Insight Community

Rather than thinking primarily about deriving value from your customers, I would look at providing relevant value to your customers in a manner that augments your brand position.

 For example, canned pasta sauce enables mothers to provide an outstanding out-of-the-box meal without having to start from scratch.  However, canned pasta sauce may also communicate laziness or failure to provide as a mother to concerned homemakers.  I would think about what the mother in this case, is aspiring to be, what she is looking to gain from the pasta sauce and how we can make her feel that the pasta sauce is helping her  become who she wants to be.

Additionally, because mothers are incredibly short on time, we need to find a way to craft a social media solution that empowers the mother within her given time constraints.  Therefor, I would propose personalizing canned sauce experience.  In my home we regularly use a canned sauce as a base while adding our own fresh cheeses and spices.  This was a solution I came up with for my wife who wanted to put more into her dinners but didn't have the time.  She now compares her sauce specialties, her "secret recipes" with her friends.

 I would consider developing a social media solution that speaks to this audience.  Sponsor a recipe community with messaging telling the "customize your can" type message.  It's not XBrand sauce, it's Mom's Sauce - brought to you by XBrand.  I would encourage mothers within and beyond this community to share their sauce secrets with one another by providing them with a forum for interaction,  a recipe widget, a recipe email template and a recipe book index card sized print functionality - which she can then pass along to friends.  This would in turn create a real world pass along network of friends sharing recipes both offline and online entirely around your brand.

The key to social media is understanding the needs of the user, of your target consumer and empowering those needs in an organic manner.  Social media is not about what it can do for you, it's about what you can do for social media users.  Reverse your thinking, re-align your strategies and you can be successful.

Heinz may have generated awareness, but they weren't delivering a message.  Social media is greater than a banner, it is a conversation.  Conversations go beyond "have you heard about x" to "you should try x".   There is greater value to be had.

Australian internet history tells us that some very large and flashy websites with competitions and content writers have bombed out badly in the search for traffic. Most of these sites spend a lot of money getting one time visitors who sign up for a competition they never win and don't come back again. Does anyone remember Scape? These sites have failed because not enough people visit, the content wasn't as interesting as the producers hoped and people have better things to do with their time.

User driven content and user participation has become a way to keep users returning to a site, keep the site producing dynamic content and create the buzz that companies are looking for. This is tricky to do when you are a company trying to sell produce since people start off being wary of an advertising message.

A good mix for a food company is internally developed content that makes people think better of the brand and user driven content that is related to the brands and is fun to participate in. Things like competitions, rewards and contests will have short term gains but the effect may wear away quickly.

Food and Recipes

Users creating recipes, sharing recipes, scoring the popularity of recipes in a Digg style voting system. Site editors or celebrity guest authors adding their own recipes to keep the content ticking over. This gets people visiting the site and talking about food. It doesn't need to be restricted to products sold by the company - it needs a wide appeal to make sure people visit the site. Make this recipe sharing fun with some Facebook applications - show your favourite recipes in Facebook or recipes you've submitted. Create a recipe mashup game where you choose some mismatched ingredients, generate or create a funny name and send it to one of you Facebook friends Wall or profile or inbox along with a generated picture.

A recipe generator would let someone select a couple products they have and it would generate the recipes that might match.

A kids lunch box helper would help parents with healthy and low waste lunch box items and let them build weekly lists for lunch box contents.

A send to mobile phone option would let people send a recipe list to their phones so they can buy the right products during their next supermarket shop. This could be extended to let people manage wider supermarket shopping lists. There could even be integration with Coles and Safeway/Woolworths online shops where a persons shopping list is matched up to products to fill an online shopping basket.

Food and Health

Having major content on the site about food and health would reflect well on the brand and help with advertising tie ins from major sites like Yahoo Sunrise. Forums about healthy eating, blogs from experts on healthy eating, news about new products, kids lunch box tips.

People are concerned about food and additives, especially parents where children suffer the consequences of eating additives that over stimulate them. A group blog from gurus within the product development teams could post news about new products or changes to existing products and the efforts made to improve the health and suitability of these products for kids. Forums would be another place to talk about what is in foods. Blogs or a wiki could help describe in plain language what the ingredients of products actually are.

Blogs, news and forums shouldn't shy away from critical responses from readers - but there should be editors who are trained and able to respond to this criticism where it's not appropriate for the original author to respond. This will give the site some authenticity and make it an interesting place for people to visit who are not loyal to the brand yet.

A mobile phone service could let people type in the name or id of a food item and get in return a longer user friendly description of the ingredients in that product. This might not be used by a lot of people but would generate positive buzz about the company and help those people who need to take extra care about the products they eat.

Food News

There are probably two areas of food news that people are interested in: new products and discounts. One services could be notification of discounts in a users area - delivered by RSS or SMS or email, it would let users choose a region and food group or brand name and alert them about where they can get that item on special that month. People love getting the inside scoop on coupons and specials that are not advertised elsewhere.

Phone coupons would be very effective where they are sent to subscribers, they are only valid for a short time and when shown to a checkout operator they let the operator use a code that gives a discount on a product.

Another news services would be new products - an RSS style new item feed and a more in depth insider blog style showing pictures and describing where it was made and how it was developed. An insiders view to the process of making a new product could be an interesting blog. New product launches could have a shop or display style location in Second Life showing the item in 3D. When people find an interesting new product they can send it to friend in Facebook as a gift and that helps spread the buzz.

Food and Video

YouTube has made it much easier to create infectious video content for little money as videos can be hosted on a YouTube channel and embedded into the website. A competition could ask members to create funny videos about food items. New products could be shown. Stunt videos like the Mentos/Lemonade videos or the Will It Blend videos could be conceived relating to the companies products.

Training videos could show how to make recipes and tie into the user submitted recipe content.

Hosting the videos on a YouTube channel with links back to the company website helps make them more findable and ensures they work and perform well regardless of site traffic.

Getting Traffic

Competitions and advertising on other larger Australian websites will help to build up initial traffic but there needs to be fun and infectious things to do on the site to keep people there. Blogs will help keep traffic if they have interesting content and they should probably have several articles before the major advertising starts. A soft launch of the site will help. A blog editor needs to make sure blog comments are being answered. News and blog posts and recipes will start appearing in Google search results and that could become the biggest source of new traffic.

Employees of the company need to be encouraged to participate on the site and corporate employees could be encouraged to use it during work hours. This will help get it to a critical mass of user participation.

Context-based advertising would be the best initial way to leverage social media for a food company.  For example, put a ton of ads up in forums that talk a lot about food products, dieting, etc. based on the specific product being advertised.  Get ads up on cooking blogs, and try to get a second life store setup.  Offer a recipe SMS service that features the brand-name condiments.

Let's assume now I want to buy the products because I've seen the advertisements.  It should be painfully obvious where I can get your product.  I shouldn't have to guess what store to go to, I should be able to see a map of exactly the nearest place to get the products I want.  If I can't get to a nearby store, I should be able to order the products online.  Since I am in the USA, ordering from Australia is my only option.  I would offer gift packages online, advertising them on flower delivery sites.  Tons of businessmen in the USA order gifts online, and making it easier for them to select your products will increase the chances that their significant others develop a relationship with your unique products, driving long-term customer retention.

