Farmers focus on social media

LIVESTOCK leaders have been collaborating to share ideas and new innovations in the agriculture industry.

At a Livestock Collective workshop held in Bendigo last week, sixteen farmers from different industries, including sheep, beef and goat farms, met to learn how to better establish networks across the community.

Events coordinator at the Livestock Collective Milly Nolan said the get together was the first one of its kind in Victoria.

“The purpose of these workshops is to build the capacity of the whole supply chain to share our story,” she said.

“The Livestock Collective started to fill a void of information which we’re still doing. We want to empower the whole supply chain to tell their story.”

A big focus of the workshop was how farmers can use social media to promote themselves and connect with the community.

Ms Nolan said their guest speaker, founder and director of Wright Social Heidi Wright, equipped farmers with the right social media tools across LinkedIn, Twitter and even Tik Tok.

“She has delivered to all of our workshops and gives people the skills to use social media to forge a compelling future for agriculture, how to brand yourself and share your story through that means,” she said.

“We’ve had a couple that have gone viral on Tik Tok and have gained 20,000 followers on Instagram just through this workshop which is incredible and it’s all about telling the public what they do.”

Amber Guerini works at a merino stud farm at Wedderburn and said she will definitely be using more social media as a professional tool.

“We’re such a tight knit community and we’re so closed there’s not a lot of transparency as there is in other industries and a lot of people don’t know what we’re doing,” she said.

“That’s why we need to use social media to show people what we’re doing with photos and videos and livestreams; things like that to create more transparency in the industry.

“I’ve only ever had those personal media accounts, now we’ve learnt how to approach it in a professional way on LinkedIn, on Twitter.

“To connect in that professional environment, that’s an innovation for me.”