Farming Facebook: Finding Community, Collaboration and Connections

By Michele Payn-Knoper


Teenage playground. College hangout. Fad. Be honest. When you hear "Facebook," you likely have thought one of these or simply that it's a waste of time. Tables have turned. Facebook reached the tipping point last December; it now boasts a population larger than the United States with 315 million users. Nearly two-thirds of users are beyond college age, and the fastest-growing user group is women over the age of 50. Facebook essentially levels the playing field for the 1.5 percent of the United States that's involved with farming because of the numbers of people you can connect with and share information about agriculture.

The business value is in the insight on trends, collaboration and intelligence you can gather from this large of a population. Regardless of your political position, consider the Obama campaign’s record turnout among young voters. This occurred largely because their online operations were run by the co-founder of Facebook. He built hundreds of communities through Facebook, quickly equipping the campaign to build a groundswell of support in different locations. Do you think agriculture could benefit from a groundswell of support? I do – and have seen the benefits of sharing agricultural messages through Facebook firsthand.

If you're not on Facebook yet, all you need to sign up is a valid e-mail account and a password at www.facebook.com. You'll need a picture and few tidbits of interesting information about yourself. The initial setup can take as little as 15 minutes or as long as you want to put into building your profile. I recommend you piece it together over time. After you create your profile, start adding some friends and be sure to use the “suggested friends” column to the right (which is shockingly accurate at finding friends and relatives). You can easily set up your account with help from a robust guide at www.facebook.com/help/new_user_guide.php and manage your privacy with suggestions from www.allfacebook.com/2009/02/facebook-privacy/.

There are three types of "Facebooks" you'll want to understand:

1. Personal profile: Self-explanatory; your profile is where you create your Facebook presence as an individual, share messages, connect with friends and post pictures/videos. These can be open to all of Facebook or completely private – or you can select access privileges for different groups of friends. See how a swine farmer uses his personal profile to provide updates from his farm – and agricultural messages – www.facebook.com/LibertySwine.
2. Fan page: More of a corporate or special-interest presence. It's somewhat like a Web site, though you have to become a "fan" in order to have their updates (known as "feeds) show on your home page when you log in. People post updates, photos, links and a variety of information on their fan page. See my Cause Matters Corp. fan page at www.facebook.com/causematters or a group of farmers connecting with consumers under "Farms2U" at www.facebook.com/Farm2U for examples.
3. Group: Either public or private, groups typically center around a cause or community. See an example of a Facebook group for #agchat at www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=67010541510&ref=ts or "I love farmers" www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=131504830174&ref=ts. Groups can be valuable to a defined set people centered around a topic or event, and they can be public or completely private.

Once you have created your Facebook, make a point to spend 15 minutes per day on the site. Update your status daily with what you're doing on the farm. You may not consider it interesting that you're planting soybeans, but, again, farming is a novelty to 98.5 percent of the population. You can also use factoids as status updates, such as "We're harvesting our biotechnology beans today & excited that this technology allowed us to save 30% on our fuel costs, decreasing our carbon footprint." Or post links on your wall with information about agriculture. After you get comfortable, start looking around for fan pages that offer information to help your business, capture market information or better understand trends in agriculture.

Remember when the Internet was “a fad” and people questioned if Web sites were really necessary? Facebook is now that "fad," and it's literally changing our culture. You can either jump on board the Facebook train and use it as a business tool or you can look back when you have tracks running across your back. Agriculture needs your voice to be on board the train, so please join us!

posted by Expert 2:10 pm