This is a classic problem and one we see a lot here at Blog-City (http://www.blog-city.com). The question is coming from the wrong place. Instead of trying to figure out how to utilise the latest and greatest marketing gimmick (be it social networks or even blogs), you should be figuring out what value can you give to your clients, and more importantly, what value can you get from your clients through an online experience.

Occam's Razor - the most obvious solution is usually the right one.

A food company, particularly this one that produces products are used in conjunction with others to make dishes should be looking at the world of online recipes. Here you want to tap into the huge collective recipe book your clients have mentally/physically collected up over the years- Just how does Grandmothers magic soup gets its zing?

The key here is to provide a platform that lets your users contribute back their ideas and for that to be shared. But where is their gain to contribute their "secret" recipe? Well, social networks and blogs tap into that basic human desire; the need to be heard. The need to be noticed. A blogger can write a few 100 words and suddenly find themselves quoted in a national newspaper. There is no greater buzz than that. Only this morning, did I notice one of our bloggers quoted in a national lads magazine.

You have the greatest offline distribution mechanism - your packaging. Imagine the buzz and excitement you could garner if you were to not only let the community contribute recipes, but through a peer review rating system, you take the best one and for a given period you print their details on the sauce bottle or carton. You have done two things here. You have given someone pride and joy at being noticed. You have also tempted a whole new world of users onto your network that probably wouldn't have touched it.

Due to your product placement, targeting the most important room in the house (the kitchen) you have a unique leverage to really drive the next generation of customer feedback.

[We would be happy to discuss this more for you; see my profile for contact details]

Why not enable consumers to steer the ship?  Ask them up front to help you run the firm.  What should we do better?  Who should we admire?  Why should we grow in this way or that?  In other words, move from an identity-driven model of advertising to an enabling one.  We are what are markets are.  We don't anticipate you, we want to be you.  

This would entail discussions that have competitions--best new sauces, best new flavors, hottest places to visit for exciting food, and then associational relationships of existing and new product ideas with these outlets.

A series of themed web-based and J2ME games and competitions would work well.

Maybe assume or invent a fun 'character' that's associated with the products, to give them personality, then set up Flash and J2ME (i.e. that run on phones) games and competitions, advertised on local TV but also trailed 'virally' around popular Australian blogs. With a little incentive, an air of mystery and a little use of sexy technology (i.e. on peoples' phones and smartphones), there should be a lot of brand awareness and hopefully an increase in sales.

Think of Starbucks - the Web 2.0 phenomena before anybody spoke about web-anything. Starbucks was able to create communities around coffee. The customers might be drinking a non-coffee, super-fattening, sugar-milk-concoction, but they feel part of a community of sophisticated coffee-smell loving, iphone-users downloading the latest jazzy tune via wifi. 

If you want to succeed with Web 2.0, create a wiki-cookbook, organize cookouts with the recipes in the outback,  webcast these on youtube, and start an x-prize for the most outrageous sauce-ideas. Have a sauce that can be designed online with all-natural ingredients, personalized by the designer, and sent to their friends or foes. 

Think of whiskeys the most fake of all drinks. Offer a square meter of chili-land and a rent of a bottle of hot sauce per year to your followers, to be picked up in person in Warrnambool. 

This is an area that is close to my heart given that it's an area where I'm currently a practioner through enabling loyalty programs that focus on activities beyond simply transactional activity.  The following is excerpted from a note I recently wrote to some people I discuss these issues with:

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The CEO of Bodybuilding.com, Ryan DeLuca, has seen their vertically focused social network, BodySpace, help them increase their average order size by 12% and conversion rate by 1% (to 8%).  I thought his following quote was precious and reflected the true evolving spirit of what’s going on online w/users and what loyalty programs have to be in tune with going forward:

“We are building something that is not just based on making money,” he adds. “Everything we add to our site is based on helping visitors reach their goals. Helping our visitors stick to their programs and reach their goals will ultimately lead to much higher revenue, a much more valuable brand based on emotional connections, and more profitability based on increased customer loyalty.”

It’s an understanding that being the enabler for your customers to communicate more effectively and in context, is the key to loyalty programs that will succeed in the future.  All apps on Facebook are simply about enabling more effective and meaningful communications between users.  When someone sends you a flower it’s a nicer and more effective way for them to communicate their affection.  Throwing food at someone is more effectively communicating a playfulness w/o writing one word.  Apps on Facebook are greatly reducing the transaction costs of communications.  When a brand creates an app that helps users more effectively communicate a sentiment or a thought or something useful, these are all then associated w/the brand.  That’s a good thing.

The key is emphasize the “emotional connection” (otherwise stated, increase the engagement) now more than ever.

Here’s the link to the full article on Bodybuilding.com: http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=24394

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Loyalty programs are a way to engage and communicate with members across various media, be it through in-store promotions that lead to an online interaction, be it through activities online, or through interactions facilitated by the CPG or retailer in social media applications, the key to develop an on-going relationship with the client.  Coke Rewards has seen over 70 million member registrations.  Clorox is about to launch a loyalty program.  One of the large beer companies is preparing one as well.  When combined with widgets that can be deployed contextually and targeted to the member based on past activity or on appropriate relevant offers, reaching out to where these members are going becomes a fundamental part of any online marketing strategy.  Combine this with targeted e-mails, and you have a set of powerful tools for engaging with customers in a meaningful, respectful and authentic way.  Companies with solutions to explore here include:

- SmartButton

- Carlson Marketing

- ePrize

- Loyalty Lab

- Harte-Hanks

- Alliance Data's Epsilon 

An Australian food products company is thinking about how Web 2.0 and social media applies to their business. We've seen brand-oriented campaigns such as the Dove real beauty or the Heinz MySpace campaigns. That is not what they are asking about. They are more interested in how they can use these technologies or platforms to derive long term value and relationships with their customers. Focus your thoughts around Facebook, blogs, the Metaverse (Second Life), and mobile platforms -- although you don't have to limit yourself to those if you have other ideas. Think about a time frame that encompasses the present to 3-5 years out. What should a brand-oriented food products company be doing to drive value from Web 2.0?

Background on the company:
Limited online presence now consists primarily of a static corporate web site. They are generally considered #1 or #2 in their market - products consist of a range of shelf stable (not in the chiller/fridge) sauces and condiments that people cook with/eat with. (think pasta sauces, ketchup, etc.)

Overview: Social Media is about Knowledge.

Social Media is a fancy word for getting involved online. The explosion of publishing technologies has allowed the general public to broadcast their opinions to the world, and over time, this has led to the development of communities of interest and a society based on trust and reputation. With over a trillion webpages out there (and growing), social media allows us to track and respond to people who have gained the trust of their peers. These conversations have always taken place, around dinner tables, at workplaces, in the line at the grocery store, but now we have both the challenge and opportunity to track the conversations because they are online.

