2. Coming from a 3 generational farming family I
was always interested in how the business was
ran and how I could help my family. My family
currently runs a farmers market where they sell
fresh and dried chile, along with other farm
produce. We knew that it was hard for people
outside of the Southwest to get quality green and
red chile. I often talked to my family about how
having a website and social media presents
would allow them to expand their existing chile
sales to an online audience across the United
States. After many conversations about the pros
and cons I got the “ok” from my uncle to start a
web-store and marketing campaign.
3. 1.Create a functional user friendly
website
2.Create social media
communities around red chile,
green chile, and our brand.
3.Generate buzz and interest in
our products.
4.Sell lots of chile!
4. Website: http://DiazFarms.com
CMS=Joomla
Modified joomla template
Hosting: godaddy
Custom banner, and product images made in Photoshop
Facebook and Twitter widgets
Blog commenting system: disqus
Mailchip.com email list integration
Shopping cart software: virturemart
For the Diaz Farms website
the goals were simple:
1.The site must be easy to use,
and appealing to customers.
2.Be informative
3. Allow easy checkout for
customers
4.Integrate Social Media
5. From early on I knew that the only way for this web store to be successful I
needed to create a thriving community around the businesses products and
brand. The social media campaign started February 2010 which was 6-7
months before we officially opened the web store. The two main mediums I
used were facebook fan pages and twitter. On facebook I created 3 fan pages,
"New Mexico Green Chile" & "New Mexico Red Chile" which were the businesses
most popular products and "Diaz Farms" which would promote the businesses
brand. For the chile pages a mix of pictures, videos, news articles, contests,
and recipes were used to create awareness and demand for the products. For
the Diaz Farms page a mix of the green chile, red chile and farm updates were
used to build brand awareness. All of these facebook pages were linked up to
the main @DiazFarms twitter to create a single source of distribution for the
twitter audience. The social media pages were updated daily with content and
every user comment was answered to really build up conversion and show that
we cared. The facebook fan pages continue to grow daily without any facebook
advertising, but strictly thru word of mouth. In twitter search feeds were set up
to monitor all talk about "green chile," "red chile," "Diaz Farms" and related
topics. On a daily basis I would go thru the searches and have genuine
conversations with people about the topics rather than just trying to sell people
products.
6. New Mexico Green Chile http://fb.me/NewMexicoGreenChile= 3,100+ fans
New Mexico Red Chile http://fb.me/NewMexicoRedChile= 850+ fans
@DiazFarms http://twitter.com/DiazFarms= 40+ followers
*Going forward each facebook fan page will have its own twitter account, which will create a dedicated topic channel on twitter. This
will give us a larger following on twitter.
7. Our physical store was claimed on
Google Places and linked up with our
web store. Also the page was updated
with photos, videos, contact, store and
product information.
http://bit.ly/dl7GGN
Our physical store location was also added to
popular check-in services such as Gowalla and
foursquare. I claimed the spots in order to update
the pages with location and product info, and we plan
to run check-in deals next chile season. As soon as
facebook places opens up to the public I will claim
our location and link it to our facebook fan page.
*Check-ins are currently low due to low user
adoption in our area.
Gowalla: http://bit.ly/aBjpwo
foursquare: http://4sq.com/cPGNNk
8. MailChimp was used as our primary mail list
service. Users could sign up for the mailing
list on Diazfarms.com/mailing-list and on our
facebook and twitter pages. The mailing list
was used to notify customers when we
started taking orders for seasonal products,
sales, and general website updates.
I encouraged users to sign up for the mailing
list many months before we started shipping
chile. This was to ensure we had a solid
customer base for our website at launch. I
also gave mailing list subscribers a chance to
order 2 days before others to beat the
ordering rush.
9. Youtube was used to upload and distribute
videos around our products. There was
existing videos that we used from the New
Mexico Dept. of Agriculture but in the
future more time will be allocated to
producing original content such as cooking
recipes and how-to videos.
http://youtube.com/Diazfarms
Blog Interaction
On a weekly basis I would search blogs
for posts that were related to our
products and industry. I would leave
comments and have conversations with
people around the topics. This would in
turn lead people back to our website.
10. Goal:To grow the New Mexico Green facebook fan
page and increase green chile sales.
Promote contest on Facebook and twitter pages
and link fans back to DiazFarms.com/contest
As terms of the contest users must “Suggest”
their friends to like our fan pages on facebook and
also comment on the post and tell us why they love
New Mexico Green Chile?
A winner at random would be picked and shipped
a free 17lb sack of green chile.
Results:
50+ comments were posted about why they love
New Mexico Green Chile and we saw a lot of
positive comments about our brand.
The New Mexico Green Chile fan page grew by
700 users.
Green Chile Sales increased due to the buzz and
new users.
11. All links were shortened with bit.ly
in order to track effectiveness of our
content. It also helped to determine
when the most effective times to
post content were.
hootsuite was used to bring all of
our social media pages together to
be more effective in posting and
commenting on posts. Also twitter
searches were set up to interact
with users who were talking about
topics we were monitoring.
12. With the opening of our website in early August till mid
October Diaz Farms online sales totaled $15,000. This
was due to the time and effort that was put into building
our social media communities. We will continue to
interact with our communities and try to grow them
further.
This proves that with social media a business can take
their product online and see high sales in a soft period of
time if they put in the time to build buzz and community
around their products.
