Telling Your Value-Added Product Story – Connecting with Your Community! – West Plains

Just starting out as a business or have been in business for decades this workshop will assist you as an Agriculture Food and Product Producer to enhance your digital communications and marketing skills! Join us at one of four locations to gain hands-on tips and tricks to creating effective communication and marking materials regardless of your direct-to-consumer sales experience. Topics covered throughout the course include:

• How to use social media for event marketing
• Collaborating with other small businesses
• How to use social media as a public relations tool
• Using online marketing to network in your community

Participants will be provided lunch and given time to network with other agriculture food and product producers.  **There is no cost to participate but participants are asked to pre-register.** (Participants Only Need to Register for One Location, As the Content is the Same)

This workshop was developed by Missouri State University Darr College of Agriculture and University of Central Missouri Department of Agriculture as a part of the Missouri Agricultural and Small Business Development Authority’s (MASBDA) Show-Me Entrepreneurial Grants for Agriculture (SEGA).

Instructor Bios

Jill Robertson retired from her marketing and agricultural communications position with Farm Credit of Western Arkansas in 2022.  Her 17-year Farm Credit career encompassed all aspects of corporate marketing, public relations and both internal and external communications responsibilities.  She worked closely with member/owners in all facets of agriculture, ag stakeholder groups across the state of Arkansas and developed an array of networking resources to promote Farm Credit’s mission in western Arkansas.   She has a special affinity for small, local, direct-to-consumer ag producers and in her role at Farm Credit was able to work with several programs designed to assist small ag entrepreneurs in marketing their products.

Clara Dickinson is an instructor of agriculture communications for the Darr College of Agriculture and is an alum of Missouri State University where she received her undergraduate degree in agricultural communications. She then received her master’s in international agriculture, focused on communications and extension outreach at Oklahoma State University. While at Oklahoma State Dickinson worked with small farms and value-added agricultural businesses in Kenya to develop marketing and communication plans.