The challenge is we no longer control the message. Our customers are more numerous than we, and sometimes, they are more influential. The key to social media is understanding what our customers are saying, and how best to respond. Companies who ignore this, are often clumsy in their public relations. For those involved in social media, their staff develops a "sixth sense" to know when something is important and when it can be safely ignored. The more you are involved, the wider the net you can cast. Thus if you only blog, you'll never hear what happened on Facebook. The challenge is balancing the hundreds of ways that you have to communicate with the audience, and determining which are important to your company.

The Basics:

Online Monitoring:

For any brand conscious company, the absolute minimum you should be doing is using Google Alerts (or other search engines) and an RSS reader to look for comments on your company, website, products, or people. Especially when thinking about the potential of a damaging revelation about food (think the spinach scare in the US), knowing if there is a problem with one of your products requires that you constantly be monitoring the online world for threats to your brand. You can spend a lot, or a little on this (sample companies include filtr, umbria, or collective intellect).

Gathering the data is not enough. You have to be able to look at the information in context, and determine if there is a threat, an opportunity, or if the information should just be ignored. In terms of knowing about social media, this is one of the biggest benefits. Initially, my recommendation would be to hire a consultant to give you six months of online monitoring on your brand, and then transition this task internally into your organization, with both marketing and corporate communications taking part.

Blogging:

When customers read a website, they don't believe it. And why should we? The text was carefully crafted and massaged by a marketing expert, and the truth is we can't all be the fastest, the cheapest, and the premier company in our field. The "marketing speak" is part of it, but the second part is we don't know who wrote the website, and the person isn't accountable.

A blog, on the other hand, is clearly written by an individual or a group of people. The content they put out can be debated, commented on, and even challenged. The writer is accountable, because they are identifiable. Done right, this generates a personal connection with the reader that can't be matched with a typical website. Thus blogs develop relationships with reader, while websites traditionally only deliver information. This is the easiest way to "connect" with readers, and the structural advantages of blogging make it superior to forums, social networking sites, and other contact points.

A blog, built correctly, has a lot of SEO advantages as well. In addition to fresh new content published as a new webpage, blogs encourage incoming links, a major currency in the online world. A blog can be indexed within days, and drive 100 links from high-ranking sites in just 3 months, which generally leads to a Page Rank 4 site and organic traffic from Google Searches, with very little effort. If you are currently spending money on SEO, a blog can help cut that cost, while delivering a long-term, permanent online platform that grows as long as you continue feeding it.

Blogs make a difference in web searches. Try this. Search "Wells Fargo Business Line of Credit" in Google. I have two blogs where I wrote about my experience with Wells Fargo.  Those two blogs are now on the first page of Google for that search.  If Wells Fargo had its own blogs, there's a good chance my information wouldn't be on the first page.  Wells Fargo spends a lot on SEO, and yet on the first page, there are three negative results, two of them my blogs.  And I'm not an SEO expert. 

More important, the need to regularly create content leads to a better informed staff member.  Blogs make you look at your business and industry with a critical eye.  The research necessary to be interesting helps you better understand competitors and companies in other markets that you can copy.  A blog serves as a conduit for learning, and that information can help improve your companies processes and products.  Think of it this way.  Blogs are a giant worldwide focus group that you don't have to pay for.  Of course, neither do your competitors.

BloggingROI:

1. Press mentions tracked to blog marketing campaign 
   
2. Number and Quality of incoming links from blog marketing campaign
3. Keywords and Search terms
4. Buzz And Credibility In The Blogosphere
5. Branding and Consumer Self Education
6. Improved monitoring capability and training in-house
7. Lowered cost of messaging through blog.  

Facebook: I'm not a big fan of Facebook for product marketing. There are opportunities, but it depends entirely on what you want to do with the site.  Ads don't work so well, but there are opportunities for employment campaigns, as well as contests that can bring a lot of publicity.  The key to Facebook is joining the site, and looking around for groups of people who might be interested in helping you with your campaign.  This is where the contests come in.  Beware angering the Facebook gods, though - they don't like anyone else making money off your site, and if you're to blatantly commercial, they'll kick you off (and they get to decide who is blatantly commercial).  It's enough with Facebook to join, add a few friends, and wait to see how they mature in the next few years. 

Mobile:

Mobile marketing is an interesting discipline. Everyone seems to have a cellphone, but the uses are still somewhat murky.  What we do know is that products launches are an easy sell.  Setting up coupons to show up by text for people who sign up to receive your mobile alerts is a great feature, and it's as easy as adding a text message to your POP materials.  Someone can walk up to your product in the aisle, text a message, and get a coupon for $.50 off.  

You can also send recipes if they send you a message, and integrate this into a system that e-mails them a recipe at home when they text your product.  

In general, mobile works great for local marketing, so you can use it in conjunction with any current promotions. 

Summary: 

If all you have is a static site, then the best way to start all of this is to get two or three people in the organization, find a consultant, and get down to some research.  Start a blog, so you can gain some SEO and online reputation, and set up a monitoring system for your brand and products.

Do this for six months, having them put 3-5 hours a week into learning.  No really - do the full six months.  At the end, you'll have three people (and you need three in case someone leaves, or doesn't like it) you can turn to for help in developing long-term campaigns.  Social media, is something you have to be in to understand.  Start small, and you'll have the in-house talent to help you navigate future challenges.  Overall, remember that there is more out there than you could possibly learn, so the goal is to learn how to tell what is important.  Good luck. 

-Jim Durbin

http://www.durbinmedia.com 

The first step is to map out some of the uses of social media for food company, the aim to cover some of the challenges relevant to a brand conscious food producer:

 There are two main themes where a social media strategy could help strengthen the brand presence and the relationship with the consumers:

1. Corporate Responsibility
   
2. Products

Corporate Responsibility themes  are centred around community and how consumers use the products.

Community Care: Many companies today are involved in the communities they work in and serve.  For a food company the care schemes could centre around food aid to the hungry, financial assistance to the community and use of the distribution network for non-profit organizations.  A social media strategy could use a blog to document the actions in the relevant care areas and allow for feedback and comment from the beneficiaries.  A forum could be used to gather ideas for needy causes from the community that provide the committee with a broad range of options.  Such forums typically allow for votes that would over time encourage community involvement in helping decide the target for the aid program.

    Potential timeline:

        Short Term - use of a blog(s) to document the aid programs and build publicity of the program and importantly raise awareness of the communities in need of assistance

        Mid Term - deploy a forum platform that allows the community to provide ongoing support and suggest new potential beneficiaries.

        Long term - use of vote based solutions that allow more of the control to be passed to the community for the selection process.  A further dimension could be the use of mashups that combine maps, demographics and aid amounts to allow the community to be better informed of where aid has been given and where aid is needed.  Such a mashup could be used to identify collection points for sharing and donation schemes overlaid with current collection statistics.

Recipes:  As a food company there is an implied responsibility on food intolerance/allergy awareness.  A Social Site community or group (Facebook or similar) could be used to connect allergy sufferers together (e.g. Gluten sensitivity, Nut allergy, Diabetes) to provide support through sharing of which products are suitable and ideas on how to use them within the domain of the allergy/intolerance.  Another community would be akin to the Women's Institute in the UK.  Using a blog and calendar platform notification and location of demonstrations using the company product for recipe ideas and intelligent diet choice would help strengthen and broaden the brand presence in the market.

