Oct 14, 2019
Agritecture, a consultancy and content provider in the urban farming space, has developed a nuanced content strategy that has helped fuel its growth from a blog to a multi-faceted company.
Henry Gordon-Smith, founder/managing director of the Brooklyn, New York-based enterprise – which has its roots in a blog launched in 2011 – discussed this subject in an interview with WARC.
“The key thing I learned about social media is that it's not about getting your message out there. That's only half the story,” he said. (For more, read WARC’s in-depth report: How Agritecture uses marketing tools to support purpose-driven urban farming.)
“Social media is about getting feedback. It's about finding out what people are interested in. Which posts do well? What follow-up questions do people have?”
Gordon-Smith’s plan has evolved to the point where Agritecture drives its content right back to its audience. “We continue to give our community what they want, which keeps them loyal,” he said.
Agritecture’s content, in fact, often doesn’t require a lot of lead time, but thrives on a natural, organic quality that yields authentic connections.
“A lot of stuff is pretty instantaneous – live broadcasts and live posts that get us to a kind of sweet spot where we have the feedback that allows to promote a very authentic on-the-ground experience and simultaneously conduct market research,” said Gordon-Smith, a keynote presenter at the forthcoming Festival of Media Latin America, a conference being held in Miami.
As the brand has grown, its content formula has matured, too. “We’ve learned to really refine that process of content creation,” he further explained.
“We now target different regions, based on their needs. We create different content categories, with some ‘smaller’ content. We offer strategies in different languages.
“But we haven't really changed our recipe: Post frequently. Be transparent. Be honest. Don't pretend it's better than it is … People want authenticity. They want real. They want to know about failures as much as they want to know about successes.”
As urban farming – and the larger related topics of deforestation and reforestation – have become part of geopolitical discourse, keeping Agritecture current has become more challenging.
But the flip side of the same coin is that urban farming is now a hot topic, meaning that a movement that Agritecture led has gained significant traction.
“The knowledge that we created in the market is now more democratised ... Now, we’re competing with niche groups, some of which focus a lot more on investment,” said Gordon-Smith.