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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] Advertising CSA

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  • From: Richard Stewart <rstewart AT zoomtown.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Advertising CSA
  • Date: Thu, 3 May 2012 21:52:59 -0400

We have a work-share CSA that we mention on Facebook and Localharvest.   Which always starts around 20 persons and is winnowed down to about 6 to 8 byt he end of the season.

We seem to get a fairly decent amount of hits from Localharvest, I think in part due to their zipcode email blast format.

We advertise it word of mouth via our winter gardening and wild edible classes and one of the local year round FMs.

We also try to get as much press as possible that gets people to our website which then routes to Facebook and Twitter.  We have fallen back to using primarily Facebook these days and use our website as more a placeholder and simple info site.

We have started advertising our honey in Edible Ohio Valley.  This, by association, essentially advertises everything.  Cost for the 1/8th page will vary I think depending on which Edible you advertise in...I think.  They also did a recent story on CSAs and had a listing for the regional ones.  

We also have a Cincinnati "Locavores" Yahoo group which has a membership of about 1200 people, give or take, and local food guide called CORV (Central Ohio River Valley) that lists farms, CSAs, markets, and now starting to list buyers and retailers of local foods as well.  This year they were distributed by CityBeat, which is one of our larger alternative/arts rags in the region.

All things given your proximity to a major population area (or rather several) should be available to you in a similar form.

Get your name out...if you are  farm and people have heard about you, regardless of the reason they always seem to ask if we have a "CSA".  Its the new Black.  Actually advertising the CSA should be secondary in your objective.  You want people to know you as the Farm (that has a CSA) and not "The CSA".  That way, if you decide to change business models on down the line you are not heavily tied to the CSA.

I would also avoid using the Localharvest billing for the simple fact that you can do it yourself easy enough AND use a credit card (assuming you have a smart phone) at half that percentage.

Richard Stewart
Carriage House Farm
North Bend, Ohio

An Ohio Century Farm Est. 1855

(513) 967-1106




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