| Date post: | 25-Jan-2015 |
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Colorado Farm to Table Food Safety—
Using Social Media to Increase
Engagement with Target Audiences
Elisa Shackelton Colorado State University Extension Specialist
Department of Food Science & Human Nutrition
Annual Conference of the
Association for Communication Excellence
June 2014
Food Safety and Health/Nutrition (FSHN) fact sheets
historically have generated ~30-40% of the total traffic on the
CSU Extension website.
Only ~3% of CSU Extension FSHN-related fact sheets are
viewed by Coloradans annually on the website. (Colo. ranks
#7)
Fewer county-based Extension FCS positions are resulting in
the inability to meet the demand for food safety and nutrition
education programs statewide.
Technology has created the demand/need for quicker
dissemination of information—especially related to food safety
and nutrition.
~26,714 engagement hours with
FSHN content (88 fact sheets)
1. CO
2. CA
3. TX
4. NY
5. FL
6. IL
7. PA
1. CA
2. TX
3. NY
4. FL
5. IL
6. PA
7. CO
In 2010, CSU went through a reorganization with a new
university-wide outreach focus on locally-driven issues.
In 2011, campus-based Extension specialists
determined there was a need for a new model to more
quickly create and disseminate timely and relevant
nutrition and food safety information to Coloradans.
Funding was secured to create a new part-time
Website/Social Media Specialist position as an
outreach collaboration of:
◦ CSU Extension
◦ Dept. of Food Science & Human Nutrition
◦ Kendall Anderson Nutrition Center
Education
• B.S. Food Science and Nutrition
• M.Agr. Extension Education
Employment
• K-State Agronomy Dept.-Assistant Scientist
• K-State Extension Agent-FCS/Comm. Develop.
• CSU Extension Agent-FCS
• CSU Extension Dept. FSHN Website/Social Media
Specialist
Hobbies
• Gardening/Cooking/Eating/Active living!
Attended City of Fort Collins social media classes
for business
Subscribe to Social Media Examiner newsletter
Participate in annual Social Media Success
Summit (2012, 2013) 26 live sessions throughout
October
Participate in monthly CSU social media campus
roundtable discussions
Read everything I can get my hands on about
best practice! (Have you used FB Audience Insights yet?!)
Huge repository containing many Extension resources
Very institutional looking—long lists, simple page layout
throughout, minimal use of imagery
Layout and navigation managed by campus
technology/communications staff (+/-)
Limited ability for agents/specialists to cater to target
audiences
Limited opportunity for social media engagement
Colorado Farm to Table Food Safety (2011)
◦ Food Safety
YouTube
Live Eat Play Colorado (2014)
◦ Nutrition and Health
YouTube
Using templates that were designed to
complement each of the websites
Content is derived mostly from existing fact
sheets. When not available, handouts are
authored/peer reviewed by departmental
faculty/staff/student website team—this can be done
relatively quickly (1-2 weeks vs 1-2 years!)
Include CC imagery (or our own) to
support/strengthen the content and to make
legally pinnable by others
New Nutrition and Health website
Increase the use of Extension’s online food safety
resources (fact sheets, videos, handouts, webinars, social
media content)
◦ Improve ease of finding Extension’s online resources
(keywords, meta tags, SEO, images, etc.)
◦ Stimulate timely awareness of and engagement with
Extension resources
◦ Increase # of total Extension users statewide Traditional audiences
New audiences
1. Named to create awareness that there are many
places in the food chain where food safety should
be of concern:
Colorado: identifying the physical location of our target
audience
Farm: growers/food handlers
To: handling mechanisms/personnel between the farm and
the consumer
Table: consumers/food service/retailers
Food Safety: emphasizing the importance of safety in the
food supply chain
2. Name builds upon the familiarity of popular
terminology/food trends, and with culture sensitivity
(fingers, forks, chopsticks)
• farm to fork
• farm to table
• field to table
• farm to foam
3. Website fosters targeted outreach to 3 distinct
(but many times overlapping) audiences:
• Growers
• Food Handlers/Retailers
• Consumers
4. Created a seal to represent the
website on social media and printed items
Facebook—1st choice/preferred/easiest most timely County Agents are assisting/expanding the reach by sharing on their pages
Pinterest—2nd favorite, showing good engagement but
limited reach and timeliness ◦ CSU Social Media staff is posting weekly for us—1300+ followers within
a very short time
YouTube—Growing but limited in our time/resources to
create new videos
Twitter—Poor results/too time consuming
LinkedIn—Poor results
Pinterest Facebook
LinkedIn Twitter
• Think like a business—be competitive and think how best to
‘sell’ your product/service
• Promote and/or link to your own products and services—rarely
to others’
• Be timely/interesting/helpful/fun
• Be visual
A great image will create greater interest in your
post.
