Question:

Discuss about the Social Media Analysis (Three Farmers).

Answer:

Introduction

Three farmers is a trio of Canadian farmers who are dedicated to connecting with the consumers by bringing sustainable quality food products to the marketplace. All the products of Three farmers are healthy and wholesome foods, the products are inherently nutritious in protein, fibre & chalk full of Omega 3, another USP of the product offering of Three farmers is that they are extremely low in calories and fat. The entire product offering of Three farmers are grown and made in Canada, and they use only natural and quality ingredients and the food requires only little processing, hence the food products are responsibly grown and made. The company offers extremely high customer service, they listen to their customers both online and offline, work on the feedback and come up with improvement in the product offering to delight the customers. Product offering of Three farmers includes Camelina oil, Roasted Chickpeas & Pea Pops, extremely popular amongst its Target audience.

Social media is one of the most important marketing tools in the hands of the company in the present world, it is really interesting to see how brands engage with their audience on social media sites and convert potential customers into customers. It will be seen how Three farmers utilize Facebook, Instagram & Twitter for their marketing activities, how they identify the target audience and communicate with them. Based on the findings and analysis, some recommendations will be given to Three farmers to better use the social media platforms (Whiting & Williams, 2013)

Importance of Social Media

The figure above is extremely important to understand the relevancy and important of Social media platforms. In a world with a total population of 7.476 billion with an estimated urbanisation of 54%, 3.773 Billion (50%) are the internet users. 4.917 Billions (66%) are unique mobile phone users and 2.549 Billion (34%) are active mobile social users. Hence, it is evident that the consumers or potential consumers are available online; hence it is required for brands to be present where the Audience lies (Graber & Dunaway, 2017)

The Snapshot presented here shows how 60 seconds on the social media platforms goes by, it is important because it helps to see the number of conversations and exchanges happening on the platform, making it inevitable for brands to not focus their marketing strategies towards social media platforms (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017)

Company Background

Colin, Dan & Ron are second and third generation farmers who have grown up on this land and are committed towards its preservation and proudly numbering the prairies among the best places in the agricultural world. They are in this line to make a difference. Provide ways for sustainable farming and provide the end consumers with highly nourished food items.Camelina oil, which is the salad and the cooking oil is enriched with omega 3, a mineral which does maximum good to one’s bod.  Its amazingly delicious Pea pops which are high source of potassium, phosphorous, fibre and iron are a replacement to the fattening chips and fries.

Target Audience

Target audience can be understood as the recipient of the readership, publication or advertisement of a message. It is the group of potential or the existing customers who are interested in the product offering of the company (Tatham, 2015). In case of Three farmers the Target audience can be defined as:

This is the TG of Three farmers as identified by the firm in its one of the research findings.

Social Media Platforms

Facebook

The company was founded in the year 2010 and in a span of two or three years it started spreading its feet on social media platforms. The company’s Facebook page has around 7,581 likes and only 7,415 people are following the page. Considering the popularity of the food items, its utility and health advantages these numbers are far below than expected. On a scale of 5 the company has been reviewed with a score of 4.9, which is good, but not of any relevance as there is not too much traffic on its Facebook page (Ashley & Tuten, 2015)

Analysis of the Facebook page- Key Findings

• Posts are regular- Almost one post everyday by Three farmers
• Facebook posts are mostly advertising the products to its Facebook audience
• Some of the posts are featuring the new recipes Three farmers wants their audience to try out on their own
• Some of the posts are by fitness enthusiasts who are referring to the benefits of the food items form Three farmers
• Some posts are related to the Food expo the company has been participating in.
• Display of the products from Three stores at the retail stores.

The company seems to be doing its best by pushing the content organically to its audience, but it still does not seem to get more likes and followers on its page, which is a sad situation. Three farmers as a company is doing good for the society, by promoting the products which are rich in nutritional value and have tremendous health benefits, still its social media strategy on Facebook does not seem to go down well with its Target Audience (Tuten & Solomon, 2015)

Instagram

Instagram is a mobile, desktop and internet based photo sharing application and service that allows users to share pictures and video publicly or privately(Sheldon & Bryant, 2016) The platform is so huge that it has almost 100 million daily active users and over than 1 million monthly active advertisers. Instagram is owned by Facebook, due to which the platform offers some amazing analytics and space for marketing promotion. It is undoubtedly the second biggest platform after Facebook for the advertisers

Finding Of Three Farmers’ Instagram Page

• The company has posted around 371 posts ion its Instagram page
• Three farmers have a follower base of 2570 out of which 2567 are following it back.
• The posts are in sync with the post on its Facebook page, which means whatever is posted on the instagram page is seen on the Facebook page as well (Good strategy)
• Three farmers are promoting its products by way of beautiful pictures on the instagram page.
• On an average each picture get around 70-80 likes, which is too low for a company like Three farmers.
• The company’s Instagram page seems to have more engagement than the Facebook page, as seen from the likes and comments on its posts(Solomon, 2013)
• All the posts on instagram are absolutely lit up, with a great camera lens, depicting the product in great quality.

