Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA
12722 RESEARCH PARKWAY
ORLANDO,FL 32826
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
This research project aims to study how and how well local small farmers in North/Central Florida use social media for their agricultural businesses, and find out how to optimize their specific operational strategies using advanced social media marketing techniques. The strategic use of social media by small farmers can significantly boost regional economies as they represent the majority of the local farm and rural community. It fosters sustainable agriculture, economic growth, and vitality in rural areas in North/Central Florida.This project will conduct comprehensive interviews and collect specially designed surveys to understand social media adoptions among local small farmers. It will also leverage AI, machine learning, and operations research methods to create tools and approaches for small farmers to fully take advantage of social media to improve their businesses.The goal of this research projectis to assist small-scale agricultural enterprises in Northeast and Central Florida in optimizing their operational strategies through the utilization of advanced social media marketing techniques and subsequently enhance their incomes. If successful, this project is expected to help increase the economic activities in the region, drive sales in local rural agriculture businesses and benefit the local community by increasing farm income and circulating money locally. The direct results and social benefits will be three folded. First, the project will help increase the adoption of social media among small to medium farmers to help them reach out to customers; Second, it will help small to medium farmers increase engagement of local consumers of agricultural produces and services; Third, eventually it can help enhance the connection between small to medium farmers and local consumers among the local communities in the Northeastern and Central Florida region.
Animal Health Component
10%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
25%
Applied
10%
Developmental
65%
Goals / Objectives
The primary goal of this research projectis to assist small-scale agricultural enterprises in Northeast and Central Florida in optimizing their operational strategies through the utilization of advanced social media marketing techniques and subsequently enhance their incomes. Our specific focus lies in enhancing their capacity to engage with local clientele, with particular emphasis on residents residing within major metropolitan areas in the region.To achieve the goal aimed above, we have three specific objectives in this project. First, we will conduct surveys and analyze online social media data to identify critical gaps and assess the current role of social media in connecting local customers with small farms in Northeast and Central Florida. This will involve extracting key information such as supply and demand patterns, preferred social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, Snap, Pinterest, X, Google Maps), and effective communication features. Second, We will enhance marketing and customer retention for small farms by using data-driven methods, including social media analysis and AI tools like Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing, regression analysis, among many others. These techniques will help us tailor advertising and promotions for specific produce or farms, maximize social media influence, and provide guidance on creating engaging content for consumers. Third, the findings and results will then be turned into workshops for educating extension agents and local farmers about how to use social media for marketing in a good strategy. To evaluate the impacts, data reflecting sales performances will be collected from local farms voluntarily with the help of extension agents. These feedbacks will also provide insight for the first objective for future improvements.
Project Methods
To effect the changes we would like to create in knowledge, actions, or conditions for this project, we are planning to use specialized methods for multiple tasks designed to address each objective.To accomplish Objective 1, this project will conduct two tasks.Elucidate the adoption of social media marketing in small farms:A social study will be conducted to reveal the status of social media marketing usage of small farms.Key factors identification:The survey results will be used to identify key factors and sensitive use-case problems in leveraging social media for small farm businesses.To accomplish Objective 2, this project will conduct four tasks as follows,Online data collection:In this task, we will collect social media data related to both small farm advertisement posting and also consumer posts and likes of various produce and local farms by using social media API and customized crawlers.Media Content Analysis via NLP:In this task, the team is going to identify the most effective form and contents of the information, which farmers plan to post. The goal is to help maximize the influence from the posted information, be it an advertisement of fresh produce, or upcoming events at the farm (e.g., farm tour). Using the survey and online data collected from the tasks described in Objective 1, the team will use NLP and reposting prediction (based on similarity and neighborhood information) to automatically suggest contents for the specific farmers for its targeting consumer community.Effective Advertisement Delivery via Information Diffusion models:In this task, the team will design the tools to help determine where the advertisement and produce, along with event information for farmers, should be delivered. Specifically, suggestions of social media platforms and a group of users will be generated by the tools to aid in the dissemination of the information. The team will use social influence maximization methods to complete this task.Content analysis via deep-learning based image analysis:In this task, the team will extract images from the online accounts of farms and investigate their influence on customer engagement. There are the following methods of image analysis that we are going to use: image classification and object detection.To accomplish Objective 3, this project will take on this following major task.Enhance existing extension programs to disseminate the results and tools:Workshops will be hosted to cover the social study results, the pathway to marketing through social media, and how to use our tool for social media marketing. Related education materials will be created. Users' feedback will be collected to fine tune the tool.This project will evaluate various impacts by a series of measures. For reached audience from educational events, this project will use the attendance of all workshops; for raised awareness in the rural community, this project will use social study responses; for applicability of the tool developed in Objective 2, this project will use the number of adoptions; for user's opinion on the tool for upgrade, this project will use user's experience and feedback; for improvement in rural economy, this project will use the sales performance of farms using our tools.