1. Social Media – The River
Cottage experience
welcome
#rivercottage

2. About the Project

3. What are the project aims?
• To provide improved broadband
connectivity in specific rural areas that
get slow* or non-existent services (and
may never get high speed services)
• to support business productivity
• to benefit the wider community
*(under 2mbps)

4. Who is involved?
• Devon & Somerset County Councils
• Funded by RDPE (Rural Development
Programme for England)
Delivery Partners
• Tooway Direct – broadband solution
• Cosmic – providing IT support & advice

5. What is the project offering?
• If you are eligible
– Free satellite and installation (pay monthly
fee for broadband starts at £25 a month)
– Free one-to-one IT help and support
– Free group workshops

6. How fast is my speed?
Visit
www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk

7. Social media
& River Cottage

8. Strategy, facts and figures
River Cottage on…
4.Marketing
5.Campaigning
6.Crisis
Questions

9. What is River Cottage?
‘less dependence on the outside world, food
integrity, and the consumption of local,
seasonal produce.’

10. As a business?
Food, multimedia & TV company
– Courses & events
– Restaurants - Plymouth & Axminster
Canteens
– Film company (Keo films)
– Books, DVDs, food column

12. River Cottage Team
Social media side
•Graeme –
marketing manager
•Murry – digital
producer
Time spent working on social media?
Roughly 1.5 days a week

13. Facts & figures
• Social media tools used by River
Cottage
• the ‘guided tour’ of application, facts
and figures
• the overview of strategy and how
impact is measured

14. What tools do they use?
Off site
– Twitter
– Facebook
– Flickr
– YouTube
On site
– Blog
– Forum
14

15. Social Media Cycles
• River Cottage is on its 3rd –
4th Cycle
• The process is cyclical –
not linear
• Constant review,
monitoring, improvement
• Repeat the things which
work well
• Fit to business activities,
key messages, events

16. Facts & figures - Twitter
7 Twitter accounts
@rivercottage
60,143 Followers
@RCHQevents
3,683 Followers
@RCFeedback
210 Followers

17. Twitter - Canteens
• Plymouth
– @plymouthcanteen
– Followers 1,959
– @plymfeedback
– Followers 0
• Axminster
– @axcanteen
– Followers 2,411

18. Facebook.com/rivercottagehq
• River Cottage HQ
– 62,273 ‘likes’
– 3.4 million
impressions per
week
– 2140 new likes last
week

19. Check-in/Places
Facebook Check-in
• HQ – 1,351
• Axminster Canteen – 2,392
• Plymouth Canteen - 1071

20. YouTube
156 official videos
YouTube
Vimeo

21. Flickr

22. Onsite - Community
Forums
Create your own blog
Questions
Recipes
My page
300,000 users

23. Find a recipe
Upload your own
recipe

25. Community created blogs

26. River Cottage
What’s the strategy?

27. Customer journey
Moving people
..to passionate
From interested
• Growing
•Brand advocates
• Sustainability
•Attend events
• Curious about the Brand
• Curious about Hugh •Join in campaigns
• Living a rural life •Get into growing/eating/
cooking
•Lifestyle choice

28. What’s the strategy?
• Who? Audience
– urban : people desire country living,
association with River Cottage product and
experience
– local : developing connection with the local
base and ability to visit, buy and share
experience
• Why? Engage
– Build brand
– Communicate
– Customer services
– Marketing channel
– Campaign

29. Demographics
Biggest segment-
25 – 44 year olds Sprout social demographic
Gender-split -
44% male
56% female

30. What’s the strategy?
• What? Brand • When?
– Recipes – During TV shows
– Menus – During events
– Sell events – Pre and post events
– Added value and courses
– Advocacy
• Where? Channels
– Twitter
– Facebook
– YouTube
– Flickr
– Blogs

31. Social media engagement ladder
Community
building
Content
Forum
creation Facebook
Participation You Tube LinkedIn
Blog Newsletter
Twitter Flickr
Facebook iTunes Virtual worlds
Listen Twitter
Google Alerts
Twitter
Google Reader
Less time More time

32. Choose your Channel
• Find the right application and platform
for the message and content
• Where is your audience?
• Split channels
– Separate brand
– Different audience
– Emphasis (eg campaign)
• Use #hashtag

33. Questions?

34. River Cottage on…
sales & marketing

35. Sales & Marketing
using social media for ‘bottom line’
activities – and how does it support
general promotion and brand?

37. River Cottage Events
• About 300 events every year at RCHQ
• Private, public, invited events & courses
– 4 day courses
– Day courses
– Day and evening events
– Weddings, corporate events, parties

38. How can social media help sales? …
‘Generates a good crowd of followers
who know you and like you’
– Encourage shares
– Give out good content
– Mix sales into the messages

39. ‘It’s all about the website’
Everything comes back to the
website - Central
destination
Easy to book & pay
Back end integration with
database

40. Creative selling
‘Create stories – lead through editorial’
– Visual
– Photography, video
– Engaging people
– with product
– In experiences
– Raising desire for product & experience
“Make it Fun! … don’t be too worthy”

43. Hugh’s Fishing Trip posted to…
– Fish Fight
– Blog – attract people to corporate days
– Workshops – training how to prep & cook fish
– Autumn Cookery Course – extended training
– Facebook page
– Twitter streams
– 1 video 6 uses
– Content shared ….. then used to sell

