Investment of employees in a brand can lead to greater public understanding and positive impressions of a brand by external stakeholders. However, this can be challenging in public organizations with multiple brand segments and a large number of employees spread across great distance with limited funds for marketing. While previous work has looked at Extension agents, faculty, and volunteers' brand perceptions, no studies have looked at communication services employees' investment in the brand. The purpose of this qualitative study was to discover how well employees in a university and Extension printing and mail entity understood the Extension brand and their investment in the brand. Research questions that guided this study were: 1) What perceptions and investment do communication services employees have in the Extension brand? And 2) what are employees' perceptions of the organization's branding and marketing efforts? Each of the 18 interviews included a series of questions focusing on employees' story related to Extension and employees' thoughts on branding and marketing efforts. Results in this study with communication services employees indicate these employees are not invested in the brand with the majority having little to no understanding of the mission of Extension. This contradicts previous research with employees in other brand segments of Extension. Implications of this work include a need for training on the Extension mission for communication services employees, a shift in culture to encourage investment in the brand, and inclusion of all Extension employees in the mission of Extension.

Social media platforms like Facebook offer farms a chance to reach larger audiences and gain connections through online engagement. Previous work demonstrates that online engagement can lead to increased sales. However, much work in tracking benchmarks for social media metrics has been outside of an agricultural context. This study aimed to benchmark the presence of fruit and vegetable farms on social media and the associated metrics (followers, likes, engagement rates, reactions, shares, etc.) to offer a standard of comparison for farms on social media. A quantitative content analysis was used to collect data from 117 farms for general analysis, and a sub-sample of 15 farms was used for a deeper analysis of 1,111 Facebook posts. Results indicate Facebook is the most used platform by Florida fruit and vegetable farms, and photos are the most used post type. Farms with the highest engagement rates posted less than farms with the lowest engagement rate, which indicates that posting more frequently may not increase engagement rates. Implications from this work are that farms may be unique in the social media space and may not need to post during the seasons when they do not have crops available for purchase.

The UF/IFAS Center for Public Issues Education in Agriculture and Natural Resources (PIE Center) conducted a series of national public opinion surveys to examine the perceptions of Americans related to COVID-19. The PIE Center shared the survey data using Extension and outreach communication pieces, including issue guides, kinetic typography videos, webinars, and communication toolkits. Data collected from the PIE Center on Americans’ perceptions related to COVID-19 also informed two communication toolkits developed for Extension. This new 5-page article, published by the UF/IFAS Department of Agricultural Education and Communication, describes the instruments used to collect public opinion data related to COVID-19. Written by Lauri M. Baker, Ashley McLeod-Morin, Shelli Rampold, Anissa Zagonel, Ricky Telg, Angela B. Lindsey, Michaela Kandzer, Sandra Anderson, Sydney Honeycutt, Phillip Stokes, Valentina Castano, and Alena Poulin.https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/wc426

The “Don’t Fake it, Make it!” series assists virtual conference and meeting hosts in creating an engaging program to benefit their participants. This new 6-page publication of the UF/IFAS Department of Agricultural Education and Communication gives an overview of common features hosts look for in virtual conference software platforms before committing to one. Written by Jarred A. Shellhouse, Lauri M. Baker, Anissa Zagonel, Phillip Stokes, and Cheryl R. Boyer.

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