Lauri Baker, Department of Communications and Agricultural Education, Kansas State University - Presentation at the 2015 Women Managing the Farm Conference
2. Today
• Your social media plan
• Audience analysis
• Websites and blogs
• Building a website
• Lunch & website showcase
3. Today
• Facebook—It’s more than likes and tags
• Twitter
• Managing all of this
• Measuring success
• Wrap up, staying updated, staying
connected
4. Beyond The Farm Gate
• USDA funded grant
– Kansas State University
– Texas Tech University
– Colorado State
– University of Georgia
• Dr. Lauri M. Baker, K-State Co-PI
• Beyondthefarmgate.org
• http://www.youtube.com/user/BeyondtheFarmGate
7. A great example…
• ZimmComm New
Media
• Can reach more
people with $2,500 in
equipment than a
radio station
• Makes 5,000
impressions by linking
all SM pages together.
• There’s an app for
that!
8. Blogs in Agriculture
• Word Press, Blog Spot, Typepad
• The hub of your communication
• Can be used as your website if well
designed
– The Pioneer Woman
21. General Guidelines for social media
• Be authentic
– Be you and be transparent! (Walmart bloggers)
• Listen!
• Respond
• Share information/stories and share control (let
your customers share stories)
• Be relevant
22. General Guidelines for social media
• Engage in two way communication
• Ask questions
• Provide value
– Five percent off is insulting. Make it worth my while.
• Enable people to gather online and discuss an
issue
23. First, ask: What’s the point?
• What is your goal for using social media?
– Awareness?
– Increase traffic?
– Drive traffic to our website?
– SM is our website
– Increase sales
24. First, ask: What’s the point?
• Establish key performance indicators
• Don’t feel like you have to use SM to get
clients, grow business, etc.
• Sometimes SM can be well used to engage
others
25. Social Media Plan:
– Primary and secondary audience for SM
– Purpose of social media
– SM platforms to be used
– General idea for the messages to be posted
– Content of pages
– Frequency of posts
• Some plans include occasional posting in the beginning and
then very frequent in the end
– Tone of messages
– Plan to gain followers
– Timeline
– Evaluation
26. Step 1: Who is your audience?
• Establish who your audience will be with
your SM campaign
• Do we have a secondary audience?
27. Step 2: Determine your Purpose
• What do you hope to accomplish?
• Do we even need to use it?
• Possible outcomes
– Listen & learn
– Build relationships
– Build awareness of an issue
– Improve reputation
– Increase user-generated content
– Increase traffic/page rankings
– Social support
– Take action
28. Step 3: Platforms
• Which social mediums do you plan to use?
– A good example:
• https://twitter.com/#!/HomeDepot
http://www.youtube.com/homedepot
• https://www.facebook.com/homedepot
29. Step 4: Key Messages
• How will your key messages evolve as the
campaign progresses?
• Establish keywords
– Keep them consistent across mediums
– Example: Home Depot promoting Father’s
Day
30. Step 5: Content of Pages
– What should your FB info page include?
– Cover photo?
– What photos do you wish to post?
– What do you want your “about us” info to say
on YouTube and Twitter?
– Any cool backgrounds?
– For Facebook, decide what you’ll be—group,
page, event, etc. Weigh all of your options
before you decide.
31. Step 6: Frequency of posts
– Three times daily?
– Once/day?
– Weekly?
– What will help you accomplish your goal?
– http://www.facebook.com/DairyMax.Local.Dai
ry.Council
32. Step 7: Tone of messages
• Only positive?
• Negative only if it impacts your business?
• You decide.
33. Step 8: Gain followers
• How do you do it without being annoying?
– Invite friends
– Promotion (Like us and get a free car wash)
– Contests
• Take time to plan and do well
– Advertising
– Quality, useful, valuable content gets followers.
• T.V. stations
– What other examples?
34. Step 9: Timeline
• Optional for general SM site, but
necessary for a campaign or event
– Budget time for site development
– Gaining followers
– Timeline/frequency of posts
• Especially important if you plan to vary frequency
of posts
35. Step 10: Evaluate
• How do we know we have accomplished
our goals?
• The usual suspects:
– Web activity—things you can measure w/
Google Analytics—page views, unique visitors,
time on site, frequently clicked links
– Friends, followers, fans, contributions, votes
– Mentions or re-posts
36. Other considerations
• Consider the following:
– Responses to unfavorable/strange posts
– Posting/re-posting news stories. And should
you make a comment?
– Deleting posts/disabling comment boxes
– Direct responses
37. Finally…
• Social media should be planned and
executed just like any other marketing
campaign
• All who will be participating in you SM
efforts need to know and work the plan
• Good initial planning helps you avoid a
bunch of pages and retroactive plan re-
designs