        Short Term - social networking platform (e.g. Facebook) to create communities to connect common sufferers or women's societies together.  Monitor the use of such communities

        Mid Term - Influence to focus the community and see what value added discussion could be started by the organization.  Blogging platform that encourages community generated content around product use within the domain (e.g. Gluten sensitivity)

        Long Term - roadshows and/or demonstrations using mashups with Google Earth, Google Calendar and community websites to advertise, communicate and share meeting notes.  Use of a podcast series where consumers can get a weekly recipe with ingredients and cooking instructions using the company product(s).

 The second key area is around the product itself.

Recalls: One highly visible area is when recalls are required due to production faults or contaminated source ingredients.  A portal that allows consumers to input batch numbers from packaging to see if the product is at risk.  This lesson was learned by laptop battery manufacturers.  Using the distribution channels the communication of outlets that are operating replacements for recalls would help strengthen the public perception of the brand.

        Short Term - a blog with RSS feed and mobile RSS feed that consumers can subscribe to to be alerted of recalls in areas of interest.  One example would be mothers interested in any recalls on baby food products.

        Mid Term - web portal that allows users to interact with the recall. If they are concerned they can input the batch number or scan the barcode at an approved outlet to see if the product item needs to be returned.

        Long Term - a mashup with a mapping/GPS platform that allows consumers to locate the nearest outlet where a replacement and recall can be made.

New Products:  New products can be publicized through a product blog.  Blogs today support  multimedia that allow pictures, video etc to be included.  This could be an online marketing campaign or in early stages a focus group that allow the community to provide feedback on product names.  A use of free solution like Google Sketchup that allow visualizations of packaging to be distributed to the consumers.  Comments on package use could be returned that give comments on ease of use (maybe a ring pull commonly breaks), child proofing or recycling advise.

        Short Term - product blog integrated to community platform that allows for easy identification of community groups, community generated content (e.g. recipes) and recall notices.

        Mid Term - Community forum that is packaging centric to help highlight frequent failures or use concerns around product packaging

        Long Term - a web 2.0 mashup to highlight retail outlets by product, potentially integrated with the stock system to give an idea of the volume of stock and current price.  Locations of recycling centres or collection routes/dates that allow packaging to be disposed of correctly.

There is much that this organization can do to drive conversation and customer intimacy.  At the end of the day, the goal is to engage consumers in a long standing conversation, that leads to repeat business, a postive customer experience and promotion of the brand (re: customer loyalty). For enterprises in the shelf stable food market, the goal should be to incrementally expand their revenue base thru smart application of Web 2.0 initiatives.

These initiatives should not be limited to "3rd Party" social networking sites, although that is certainly a component.  The underlying goal should be to broaden the base of conversation with consumers and co-create on future products with consumers.  Toward that end, I'd recommend the following:

No offense intended to the client, but there very way the question has been worded shows that this food company really has a LOT to learn about this market. They're probably better off speaking to Don Tapscott and Michio Kaku if they want a futurist view on how things will look 5 years from now. The changes taking place in the way people interact via the Web are moving at breakneck pace; and 5 years from now things are going to be dramatically more evolved (and diverse) than anything we can point to today.

That said, it's also paramount for this company, and really any other consumer-facing entity, to accept that social media is an essential component toward protecting, building and enhancing its brand. Rather than play guesswork with what tools/approaches will be around in a few years; let's talk about the major social media/Web 2.0 approaches that exist TODAY and how they might be leveraged by a food products company.

When discussing social media and Web 2.0 tools; I'm partial to Professor Andrew McAfee's SLATES paradigm:

• Search and discovery
• Links
• Authorship
• Tagging
• Extensions
• Signals

Blogs, wikis, social networking sites and their interrelated services (e.g., Twitter, Dopplr) are all tools that leverage the SLATES.

BLOGS 

Blogs are excellent tools for one (or several) to many communication. Authorship is simple, and publication is virtually instantaneous. As importantly, blogs can be pushed out to users AND pulled by those who are interested (think RSS). Blogging is easily extensible as services like Digg!, del.icio.us, etc...allow a wider reach; the audience finds you.

From the perspective of the foods company in question, blogs are probably the easiest social media tool to start with. Anyone that is familiar with a word processor can write blogs; and the learning curve for leveraging the syndication features is not steep. 

Now, how might this company use blogs to foster a relationship with its customers?

• Use the blog to increase the frequency of communication

• Recipes
• Contests
• Coupons
  
• New product announcements

WIKIS

Wikis are less about one-to-many communication and much more about building a collaborative knowledge base wherein the community helps build and refine the content. The most obvious example of this is Wikipedia; but many enterprises are leveraging wikis as a knowledge management tool both internally and as an external asset.

How might wikis by used by the food company?

• By registering as a user, customers can contribute to the wikis

• Have pages where people can build and discuss recipes
• Have pages where users can discuss brand campaigns (way in on logos, new product ideas, TV spots)

SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS

Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Second Life; all are unique both in their design, extensibility and core user bases. Having a presence in each is a no brainer. In Second Lilfe, companies are building virtual marketplaces. For example, SAP has a virtual HQ there where they actually have a meetspace. People from their social media team and global marketing conduct meetings there. MySpace, once the place for young people to stay "hip" is now ubiquitous. Not having a MySpace presence is almost admitting that you have no importance in the lives of people under the age of 35. For many, that's simply a static MySpace webpage; not all that different from what the food company already has; but it can quickly evolve. At Facebook, there is a considerably more malleable environment where developers can build widgets and add ons that serve nearly limitless purposes. Viral marketing is a great example of the way our food company can use this. Kinzin build a relatively simplistic app on Facebook called Are You Normal? It's a simple little applet that caught fire, and gave Kinzin a trojan horse to expose the Facebook user base to its main product (which is a subscription service that has nothing to do with Facebook). If said food company is looking to establish new brand extensions OR foster a loyal following with the key 18-35 demographic, what better way than to build an app or two and follow the Kinzin model?

I'm really just scratching the surface here of what's available TODAY much less what will be available 3-5 years from now. At the risk of sounding like a cliche, this food company has to crawl before it walks, and walk before it runs. Honestly, asking how to formulate a 3-5 year plan right now is like telling a 12-year old Little Leaguer that he's a failure if he doesn't win the World Series some day. Baby steps.

Before moving ahead, this food company has to really ask itself what ITS goals are and how social media can guide them...

• Are they looking to extend their core brand messaging, and just want to make sure they touch this new channel?
• Are they looking to roll out newer, edgier products/brands and want to test the markets with a young demographic?
• Is this more about a marketing/advertising play?
• Is this about increasing the interaction with customers?
• Is this a way to increase/foster brand loyalty?
• Does the company feel its brand is getting stale and wants to reinvigorate it?
• Is this about expanding into new markets or protecting those they already dominate?

