The Eastern Ontario Local Food Conference (EOLFC 2013) provided a great opportunity to share information, learn about success stories and gather information on innovative local food businesses, projects and best practices. The conference was organized by KEDCO (Kingston Economic Development Corporation) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Food and the Ministry of Rural Affairs. The theme of the conference was Innovation Driving Local Food and it was held December 3, 2013 at the Ambassador Hotel in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Kelly Ward from Foodland ontario, part of OMAF and MRA on Innovative use of social media marketing for local food

1. Social media marketing
Kelly Ward
Foodland Ontario
kelly.ward@ontario.ca
@FoodlandONT
@wardkell

2. Media Consumption Habits

5. Social Media Use in Agriculture Sector

6. Source: KTT/J.LeBoeuf (2012)

7. A plan for social media fitness
Social Listening
Maintain Social Channel
Integration and Outreach

8. Getting Started
• Listening
– Follow twitter feeds, Facebook
pages/people, Pinterest, YouTube
– Follow bloggers (subscribe via RSS
direct to Outlook)
– Identify who the influencers are
• People with large/engaged audiences

9. Who are you talking to? (Now / In 5-10 years)
Will you be on their radar?

10. Emergence of Social Search
Graph Search

12. A Look a Trends in Social
• Facebook and Twitter still the elephants in the room
• YouTube - a search engine
• Youth demographic beginning to abandon Facebook
(SnapChat)
• Twitter acquires Vine (6 second ‘video’ clips)
• Visual content, highly shareable (moving beyond text
only updates)
• High rate of technology evolution
• Mobile-friendly and apps
• Predictive Algorithms
• Kickstarter and crowdfunding

14. Define Your Strategy
• What is the business need you are fulfilling?
– Publishing
– Marketing (self/industry/institution/company)
– Networking
– Discussion
– Professional Collaboration

15. Create Your Accounts
Consider:
– Do I have sufficient content? If not, where else
could I pull from? (curation)
– What type of content do you want to convey and
to whom?
• Which social channel is your audience on
• Are you creating shareable content?

16. Foodland Ontario Social Media Landscape
Foodland Ontario Website

17. Best Practices on Social
• Create a content strategy
– Compelling / Shareable
– Storytelling
– Ask conversation starters
• Seek partners and influencers to build your
audience/community
• Speak the #language on @twitter
• Integrate content on feeds where possible
• Be active

18. Visual Content – Informative Animation

19. Visual Content - Infographics

20. Building Endurance and Running
• How will you measure success?
– Awareness measurements (shares, retweets)
– Engagement measurements
(comments/mentions)
– Click-through conversion (ads/links)
• Risk mitigation – what are the threats?
• Outreach and participation beyond your channel

21. Information Automation

22. A Word From My Sponsor

23. QUESTIONS?
kelly.ward@ontario.ca
@FoodlandOnt
@wardkell