Finding Local Foods on Your Next Road Trip

As you're driving down the highway on your next road trip, take a look at the signs advertising what food options are available at the next exit.  Almost all of the food options are fast food.  Obviously, fast food is convenient and predictable, but what if you want to eat something different?

SHFT, a multi-media platform company, recently released a smart phone app called Food Tripping to help consumers locate local foods (watch the video below for a brief summary).


Food Tripping uses GPS to locate local restaurants, juice bars, farmers’ markets, microbreweries, etc.  Users can search by location, name, popularity, and category (see Image 1).  Each listing gives the address, phone number, category, website, directions, and "sharing" capabilities (via email, Facebook, and Twitter).  You can also view a list of past businesses you've visited when you "check-in" or "add to favorites".  Think of it as Foursquare just for food.

Image 1.  Food Tripping app displaying farmers' markets in the St. Paul, MN area.  Photo from Supermarketguru.com

As an ag business owner, how will this new app help you?  This sounds like another great way to bring new customers to your business without any cost to you.  The app is free (available on iPhone and Android devices) and anyone can make a free listing for a business.  All you need to do is click the "suggest" button and fill out a very short form with your business's info.  Once approved, your business will be listed in your area.  Why not take 5 minutes out of your day to create a listing and get some free advertising?

As a consumer, would you use an app like this to visit a food business in a town you're unfamiliar with?  As an ag business owner, have you listed your business on other apps (like Foursquare)?  Has your listing attracted new customers?

Instagram and Small Businesses

Using photos in your social media efforts can provide amazing results. Recently, I heard Julie Flinchbaugh (@flinchsorchard) talk about her most successful Facebook posts (as measured by Facebook Insights) of 2012.  The top ones all had an image.  Photos capture a moment unlike words ever could (unless you use 1,000 words, or so says the proverb).  Is there any wonder why, then, two of the hottest social media tools are Pinterest and Instagram?  We've discussed Pinterest in this blog a few times.  (Check out Lots of Interest in Pinterest... and Pinterest Secret Boards - Make Use of Them for Your Business. That first one needs a bit of an update...)  Let's briefly talk about Instagram, though.

My Instagram page as viewed on a web browser. Your business's pics in this format could be very engaging!

Instagram is a photo-based social media tool designed primarily for mobile phones and tablets.  (The website is a relatively new feature.)  It allows the user to snap a new pic (or use one stored on the device), edit it (notice the various effects in the pics above) and add a caption.  The user can also share the photo to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and foursquare.  Users of Twitter and Facebook will also recognize the usefulness and power of @ mentions of other users as well as hashtags.  These act just like they do in the other tools.  Finally, all content is public by default.  Users follow each other similar to the Twitter model and, like Twitter, you can make your profile private.

I made this Granny Smith
tower. What if I had linked it
to my favorite orchard or grocery
store?  What if I had tagged a friend
to tell them how good the apples were?

According to its website, Instagram currently has over 30 million user accounts and over 5 million photos are uploaded each day.  Individual use of the tool continues to grow.  Here are 6 ideas how you might use it to connect with your customers and tell your business's story....

1. Post pics of cool stuff around your business; how you make your product, the view from your farm market, a customer enjoying your product.  Be sure to add appropriate hashtags to expand your reach.  Add a comment asking for people's thoughts or challenge them to identify what they see.
2. Add a personal touch if customer relationships are important. Pics from a family vacation, holidays, or weird things you see on any given day are all good stuff.  Show them whatever you are comfortable sharing.
3. Tie Instagram to your other social media accounts.  This will help you spread your word and hopefully attract people to connect with you in multiple ways.
4. Encourage users to post pics of themselves using your products.  Ask them to @ mention you.  You might even create a hashtag to group all those pics.  (This could be a photo contest opportunity if you can decide how to judge them. Random drawing, perhaps?)
5. If you have a retail location, encourage users to post photos and tie them to foursquare check-ins.  This builds your presence on foursquare and adds that powerful image to what might otherwise simply be a check-in notification.
6. As with other tools, be social with it.  Like things that those you follow post (if you really do like it).  Comment on it.  Respond to comments on your pics. Etc.

