Where the food enlightens emotions!

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2018 Social Media Trends

Can we really capture the shape of how social media is going to be? Thanks for the great technology, social media has been innovated so fast since it was born. Also, what is popular on social media has been changing day by day, even hours by hours. We may not really predict the whole picture of the future trend, but we may present the likelihood of what will be important next on social media.

This blog is going to synthesize the main social media trends that are predicted by organizations with great credibility in business insights and data. Most importantly, I will share my personal opinion in the end. 

1. Live Streaming Dominates 

According to SocialMediaToday research, 80% customers prefer to watch the live video than any other types of brand posts. 78% of online audience are watching video on Facebook live. Therefore, brands big and small will turn more attention to live stream in 2018. By 2020, live streaming video will account for 82% of internet traffic. 

2. Increased use of messaging platforms

Over 2.5 billion people globally use messaging platforms on social media networks. The main application includes Whatsapp (1.3 billion), Facebook messagers (1.2 billion) and Wechat (963 million). Due to the great user bases, according to entrepreneur.com, in 2018, brands are expected to invest more time and money connecting with consumers across messaging apps. And the technology of messaging apps will save $8 billion annually for business. 

3. Micro Moment Contents Become popular

Short-lived social media content (on Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat) displayed only 24 hours will dominate 2018. The trend is predicted based on the facts that over 200 million users made instagram stories every month and over 1 million advertisers are using instagram stories to place ads at least once a month. 

4. Rethinking Twitter

Twitter has lost its followers year by year. The messages of 140 characters engaging conversation seem to lose the battle of with the social media dominated with visual contents. Twitter, in 2018, will need to rethink the operation of its platform. Entrepreneur.com sees Twitter need to revamp the advertising options falling behind in the first place.

5. Trust declines, privacy matters

According to Edelman’s global study of consumer confidence, consumer trust in the media, academics, CEOs and government sunk to historic lows in 2017. With the trust declines, consumers rely more on their peers and social influencers. Additionally, after the “Cambridge analytics” scandal, the abuse of power of  Facebook and Google has arisen public concerns about online privacy. Therefore, how to better protect the online private space under the social media operation will be a heat topic in 2018. 

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Organizational Level Blogging

 This blog is going to focus on pros and cons of organizational communication to its external and internal audiences by using the blog example of National Restaurant Association.(http://www.restaurant.org/Home) 

External Vs. Internal 

The external audience refers to group of audience who share little knowledge of the organization content. While the internal audience understands the organizational background and its culture. So in order to communicate with the external audience, the blogger may need to add some common contexts on the organizational level in the posts. 

Pros Vs. Cons

For the external audience, the blog will establish credibility. Take the blog of National Restaurant Association as an example, the external audience would be future restaurant owner and culinary students. The contents toward them are about nutritional recipes and restaurant policies. Also, the posts will provide links of joining membership and events at the bottom. The content actually functions in a way to build up a stable relationship with the audiences who share the similar beliefs but lack of professional foundations.

However, the introduction of the basis of organization could be boring and uninspiring. Therefore, it is important to notice that simple but engaging contents would be the key to win their hearts.

For the internal audience, the blog can unify the community culture. On the blogs of National Restaurant Association, they share the professional and in-depth restaurant research or dining trend in the industry. Such posts will aid the internal audience, current restaurant owners or market researcher, to reinforce the identity within the same “community” every time they share the knowledge.

Look at the down side, some researches still require extra payment to be able to download the whole file. The price is always around hundreds of dollars. The internal audience might lose the interest on seeking the information in the blogs with charges, if Google, sometimes, can cover their basic research need.

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Beer is an immediate mood booster, whereas wine is a friendly emotion keeper. I listened to country songs along with this treat at home. I sweared I had nothing in mind at that moment; kept breathing the fruitful scent and getting buzzed in a way how I seek nature. ——— #foodreviewer #foodreview #zgtasting #wine #whitewine #springbreak #fruitpunch #pineapple #tnlife #alchol #love (at Knoxville, Tennessee)

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Hootsuite Certification!

Hootsuite is an intelligent social media management platform. It is efficient for people working in communication area. I, ad major me, was glad that I got it certificated during this Spring break. Tap continue reading, to explore more how Hootsuite assists for the analytics, posts and engagement on social media. 

Analytics 

Online analytics set up the foundation of online communication. Any business or brand, who wants to promote its product or service, first of all, needs to understand the target audience; basically the demographics, the psychographics and the consumer’s journey. 

Hootsuite Board function provides the real-time overviews of Instagram, Twitter and Facebook performances. It concludes the insight of audience, how they interact (click, share, comment, like) the posts, and the performances of the published contents. Of course, the best ways to perceive psychographics and joineries are going to uncover their actions toward the social media posts and how they use social media through out the day. Hootsuite holds all those information and convert it into metrics. We can create as many as metrics we want under the function of Hootsuite Board. Devoting to offer simple convergent of data, Hootsuite could gather complicated analytics into the easily readable charts, such line or bar charts. Moreover, the Hootsuite data hunting is based on the whole internet worldwide. It can show clicks by region and country. Also, the analytics could share with the whole immediately. 

