Social media is important for most startups – it helps you connect with your audience, it lets you shout about your product, and, crucially, it’s free. But for food businesses, it’s particularly important. Customers might not be able to taste or smell your food at that very second, but through the magic of Instagram or Twitter they can still experience it, enjoy it, and remember it.
Meringue Girls are a serious girl power food duo, winning both the food and fashion worlds over with their sweet treats. They also happen to have the most delectable food Instagram going, and a super-following who love their pics of pastel macarons, brownies, and of course meringues. We spoke to them about what platforms they use, and how they use them.
You have a really engaged following on Instagram – how did you go about building this?
It was very organic for us. We have always been a bit slow on the old hashtag, and so we have never really focussed on them, which is probably quite silly as we could probably get a few more followers. We have seen hashtagging work with a lot of our foodie friends but for us, building our following has been much more about collaborations with other like-minded brands.
Which platforms are important to your business?
We use Instagram, Facebook and Twitter but to be honest, our Facebook and Twitter get a bit neglected. Our main focus goes on Instagram. What we do is very visual so it makes sense to use a platform that’s heavily image-focused. However, if we are Instagramming we will always link it to Twitter and Facebook.
Your food photos on Instagram are always on point – what are your tips in this area?
All the live stuff that we do is taken on our iPhones - from baking in the bakery to events. We are food stylists so know how to get a good angle on it, or how to style it up with a sassy backdrop. We have also been fortunate enough to publish two cookbooks and are constantly doing incredibly vibrant food styling jobs with some fabulous food photographers, which provides a lot of good content for our Instagram accounts.
What do you think is the key thing that makes people follow you?
Our audience follow us because we are an inspirational and innovative baking brand with girl power at the core. We know our audience is 90% female, which is a huge indication that they love the girl power ethos. We know too from posting the occasional savoury treat that they get significantly less likes than the vibrant, colourful sweet stuff.
Have you had any social media fails?
We have definitely had a few in our time. We once re-posted a pic that we found anonymously in the depths of Google. We didn’t credit anyone as we didn’t know who it belonged to. The next morning we got an absolutely outraged email from the owner of the picture. All you can do is apologise and learn from your mistakes.
Any other tips for food businesses?
As long as you have a strong brand, the social media element should come naturally. Post about what you are doing and what inspires you.
Try to stick to a theme of colourways and use the same image sizes and borders so your feed looks uniform and fabulous. We try to post at least 3 times per day to keep momentum up.
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