The State’s Fisheries and Animal Resources Development (FARD) Department took initiatives to start Facebook pages for the Odisha State Cooperative Milk Producers’ Federation (Omfed), the Odisha State Poultry Products Cooperative Marketing Federation limited (Opolfed), the Odisha State Fishermen Cooperative Federation (Fishfed) and the Odisha livestock Resources Development Society (OlRDS), which are facing different challenges in the changed scenarios.
It was kept in view that conventional media was expensive and people often struggled to reach their targeted audience. That is the reason why the department used the social media to reach out to a large number of people of all age groups.
To increase the brand value of the products of the cooperatives functioning under the department and to reach the targeted consumers among other steps, the following pages were launched.
Similarly, to create interests among the youngsters in the livestocksector, a dedicated facebook page of www.facebook.com/olrds was also launched.
The social media campaign has not only helped Omfed, Opolfed and Fishfed to re-establish their brand in the market, but also helped them boost their sales.
With a total fan base of 1,66,867 and with a reach of about one crore people, the Fisheries and Animal Resources Department is now capable of reaching to a large number of audience with the help of its own social media platform.
While majority of the readers are young children, the pages have also attracted people of different age groups including women and elderly.
For example, out of the total 37,512 Omfed page likes, 11,645 likes are by boys and 2,000 by girls all between the age group of 13 to 17 years. While nearly 16,000 likes on the page are by boys and 2,500 are by girls all in the age group of 18-24 years. Similarly, 5,000 likes are by men and 500 by women all in the age group of 25-34 years. Majority of these likes are from people residing in Odisha.
Similarly, out of 39,112 likes on Fishfed mostly from Odisha, nearly 18,000 are by boys and 3,000 by girls all in the age group of 13 to 17 years. 13,000 likes are by boys and 1,700 by girls all in the age group of 18-24 years. 2,500 likes are by those in the age group of 25-34 years.
Out of 32,575 likes on Opolfed page, 10,000 are by boys, 1,500 are by girls all in the age group of 13-17 years. 14,500 likes are by boys and 2,000 by girls all in the age group of 18-24 years. Similarly, 3,513 likes are by those in the age group of 25-34 years.
Out of 57,668 likes on Olrds, 9,676 are by boys and 900 by girls both in the age group of 13-17 years. 26,489 likes are by boys and 900 are by girls both in the age group of 18-24 years. 12,858 likes are by boys in the age group of 25-34 years, 3,619 by men in the age group of 35-44 years and 1,300 by men of age group 45-54 years.
The Facebook page has helped Omfed, Opolfed, and Fishfed to increase their sales, branding of products and helped officials to stay in touch with their customers, while the Olrds Facebook page helped the department to propagate information about different schemes, their benefits, achievements and highlights success stories.
Every day officials of the concerned organisations prepare their write up to be posted. These drafts are checked by higher officials and after that a team of experts who are specialised in content, digital marketing, graphic design and have experience in search engine optimisation edit these contents and create necessary graphics strictly adhering to Facebook policy and guidelines.
After editing the contents and graphics, the team sends the same to Commissioner-cum Secretary of the department for a final check.
The drafts are read and necessary corrections, if needed, are made by him before those are posted on the Facebook pages. The final draft and images are again sent back to the team which schedules the posts so that they get posted next day morning at 6.00 AM.
This is being done to ensure the posts are error free. Be it Sunday or Saturday or holiday, a practice has been developed so that contents are posted daily.
The contents generally posted include awareness on products, Government schemes, incentives, events, prices of the products, e-commerce initiative, success story etc. The posts are so popular that some posts have received even more then 10,000 likes. Recently, the department even posted content in Odia language on the Facebook page of Omfed and it received very good response.
Readers have posted their experiences as comments on different posts. They are hundreds in number.
(The writer is Secretary, Fisheries and Animal Resources Development (FARD) Department, Odisha)