Promoting Your Farming Business on Social Media

If there’s one thing we’ve been doing a lot over the past year, it’s spending time online. For farmers, promoting your farming business on social media is a great opportunity to show off your operations and reach potential customers who want to know more about where their food comes from.

Ben Rice | Agriculture Industry Representative

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Social media has come a long way since the Myspace days of the early 2000s. It’s become one of the main ways we stay connected with family and friends and also how we learn about and support businesses. Promoting your farming business on social media is a chance for farmers to show their operations and increase sales. Here are some things to think about as you get started on social.

Which Social Media Accounts Work Best for You?

Getting started with business accounts on social media can seem overwhelming. It’s a good idea to start off small – pick one or two main platforms to focus on and go from there. According to a recent Farm Progress survey, the most used social platform for work among farmers is Facebook. Facebook also has the largest user base of any social network, with a higher percentage of older users. But if you’re trying to reach a younger audience, Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok is the way to go. Know the audience you’re trying to reach and where it makes the most sense to spend your time.

What Do You Include When Setting Up Your Social Media Accounts?

When you choose which social networks to focus on, you want to make sure your profiles are filed out completely. Include some info about your business and who you are, and include a link to your website if possible so people can find out more. On Instagram, you can also use relevant hashtags in your bio, which helps people find your account.

Here are the steps to setting up business accounts on the following platforms:

What Kind of Social Media Content Do You Share?

This is where you can have fun with social! This is your chance to show what makes your farm stand out. Behind-the-scenes content does well on social media: for example, sharing some machines at work on your farm or a look at your livestock.

Your account is also a great way to change any preconceived notions around the agriculture industry and show people how their food is really grown or raised. As consumers get more interested in buying sustainable and ethically grown or raised foods, this is a place to show them the people behind the produce.

How Do You Measure Social Media Success?

How successful your farm’s social media efforts are may depend on a few different things:

Are you trying to build more awareness around your farm?
Is your main goal to increase sales?
Do you want to educate people about the agriculture industry in general?

Once you decide what your main goal is, then you can figure out how to track that, whether you look at number of followers, post likes or comments, or visits to your website or orders.

Promoting your farming business on social media can seem a bit scary if you’ve never tried it before, but if you start small and focus on posting content that you are passionate about and find interesting, you can build a following that can help your business grow too.

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Ben Rice

Agriculture Industry Representative

Having spent his formative years on a tobacco farm, Ben Rice went on in the agriculture field to earn degrees in Agriculture Business Management and Agriculture Science from North Carolina State University. Rice now brings his invaluable expertise to Caterpillar as an industry sales and service representative.