Case Study: Institute of Culinary Education
Problem: Solidify a content strategy to engage leads on a new social media platform, TikTok.
With 800 million monthly active users on TikTok according to Datareportal 2020, it’s clear that Social Media Managers must remain in tune with the evolving landscape of social media.
Maintaining the growth and performance of existing social channels is also important so that each platform is utilized for their unique capabilities.
Being agile is crucial in these circumstances as product changes and shifts are out of the brand’s control, but can be harnessed to increase engagement, and eventually revenue, if the brand is able to pivot and adapt accordingly.
Solve: Content pillars
‘Find your culinary voice’ is the underlying theme and north star of the ICE brand. Leveraging existing content is a great way to quickly test out what the audience engages with and is an efficient way to produce content on a new platform. Learning the platform capabilities is a part of the solution, where examples below detail the categories of viral videos and tactics like duet videos.
1. Culinary How To’s
‘How to make a #cornet’ is the highest performing TikTok so far, with 2.6M impressions. This is a strong indicator that this audience is eager to learn culinary skills and is a way to demonstrate ICE’s leadership in the industry. ‘How To’s’ demonstrated by current students, teachers, alumni or partnerships is a great way to get the community involved and showcase the curriculum.
This could be broken down into clips that are mini skills taught in each program e.g.:
Culinary Arts
How to julienne a carrot
Pastry and Baking Arts
How to make a sourdough starter from scratch
Health-Supportive Culinary Arts
How to pick ripe fruit
Restaurant and Culinary Management
How to design your menu
Hospitality and Hotel Management
How to price your food
2. Cooking with Culinary Experts
Using snippets from virtual events could be repurposed into 1-minute TikToks that demonstrate a recipe, but also promote ICE events. Cooking and food accounts are increasingly popular on TikTok, with accounts such as @cookingwithshereen at 2.4M followers. This category is a way to get onto user For You Pages, that will increase the reach of ICE’s audience.
3. Culinary Creations
TikTokers love mouth-watering dishes, so showcasing famous dishes or restaurants that ICE Alumni work at is an aspirational content pillar to further drive engagement.
Collaboration with students is also a great way to showcase a day in the life of a chef, baker, restaurant owner or hotel manager. This personalizes the experience of studying at ICE, while illustrating tangible outcomes of the programs.
4. Culinary Moments
Cultural and food holidays drive engagement because it is relevant to the audience’s day to day lives. Having a ‘Foodie Calendar’ is an essential tool for content planning and to inject mini-stories the brand can talk to when major campaigns aren’t running.
Driving user-generated content is always important to show the brand’s reach. TikTok’s duet feature is a way to encourage UGC e.g:
Duet this video to show off your Thanksgiving feast
Show us what you’re doing to celebrate National Pancake Day!
It’s National Cake Day — duet this video and show us your bakes!
Thank you!
Don’t hesitate to reach out — I’d love to discuss how my experience can be leveraged for the Social Media Manager role at ICE.
(347) 429-3599