BUILDING YOUR ONLINE PRESENCE

Marketing with social media

Written by Faye Smith, Rural Route Creations

A digital presence has never been more important for sharing information with others. Whether you are posting photos of your children on Facebook or sharing a motivational quote on your Instagram story, the rate of data shared on the internet is growing by the minute. According to Bernard Marr, a technology guru, and author, over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created by humans scrolling, sharing, and posting daily. Forbes shares that Americans can spend more than 1300 hours on social media a year.

You may be asking; how does this affect me? By understanding how much social plays in our lives – we understand why it’s important to integrate it into our marketing tactics for our cattle operations. Social Media can be daunting to learn at first, but no matter what the goals of your operation are, it can be used as a cheap and effective way to market cattle.

Below are some tips you can use to either kick off your farm’s pages or some easy things to keep in mind while updating and managing social media platforms.

Know your audience

Understanding the importance of knowing your potential customers is one of the most important parts of marketing your operation. Recognizing a few target audiences to market to makes creating content much easier. This could be anyone from a suburban consumer looking for freezer beef, to a fellow breeder states away looking for their next addition to their donor cow herd.

Consistency is key

Branding of your operation is more than what is freeze branded on the cows. Keeping consistent logos, messaging, and content is important for your followers to stay engaged, and want to learn more. This is as important to be utilized on one platform, as it is across many others.

Keep it simple

Cattle operations do not need to have a page for every social media platform imaginable. If only having a Facebook page and website work for you – keep using it. If experimenting on TikTok is how you want to advertise an upcoming sale – do it. It all depends on what your operation is looking for in terms of audience engagement and impressions.

Even though social media may be new to you, or you feel like a professional – this is an important tool that can be utilized by all to build your network and reach new customers.