Even traditional industries like farming need a strong online presence to thrive. From conducting competitive analyses to optimizing your email campaigns, we'll walk you through practical, step-by-step approaches to expand your reach, transform your farm’s story, and forge deeper connections with your community or audience.

Social media is a powerful tool for farmers to cultivate relationships and grow their market share. By investing a small amount of time each day into social media efforts, you can reap significant benefits - from connecting with your local community to attracting new customers. We'll show you actionable steps to create a vibrant online presence that aligns with your farm's values and attracts a loyal following.

Learn from Competitor Data

Conducting a competitive sweep is crucial for successful social media marketing, whether you've already created your accounts or are just getting started. By analyzing your competitors, you'll gain valuable insights into benchmarking your farm's social media performance and refining your strategy. This exercise is applicable to most platforms, but we'll focus on Instagram and Facebook for now.

Here's how to conduct a competitive sweep:

1. List the farmers you know, both locally and nationally, leaving space for notes.

2. Search for their farms or names online, and follow their social media profiles.

3. Subscribe to their emails or newsletters (more on this later).

4. Note basic metrics like follower count, likes, and post frequency next to each farmer.

5. For top-performing farmers, identify posts with the highest engagement.

6. Analyze the topics, tone, hashtags, length, and follower comments on these posts.

7. Follow engaged commenters who appear to be customers, noting any profile characteristics.

8. Streamline your competitive analysis using tools like SocialBlade and Hootsuite to automate tracking engagement metrics and your competitors’ activities.

Bring your Philosophy to Social Media

Join your farm to social media communities that align with your values and management practices to generate organic support.

Complete this exercise to help your integration:

1. List your farm's attributes and methodological practices (e.g., regenerative, organic, local).

2. Use Instagram's search and recommended accounts to find relevant accounts.

3. Analyze these accounts as outlined in the competitive analysis steps.

4. Reach out for potential social media partnerships, offering your products or discounts as incentives, if feasible.

5. Regularly engage with aligned accounts to boost visibility and community involvement.

“Each post on our social media is crafted to reflect our deep respect for nature and the animals. We believe in using the whole animal, and social media helps us educate others about this practice, ultimately promoting sustainability across the industry.”
Brian Sanders, Founder of Nose To Tail

Apply Insights For Effective Engagement

Use the information you’ve gathered to emulate successful strategies employed by top-performing farmers and influencers:

1. Identify common themes among successful accounts using colored highlighters. Reflect on how you could fuse their topics and approaches with your own.

2. Generate your own posts incorporating these themes, topics, tone, and length.

3. Ensure your photos are relevant, location tags are added, and your profile is public and business-oriented.

4. Leverage Instagram's resources to improve visibility and consider piloting a giveaway.

5. Create a subscription funnel to capture email subscribers through Instagram.

Engaging Post Ideas:

Behind-the-scenes farm tours
Seasonal harvest showcases
Customer testimonials
Educational content
Live Q&A sessions
Community events

Nurture Customers Through Email Marketing

Email remains a cornerstone of effective marketing. By developing an email strategy that nurtures your relationships with customers, you’ll keep them engaged and eager to support your farm. Well-crafted emails can turn casual readers into loyal patrons, and loyal patrons into brand advocates.

Choose Email Types and Schedules For Greater Impact

Choosing 1-3 email types, such as newsletters and promotional emails, helps set expectations and simplifies content planning.

Consider this approach:

1. Start with a monthly newsletter covering events, tours, and business updates.

2. Add promotional emails featuring holiday sales, bundles, and partnerships.

3. Decide your total monthly emails among your chosen email types. For example, newsletters could be sent on the 1st of each month, while promotional emails could be the third to last week of the month.

4. Analyze the email frequency of farmers you've subscribed to for reference.

5. Assign set days and times for each email type, avoiding weekends due to lower open rates.

6. Test this schedule for 2-3 months through your own email or a free trial from MailChimp.

Newsletter Content Ideas:

Personal farm stories
Seasonal recipes featuring your produce
Valuable farming tips for readers
Upcoming events and community activities
Customer spotlights and testimonials
Exclusive subscriber offers

Monetize and Optimize Your Email Strategy

Identify your best-performing social media posts and emails to prioritize future efforts:

1. Conduct a manual audit after 2-3 months to assess top-performing email types and schedules.

2. Utilize email metrics from platforms like MailChimp (open rate, click-through rate, etc.).

3. Adjust content, subject lines, send times, and audience segments based on data insights.

4. Implement re-engagement campaigns for inactive subscribers.

5. Prioritize successful email types and align other emails with their tone and format.

6. Gather candid feedback from subscribed family and friends to refine your approach.

ProTip: Leverage AI tools like ChatGPT to polish existing emails or generate new ones, comparing performance to your original content. Learn more about using prompts for ChatGPT here.

Achieve Digital Success

Each social media post and email invites your audience to engage and participate in your agricultural journey. By learning from competitors, staying aligned with your values, and applying key insights to refine your online strategy, you can strengthen your connection with your community and grow your network of supporters. The strategies in this guide aim to help your farm thrive and distinguish itself in the busy digital marketplace. With focused effort and a strategic approach, you'll consistently enhance your online presence. Professional Help

Professional Services

If you’re seeking professional support, Yama provides services to farmers, including digital advertising, website development, social media and email management, logo and brochure design, and customer surveys.

To learn more about how we can help your farm thrive, visit https://www.yamaresearch.com/, or email services@yamaresearch.com

A Farmer’s Guide to Social Media and Email Marketing

Table of Contents

About the Authors

Cultivate Your Farm’s Presence on Social Media