Seven years is a long time to do any one thing. Yet here I am, seven years later, still self-employed and still focused on specialty coffee. My services have naturally evolved through the years and it’s been an interesting journey through it all.
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While this article is geared towards SCA Expo attendees, you can certainly extrapolate the content to apply for any conference your company attends. Whether you are attending as an individual professional, a coffee company, sponsor, or exhibitor, the basic marketing tenets are the same. And planning is your friend.
Set goals for attending. What do you want to tell your followers? Do you want to share what you’re learning from the classes or do you want to share about new products? It’s not an either/or situation but make sure you know what you want to convey online.
Expo is ridiculously overwhelming. Write out your “can’t miss” items and then your “maybe I can go” items. If you are repping a company, be sure to include all the classes & guest roasting spots you’ll be at. This seems like basic knowledge but if you don’t write it down, you’ll forget in the moment.
Depending on how in-depth you want to go on your marketing, start creating your promotional templates now. Get those Instagram covers ready, write out your social media text, and plan ahead so you don’t find yourself scrambling the day of.
If your company will be posting from the floor or competition arena, know what topic(s) and frequency you’ll be posting at. And be conscious of your audience! If you normally talk to 80% consumers & mostly about what coffee you’re brewing, don’t overwhelm them with 20 IG stories & 10 Facebook posts in three days. Instead, opt for a summary post.
I highly recommend the digital marketing planning to start *now*. If you’re an exhibitor, I’m sure it started months ago. Best of luck in your planning!
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I often liken consumer education to language translation. Sure, you may be using English in both your industry and for your consumers, but the words you use certainly aren’t the same. Your lexicon of industry words like “cupping,” “direct trade,” and “effervescent mouthfeel” probably aren’t all crammed into one consumer-oriented post without some explanatory sentences.
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Cultural appropriation in food businesses and media is not a new topic. There’s been many a discussion surrounding who gets to sell what kind of food and confusion on what’s appropriation and what’s not. I’m not going to get into the details here. If you need articles to read, there’s a great list here.
I get it. It’s tough out there. You have a new product or you’re a new roaster and you need to get the word out. You think, “If I send people something, they can post about it and it’s free marketing!” I mean, kind of.
But you should still know a few things about this “free marketing” concept.
This is Part 3 of my outsourcing series. Here’s Part 1 and Part 2.
How do you figure out if the social media consultant you see online is the perfect one for you? This article is going to go into tips on what to look for in a consultant and manager. The content creation part of outsourcing, like photography, is a little easier since you can see tangible products (e.g. photos) and evaluate fit through there.
This is Part 2 of my outsourcing series. To read Part 1, visit the article here.
As I mentioned in my previous post, there are many things that make up social media marketing. Depending on how much time you have and what you’re willing to part ways with, you may decide to go 100% outsourced.
Outsourcing does not mean that you need to hire an agency. It could mean offloading your social media management to someone else on your team. In this context, we’ll take a look at the items that you can outsource and when to know you need to do it.
When you’re a business owner, you often find yourself pulled in a thousand different directions. Whether because it’s your least favorite activity or it just falls down on the priorities list, social media posting might not be happening for you. That’s okay, as long as you know when to outsource.
This isn’t going to be a how-to guide on diversity efforts. It’s more of a reflection on what you can do as a business (or a person).
On the two panels I participated in at Re:co, I tried to emphasize recognizing your own power and your business’ power. Harnessing that power and making it work for good is likely a better approach than drastically changing up your business.
This marketing tip is going to be short and sweet – as well as easily implementable – just in time for Expo!
I'm a San Francisco-based coffee marketer: digital strategist, writer & photographer. On the side, I munch on donuts & think of new ways to make you look stunning online.
You can reach me here or on Twitter.
Life goal:
eat / drink coffee / write / travel
>>>> all in one.