44. River Cottage Posting rules
Don’t post ANYTHING unless
3. Small amount of value
4. There’s advocacy attached
5. Shares expertise or knowledge

45. Example:
Get Growing in Spring
Two day visitor weekend March

46. Pre-event publicity
• Created stories around speakers,
animals, activities going on during the
event
• Stories were Tweeted, Facebook,
through e-newsletter and blogged
• Created a hash tag
#GetGrowingInSpring

47. Run up to the event

48. On the day of the event
Graeme took photos all day and posted them on Twitter
Still engaged with people during that day
Posted on Twitter and Facebook

50. Re-tweeting people’s comments
(listening using TweetDeck)

51. After the event…
Encouraging
people to post
their photos

52. Advertise events in Facebook Events
Public event

53. Facebook Page – Book a table at the Canteen

54. Dealing with Feedback
@Rcfeedback
•Sells events
•Not a big twitter
feed or following
•But used in
website auto-pull
feeds on
feedback

55. Dealing with complaints

56. Learning points
• Create stories
• Use video content and re-use liberally
• Use content to encourage share – then
sell
• Encourage commentary
• Engage before, during and after event
• Encourage click-through to website

57. Learning points
• Patience is Key
– Accumulated effect – it takes time
– Immediate returns are obvious but trickle-
effect is also working
– Build-up of messages and engagement
– Tickets sell so fast, because people are for
tickets already. They are already waiting,
engaged.

58. Questions?

59. River Cottage on…
Campaigning

60. Campaigning & Social Media
– a match made in heaven!
•Brand reinforcement
•Building community
•Advocacy is an important business
skill – show you care!
•Building your reputation
•Shows wider interest and
commitment, passion

61. Campaigning
• Hugh’s Fish Fight
– Half of all caught fish thrown back at sea –
‘discards’
- Hugh joined the campaign to stop discards
at sea

62. How did they do it?
3 nights of TV helped! Channel 4
Fish Fight
800,000 signed up to website
petition
Website encouraged Sign up to
Facebook, newsletter and
Twitter

63. 243,000 likes

64. 30,478 followers

65. • All this aimed to
– Tweet to the MEPs involved in the debate
– On the day of the debate….
– 140,000 Tweeted in support of the fight
changed the minds of the European
Parliamentary debate

66. Campaign break down
Website with
Twitter addresses

68. Look at the number of likes and shares!

69. Campaigning
• Compared to –
– Chicken-Out
• Pre-Social Media
• 160,000 signed petition online
• FishFight Campaign nominated for
BAFTA Award – new media

70. Lessons Learned
• It’s not about selling, just using media
as a way to influence big change
• Must not harm the brand. It must
reinforce it
• Build drama, get deadlines and create
events
• Decide an end date

71. How can we campaign?
• Decide if you want to set up your own
campaign or join in an existing one
• Create Facebook Group or Page
• Decide if new channel or #HashTag
• Create editorial – make it good
• Get the storyline
• Plan as a 2 year project, create
deadline, find it a home after (exit
strategy!)

72. Questions?

73. River Cottage on..
Crisis management

74. Social Media use during and after
crisis – how can it help, how can it
assist recovery of a business

75. River Cottage Crisis
Serious Fire – 7th February 2012
Badly affected HQ buildings

76. River Cottage Crisis
– Phone lines on-site were down – no
communication
• Immediate Tweets to share info (and reassure)
• Twitter became the communication channel on
which to develop key messages, share updates
and inform audiences
• Commitment to regular updates – follow-up

77. Immediate decisions on priorities
1. Safety – staff and visitors on-site
2. Support for short-term/guests arriving that
morning
3. Protecting long term bookings and
business

81. ‘Be positive’

84. Handling the media
• Gathered interest from press and TV
-local, regional, national
• Press became reliant on social media
channels for updates
• News content driven by River Cottage
staff and spokes-people
• River Cottage remained in control of
the story and used materials from
social media

86. River Cottage Crisis
• Key Social Media use
– Twitter
• Short, sharp messages and updates
• Sharing photos and messages of support
– Blog
• Narrative and explanation
• Information about bookings, what to expect

88. Business as usual – 2 weeks

92. • Social media helped
– get message out quickly, accurately,
succinctly
– Provided place for positive support and
response from public
– Allowed central resource for materials for
the Press, kept control of news stories

93. What happened?
- Follower numbers increased
–Interest and business support grew as a result
–Guest feedback on the new experience was
highly positive and supportive
–Reduced impact on business, speeded recovery
– Maintained reputation

94. Lessons Learned
• Act quickly
• Say what you will do and do it
• Provide images and video for content
• Ask followers to spread the word
• Tweet short messages – point to your
blog or website longer messages
• Video is very powerful

95. Questions?

96. Summary

97. Lessons Learned
1. ‘Learning to use social media is about
cycles’
2. ‘Our strategy? We’re about moving
people from interested to passionate’
3. ‘Point back to the website’
4. Don’t post anything unless.. It has
value, advocacy, expertise
5. ‘Social media is about content’

98. 6. ‘Engage with people’
7. ‘Monitor wisely’
8. ‘Make it fun’
9. ‘Think about when to split channels’
10. ‘Be patient’

99. Take a moment….
Consider two points from this
morning for you to take away
to either do or learn to do…
Questions?

100. Would you like help?
Our digital mentors team are here to
help you
0845 094 6108
talk@cosmic.org.uk
www.cosmic.org.uk
@cosmic_uk
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