To communicate to agribusiness audiences, it is essential to delve deeper into collective and precise aspects of the cultures that involve rural producers. And it is worth emphasizing that we are not just talking about culture in the sense of agricultural management, but about how producers consume and disseminate information and how they behave on social networks.
In this exercise, let us consider the grain producer. Farmers are more open to technology, more concerned about combating pests and precision agriculture.
They are active on social media to exchange information and close deals. A survey done by the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul’s business school and the Department of Agricultural Economics of the University of Illinois, with 461 soybean producers in Brazil indicates that WhatsApp is among the main channels for purchasing agricultural inputs and commercial production.
Grain producers look for technological innovations that can improve their productivity on specialized news sites, association channels and organizations such as Embrapa and Aprosoja.
The culture of agroinfluencers
Another movement that has been gaining followers in agriculture are agroinfluencers. This is the case of Michele Guinzin, an agricultural engineer with more than 200,000 Instagram followers and more than a million followers on Tik Tok. With videos and photos of his routine, Guinzin also advocates in favor of Brazilian agribusiness. One of his posts about the importance of the sector as a source of food and wealth for the world found a voice among rural producers.
Social media is also a powerful tool for bringing young people, including those who will inherit their family’s land, closer to agriculture. Camila Telles, another agroinfluencer, seems to have understood the potential of the media and uses her Instagram profile to, in her words, “present the agribusiness world that so many live in and few know about” to her more than 400,000 followers.
The Furrow and the power of content marketing
There’s room for content marketing to grow in agribusiness and it is not happening today. The first edition of The Furrow magazine, from agricultural machinery manufacturer John Deere, was launched at the end of the 19th century and is still used as an example by marketing specialists as a success story for branded content. The publication highlights content about good practices in agricultural production,
disseminates research and innovation and technology trends for the sector. The magazine has followed the evolution of consumption and production habits caused by technological advances, and vice versa. The Furrow is currently translated and adapted in 14 languages, and its goal continues to be: “To tell stories that people enjoy reading about and to provide them with knowledge that can be applied to their operations.”
History, recent or not, shows those who wish to communicate with rural producers that it’s important to understand that they have their own culture, including the way they communicate. On the agricultural scale, topics related to production and insights into the behavior of this audience on the internet have the same weight when it comes to creating relevant communication about the industry.
