CYBERSPACE - In honor of March National Nutrition Month, USA Rice hosted a two-week campaign with the Healthy Aperture Blogger Network to spread the U.S. rice message and share delicious rice recipes with people across the country. The promotion kicked-off March 14 with a blog post on Healthy Aperture's website introducing the "Think Rice" theme and the ten top-level bloggers participating.
"These bloggers are comprised of both influential registered dietitians and healthy living enthusiasts, which broadens the audience exposed to our messages," said Katie Maher, director of domestic promotion programs.
Each day during the campaign, a new blog post was published featuring a unique U.S. rice recipe and stunning food photography. The posts included cooking tips, key USA Rice messages, and often a story behind the recipe. The bloggers also shared their recipes via social media using the campaign hashtag #ThinkRice.
"Nearly 30% of shoppers report that blogs impact their purchasing decision," said Maher. "So enlisting this group of powerful food and nutrition bloggers is a great way to encourage the public to think rice while enhancing USA Rice's recipe database."
In just two weeks, this blogger initiative generated more than 1.5 million impressions through the combined blog and social media posts. And to top things off, Maher points out that now USA Rice owns these healthy, on-trend recipes and images.
"It's so great to see all the different ways people think rice," said Maher. "For example, we now have two takes on risotto - one blogger created a healthy breakfast risotto with berries and another created a vegan risotto with spring vegetables. Expanding our recipe library to include rice in different meal parts like breakfast, and to offer vegan recipe ideas is exactly what we need to do to keep rice fresh and exciting."
Healthy Aperture is a nutrition food blog and photography sharing site founded, and hosted, by registered dietitians. The Healthy Aperture platform enabled USA Rice to engage with influential food and nutrition bloggers, get them cooking with U.S. rice, and educate them on important U.S.-grown rice messages that they in turn share with their readers.