I look forward to seeing what the other Insight Community members have to say on this one, as well as further contributing to this discussion if the food company chooses to move forward. This was fun.

Think like a consumer. What do your customers want to read about?

I suggest starting a blog and publishing recipes with photos and other fun stuff. Let your customers subscribe by email or RSS feed and you can build up a huge brand loyalty. Create something like http://startcooking.com/blog/ and you will be onto a winner.

The best way for the company itself to derive value from any Web 2.0 tool is advertising, pure and simple, but from what's been said here, you know this already. Trying to turn this on it's head and derive value for the customer is slightly harder. It would be difficult to use Second Life as a virtual testing area for any food product, however, have you considered testing labeling, packaging and concepts for new products here? What does well in second life often does well in the real world too. 

You would find that once tested on Second Life, these products could have their own web-space for more 'virtual testing' and feedback. There would need to be some way of drawing people in of course, some form of incentive from your marketing people. Once the web-space exists however, it should be the first place that anyone with a query about that product comes to. Put it on the jars.

Then there's blogs. A product with a blog is something people who are interested in the company would read. People with compliments and complaints would use it. People like to be able to give anonymous feedback.

The blog wouldn't have to be detailed, but if you already have a product manager for each product, let them write about what they know, give them an outlet, and let customers submit comments. These can be monitored, but negative and positive comments should be published - especially if there's a constructive answer to be had. If I had a customer submit a comment on my blog saying that they liked my technology, but... or they didn't like my technology, because... I'd listen. I'd pass it back to the Product Management team and get it seen to. I'd publish results of queries on the blog, and turn it into a discussion forum.

Forums are another good idea, especially if you are looking for feedback. You will need to make sure that these are monitored properly, all questions dealt with and a good quality of service given however. This may take more resource than you are expecting - don't skimp on it though, a failed web presence is worse than none at all. 

But to be social, you need an actual person with a distinct personality. Here's three easy ways to fill the company's side of the relationship.

• Use an in-house expert. Hire a blogger with an engaging, personal tone to entice online consumers to your company's online presence. They'd provide information about the food, but more importantly, they'd exude a positive, warm, and fun presence that made consumers want to keep coming back.

   

• Sponsor a celebrity advocate. A celebrity's online presence always excites consumers. Imagine a sports figure, talk show host, or famous chef offering their insights into the food and its lifestyle. To help them along, their commentary could be ghost-written (or ghost-edited). But your company's online presence automatically inherits a chunk of the celebrity's audience, plus any new fans attracted by the inevitable press coverage.

   

• Create a fictitious persona. The success of YouTube's LonelyGirl15 proved fictitious personalities are just as attractive as real ones. A food company might feel more comfortable dispensing their online content with a carefully-crafted pseudonym. AOL used the personna "NetGirl" to dispense cyberspace tips to new users. Everyone online uses pseudonyms eventually, so consumers should develop the same trust and affection for the brand.

   

• Use consumer-generated content. This requires some careful oversight, but when properly executed it creates intense loyalty. For exampel, imagine a company-branded forum offering "health diaries" maybe augmented with encouragement and tips from a "health coach." Other approaches could be a cooking forum or a party-planning site. Once users develop friendships within the forum, the brand will become a part of their life.

• In Second Life the company can create an attractive virtual destination -- like a tourist attraction, diner or gym -- complete with a virtual "library" of recipes and information. The site could include a friendly (and possibly automated?) avatar. Metaverse events could be staged -- like a Q&A session, a health seminar, or a celebrity appearance -- with the transcripts providing content which can be re-used on the web.

 

• For mobile platforms, the company could try offering a short message offering a "daily tip" with useful "secrets" about nutrition, beauty, party planning, or encouragement to exercise. Messages could also be sent sharing the funniest "comment of the day" from the company's web presence or their Second Life location, or updates on an ongoing contest.

   

• Even a simple web page can draw attention from other social sites around the web. Contests would offer an easy way to foster excitement, and ongoing contests create the impression of a community. Imagine a reality show-style campaign where a consumer gets a surprise visit at home, with the photographs featured online. If done right, this could create an ongoing interest in the company's presence, with real intrigue in what they're planning to do next.

  Sometimes even the simplest information becomes a surprise hit on massive social voting sites like Digg and Reddit -- especially if they're served up with a dollop of humor. (For example, a humor list of "What Not To Do For Your Spaghetti Feed" or "How To Know When You've Bought Bad Ketchup.")

Creating value from Web 2.0 for the company is a matter of allowing users to develop and improvise with the company supplying the tools, web space, and an interface. The value in Web 2.0 results from large numbers of people forming a community from which springs a new experience. Web 2.0 is about releasing the creative talents within the community rather than a company telling the community what to do.

If the company is trying to extract value from Web 2.0, it must be willing to let users take over. The company must make an  investment that might include providing online storage space, editable web pages, wiki pages, and java platforms to construct programs and widgets for visitors to use online or download. The interface must be simple enough for non-technical people to use. Along with this, more tools for innovation by sophisticated users, an example of what Google Mashup is offering to users.

I was recently speaking to a colleague at Harvard Business School Press. As HBSP looks at entering Web 2.0, its approach is to enable its employees to communicate with its readership. As a Food Company, how can you bring your employees in closer contact with consumers? And how can you bring your consumers in contact with one another? Consider Web 2.0 applications that enable consumers (and employees) to share recipes, ask and answer questions, and tell stories about their experiences - in short, activities that build relationships.

What is the value of relationships? Relationships among consumers build brand loyalty and tend to increase purchasing volume. It lowers the cost of marketing campaigns as word of mouth can spread from the community out to others. It minimizes the damage of negative experiences, as it provides a means to identify those people who voice a problem (and therefore a means to rectify the situation for them.)

The key to an effective Web 2.0 strategy is to set realistic expecations of what such technology is capable of, play to its strengths, and devote sufficient resources to the project so that there will be measurable results.

It's funny you mentioned Heinz, as they're the brand image you essentially want to become. Since you sell condiments there are most likely dozens of other choices for the consumer when they head to the local grocery store, and you need them to select yours for the same reason the select Heinz: the name Heinz IS ketchup. A part of me is surprised that the condiment hasn't shifted from being called ketchup, to beind called 'Heinz' (not quite the same ring I guess) the way that tissue has become Kleenex.

The web is much like that grocery story, except the dozens of choices become a million, with a thousand places to create a profile and a million places to write down your thoughts. The goal of your web 2.0 campaign should be to make your brand name the staple on a product where users probably don't spend their time thinking, "Man, I wish I had some Ragu pasts sauce right now." The goal of your campaign is to make your customers spend the extra .20 on your brand name. Anything else isn't worth your time. You aren't trying to build community or have a cool social website or build a video sharing platform, you're trying to get more brand loyal customers.

How you do it:

Now-6 months

Reach out to bloggers in your area. Simple campaign to break into the blogosphere: invite bloggers to play food critique and review some of your specific products. Everyone who does write (even if they write negative) are offered a LOT of your product. The key to this is that it's more than they're going to reasonably consume. Something like 20 cans of pasta sauce. Something that they'll basically be forced to hand out to neighbors, friends, and co workers. A free can of pasta sauce isn't worth writing a post...but 20 cans is, just for the sheer novelty.

