Influence of social media: How a salted egg yolk croissant crashed one blog
Over the past two weeks, one topic has been making rounds on Facebook News Feeds of Malaysians and Singaporeans. A blog review of a molten salted egg yolk croissant from a Malaysian bakery went viral, and sparked a frenzy online and offline.
The bakery saw long lines of customers eager to snatch up the pastry. The blogger who wrote about it, Rebecca Saw (@wackybecky), had her site crash on 23 November, days after publishing the post. She had 50,000 visitors, up from her daily average traffic of 10,000. On Facebook, where she first shared her post, it had over 19,000 social shares.
Rebecca said she was surprised when she first found out. “It wasn’t my first viral story, though earlier stories didn’t have as much traction as this has now. This croissant went all the way to Singapore, Sarawak, etc, but earlier articles was within Peninsular Malaysia. I believe that’s because everyone is more open to sharing on Facebook now,” she said.
One reason why her story went viral was the food porn factor, according to Rebecca. “I think it has to do with that one picture where the custard was flowing out. Nothing beats food porn, really. People would be interested to find out where the cafe is once they heard of this croissant, but seeing the link shared with that particular photo was it,” she said.
Rebecca, who runs a digital strategy agency, said that she did not have a particular strategy for the post. She usually includes popular keywords in her articles and includes the best photo when sharing on social media. “That is the key for people to be interested to read and share,” she said.
Good reviews vs bad reviews
Social media can be a double-edged sword. The same tool that brought a lot of customers was also what led to many customers staying away from the shop.
Many who joined the queues shared their experiences online, most were complaints such as changing the time of when the croissants would be ready for sale without prior notice, and only informing customers of the quantity they can buy when they were at the cashier. This resulted in many who queued for hours only to find out that the product was sold out.
The cafe tried to apologize and told customers to check for updates on their social media accounts, however many customers pointed out that not everyone had a Facebook account or was social media savvy, reported SAYS.com.
More people are reading reviews online
Social media has changed the way people make decisions. In a study done by search and SEO agency Bright Local on consumers in North America, they found that more people read reviews online (4% increase from 2014 to 92%) over the past five years, and 80% of respondents trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Also many consumers read up to 10 reviews before making a decision.
It is a shift from the past where traditional celebrities such as movie stars and singers often endorse products to attract customers. Now, social media personalities and regular folk have their voices heard by strangers on the Internet.
Rebecca gets a lot of feedback from her readers, most usually recommend her other similar places to visit. She also follows other bloggers like Sean from Eat Drink KL, mostly to keep abreast of what’s new in the Kuala Lumpur food scene. For actual food recommendations, she prefers to stick with her group of foodie friends.
“We have similar tastebuds, and thus the feedback exchanged among ourselves are more ‘trustworthy’ to me, since I know they are as anal as I am,” she said.
And the verdict on the croissant…
As for the salted egg croissants, Rebecca brought over some for the migme office in Singapore to try. Granted it had survived a plane ride and was eight hours since it left the oven, the pastry wasn’t as fluffy as in the photos. However, the salted egg filling was generously piped in to give a good ratio between pastry and salted egg filling.
Was it worth crashing the website and the online drama? Maybe.
- by @nattylim
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