Friday Faves No. 161

our favorite finds from the front lines of food

Would make a great fitness class: High Speed Mochi (link to video) (Laughing Sqiud)

Buy some vegetables already. For some growers, farmers markets just aren’t what they used to be. "The decline in sales is, arguably, one result of the contemporary farmers market, which has evolved to meet the needs of a new generation of shoppers who view these outdoor markets as more a lifestyle choice than an opportunity to support local agriculture." More sophisticating marketing can help: "But market managers say farmers must also help themselves if they want to survive and thrive in this new era. It’s not enough to simply show up at a market and expect consumers to buy all your gorgeous, freshly harvested stone fruits and greens. Farmers must be attuned to consumer demand and be better marketers and shopkeepers, even at their makeshift outdoor stands." (Washington Post)

There is always room for compassion, and another bakery: Syria’s Beloved Sweet Shops Follow Its Refugees Into Exile "Civil war has scattered Syria’s bakers, pastry chefs, and restaurateurs. For the foodies—and children—in their new communities, it’s a tasty turn of events." (National Geographic)

We're not generally fond of "food as medicine" headlines, but we do love our seaweed. Seaweed Could Help Fight Food Allergies (Food & Wine)

The New York Times is barely dipping its toe in here, but the further we get from the "farmed = bad, wild = good" trap the better. Farming for Fish As leading chefs are turning away from the sea and toward sustainable hatcheries, it seems we’ve just begun to skim the surface of aquaculture (New York Times)

A great new food site for the breakfast obsessed — Extra Crispy with some really fine personal essays like: Soup is the Breakfast of Kings 

The future is in the works, with both rising interest in sustainable food and domestic production in China: International hotel chain starts serving 'low carbon' Chinese salmon (Seafood Source)

Making Social Media Work for You

This is the second issue of our new column on branding and marketing for SEA, Seafood Experience Australia.

Making Social Media Work for You

originally posted May 18 | by sea |

Recently, we’ve had a lot of questions about social media:

What can I do with it?

Do I have to get onboard or be left behind?

Which platforms are worth doing and what’s the difference?

Doesn’t it take a lot of time, have to be instant, and depend on knowing tricks?

The good news is that you can get value through using social media for your business without making it a full time job — and you probably already know how.

Here’s the secret to getting people to pay attention to you online — be authentic, be interesting, and be generous.

We’ll address the concept of online generosity in a future column.  Let’s look at what it means to be an authentic social media user and a little bit about the networks to know.

Authenticity is in the details

Social media gets talked about in the abstract, but it’s noting on it’s own. It’s a tool.

In the case of these communications tools, the medium is not the message. Social media is really old-fashioned interaction, just faster and louder than ever before.

Social media is a good brand-building tool because it’s another way for your peers and customers to get to know you. “Getting to know you” doesn’t have to mean the personal over-sharing that gives social media a bad rap. We’re not suggesting that your customers want know what your dog looks like in sunglasses or that you’re drinking a latte right now.  They do want a window into your business and your philosophy, so they can feel confident in choosing and supporting you.

Succeeding as a seafood producer takes building solid and direct relationships with customers and throughout the value chain, from distributors to chefs to home cooks.  A key part of customer loyalty is the feeling that a connection has been made.  People like people and people trust people — not companies. For a connection to be made, people need to feel that there’s another actual human on the other side of the transaction.  Big businesses are struggling to recreate the element of human interaction they’ve lost. If you’re running a small business and your customers like you, you already know how to do social media.  The leap is to echo that part of yourself and your business on the platforms that can help you connect.

The networks to know

There are dozens of social media platforms whose names you hear in passing and logos you see scattered across the web. These are the four you need to know and should consider using. While many people and organizations have accounts in all four places, each platform has its own feel and variations on audience.

There are services that allow you to make one comment and simultaneously post to all of your accounts across various platforms.  This saves time, but because it’s a one-size-fits-all blast, it ends up not really fitting anywhere. And when the whole point is to be authentic and connect, a canned message undermines your brand. To keep the time commitment in check, you’re much better off allocating a set amount of time each day, or every few days, to checking in and making a few well thought through posts.