Having said that, the company still needs to do a lot on Instagram, as they are not able to utilize it to its full potential and are still way behind its competitors.

Twitter

Twitter was touted as one of the fastest growing social media platform. It is a micro blogging site, where a user can tweet in 140 words or less. The new functionalities of adding a GIF, image has made twitter very popular among the brands and the users. A user can tweet; retweet, like, direct message on twitter, very popular social media platform to keep the conversations going (Brain, 2014)

Three farmers joined Twitter in the year 2008 and until now has 4167 tweets, 4053 followers, it is following 1836 people and has gotten 4,212 likes on its posts. In my opinion Three farmers has a good audience engagement on Twitter in comparison to the other two (Smith, 2014)

Some fact findings from Twitter Page

• Regular posts on the twitter page
• The posts are either about the new recipe, its product, its process of making the product, exhibition and promotion.
• The user seems to retweet the post which shows some celebrity with the product or the outlet showing the product line.
• Some posts are also shown offering discount coupons to its customers.

As explained earlier, twitter is an extremely interactive tool to interact with the audience and keep the conversations alive, when used strategically with great info graphics can do wonders for the brand (Post, 2014)

Recommendation & Conclusions

Strategy for Facebook

Facebook is an excellent tool for showcasing the product to the target audience as everyone is on Facebook these days, through the feature of mobile marketing audience can be targeted on the go. As explained above the likes and followers of Three farmers on the Facebook page is very low. One of the strategy to increase that is using the feature of Facebook live every day and speak about the processes used to make the product, show on the Facebook live video how the product is made, this will generate the curiosity of the product in the minds of consumers (Young, 2014). Another strategy can be offering discount on purchase of the product it is proven that consumer likes the page on social media if he is getting some free coupon or discount. This will make the customer like the Facebook page and hence the content can reach more and more audience (Macarthy, 2014)

Strategy for Instagram

Instagram  is a wonderful platform for sharing photos and videos with the audience. It can have great effects on the targeted audience if used strategically. For example the timing of the posts have to be when maximum audience is online, which is preferably in the evening or at night (Walker, 2014). Second thing which can be done is using the Instagram stories to promote its product, it has been seen that stories have a more engagement rate than the posts. Hence, this will help the brand in reaching more of its audience (Johnston, 2017)

Strategy for Twitter

Twitter is a very popular micro blogging site which has many advantages of its own, other than Facebook and instagram. Twitter has a better engagement rate than Facebook and instagram; also the audience is tech savvy and understands the benefit of advertising on twitter (Tansel, 2015). One sure shot strategy or the one which is in trend and is highly rewarding is influencer marketing. Influencer marketing can be understood as a celebrity, who is using the product, recommend to his followers on social media platform. Audience listen to the influencer and the content is pushed to their followers who further tweet and retweet, thus promoting the product. So, Three farmers should get an influencer who is a role model for the TG of 25-44 and ask him to tweet about the health benefits of the product, this would surely bring more followers for Three farmers and reach a great number of audience (Baker, 2014)

Reference:

Allcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social media and fake news in the 2016 election (No. w23089). National Bureau of Economic Research.

Ashley, C., & Tuten, T. (2015). Creative strategies in social media marketing: An exploratory study of branded social content and consumer engagement. Psychology & Marketing, 32(1), 15-27.

Baker, M. J. (2014). Marketing strategy and management. Palgrave Macmillan.

Brain, S. (2014). Twitter statistics. Internet] http://www. statisticbrain. com.

Graber, D. A., & Dunaway, J. (2017). Mass media and American politics. Cq Press.

Johnston, A. (2017). How to Create an Instagram Marketing Strategy. Sprout Social. Retrieved May 2nd.

Macarthy, A. (2014). 500 Social Media Marketing Tips: Essential Advice, Hints and Strategy for Business: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, Instagram, Linkedin, and More!. CreateSpace.

Post, H. (2014). Twitter statistics. Statistic Brain.

Salomon, D. (2013). Moving on from Facebook: Using Instagram to connect with undergraduates and engage in teaching and learning. College & Research Libraries News, 74(8), 408-412.

Sheldon, P., & Bryant, K. (2016). Instagram: Motives for its use and relationship to narcissism and contextual age. Computers in Human Behavior, 58, 89-97.

Smith, C. (2014). By the numbers: 138 Amazing Twitter statistics. Digital Marketing Ramblings.

Tansel, A. K. (2015). Analysis of Tesla Motors’ Marketing Communications Strategy.

Tatham, S. (2015). Using Target Audience Analysis to Aid Strategic Level Decisionmaking. ARMY WAR COLLEGE CARLISLE BARRACKS PA STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE.

Tuten, T. L., & Solomon, M. R. (2014). Social media marketing. Sage.

Walker, S. (2014). Social Media Marketing Tips: Essential Strategy Advice and Tips for Business Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram and Much More!. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

Whiting, A., & Williams, D. (2013). Why people use social media: a uses and gratifications approach. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 16(4), 362-369.

Young, A. (2014). Google and Facebook. In Brand Media Strategy (pp. 7-14). Palgrave Macmillan US.