Using Social Media to Market Pears

Using Social Media to Market Pears. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. A lot of people are spending time with their friends, discussing everything from their favorite TV shows to sharing recipes while doing so only in cyberspace. The advent of social media outlets like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter has been changing the marketing landscape. Cristie Mather, communications director for Pear Bureau NW says they now use these outlets on a regular basis and have found them to be very important. MATHER: Oh it's important in so many ways. It's a really great way to keep your finger on the pulse of what's happening, what people are saying about your products. They're there, you should be too. Many businesses like the Pear Bureau are now using these outlets to find out what consumers are doing. It's instant feedback. MATHER: It's not that you are just out there putting random things out there. You're listening to consumers and you're following trends of what they're talking about and the recipe's that they're looking at and the questions that they have about your product and then you engage in a conversation with them through Twitter and it's nice because it's short and sweet. You only get 140 characters to say what you want to say Mather says she got started on Twitter when she says someone asked how to tell if a pear was ripe. MATHER: Our customers are here. That's one of our main talking points is educating consumers about how to properly ripen their fruit and how to tell when they are ripe. So I immediately got on there and created a business account and replied to that person and told them how to tell when a pear was ripe and we had our first follower. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.