How To Make Social Media Work For You
June 25, 2015 
Christina Herrick
I have a confession to make. I enter a lot of contests. I’ve won gift cards to local restaurants, locally made jewelry, tickets to local events, and even a trip to Cancun.
My mom once told me, “You can’t win if you don’t enter.” Since then, I’ve held this motto close to my heart. My friends say I’m lucky, but I just counter with, “You can’t win if you don’t enter.”
I am discerning in my entries. I only enter contests for things that I might use or need. (Who doesn’t need a vacation?!?). This brings me to the inspiration for this month’s column.
When I was thinking of a topic to write about this month, I intended to focus on the use of social media. But instead of giving you ideas on how to promote your business through social media, here’s a way to let others promote your business through social media.
Let Bloggers Promote Your Business
I recently came across a contest a local blogger was featuring. She attended a tour of Petitti Garden Center, a local garden center in Ohio, and in turn received a $100 gift card for their own use and a $50 gift card to give away. This blogger was one of many who attended the tour and then gave away a gift card to the garden center to one of her readers.
Each reader had several ways to gain an entry:
- Comment on the blog about what “you would want to add to your garden from Petitti’s.”
- Visit both the blog’s Facebook page and Petitti Garden Center’s Facebook page and leave a comment on the blog indicating a visit to both pages.
- Follow both the blog’s and garden center’s Twitter accounts, and comment on the blog indicating following both.
- Lastly, she supplied a phrase to tweet out with a link to the blog. Readers could tweet out that phrase once a day for additional entries. But, a reader needed to leave a separate comment for each tweet.
An Exclusive Behind-The-Scenes Tour
Petitti’s worked with an outside marketing agency who had a relationship with Cleveland-area bloggers, says Liz Ambrose, marketing manager for the garden center. This was the first year for this type of promotion.
Ambrose said 30 bloggers were contacted, each given a $100 gift card if they were interested in blogging about their experience and a $50 card to giveaway to readers. So, at the most, they spent $4,500 to have these bloggers attend.
The marketing agency did screen the bloggers’ content ahead, to make sure they were a good fit for Petitti’s and were positive in their content posted.
The bloggers were invited to an exclusive tour of the production center, given by Angelo Petitti, who founded the garden center company. Some were unable to attend and blogged about a visit to a garden center, or some are waiting to blog about the experience of gardening all year.
“Since (the tour) we’ve had great posts about us,” Ambrose says. “We got our name out there to a lot of people who might not necessarily shop at Petitti’s.”
I’m not sure what the average reach of each blogger would be, but one blog listed 360 entries for the giveaway, one listed 80, and one as small as 10.
Ambrose says it has been a positive experience for the company. She also noted that these bloggers are now following, sharing, and commenting on what Petitti’s is doing on social media. Which is an interactive bonus for the garden center.
How This Giveaway Could Work For You
Right before your season begins or when your market opens it’s a busy time. You’re trying to get all your seasonal workers hired and trained and making sure your operation is ready.
You could use one of those days as the perfect time to invite bloggers to visit your farm, tour your operation, and also train your employees – perhaps by shadowing seasoned veterans. Have them sample the foods your market is best known for and get a real feel for what your operation does best.
I wrote in the past about how you could use an outside marketing agency to help garner more sponsorships and partnerships on your farm, a blogger tour might be another great way to use an agency you might already have a relationship with.
If you’d prefer to not use an outside marketing agency, you could invite a couple of local bloggers in your area (Google search for blogger and your state), and since most belong to a blogger network, they might be able to suggest some other local bloggers to invite.
Although you can’t control what the bloggers write about, you can take extra steps to ensure the experience is one the bloggers will rave about and they have access to parts of your business you don’t see just stopping in the farm market.
“Giving them this exclusive tour of one of our growing facilities made them feel special and made them feel in the know,” Ambrose says. “It also made them that more interested in what we do because they saw it from behind the scenes.”
You Can’t Win If You Don’t Enter
Many of you would probably spend more money on boosting a Facebook post, a print or a radio ad. Why not invite a handful of bloggers out for an exclusive tour of your farm market, some samples, and a gift card to your market for their time — and one to give away as well.
Petitti’s could get as many as 60 return visits with the gift cards they provided, not to mention all the word-of-mouth and social media boosts they received, right as the spring growing season began.
How much would you spend to promote your business? As my mom would say, you can’t win if you don’t enter. In this case it applies to social media as well.
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