Foodies, those who are often found looking up food content online, are a social people. They use social media to its fullest, photographing dinners to post, seeking out food brands to follow and searching for recipes to make. They’re everywhere, but which social media platform do they use the most?
Only Targeting Pinners?
You’d be surprised to learn the social media platform most well-known for recipe sharing, Pinterest, is not #1. It’s not even #2. According to a recent report published by international food, beverage and lifestyle marketing agency, Sopexa, Facebook is winning the social media foodie wars over Pinterest and Instagram. (The report polled 3,000-4,000 users in six countries: United States, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Japan and China.)
The Contenders
Pinterest
Worldwide Users: 100 million
Percentage of American Foodie Users: 36%
Percentage of Worldwide Foodie Users: 18%
Instagram
Worldwide Users: 300 million
Percentage of American Foodie Users: 73%
Percentage of Worldwide Foodie Users: 17%
Facebook
Worldwide Users: 1.49 billion
Percentage of American Foodie Users: 90%
Percentage of Worldwide Foodie Users: 81%
When it comes to visiting each social media site daily (not just for food-related reasons), according to the Pew Research Center, 70% of users visit Facebook daily, 49% visit Instagram daily and 17% visit Pinterest daily. While it’s lagging behind Facebook and Instagram, it is worth noting that Pinterest has a very high level of engagement, due to the loyalty of its users.
Some other takeaways from the report included tips on how to market to foodies:
• Foodies don’t like how-to posts on cooking, they simply like to find an exciting recipe and figure it out on their own
• The topics that were most popular on food-related posts, whether recipes or content, focused on the exotic, the origins of the food, nutrition and self-improvement
• Foodies prefer to interact with the food they buy, they want to see, feel and smell it; they’d much rather buy their food in a store than online
• Contests, games and discounts were a turn-off to foodies, but they do like to partake in recognition programs that reward them for searching, shopping, cooking and sharing
• These foodies have started to drift away from restaurants, preferring instead to make recipes in their homes as “house chefs”
What does this mean for your business?
If you are a business that sells a food or beverage product, you’ll do best if you target all three platforms. If you can only focus on one, Facebook is the one with the most foodies, albeit self-proclaimed foodies. It’s also important to remember that small businesses may not follow these trends. Track your users and their level of engagement on each platform you use and see which one is performing the best, then decide where to focus your efforts.
