3 Ways Food and Beverage Brands Can Update Their Social Content Calendars to Boost Organic Engagement

Social media is a critical component of any food & beverage brand’s marketing strategy. Through social media, F&B brands can promote their products, build awareness of their brand and engage with their audience. But what if your audience isn’t actually engaging? Sure, a low-performing post here and there is to be expected, but if your posts are consistently only receiving a handful of reactions and shares, it’s a sign that your content calendar can be improved. Here are three ways F&B brands can enhance their content calendar to boost organic engagement.

(1) Invest in powerful visuals

In a world where attention spans are ever-shortening, a powerful image can be exactly what your posts need to stand out from the clutter and grab the focus of your audience. Oftentimes, brands have just three seconds to capture the interest of a user to decide to engage with a piece of content or not, so grabbing their attention quickly is key.

Social media is a highly visual channel. Food and beverage brands that want to be successful on social media need to embrace the visual nature of each platform by showing off products in an interesting way that captures the interest, and appetite, of your social media followers. A great image can really make or break a brand’s post, and if it’s not what followers are looking for, they might discover they’re hungry for some other type of content.

What makes for a great social media visual:

- Resolution and focus. Grainy ‘grams aren’t going to cut it for most audiences.

- Composition and framing. Use the rule of thirds to create visually compelling images that grab attention.

- Sizing. Size your images appropriately to the platform and the post type.

- Consistency. Whether it involves a color palette or framing mechanic, showcasing a consistent style of editing and a consistent aesthetic can help build brand identity and drive stronger engagement.

- Creativity. Show your audience something they’ve never seen before.

- Authenticity. Whether an image is a video, photo, animation or graphic, authenticity is key for audiences who want to see something that makes sense for the brand without trying too hard for the sale.

(2) Mix up your post types

If your content isn’t landing with your target demographic, start adding different post types into your content calendar. 

Not every audience engages with a social media platform in the same way. For example, younger audiences prefer to engage with Stories and Reels on Instagram, whereas an older demographic engages with more traditional posts or carousels. Knowing who your audience is and what type of content they are likely to engage with can help boost engagement dramatically.

A few best practices for how F&B brands can mix up post content:

- Take the time to understand how your audience engages with the platform of their choice.

- Once you identify the type of content you need to create, marry that insight with your own goals.

- Create compelling content that encourages audience engagement – ask them to leave their opinion, share, etc.

- Be more than just a one-trick pony. Share product, brand and lifestyle content across each post type. As the saying goes, variety is the spice of life, so cooking up a variety of content will keep users hungry for more.

- Don’t limit your content to just images or links. Mix things up by including video, as it tends to perform better than other content types on most social platforms.

Drive more engagement by making it fun, interesting and rewarding for your audience to interact with your F&B brand on their favorite social channels. Provide content that truly resonates with them and they can relate to.

(3) Implement posting strategies that increase visibility

The more people that see a piece of content, the more opportunity you have to drive engagement for that post. And, while you can’t plan for virality, you can set yourself up for success by ensuring your content calendar is built on best practices and strategies that increase the visibility of organic posts.

How to increase visibility on social media:

- Use post-appropriate hashtags to improve the discoverability of your content.

- Tag relevant locations and people in your posts to be added to those conversations. 

- Use “viral” music in your Instagram Reels for a boost from the social algorithms.

- Test your posting time/schedule to find the times that put you in front of your largest possible audience.

- Share user-generated content (and tag its creators) to mix up your content and encourage sharing.

- Bolster your social engagement with an experienced partner

Ready to take your social media presence to the next level? Union has deep experience helping F&B brands grow their audience, drive engagement and increase the return on their social media audience. Schedule a call to learn more.

Sarah Bonkowski is Union's social media supervisor