In this edition of the Young Extensionist Corner, Prudence Cook, former GRDC Manager Online Communities, now with the Birchip Cropping Group, shares with us her tips on social media and how we use it for agricultural extension.

Here are Pru’s Top 10 tips for social media and agricultural extension:

1. Know who you want to talk to and where they are

Agriculture presents a unique opportunity when using social media as our audience is finite. We already know a lot about the volume and communication preferences of the people we’re trying to target so look for quality interactions – not quantity. I often get asked what platform is best – it’s the one your audience is already using.

2. Get involved

It’s not enough to just schedule tweets and respond to queries as they come in. Set aside time each day to monitor social media. Look for conversations happening in your industry; can you contribute and add value? Would others in your organisation be interested in these conversations? Watch what competitors and contemporaries are doing; look for areas to improve, identify new trends and features and develop benchmarks to track your own performance.

3. Add value, don’t sell

Anything you post needs to add value. I always ask myself “Will our audience members find this information useful? Can they do something with it that will help them improve?” before I hit the publish button. Users will associate far more value with you and your organisation if they’ve received something that helps them on-farm. Direct sell jobs tend to get little traction and, in some instances, can even lead to negative responses.

4. Don’t try to be everything to everyone

Often there is a high degree of confusion around what purpose social media serves – it can be a customer service channel, a broadcast channel, an information gathering tool or any combination of the three. There is no one way to use social media, but if you try to do everything, you’ll end up with segments of your audience switching off. Understand what you’re aiming to get out of social media, who your target audience is and stick to key themes that are of interest to them. A consistent approach means your followers know what to expect and will derive more value from your efforts.

5. Internal buy in and involvement is a must

Having your team aware of the types of people and conversations happening on social media is critical to getting relevant content and speedy responses to questions. If your organisation is new to social media, choose a champion, develop up a campaign to promote their project and use the results as a case study to get other staff members on board. Actively encourage individual staff accounts; this gives your content a wider audience and allows quicker responses straight from the expert. Additionally, growers are far more likely to engage with an individual than they are a company logo. Ensure that staff choosing to use social media in their work have access to training and support, and are familiar with the objectives of your social media strategy.

6. Social media won’t answer all your questions

I’m often approached by people asking if they can use social media to gather feedback relating to farm practices or seek industry input into project design. At best, you’ll get a handful of responses, depending on the size of your network and the existing relationships you have within it. Use social media to complement other channels, but don’t rely on it as a single source of truth.

7. Allocate time and budget to do social media properly

If social media is an ‘add on’ to your role, then when you get busy, it’s the first thing to get forgotten. As part of your social media strategy, work out how much time you need to monitor, develop content, schedule and evaluate in order to meet your objectives. Depending on these objectives, this may only need an hour or so a week. You’ll also need a budget, particularly if your audience is active on Facebook. Once again, as we are working with small audience sizes, the budget doesn’t need to be huge. Paid promotion will allow you to better target your posts and ensure a wider audience is able to see your content.

8. Data based decision making

We rely heavily on numbers to help with decision making in agriculture – social media is no different. Get familiar with Google Analytics; this will give you insights into who you’re talking to, when they’re most active online, what information they’re after and what platforms and formats most appeal. Then use analytics from each of your social media accounts to further refine who your audience is, what type of information they’re interested in and how they want to receive it.

9. Act your age

Stay true to your brand and don’t try to be something you’re not. If you’re trying to convey agricultural information, don’t try to be too trendy or cute. Analytics suggests that growers respond well to timely and relevant technical content. Presenting a clear value proposition is the best way to drive engagement.

10. Be prepared to let things go

Sometimes this is straight forward. With the relative ease you can publish information, it’s easy to say ‘this content isn’t relevant, we’ll avoid it in future’ should a post perform poorly. It’s much harder to let go when you’ve invested a lot of time in a campaign, or even an entire platform. I was a big fan of Google Plus; I loved the functionality, the look and the concept. Unfortunately, my target audience didn’t feel the same way, so I concentrated my efforts back into the platforms they were already using.

Prudence Cook was responsible for implementing GRDC’s social media strategy and managing social media operations, providing digital extension to Australian grain growers and the broader grains industry. Pru has a Bachelor of Agricultural Science from The University of Melbourne and a Graduate diploma in journalism from LaTrobe University. Pru was also a guest speaker at the APEN conference workshop where her presentations were well attended and highly appreciated.

Young Extensionist Corner: Pru’s Top 10 Tips for Agricultural Extension using Social Media

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