These days, apple grower Brian Kelliher’s idea of a successful harvest isn’t just measured in bushels.
As Chairman of the Connecticut Apple Marketing Board (CAMB), an important part of his harvest equation now includes the growth of visitors to the board’s revamped website and new social media sites.
Use of digital media to promote the state’s orchards was greatly expanded through Kelliher’s initiative during the just-concluded season, with the help of a USDA Specialty Crop Block Grant administered through the Department of Agriculture.
CAMB’s Facebook page now has more than 9,000 fans, and the overall program has proven so successful that the board no longer advertises in newspapers or other traditional print media.
“We are making a lot more connections with customers and potential customers this way for all of our member orchards across the state,” Kelliher said late last week as he prepared for the final weekend of sales at his Easy Pickin’s Orchard in Enfield. “It helps people find us and it allows us to verify exactly where customers are coming from and what some of their buying preferences are.”
Appointed by Commissioner of Agriculture Steven K. Reviczky, the CAMB is composed of six apple producers and one member of the public.
“Apples are one of the state’s largest and most important agricultural crops, with an average yearly harvest of about a half-million bushels worth $12 million,” Reviczky said. “It is exciting to see the success that the CAMB is having in using social media to promote their orchards and our extraordinary Connecticut-grown apples.”
The CAMB Facebook page and Pinterest photo boards are designed to direct customers to CAMB’s website, ctapples.org, and to the websites of orchards near their homes.
Representatives from more than 40 orchards attended a media training session last year at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station that was geared toward helping them build or improve their websites.
The social media sites are overseen by social media consultant Sue Muldoon, of Enfield.
“This campaign is attracting more customers and creating a lot more engagement between them and the orchards,” Muldoon said. “They are not just going to the sites but are also posting on Facebook about the orchards they visited.”
The number of Facebook fans doubled in 2014 to more than 9,200, Muldoon said, noting that 82 percent of the fans are women.
Most of the fans are in the Hartford area, she said, while 13 percent are from New York, especially New York City and Staten Island, and four percent live in Massachusetts.
Updating of the website included a new children’s page, a list of pick-your-own orchards, and a media library accessible only to growers on a password-protected page.
CAMB plans to add more orchards’ photos and information to the site, and to build a recipe page featuring local orchards, chefs and food enthusiasts.
Plans also include the creation of a social media “app” that will link smartphone users directly to CAMB’s website and to those of individual orchards near them.
The largest and most popular Pinterest board (pinterest.com/ctapples) is for recipes, Muldoon said, and features about 150 recipes.
Sam the Scarecrow, a wooden photo board with cut-outs for visitors to pose behind, was brought to orchards for a week at a time, accompanied by a photographer to take pictures of families and customers. The photos were then posted on the CAMB Facebook page and linked to the Facebook pages of specific orchards.
Beyond its mission to increase customer awareness through publicity and promotion, CAMB also is charged with implementing the “market order” requiring all Connecticut apple growers to
submit an annual harvest report of their wholesale, retail, and pick-your-own sales.
The order also requires growers to pay an assessment fee of four cents per unit (roughly a 40-pound bushel) on all apples sold in excess of 1000 units.
The fee is collected by the agriculture department and helps pay for CAMB’s promotional program and other expenses, including donations of apples at events such as the Hartford Marathon, the Connecticut Veteran’s Day Parade and the Eastern States Exposition.
Kelliher, who grew up on his family’s Bailey Road farm and graduated from the UConn College of Agriculture, said growers not only need to keep up with changes in marketing such as the use of social media, but need to update their crop varieties and farm operation to meet market demand, as well.
For example, while the McIntosh continues to be perhaps the state’s biggest seller, varieties like the early-picking Zestar and especially the Honeycrisp are in increasingly high demand.
“Honeycrisp is definitely the big buzz now,” he said of the hybrid of Macoun and Honeygold that was actually developed in 1960 but only become popular in New England in recent years.
He said another industry trend is to grow trees closer together – perhaps three feet apart as opposed to the traditional eight feet – enabling growers to more than double the number of trees raised per acre.
While CAMB’s digital marketing campaign is clearly reaping benefits for growers, Kelliher said the apple harvest itself this year was solid but expectedly down from last season’s record crop.
“Last year I had more apples than I needed,” he said. “I’d say this year was an average year and that should make everybody happy. We’ve had our share of bad years so to me an average year is just what we’re looking for.”
Source: State of Connecticut