I've grown to enjoy Instagram for its simplicity and ability to engage another user (including a business) around a photo.  With just a bit of thought, I think there's a lot of potential to use it effectively in marketing a small business, especially food and agricultural businesses.  If you follow me (jeffhyde), I'll absolutely follow you back!

Savvy Farm Promotion, Made Simple

On a recent farm marketing tour a group of growers were able to experience the gamut of retail farm marketing from large corporations that incorporate small market aesthetics to small markets making full use of the mobile and internet tools available to them. 

Giant Eagle's apple display signage

One large corporation, Giant Eagle Market District in Pittsburgh, is taking marketing back to its roots.  Utilizing hand-painted signage and displays that look like I could put them together in my garage, they were able to take what sounds like a rustic set-up and make it eye-catching and even beautiful. Their store displayed a large variety of national brands, local produce, and locally made value added products such as baked goods and sauces all in one convenient location for the consumer. Cues can be taken from their straightforward signage and grouped display stations that dominated the store, making it easily navigable for customers. 

Peach display at Giant Eagle. Notice the inclusion of pie-baking supplies.

On the flip side we visited a family farm, Covered Bridge Gardens, in Ohio who is utilizing cutting edge technology to get the word out to their CSA and farmers’ market customers. In addition to their slick looking website linking their Facebook page, blog, and e-commerce site, the farm is in the initial development stages of an app for smartphones.  This app will alert their CSA customers to surplus produce or changes in their pickup schedules.  It will help customers find them at area farmers markets, link to their online store on their website and make every part of their business literally available at their finger tips.  With the trend of smartphone users to utilize their devices more for social media and web surfing rather than for simple calling, transitioning to an app is a logical method for Covered Bridge Gardens to reach their customers in the way that is most convenient for both parties.

In discussion after our groups visit to Covered Bridge Gardens, a tour attendee brought up a good point.  If you are unable to be lucky enough or willing to pay the money for the development of your own farm app, a great way to replicate some of the functions is through the use of QR codes.  Many area markets are starting to add these codes to their value added product labels, door stickers and the backs of their business cards.  When incorporated correctly, meaning printed in a clear and easy to identify fashion, these codes can be used as another quick methods to direct customers to your website.  Especially useful if your site offers an e-commerce shopping section allowing customers to make purchases directly on the web. Just think if you pick up a jar of your favorite spicy gooseberry jelly at a market while traveling and was savoring the last bits at the bottom of the jar.  Wouldn’t it be nice to scan a quick code from the back of that jar with your phone as you savored your last mouthful and be instantly directed to a site where you could order more?  I think this sounds downright delightful, and delicious!

For more information on QR codes, straightforward signage and displays for your market, or technology based marketing options for your business check out the Ag Entrepreneurship Team’s past blog posts.  Here are a few of my favorites:

What's that square? Using QR codes for marketing

Best Practices for Farm Market Vendors - signage and display tips

Why Mobile Payment Systems Might Work for Your Business

This post comes from the newest member of Penn State Extension's Ag Entrepreneurship Team, Carla Snyder. Carla is the Ag Entrepreneurship/Marketing educator in Adams County, PA.

Dashboard apps for your tablet and smartphone

If you are on the go, or just have a schedule that keeps you away from your desk, you might find social media dashboard apps for your table or smartphone to be quite useful.  Just like desktop dashboards, apps allow the user to:

                                                                                                    Figure 1. 

• monitor several social media accounts, 
• create streams with lists and hashtabs (Figure 1), 
• schedule when tweets should post
• easily attach photos to tweets, 
• shrink links, 
• and add locations (latitude and longitude) pertaining to the message. 

To help you understand what dashboard apps (for example, TweetDeck, HootSuite, or Yoono) look like I have included screenshots of various social media networks as they appear on my iPhone.  These apps will have a similar appearance and functionality on Android phones. 