A company called Lara Bar did something similar to encourage trials of a new flavor. It worked for me...and they send me two free boxes. That was a lot of Lara Bars...and I handed them out pretty freely...and now they have a new brand loyal customer.

2 Months-Year

Encourage those who like your brand to do various things. Partner with a 'upload your recipe social site (such as cookshare.com or shareddish.com) and challenge users to upload recipes using as many of your condiments/products as possible.  The winner is voted on by the community as well as a panel of judges... the community voted winner gets something (and plenty of your product to share of course)...such as their recipe on the back of your bottles and a trip for two to a culinary arts seminar or something.  The expert judges winner gets to help a famous chef cook a meal for their friends in their own home.

You should also have a photo-sharing contest on the site (making it more dynamic), allowing users to get creative with your products...then the winner gets put on the label (see jonessoda.com) and gets plenty of your product to share.  Have categories for different products, as well as a free-range creativity section.  Seed the contest with some ideas you come up with with employees families.  

There should also be an interaction for all the employees, offering them a separate but same contest on your website, allowing manufacturer families to compete in creativity against vp's.

 A year and beyond:

By then, trends will continue to change, and you'll need to regroup and think about fitting into the existing trend...but again people on your site sharing and tagging things doesn't necessarily make them pay the $.20 extra for your brand at the store...and if it doesn't than it's not worth your time.

Facebook apps are not something that will really help with your brand loyalty.  You can offer your company for facebook users to become 'fans of,' but it's not worth your time or money to build an application.  It would need to be something lighthearted to spread, something with delivering pizzas with your sauce around facebook profiles or something like that, and nobody's going to remember the brand.

In second life you can build a store for your brand and give out free 'spaghetti sauce' jars for people to put in their homes, but unless you can do it cheaply, it's probably not worth it.  Same with mobile, users won't want text messages with 20 cent off coupons for your products...wait until cell phone tech develops, then regroup and think about how to build your brand using new platforms.

Finally, utilize your website for feedback, discussion, and to hear from users.  Give them a space to talk about what they like, what they don't, and what they'd change.  Learn and use that info, it's free market research, and you can get a developer to build custom forum code for a few hundred dollars.  Make it really easy for people to buy your product from the website.  Give free shipping.  Offer special 'web only' flavors that are limited editions.

Does it build brand loyalty?  Ask yourself that before every web campaign you begin.  If it does, great.  If not, don't worry about the social web, and focus on your customers and what they want.  

Both Web 2.0 and social media (henceforth referred to as social computing 2.0) are gaining mainstream momentum both in consumer and business contexts. While the first wave of social computing 2.0 innovation has occurred outside of the enterprise, firms have taken notice and are beginning to adjust. As a result, social computing 2.0 has garnered sold out conferences, daily press coverage from traditional media outlets, and even a series of sessions at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. For established companies, which are traditionally conservative in relation to their approach to technology investments, it is crucial to grasp the concrete realities of the social computing 2.0 domain in order to construct an objective driven strategy suited for maximum ROI.

Present day realities
An innovation groundswell has created a new wave of Internet-based technologies – Google’s YouTube, Six Apart’s LiveJournal and del.icio.us – have gathered under the social computing 2.0 umbrella. A handful of startup vendors have emerged to serve the enterprise Web 2.0 market with traditional vendors such as BEA Systems and IBM looking to make a splash as well. Additionally, a rash of acquisitions has marked the social media realm characterized by headliners like Google and Yahoo buying their way into the social computing 2.0 mix.

Nonetheless when it comes to the enterprise social computing 2.0 lacks a quantifiable value proposition. There are no reliable ways to consistently meter or measure what has been “accomplished” through social computing 2.0. New relationships and new forms of existing versions can all be harnessed through this new medium, but it remains to be seen whether the concrete benefits reaped from things like increased communication with customers and the cultivation of product communities will gain more visibility or continue to go unrecognized. To work around this requires a crystal clear social computing 2.0 strategy marked by a focus on:

• People. Technology is only a means of connecting with the human element, one which should take precedence over any one application or platform.
• Objectives. Decide what the overarching goals are and stick to them.
• Relationships. These are the bridges over which a stronger business is built.
• Strategy. Understand how objectives will affect your customer value proposition.

Even though the value proposition for emerging technologies and platforms isn’t easily quantified, it is necessary to consider how they affect the following:

• Productivity. At the end of the day Web 2.0 and social media should serve as a boon to efficiency and not the other way around. For example, if a company is considering embracing customer facing blogging, it must take on the task of publishing blogging guidelines and a set of best practices to prevent blog entries from disclosing proprietary information.

• Compliance and HR. For firms operating in highly regulated industries it is important to grasp how new forms of content creation might interfere with corporate retention strategy. Also, it is essential to ensure that strong protections are put in place to keep any union contract violation and/or any previously established code of conduct.

• Security and integration. When investing in blogging, RSS, podcasting, etc. it is important to determine how much the new technology will overlap with existing infrastructure. Where more overlap results in more risk of interruption to the business. Most enterprises are protective of traditional Information Systems (IS) to the point where new technologies are kept at arm’s length from core systems and infrastructure, especially if authentication and security is difficult to implement.

• Deployment management. The launch of any new initiative is no walk in the park, and this is especially the case with social computing 2.0, even if the steps leading to deployment are similar to familiar technologies. However, it is especially critical for large, established companies to give thought to how they plan to manage the deployment process. Otherwise odds are that cost, complexity and length of time involved will skyrocket unnecessarily.

Still the question isn’t if social computing 2.0 can help the enterprise, since companies like Amazon.com, with its customer reviews and lists, Plogs, and tags attest to that fact, but how and in what ways can it be leveraged as a competitive differentiator. For starters, enterprises can reap the benefits of social computing 2.0 in these areas:

• Developing a participation ecosystem. By enabling customer participation companies can engage its best customers, and create cost-effective ways in which to encourage customers to participate in rating, testing, and even improving a product. Several companies are already well down the social computing 2.0 path and by doing so serve as unofficial case studies for those considering following suite. For example, the retailer American Apparel uses a store in the virtual world Second Life to experiment with new product releases. The aforementioned Amazon has come to largely rely on the feedback of unpaid consumers to contribute their opinions towards increasing the value of its product descriptions across its numerous categories.

• Dialogue driven market research. Companies are able to tap into and truly understand the dialogue that happens about the company, its product(s), and/or its brand(s). This can occur throughout the blogosphere, in feedback in a company's community site, or in user generated video. This organic, user-generated content provides information and feedback that trumps the output from focus groups or the bland responses from a survey. When General Motors, for instance, realized that its Chevy Tahoe had drawn the ire of environmentally-conscious consumers the company invited consumers to create their own ad online for the truck.

