The pandemic has emphasized the need for most, if not all businesses to have a strong online presence. Would I be able to find your farm, orchard, nursery, or greenhouse online? Do you have a website? Facebook page? Twitter account? With so many online channels from which to choose, it can be overwhelming to keep up. However, a blog post from Jain Irrigation, a video posted by one of our nursery customers, Foothills Nurseries, and a virtual tour of J Frank Schmidt & Son Co. all reminded me that video is an important tool to help tell a story.
Even if your farm has a one-page website and Facebook page (both of which are now quite easy to create and manage), you can upload and post pictures and videos. I look around to see what our customers and other ag tech suppliers are doing to tell their stories. Consumers not only want to know what you do, but who you are, and why you are doing it.
The Jain Irrigation blog post, “A 5 Point Checklist to Shoot Better Video” is an easy read that can get you going in the right direction if you are looking to grow your online video content. Start capturing who you are, what you are doing, and why you continue to choose the honorable profession of feeding the country, and for some, the world. Through video, you can explain and show how your nursery plays an important role in making neighborhoods, parks, and cities beautiful and green. Invest some time and money into this type of marketing because online is the new marketplace. Consumers and buyers start with the internet so you must create a good first impression for your future customers with your content.
Through the pandemic, we have found a couple of additional helpful tools to generate more video. Wideo is an online software platform that provides video templates. Is is as simple as selecting a template and plugging in your colors, pictures, and text. Wideo offers free and paid plans that help you produce professional-quality video quickly at a great price. Here are sample Wideo’s we created that explain our Pay by Weight, Pay by Piece, and Pay by Time electronic labor tracking solutions.
Many of you have joined at least one Zoom call over the last week, or maybe at least one call already today. Recording Zoom sessions is another easy way to capture product demos, speakers, interviews, and screen sharing. It is easy to convert the recording, save, and upload the video to your preferred platforms.
And finally, another great tool we discovered at 2nd Sight is Adobe Premiere Rush. For more experienced video editors, Adobe Premiere offers feature-rich software for video creation and editing. For the less experienced, or those who are simply in a time crunch, Adobe Premiere Rush is a perfect program that simplifies the video creation and editing process.
When I come across a really good product or company video, I remember it. When a farm has a nice website that not only says what they are doing, but why they are farming, I remember it (Bow Hill Blueberries and Major League Blueberries are a couple of blueberry farms and our customers that have done a great job at this). Marketing is all about top-of-mind awareness. Today, we all have the tool right in our pockets to start capturing pictures and video. It’s time to unlock the potential for your business.