Mallorie Rosenbluth is the Head of Social Media at Grubhub, a food delivery service that allows consumers to order from their favorite restaurants and get it delivered right to their doors. With a decade of in-house agency experience, Mallorie has held a variety of food-related marketing roles and was a recipient of the Social Media Society’s Social Media Star Award, among other accolades. She also co-authored the second edition of the New York Time’s bestseller “Likeable Social Media.”
At Grubhub, Mallorie leads the social media efforts to bring tasty and entertaining content to their more than 1.3M Facebook fans, 201K Twitter followers and 40K Instagram followers. With such large followings and a small team, Mallorie tells us how Grubhub plans their editorial calendar, how that content is created and why hesitation is toxic in the world of social media.
What are the biggest challenges of your current role?
Mallorie: I think most people in the social media space would say the same thing – time and resources! There are so many interesting, innovative, and exciting platforms and features across the social media space. Unfortunately, there just aren’t enough hours in the day or hands on a team to test every single one of them. It’s incredibly important to set your strategy, and then focus and prioritize the tactical pieces of your plan. Once that’s all said and done, it doesn’t often leave room to do much else. We try to follow the 80/20 rule – 80 percent of what you do is part of the plan and 20 percent is test and learn. But even that 20 percent doesn’t come close to covering all that’s possible.
In this post, you state that only 30 percent of your content is created internally. Because the rest of Grubhub’s content is dependent on users, employees and influencers, how do you plan your social media calendar?
Our social media and editorial calendars, overall, are set at least a month in advance with higher level content thematics that we develop individual content pieces around. Whether we’re shooting that content ourselves or not, it doesn’t matter. We stay consistent with our thematics when we’re sourcing content from the community or employing influencers to shoot for us. Having defined monthly themes ultimately allows us to provide direction to our content creators and content sources, and ensures we have consistency across platforms.
What types of content do you create internally and how is it typically used?
We shoot for things like food holidays (we’re looking at you, National Chicken Wing Day) or broader-based themes like our summer series “Eat Like You’re There,” which is all about taking a vacation through food when you can’t jet set around the globe. We also take our data around popular and trending foods and shoot that internally. We try to shoot our own content internally when we’re using it across not only social, but our blog and on our website and app as well.
Grubhub has some pretty entertaining posts. Is there a group brainstorming process involved or is there one master creator of funny pizza posts?
Our brainstorms are the best! Formally, we’re meeting weekly to discuss all things social and editorial content, as well as monthly to align on those broader themes. Informally, we’re talking and Slacking throughout the day as inspiration strikes. The team loves not only social media, but also food in general, so we have lots of ideas. Whether we’ve read an article on the commute in about the hottest pizza fad or tested out getting ice cream delivered during a weekend heatwave (pro-tip: best idea ever), inspiration constantly strikes.
How is your social media team structured and why does it work?
Our team is small, but we accomplish a lot. I manage three people who handle social, influencer and editorial content. We have clear swim lanes and accountabilities to ensure we’re able to work efficiently. We also collaborate on things like brainstorm sessions and monthly/quarterly reports to make sure we work effectively.
One thing we see a lot of organizations struggle with is execution. Brands get excited about the social media strategy but struggle to implement it. What do you see as the key to putting a strategy into action?
At some point, you have to just do it. A lot of teams will build an entire strategy around a new feature and by the time they’re done discussing Instagram Polls (for instance), the feature has been around for two weeks and it’s old news. Sometimes, you have to know when to stop talking and just go out there and do it. You’ll get more insights from the real world, even if you fail, than you ever will trying to guess how people will react. Social media moves fast, so you have to as well.
What’s the best piece of career or social media marketing advice you’ve received?
Check what accounts you’re logged in to. With both your personal and business accounts linked up to the same devices, the ultimate fear is tweeting or posting something you meant to do from your personal accounts on your brand ones. You’ll never be sorry you double checked!
[Related: 8 Common Social Media Marketing Fails]
BONUS! What toppings are on your favorite slice of pizza?
We have a lot of conversation about this around our office! I’m a huge fan of the very controversial pineapple, and I love my pizza loaded with toppings. My perfect pie: pineapple, banana peppers, sausage, onions, and mushrooms. And you gotta have a side of ranch for dipping. You can @ me on that one.
Catch Mallorie present at the Social Media Strategies Summit in New York on Oct. 11.
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