What could a Proakatemia student do for a strawberry farm? That was the question in my mind when I started my Entrepreneurial studies in Autumn 2020. My parents have a strawberry farm and since I have worked on that farm since I was born, I’m very familiar with how the business works. After starting my studies here, I really wanted to do a project that would also benefit my parents, because family is very important to me.
It didn’t take long for me to realize that my parents don’t have the knowledge of social media like us younger generations do. On top of this, I realized that all the summers working at the farm there was not anyone who would’ve had the time to properly update social media, because the strawberry season is so hectic. I drafted an offer to my parent’s farm, and they accepted it.
What I did:
I had a colleague from Proakatemia come to the farm and take pictures of the fuss and the buzz over there during the most hectic season. I created a plan for what kind of an image we want to give of Portaanperän Mansikkatila and a posting plan that would support that image. I made an account Later to make posting automatic and I even ended up traveling to Levi to take beautiful winter pictures for the farm. During the wintertime, I’ve also searched and created strawberry-related recipes and during summer we did a lot of giveaways.
What changed?
First, customers have given amazing feedback about how great it is that the farm is now active on social media, even during wintertime. Second, the number of followers has grown from 120 to 354 and they are more actively liking, commenting, tagging, etc. Third, the farm is now posting regularly and my parents don’t have to stress about it at all.
I learned that making a proper plan for social media posting is very important. People also want to see more about what is happening on the farm rather than just advertisement and getting people to engage is quite the challenge. Getting to use new tools such as Canva, Later and the statistics on Instagram has also been a great learning journey for me.
How can I improve?
There is still a lot that can be done better, for example, I need to learn more about marketing in social media, like how to make posts that will attract people and how to utilize the payable commercials on Instagram and Facebook. I need to create more authentic, personal, and useful content for social media to make people more engaged. I can also shift my focus a bit from Instagram to Facebook and learn more about how to utilize that platform and create posts specifically designed to work on Facebook.
These are just a few examples, but it gives the picture of how learning is a journey, and you can’t do everything perfectly right away, but as you do things you learn more and more and find improvement points. That’s what Proakatemia is all about.
Kuvassa: Adalmiina Nieminen ja Emilia Parikka
This is an example of how everything is possible with Proakatemia studies. You can utilize your knowledge and learnings in very creative ways and end up helping not only yourself but the people and businesses that matter to you. I will be sharing my learning with the Later app later (ha-ha) in another essay this Spring to help any businesses inside and out of Proakatemia make their social media publishing easier. Stay tuned for that one.
Written By: Emilia Parikka
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