How Amateur Competitive Eaters Can #FeedTheMovement

As mentioned in #FeedTheMovement, which you do need to read if you have not already, our #1 goal is to create and lead a movement which will significantly increase the public awareness, general popularity, and social acceptance of competitive eating and food challenges. By doing this, we will “move” the sport of competitive eating up to a similar platform that mixed martial arts, boxing, racing, poker, bodybuilding, powerlifting, bowling, pool, darts, and other smaller mainstream activities are currently on. This big new “movement” will lead to more eaters, fans, promoters, and also sponsors, which will then lead to more challenges, contests, and other competitions. Because of the much larger and more active community that we will continually grow, there will be many more & larger financial, marketing, and advertising opportunities for eaters, promoters, and sponsors alike. There will also be many more events for competitive eating fans to watch, follow, & enjoy. These changes will not happen overnight, and we definitely cannot do it alone without YOUR help. The eating community is small right now, but as the “movement” builds and gains momentum, we will all start seeing results which will help us grow at a more rapid pace. The MOVEMENT’s acceptance policy is similar to that of a septic tank which is where an eater’s food ends up (because we don’t waste food!!)… We accept anyone and anything that fits!! Thank you for your interest in joining us!! 🙂 🙂

“FEED THE MOVEMENT OR GET EATEN UP!!”

I put together a pretty general article called How Professional Eaters Can #FeedTheMovement which is geared mostly towards experienced professional eaters in the USA who are currently involved with Major League Eating and All Pro Eating and not exactly free to do whatever they want (especially MLE since they cannot participate in eating challenges or contests not sponsored by MLE). Check that out if you are interested and have not already. This article is geared towards all other eaters, both young and old, who are interested in helping us grow the sport of competitive eating through positively increasing public awareness and attitude towards the sport. Even if you have never even participated in a food challenge or eating contest yet, but are genuinely interested in becoming a competitive eater, you are still considered an amateur eater. You became one when you were a baby (beginning eater) and you were switched to baby food and then eventually started eating real food by yourself. Also, we are all amateur eaters in reality because none of us make over half of our yearly income from participating in eating competitions. Whether you are located in the USA, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, or any other country with eating competitions, and even if your country of origin does not even have eating competitions, these are important things that you can do initially to #FeedTheMovement:

How Amateur Competitive Eaters Can #FeedTheMovement

1. Learn as much as you can – You will learn a ton of information by actually training for and participating in the food challenges and eating contests, but you definitely want to learn as much as you can before you really get serious so that you don’t make a ton of unnecessary and potentially dangerous mistakes. You now have a very reliable source to learn from. I will be the first to admit that I don’t know everything there is to know, but I have learned a lot since starting in 2010. All of my experiences and things that I have learned through trial & error are documented throughout all of the over 100 articles featured in the TIPS and STRATEGIES sections. If you have questions about something food challenge & competitive eating related, there is a very high chance that your question is covered throughout one of the articles which are all labeled with very descriptive titles. If you can’t find the answer, please make sure to contact us, and then I can answer it in a future article. You are probably not the only person with that question, so you will help all of us by asking it so that I can include the answer on the site. Check out all the articles and use that information to better yourself and improve both your training regimen and strategies, along with your techniques. Then you can better help other people in the future so we can continually pass on helpful information. Way too many people are failing challenges simply because they don’t know what to do. A smarter community will lead to significantly greater, positive results in the future.

2. Share articles and information that you find helpful – Not only will this help us, but it will also encourage potential eaters & fans to get interested and involved with the community. There are millions of competitive eating fans that don’t even know they are yet. Some of those people may be in your “social media circle” and need you to spark their interest. One of the keys to our success is to start driving more traffic to the site. People can’t get involved if they don’t even know they can or where to go. The reason that there are no real competitive eating sponsors is because nobody even knows how many people are interested because there is no central place for people to go to join and follow, which then shows off the total number of people following the sport to potential sponsors. By sharing an article or page, people will click on it, and then have the chance to check out other parts of the site. Just get people to check out one page, and we will do our part to make sure they stay for a while. A larger base of followers means more potential for larger opportunities, which is what we all want!!

3. Promote small local businesses!! – If you get on YouTube and check out eating videos, you will more than likely find a bunch of videos of people eating foods from McDonald’s, Taco Bell, In-N-Out Burger, Wendy’s, Burger King, Pizza Hut, and other big-name corporate fast food restaurants. These people are doing this not only because the food is cheap, but also for YouTube views, which definitely attract more views than posting eating challenge videos (trust me, I know from experience). While it is okay of course to do food stunts like eating chicken nuggets and Big Macs every now and then, know that these corporate restaurants will never see your videos, care that you are doing them, or ever sponsor an eating competition any time soon. There would be no food challenges or eating contests if smaller restaurants were not hosting them, so we need to thank these restaurants by promoting their businesses so that they can keep their doors open and continue offering the challenges and contests that they do host. By doing this, other restaurants will take notice and create a food challenge or contest too that you will be able to compete in. That is how we grow the community, by helping the small businesses around us that host eating competitions rather than the large chain restaurants that don’t.