Facebook  Facebook is now so ubiquitous that most people know generally what it’s all about. Even for business, Facebook revolves around people and relationships between people. Making connections on Facebook is like inviting someone over to your house. It’s a place to ask questions and have conversations. The personal and professional lines blur considerably on Facebook. In food, some chefs are here, but it’s most useful for causes and consumer brands.

LinkedIn From being just a place to post your resume several years ago, LinkedIn has grown into the Facebook of business. It’s time to take another look and see if you’re getting all the value you can from it. Like Facebook, you can post professional updates and links. You can join business groups and post as a business. LinkedIn is great for generating insider buzz and staying front-of-mind with your peers, tastemakers and potential customers. Because chefs move around so much, this is a great way to not lose the contacts you have when they switch jobs.

twitter  Twitter is for news sharing and micro-blogging, like pointing to a resource and giving your opinion of it in 140 characters or less. While you can’t say much in 140 characters, you can include a shortened url that directs the reader to an article online or an image with a short caption. Most interesting tweets are pointing to longer articles and are essentially flagging and curating news for like-minded people.

Does anyone really see all this tweeting? Twitter is like standing on a street corner of New York City passing out flyers. Most tweets won’t lead to anything much, but you get noticed and you just might make a fantastic connection you otherwise wouldn’t have.

There is a lot of food and sustainable food movement activity on twitter, so it’s easy to get into the stream of things pretty quickly. Because it doesn’t take much time to check in with, chefs are here and so are distributors to communicate with them. We’ve even seen distributors who use twitter like a live auction and fisherman who post about their catch to chefs while they’re coming back to shore. Most of the food movement and sustainability dialog is by NGOs and journalists. There’s a real need for farmers and fishermen to start participating here to get the producer’s viewpoint into that dialog.

Pinterest  Pinterest is the new darling in town. It’s an all-visual format like a shared online bulleting board. Using it for business is very new, but the number of users on Pinterest and how long they’re spending there in rising rapidly. It’s already shown itself to be really helpful in driving consumer traffic to your web site. To play in this game, however, you need high quality images.

DIY Press Savvy, Part Three: Leveraging Your Coverage

this piece was originally published February 16 in Seedstock, the blog for sustainable agriculture focusing on startups, entrepreneurship, technology, urban agriculture, news and research

Thus far, in our three-part series on DIY press savvy for sustainability-minded food entrepreneurs, we’ve covered how to put together your story to resonate with the media, and how to tell it to the right people. In the final part of this series, we look at how to leverage the press you get for maximum benefit. 

Use What You Have

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Even if the coverage you receive isn’t everything you hoped for, you can still make it work for you. You will remember the particulars of who said what about you, but most people will just remember that you were written about. In the immortal words of P.T. Barnum: “I don’t care what you say about me, just spell my name right.”

Don’t correct the reporter unless you absolutely have to. If the article misstates the year of your farm’s founding or how many trees you have, just let it go. All that comes of making a writer correct a non-essential detail is that you get remembered as high-maintenance. If, however, the erroneous information is something that will diminish the usefulness of the article, such as a misspelled name or an incorrect web address, send the writer a nice note about it. That way, at least the online version will have the correct information and you can use that clip in your promotions.

Package the Coverage

Since most people that you distribute your press coverage to will not read the full article, pull out a quote or even just a string of words that are complimentary and use that abbreviated content along with the media outlet’s logo when you reference the article. Using the actual image of the publication’s logo is an easy way to increase the impact of your coverage since you’ll benefit from the visual brand association. “The New York Times” as it appears on the front page of the paper looks more impressive than “The New York Times” typed out.

If you’re so lucky as to get a great line in an article that recommends you and your product, then use it. If the article says: “Happy Frogs Farm makes the best pie I’ve ever tasted,” it will be obvious what line to pull out.

