Promoting agricultural conservation on Facebook: an exploration of the performance of farmer identity frames across age and gender

An understudied aspect of promoting conservation agriculture is how to effectively use social media to reach farmers. To address this gap, we tested message frames related to aspects of farmer identity using Facebook ads. In doing so, we extended work about farmer identity by considering how farmer identity emphasis frames would perform in the context of social media. We ran four 8-day campaigns that each promoted relevant events or materials (e.g., a cover crop field day) through a real agricultural organization’s Facebook account. Each of the four campaigns consisted of four ads representing an identity frame (Business, Hero, Science, and Steward). Our results indicated that users were compelled by the farmer identities presented in our ads, and that demographics played a role. Ads framed to address Business as a farmer identity were the most cost-effective relative to obtaining clicks. However, relative to the Business frame, ads using the Science or Steward frames were more effective at engaging women. Among younger users, the Hero ads received fewer clicks per reach compared to the Business or Science ads. Consequently, the “best” frame is relative to the communicator’s goal. Overall, our work verified that in the space of paid social media advertising, message frames mattered, possibly because our approach facilitated peripheral processing. This exploratory work offers a point of departure for future collaborations between practitioners and researchers mutually interested in using social media to communicate about conservation.