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Coming from a 3 generational farming family I was always interested in how the business was ran and how I could help my family. My family currently runs a farmers market where they sell fresh and dried chile, along with other farm produce. We knew that it was hard for people outside of the Southwest to get quality green and red chile. I often talked to my family about how having a website and social media presents would allow them to expand their existing chile sales to an online audience across the United States. After many conversations about the pros and cons I got the “ok” from my uncle to start a web-store and marketing campaign.
1.Create a functional user friendly website2.Create social media communities around red chile, green chile, and our brand.3.Generate buzz and interest in our products.4.Sell lots of chile!
Website: http://DiazFarms.comCMS=JoomlaModified joomla templateHosting: godaddyCustom banner, and product images made in PhotoshopFacebook and Twitter widgetsBlog commenting system: disqusMailchip.com email list integrationShopping cart software: virturemart
For the Diaz Farms website the goals were simple:1.The site must be easy to use, and appealing to customers.2.Be informative3. Allow easy checkout for customers4.Integrate Social Media
From early on I knew that the only way for this web store to be successful I needed to create a thriving community around the businesses products and brand. The social media campaign started February 2010 which was 6-7 months before we officially opened the web store. The two main mediums I used were facebook fan pages and twitter. On facebook I created 3 fan pages, "New Mexico Green Chile" & "New Mexico Red Chile" which were the businesses most popular products and "Diaz Farms" which would promote the businesses brand. For the chile pages a mix of pictures, videos, news articles, contests, and recipes were used to create awareness and demand for the products. For the Diaz Farms page a mix of the green chile, red chile and farm updates were used to build brand awareness. All of these facebook pages were linked up to the main @DiazFarms twitter to create a single source of distribution for the twitter audience. The social media pages were updated daily with content and every user comment was answered to really build up conversion and show that we cared. The facebook fan pages continue to grow daily without any facebook advertising, but strictly thru word of mouth. In twitter search feeds were set up to monitor all talk about "green chile," "red chile," "Diaz Farms" and related topics. On a daily basis I would go thru the searches and have genuine conversations with people about the topics rather than just trying to sell people products.
New Mexico Green Chile http://fb.me/NewMexicoGreenChile= 3,100+ fansNew Mexico Red Chile http://fb.me/NewMexicoRedChile= 850+ fans@DiazFarms http://twitter.com/DiazFarms= 40+ followers
*Going forward each facebook fan page will have its own twitter account, which will create a dedicated topic channel on twitter. This will give us a larger following on twitter.
Our physical store was claimed on Google Places and linked up with our web store. Also the page was updated with photos, videos, contact, store and
product information.http://bit.ly/dl7GGN
Our physical store location was also added to popular check-in services such as Gowalla and
foursquare. I claimed the spots in order to update the pages with location and product info, and we plan to run check-in deals next chile season. As soon as facebook places opens up to the public I will claim our location and link it to our facebook fan page.
*Check-ins are currently low due to low user adoption in our area.
Gowalla: http://bit.ly/aBjpwofoursquare: http://4sq.com/cPGNNk
MailChimp was used as our primary mail list service. Users could sign up for the mailing list on Diazfarms.com/mailing-list and on our facebook and twitter pages. The mailing list
was used to notify customers when we started taking orders for seasonal products,
sales, and general website updates. I encouraged users to sign up for the mailing list many months before we started shipping
chile. This was to ensure we had a solid customer base for our website at launch. I also gave mailing list subscribers a chance to
order 2 days before others to beat the ordering rush.
Youtube was used to upload and distribute videos around our products. There was
existing videos that we used from the New Mexico Dept. of Agriculture but in the future more time will be allocated to
producing original content such as cooking recipes and how-to videos.
http://youtube.com/Diazfarms
Blog Interaction
On a weekly basis I would search blogs for posts that were related to our
products and industry. I would leave comments and have conversations with people around the topics. This would in turn lead people back to our website.
Goal: To grow the New Mexico Green facebook fan page and increase green chile sales.
Promote contest on Facebook and twitter pages and link fans back to DiazFarms.com/contestAs terms of the contest users must “Suggest”
their friends to like our fan pages on facebook and also comment on the post and tell us why they love New Mexico Green Chile?A winner at random would be picked and shipped
a free 17lb sack of green chile.
Results:50+ comments were posted about why they love
New Mexico Green Chile and we saw a lot of positive comments about our brand.The New Mexico Green Chile fan page grew by
700 users. Green Chile Sales increased due to the buzz and
new users.
All links were shortened with bit.ly in order to track effectiveness of our content. It also helped to determine
when the most effective times to post content were.
hootsuite was used to bring all of our social media pages together to
be more effective in posting and commenting on posts. Also twitter
searches were set up to interact with users who were talking about
topics we were monitoring.
With the opening of our website in early August till mid October Diaz Farms online sales totaled $15,000. This was due to the time and effort that was put into building our social media communities. We will continue to interact with our communities and try to grow them further.
This proves that with social media a business can take their product online and see high sales in a soft period of time if they put in the time to build buzz and community around their products.
