blogs

Wake up a little early this morning and write your farm blog.
This is the second installment of "5 farm blog ideas" -- click here to see part 1.

1. "A day at the market": Describe in detail -- from waking up before dawn to unpacking the truck after dark -- a day in the life of the farmer's market. The whole cycle is not something most customers appreciate because they see you for a few minutes in the mid-afternoon and do not think about the long hours that it takes. On the days you really need some sympathy, this is a good blog entry to print out and stick in every customer's bag as they leave your stand.
2. Cold weather farming: What do you do at the farm to get crops to customers in the cold season? Frost protections, specialized crops, and over-wintering are all interesting topics for non-farmers.
   
3. Cleaning up the farm: What does it take to get the farm ready for winter? The tiny farm blog did a great job of this by describing how he uses the bucket of a front-end loader to clean rows. He finds it "too easy," akin to cheating, but it is a great example of how creativity with farm implements is often utilized. This inventiveness goes on at every farm, but it is not something that the average eater knows about.
4. Focus on the crop: Whether you produce vegetables, meats, or other products you have probably gained knowledge on the crops you grow over the years. The Ladybug Letter did this recently with pumpkins. Most of us do not have Andy's virtuosity, he discusses nursery rhymes, special varieties ("Cucurbita maxima"), Cinderella, and Nixon, but just write down your knowledge of a particular crop and you have a blog article that customers will love.
5. Conferences: As the work slows down on the farm, the farming conference season kicks into high gear. One way to remember what you learned at the conference is to write about it in terms that your customers can understand. Explaining the ideas in simple terms will help you challenge some of your assumptions and your customers will become more connected to the farm. That sounds like a win-win.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving.. Among the many things I am thankful for in my life, I am thankful for the friends that I have made across the country while providing the Small Farm Central service. I am also thankful for the education and experiences that led to this project; it provides me with a lot of pleasure.

Have a great Thanksgiving -- back to the mailing list series after the holiday.

Let your customers speak! This is Part 8 of the "Farming the Web" course in farm web design.

Connecting with customers is the reason that you have a farm website; the newest push on the web (in what is often referred to as Web 2.0) is to have that customer connect back with you. And take it a step further and allow customers to connect with each other and you have a self-regulating marketing machine that does not require as much effort and is more effective.

On most sites, this push and pull takes the form of comments. If you have ever visited Amazon.com, you have probably noticed the reviews that people leave for each book, which are in effect comments directed towards a particular media item. I was just reading an article that told the following story about Amazon comments:

In 1988, a British mountain climber named Joe Simpson wrote a book called Touching the Void, a harrowing account of near death in the Peruvian Andes. It got good reviews but, only a modest success, it was soon forgotten. Then, a decade later, a strange thing happened. Jon Krakauer wrote Into Thin Air, another book about a mountain-climbing tragedy, which became a publishing sensation. Suddenly Touching the Void started to sell again.
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What happened? In short, Amazon.com recommendations. The online bookseller's software noted patterns in buying behavior and suggested that readers who liked Into Thin Air would also like Touching the Void. People took the suggestion, agreed wholeheartedly, wrote rhapsodic reviews. More sales, more algorithm-fueled recommendations, and the positive feedback loop kicked in.

Maybe you can't propel a book to the best-seller list, but you can create a feedback loop that generates excitement for your business or at least allows customers to give direct feedback. Comments do take a more advanced web technology system than your most basic HTML website, but most blogging platforms offer comment extensions. Comments are one of the features I have added to Small Farm Central over the past few months.

The most popular place to utilize comments is on blog posts, so that readers can immediately reply to the content they see in the blog. Many of the larger blogs expect 100s of comments on each article they post. I don't expect that on smaller blogs like this one or your farm website, but it shows an openness and willingness to engage with each visitor that is very important on any website. We are no longer in the TV age where we are expected to hollowly except the content coming into our living rooms -- we are in the Internet age, where TV shows allow the public to vote off the cast members. A good idea for a blog post on a busy or tired week is the "question blog" where you simply pose a question with some cursory discussion yourself and let your visitors do the content generation in comments. Maybe something like "What is your favorite way to cook winter squash?" or "How often do you buy non-local produce is the wintertime?"

Your farm website can accept comments on blog posts, staff profiles, photos, and recipes. What about letting your customers add their own recipes to your farm website? Would that encourage participation and make customers feel part of the farm instead of mere consumers? Extend user-generated content to your heart's desire; maybe you want customers to upload a publicly accessible customer profile with a photo or allow users to add their own photos of your farm or the food they cook to your website.

