I have rightly or wrongly spent the majority of my adult life avoiding social media. Having never so much as set foot on MySpace, or even Facebook, there was a little part of me that was quietly smug that I wasn’t conforming to this new phenomenon.
But the smugness has well and truly worn off, and we are on a one-way track to being validated only by our online presence, although this expression still makes me feel a little sad.
In my new occupation I am constantly being told to increase my social media profile and my online presence. The people who are telling me this, not requesting, suggesting, recommending or even advising, are my agent, publishers, brands, food festivals and the list goes on.
So it made me think of the industry that I had just left, the amazing, albeit slightly antiquated, industry of fruit and veg. Now I mean this as a compliment and have loved every day of my 21 years selling fresh flowers, fruit and vegetables. But we have to face facts that as an industry we are not grasping and squeezing the very last opportunity out of this new(ish) platform.
I can hear the groans now. Why do I want to do that, I haven’t got time, it’s only our competitors that will be looking at it, our customer base isn’t on it, etc. As a product of the fresh produce industry, I have uttered all of the above and many more unprintable justifications why I haven’t ever bothered with Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. But I was wrong.
On social media we have people that squash half an avocado on a piece of toast and they have a million followers. What would the world of social media do if they saw you growing, shipping, breeding, selling and ripening millions of the things? Not to mention telling them what is in season, what is good value, what is being developed, what is coming soon, showing off the displays and flashes that look like works of art, what deals are you doing: the list is as endless as the potential.
The world we frequent and the products we sell are perfect for this craze – we are everything that the mums, the yoga teachers, the vegans, the clean eaters and the chefs are posting about to a huge audience.
And there are so many benefits. We need to start attracting more younger fresh faces to the business. We need to get more people consuming more fruit and veg. We need to engage our customers and consumers to find out what they like and what they want. The word that is used for people with a large following on social media is an ‘influencer’ and that is by its very definition because you can start to influence people in what they buy and where they buy it.
A couple of top tips: Instagram is probably better suited for our visually-driven business, also the interaction on this platform is now higher than Twitter, but I would say do them all if you can. Avoid the automatic posting of the same thing across multiple platforms – it’s unpopular with the public and the people hosting those platforms. Reach out to like-minded companies, follow lots of people, get talking, get liking, get posting! Get on with it.
