Everyone has their own idea of what a successful social media strategy is. However, the best social media strategy is one that’s built backward from a single goal rather than a broad approach. Each platform has its own advantages and disadvantages. Local reach lives on Facebook. Brand and recruiting live on Instagram. New audiences live on TikTok. Research and trust live on YouTube. Business buyers live on LinkedIn. Industry conversation lives on Threads, X, and Bluesky. The strategy every agribusiness professional should follow is to pick the goal first, then the platform that fits it.
Ready to learn more? Here’s how to nail down a social media strategy with a clear goal, pick one or two platforms to realize that goal, and measure the results of your success.
Start With the Goal, Not the Platform
When deciding on a social media strategy, you should start with your goal, not the platform. Your goal will inform the platform that works best for you. Here are four of the most common goals we see for agribusiness professionals that may give you a place to start:
- Sell products or move inventory
- Earn trust before the buying season
- Hire and keep people
- Build industry presence
Each of these goals measures success in different ways. For selling products and moving inventory, success looks like getting more inquiries, demo requests, and lot or field visits. For earning trust, it’s about finding yourself in the consideration conversation when a customer is ready to decide where to spend their money. Other goals, like hiring or building industry presence, can measure success by the number of applications for a job posting or by the amount of good press they receive, as well as referrals from happy customers.
In the same way that certain ad copy and visuals only work for specific platforms, social media platforms only excel at a few different goals. As much as the social media companies want you to think of them as the “all-in-one” social media solution, a strategy that works on one platform doesn’t necessarily translate to another.
Match the Platform to the Goal
The platform you choose to focus on is just as important as the goals you’ve laid out in your social media strategy.
Facebook — local reach and direct selling
Facebook was one of the first social media platforms to really take off, and its dominating online presence still hasn’t let up thanks to its parent company Meta’s constant push to innovate, acquire a larger user base, and keep people within the Meta ecosystem. Users on Facebook skew older than those on Instagram or TikTok, and the platform reaches more U.S. adults than any social network except YouTube. That means Facebook users aren’t looking for the next hot social media platform; they just want to see pictures of their family and friends, keep up with local businesses, and participate in the Facebook Groups they already know and love. Local reach and direct selling tend to work really well with this user base, especially if you’re a trusted local business.
Formats that work best on Facebook include product and unit listings, event posts, Marketplace listings, and Groups. Groups are the true underutilized feature of Facebook that many marketers tend to forget, but they’re where growers are already talking to each other in commodity, regional, and equipment Groups. Groups are a great way to connect with your audience and showcase new products and services to an audience that’s already willing to engage with you.
Instagram — the face of the operation
Instagram, also owned by Meta, is where you show off your brand with engaging pictures that resonate with your audience. It’s also increasingly the place where younger audiences go to engage with short-form video content through Reels. Instagram users tend to be younger than your average Facebook user and skew toward visual browsing. Feed posts, disappearing Story content, and Reels give you multiple tools to grab your audience’s attention with visual content and give them a glimpse into your day-to-day operations. Anything that photographs well – like equipment, fields, facilities, and people – is a great opportunity to showcase the “face” of your operation. The highest-performing free content most ag companies already have is photos and videos of their own people doing the work, but for some reason, most never post them. Use the content you’re already gathering and learn to repurpose it for an Instagram audience.
TikTok — reach beyond your following
TikTok is one of the original short-form video content platforms, and distribution on TikTok is typically sorted by interest, not follower count, which is good news for a newly established account to stand out. Virality and content resharing thrive on TikTok, and a small business with fewer than 1,000 followers can sometimes go viral and quickly grow its audience. TikTok audiences don’t care much for uptight, polished content; short, unpolished videos with one idea per video tend to resonate with a TikTok audience. Think real footage over highly produced footage. And good news for agribusiness: ag content performs better here than most ag marketers expect because non-farm audiences find the work genuinely interesting. Who doesn’t love seeing a sped-up video of a tractor plowing the land, or someone feeding their livestock with a sunrise in the background? For TikTok, decide whether that viral reach serves your goal or just flatters the numbers. If your goal is awareness, then TikTok may be the right fit for you.
YouTube — where buyers actually research
YouTube is the most widely used platform in the U.S., and the one people go to on purpose to do research before buying. If you’ve ever searched for a step-by-step video online to walk you through changing the oil or blades on your John Deere lawn tractor, you’re not alone! Formats that work well on YouTube include walkarounds, how-to and maintenance guides, product comparisons, field trials, and Shorts (YouTube’s short-form video answer to Reels and TikTok).
One thing to remember about YouTube is that fresh and consistent content doesn’t matter as much here as it does on Reels and TikTok. This is the only platform on the list where a video posted three years ago can still bring in leads as long as the video is still relevant to what the user is researching. Many people research long before they buy, and they often research on YouTube first.
LinkedIn — when your buyer is another business
Not every agribusiness sells to a grower. If you’re an agtech company, an input supplier, a co-op, or anyone selling into corporate farms and the dealer channel, your buyer sits behind a desk, and LinkedIn is where you’ll find them. It’s also the one platform on this list where a job posting does real work, which matters if hiring is one of your four goals. For a local dealership trying to move used equipment, though, LinkedIn is mostly a distraction. Your customer isn’t scrolling it between loads.
