For companies today, social media are becoming more and more important. The pork industry’s consumers and competitors are already there, so the Pork Checkoff is expanding its presence on YouTube, Twitter andother social media to reach a wider audience and form new connections.
“With more people two and three generations removed from the farm, it’s more important than ever forfarmers to tell their story and help people understand the basics of modern agriculture,” said Teresa
Roof, public relations manager for the Pork Checkoff. “Social media outlets are a cost-effective way to get messages across.”
Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, platforms for interaction, conversations and relationships, aren’t just for teenagers. For example, the majority of Facebook’s 350 million users are beyond college age.
On the micro-blogging site Twitter, which has grown1,928 percent in the last year, 45- to 54-year-olds are the top demographic, with 25- to 34-year-olds close behind, according to comScore data.
At YouTube, the popular video-sharing Web site, more than 20 hours of video are uploaded every minute, offering millions of users hundreds of millions of clips to choose from to view. These trends show no signs of slowing down, Roof said.
“It’s important for us to join the conversations in the social media related to pork. If we’re not there to answer people’s questions, someone else will. Even better, it’s amazing how far our messages can reach through the social media.”
New Videos Show Farm-Food Connection
Recently, 11 new videos in the “Food Comes From Farms” series were added to the Pork Checkoff’s YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/PorkCheckoff. The short videos, which are designed for consumers, range from “Lives of Sows Exposed,” which shows how family farmers provide humane housing and care for mother
pigs, to “Wanted: A Good Home for Pigs,” which throws open the barn doors to show viewers the spaces where pigs live.
“By tracking how people are finding our previous YouTube videos, we used this information to make the new videos’ titles edgier and descriptive tags more useful for online searches,” said Roof, who noted that the Pork Checkoff has used YouTube for nearly three years now and continues to develop an online following.
The Pork Checkoff recently worked with two producers, including VandeRose Farms in Oskaloosa, Iowa, and the Sleezer family from northwest Iowa, to film the “Food Comes From Farms” videos on-site.
“Intentionally, the person who narrated the videos did not have a farm background,” Roof said. “We wanted him to ask questions an average consumer would, such as ‘Why don’t the swine barnshave windows’ and ‘Are the sows comfortable in those pens?’”
The videos show the basics of pork production from farm gate to dinner plate, including why artificial insemination is used and how corn grown on the farm is used to feed the livestock. The videos can be integrated on Twitter, where the new @Pork Checkoff handle is geared towards pork production-related issues, Roof noted.
Derrick Sleezer, an active participant in the Pork Checkoff’s Operation Main Street program, looks at social networking tools as another way to spread the good word about agriculture.
“We have nothing to hide at our farm, so I was willing to include our farm in the YouTube videos. In agriculture, we need to become more progressive and tech-savvy to communicate our story and connect with consumers.”
Sleezer, who has the YouTube video links on his Facebook page, was pleased with the way pork production is portrayed in the video clips.“I’ve received extremely positive feedback,” he said. “I’m glad consumers are seeing how hard farmers work to do the right thing as we care for our animals and our land.”
Source : National Pork Board