Social media web chat: the best bits

TWITTER

Tim O’Grady:

If it’s an auto reply then it turns me off, depends on what they say and how they say it – it’s personal choice in the end.

Heather Gorringe (@Wiggled):

If it’s “welcome to my gang” or similar I don’t care for it as following someone doesn’t necessarily mean I have joined their “gang”. I like to try and thank for mentions and retweets just as in real life you would thank someone for talking positively about you or your business.

@FarmrPhil:

Good question – I tend to thank for retweets and comments and not just for a follow.

Will_FW:

I find auto replies pretty impersonal. While social media is meant to be easy, it’s not that easy. Lazy! A simple retweet every now and then will do.

Jan Minihane:

Always use normal business etiquette and manners and you can’t go far wrong.

Tim O’Grady:

Depends on who they are. If it’s someone who looks interesting (it’s important to have good biography information) then I’d follow back.

Tim O’Grady:

I always check the last few tweets to see if what the person is saying is interesting or relevant. If so, they get a follow. Sometimes you need to be a bit broad-minded, I’ve ended up with a ‘friend’ discussing whisky over the last few weeks from a random retweet by someone else. First look I didn’t find his bio that interesting, but I followed anyway and now have really interesting chats.

EdmogFW:

I like to follow a lot of people because I use Twitter for information. That doesn’t mean I follow everyone though.

Jan Minihane:

It depends – you can follow everyone back, then run lists of who you ‘really’ want to follow/see tweets from, or you can be more selective. I tend to be fairly open about who I follow back then have a clear out once in a while with those who don’t engage. I also check their profile first and if they just broadcast and don’t engage, I don’t follow back – it’s a total turn off for me!

Heather Gorringe (@Wiggled):

I think it’s great to follow folks when you are not sure whether you will be interested – many times you get to follow really interesting people rather than missing out. You can use tweetdeck to sort them into close friends, interests etc and you can unfollow so easily if their tweets don’t suit you in the long term. In my view better to follow more rather than less.

Matthew Sharp:

I’m careful who follows me. I like to know who follows me and I decline a few people who I feel won’t be interested in my tweets. But doing that means that if you do post something personal or political you know who reads it. You have to be very careful what you say. Just to add – my other account which I look after isn’t private as that only has news on, so I suppose its depending on the purpose. One is ‘business’ shall we say, the other ‘pleasure’.

Jan Minihane:

I always, always recommend the “think before you tweet” principle. Don’t put up anything you don’t want your competitors/peers/suppliers/customers to see, as everything potentially is visible.

Tim O’Grady:

Social media is a personal choice, we can all put how much we do or don’t want to out on the web. Restricting content is a good way of ensuring privacy.

Jan Minihane:

In terms of having a public vs. private twitter account, if you can’t fully trust yourself not to say anything inappropriate, then a second private twitter account is advised. Otherwise you want your account to be public. Being on twitter is about extending your reach and connecting with peers, customers – being private puts off followers. There is proof that a public account = more followers.

Tim O’Grady:

Do you use the search function in twitter or search.twitter.com? They are really powerful searches that let you look for keywords – you can even narrow down by geography.

Tim O’Grady:

Have a look who other people are following. If they are interesting go and have a follow to see what they say. You can always unfollow if you don’t find them interesting. I’d also suggest doing a local search in twitter, and go and find your neighbours. In the search bar type in ‘near:yourtown’ to find local tweeters.

emelfp:

I pick up followers when I get involved in tweets so I tend to follow the ones that interact. I love the broad network on twitter.

sos_nm:

We use hashtags to get the customer and Bit.Ly to direct the customer to our sites.

EdmogFW:

A good way of getting new followers and sharing information is using hashtags such as #agrichatuk and #farmpics.

Matt Redman (@redmanmatt):

#agrichatuk is a great way to pick up followers/people to follow, and they all have similar interests.

