Moonlighter Farm

Agency Client for Startup Tucson

Moonlighter Farm is a small local farm outside of Tucson, Arizona, that enlisted Startup Tucson to launch their online digital presence with an emphasis in blogging and social media strategy.

Project Date

• Summer 2021

Key Marketing Deliverables

• Overarching Marketing Strategy Breakdown Presentation ("Launch Plan")
• Social Media Guide and Checklist
• Blog Strategy for 12 Months
• 1 Example Blog Post w/ Strong Keywords and Backlinks
• Posting Calendar for July/Aug/September

Blog Posting and Sample

Keywords/Key Phrases for SEO 101

These are terms added to online content in order to improve search engine rankings for your site, posts, and advertisements in a search engine.

Do’s and Don'ts
Do:

• Be accurate with your offering
• Not too vague but not too specific. Finding the balance of high to medium search traffic with low to medium competition on the keywords helps.
• Identify your goals with the keywords on the page and tailor each page for specific keywords or offerings affiliated with it
• Select 3 to 7 keywords/keyphrases for the web page

Don’t:

• Abuse keywords. Too many can harm your SEO
• Have inaccurate keywords. Search engines will penalize wrong keywords with a lower SEO ranking.
• Be too vague. These keywords will have a high search traffic, and as a result, have a lot of competition to rank well.  (Example: “farming”)
• Be too specific. Keep in mind search volume (you can use a variety of free and paid-for services for this). You might get all the traffic for a
• specific keyword, but low search volume = low traffic to your site from those keywords. (Example: “conserving water to deal with drought in farming”--this keyphrase is very long and not ideal for a keyword/keyphrase. Alternatively, pull a couple of the biggest keywords from this.)
• Incorporate too many keywords into the text of your blog post. Spamming the keywords will be recognized by Google’s search engine algorithm and penalized. For every 200 words, try to incorporate your keywords 1-3 times.

How to Find Useful Keywords:

SEO Wiz on Wix: FREE

Google Search Console: FREE

Link below to download Rank Tracker (Base Version: FREE, need to download Java 8)

https://www.link-assistant.com/rank-tracker/download-success.html

SEO Insights for Moonlighter Farm Blog Posting

Sample Blog Post With Best Practices

Below is a template mixing around many of the best practices for blog posting, but feel free to change it to what works for you. It is an informative while playful tone, and trickled throughout are a healthy amount of plugs and shoutouts back to the company or any potential co-sponsors. 

Backlinks 101

A backlink is when one website mentions another website by linking to it through a clickable link in order for search engines to identify it as a backlink. This can increase SEO (search engine optimization) and make it easier for your farm to be discovered on Google.

Why?

• Brand Recognition/Exposure to call more attention to your brand or other brands
• New Leads/Relationships
• Promotion of things on your site, others, or vice versa
• Referral Traffic from people backlinking to your website
• Organic Ranking on Google

How To Build Backlinks:

Backlinking should be one of the main priorities for your website SEO because of the importance of search engine ranking.

1. Posting
   Write articles containing popular keywords that relate to your website/company/product. If you do not know where to start your keyword research for your site, keyword tools are out there to show you which keywords will generate the most relevant search volume.
2. Commenting
   Posting comments on other articles that relate to your website or product can be beneficial. When you start commenting make sure to reference your website/product that relates to that article. You never know who is going to write an article about your site or give you a backlink.
3. Tracking
   It’s important to keep track of your backlinks so that you know which websites are linking back to you. You can make an excel spreadsheet and keep track of the date, websites, contact information and comments

For more information on building backlinks:

Twinword - https://www.twinword.com/blog/backlinks-affect-seo-ranking/

Blog Topics and Strategy

Here is a list of some blog topic ideas, details and the marketing intention. Feel free to use these ideas, change these ideas or create your own! They are not in a particular order but we do recommend utilizing the first one first, as an introduction to the company and to you!



Blog Topic

Details

Marketing Intention/Strategies to Maximize Impact

Welcome to Moonlighter Farm

Who is Tommie? 

What is Moonlighter? What does the name mean to you?

