Choosing Social Media Tools for Your Business

by Sarah Cornelisse, Sr. Extension Associate, Dept. of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education

"What social media should I use for my business?"  This is an often-asked question, and unfortunately, not one that is easily answered by an outsider.  The appropriate social media tool(s) for your individual business will depend on a number of factors, several of which I discuss below.

What are your goals?  Any time you implement the use of a tool, you should have an identified goal that the tool's use will help you in reaching.  The same goes for social media tools.  It is easy to post lots of content to one or more platforms without accomplishing anything.  Keep in mind also, that it is entirely feasible to identify the use of more than one social media tool to accomplish one or more goals, such as using both Facebook and YouTube to share videos of recipe preparations.

Who do you want to connect with?  Are you looking to connect with consumer, businesses, colleagues, women, techies, etc.?  Different tools attract different types of users.  You'll want to research the demographics of the users for the different social media tools you're considering.  For instance, women are the primary users of Pinterest, while connecting with industry peers may call for using Linkedin.

Where are your competitors?  Some degree of weight should be placed on what social media tools your competitors are using.  What platforms are your direct competitors most active on?  If enough of your direct competitors, or businesses similar to yours, are active on a particular platform, it's likely that is where you should be as well. 

What type of content do you want to share?  Typically, the type of business you operate and the products/services you sell, dictate the type of content, but not always.  Different social media platforms lend themselves better to different types of content.  Photos and recipes are great fodder for Pinterest.  Facebook handles a variety of content types, but photos and video are more likely to be shown in the newsfeed of followers.  To tell stories, educate, or discuss industry related information, blogs are likely preferable.

How do you want to engage?  You may have a preference for how you would like to engage with consumers and followers.  If you enjoy ongoing conversations, can be "connected" a great deal of the time, and are not concerned with followers finding past posts, you may prefer using Twitter. 

Track analytics.  If you're using more than one social media tool, study the analytics that each provides on your activity.  You may find that your followers are conversing with you, sharing your content, etc. more often on one platform than on another.  If that's the case, you'll want to focus your efforts more on the tool that is generating this "return."

Answering these questions should lead you to identify the most appropriate social media platform(s) for your business.  Remember, you don't need to be everywhere.  It's fine to start out with just one social media tool.  The trick is to start with the right one.

Starting a Farm? Get Prepared!

by Lynn Kime, Sr. Extension Associate

When beginning any new enterprise, many decisions need to be made prior to planting or purchasing the first animal.  These decisions require research and developing an enterprise budget to be sure the venture will be profitable.  Depending on the scope of the enterprise, a business plan will assist with the decision making process, especially if this is your first venture into production agriculture.  To make the transition easier, think about what you have a passion to do.  Having a passion for the production makes the entire process more enjoyable.  A list of topics to consider prior to beginning include:

• Marketing
• Production
• Harvesting and storage
• Risk management
• Environmental regulations
• Where to find information

 Before beginning any production, you need to know if there is a market for what you plan to produce and where that market may be.  Another marketing decision is whether you are going to market wholesale or retail.  Wholesale marketing may be the easiest, but may not provide enough income to sustain your enterprise.  Retail marketing will take more time to develop as you will need to develop relationships with potential customers or find a farmers' market that has enough traffic to market you production.  One recommendation is to start small and grow into your market.

There are usually several production options for any livestock or crop you plan to produce.  For example, if considering producing beef cattle, will you raise grass-fed or a more conventional grain and hay program?  For horticultural crops, will you use plasticulture or be organically certified?

Do you have the time to produce and harvest what you plan to produce?  Even one acre of some crops requires 30-40 hours to harvest and many more to produce.  The production will need to integrate into your proposed schedule.  Also, will you need to store a portion of the crop prior to marketing and do you have these facilities?

Any production contains risk.  You are at the mercy of the weather, markets, and inputs that you cannot control.  There are insurance products you can take advantage of to help alleviate some of these concerns.

All municipalities have regulations that may impact your plans and production.  The first step for you is to contact your local municipality to determine if what you are planning fits into their regulations.  Another place to visit is your local Conservation District office to see if there are any environmental regulations that will impact your plans.

Penn State's Agricultural Alternatives publication series is an excellent place to start your research into a new venture.  There are now 64 publications in the series and we cover many topics targeting the small-scale and part-time farming community.  These publications are between four and twelve pages long and any topic covering production of livestock or crops has a budget included.  The publications are not in-depth production guides, as indicated by the length, but are designed to allow the reader to make a better informed decision about the potential of the enterprise.

We have an extensive listing of livestock, fruits, vegetables, and farm management publications.  The farm management publications cover business start-up, business planning, marketing, and risk management topics.  These should be viewed first when considering a new farming venture.  The information contained in these publications is necessary when starting a business.  They will guide you through the process of the new venture and provide the information to allow you to become successful.  There is also a section covering where to find much more in-depth information into the topic covered.

You can access these publications here.  There is a link to a PDF file for easy printing on the web pages that do not link directly to a PDF.  I encourage you to check out the website and discover what the project has to offer.  By using these publications and the included budgets you will be better informed about the time, capital, and equipment needed for the enterprise; all issues you need to consider when starting a new venture or enterprise.

Winter is a Great Time to Make Your Social Media Plan

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.

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.

Keeping Detailed Records Can Improve Marketing Decisions

The other week I attended a field day at a PA dairy farm that has a creamery enterprise processing their own cheese.  Having attended numerous field days, I expected the day to be spent covering the production aspects of the business.  A fair part of the days was, in fact, spent on dairy and cheese production.  However, what impressed me was the time and detail spent on record-keeping and marketing for the cheese enterprise. The manager shared several examples of the charts created from data they track - everything from milk usage to customer (outlet) trends to sales by type of cheese - all over a multiple year span.

I've created an example, below, (with non-existent data) to illustrate how detailed record-keeping can assist in making marketing decisions.

Example chart of cheese sales ($) by type

The chart easily illustrates for each cheese type how sales have changed over the five-year period in question.  Anyone looking at this can quickly see that sales of cheeses A, D, and G, after reaching a peak in 2010, dropped in 2011.  This should tell the business owner that those are cheeses that should be closely watched during the coming year to see if sales continue to drop.  The owner might additionally want to do some investigative work to see if he/she can identify a specific reason behind the drop in sales.  Alternatively, the significant sales increases for cheeses B and E may lead the owner to increase marketing for those types, or to leverage their popularity to assist with sales of the cheeses with decreasing sales.

Whether it's cheese or another product, having sales data organized in a fashion like this can easily assist with identifying trends among your customers and help you make production and sales decisions.