I love snacks. Snacks are great because they’re … well, snacks. Small in size, sweet or salty. One of my favorite pieces of new media marketing vernacular is “info snacking.” For those un-indoctrinated, info snacking speaks to all of the little snack-sized bits of our story that we leave out as a sort of a bread-crumb trail leading back to our businesses in the hopes of creating stronger brand engagement. Photo albums on Flickr and Picassa, conversations begun on Facebook and MySpace, stories unraveled on blogs and YouTube — not to mention numerous Tweets. All of these are info snacks that we leave out for a culture that has gradually shifted toward an increasingly steady diet of bite-sized nuggets of content (e.g. Twitter use is up; newspaper subscriptions are down).

On my run this morning (working off more literal snacks), I thought of the work ahead of me when I returned to my desk — editing a video, writing a blog, uploading photos, tweeting across several client accounts. None of these projects resembled creating what we think of as traditional ads. And yet, I think the term ‘snacks’ can be misleading. I think the preparation of quality info snacks demands as much craft, devotion, and time as creating traditional modes of commercial messaging. And, as alluded to in our last post, you need a recipe if you want it to come out right.

Your guests are hungry. Are you leaving out enough snacks?