A New Perspective

I was kindly granted admin access to the Todd's Table Facebook page by Jaime McGirt, the director of the Todd Listening Project (an outreach program formed from the Blackburn Chapel in Todd, NC). The reason I asked this permission was to evaluate the uses of the Todd's Table Facebook Page and learn how to optimize the posting schedule, content, and engagements. Those three things, if optimized, are going to increase the quality of comments, quantity of likes and views, enhance the feeling of community and increase traffic to the Todd's Table market Saturday's 8am-12pm. To begin with, the attendance to the mobile market is the most important goal. The purpose for the market is to be a mobile food access hub and gathering place for community members to enhance their relationships with each other and the programs that serve the community. The second point to consider is that because the mobile market survives off of local product donations, local volunteers for the community garden, and funds to keep up the garden- traffic is essential to eliminate potential food waste or lost connections in the community. There is also a reason to increase traffic and donation to the market, whether that be in Todd or on Facebook.

The market actually allows for a pay-it-forward-type system; all donations from visitors, members,

customers, and local businesses goes forward to increase the blessing of food access. How it works: if someone would like to donate to provide someone else access to the local, organic, nutrient rich foods offered at the market, they would be able to slip a dollar into the blessings jar. This is a great thing! At my last trip to the market, I was just sitting around chatting with Jaime about how I was so excited to try the fresh chamomile tea that Matt had harvested for the market. When she heard I didn't have a tea bag for loose tea, she allowed me to use some of the donations to get a steeper. This was a small blessing that rejuvenated my sense of community and oneness. This is a goal of the Todd's Table outreach, to spread the news and share the blessing of accessible food.

From the usage of the Facebook Insights, I was able to see who, what, when, where, and how.

Let's start with "who". Out of 100 followers, 76% are women and 23% are men. Of the women, 15% are ages 25-34, 20% are 35-44 , and 23% are 43-54. Of the men, 3% are 24-34, 7% are 35-44, and 5% are 43-54. Those data sets are pretty representative of the towns demographics, however there are more than 100 people in the town. Only 13 followers were actually from Todd. The rest were from Boone, Jefferson, Charlotte, Fleetwood, Winstin-Salem, etc. An important side note is that only 83 people out of the 10 followers are engaging, but there is an overall reach of 4,319 people across the country. This information is awesome! This shows that people from all over know about the TLP. From my perspective, if we can get those people to join quality discussions online through commenting, sharing, and posting on and from the page, we can greatly enhance the knowledge of the hard work being done. The news can spread because there are organic, naturally earned fans of the TLP. So what does this mean? This means we need to look at how those people are interacting with the posts. How often do they like, share, comment, or visit a link away from the page. What times are they engaging, what makes them engage some times more than others, and how can we optimize those actions?

See how to Optimize Posts!

#community #garden #growing #socialmedia