This morning, I texted one of my friends “my imagination hurts.” One of the big projects we are working on now is a USDA Specialty Crop Block Grant to help farmers use social media in their marketing. As part of this, we are creating five monthly “packets” of social media content for farmers to use to promote their products easily. These packets will consist of posts to use on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube.
Because this is funded by a grant and we want to be able to create great analytics showing the impact of our work, as well as increase the visibility of our own organization, I decided we needed to invent a hashtag. After the fun of hashtagging EVERYTHING at #moses2014 , it seemed like a good idea. Coming up with one was harder than coming up with the idea. Some early, failed attempts, include:
#tlcvegrules
#allvegallthetime
#agriawesome
I eventually came up with #illgrowTLC. It’s great because every part has multiple meanings (and Jeff has just told me I need to include a parethetical about how I am totally boasting). The ill can be Illinois or I’ll (like I will). The word grow is pretty self-explanatory – the farmers using this will be growing vegetables, and the Specialty Crop Growers get a bit of name recognition too. TLC is The Land Connection or tender loving care – alluding to the ethos of sustainable agriculture, and our own organization. Yay etymology!
When I started working for Cara, I told her I didn’t really have an imagination. I still don’t feel very imaginative, but we were rushing to get the first set of example posts done for our in-person social media marketing workshops. They still aren’t totally done (as of my writing this on March 20), but you can see the proto-sample posts here.
If you missed attending the workshop (or enjoyed it so much you want to go back and see it again), Kristi, from Second Cup Media, is going to be turning it into a webinar series, which should be available by mid-April on the website. Working on these with me is our intern, Akshita, and a former intern, Stephanie. Between the three of us, and input from Cara, we are going to have really great, engaging content, including some memes.
For your entertainment, here are some of my early, not terribly good attempts at creating memes. (These will NEVER go viral. Unless there’s a cake-wrecks for memes):
And, a slightly better verison of the chard, inspired by my friend Kathryn’s boyfriend:
