sugarception.wordpress.com

Comm346 - Ho Si Xian Sarah

Why did I choose this topic?

These drinks are definitely unhealthy

Image  sources:    Coke  can:  h1p://www.my-­‐savour.com/image/cache/data/can-­‐of-­‐Coca-­‐Cola-­‐500x500.jpg  

You would think these are healthy

But they actually contain a lot of sugar!

Therefore, the concept of Sugarception was born!

Sugar + Deception = Sugarception

Sugarception served as the brand of the blog

Purpose: To educate individuals about the deceptive practices the food industry engages in and to advocate people to adopt a healthier lifestyle

Target audience: •  Young people in Singapore

Sugar + Deception = Sugarception

Objective: To establish a one- stop site for health education and to communicate with my audience

Constraints: •  Health? “Boring!” •  Gaining a pool of loyal

followers in 4 weeks

Sugar + Deception = Sugarception

Goals

Short term: To help young people in Singapore make healthy choices by warning them about the deceptive practices of the world food industry

Long term: To establish a community of people who want to lobby for a healthier society

Measuring success

•  Awareness •  Engagement

Awareness

Awareness Here’s what I did to generate

awareness of my blog

Pre-blogging promotion

•  Before starting my posts, I promoted my blog via different channels (Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat)

•  Used Snapchat in particular because I wanted to target the youth

Promote blog on different channels

During the 4 weeks of blog posting, I promoted my blog on the following channels (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter)

Using appropriate hashtags to get the message out

#sugar #sugarception #diabetes

#obesity

#subway

#foodindustry #greenjuice

#juicing #sugarydrinkstax

#showusyourpeanuts

Using appropriate hashtags to get the message out

•  Hashtags were carefully curated to match the blog posts and reflect the current trends in health research

•  Sugarception branding was enforced

by tagging #sugarception to every blog post and social media publicity post

Snapchat content creation •  Promoted blog on snapchat by creating interesting content relevant to my

audience •  “A college student’s guide to being healthy” •  Documenting the sugar-free challenge that I took, which gained a

following from my Snapchat followers •  Uploaded snaps on YouTube and added them to a category on my blog called

“Snapchat Videos”

Commentary on most recent issues in health and nutrition

I searched the internet for hot topics related to sugar consumption and wrote posts based on controversial issues such as a “Sugar-Free diet” in the hope that the blog posts would go viral

Engagement Here’s what I did to generate

engagement for my blog

Make social media account public

Make social media account public

•  In order to connect with my key public, I made my social media accounts such as Instagram and Twitter public

•  Added these social media platforms to my blog so that visitors who stopped by to read the posts could follow me on Instagram and Twitter.

Sugar-free challenge

This created some engagement with my Snapchat followers

Comments on different channels

•  Followers of my social media accounts commented, although there were not many commenters

•  However, these commenters were loyal to the Sugarception cause

Evaluation of success

•  Awareness of issue reached •  However, engagement fell

short because not enough 2-way communication

How to increase effectiveness of blogging?

Key Success Factors for blogging?

Creating controversial but relevant content

•  This was my most successful post

•  The content was relevant to the audience because Subway is a food stall that most people eat on a day to day basis

•  For me to criticize Subway as unhealthy was controversial, and this generated the most views

Adopting a humorous, conversational style

•  Using stories from my daily life and using hashtags in my posts helped to reduce the gap between the audience and myself

•  For example, when I was doing the Sugar-Free challenge, I blogged about how I failed miserably at that. This allowed me to connect with the audience as an average human being who is not perfect.

Follow opinion leaders/bloggers with similar interests

•  Filter relevant tags in Wordpress

•  Eg. “Sugar” •  Follow bloggers who

are aligned with your area of interest, comment on blogs and start the dialogue!

Create a brand community

•  Upon reflecting on how to make my blog generate two way conversation, I can:

•  Encourage other bloggers and people to share their stories about how they have battled with sugar

•  Create a Snapchat contest where people post their Snaps of eating healthily and the best ones will be featured on the blog

•  When people feel that their opinions count and are validated, they would want to contribute more to the blog and thus creating a brand community.

•  This shows the psychological ownership theory in practice, where people gain satisfaction from providing and receiving advice from others.