Facebook

I have included a few screenshots of my Facebook news feed, as it appear in the TweetDeck app, to demonstrate that is it possible to access quite a bit of posted information.  Not only can I scroll through the stories, posts, and announcements of the day (Figure 2), but I can also to “like,” “comment,” and/or see images that Denise Gardner, Penn State Extension Enologist, has posted on her Facebook page (Figure 3).  Figure 4 shows the detail of an image associated with Denise’s post.  

Figure 2.                                                                   Figure 3.

Figure 4.

       Figure 5.

How many Facebook accounts can I access?

                                                                                                              

Even on my iPhone I like to have access to both my personal Facebook page and the Ag. Entrepreneurship Extension Team’s Facebook Page (https://www.facebook.com/FarmBusiness).  If you have more than one Facebook account that you would like to monitor on your mobile device your choice will be limited; however, HootSuite will allow you to do this.  For comparison, I've included an image of this Facebook Page as it appears in the HootSuite app (Figure 5).  

What if you like to monitor your LinkedIn account?

Figure 6. 

Networking with those in your LinkedIn community is as accessible on your mobile device as it is on a desktop dashboard.  Using Yoono, one of the dashboards that provides a mobile connection to your LinkedIn account, you'll be able to read what others have posted, publish posts, and learn about notifications (for example, who you have recently "connected" with on LinkedIn) (Figure 6).  

Concluding thoughts

These are just a few features of social media dashboard apps.  Each app has certain benefits as well as limitations.  If you use FourSquare - you will want to consider the HootSuite app.  Do you use Flickr?  Then you will want to select Yoono.

I have found that the dashboard I use on my desktop is not the same dashboard that I prefer to use on my smartphone – so you may find that you will not use TweetDeck or HootSuite exclusively.   What you need to consider when selecting an app is which one do you find the easiest to read (each app has a different background/font color combination) and which app provides access to the social networks you use most often.

Mobile Payment: A Direct Marketing Tool

The Penn State Extension Ag Entrepreneurship team, along with Ohio State and Minnesota Extension, have developed a series of webinars on social media and mobile technology for ag businesses (more information on the webinar series at http://www.cvent.com/d/lcq890).  These issues are especially pertinent for direct marketers who are rapidly finding that they need to engage their customers using these tools.

One of the webinar sessions will focus on mobile technology available for use by farm markets, farmers markets, roadside stands, and agri-tourism businesses to accept payments.  Chris Raines, Assistant Professor and webinar team member, was motivated to learn more about mobile payment following his own mobile payment experience when getting take-out.  So he purchased the needed attachment for his iPhone and tried it out.  Check out his blog post on his experiment and thoughts regarding mobile payment possibilities for direct marketers.

Get Marketing! Use Foursquare to Your Advantage

For owners of smartphones (iphone, androids, etc.) foursquare is a fun little application to download and use on their phones.  It's a location based application that lets users "check-in" at whatever location they may be at.  Check-ins are shared with other foursquare users, either all users or a smaller designated circle of friends.  For instance, when I come to work I check-in at my building - Armsby Building - as do some of my foursquare using colleagues.  And we've created a friendly competition out of this resulting in me being the "mayor" of Armsby (i.e. I've checked-in most often during a 60 day time period).

But foursquare can be, and is, more than a fun game.  Businesses can use foursquare to their advantage as a marketing tool.  At the most basic level, it can be considered "word of mouth" advertising.  Think of the power in having a foursquare user check-in at your business or market on a regular basis and that being shared with all of their friends!  Beyond that though, you can use foursquare to offer specials to your foursquare-using customers.  You can create a mayor's special, loyalty special, and newbie special, among others.  Think of it as electronic couponing - rewarding those who visit you.

Analysis of foursquare data is also available - a must for determining value in your foursquare use.  You can keep track of the number of check-ins, what time of day check-ins occur, as well as age and gender breakdown - all for a variety of timeperiods.

Hopefully you're intrigued.  If so, check out this article from Mashable.com about how to get started with foursquare marketing.  Foursquare itself also provides lots of assistance and information for businesses on using the application.