Images have the ability to show the specific
behavior you are trying to teach, or
strengthen/reinforce your written message.
If you can’t take your own photos or don’t have the
budget to buy photos, use Creative Commons
images.
(June 16, 2014)
(June 1-17, 2013)
• 1 weekly post (Tuesday morning 8 a.m.)
• Seasonal/timely/relevant topic for a mostly Colorado-
based audience
• Interesting/attractive image to draw attention to topic
• Stand alone food safety message with ‘call to action’,
plus link to additional information/resources
• Strategically post on other relevant ‘liked’ FB pages
Hope our post gets shared with their followers
Original post
3,852
reached
Shared post
2,053
reached
News/media-- local/regional/statewide
Farmers’ Markets
Grower organizations/businesses
Garden clubs
CSA’s
Food Banks
County Extension offices
Schools/Churches
Government agencies
Making Facebook Friends
1. Start with local or familiar pages.
2. See who they like/who likes them and ‘like’ them from your
page, if a good potential target audience.
3. Find new pages by searching by local/regional keywords
(locations, organizations, businesses, groups, clubs, etc.).
‘Like’ their page and people they ‘like’, if relevant.
4. Use Graph Search (must search as yourself, not as a page)
5. Buy Facebook ads to:
• Promote a post (Increase the visibility of a certain resource/event)
• Promote your page (Get Likes)
• Monitor who/where we are reaching (age, gender, city,
organization, etc.)
• Track engagement with FB posts and Pinterest Pins
(likes, shares/repins, comments, clicks)
• Measure engagement with specific CSU Extension
website resources linked from Facebook/Pinterest
• Celebrate the network of individuals/groups/organizations
that are assisting promote food safety in Colorado!
Post Overview —Sorted by Reach
Monitor overall social traffic ◦ Where are people coming into our websites from?
Put more/less effort into this platform
◦ Are there social referrals?
Who is promoting our resources?
Measure traffic to specific resources linked from
our social media posts
Sample of monthly social traffic to CSU Extension website
Sample of social media links to CSU Extension resources
Goal: To increase the use of CSU Extension’s food safety and
nutrition online resources by residents of Colorado
◦ Have improved ease of finding CSU Extension resources by
being more mindful of keywords, meta tags, and SEO.
◦ Many fact sheets have moved into higher search/rank
positions!
◦ Have created a more timely awareness of and engagement
with CSU Extension resources using social media
platforms.
◦ We continue to grow our Facebook and Pinterest followers
◦ Have increased the total # of total Extension users statewide
CSU Extension
Traffic Channels
CO Farm to Table Audience Overview
2013 vs. 2014
• Coloradans #1 user of CO Farm to Table content!
• 86% increase in use from Jan-Jun 2013-2014
• Grew from 1453 to 2703 sessions in 6-month period
• Even though avg. session duration decreased from 5:07
to 4:13, still had more engagement hours—124 to 190
Thanks to the following for their ongoing support of the
Colorado Farm to Table Food Safety website:
◦ Darrin Goodman
◦ Ruth Willson
◦ Joanne Littlefield
◦ Marisa Bunning
◦ James Peth
◦ Mary Schroeder
Thanks for Coming!
Questions?
Contact Information
Elisa Shackelton
Extension Specialist
Department of Food Science & Human Nutrition
202 Gifford, Campus Delivery 1571
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523-1571
(970) 491-7334 Phone // (970) 491-7252 Fax