It is a balancing act, of course. With openness comes some unwanted comments; all well-designed platforms that accept comments will have an easy way for you to destroy negative or off-topic comments. In the end, it is your website and people can't post anything they want. There is also the problem of spam infecting your website. An unprotected comment form will, over time, invite spammers to join the party. I use the Recaptcha service which differentiates humans from computers, so automated programs cannot infect Small Farm Central sites with spam comments.

Openness is good. As small farmers we should be open to customers visiting the farm and knowing how we grow the food that goes into their homes. That is one of the competitive advantages we have as small farmers and we must make use of it. Find a way to extend your openness to the web and let your customers in the door with comments and other user-generated content techniques.

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Small Farm Central bridges the gap between technology and agriculture by providing web services to direct marketing small farms across the country. We help farms reach their marketing potential with inexpensive, professional websites that any farmer can use. Come get a free demo today.

Wake up a little early this morning and write your farm blog.
This is part 1 of an on-going series. Click here to read part 2.

1. Variety feature: write about one of the special varieties that make small-scale farming so interesting to you and the customers. These varieties are bred for taste and are meant for ripe picking instead of shipping. They also have a history -- find out what that history is on the Internet. Do you cook this variety differently than the standard-issue grocery store fare? What is different about the way the plant looks? Is it more difficult to grow? Did you save the seed?
2. Choose a specific challenge: there are always challenges in farming and it is temptation to write about farming from a breezy overhead view; mentioning each challenge in one sentence and moving on to what you think people find more interesting. Today, focus on one particular problem and all the ideas you have for solving it, what books you are reading to find answers, and any other sources you can call on (neighbor farms, family, etc). By telling the detailed story of one problem, customers will understand how inventive you must be to grow your crops.
3. The first time.. : discuss the first time you ever thought about farming. Did you grow up on a family farm? Did you visit your grandfather's farm when you were young? Many of your customers don't know how you got into farming.
4. What's the neighbor up to: You probably have people in the area also doing innovative projects in agriculture and food. Highlight one of your neighbors and friends today. By telling their story, you are demonstrating how it takes a whole community to produce the food, not just one farm.
5. Worker feature: Let one of your interns or workers write a post today. You can of course review it before you post it online, but this activity will give your worker a different way of reflecting on the farm and make them feel more valued in the business. It is very hard work on a farm and a distraction will be good for your worker.

I will continue this "5 farm blog ideas" post in the future to get you writing today!

Of course you can get your own website up and running, complete with farm blog, on the Small Farm Central in just a few hours and very inexpensively. Call us today (412-567-3864) or email us at info@smallfarmcentral.com to get started today.

Writing your blog will become easier over time. Small farms today are direct marketers and as such are in the business of relationship marketing with each customer that buys products from the farm. The customer is not at the CSA pickup, farmer's market,  or on-farm market because it is easiest or cheapest food source -- they are there because they respect the farmer, want to support the local economy, and feel that their dollars are spent on a worthwhile endeavor. Every chance you get as a farm to interact with your customers should reinforce the connection to the land and make the customer feel like they are doing a good thing by patronizing your business. This is a very difficult task for a busy farmer. I challenge you to take your relationship marketing into the 21st century and start a blog on your farm website.

I'm sure some of you are unclear on the meaning of the term "blog". It is a rather fluid term that is a shortened version of "weblog." In my mind, it signifies a webpage that displays content of varying lengths in chronological order and invites readers to interact in the form of comments. Often, blog postings are categorized or tagged by topic so that users can navigate through related blog entries by the tags, such as "farming challenges" or "farmer's market." Blogs take many different forms from personal, public diaries to political commentary to blogs that are published by businesses themselves. This is the most popular form of content generation and information retrieval on the Internet today and the very website you are looking at right now, Small Farm Central, is a blog-style site. If you have heard of the term "Web 2.0", blogs are big part of the Web 2.0 movement.

Your farm should blog because it is an easy and time-effective way for you to get your story out to customers. Repeat customers come to you because of the relationship that they have with you and a blog is a perfect way for you to start and augment the real-world interaction that you have with the customer. Granted it does take some time, energy, and thought to produce effective blog posts that communicate the farm experience, but that post will easily be read 100s or 1000s of times over the life of your blog. That works out to be an extremely time-efficient way to build a consistent and faithful customer base. Customers that read your blog will be more understanding of blemishes or crop shortages because you can explain the exact cause of the problems. This becomes a story that they can take home with their produce and they will feel more connected to the farm and the food if they know some of the challenges that went into growing it.

