If you are keen on knowing how social media can impact your agriculture business and how to leverage the same to garner more market presence by generating valuable leads, this article will benefit you.

With the increasing digital penetration in rural India, especially among farmers, the burgeoning power of social media has been acknowledged by all now. More importantly, it has become an inseparable part of a commoner’s life. Using social media for business promotion is a no-brainer for anyone starting or running a business, and the agriculture industry is no exception.

Businesses and marketers have a myth that agriculture and allied sectors cannot make the most of social media marketing. If they use it wisely, it can become a handy tool for most of the companies linked to agriculture products and output. The next question is– How? The essence of a successful strategy lies in strategizing your social media marketing plan. While formulating your social media management strategy, there are three essential things to keep in mind.

Choosing the right social media campaign

Three critical attributes characterize any successful social media campaign: sound background research, correct implementation, and post-campaign feedback generation. 

We understand that a small agribusiness would not be in a position to conduct such an extensive campaign. But, here, we have tried to emphasize the idea and utility of running a social media campaign and not the scale of the campaigns. 

Now that the social media campaigns are done, we move on to the next thing- Social media handles. As mentioned earlier, the platform should be informative and interactive. What do we mean by that? 

 

Anyone who follows you and follows your page should get some information from your posts along with bi-directional interaction. A uni-directional way of sharing information gets boring for the readers, so try to make your page interactive and engaging. An informative page would attract followers, but an interactive page would retain them. 

 

Good content on social media

 

Social media platforms for your agriculture business and products should have “good content”? Now, what does it mean when someone says good content? Good content primarily includes:

F.A.Q.s. No, this does not mean the Frequently Asked Questions with which this acronym is usually associated. F.A.Q. stands for: Facts, Advice, and Questions.

Facts

This would mean posting interesting facts about your product and agriculture sector in general. The idea is to share posts related to general knowledge or some amazing facts that could surprise the reader. 

Advice

For example, you can let the customers know your opinion on certain farm activities that involve farm equipment through advice. This would be a good way of giving them a glimpse of your understanding of the Farm equipment industry and establishing a sense of trust with them.

Question

In the form of polls or in any other way, questions are a fun way to make your handle interactive and engaging. The type of questions asked could be factual, a personal opinion of the followers on any topic related to agriculture  business, or even feedback on your initiatives or products.

Selecting the right social media platform for sharing content

It’s just as important to curate the proper campaign as it is to choose the right platform for any social media technique. Your campaign’s reach could be minimized, or the social media posts might not give the desired results if the platforms are not chosen wisely. 

For example, videos educating farmers about the usage of farming equipment and latest technology would be better suitable to be uploaded on YouTube and Facebook. 

Selecting any platform is not only dependent on the type of platform but also the reach it offers. If the reach of a particular platform is very high compared to the rest, you can alter the social media strategy to fit the type of platform. For example, you might have thought of promoting your products through Instagram posts, but then you realized that among your target group, more people are using Youtube than Instagram, so now you can also think of using videos for promotion on Youtube as well as Instagram.

In the case of Swaraj Tractors mentioned above, the platform of Facebook for their campaign ‘Maine Chuna Mera Swaraj’ played a crucial role in its success. So, don’t forget to do some research and spend some time deciding on a platform (or platforms) for your social media handles.

Conclusion

If you want your agriculture business to grow, investing time in developing the right social media strategy will play a huge role. Do background research. Structure your plan. Implement the strategy. Measure the results. 

This way, you would be using the potential of social media to the fullest. Otherwise, even if you create social media accounts on several platforms, your handle would be lost somewhere among thousands of accounts. The strategy would help you stay relevant among a horde of other platforms.

One of the most significant advantages of the right social media strategy would be to know your customers in a very cost-effective way. It would allow you to increase interaction with your customers and have accurate information about their behavioral trends. You would get a real-time update of the customer’s likes and dislikes and strengthen the overall business strategy using the same insights. 

Also, read on our portal, “Regenerative Farming is the Path to Sustainable Agriculture“.