Before we knew “digital marketing” or “social media”, we knew Facebook. A handheld phone had a whole-new meaning ever since each of us created our Facebook profiles. It became that magical place where we could show off our life’s details, share our feelings and opinions. Most importantly, it made us connect and create amazing networks with people important to us.

For the regular user, these people meant friends and family. Under the current though, was the Facebook user who wanted to connect beyond – build a following so as to promote work and gain recognition. Around the world, digi-savvy lifestyle and food creators began publishing exciting content that engaged Facebook users with their sheer visuals – as pics and videos. Digital marketing agencies deems these as the “founding fathers” of digital creators, so to say.

If you think this is just a history lesson in digital marketing, let’s cut to the chase with a very interesting case study. Your Food Lab is a Facebook page started by a young chef, Sanjyot Keer. His take on Indian recipes was simple, exciting and efficient. What did he do to take his page to a whopping 5 million followers? Well, he took every element that Facebook offered over the years and leveraged them for maximum visibility and engagement.

Video Posts

As the main-stay of the brand: Food being prepared and served is immediately captivating content. Creating stylized yet short culinary videos, Your Food Lab captured FB users’ attention, and saw a steady rise in viewership.

Knowing the target audience

Who needs simple-to-implement fancy recipes more than a mother? Your Food Lab strategically posted easy yet appealing sandwiches, snacks and rolls at times of the day when home-based and office-going moms were relatively free and could scroll down their Facebook feed. This was in the afternoons and late nights.

Consistent posting

This was when organic reach and growth was a thing! By consistently posting good and engaging content, visibility for Your Food Lab increased. This created more Likes.

Call To Action

Your digital marketing agency will still harp on this. Rather than just posting content, tell the viewer what to do with it. Chef Keer invited his followers to Like and to Share. The rest is Facebook history.

Facebook Live

Live demos of your favourite street-foods, answering viewer questions in real-time, making special announcements to them – all of this was a simple capitalization of Facebook’s exciting Live option by Your Food Lab. Big digital marketing thumbs up.

Innovations over the years

Digital marketing is not just about being on all platforms and putting the same content everywhere. It’s also about muscling through one medium and innovating to the fullest. With new stuff like episodic content (a video series on healthy foods), Your Food Lab Junior (a weekly series with a 5-year-old that impressed many) and regional content (in Hindi), created more and more reasons for followers to increase by the minute.

FB Stories

Similar to Instagram Stories, in which posts last for 24 hours, Your Food Lab used this tool for special announcements, audience polls and to build excitement and anticipation for what comes next.

Your Food Lab’s journey over the last 5 years is a case study in content creation and social media engagement. At 5 million followers, Your Food Lab is a part of many Indian homes today.

It also led the Facebook story in the area of monetization of content by independent content creators. Creating impactful content that resonated with the audience, Your Food Lab could monetize content via Facebook and through collaboration with major FMCG brands that leveraged its space. That’s Facebook-led digital marketingfor you!

Facebook, as a platform has been evolving. You might need help to make it work for you. Find us by your side at GroCurv.