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Episode Summary
In this day and age, if you’re a farmer—especially one that’s just starting out—one of the first things you can do to start marketing yourself is establishing an online presence. And what better place to be for a new farm to start than a simple photo-sharing site like Instagram?
In this episode of Carrot Cashflow, Kevin Espiritu of Epic Gardening talks about why and how we can leverage Instagram to build a following that will engage, support, and purchase from us. He also shares some easy, insightful tips on how to be the big, shiny object that people would want to engage with.
Today’s Guest: Kevin Espiritu
Kevin Espiritu is the founder of Epic Gardening, a gardening education platform that aims to teach ten million people how to grow plants. Since its founding in 2013, it has now grown from a hobby site to a reader-supported educational platform and gardening supplies shop.
Relevant Links
Epic Gardening – Website | YouTube | Instagram | TikTok | Facebook
In this episode of Carrot Cashflow
- Diego introduces the episode’s guest, Kevin Espiritu (01:03)
- Ready Farmer One: The Farmers’ Guide to Create, Design, and Market an Online Farm Store by Diego Footer & Nina Galle (01:53)
- What branding a business means for Kevin Espiritu (03:34)
- How much of Epic Gardening overlaps with Kevin’s own identity (04:39)
- Working through the fears of being seen and judged (05:44)
- Would Epic Gardening be the same if Kevin stayed behind the curtain? (07:34)
- Supporting a brand because of the person or people behind it (08:47)
- How to go about building up a core audience as a small business (10:23)
- Two ways to look at audience building (11:26)
- A strategy to get product out there (13:20)
- Pick your platform (13:42)
- Make the content interesting to someone who has never farmed in their life (14:27)
- Strategic posts vs. posting for the sake of posting (16:15)
- Think about your own online behavior (18:17)
- Putting out content that would make people stop scrolling (18:40)
- Adding layers of education on what would have been a simple photo post (20:22)
- The overlap in the education and entertainment Venn diagram (22:12)
- The shareable aspect of a post (23:28)
- How effective is adding long text in Instagram posts? (24:23)
- Key points in doing education on Instagram (26:04)
- Does blogging have a place in building a brand? (27:51)
- Dedicating time to email your email list (29:24)
- Building an audience takes time…a lot of time (30:48)
- Trial and error between posts that work and post that don’t work (33:00)
- Delving into why certain posts don’t work (35:14)
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