Posts

The most fancy function of Hootsuite is the highly efficiency of generating posts across the multiple social media. Once we connect the social media accounts to Hootsuite, we can make them all posting by just one composing under Hootsuite. Often time, managing social media does require continuous communication efforts. Hootsuite Bulk Composer could schduel 350 posts ahead of time. The scheduling function covers the date and time, content and links. The social media schedule could be presented into a calendar view. The whole team members who have permission to edit can improve the schedule any time. Most importantly, we just don’t stick with our computers all the time. Hootsuite also supports same function on its own mobile app. Just one moment chilling with coffee, we can make the posts on-the-go. 

Engagement 

So for the connection building and engaging, Hootsuite, as well, does an amazing job. It allows to search the hashtags, location, mentions, profiles related to the theme we set. Then, we can engage with people who share the similar interests with us through out different social media platforms. Take my food Instagram account @zgtasting as an example. I want to engage the audience who live the same city as I live. Firstly, I can do the geosearch and set up the radius I want to reach. Then, I can search the hashtags related to food using in my area. I can use the similar hashtags to get more exposure of posts. I also can comment, like and share their contents in order to engage them and draw their attention back to my feeds. Those food influencers are not just out of there, by getting familiar with who they are and how they do food posts, I can learn and understand the popular trends in my area. 

                             “Social media is about people not logos“

                                                          The End

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Estoy Zgtasting, Florida!

                                      {Jan 4th-8th, 2018} Orlando, FL

Hola, the state of sunshine! The climate change made you feel like 40 (F), but it never chilled down your humanity. I enjoyed the FOOD side of the humanity. Food and I always stick with each other in every corner of the world. So, for this post, I am going to share the multicultural food experience at Orlando, FL.

Seafood

I was in Disney Magic Kingdom during the day experiencing a brutal crowds on the first, I decided to treat myself at night with the advantage as the coast city, fresh seafood! I want to highlight SHRIMP here @Red Lobster (9892 International Dr, Orlando, FL).

I ordered shrimp cocktail as the appetizer and seafood plate with grilled salmon, shrimp and lobster as the entree. (DON’T judge me, It was a healing trip after a hard breakup lol). So, two of dishes had shrimps. The appetizer one tasted like “first love”. It was lightly boiled shrimp, sweet and chewy. Alike first love, the shrimp was simply cooked without any “dramas”. But the ocean feeling of being a seafood got me excited, because it was so pure and straight; a perfect expression of “it is it is”, the self-evident way of the real nature. The grilled shrimp of my entree was in a different style. The smoky feeling on the shrimp just gave its a taste of maturity. Then, the melted butter blended the freshness into the smoky taste well. 

Hispanic Cruise

Florida is proud of its Hispanic culture. One of the best way to dig it out is from the food. The second and the third day, I dined in two different Mexican restaurants. It was very interesting to discover the presentation of the Hispanic food.The Hispanic entree was alike a old couple. All ingredients were “smart” enough to keep a good distance in one dish but without totally separating with each other. The Hispanic cruise did not pile up sauce, meat and rice. They showed directions and clues of how I could start eating. You know, old couples had nice guideline of being along well together. 

Each Hispanic entree fries at least one thing containing heavy starch, such as Brazilian bananas or corn cakes. The fried veggies were like a strong male role in one relationship, they were full-filling and seasoning in a good balance. They were “experienced” to handle all appetites, such as nutrition needs, or feeling extreme empty, which were similar to women’s emotions in a relationship. 

Sweets

Finally desserts! I want to keep doing storytelling of my favorite Hispanic dessert, creme brulet! It had a hard sugar shell on the top of a creamy pudding. I was so careful to break the shell. I knew it was thin and was ready to be surprised of the inside. It was like a new couple who was in the early stage of a relationship. They tried to figure out more about each other but with great cations. Then, I spooned in the creamy pudding. The pudding was silky and milky. This phase was after the cautious attempts, the couple crazily fell in love with each other. They were happily together and became romantically untied. It was 100% percent heaven feeling. 

LOOK! FOOD is always a bound to our EMOTIONS! Come and stop by to check more food stories on my instagram account @zgtasting ;) 

Peace and Love, guys!

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Serving with a caring heart;)#zgtasting #sushi #knoxvillerestaurants #foodreview #foodreviewer #tn #connection #food and #people #chef #devotion #humanity #personality #asianfood

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I love the dish with great balance of its taste and texture;) #lobsterlove #asianfood #foodreview #zgtasting

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What is Social Media?

