Taste of Home's mission is to provide a fulfilling experience for our millions of food-loving devoted readers and to simplify their everyday lives.
Instagram may be a visual-based platform, but it's ultimately about choice. It starts as what the user chooses to post on their own, but the power of Instagram shines when a user chooses to engage—to connect. As a brand that thrives on food choices, we knew Instagram was the perfect place to evolve our food content into a personality—one that users would not only want to interact with but also relate to and depend on.
The goal of our efforts is to:
On Instagram, we've developed a personality that can closely relate to our followers and potential new followers. If anything, we like to think of ourselves as their food-loving friend who's there for their cooking marathons, take-out cravings, and everything in between.
Our brand was built on highlighting delicious, test kitchen-approved recipes from home cooks across the country, but as that food-loving friend, we know all too well every night isn't about home cooking. People are busy. They're strapped for time. And doggonit, sometimes they just want to order in Chinese food and binge-watch Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. (We've all been there.) But when our followers do want to fire up the stove, we not only give them delicious food choices, we celebrate theirs.
Known as one of the originators of UGC, Taste of Home has brought the element of readers sharing their creations with us to life on Instagram. In early 2018, we launched #TOHFoodie, which entices people to share photos of their home-cooked meals for a chance to be featured on our feed. Since launch, we've received over 13,000 pieces of tagged content. This has only strengthened our core value of creating a tight-knit community of passionate people who love food.
In November, we launched our first-ever Instagram Episodic called Beauty Pantry. Two of our savvy editors use ingredients they already have in their pantry to demonstrate how to make a popular beauty product. As they're creating the products and engaging with users, our followers are getting another level of our brand's personality through meeting the faces behind Taste of Home.
We also launched "Raise Your Hand"—a franchise that speaks directly to our followers and asks them to engage with us if they've experienced a similar feeling. It's a simple graphic that has a raised hand emoji and, for example, reads: "Raise Your Hand...if all you want is take-out tonight." Again, as a relatable brand, we cater to home cooks just as much as we do to take-out lovers. (Sometimes ordering pizza is exactly what you need!)
Ultimately, our goal is quite simple—connection. We want to make users happier through uplifting content while also being there when all they want is comfort food. We want them to communicate with us while also creating a community with each other. Above all, we want them to know we're always listening to them so they can keep choosing us as their uplifting escape from the sea of social media.
As of December 2018, we've seen incredible growth YoY:
TL;DR: We hit every single goal we set out to hit at the start of 2018. A quick reminder/rundown:
