Midyear Results from Influencer Program Point to Increasing Consumer Engagement

 
Avocado Sushi Boats
Avocado Sushi Boats - just one of the many influencer recipes featuring U.S. rice
Jan 15, 2025
ARLINGTON, VA – Like any great recipe, good things come from tasty combinations.  The USA Rice partnership with thefeedfeed, the largest digital food community, continues to prove to be one such combination.  For the past six years, USA Rice has organized a network of food influencers through its relationship with thefeedfeed to develop new rice recipes, distribute industry talking points, showcase different rice varietals, and engage with consumers throughout the year.

The influencer program with thefeedfeed kicked off in September for National Rice Month (NRM) with a “Trending Tuesday” weekly story series.  This sponsorship ran throughout the month, highlighting four different recipes using U.S.-grown rice created in partnership with an influencer: Brown Butter Puffed Rice Krispie, Crispy Rice Salad, Avocado Sushi Boats, and Chicken Teriyaki Rice Bowls.  Together, these sponsored posts have generated more than 2.1 million consumer impressions. 

All four posts were amplified across thefeedfeed digital ecosystem, promoted through an email newsletter, added to the thinkrice.com recipe database, and will live in perpetuity on thefeedfeed.com.  Overall, the “Trending Tuesday” sponsorship in 2024 was a great success, boasting a reach of 23.2 M.
 
Throughout the year, USA Rice will deploy eleven thefeedfeed influencers to share twelve posts total.  To date, five of these have been shared and include Chicken Katsu Curry, Spicy Crab Rolls, French Onion Risotto, Kimchi Rice Balls, Fall Fried Rice, and Claypot Rice (Bo Zai Fan). 

“The goal of the influencers’ posts is to promote U.S.-grown rice to a wide-ranging audience as they generate organic engagement by showcasing their favorite ways to cook with and enjoy rice,” said Cameron Jacobs, USA Rice vice president of domestic promotion.  "These strong midyear results highlight how receptive these audiences are to content featuring easy to make rice recipes along with unexpected ways to use rice.  This program continues to make a difference in getting the word out on the U.S.-grown difference to as many people as possible."

At the midway point, this program has generated 3.3M direct engagements (already surpassing the program goal of 2.5M by 32.4 percent) and 36.9M consumer impressions.