Formats that work here look different from the rest of the list. Native documents, the slide-style PDFs readers swipe through, pull the strongest engagement, followed by multi-image posts and video. Plain text and link posts land at the bottom, which is the same lesson Facebook teaches: the platform would rather keep people on it than take them away with an outbound link.
Threads, X, and Bluesky — conversation, not conversion
There’s no shortage of “conversation” style social media platforms these days, from X to Threads and even Bluesky. All three platforms are essentially the same, but with different user bases and daily active users. Choosing one over the other really depends on your preference. The important goal to remember with these kinds of platforms is to simply have a conversation, not conversions. Audiences on these platforms are smaller and more industry-facing; think ag journalists, commodity and market watchers, agronomists, and fans of a brand or products. The goal here is to have an industry presence and build relationships. They should not be used for local lead generation, and many users will reject a brand that’s trying to sell too much on these platforms. However, if industry presence isn’t one of your four goals, these platforms are optional. You’re better off sticking with one of the other big platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok.
Pick Two and Commit to the Goal
Now that you’ve identified a clear goal and taken a look at the areas where each social platform performs best, it’s time to pick your two top platforms and commit to the goal. To make it even simpler, pick one primary platform that you want to spend the most effort and time on, and a secondary platform to experiment with. Everything else gets maintained to make sure your information is up-to-date, but your primary focus areas should be your top two platforms. For example, Facebook to connect with your local customers with deals and events, and Instagram to showcase photos of products and behind-the-scenes culture; or TikTok for quick virality and creative short-form videos, and YouTube for a more in-depth knowledge base.
For some agribusinesses, you have the time and the staff to handle more than two platforms without spreading your content too thin, but for small businesses – especially local businesses – the pick-two strategy is the way to keep your main focus strong without spreading yourself too thin online.
Know What “Working” Looks Like Before You Post
Decide what a win looks like before the first post goes up, because the benchmarks can sometimes be eye-opening. You may feel discouraged about your immediate results without a baseline to compare them to.
Across industries, median engagement sits at 0.18% of followers on Facebook, 0.30% on Instagram, and 0.03% on X, with TikTok the outlier at 2.01%. Socialinsider puts Facebook’s average at 0.15% across 25 million posts from more than 130,000 business pages. That is not a reason to quit, but it is a reason to figure out a different way to measure success than just likes. Metrics like impressions or likes are often what we call “vanity metrics,” aka metrics that look nice in a report but hardly tell the full picture.
A 0.2% engagement rate tells you nothing about whether a grower called your sales desk. Pick one metric per goal instead: inquiries for selling, applications for hiring, repeat viewers for education. Then give it 90 days on one platform before you judge it. Marketing leaders are already starting to shift that direction, and while engagement is still the most-reported metric at 68%, conversion follows close behind at 65%, and revenue at 57%.
Need a Little Extra Help? We Got You
Root+Beta works with agribusiness professionals from all over the United States to accomplish their marketing goals, including social media strategy. If social media just isn’t your thing or you feel like you need a little extra help getting your social media strategy across the finish line, shoot us a message or give us a call. We’d be happy to help you focus your social media strategy into a winning plan.
Ready to see what we can do for you? Email us at howdy@rootandbeta.com, give us a call at (501) 291-1642, or schedule a meeting with us today.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many social media platforms should an agribusiness be on?
Two. Pick one primary platform that gets the bulk of your time and one secondary platform to experiment with. Keep your other profiles accurate and current, but stop producing content for them. Three posts a week you can sustain through planting beats twelve you abandon in April.
What is the best social media platform for marketing to farmers?
Facebook, for most agribusinesses. It has the broadest adult reach, and its user base skews older, more rural, and more established, which lines up with a lot of ag audiences. If your goal is research-driven purchases instead of local selling, YouTube is the better first pick.
How often should an agribusiness post on social media?
Match the platform’s norm rather than chasing volume. Across industries, brands average about three posts a week on Facebook, 3.7 on Instagram, two videos on TikTok, and 2.2 on X. Start at the low end of that range, hold the cadence through your busy season, and adjust from there.
Is TikTok worth it for an agriculture business?
It depends on your goal. TikTok earns its place if you want awareness or you’re trying to hire, where casting a wide net helps. It’s a poor fit for local selling because most of the views you earn will come from people who enjoy watching farm work and will never buy equipment.
Should an equipment dealership use LinkedIn?
Usually not for selling, though it’s still worth keeping a current profile. Dealers get the most out of LinkedIn when they’re recruiting technicians or working with commercial, municipal, and government fleet accounts, where the buyer is a purchasing manager rather than a grower. For retail equipment sales, your effort belongs on Facebook.
How long does it take for a social media strategy to show results?
Give it 90 days on one platform before you judge it. Anything shorter and you’re reading noise, not a trend. Set your goal metric at the start, check it at 30 and 60 days without changing course, then decide at 90 whether to keep going or move on.