Spreading the Word Via TikTok: A Viable Platform for Farmers?
February 8, 2022 TikTok intrigues me. Not necessarily in a good way, but I’m willing to give the video-focused social networking service a look, especially after listening to Shay Myers, the CEO of Owyhee Produce, a vegetable farm in Parma, ID.
Speaking at a Produce Marketing Association (PMA) webinar, the third-generation grower advised his peers how to best share their stories with Gen Z post-Millennials born between 1997 and 2012.
Myers, 41, has been creating content on social media since 2007. On TikTok alone he has 378,000 followers. His videos (hundreds of them) have garnered 5.6 million “likes.” More than a million people have viewed some of his videos, including one 45-second clip that boasts 4.1 million views. Who knew so many people would be struck by the fact their onions were in storage for up to a year? Myers didn’t.
“In my mind I was just talking about, ‘Hey, we store certain items in North America because of the latitude we live at. It’s a common practice.’ But the consumer was very surprised by something that was extremely common sense to me,” he says.
Therein lies a cornerstone strategy toward TikTok success, Myers says.
“Ultimately what led me to TikTok and the power of the on-the-moment type of content was the realization of the new people coming into produce,” he says. “A lot of us assume that, if we’re in produce, we come from a produce family or that we’ve come from some part of the produce industry, and we understand the subtleties and nuances of the industry. And that’s not true. It’s very, very untrue, and it’s a poor assumption that we make as brands and marketers.”
Other TikTok tips, according to Myers:
Personality is essential: “There are folks who create phenomenal content and have zero personality. It’s not that the person doesn’t have the personality necessarily. It might be that they’re trying to position it as a company. People don’t want to follow companies. They want to connect with an individual and not just a brand.”
Have a purpose: “I get really frustrated by the demonization of agriculture, the demonization of farmers. We’ve been so often misrepresented that I felt I had to step up and make sure to tell our story from our point of view. We all need to be doing that.”
Any content is good content: “Perfect is the enemy of the good. (We have) plenty of videos, plenty of content — that is out there forever — that is imperfect. But if I’ve learned anything by being a content creator, it’s that you have no idea which videos are going to go viral. Sometimes I’ll just pull my phone out and rant on something or love on something, and a million views later you’re, like, ‘How did that happen?’”
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