from Honey & Co; food historian Ivan Day and art historian Andrew Graham Dixon.

I will certainly be back next year.

How to do your own PR and get results!

Getting your story in the press is a great way to get your message out there, raise awareness of your brand and even generate sales. But there’s lots of competition for those column inches, in print or online. How do you get your story to stand out and get the coverage you’re aiming for?  Here are my tips for doing your own PR.

1. Be Social

PR stands for Press or Public Relations - the emphasis is on relations. Go out and build relationships either through social networks, attending events or picking up the phone and getting out meeting people.

Use social media like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to build your fans and advocates and they will do your job for you telling their friends and spreading the word.

Connect with relevant journalists on social media or seek them out at events you attend (press badges are often easy to spot). Don’t be afraid to introduce yourself and hand over a business card or better still a sample. You’ve then got a good excuse to follow up with them.

2. Be an Expert

Whether you are a cheesemaker or an insurance broker you have expertise in what you. If you demonstrate this expertise through a blog or social media journalists will identify you as someone to speak to in their research. For example if you are an vegetable grower and blog about the impact of a wet spring on the asparagus harvest and share that opinion on social media or even send it direct to the press, journalists may call for a further comment to quote in their piece.

3. Be an authority

Make sure you know your facts, have some figures to hand, journalists love data, such as the size of the UK asparagus market or your own increased volume of asparagus sales over the last five years. Have an opinion and don’t be afraid to share it.

4. Be targeted

Do your research. Buy the newspapers or magazines and spend time looking at online publications. Think about their approach and themes. What do they cover and what don’t they cover?  How can you make your story relevant to them?  It’s often worth having several angles of the same story up your sleeve, for example one for the local media that focusses on the local connections, one for the national food press and one for the trade press.

Create a list of the relevant journalists by reading the magazines or papers. Magazines usually have a boiler plate at the front with names of key staff and some contact details. Papers can be a bit harder to get contact details for but google is a powerful tool and you’ll be surprised how often you can track down someone’s email address!  You can always pick up the phone and ask who is the relevant person.

Build a database - keep a record of the names and contact details of your target list of journalists. Keep a record of what you have sent them and when and a note of how they responded. The more information you can add the better and don’t forget to keep it up to date.

A scattergun approach doesn't work. Think carefully before sending your news - is it relevant to that person or publication. Make the covering email personal and highlight why you think it is relevant to them.

4. Be concise

Whether you’re telling your business story face-to-face or writing a press release you have a just a minute to get your audience's attention.

I still regularly think about an acronym I learned 20 years ago: AIDA which stands of Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. You need to get your readers attention, engage their interest and encourage them to take action whether that's buying your product or writing about you.
 
Journalists receive dozens of emails a day and many will go unread so make sure you get a compelling heading in the email subject line to get their attention and make sure they’ve not lost interest by the time they get to the key part of your message. Think about the key points you want to get across (sometimes called the top line), why should they be interested and don’t forget the what, where, why and when.

A press release shouldn’t be more than a few paragraphs long and fit on one side of A4 (and this doesn’t mean size 8 font!). Make it easy to read with good line spacing. You can add a few notes on a second page and don’t forget to include your contact details.

5. Be newsworthy

A press release is not a sales pitch. Don’t over-hype the story or exaggerate - be genuine and honest. Write objectively as if you were writing something you’d read in a paper or magazine.

Think about what makes it a story that they’ll cover (this will depend on the type of publication). Do you have data or research that shows a new trend or a nutrition benefit to your product? Do you have tips to share or inspiring recipes.

6. Be visual

Include one or two photos as thumbnails in the copy.  Have good quality high resolution images to hand. Dropbox is a great way to store and share high resolution files. Include links to to Dropbox or offer to share them on request.

7. Be smart

Make it easy for the journalist. Put the story in the email and don’t assume that they will open an attachment. If you send an attachment send it as a pdf document that can be opened on any platform.

8. BE APPROACHABLE

Remember to include your contact details and offer to answer any questions or send samples.

Invite them to visit you or meet for a coffee. Journalists are real people and this is all about building relationships.

9. BE PERSISTENT

Silence doesn’t mean rejection - journalists are busy and often inundated. If you don’t receive a response it’s fine to follow up after a few days or a week but avoid becoming a pest by chasing them too many times, that won’t yield results.

If they are not interested in your story ask them if it’s ok to send them other news in the future and ask them what sort of things would be relevant to them.

If you would like more advice or help about PR do get in touch, I'd be happy to help!