4. #Hashtags – If you use Facebook, Twitter, and/or Instagram, you already know all about #hashtags. We were able to file a claim through Twitter successfully and now we own @foodchallenges. Our Instagram account is @foodchallengescom. We will be posting on all of our accounts each and every day to build our followers. We will have a #challengeoftheday, #videooftheday, and we will post articles and other things, including new updates about members of the community. We will also be reaching out to people using the #hashtags related to competitive eating. Our main ones will be #feedthemovement, #foodchallenges, and #foodchallenge, but we will also check for #competitiveeating, #eatingchallenges, and #eatingcontest. Involve these when you post pictures and updates so that people searching those hashtags will see your posts, our posts, and everyone else from the community using those #hashtags. If you mention us, we will be able to retweet and help promote your posts too. Make sure that you are following us, and make sure to let us know if we are not already following you. We will only be promoting members of our community, so those eaters and promoters with us from the start will be promoted most. The more often we use these highly searched hashtags, the faster the movement will grow!!

5. Actively promote the community & eating – The most fun and productive way to #FeedTheMovement is to simply compete and participate in eating events. If there are competitions around you, attempt the food challenges and compete at the contests!! Promote the event via social media and encourage people to come beforehand, and then post the results afterwards to further promote the event and how you did. Chances are high that many of your friends & followers will take interest in what you are doing. It is rare to see positive and fun posts via social media these days, so give people something fun to follow. Pictures and posts involving food tend to get more social interaction than other posts. If you are at a smaller restaurant that doesn’t have a challenge, mention the idea to the owner or manager. Many restaurants have pondered the idea, but just have not been coaxed into actually starting a challenge. Your suggestion might just inspire them to create one!! Make sure to tell them to check out our PROMOTERS section to find out exactly what they need to do to be successful. After seeing one of your posts, a friend may ask questions or take interest in trying a challenge too. Recommend articles to them that answer their questions, and tell them to join the eating community so that we can grow!!

6. Use the resources on FoodChallenges.com – One of the easiest things you can do to help us and yourself is to use all of the applications and resources available through our website. We did not design the website with ourselves in mind, and we created it for everyone to use and benefit. We will only be promoting active members (everything is free) of the community so make sure that you have set up a legitimate profile to show off your eating achievements (challenge & contest wins). Make sure to also link your social media accounts and/or your personal website if you have one. Remember to post pictures of your challenges and events too so that people can follow you!! Not everyone following you on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram will really care, but all of your FoodChallenges.com friends definitely will!! Lastly, include links to your best YouTube videos if you have any so that people checking out your profile who don’t know you will be able to watch some of your events. We will use and cycle each video listed by our members as a #videooftheday via our daily social media posts. In addition to the social media platform, make sure to take advantage of the forums too. Feel free to post questions and comment on other people’s questions or posts. More activity in the forums shows potential sponsors and advertisers that there is a high level of interest which makes them more inclined to join in!! Your user profile is meant to serve as your “eating resume” to fans and promoters, so please let us know how we can improve it.

7. Have fun and CARE!! – People love to do things that are fun, and they might want to join in on the fun if they see you having fun. Who doesn’t love having fun eating food? Soon, we will have FoodChallenges.com apparel available to wear so that you can proudly represent and support the community at your eating events. When wearing FC clothes, wear them proudly and have fun!! If people see you having fun, they will be more likely to check out our site to see what the fun is all about. Also, show people that you truly care about what you are doing. If you don’t care about the results of your food challenge or eating contest, why should anybody else? If people in your “circle” know that you care and are passionate about what you are doing (eating), then they will be more likely to support you online and at local events. As the community really starts to build and gain momentum, more challenges, contests, and opportunities will begin to become available. Since you were working hard and improving as part of the community already, you will be able to proudly capitalize on those opportunities while knowing that you were one of the initial people that helped get the “movement” started.

** Mitch and I combine for over five dedicated and hard-working years of learning, planning, developing, and improving everything that is currently available through FoodChallenges.com. This is what we do, and we do not have other primary jobs or responsibilities. While we both have learned a lot through our experiences, we are 200% fully aware that we definitely DO NOT know everything there is to know, and we are NOT able to do everything that needs to be done in order for Team #FeedTheMovement to be successful by ourselves. We do, however, know that we are willing to go wherever and do whatever needs to be done so that we can make the “movement” successful and as large as possible. If you are seriously interested in helping us LEAD Team #FeedTheMovement by doing something we are not already doing, please contact us and let us know your ideas and how YOU can put them into action with US as a TEAM. There are ways that EVERYONE can help US though, so please read the article(s) pertaining to you which describes how YOU can really #FeedTheMovement  🙂 🙂

Thanks for reading “How Amateur Competitive Eaters Can #FeedTheMovement” and using our website!!

– About The Leaders Who Started Team #FeedTheMovement

– What FoodChallenges.com Is Doing To #FeedTheMovement

– How Professional Eaters Can #FeedTheMovement

– How Food Challenge Promoters Can #FeedTheMovement

– How Eating Contest Promoters Can #FeedTheMovement

– How Fans Of Competitive Eating Can #FeedTheMovement

– How News Media And Bloggers Can #FeedTheMovement

– How #FeedTheMovement Will Actually Work