Be A Chef: Blue Apron Social Media Monitoring Part 1

I love to cook, but have always been a little apprehensive about trying new recipes. I've never quite got the hang of what spices compliment certain flavors and have been hesitant to try unfamiliar ingredients. Now that I'm a newlywed and have received all sorts of fancy new cooking gadgets it's time to step up my cooking game. I mean really, how many times can I subject my husband to boring pasta or frozen pizza? And less we forget about the planning and effort it takes to put together 7 meals a week.  It's super time consuming, slightly stressful and it tends to get expensive. 

I was hesitant when my husband suggested we try Blue Apron, it seemed like another subscription box service that in the long run would be more hassle and more expensive than it was worth. People always say that the key to a successful marriage is admitting when you are wrong, and I'm happy to admit I was wrong about Blue Apron.

About Blue Apron

 Blue Apron is a New York based start up that began in 2012. The concept is simple, people are strapped for time but want to make healthy and affordable home cooked meals. Step into the spotlight, Blue Apron. Blue Apron's mission is to make cooking fun and easy with it's a once-a-week food subscription service. Blue Apron delivers step-by-step recipes and all the fresh ingredients you need to create three delicious meals a week. Currently, Blue Apron estimates that it sends out enough ingredients to create 800,000 meals per month.

For the past four weeks, I have been collecting quantitative and qualitative date on the social media presence of Blue Apron meals. In addition to reviewing their website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, I used IceRocket, Social Mention, Addict-o-matic and Google Trends for more analytical data.

Blue Apron and Social Media

Blue Apron Website

If you aren't a subscriber of Blue Apron, you still have access to plenty of content.  There is a blog focusing on three main topics of cooking: Eat, Learn and Live, as well as video demonstrations including how to control the heat of your jalapenos or how to supreme an orange. Blue Apron enthusiasts can also subscribe to their YouTube channel or cook along with Blue Apron on Wednesday nights by following them on Facebook with #BAlive cook.

For members of Blue Apron, you can manage the type of plan you are on through your online account. Blue Apron offers a vegetarian or pescetarian option, as well as plans for people who love both meat and fish. Blue Apron can also accommodate some dietary restrictions such as no shellfish, no red meat, no pork or no fish.

Through your online account you can also follow your meal delivery with this handy calendar.  The calendar charts out your delivers for the coming weeks and outlines the recipes that you can look forward to. If you see a recipe that you are not interested in, or if you are going to be out-of-town - you can opt out of a week of deliveries, by simply marking the calendar with a "skip this week".  

In an effort to spread the Blue Apron distribution, longtime members can earn "free weeks" to be shared with friends and families that are considering becoming Blue Apron members.    

Facebook

Blue Apron has a very healthy following on Facebook with over 540k likes. They are also very consistent with posting updates.  Their Facebook page will share a post at least once per day but most days have multiple posts. Typically, these posts are about what's on the menu that week for members, but they also engage members asking for feedback on the recipes and also share tips and best practices for how to prepare certain ingredients. Blue Apron encourages member feedback and many times members comment to other members about their thoughts on a particular meal. Blue Apron is also consistent and quick when it come to responding to user comments, however the responses are generally very short and don't engage the user any further

Twitter

The @blueapron twitter handle is also heavily followed with over 20,000 followers, a less popular following then Facebook, but just as active. With multiple posts per day, the content is more focused on cooking tips and promotional information, like their partnership last week with Bravo's Top Chef:

Big news! Watch @BravoTopChef on Oct.15 at 10/9c & have the winning recipe delivered. Sign up: http://t.co/FBNy2mz4hz pic.twitter.com/uCszcUzEVa
— Blue Apron (@blueapron) October 12, 2014

Similar to their presence on Facebook, Blue Apron also uses their twitter handle to reply to member feedback and issues like this tweet below:

@katninetails Sorry about that, Nina. Definitely reach out to us at contact@blueapron.com, we'll make it right.
— Blue Apron (@blueapron) October 10, 2014

For what I observed, Blue Apron did respond to both negative and positive feedback in a timely manner showing that they have a dedicated force monitoring their brand on social media.

Instagram

Another large following with over 115,000 followers and 553 posts. The most popular use of Blue Apron on Instagram is actually driven by IG users with the Blue Apron signature hashtag #BAChef . Blue Apron encourages members to share pictures of their blue apron boxes, ingredient and meals they've prepared by uploading the photo to Instagram and adding the hashtag #BAChef. Here's a shameless plug for one of my pictures with my "sous-chef":

As we all know, there is nothing more popular on Instagram then sharing pictures of your food and Blue Apron has tapped into this trend. Blue Apron not only encourages member participation with sharing these photos on Instagram, but also uses this tool as a way to get their brand out there with people taking about it. #BAChef is not only a great way to brag about the amazing food you've prepared but it's also encourages word of month and conversation between your group of followers.

Analytical Data Observations

Addict-o-matic

Addict-o-matic is a search tool that "instantly creates a custom page with the latest buzz on any topic".  I found that I was able to produce more relative results when I searched "Blue Apron Meals" rather then just "Blue Apron".

It's important to note that Addict-o-matic does not take into account content from Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, so it's difficult to see what Blue Apron's true social media presence is by only looking at Addict-o-matic. However, from the Blue Apron buzz that is provided, it's clear that Blue Apron is talked about in a positive manner.

Social Mention

According to their website, "Social Mention is a social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user generated content from across the universe into a single stream of information".

Social Mention measures four metrics:

• Strength: the likelihood that a brand is being discussed in social media
• Sentiment: the ratio of mentions that are generally positive to those that are negative
• Passion: the likelihood that individuals talking about your brand will do so repeatedly
• Reach: the measure of the range of influence

Week to week the numbers seem to remain consistent, except for the weeks of October 13th and October 20th where Blue Aprin saw a spike in strength. These weeks coincide with Blue Apron's announcement about their partnership with Top Chef, so I believe this may explain the increase. Overall the sentiment seems to remain level with the positive and neutral mentions highly outweighing the negative.

Ice Rocket

Ice Rocket allows users to monitor their brand on social media by specializing in real-time searches. Their "Big Buzz" feature allows users to search blogs, Twitter and Facebook all from one page.

This graph from Ice Rocket shows the Daily Blogs Citation Tread of the term "Blue Apron" from the week of September 21 through the week of October 19th. It's tough to determine where the different spikes and declines originated from, my best guess is that Blue Apron spikes on days their boxes are delivered (Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday) and declines on non-delievery days. 

The term Blue Apron averages just over 8 posts per day. For comparative purposes, I looked up how many posts Blue Apron's main competitor Plated averaged per day and they came in at an average of 6.70 posts per day- just slightly behind Blue Apron.

Google Trends

Google Trends shows the user how often a particular search-term is entered based off the total search volume. Google Trends offers an excellent way for the user to step back and see how their brand trends over a given time period. For the graph below I selected the dates of January 2012 ( a rough estimate of when Blue Apron was getting it's feet off the ground) through today - October 2014.

As we can see Blue Apron has had steady growth throughout the past almost 3 years, with some small dips here and there- yet they always seem to recover.

Is Blue Apron ready to graduate from a social media sous-chef?

Overall, it appears that Blue Apron has a fairly strong and positive presence on social media. They have clearly committed time and effort to monitoring their brand, which shows that they care about what people are saying- and eating.  Now let's get cooking and be a chef!