If you didn’t get a line like that, you can get creative. Think of movie posters that often grab stray words that proclaim the movies to be “brilliant” and “original,” while the reviews they reference may not be terribly flattering overall. For example, if you receive a line in an article that describes your pie as having “a nice flaky crust with a lackluster filling,” use the following words:

“Nice flaky crust” — The New York Times

You can also adapt the headline. Even if your product was number 10 in a list of 10 and the comments were only so-so, write:

Named one of the 10 Best Apple Pies by The New York Times

Tell Everyone

The day an article comes out people will see it, but if you leave it at that you’re only going to get the recognition that luck brought you on that day. Press that you spread around and talk about, on the other hand, lives on forever. This is no time to be modest. If the idea of name-dropping in conversation makes you queasy, do it in writing.

An article is a third party validation – “Don’t take my word for it that I’m great — The Times says so.” Think of all the places where customers and media look, and all the ways that this third-party validation can help you. Now, you’re not just selling good pies, you’re selling pies that are “Named one of 10 Best Apple Pies by The New York Times.”

You can stretch out your 15 minutes of fame for years as long as you keep talking about it. Make that endorsement into a poster and hang it at your market stand; call it out from the homepage of your web site; attach it to all flyers and promotions; add it to your email signature. You can even add it to your business cards. Until everyone you come in contact with knows that your pies were in The New York Times, you haven’t used the quote enough.

_____________________

About Alisha & Polly’s company: Polish Partnerships

www.polishpartnerships.com

Polish is a branding and communications company for the new gastroconomy. By creating strong partnerships with food and beverage producers, hospitality groups and industry innovators, we go the extra distance, transforming hopes, dreams and expectations into tangible, sustainable and polished realities.

DIY Press Savvy, Part Two: Telling the Story

this piece was originally published February 2 in Seedstock, the blog for sustainable agriculture focusing on startups, entrepreneurship, technology, urban agriculture, news and research

Last week in our branding and marketing advice column for sustainability-minded food entrepreneurs, we kicked off our three-part series on DIY press savvy by providing advice on how to put together a story that will resonate with the media. This week’s column is all about how to get your story in front of the right reporters.

So let’s begin with the pitch.

While it’s perfectly acceptable to make a phone call to make your pitch, email is generally the best first approach. With email, you won’t catch someone at a bad moment, and you can craft your pitch without worrying about getting flustered mid-sentence or going off-topic.

Long live the personalized note!

The proliferation of media outlets and ways to obtain news has had one really wonderful effect on media relations — it’s made it all more personal. Blasting formal press releases to fax machines everywhere is less useful than ever. The press release is dead. Long live the personalized note!

Not having a one-size-fits-all release means that you can target your email to reporters and editors based on the topics that they write about and the audience for their publication. It means more work for you upfront, but since there’s a greater possibility of making a connection, there is a higher rate of success.

You don’t need to obsess over form, but here are a few good rules of thumb to follow:

Don’t waste your subject line. This is your headline and what will get your email noticed and opened. Have a little fun. A popular reporter at a media outlet has an inbox full of dreary subject lines that he receives everyday. If you can name drop (a well-known chef, romantic origins), by all means do so. Celebrity sells.

Cut to the chase. Keep things brief, or at least offer a brief summary of what you’re talking about up front, and then include more information as an FYI. If the reporter doesn’t know what you’re talking about until the third paragraph, he probably won’t read that far. If you’re story is complex, and you’d like to write up something that is more like a formal release, you can certainly do that. However, it’s still best to start your communication off with a personal note that tells the reporter why the story you are pitching is exciting.

Finding the right fit for your story

Sending your pitch to the appropriate reporter or publication is as important as assembling the elements of a good story. The most reliable way to know you that you are targeting the right person is to read the publications you want to get into, and pay attention to who writes about what. Sending a product pitch to the restaurant reviewer won’t get you anywhere. This is match-making.

If you are unfamiliar with a particular publication, you can work backwards. Available on the publication’s web site, or in the first few pages of a print magazine, is the masthead. The masthead contains a listing of everyone who works at the publication along with their job titles. Typically it is organized by subject (food, travel, environment, business) so you can find the names of the editors and staff writers. Then search by their names to pull up their recent articles, and see what they’ve been writing about. With this information, you can determine to which reporter you should send your pitch. Just make sure that you don’t pitch two people at the same publication at the same time. Nobody wants to go to their boss with a great new story idea only to find out that their office rival has shown up with the same great idea.