Jan Minihane:

Using search.twitter.com to find your target audience is a great way to build quality followers – very few Twitter users make use of the search function effectively. Also do a keyword analysis for your farm/business and then search for hashtags incorporating those key words and phrases and see which bring back good results. Then go and see who’s using it and follow where appropriate. If someone isn’t already using a hashtag, why not use it as your own as a way to share knowledge/expertise?

Tim O’Grady:

Small numbers, but to turn it the other way, how many members of the general public do we follow? I guess the question is, how to break down the barriers between different industries? You might farm next to an industrial estate; do you take note of the business on it? Do they take note of yours? Social media could help to break down those barriers by allowing easier communications.

Matt Redman (@redmanmatt):

I’d say it is mostly fellow ag people, but the number of others is rising. And people don’t need to follow to read tweets. To get a balance we’ve got to take note of them if we want them to take note of us.

@FarmrPhil:

Everyone eats and in my experience, my own followers represent a broad spectrum.

Matt Redman (@redmanmatt):

Pictures and links are good, but plain text is also good when using your mobile in the field.

Tim O’Grady:

Words work for Twitter but if you are running a Facebook page then links and pictures are essential to get your message into people’s ‘stream’.

Jan Minihane:

Links, pictures and videos are good IF you put a call to action with it, i.e. a question, or a catchy blog post title. It’s using emotional intelligence as to what would make someone reading your post want to click on it.

JonesFW:

I use Twitpic. Or Lockerz (used to be called Plixi).

Jan Minihane:

If you’re using twitter.com there will shortly be an auto photo upload option – it’s rolling out at present. Otherwise Twitpic is fine. There are Twitter clients like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite (which show your Twitter account info in an easier to read/use format) which have an auto photo upload feature. There are many benefits to using a twitter client over twitter.com itself, but get comfortable with twitter.com first, then move on.

Matt Redman (@redmanmatt):

I use it mostly phone. I only use the PC in evenings, I’m in a tractor the rest of the time. A smart phone very useful for farmers I think. I get all spray recs and emails ‘on the go’ without the need to keep checking back to a computer.

@agrinick

I’m actually stood in a cow shed right now on my phone having just fed them!

@WLATribute

I’ve just started on Twitter a couple of days ago and will be getting a new phone soon so that I can tweet on the go!

Jan Minihane:

A smart phone is a great investment, I no longer have dead time when I’m waiting in a queue, waiting for a client, stuck at my mum’s etc. I can always be doing something productive and that way it’s not more time I need to find – it’s just reallocating dead time.

julierobinson_:

Interesting at the NFU Council the other day. Those who’ve got to “know” each other on Twitter seemed more likely to chat face to face than before.

Matt Redman (@redmanmatt):

Tweeting from the NFU council the other day was brilliant. I kept up with what was going on as it happened. If I had to read a report of the day I’d forget half, or not finish it. The same applies to farmers – I’ve met quite a few people at cereals who, without twitter I’d have no idea who they are or how they can be useful to know.

Will_FW:

I really like the live tweeting from conferences… very useful!

Tim O’Grady:

Live tweeting is spreading. Local parish councils are taking it up as a way to get a wider community involved in decision making.

Jan Minihane:

I’m a big fan of live tweeting from events – it’s so powerful to extend the messages of the day out to the public and make people feel a part of it. I think the combination of tweeting and meeting people helps advance relationships and makes conversations in real life easier. It helps builds trust and respect quicker.

Heather Gorringe (@Wiggled):

Agree that tweeting and meeting helps advance relationships much quicker and to maintain that relationship without lots of work. We had a farmer ‘tweet up’ at Royal Welsh – great.

emelfp:

Anyone who’s been to a tweetup would agree – barriers already lowered.

No1FarmerJake

We use Facebook (Overbury Farms) to help build the picture of the farm, also links in with farmerjakef’s blog and YouTube videos. A multi-pronged approach gives people options on which ones they would like to follow.

Jan Minihane:

It’s great to be on a variety of social media sites – if you have a joined up strategy and have the time – your website is your online office and social media channels are just doors into that office, and people want choice these days and expect the info they want to come to them the way they like it.