• Competitive intelligence. The exponential explosion of information available on the Internet can be both a blessing and curse. However, when filtered correctly blogs and message boards like Engadget and Slashdot often are first sources of breaking news, shifts in executive leadership, and even ideas surrounding the latest R&D breakthroughs related to the venues of major corporations. User communities are quite adept at finding and referencing notable news/information items so it is worthwhile to consider how to engage customers in the creation of intelligence collages composed of such.

• Driving sales with content. Even though companies are forced to come to grips with the fact that social computing 2.0 often forces them to relinquish a degree of control. Companies have been able to do so with the objective of driving sales. For example, the company skinnyCorp created a Web site called Threadless which enables customers to submit designs for t-shirts, which are then voted upon by visitors to the site and sold back to the general public. This participative commerce approach is particularly powerful as consumers also become active members of the productive process.

Relationships through community
For a brand-oriented food products company it pays to investigate how social computing 2.0 can be used to gain attention and consumer trust. Most notably it is crucial to recognize that relationships are best fostered within the construct of a coherent community. Therefore the focus should be on building communities and nurturing the associated relationships. The core of this approach should be centered on the early adopter. These are the customers who demonstrate greater affinity to brands and are more prone to turn into active brand advocates through the use of social computing 2.0 technologies. As a result, these facts will loom large:

• Find the early adopter. These are the consumers who are more comfortable with technology are more likely to assume an active role in the social computing 2.0 sphere. Individuals of this variety are those who blog consistently, create podcasts and online videos. However, they are also a minority within the scheme of things where most individuals remain consumers and silent citizens. The methods employed to reach this segment should focus on introducing a high degree of conceptual proximity to current online activities as well as ease of use.

• Brands ring clearly with early adopters. Since the early Adopter is prone to research products before making a purchase they are also much more likely to stick with a brand once they have reached an informed decision. Apple’s customer base was already rife with early adopter types but it was able to extend outside of the self-contained Mac world with its iPod community efforts and saw it pay big-time dividends in sales and extremely strong brand loyalty and satisfaction.

• Social capital encourages virally charged early adopters. A viral brand is a powerful brand. Thus when early adopters become viral brand advocates they are able to assist the organic growth of communities. This crowd can be referred to as the “influencers” since they are much more likely to propagate information about products throughout their intimate and extended social network.

This isn’t to say that only the early adopters matters. Rather, it implies that the first step of building relationships through social computing 2.0 involves courting the early adopter early in the game. That way, it is possible to align future endeavors with the natural social influence of Early Adopters. However, as time progresses it is necessary to increase focus outside this group. This will require:

• Embrace new tools and tactics. Social computing 2.0 is technology driven by the desire to participate in conversations or to start a relationship. Customers desire to be made participants, instead of idle spectators who are force fed messages, content or advertising. Establishing a presence on Facebook and/or MySpace helps encourage conversation, exchange and other forms of participation all of which promotes a viral community that feeds off itself and its own growth.

• Encourage relationships. Brands should not be portrayed simply as impersonal entities but instead as a property of the relationship between customer and the company behind it. In this way, brand qualities can find ways to connect to the branches of the extended network of friends and acquaintances through the customers who participate in the same community. A concept worth exploring might be social networking-type profiles that promote the brand attributes of different products.

• Activity, activity, activity. Nothing kills community more quickly than the feeling that no one is involved. Therefore it is important to determine how to continually engage loyal customers with interactions, content, and features that are “sticky.” This could take the form of prompt updates, cross-product affiliation and promotions. Whatever the case, as it relates to community the more activity, the better.

A look at emerging media and technologies
Below is a list of social computing 2.0 technologies including why they are relevant on a product-based gear.

Technology

Example

Relevance

Where it can help right now

Blogs

ShoppingBlog.com

Serves as a platform for viewpoints about products.

Viral marketing, reaching valuable niche markets

Metaverse

Second Life

Provides a channel for reaching customers on the cutting-edge as well as a relatively risk free, virtual test bed for ideas.

Generating “buzz” at the bleeding-edge

RSS

Serves as a new channel through which to connect with customers while providing filter options for consumers who want to customize information they receive.

The next step in interactive customer outreach…a new twist on the rapidly fading returns for email marketing.

Product-oriented social networks

Kaboodle

Provides a personal window into the product universe that is the Internet. Edited information can be shared across users.

Viral marketing and reach into niche groups.

Consumer targeted social tagging

Amazon.com

Provides the means to create/assign shareable folksonomies to brands, products and categories.

Helpful within larger product web inventories that require full-featured search/location functionality

User reviews engines

eBags

Combines and organizes perspectives about products and brands that provide added context for purchase decisions.

Gaining unfiltered feedback about brands and products.

Wikis

ShopWiki

Provides a user-driven alternative purchasing guide

Helpful in providing user-generated help for a purchasing process that might be considered intricate.

Engaging and deriving value
Finally, it is best to understand how different forms of engagement enable firms to derive value from the social computing 2.0 domain. These do not have to be performed in exclusion and can be mixed and matched accordingly.

• Silent listening. Using social computing technologies to keep posted on what matters most to your customers. This doesn’t have to be implemented as a publicly accessible resource since a number of companies are beginning to explore how private communities are applicable. Other places, companies are the silent participants in the brand monitoring process.

• Talk. Social computing 2.0 platforms are a great channel through which to distribute messages about your company. Executive blogs (i.e. GM’s FastLane) provide insight into a company as well as a snapshot of organizational culture. Customers have taken well to the prospect of interacting with key members of management.

• Energize. Companies have seen success by embracing strategies that vitalize including the designation of brand ambassadors through scrapbook based communities or social networks. Virtual worlds are also emerging as a new landscape for energizing brands.

• Support interaction. Certain social tools like forums and wikis can help initiate customer communities by providing a central point of interaction. The aim behind pushing extended participation within a community is to encourage higher comfort levels with the company’s brand as well as higher consumer satisfaction.

• Embrace external innovation. The days when customers were considered dumb consumers are long gone. The companies that find ways to integrate customers into their innovation process using social computing 2.0 are those that will profit over the long haul. See: Salesforce’s IdeaExchange for an example.

Introduction:

Social media is already a very powerful way to leverage inexpensive online techniques to make sales, increase brand and product awareness, and foster customer loyalty. There are indications that social networks may be the *dominant* form of human interaction within a decade and also a major form of business to consumer interaction, so this is an important arena for any major business effort.

Initially only a modest investment and straighforward approaches are needed to dramatically expand your online marketing efforts from a static website to a dynamic, rich, user-centric environment. These approaches include individual product blogs, a recipe and food discussion community, and an active presence on all major social networking sites. Although I offer some guidane on a second life presence below, I question whether this is a good place to invest your social media capital and time given what appear to be a high volume, lower margin set of products and likely customer demographic.

Following are several suggestions about ways to incorporate social media into your online marketing strategy. Initially there is no great need (or even possibility) of integrating all these elements together. Social media as differnt "islands" of social networks and communities is slowly breaking down in favor of a more open, web-wide social network, but this is some years off and you'll need to develop separate accounts and environments to take advantage of things right now.