What is your vision for your farm?

How can people get involved 

Leverage this prior to your full product launch to generate interest.  

Include a call to action such as signing up to your newsletter to build your audience

Desert Farming 101

Tools/equipment

Land 

What's critical for Tommie 

Leverage this prior to your full product launch to generate interest.  

Include a call to action such as signing up to your newsletter to build your audience

Produce in Arizona

What works best in the desert 

What's the timeline of production? 

(Could then translate into seasonal blog post i.e. in the summer it's peach season and this is what's best during this time of the year)

Allows your audience to know what you are planning to grow and sell, also create the exclusivity 

Include a call to action such as signing up to your newsletter to know when/where to buy the produce & about your selling and subscription 

Farming Dogs

Farming purpose? 

I know dogs are critical for large scale farming with animals but are they important with mainly crops on a small scale farm?

Creates easy quick engagement

Develops a personal connection to the brand

Include a call to action that directs audience to sign up for your newsletter to build your audience 

Recipe Posts

Simple tips on how to store and eat your produce, your favorite way to eat what you grow

You could also bring in a guest poster (ie. a customer or friend or even a family member) who creates a recipe with your produce 

Audience envisions buying, eating and cooking...also can reach a broader foodie audience 

Include a call to action to sign up for the subscription (maybe a discount code specific to post) 

Farming & Sustainability in Arizona

What sustainable practices do you use on the farm?

Bio-intensive, low-till farm? 

How does the droughts in Arizona affect your farming/crops? 

Reaches a broader audience and can educate readers on how to be more sustainable on a small farm (and personal garden) 

Include a call to action to sign up for your newsletter to build your audience 

Why buy local? Advantages to locally grown produce

Highlight why local produce/crops are better than mass produced 

No GMO? Organic? 

Creates a sense of guilt for those who don’t purchase locally and can educate readers on the benefits and advantages 

Include a call to action to sign up for your newsletter for upcoming events and signing up for subscription to purchase produce

How to protect crops in SoAZ

Protecting crops from the sun, lack of rain, animals etc..

What do you do? How can audience implement tactics for at home garden

Educates your audience and can grow your audience (let’s say someone Googled how to protect crops in AZ) 

Include a call to action for people to sign up for newsletter and get involved with more 

What's Tommie’s favorite vegetable to grow

What's your favorite and why? 

Is it because it's your favorite to eat? 

Is it because it's your favorite to just grow? - low maintenance? 

Makes your audience feel like they are getting to know you on your personal level

Include a call to action to sign up for newsletter and subscription 

Favorite farming story or favorite story from teaching about farming 

 What was your favorite story? Why? Did you learn anything from it? Can give a background about it

Makes your audience feel like they are getting to know you on your personal level

Include any images if you have them

Include a call to action to sign up for newsletter and follow you on other platforms to learn more

Posting Strategy

Once a month (12 times a year)

Tips to Think About

• Think what your idea reader wants
  • Achieve their aims
  • Answer their questions
  • Solve their problems
  • Overcome fears
• Think about what sparks your creativity
  • What excites you
  • What you know and what you’re learning 
• Constantly seek out new blog ideas - write them down and keep them safe
• Break up your writing days
  • Day 1 - pick an idea and write an outline
  • Day 2 - research if required
  • Day 3 - write a first draft
  • Day 4 - revise and edit
• 2-3 paragraphs (200-400 words)
• Optimize posts by including keywords in post titles and body content
• Include a landing page link and sharing buttons for people to share your content
  • Here’s some more tips about blog writing from Hubspot https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/find-writing-inspiration?toc-variant-a=
    

Posting Strategy

Once a month (12 times a year)

Launch

On the landing page, we can create a short blog post to upload for the audience to learn a little more about Moonlighter Farm and direct them to sign up for the newsletter

Content Goals for First 3 Months

Social Media Checklist

Setting Up Profiles

• Instagram
  • Set up page
  • Upload profile picture (company logo typically) **
  • Create bio - ensure it best describes the company yet short and sweet
  • Include link to your website
  • Make your profile a professional business account
    • Settings → Find account → Switch to professional account
    • Here’s a link to a walkthrough https://business.instagram.com/getting-started
  • Familiarize yourself with the platform, you can find videos on how to navigate, post and interact with your following 