Don’t just target the top editors either. There is a lot of value in cultivating relationships all the way down the masthead. All editors, and even interns, are gathering new story ideas, and their youth and ambition can work to your advantage. Many times great coverage comes from a junior staffer, who passionately goes to bat for an idea. They want the best possible exposure for their idea (and possibly the writing credit) to advance their career, so they’ll fight for you and your story.

Once you have the name of a reporter or editor to send your pitch to, you will still need to find his or her contact information. There are guides priced from hundreds to thousands of dollars that promise email addresses and phone numbers for editors and reporters. With a little persistence, though, you can now find all of this information via a Google search. Most business emails follow a formula (e.g. First.last@company.com), so once you’ve found one, you’ve found them all for that publication. If you enter enough likely formulas in a Google search, you’ll probably dig up the address without much trouble.

You can also call the publication. They will usually give you the email address that you need or patch you through to whomever is working on the holiday gift-guide, for example. Freelance writers are easier to get ahold since they often maintain their own web sites.

Another great place to find information is in a publication’s Media Kit, which typically provides details on demographics, circulation and key publication dates. It can usually be found on the publication’s web site at the bottom of the homepage. It will also list any themed issues or special sections that appear throughout the year, such as a “green” issue or a special section on local businesses or food trends that might be a good fit for your story.

If you really want to dive into working with the media, Mediabistro is a resource that can help streamline your information gathering and teach you a lot about the industry. It’s the go-to jobs and news site for media and PR, and it’s where you can pick up information on new editors being hired and new publication launches. The “how to pitch” features provides you with lead times and interests for specific editors and publications as well as their contact information. Some of the content is free. Most is accessible with a subscription ($55 for a year).

Trade Tips & Cautions

The following guidelines will help you navigate like a pro:

1. Follow up: Stuff gets lost. You won’t be considered a stalker for sending a follow-up email a few days after the first one. Even a third note is OK.
2. Speed is really, really important: if a reporter calls or emails you, respond immediately. If they are on deadline and calling everyone they can think of, the first one to get back to them wins.
3. Photos: If you have photos, say so. Having print-quality photos can sometimes make the difference between getting coverage or not. If possible, include a link to where the photos can be viewed online. Don’t send photos (or anything else) as attachments.
4. Let reporters do their job: Telling the story through their media outlet is the reporter’s job, and you shouldn’t try to micromanage how they run with a story. Don’t ask to read and sign-off on a story before it runs.
5. Beware of pay-to-play coverage: If the “editor” or “producer” starts talking about “sponsorship,” this is not real journalism. Move on.
6. Be gracious: Once the article happens, even if it’s only a mention, send the reporter a little thank you note.

Getting media coverage is exciting, but ultimately it’s what you make of it that counts. Tune in next week to find out how to get the most from your 15 minutes of fame.

_____________________

About Alisha & Polly’s company: Polish Partnerships

www.polishpartnerships.com

Polish is a branding and communications company for the new gastroconomy. By creating strong partnerships with food and beverage producers, hospitality groups and industry innovators, we go the extra distance, transforming hopes, dreams and expectations into tangible, sustainable and polished realities.

DIY Press Savvy, Part One: Finding the Story

this piece was originally published January 26 in Seedstock, the blog for sustainable agriculture focusing on startups, entrepreneurship, technology, urban agriculture, news and research.

This week in our branding and marketing advice column for sustainability-minded food entrepreneurs we kick off a three-part series on working with the media that will cover how to develop your story, how to make your approach to the right reporters, and finally how to leverage the coverage you receive.

The media plays such a huge role in society that it often gets talked about as something abstract and impenetrable. Getting coverage is really not all that mysterious, and the priesthood of PR agents isn’t required. With a few pointers and “rules of the road,” you will have everything you need to be a great press agent for yourself. And you will have what no one else can give you — authenticity. Nobody can tell your story with more passion, or explore more facets of it, than you. Authenticity, passion and a well-structured story mean more than an address book full of media contacts.