Tim O’Grady:

Don’t forget Search Engine Optimisation as well, Google loves your if you are online across lots of different sites.

Matt Redman (@redmanmatt):

I think that’s the best way. Website/Facebook/blog/Twitter all linking between. It encourages people to look closer, maybe follow you on Twitter, and it’s great way to promote things like your OFS, school visits and all the training courses you go on to help you farm and benefit the environment.

SimonS:

YouTube’s all very well, but you’ve got to have the expensive camera kit first. I’m a struggling farmer.

Matt Redman (@redmanmatt):

Most digital cameras will do video now. I’ve got a cheap one I carry round at work all the time, never know when you might want to take a picture or video something.

emelfp:

I have used YouTube videos to sell farm machinery linked to eBay and it has worked well. My camera wasn’t expensive and takes video. Sometimes you only need a few minutes for YouTube, or even use your phone.

Jan Minihane:

A lot of videos that ‘go viral’ are done on the humble flip cam (you can get decent ones for £100) so you can do it very cheaply if you have the willing and a bit of creativity.

Tim O’Grady:

I didn’t get it at first but now I’m hooked. It can be a great way to get offers and deals. The big difference between Foursquare and Facebook is that it’s built for businesses. If you have a physical location (perhaps a diversified farm?) then you can use Foursquare as a rewards and offers mechanism to encourage people to your place. Facebook will be offering a similar product later this year called ‘Deals’. The other advantage of Foursquare is that when you check in, you can send it to Twitter and Facebook so you’re only doing one thing once.

emelfp:

I can see how it could work for tourism businesses or restaurants, but not others.

He his-self:

Social media is already ubiquitous, at least among those under 40. Its use for agricultural purposes however remains questionable.

Jan Minihane:

Re: “under 40” comment from He his-self. The social media user base is maturing. The fastest growing demographic on Facebook is women over 55. The average age of a Facebook user is 39, and twitter is 38. It’s generally older than a lot of people think.

@FarmrPhil:

I think it’s important that as farmers we are seen to promote transparency within our industry – social media is a perfect medium.

Jan Minihane:

Social media, Twitter particularly, can be a very powerful way to change people’s perceptions of a business/industry/organisation and change the sentiment towards it.

Heather Gorringe (@Wiggled):

If we get to the stage, for example, when we need to inform people that we are spraying, why not make the responsibility on them to follow us on Twitter? That way we can simply tweet from the cab when we are spraying. If they want to know they can follow, rather than us needing to notify anyone in particular or notify folks who just aren’t that interested. In other words it’s an opportunity for us to lead with positive open communications in all sorts of ways. If there is no problem with what we are doing then let’s use social media to tell people who want to know about it quickly and easily. Ignorance breeds contempt, as we have seen over the years.

Matt Redman (@redmanmatt):

That’s a great idea. It would be simple for both – and allow the farmer to promote farming with other tweets to people who wouldn’t normally follow them.

He his-self:

A lot of the people we are attempting to reach are never going to come around to our way of thinking. I very much doubt social media will change that.

Heather Gorringe (@Wiggled):

We have often missed the opportunity to communicate directly and blamed all sorts of people for misconstruing farming and agriculture. Social media is a fantastic opportunity to improve the situation without lots of effort and from our homes or tractors. Folks who say “Twitter and Facebook are just places for people to update each other on what they’ve had for breakfast” are just completely out of date. It would be like saying the phone or the email are just for that too. We must not blame the tool for the conversation – we need to use the tools to drive and build useful conversations with huge numbers of people globally. It’s an amazingly wild time. It’s bigger than when they invented the telephone in my view.

Matt Redman (@redmanmatt):

I signed up to Twitter a long time before actually using it. I eventually started using it and followed people like @farmrphil and @no1farmerjake. I soon got a few followers and it’s gone from there. Very useful for work, leisure and education. Best thing I’ve found about the use of twitter is the ability to ask questions, get answers and talk to people that without it, you’d probably never get into contact with.