• Changing name and username on Instagram
  • Head to your profile and click on the “edit profile” box
  • From there you can change your name and your username
  • Keep in mind that your name can have uppercase letters and spaces but your username cannot
  • A great way for people to easily recognize the brand is for the username to have no other characters ( _ . -  etc.)
  • While here, you can create your bio, add in your website and more
• Facebook
  • Set up page
  • Upload profile picture (company logo typically) **
  • Fill out “additional contact info”
  • Website, phone number (if applicable), email address
  • Fill out “more info” section
  • About section - short sentence about what the company does
  • Create upcoming events
  • Complete services section
  • Could include delivery and link it to website

** All social media platforms should consist of the same profile picture in order to create a consistent brand

• Google
  • Create a Google account for your business
  • Go to www.google.com/business
  • Complete all steps: business name, address (there's an option for delivery only and to hide your address), phone number etc.
  • This link walks though step by step with photos if needed https://www.brightlocal.com/learn/how-to-set-up-google-my-business/
  • It also provides some tips and tricks towards Google accounts and how to make your brand more “Googleable”
  • Once done, you can add photos and videos in order to solidify your business and showcase what you do to the community
  • You can also encourage your customers to ‘Follow’ you on Google and write Google Reviews
  • A way to get reviews is by offering discounts to those who leave one!
  • Google reviews are critical to build brand trust, awareness and rankings. It can help your business with customer feedback and provides higher reach on Google. 
• Facebook & Instagram Tips
  • Use paid ads to promote content, increase awareness and offer discounts
  • Stay engaged with your fans by responding to any questions they have, liking their comments on your posts and sharing any photos you are tagged in
  • Tag any relevant pages in photos and posts (brands, partnership companies etc)
  • Ask people to comment, like and share posts
  • Facebook and Instagram have an awesome feature to connect the accounts so you can post to them both with one click! This is an awesome way if you were cross promoting content but would not recommend doing this for every post so there is some unique content for each platform
  • Follow fellow businesses and brands
  • Like and comment on posts pertaining to farming in Arizona, brands you use, events you attend etc.
  • Facebook and Instagram have an awesome feature to connect the accounts so you can post to them both with one click! This is an awesome way if you were cross promoting content but would not recommend doing this for every post so there is some unique content for each platform
  • Posting regularly on your stories will allow you to connect with your followers, these can be more spontaneous and are simple to snap a picture and post it onto your story

Helpful Tools

Tools and Strategies for Creating and Managing Social Media

Canva is a platform that offers templates and a variety of tools to create graphics on your social media platformsIt is user friendly, where you can search by what you are looking for and create a post with the proper dimensions for whatever platform you are using.

Later.com is a platform that allows you to plan, schedule, publish and measure the results of your Instagram and social media posts. This would be a simple and easy way to monitor your posts while scheduling out your posts including hashtags, tags and the captions.
The free plan offers 30 post schedules and includes Instagram and Facebook platforms.
Their website offers video guides on how to use the platform to schedule and publish your posts.

Hashtags for Social Media

Utilizing hashtags on Instagram and Facebook is a great way to broaden your reach and allow new people to discover your page! There is a wide variety of ways to implement hashtags, some people use a paragraph full of them, others may use one to two. Research has shown that utilizing 11 hashtags is the optimal number, but you should really focus on using some that benefit your page. To start, you can use some simple ones and switch them up for some posts, after about a month you can check your analytics to see how your hashtags are doing. The ones that are good you can keep and the ones that are not so good you can stop using.

Here are some that may help broaden your audience in the beginning, feel free to do additional research to see what would work best for your page! 

#farming 
#farm 
#farmlife
#farmer
#farmersmarket 
#farmtotable

#smallfarming
#smallbusiness
#shoplocal
#eatlocal 
#buylocal 
#suppportlocal 

#tucson
#arizona 
#fresh 
#local 
#food
#nature 
#healthy