Of the four specific items mentioned above, I think developing a strong brand presence in blogs and mobile and starting to work with the Google Open Social APIs are potentially much more powerful for your product line than Second life or Facebook. This is due in part to what I'd guess is something of a demographic mismatch with your target audience, and also research that suggests Facebook advertising is converting questionably compared to alternatives like pay per click and other targeted contextual ads. Also, Google's twin social juggernaut of spearheading the Open Handset Alliance and Open Social APIs will accelerate the adoption of social applications all across the web and across different web properties. It will also eventually make participation simple and easy.

I recommend you deploy within your marketing division a *social network team*. Start with a small, focused group - ideally of current employees familiar with the products. This team will also encourage (gently) existing consumers to be part of the social networking efforts. The "currency" for incentifying the social campaigns should be generous product coupons and special offers, and perhaps even family-friendly picnic get togethers for loyal customers who have actively engaged with the company online.

Mobile Web:

Open a TWITTER account and post recipes and cooking tips regularly.  Twitter allows you to "broadcast" to mobile twitter users via simple internet interface accessed from PC.   Also offer answers to cooking and BBQ questions. As with most of your social efforts avoid "shameless" marketeering in favor of general branding, product awareness, and loyalty.

Establish a Twitter account for a marketing employee or intern who shows interest in writing, and has basic familiarity with social media. Name it after the company mascot or logo if possible.

Transparency and honesty are critical when commercializing social media. If you have not done it already consider a marketing position for a new hire familiar with social media that would include all social media opportunities like Myspace, Netscape, Digg, Reddit, Flickr. These represent a goldmine of cheap marketing opportunities.

You'll only need to allocate about 5 minutes per day to update the twitter twice per day.

Partner with mobile networks to offer "instant phone coupons" for your products. A buyer in the store isle could order up a coupon on her cell phone via an automated 800 number to be applied via a number code at cash register. All you require for this is email, which is then stored for later communication. Dovetail this with your online website such that offers are emailed regularly to customers via an opt-in email newsletter, which also will contain recipes and cooking tips.

Email remains a powerful tool when shoppers have opted in. Initially provide generous coupons for sign up, then modest coupons with encouragement to join the social networking efforts you have established, participate at the blogs, and more.

Opt in text messaging for coupons and specials is also something to consider. 

Blogging:

In my opinion this is your key focus area for your new social campaign. Blogging offers a powerful way to reach many people, but more importantly blogging is an excellent help in optimizatin of website content for search engine marketing. Google now views quality blogs as fresh and relevant content and it's often easier to rank blog content for keywords than normal website content. Write a blog for *each* of your major product lines. e.g the Pasta Sauces, BBQ Condiments, Dressings etc. These blogs will *each* feature a recipe of the day and every 2-3 days a personal post about why this product is well suited to the homemaker. Encourage commenting by offering coupons and food prizes weekly or even daily, and encourage more community participation via commenting at the blogs. Both to avoid spam and problems, require a simple signup with email and user name.  These opt in emails will prove invaluable as you contact people later for speical coupons and promotions. 

Initially I'd recommend you avoid a community forum because this is harder to manage than simple blogging comments, which offer many of the same advantages.

Archive the blog recipes of the day at the website, with links back to the blog. Encourage users to "join twitter" and other social networks and add your company as their "friend". Building a quality food community is not just about your own product, so welcome people to share all insights about cooking with each other.

Online Coupons, online sweepstakes and promos. Earlier this year America Online conducted a large study of online click behavior (in USA) that found the most ad-responsive online consumers in that massive study of click advertising were middle aged women who like sweepstakes. This may be a quality demographic for you and indicates social network advertising - such as clickable text and image ads at MySpace and Facebook - may have a favorable response rate if you promote sweepstakes and product coupons.

Myspace: Depending on your product Myspace may have limited value, but I have heard of some great success stories with highly targeted advertising at Myspace for high end services. Myspace, with 200,000,000 members, is larger than Facebook and clever viral marketing can have extraordinary results here.

Stumbleupon.com: This "website ranking and finding" social environment has exploded in popularity. Investing a few hours would begin the process of planting a company "flag" in this environment.

Flickr Communities: Flickr remains a powerful social network.  Food photos are appropriate here with captions, and could garner some interest.   Spend time in the foodie groups and start some of your own. Search engines have recently noted that image search has a lot of potential for ranking benefits.

Second life Promotion: I think this should be very low on the list of social networking for your product due to labor intensity, higher cost than blogging, and what I see as a questionable return for your market. However if you choose to go this route here is some advice from an earlier insight I wrote for an automobile company:

1) Build an Island to promote your company.

2) Develop relationships within the game utilizing your own employee base and a handful of interns that can be assigned to the project. Modest stipends should be provided in employee time and purchases of linden dollars (the SL currency, available for real dollars) to allow these players to help you promote the project.

* Building the Island. In Second Life, the Island is a location within which a company can define a brand and a Second Life presence. The cost is about $1700 plus a $295 monthly land maintenance fee. Initially only one Island will be needed to effectively brand your product. More about Second Life Islands and brand marketing is here at Second Life.

There may be advantages to having an internal team develop your SL presence, especially if you have people who already are part of the game. However even if this is the case you'll probably want to invest in some consultants to help guide the process in the early stages. Fees will vary enormously and my personal opinion is that you should stay away from agencies and work with individuals who can better interface with your existing marketing teams. Here is a list of SL consultants.

Second Life is very time intensive, so consider using staff capable of taking on the job themselves (this is the most desirable approach if they can integrate with existing marketing efforts. Amazon.com's very impressive Second Life efforts have been largely from the work of a single employee - feel free to contact me for his contact info as well as the guy who helped establish the Sun Microsystems Island - though that was done with consultants rather than in-house).

Google Recipe gadgets. Google gadget team leader Adam Sah is always looking for neat new uses of the technology and this. Yahoo and Microsoft also have gadget/widget development platforms, but Google is the key target here for viral marketing because they have the largest user base, superb support for the platform

Viral marketing can be a labor intensive process given the enormous number of social networking websites that can be used to springboard the viral program, so the core team will ideally enlist support from enthusiastic consumers to help spread the word about the new communities forming at the website. Special offers, generous coupons, and responsive answers should powerfully assist in this effort.

Integration with *existing* social networks tends to be far more successful than trying to create separate social communities.

-----------

More info:

ReadWriteWeb has an excellent summary of the idea that online relationships between people can be described in terms of a "Social Graph" that defines and to some extent dictates those relationships.

New York Times is summarizing some interesting plans from Google and Yahoo to turn their email systems into forms of social networking. This idea could have a lot of potential, as the Yahoo’s Brad Garlinghouse points out in the article that Yahoo has a lot of information about an individual’s social relationships - for example who they email regularly - and this info is simply begging to be mined to help users navigate their increasingly complex online worlds.

This WSJ piece by Jessica Vascellaro is talking about a clear trend in social networking - noting that we’ve passed the “teen early adoption” phase and entered the professional phase where pretty much everybody will eventually participate

Pew Online activity study earlier this year found 8% of Americans are deep users of the participatory Web and mobile applications. 23% are heavy, pragmatic tech adopters – they use gadgets to keep up with socializing.