Winter provides farm and food business owners the opportunity to reflect on the year past while planning for the coming year. While you are planning planting and/or production quantities and schedules, updating financial records, attending professional development events, and evaluating marketing outlets, consider developing your social media presence and strategy as well. And if you are using social media, remember that your presence shouldn't go into hibernation even though the ground outside may be covered with snow.
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Don't let your social media presence go
into hibernation, like this bear,
during the winter months. |
I read
this article yesterday that provides a timely reminder about the importance of creating a social media strategy and maintaining your presence year-round. The author also provides a couple of helpful tips:
- Plan a schedule of topics for posts during the coming year.
- Use scheduling tools offered with many social media tools to pre-load content.
If you have an active social media presence during the growing and selling seasons, you want to maintain that visibility during the off-season. Followers unfamiliar with farming and food production may be interested in learning about what goes on "behind-the-scenes" that makes what is visible, and easily shared during the summer months, happen. You can easily recruit followers to provide their input for decisions and options you're weighing. Larger packages vs. individual servings? Heirloom tomatoes vs. standard breeds? Which new products to offer? Ask!
Read about how one farm marketer did just this.
Interested in creating a social media presence for your business or jump starting your existing presence with a social media strategy? Check out Penn State Extension's
Social Media Boot Camps for Ag Businesses. Registration for the first two ends on Dec. 3, 2012.