Tim O’Grady:

I often call twitter “ask a human.com”. It gives better results than Google sometimes. People often just follow a few celebrities and update people on their lunching habits but that’s it. It’s a shame as it can be so much more but a lot of people don’t ‘get it’.

@FarmrPhil:

I’ve had some cracking discussions about badgers and bTB on Twitter – just search badger or bTB. Remember how sceptical many of our parent’s generation proclaimed the mobile a waste of time and a fad.

Mango day:

I’m finding Twitter useful for breaking news stories both within the agricultural sector and in general. We are clearly in danger of information overload but a brief tweet giving “finger on the pulse information” is most useful.

He his-self:

I use twitter as one of my news aggregators. It helps capture the zeitgeist, whatever that is.

julierobinson:

It’s really useful for information. Over the past few weeks info on the drought in different parts of the country has been very helpful to get an overall picture.

emelfp

There’s a wealth of info and news about farming issues from all over the world a lot of just farmers on twitter – you just need to search.

Will_FW:

The power of social media is in connecting a network of people to address a common cause What’s the cause in farming? It’s great having a network, but a network with a purpose would be way more awesome. I think social media is the first step towards wider use of tech & ICT in food and farming. Google, Ebay, Amazon etc have made themselves off the back of the internet. Agriculture hasn’t even scraped the surface of how to use the web to best effect yet it provides a way more essential service than books (maybe!)

Matt Redman (@redmanmatt):

Definitely. It keeps you in contact with people when you’re working long hours on your own. I use it more than texts to pass the time.

Jan Minihane:

Shropshire (where I hail from) has very many isolated businesses. Twitter particularly has done an amazing job at bringing people together and helping them feel part of the community. It’s a very very strong community on Twitter and I’ve seen stunning random acts of kindness.

@FarmrPhil:

Social media is one person one voice – it’s not who you are, it’s what you say. This is very rewarding in an isolated rural situation.

julierobinson_:

In one case I tweeted about there being no rain in E. Anglia & @NFU_Kent weighed in to remind me that SE badly affected too. It was good to know.

Matt Redman (@redmanmatt):

I think people like myself – an arable farmer with no direct link with public – Twitter gives us the ability to show what we do, why we do it and how in an up-to-date way. Short and sweet and to the point. Its’ also great to engage with others in similar lines of work for questions or general chat.

Tim O’Grady:

Lots of industry news comes through Twitter so you could find out latest trends and information specific to growing grain and raising sheep.

Joon123:

I’ve learnt more about actual farming from @FarmrPhil via Twitter in the last few years than I’ve ever known before.

julierobinson:

I like to follow news (I do a morning review of main items) and farmers (knowing what’s happening on farm is very helpful in my job).

Heather Gorringe (@Wiggled):

Twitter is not just for diversifications – it’s for farmers producing grain and beef. Whether you are a commodity producer or not, Twitter is there to engage consumers. Think of the effect they are all having on attitudes, prices and loyalty to British produce. It’s there to engage MP’s and journalists (like tonight). Basically anyone and everyone is on Twitter and we as farmers have the chance to have a conversation with them and, better still, a public conversation that other people can listen in on and be influenced by. Why not a farmer doing this? Cooking up his beef burgers and sausages and having folks follow him on twitter to know where he is parking and how long for – sort of guerilla burgering. There is one is in LA who has used Twitter to HUGE success. There’s also a baker who tweets when his bread is coming out of the oven. Farmers just need to think about HOW to use this media.

Jan Minihane:

Personally, I think in most cases a website is still a useful part of your online presence, it can build credibility and provide an online base of more info on you and your business. That will evolve in time and be needed less, but for now, I still think it’s a requirement most of the time. If you have no budget for a website or just want to test the water, a FB page shop is a great place to start

Heather Gorringe (@Wiggled):

I don’t think you need a website to sell on Twitter. If you have a physical presence then tweeting to alert people of what’s available and when (especially if it’s fresh) would be brilliant. PYO farm for example “The very first strawberries have arrived in our shop – get here fast for the first 20 punnets or tweet me back to reserve your fruit….”