Part One: Finding The Story

The biggest piece in learning to represent yourself well to the media is understanding what writers and editors need to build a story, and how you can help them put the pieces together.

If you don’t consume much media, such as foodie-focused magazines, local restaurant reviews or newspaper food or environment sections, start now. Look at the stories you read with a critical eye. What are the elements that are strung together to form the narrative of the article? Reading relevant media sources will also help you get to know which writers are interested in what kinds of stories, so you can target your approach (more on that in Part Two).

The first questions you need to be able to answer are: Why you? And why now?

News needs to be, well, new. There needs to be something going on that can capture attention. If you’re new on the scene, you’ll need to introduce yourself and why you matter. If you’ve had some coverage before, you’ll need to give them a reason why you should have more.

“I’m a beet farmer, and beets are really yummy” is not news.

“I’m a beet farmer. I grow a funky heirloom no one else around here has, and these chefs in town are featuring it on their menus.”

Now we’re talking. Your beets aren’t just beets; they’re part of something going on, a trend. If you can’t line up the pieces like this now, don’t worry. We’ll walk you through some ideas of how you can make yourself part of a story.

To create a pitch that you can approach the media with, you have to line up the elements of their article. The more complete your narrative or outline is when you present it, the more likely it is that someone will pick it up. If you’re looking for video coverage this is even more important. They will literally want you to paint a visual picture of what the story will look like — where they can shoot, who will appear on camera. If you have a big sunny kitchen to shoot something cooking or a picture-perfect barn, let them know.

Here’s a few tips to help you put together a press-worthy pitch:

Get personal.  You don’t have to unpack your full life story or innermost thoughts, but give your pitch a personal touch that will help the author flesh out an article. This speaks to the ultimate truth that people are interested in people. Even in coverage of storms and technological innovations, a general interest article will focus in on the people affected, not the wind forces or mechanics.

Are you a career changer with a back-story very different from what you’re doing now? Are you farming land your family has farmed for one hundred years? Do you specialize in heirloom seeds that reflect your heritage or have a special connection to you? Perhaps you learned about them from your time in the Peace Corps or in a restaurant in which you cooked. One of the reasons people like supporting artisans and farmers is because they can feel connected on a human scale. Mentioning a few little details about yourself helps strengthen this connection.

Jump on a train in motion. Taking advantage of existing momentum and getting coverage as part of a trend is a lot easier than breathing life into a totally new topic. Look at what you do with trend-conscious eyes. Is there a new scientific report or news section story that relates to something you do? Is a certain kind of restaurant all the rage in your area and you supply several of them?

Look around your community and reach out to others who could be part of the same story. One farm doing something is random, but three farms doing the same thing is a trend. Line up the potential players in the story when you pitch.

Create your own “why now?” Events are a great answer to why something is deserving of coverage now. If you don’t have anything on the horizon, create something. This isn’t cheating. Organize a farm visit day to celebrate a harvest or talk to your chef customers about creating a special menu featuring produce from your farm. The restaurant might even have a PR firm on retainer that can pull the story together and bring you along with their efforts.

Festivals or holidays, with the exception of ultra-competitive Thanksgiving and Christmas, are also great to tie your events to. Perhaps your region has a seasonal festival or fair. Do you produce something that is part of a traditional food dish, especially one that connects to an ethnic group in your area? That’s a story waiting to happen, and you might be able to get yourself mentioned as part of it.

Being the first one to do something is always a good angle. If you have something new going on in your field, use it. If you’re really not doing anything new and different from your neighbors, you may want to start brainstorming what you might be able to create in order to generate a little flash.

How do you make your pitch to the media once you’ve lined up the elements of a story? Tune in next Thursday.

_____________________

About Alisha & Polly’s company: Polish Partnerships

www.polishpartnerships.com

Polish is a branding and communications company for the new gastroconomy. By creating strong partnerships with food and beverage producers, hospitality groups and industry innovators, we go the extra distance, transforming hopes, dreams and expectations into tangible, sustainable and polished realities.