The complaint I hear the most is that farmers don't have time to be writers as well as producers. Steve Sando of Rancho Gordo dedicates one afternoon every two weeks to writing six blog articles. He then releases one each Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. There are other techniques of course too: get a trusted intern to write an article each week, find a very enthusiastic and involved customer who will volunteer to write a blog article every once and a while, or just commit to posting a short update once each week. There is no right way to write or schedule your blog, but post on a regular schedule and write with passion because passion is infectious.

At this point, if you are considering a farm blog, start reading a few established farm blogs and get some general advice on how to write blogs. I have discussed some aspects of blogging at Small Farm Central in Farm blogging isn't always literature, but this is and What I learned during an interview with Steve Sando of Rancho Gordo. Blogging will be a topic that I come back to over the next few months because I believe it is the core of any modern farm web marketing strategy.

Some farm blogs to get you started:

• Eat Well Farm Blog : recently discussing problems with the Med Fly and how they are certifying their packing shed as Med Fly-free.
• Life of Farm Blog : this blog is sponsored by the Mahindra tractor company. Perhaps the writer got a free tractor for writing the blog?
• Tiny Farm Blog : wonderful photos and at least a post a day.
• Rancho Gordo Blog : this popular blog receives 300-500 unique visitors a day (which is impressive for a farm website) and even helped the author secure a book deal.

Read about the process of writing a blog and more:

• Blogging Your Way Into a Business
• Business Blog Case Study: Stonyfield Farm
• Blogging for your customers versus blogging for your business
• How to Write Great Blog Content : Great advice from the #1 blogger.

Spend the next few weeks reading farm blogs and exploring some of the resources listed above. Then when you think you know enough about blogging to start, you will probably want to go back to Hosting Options to get your blog online. Not coincidentally, the Small Farm Central software contains all the features you need to get your blog (and farm website) up and running within a few days. I know that not very many farms are taking blogging seriously as a marketing tool, but I have a strong feeling that every serious farm will have a blog in five years.


This is week five of the "Farming the Web" course which comes in weekly installments covering all aspects of developing a website for your farm. If you liked this article, you may also be interested in:
Design (Advanced): what does my customer want?
Farming is not equal to the web?

Steve Sando searching for new bean varieties. Steve Sando of Rancho Gordo seems to lead a charmed life as bean seed selector and grower in Napa, California. He travels extensively in  Mexico and Central America to find rare and unusual varieties of dried beans to grow out in his trial gardens; only the tastiest varieties are saved for production in the future. These beans -- ranging from the spotted Vaquero Bean to the Pebbles Bean to extra-tasty varieties of Pinto Beans -- are then sold at farmer's markets, to restaurants, and most interestingly for Small Farm Central readers, on the Internet.

The cornerstone of his web marketing effort is the wonderful Rancho Gordo blog that he updates almost daily with news and photos on new bean varieties that he is testing, recipes that use beans (I can recommend the Breakfast Molletes because I made them on Saturday morning!), and controversial topics related to the larger sustainable agriculture community. I will be writing more in the future about the valuable aspects of blogging for your farm in the future (and of course, what exactly a blog is), but if you want to get a jump start on this topic, start reading farm blogs -- the Rancho Gordo blog is a good mentor. I only wish his blog and regular website were better integrated to help people that read his blog posts more readily convert from readers to buyers of products -- but I think there are some technical restraints because his blog is hosted separately from the regular site.
Vaquero beans from Rancho Gordo.
I am interviewing Steve later this week about his approach to web marketing. I will quiz him on the costs, both money and time, and the rewards of running his website and blog. I hope you can learn a little bit from his blog, try out a few new "New World" recipes, and then learn about how you can duplicate his success through my interview summary that will be coming out in the next week or two.

Especially as it relates to blogging, his website represents persistence and passion. As he writes about his beans, customers, and recipes I am convinced that he loves his subject and it provides a face for his product that is principled and human. The human connection -- the customer knows who we are and why we farm and we know why that customer supports our farm -- is an ideal that we all strive for in the sustainable agriculture community. The internet is just another way to reach people and customers who can keep us doing what we love.