Google literally knows everything. But it does not always look good to me. I just googled the definition of social media; social media more narrowly defined includes only channels for user-generated content, as distinguished from platforms, which are referred to as social technologies. Oh, wow! Thanks, google! It is impressed, but please, at least, make some sense to me. 

For me, first, social media is a platform of personal branding. We represent ourselves and express ourselves. Everyone is unique, we use own context to share the perspectives in this worldwide net public place. We are brands of ourselves. We shine differently. That is what makes social media so intriguing. Once we set up mind to a theme, we need to maintain and be consistent with the theme.Take food catalog on Instagram as an example. @factsoffood provides daily food nutritional facts. The feeds are clean and content-centered. Whereas @_foodstories_ are a foodstylist and photographer couple，they shoot their food “at the moment” of life, presenting love and harmony to the world. @foodstarz_offical is a place to share the best images of chefs and homecooks. It maintains the high-end style (the art of plating) of each picture. There are also foodie travelers. @Modgam travels all over the world, and introduces people amazing food with the best price in one specific city. @fullyrawkristina posts her travel photos separately with her food photos. Moreover, she reveals her vegan food style and sometimes teaches people her recipe. @Paigingun is a video based account teaching people dessert but Thai sweets only.

Secondly, I see social media is a place where the equality glows. The equality can be implied to two aspects: a. it is a mutual way of communication. There is no hierarchy among average public and celebrities. b. social media advocates the voice of the minority/disadvantage groups. Well, aspect A sounds silly. Of course, we all know how to make a post through social media; we all know how to connect and expand networks on social media; we all know how to gain information on social media of personal interests. Right, they are the plain facts of social media. I am a food blogger I will, still, make “food” as an example. Let’s say Gordon Ramsay shared his perfect burger recipe on Youtube. Foodies found it out, and commented on his recipe, either like or dislike. On the other side, foodies also can make a burger video and share with Gordon Ramsay.  We can deal with the same actions on social media. As for aspect B, I have to say it is of great importance to the society. Social media has opened up virtual spaces that bypass traditional gatekeepers. People in a disadvantage group could speak out voice and gather support through social media, doing protests for the rights. 

Now you are on social media with me @zgtasting! Yes, I am doing my personal brand and I love it! I love how social media presents the great opportunity to let me spread my thoughts. I wan to share my lovely moments with you and get you inspired. Great food is not just out of there, it just pleases us in such a natural way. That is all what I am doing about, not eating the food but feeling the food! It will speak to us;)

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About Me

Hello, world! I am so thrilled to actually run my own blog. My name is Xiaojia Zeng, a Master’s student at the University of Tennessee, studying advertising. Well, my name does not sound like an American at all. Right! I am “made in China”. I really enjoy what I have been doing here in the States. It is the right place to me to just absorb and immerse in the diversity of culture, which keeps me, as an ad folk, an open mind.  I want to go further in strategic communication in the food industry after graduation, either a non-profit organization or profit company. I understand that advertising is powerful. So, people’s perception toward food could be easily influenced by the advertising message. However, some trendy advertising of food just promotes whatever helps the profits instead of advocating healthy diet in an ethical way. I am passionate to speak the voice of dietary balance. Also, I personally enjoy different food a lot. It is always exciting for me to work with a food brand. As a Master’s student, I did research in Chinese fast food chain’s advertising in the US. I developed strategic communication plan for IZZE. I made qualitative research for Sun-Rype fruit strip to study consumer behavior. I wrote the whole advertising campaign for the Subway brand. My experiences working with food brands just identify the career goal which I really love doing and what I really want to do.  Stepping further of my advertising career, I dream about building my own food brand. I believe each restaurant or a kind of food should be unique.  Therefore, I am going to share the food experience in my blog. I open to all kinds of cuisine. It could be a dish I tried in a restaurant, or lovely home-cooking by my friends or myself. I want to share the moment when the taste of food enlightens my emotion in a positive way. I remember how the simply fresh taste of an organic strawberry could make my day. I can feel how the farmer takes care of the strawberry in the most natural way, so does how I feel when I try an amazing dish. I like how people show their personality to each plate they make. Every plate is the story of a person. They are artists in life. I appreciate how they bring their life wisdom and incorporate into a dish as an aesthetic expression. It is a way of sharing love and happiness, at the same time, being persistent to just be the real self. However, sometimes I could be harsh to the dish which upsets me, having no emotion connection with it. For instance, a dish does not keep a good tradition or a dish which is so conservative instead of focusing on improving the consumer’s experiences.  I will update the blog weekly. I want to be recognized as a food writer. With the reputation, then, I would build my own food brand once I decide where I want to go in the food industry. It could be a brand for my wine or a brand for my restaurant. Please also check out my Instagram account @Zgtatsing.  I love you guys! XOXO