Agriculture Social Media Marketing
About The Project
The Arkansas soybean industry contributes $2 billion annually to the state. Every soybean farmer pays into the commodity’s Checkoff program. Those funds are administered by the Arkansas Soybean Promotion Board (ASPB), which invests in research, promotion and education.
We conducted primary research through evaluations and audits of the demographics of followers on each ASPB channel. Research told us Facebook was the place for consumer-facing content with women accounting for 77 percent of users. We reviewed secondary research to back up the follower audit and discovered the majority of Twitter followers were farmers.
THE FINAL
Result
Analytics show the 2016 social media campaign succeeded in creating daily conversations with almost 3,000 followers across the social media channels. Website visits increased by 23 percent during the campaign and measured the growth of 26 percent with unique visitors. We grew the Facebook follower count by 45 percent, with Facebook Insights demonstrating a total reach of 414,000 Arkansans over the yearlong campaign. We increased our Twitter impressions per tweet by 515 percent.
Our findings showed each social media channel had an increase in followers and impressions, meaning our target audiences are still utilizing each channel as a mode of communication and education. We learned having an audience specific social media strategy increased engagement. At the same time, we learned the use of social media channels to direct traffic to the ASPB website was natural to learn more information.