FMPP: Websites for Farmers

- with Vernon Thornblad

A step-by-step guide to the easier, faster, better way to build and maintain your online farm stand and more.

Tuesday, February 25th, 4 - 6 pm, Hannah Grimes Center, Suite C Conference Room

As with any small business, a website is increasingly becoming an important way for farmers to:

• Build their brand
• Communicate with their customers
• Grow their business
• Sell their products

Building a website can be a daunting task for the already overworked farmer. Like a garden, once built, a website needs to be looked after in order to reap a harvest. Fortunately, new tools make it easier than ever to get a website up and running, then make it work for you, rather than you for it.

Vernon Thornblad from Market Powersource will provide an overview for building a WordPress website, then walk you through the steps to efficiently maintain a site using the powerful and intuitive WordPress Content Management System (CMS).

Participants will learn how to:

• Customize their site
• Update their site with fresh information, photographs, even videos
• Maintain an e-commerce store
• Make their site their one-stop hub for social media
• Provide a calendar so customers know when products are ready, or events are to be held.
• Begin optimizing their site so search engines like Google will find and display them.
• Use their site to best communicate with current customers and grow their business

Cost: free. Registration is required for attendance workshop.  

Who should attend: Farmers selling at farmers markets or CSAs or anyone in a small business that makes their own products, who either want to build a website for the first time, or find a way to minimize web maintenance while maximizing effectiveness.

With over 25 years of experience in advertising, Vernon Thornblad is an award-winning Creative Director and Online Marketing Strategist. He was a social media pioneer conceiving of an online community hub by the late 1990s. He has a track record for developing sales-generating social media marketing, web PR and other web-based marketing tactics.

He has served as Online Marketing Director for an international events management company and as the Marketing Director of Everythingfarm.com. Today he specializes in WordPress website design, development and training. He helps small businesses and organizations build and grow their presence on the web and thrive in the growing online marketplace.