@agrinick

I agree Heather, if a physical presence is available then just Twitter is fine but for e-commerce you can’t really get anywhere with a website…safely and reliably anyway.

Tim O’Grady:

A lot of people think it’s important to have a website too but I think Facebook can be a good low budget starting point.

Jan Minihane:

Absolutely. A blog (e.g. wordpress.com and eblogger) is free, simple to set up (I’m not a geek and did my first one in 10 minutes flat) and you can add pages so it pretty much looks like a website. As you say, it’s also a great way to learn what you do and don’t like, then you can invest in a website when you feel more knowledgeable.

Heather Gorringe (@Wiggled):

You can use twitter without a website to sell. How about Fresh croissants just out of the oven at our farm shop – come on down s’il vous plait :0)” or Farm walk on Sunday evening – BBQ afterwards – £5 per head. Tweet me to book etc etc

Heather Gorringe (@Wiggled):

emelfp I think a blog can be a great way of starting out and using twitter to point people to more detail about yourself. I use posterous.com as you can even email the blog posts which makes it so so simple – I have yet to persuade @farmrphil to blog! With regard to websites – much easier now as everyone is pretty much agreed how best to lay them out (like search in top right) shopping basket in top right etc etc so easy to steal principals from the expert big boys – like johnlewis.com etc

Tim O’Grady:

I’m not a sheep expert but I’m sure you’d find Twitter particularly a mine of information that would help in selling your lambs, maybe even customers.

Harriet Wilson:

Even though I normally use Facebook for personal reasons it is so useful as a “shop window” for livestock. However, I feel that Facebook is not only a great way to sell produce but also to make people more aware of what you have to offer; thus building your brand image. I have been added to a lot of herd and livestock pages where the breeders can upload pictures of their stock coming up for sale or any shows that they have won or done well at; again a huge shop window for breeders.

Tim O’Grady:

Jan Minihane:

I have a mantra – the less you sell on Twitter, the more you will sell. Concentrate on building your brand and people’s trust in you. Once they buy in to you they buy into your product/service.

He his-self:

I’ve seen direct marketing on social media fail on numerous occasions. Users do not appreciate being told what to buy and find the disruption to their community offensive. It is not as simple as selling stuff at say a market stall (which I understand is not simple at all).

Jan Minihane:

Traditional marketing and the hard sell falls flat on it’s face on Twitter. The biggest reaction I get is when I tweet about my two-year-old son cracking my TV screen – it’s amazing how it can help you find a common ground with your followers.

@FarmrPhil:

Marketing ourselves isn’t just about selling … more like brand building #socialFW [via Twitter]

Heather Gorringe (@Wiggled):

There’s no problem with using Twitter to sell to some extent. Selling is not a dirty word – especially if you respect your social media community and let them know of new deals/offers etc. Of course this is only a tinsy winsy part of what twitter is useful for.

Tim O’Grady:

You’d be surprised. Twitter is built to work over text messages, it’s a bit clunky but it does work. Can you get ‘data’ on your phone at all? If so, I bet you could get access to some of these services.

Heather Gorringe (@Wiggled):

Matt Redman (@redmanmatt):

Who knows? I think once you get the hang of one, it is easier to use a different one. Plus that will always be the case so I guess you’ve got to start somewhere/time?

Tim O’Grady:

Tthe technology will move on but Twitter particularly is fairly simple. If you learn one thing now then it will be easier to learn something new in the future as you’ll have knack by then.

Jan Minihane:

New social media sites are springing up all the time. Twitter will have it’s day, Facebook may take longer (it’s mission is ‘to be the web’) but personally I think not for a few years at least so there is plenty you could be benefiting from. My advice is start with one site, don’t try to do them all. It’s just too overwhelming.