Social Media Marketing for Food Brands

How to Use Social Media Marketing for Food Brands an Example by COSTA

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sea food dish with noodles featured image for the social media marketing for food brands post

Using social media marketing for food brands can often turn into a goldmine if done right. To help you get started with using social media for your brand, I’m sharing a great example of how a food brand uses social media to inspire people into buying their products.

COSTA is part of the apetito Group and one of the top providers of frozen fish and seafood specialities. They are doing a great job using social media marketing to showcase their products, share creative recipe ideas and bring together great visual content using a hashtag and a social media wall.

Invest in visual content and share it on your social media channels

A picture is worth a thousand words. As a food brand, your content needs to be visual. Images or videos help you connect with your audience. Telling your brand’s story through appropriate and consistent imagery will have a powerful and lasting impact. 

In an analysis of over 1 million articles, BuzzSumo found that pieces with more images received double the social media shares compared to articles with fewer images. Social media marketing for food brands should be all about visuals, and COSTA is an excellent example of how to do it right.

Facebook post displaying COSTA's Frutti di Mare frozen food mix.

Leverage user-generated content for your food brand

Asking for user-generated content is a fun method for both brand and users. It creates a meaningful connection between the two and leads to more engagement. Users get to show off their creative side. Their content helps circulate the hashtag among those who aren’t yet following the brand. Food brands, especially, can get a bucketload of content through UGC without having to create it themselves.

The type of content that you choose to combine with your hashtag is up to you. You can create photo or video challenges on Instagram or ask for creative answers to a question you pose. If you want to know everything about running great hashtag campaigns, have a look at this hashtag campaign guide for marketers.

Collect authentic user-generated content from your hashtag campaign.

Create a hashtag wall in minutes!

Don’t ask for anything too complicated to keep the contest attractive for a broad audience. If you like, make it a requirement for users to follow your account. This way, you can grow your follower base through the campaign. At the end of the campaign, notify the winner publicly and share their content to give it a wider reach. They’ll be grateful for the exposure, and it’s great content for you.

COSTA was promoting healthy frozen products for the barbeque season and created a contest where they give away a professional LANDMANN barbecue. Participants only need to comment on the official social media posts on Facebook or Instagram, sharing their favourite COSTA product they use for creating delicious and easy barbecue dishes.

Facebook post by Costa Meeresspezialitäten. The image is showing a collage of a LANDMANN barbecue, a box of COSTA’s frozen salmon filets and an up-close image of some appetising looking barbecued salmon filets. The image is branded with the LANDMANN and COSTA logos and a large “Jetzt gewinnen!” sticker. It also carries the hashtag #BarbecueFitness in large letters.  The caption is not visible but three comments by fans are. They show images of barbecued food creations made with COSTA products.
Source: Facebook

It’s amazing how many people joined the contest and even shared photos of the dishes they created using COSTA’s products.

Share new products on social media

You can also use social media to support your retail channels if you want more people to look for your brand on store shelves. COSTA is using Instagram and Facebook to share their latest products with their social media followers. They keep a consistent branded design throughout all their posts, which helps people remember the brand and recognize their products immediately on store shelves.

A Facebook post by COSTA Meeresspezialitäten showing a box of COSTA’s King Prawns product, placed on a wooden board on the same light blue wooden background as the post screenshot above. There’s a small mortar and pestle with some herbs in it next to the board. Everything is decorated with green herbs strewn about.  The caption is in German and reads: “Königlich genießen mit unseren King Prawns. 👑 Aufgrund ihrer Größe sind sie besonders vielseitig einsetzbar – beispielsweise als Veredelung in einer leckeren Pasta oder als Beilage in exotischen Wokgerichten. Probiert es einfach aus!”

Share new recipes on social media

We all love food, and many times we’re out of ideas when it comes to what we could cook next. That’s where food brands can gain a lot of followers and engagement by sharing unique recipes using their products. Showing people how they can use a great product is far better than just telling them to buy it.

COSTA shares recipe ideas for all the products they sell and the images look so appealing that you just want to run to the store, buy the product and start cooking right away.

Instagram post by COSTA Meeresspezialitäten. A bowl of dark pink soup topped with prawns and green garnish. The bowl and spoon next to it are placed on a patterned white-and-blue napkin and presented on the typical light blue wooden background COSTA always uses. In the top left corner of the picture a small dish with cracked pepper and a lemon wedge has been placed.  The caption is in German and reads: “Rote Bete Suppe mit Sauerrahm und Garnelenspieß Wir wissen ja nicht, wie es euch geht, aber wir brauchen heute was für die Laune, für die Seele. Die leckere Suppe mit Ingwer, Wasabi und Garnelen verspricht nicht nur wohlige Wärme, sondern auch puren Genuss. Probiert’s! Den Link zum Rezept findet ihr in unserer Bio.”

Repurpose that great content in a social media feed on your website

COSTA regularly posts updates on social media, and they have an impressive follower community engaging with the content they create.

Since they’re already spending time and effort on posting to the brand’s social channels, why not make it go a little further? By displaying social media content — content that they’ve created already anyway — on their website, they keep their website content fresh and engage visitors.

They are using a social media wall right on the COSTA homepage, mixing Facebook and Instagram feeds and inspiring visitors with new content about their products, recipes or contests they are running.

Screenshot of the COSTA website. The header on top shows the hashtag #BarbecueFitness and, further down on the page, the social wall is embedded under the heading “#BARBECUEFITNESS auf Social Media”.

Enhance social media marketing for your food brand and delight your visitors with curated social media feeds.

Create a social feed in less than 5 minutes!