Social Media Management FAQs for Food Brands

Thinking of onboarding a social media agency specialising in food? Here are the most common questions food, drink, and hospitality brands ask us when looking for organic and paid social media support.

Why should we hire a specialist food and drink social media agency over a generalist marketing agency?

We have worked within the food industry for over 10 years, we understand the unique demands and challenges that this industry can bring. Crazy hours, price fluctuations, getting stocked in supermarkets etc. Plus we’re massive foodies ourselves. That authentic passion and deep understanding of the sector are very difficult to replicate.

Generalist marketing agencies can be a great one size fits all solution if you need a website, traditional PR, offline ads and social media management. However, social media has quickly become an expert field of its own.

Understanding the ever changing landscape of social media platforms, trends, and the media editing skills to deliver an effective strategy is now something that a general marketing agency simply isn’t built to deliver.

How do you measure ROI?

Tracking ROI on paid social is fairly straightforward, we set up attribution tracking from ads and we map that against sales, Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) and Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC).

With organic social, this is the golden question. For us, the true job of organic content is to build brand awareness, social proof and an active, engaged community. We measure organic through engagement (likes, shares, saves and comments), reach, and community growth. These are the real metrics that show your worth as a brand online.

Which platforms should our brand prioritise right now?

Every brand is different, and it always comes down to your specific goals. LinkedIn is great for B2B if you’re looking to secure wholesale listings or connect with other retail businesses. TikTok and Instagram are essential for driving consumer awareness and Facebook is still very valuable if you’re trying to reach a slightly older audience. Pinterest is a wonderful platform for recipe driven content.

We will work with you to clearly define your target audience first, and then build a platform strategy around your specific brand needs.

Should we focus on organic social media or paid ad campaigns to scale?

If you’re looking to scale and have the budget, paid campaigns are the way to go. Relying on organic virality is unpredictable, and you may end up attracting an audience that is not interested at all in your product or service.

With paid social, you can control exactly who sees your content. You can target qualified audiences, test your messaging and track direct sales or website traffic.

In an ideal world organic builds the community and paid drives the growth.

Got more questions about socials for your food or drink brand? Let’s talk.

Book a strategy call.

How do you handle community management?

Community management is a rapidly evolving service within social media. Engaging with your followers helps build trust and brand loyalty, but the real gold is in pro-actively engaging with adjacent brands and accounts.

Showing up in relevant, trending posts demonstrates you are more than just wallpaper on social media but a part of the community and someone worth following.

What does the content creation process look like?

We handle content creation end-to-end. Once we have your strategy defined and understand the look and feel of your brand, we handle everything. Food styling, shooting, editing, subtitles and social media optimisation. We work with specialist photographers and videographers who know how to make food look irresistible on camera.

We deliver a mix of fast, trend led short form video, alongside high resolution product and recipe imagery ready for posting.

What does the day-to-day approval workflow look like?

We have automated systems in place to make content ideation, creation and approval as simple as possible. We provide you a login to our management system and you can see your full content calendar, with access to manage the approval workflow easily without taking up too much of your time.

What total monthly budget and ad spend do we realistically need to see results?

Budgets vary depending on your goals, product margins and target audience. For paid ad spend, we’ve seen successful campaigns start from as little as £10-£20 per day, scaling up as we understand campaign profitability.

For full social media management and content creation, our retainers depend on the volume and type of output required.

During our initial strategy call, we can talk directly about your content demands, margins and growth goals to recommend a realistic budget that ensures you get a return on your investment.

Book a strategy call and let’s talk about how we can help.