Down in Gainsville, VA, near the Manassas National Battlefield, you’ll find the Smith Family Farm. A fifth generation farming family, the farm has been owned and operated by the Smith’s for more than 100 years.
They’re a traditional farm in every sense. Their meat is all grass-fed, as is their dairy produce, and they’re also USDA-inspected (United States Department of Agriculture).
They pride themselves on their values – all beef under 24 months of age, humanely raised animals, and family-friendly prices on products delivered to your door. Much of their business is done directly on the farm.
So far, so good – a nice story about a nice way to do business. But what’s interesting about the Smith Family Farm is the way they’re using social media to help tell their story and grow their business.
Take a look at their website, and you’ll notice that it’s possibly not what you’d expect from a fifth generation farming family. On the home page is the Twitter feed for Smith Family Farm, as well as an email subscription form for updates and newsletters.
Take a look around their website and you’ll get more of an idea how the farm is integrating social media into their daily routine. Click on the Notebook tab on the navigation menu, for example, and this gives you a more in-depth look at their Twitter stream. You can even subscribe to their Twitter feed via RSS.
Move over to the Events tab, and you’ll see a full day-by-day breakdown of any events the farm’s part of. Not only that, but you can add any that you might be interested in to your own Google Calendar, thanks to the iCal option.
The Twitter stream itself is a nice mix of information, conversation and visualizations, and shows a business that’s at ease with how social media can be used. From information to where they’ll be next, to descriptions of rural life, it’s community news and involvement at its simplest and most effective.
What makes the Smith Family Farm website stand out (and thus, makes the business stand out) is the mix of old and new. They share plenty of their history, yet they offer PDF downloads of their products. They even offer the equivalent of Twitter’s #followfriday with their friend recommendations.
If social media really is about re-humanizing business, the Smith Family Farm is showing many bigger and more tech-oriented businesses how to play in this space. Who said you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?
photo credit: Smith Family Farm
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