Social media and the organic farmer

The latest Food Programme was broadcast yesterday by BBC Radio 4 and made for some interesting listening. (Listen again at iPlayer.) In it Sheila Dillon visited the Food and Drink Expo 2010 at the Birmingham NEC and, rather than discussing the food, her focus was encapsulated in the programme slogan, 'To Tweet or not to Tweet', which was also the name of a panel debate at the Expo. Twitter was not the principal programme focus though. The programme explored social media generally and its use by small farmers and food producers to communicate with customers.

There were some interesting discussions about the fact that online grocery sales grew by 15% last year (three times more than 'traditional' grocery sales) and the role of the web and social media in the disintermediation of supermarkets as the principal means of getting 'artisan foods' to market. Some great success stories were discussed, such as Rude Health and the recently launched Virtual Farmers' Market. However, the familiar problem which the programme highlighted – and the problem which has motivated this blog posting – is the issue of measuring the impact and effectiveness of social media as a marketing tool. Most small businesses had little idea how effective their social media 'strategies' had been and, by the sounds of it, many are randomly tweeting, blogging and setting up Facebook groups in a vein attempt to gain market traction. One commentator (Philip Lynch, Director of Media Evaluation) from Kantar Media Intelligence spoke about tracking "text footprints" left by users on the social web which can then be quantified to determine the level support for a particular product or supplier. He didn't say much more than that, probably because Kantar's own techniques for measuring impact are a form of intellectual property. It sounds interesting though and I would be keen to see it action.

But the whole reason for the 'To Tweet or not to Tweet' discussion in the first place was to explore the opportunities to be gleaned by 'artisan food' producers using social media. These are traditionally small businesses with few capital resources and for whom social media presents a free opportunity to reach potential customers. Yet, the underlying (but barely articulated) theme of many discussions on the Food Programme was that serious investment is required for a social media strategy to be effective. The technology is free to use but it involves staff resource to develop a suitable strategy, and a staff resource with the communications and technical knowledge. On top of all this, small businesses want to be able to observe the impact of their investment on sales and market penetration. Thus, in the end, it requires outfits like Kantor to orchestrate a halfway effective social media strategy, maintain it, and to measure it. Anything short of this will not necessarily help drive sales and may be wholly ineffective. (I can see how social media aficionado Keith Thompson arrived at a name for his blog – any thoughts on this stuff, Keith?) The question therefore presents itself: Are food artisans, or any small business for that matter, being suckered by the false promise of free social media?

Of course, most of the above is predicated upon the assumption that people like me will continue to use social media such as Facebook; but while it continues to update its privacy policy, as it suggested this week on its blog that it will, I will be leaving social media altogether. 'Opting in' for a basic level of privacy should not be necessary.