Social Networking Online Can Be A Farm Marketing Tool

By Jane Eckert

Last month, we talked about the benefits of starting a blog on your website to enhance the marketing of your business.  A key benefit of frequent blog updates is to help your website score higher on search engine rankings. Blogs are part of the larger community of  the  “social networking” phenomenon that has been happening in recent times on the Internet.

This month, let’s explore some of the other “social networking” options.  If you read any magazine, listen to television or the radio or go online, it’s hard not to hear at least some mention of networks called Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.   These all started out as little more than an Internet version of “socializing” with friends or peers.  Now, with millions of members, these networks wield a powerful market potential, and savvy business owners are starting to use these networks for promotion and marketing.

Whether or not you are ready to engage in this type of media, I do believe it is something that you need to know more about.  It’s here to stay, and it is significantly changing how a large percentage of the public communicates with our friends, and, potentially, with a much broader audience.

According to a recent media study by Michael Stelzner, sponsored by the Social Media Success Summit, 88% of marketers say they are now using some form of social media to market their business.  How new is it?  Well, almost three out of four say that they just began using social media within the last few months. 

Certainly we must recognize that this was a survey of marketing firms in general, and not just farm marketers like us.  I’m quite sure our numbers participating in social media today are not nearly so high.  Yet, I do know that what works for the larger marketing companies typically can always work for the smaller guys.  In fact, the Internet somewhat levels the playing field.  Everyone can have a website, and everyone can be on the social networks.

Now, I know that some of you reading this column still prefer to not even bother with emails or websites, but you know that it is a necessity.  So brace yourself to learn that among the folks that do spend a lot of time online at their computers, many have now moved on to social network—current researchers tell us now that the time spent on social networks and blogs is now greater than the time spent on emails.  According to Nielson Online, more than 67% of the online population participates in some type of social network.  With that many potential customers, we, as farm marketers really must educate ourselves as to how these tools can help bring us more visitors.

Many folks used to think that these social networking sites were just for the young, especially Facebook, which was initially a teen phenomenon.  Now, it is proven that people of all ages want to share information with each other.  Adults are finding high school classmates, former co-workers, friends in common, and just using the network to communicate with friends from the convenience of their homes. 

Ironically, this new online media is doesn’t appear to be as easy as calling your local advertising salesperson and placing an ad in your local newspaper. But that’s one-way communication, where you make an announcement and hope someone reads it.  Like building any other network of contacts, social networking requires that you invest more time to establish two-way communication.  For some,  that will take some time and study, or it may be something you want to delegate to younger members of the farm family.  They will probably thrive in the social networking community, bringing you new customers as well as meaningful contributions from you tech savvy kids.  Others may want to wait for winter when they feel they have more time and patience for learning a new tool of communication. 

You may already be using a social network to connect with your family and out of town relatives with quick updates, photo’s and video sharing, but now is the time to consider how to make this type media work to grow your business and the followers to your business.

The most important thing to know before getting started is that all of these social media tools don’t require any financial outlays, however, they will take a lot of time and commitment before you may see any value to them.

Here’s a quick summary of these three media tools and what they offer.

• Twitter (www.twitter.com) is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: “What are you doing?” You are limited to a 140 character post, and you can post as often as you like.  These are very short, frequent updates that you can tell about your chores for the day, what you are picking, what’s happening with your family or anything else on your mind.

2. LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) is considered a business to business network of friends, associates and experienced professionals. You can find, be introduced to, and collaborate with qualified professionals that you need to work with to accomplish your business goals. This is about connecting to people with similar professional or business backgrounds to exchange information for your benefit and to recommend their services.
3. Facebook (www.facebook.com) allows you to contact your friends, tell them what you’re up to, share photo’s and get to know more people. The updates are not limited to a specific number of characters as they are in Twitter, plus you can share photo’s more readily.
Facebook is also easy and fun to use. Businesses are now creating “fan” pages in order to share more about them to larger audiences.
All three of these social networks share some common features for your benefit.   

• They allow you to create and maintain your own online profile. 
• You can add a photo of yourself with your profile. 
• With your permission, the services can match your email address book to their existing subscribers to locate the people you already know you and who may want to become a follower of yours.
• You are given the option to approve or deny any one to follow you and your updates.
• If you are currently writing a blog, you can also connect your blog to your profile page to these networks.

At this point, I’m not ready to say that one of these networks is better than the other. My personal preference if you are just getting started is to create a blog like we discussed last month. However, I have hired an intern this summer to help me improve my own social networking abilities and I’m sure I’ll be sharing with you again more about these networks.

Jane Eckert, a national speaker, author and agritourism expert, is principal of Eckert AgriMarketing (www.eckertagrimarketing.com), a firm that helps farmers sell products directly to consumers and develop their operations into tourist destinations. Jane can be reached by phone 314-862-6288 or at jane@eckertagrimarketing.com