Social Ambassadors
Connecticut Milk Promotion Board contracted with New England Dairy with a focused effort to increase engagement, expand communication channels, and deliver strat4egies for dairy farmers to interact with each other and the public to promote increased milk and dairy consumption.
We know where consumers in Connecticut and New England are viewing their content, and the answer is social media. We need our farmers to tell their stories, to give the non-farming public a glimpse into the challenges and victories that dairy farming holds. We need to be telling these stories across social media. These are the driving forces behind the Social Media Ambassador program.
In conjunction with Connecticut Milk Promotion Board, New England Dairy recruited 10 dairy farmers and up-and-coming Ag-vocates to take to social media to share important and relevant dairy farming information with their audiences.
To support our social media ambassadors, toolkits were created to focus on each of the three monthly topics. These toolkits include information about those topics, photography and video tips, and inspiration for social media posts.
Each month CT Dairy Ambassadors take to their social media pages, from Facebook, to Instagram, to TikTok, to share at least five themed posts using the #CTDairyAmbassador hashtag. These posts are meant to be fun, engaging, and educational. Monthly themes of community, dairy nutrition, and sustainability are meant to focus on topic areas in which we know consumers have questions.
October 2021 was centered around community and how dairy farmers serve their neighbors and enhance their towns, while January 2022 was focused on dairy nutrition and holistic health and wellness. The pilot program will wrap up in May 2022 with social media posts focused on sustainability.
To date, the team of dairy ambassadors has shared more than 200 social media posts impacting and influencing their audiences with positive dairy farming messaging.
Sharing the dairy farming perspective, experience, and story are critical to building trust and securing and increasing consumption of dairy in Connecticut. As a dairy farmer, you are a first-person expert when it comes to your farm, your practices, and your production. Transparency is now more important than ever and as an industry, we need to control the narrative. Connecticut Milk Promotion Board and New England Dairy can help elevate and foster those up-and-coming voices in the digital space, a place we know the public is absorbing content.
