Week 2: A Conversation with Guest Speakers Babette Pepaj and Jeremy Pepper by Teona Gamtsemlidze
By UCLA X469.21 Student Teona Gamtsemlidze
It was so exciting to have a discussion with our Week 2 guest speakers — Babette Pepaj, founder of BakeSpace and the TECHmunch Conference, and Jeremy Pepper, social media and communications manager at the University of Southern California. From the moment they arrived, our classroom was filled with their positive energy, humor and enthusiasm.
Babette created bakespace.com back in 2006 as the first food-themed social network to connect people who are passionate about food and cooking. Users can post, browse and swap recipes and create their own digital cookbooks. The site even includes a section to find unique kitchen items from around the globe. Do you wanna check out the World’s Best Cupcake Frosting Kit? You can find it at bakespace! Then in 2010, Babette created TECHmunch, the traveling conference for culinary content creators and food influencers.
One thing is clear: Babette’s recipe for the ongoing success of bakespace.com and TECHmunch is her passion for what she’s doing, along with her absolute dedication and amazing social media skills.
Babette discussed a TECHmunch event she produced for Princess Cruises to illustrate ways to activate influencers and generate measurable results, By expanding a food tasting event with Chef Curtis Stone into an Instagram workshop and photo contest, she inspired the 50 invited influencers to post high-quality content that resonated with their followers. The event was a huge success! In just the first 24 hours, 267 Instagram stories, 171 Instagram photos and countless tweets resulted in 60 million impressions! In addition to creating lots of buzz, the event turned into a PR opportunity with significant earned media coverage (see the KTLA story here)!
Lesson learned: An effective way to engage influencers is to give them something of value. In this case, it was an opportunity to dine with a celebrity chef and learn how to take better food photos.
A few other important factors to consider when working with influencers include:
- Identify what type of influencers you need (bloggers, vloggers, Instagrammers, etc.)
- Understand their audience and verify their followers/level of influence by using platforms like twitteraudit.com and igaudit.io
- Make sure they post consistent messaging across all platforms
During the second half of the discussion, Babette and Jeremy shared a few practical tools for visual storytelling via various social platforms.
Instagram:
- Plan your story – use the upload feature to add photos you took in the last 24 hours
- Use the “archive” buttons to help tell your brand’s story
- Use screen capturing software to save Instagram Stories from other users
- Use a tracker like hashtracking.com to capture your tweets and Instagram posts from an event
- Create and schedule Instagram stories from your desktop using storrito.com
- Make Instagram story templates through the Unfold app and Canva
Facebook:
- Use believe.tv and Zhiyun tech kits to create Facebook live videos
Snapchat:
- Build geo filters using filter builders like snapchat.com/create, pepperfilters.com or Snapchat lens: lensstudio.snapchat.com
Linkedin:
- Stream live video using Wowza live streaming software, and follow hashtags
Thanks Babette and Jeremy for sharing so much valuable knowledge!
