What strategies do gastro-influencers follow?

Dr Mária Törőcsik, a professor at the University of Pécs and Míra Mohr, an economist behind the Süti MáMohr blog and self-proclaimed gastro rock star, did a qualitative survey on the market attitudes of Hungarian online opinion leaders. They made 11 in-depth interviews with key players in the market of gastro-communication. For instance one of the bloggers shares recipes on YouTube, and we can know another from the television screen. There is one who has lots of followers on Instagram and TikTok, and one of the influencers is a gastro-blogger. Two from the 11 interviewees live off being bloggers, so they don’t have another job. Four of them are entrepreneurs in the sector, this is their main job, but they also work for others – not only on their own platforms. Five of them have a job in other sectors, they are active in gastro-communication in their free time.

Mirtill Bodolai:

“I think one has to realise what kind of people they would like to reach with their content. It took me a while to find my audience, but I found out that many people – just like me – love retro recipes, the one’s our parents cooked from when we were little.”

Digitalisation, innovations

The algorithms used by Instagram have been designed to give users the most optimal experience, so much so that there is no Jolly Joker strategy for being successful on this platform. It is very difficult to reach the target audience, but sometimes it is also very easy – this unpredictability causes the biggest problem for professional account holders. Three of the interviewees said the appearance of TikTok and the proliferation of short-form videos have resulted in quality deterioration. Six of the influencers opined the market is seasonal: autumn and winter are the peak periods and there is a decline in summer and winter.

Beáta Nagy-Pojdin:

“There is always a weaker period in the summer, and I think this is because people like to be outside and they travel in the summer. The beginning of the year is also very difficult, after the holidays. Then from March things get better and better as Easter is approaching.”

Gréta Kapunics:

“My observation is that my audience is the least active in spring and summer. (…) In the autumn people like to stay at home and bake cakes very much, and of course there is Christmas, when my reach is rising linearly.”

In the saturated market of the food industry, it isn’t enough to tell consumers that the given product is really tasty. Advertisers are focusing more and more on emotions instead of communicating taste.

Zsófia Böröcz:

“Education is my main mission, because I am not a showwoman. I do understand how and why things are happening in the media, but I can’t identify with these things. For me communication is first and foremost about education.”

Two gastro-influencers mentioned entertainment, and another two said they simply tell the name of the cake and the recipe – they don’t add colour to their communication with any attributes. The survey has found no relationship between the number of followers and the type of communication used.

Word-of-mouth advertising in online communities

We can conclude that the two full-time bloggers manage their activities more professionally, and it seems that that they are making great efforts not only to preserve their competitive advantage, but also to make it bigger. Having a large number of followers isn’t a prerequisite of working in this field full-time, but in this case the influencer must also do other things than just blogging, e.g. photography, marketing, etc. However, having many followers is essential for being a full-time blogger and living off one’s own platform only. The majority of the interviewees think that innovative nature of the market is generated by the supply side, and those who are active in this field should calculate with the weaker periods (summer, beginning of the year) when planning their marketing strategies. //

Bebepiskóta

Beáta Nagy-Pojdin