By Liz Hammond of Local Food Marketplace and Tricia Phelps of Taste the Local Difference

Online sales through Local Food Marketplace increase your products’ accessibility, offer convenience to your customers, and develop key marketing touch points that you otherwise would not have – but you need to harness these opportunities to get the most out of them.

We teamed up with Taste the Local Difference (TLD) for a four-part series focused on quick, easy, and impactful marketing resources for farmers, food hubs, and markets! Taste the Local Difference specializes in marketing local food and to help amplify their efforts. TLD represents thousands of local food businesses across the value chain, and they all have one thing in common: limited time and resources.

Part 2: Make Your Social Media Work for You

Love it or hate it, social media is part of the business landscape. Your customers expect you to have an active social media account, and it is likely the first place they’ll turn for information about you and your products. When used effectively, social media can be an impactful tool for building brand awareness and driving traffic to your online marketplace. So, how do you get past the passive scrolling and start actively communicating with customers? Here are our tips for making the most out of your social media accounts.

Use a Content Calendar to Stay Consistent

Content calendars help keep your social media up to date, organized, and on message by providing the structure you need to accomplish these content best practices:

Post regularly

Consistent posts are essential for gaining and engaging followers. And while some content comes naturally in response to unexpected or exciting events (a snowstorm in May?! Bessie had her calf!), relying solely on special occasions for content can leave your feed looking sparse and your customers looking elsewhere.

For example, an effective routine would be posting when your storefront is about to open as well as prior to closing. This alerts your followers about not only your online store, but also encourages them to shop. Highlighting new products and producers is great for promoting your marketplace, as well as encouraging cross-promotions with your online store and your producers.

To keep your channels fresh and your customers interested, decide on a manageable publishing schedule—we recommend at least 3 posts per week—and stick to it.

Plan your posts in advance

If adding regular social media posts to your To-Do list feels overwhelming or unrealistic, you’re not alone. After a long day of running your business, sometimes the last thing you want to do is search through your photos and think of a caption. Starting from a blank page each day can sap your creativity, undermine consistency, and result in missed opportunities. Instead of treating social media as a daily chore, approach it as an ongoing project and plan ahead. Allocate time to draft multiple posts at once, especially about a shared theme. Have an upcoming plant sale or special farm event? Design all of the promotion posts together. Choose your images, edit your text, and have them ready to go. When it comes time to post, you won’t have to start from scratch!

Identify Content Themes

Effective social media requires quantity and quality—frequent posts are key, but the content counts too. Stay friendly, casual, and authentic to yourself and the business you’ve built. Help your customers get to know the people behind the products by using posts to share your story and connect with your followers. Think of the different strategies for drawing in customers as your Content Themes, and rotate through these as you plan your posts. Identifying and planning within these categories will help you brainstorm a variety of posts and explore different methods for reaching customers.

Content Themes & Posts to Consider:

• • • Brand Awareness

    • • • • Share your story:
            • • • Why did you start farming?
                • What brought you to supporting local food?
                • How did you get started with your foodhub or market?
                • How long has your farmers market been in business?
          • Introduce an employee:
            • • • Feature your Harvest Team!
                • Highlight a mentor.
                • Showcase your Packing Team, Drivers, or others in crucial positions behind-the-scenes.

 

• • • Educate & Engage

      • • • Answer a frequently asked question:
            • • • Do you offer standing orders?
                • How do I receive my order?
                • Do your product offerings change with the season?
                • Do you offer home delivery?
                • What payments do you accept?
                • When can I order and expect to receive my products?
                • How many farmers do you support?
          • Post a fun resource or video:
            • • • Share videos of your team harvesting, prepping fields, weeding – all of this is interesting to non-farmers and farmers alike!
          • Offer an incentive challenge or contest:
            • • • Encourage your followers and customers to tag you in their photos with your products.
                • Do a giveaway or a sale where contestants must like, share, and tag others in your social media post.
                • Team up with other businesses for a group giveaway to reach a broader audience.

 

• • • Sales

      • • • Share a customer testimonial:
            • • • Has someone been shopping your online store since it’s beginning? Share their experience!
                • Did you receive a good review online? Share the positive review and encourage other customers, too.
          • Highlight a seasonal or unique product available:
            • • • Are your ducks laying eggs again? Share the news!
                • Do you plan on having ground cherries this year?
                • Did you plant an extra bed of heirloom tomatoes and expect a larger variety crop this year?
                • What is new right now for your online store?

 

Call Customers to Action

Think about the purpose behind your posts. What’s the goal? For businesses, it’s often a request or reminder to customers: make a purchase, become a member, tell a friend. These “asks” are your Calls to Action, and they’re important. Finishing each post with a Call to Action encourages your customers to stay focused on your business even after they log off. Brainstorm as many Calls to Action as possible, and pull from that list to include a Call to Action in every post you plan. Mix and match your Calls to Action with your Content Themes to keep your posts engaging and effective.

Hint! Calls to Action begin with an active word:

• • • Share
    • Try
    • Become
    • Post
    • Start
    • Confirm
    • Sign up
    • Explore

 

Communicating regularly on multiple channels helps you reach more potential customers and highlight different elements of your business. Download this free Content Calendar Template and begin brainstorming your calls to action, identifying your content themes, drafting future posts, and setting your publishing schedule. Then, take the next step toward streamlining your social media usage.

Bundle Tasks to Gain Efficiency

Planning posts, logging in, and publishing to Facebook, Instagram, and all your other accounts may start to feel like too much time online. Instead, use a social media management tool, like Buffer, Hootsuite, or Later to schedule and publish posts across all of your social accounts at once. These tools offer free, single-user plans as well as paid premium versions. Bundling your accounts into a single dashboard saves you time and provides a holistic view of your social media presence.

Use your content calendar to plan and organize, a social media manager to schedule and publish, and start getting more out of your social media accounts without having to spend hours online everyday. Check out TLD’s Marketing Tips for Local Businesses Facebook Group for more strategies and follow them online @tastethelocaldifference!

Keep an eye out for more marketing tips on the blog from LFM & TLD! You can gain access to 1:1 support and customized marketing strategies from Taste the Local Difference here.