Make The Most Of Social Media For Your Business
March 10, 2015 Anyone who grows produce for a living knows that production is only half the story. You can’t stay in business unless you can sell the products of your hard work.
Rick Snyder
No matter how good you are, you have to move product out the door to make it in this business.
Most sales of truck crops, i.e. fruits and vegetables grown on the farm, are made through wholesale channels or via a variety of direct marketing channels. Many growers have found the perfect combination between wholesale and retail that works best for their farm.
Direct marketing includes retail sales at the farm or greenhouse, farmers’ markets, CSAs, buying clubs, etc. The same is true of greenhouse tomato growers, and other greenhouse crop producers. Actually, greenhouse vegetable growers may have an edge in selling directly to restaurants, as well.
In order to market and sell produce you must be able to get along with all kinds of people. This, as we know, is not always the case, even with the best growers. The solution in many farm businesses is to have one person designated as the marketing agent. That person must have the right kind of personality for dealing with customers.
Social Media Marketing
In addition to being able to deal with the public, the person designated to handle marketing must also know how to use social media: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
According to a recent Pew research report (http://pewrsr.ch/1CWJmF9), 77% of Americans use Facebook, 63% use YouTube, 22% use Twitter, 24% use Google Plus, and 26% use LinkedIn. This is based on the 89% of Americans who have access to the Internet.
Everyone is marketing something in each of these formats. Many times, it is matter of marketing yourself — as with LinkedIn — which helps people network in the business community and find jobs.
Social media is just another tool for marketing your products, whether they are fruits, vegetables, or anything else. People are online more and more and much of that is via social media.
Using Facebook For Event Promotion
The Greenhouse Tomato Short Course, which I organize, was held March 3-4 in Raymond, MS, and is promoted through all of the traditional channels available to University Extension specialists. Yes, that means most promotion is free since paid advertis-ing is not part of the picture for Extension programs.
This year was different. We experimented using paid advertising on Facebook to promote the conference, hoping to get a substantial boost in participation over last year.
So how did this work? First of all, a new page had to be created, which was done on Nov. 3. After that, several days were spent creating content for the page, so there was something to look at and learn from upon launch.
On Nov. 7, the paid ads began. These had to be carefully crafted to attract people who would be interested in the training at the short course rather than those interested in recipes, home gardening, eating at nice restaurants, etc.
We want people who want to commercially grow greenhouse vegetables. This takes a careful strategy to both attract a wide audience, yet filter out those who are unlikely candidates for training. This took weekly fine-tuning and adjustments to make it work better.
Final results are not yet in, but within one week after launch the page went from zero likes to more than 1,000. Ten days after ad launch it had 1,156 likes.
Facebook and other social media sites are excellent tools to promote your operation, as they allow you to reach a wide audience at low or zero cost.
For more information on the Greenhouse Tomato Short Course, visit www.facebook.com/GreenhouseTomatoShortCourse.
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