Ho Si Xian, Sarah Sugarception Blogging Project November 2015

1. sugarception.wordpress.com
Comm346 - Ho Si Xian Sarah

2. Why did I choose this topic?

3. These drinks are definitely unhealthy
Image
sources:
Coke
can:
h1p://www.my-­‐savour.com/image/cache/data/can-­‐of-­‐Coca-­‐Cola-­‐500x500.jpg

4. You would think these are healthy
But they actually contain a lot of sugar!

5. Therefore, the concept of Sugarception was born!
Sugar + Deception = Sugarception
Sugarception served as the brand of the blog

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. Measuring success
• Awareness
• Engagement

10. Awareness

11. Awareness
Here’s what I did to generate
awareness of my blog

12. 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

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

14. Using appropriate hashtags to
get the message out
#sugar
#sugarception #diabetes
#obesity
#subway
#foodindustry#greenjuice
#juicing
#sugarydrinkstax
#showusyourpeanuts

15. 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

16. 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”

17. 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

18. Engagement
Here’s what I did to generate
engagement for my blog

19. Make social media account public

20. 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.

21. Sugar-free challenge
This created some
engagement with my
Snapchat followers

22. 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

23. Evaluation of success
• Awareness of issue reached
• However, engagement fell
short because not enough 2-
way communication

24. How to increase effectiveness of
blogging?
Key Success Factors for
blogging?

25. 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

26. 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.

27. 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!

28. 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.