PCC-DBII and Grantee Cross-Promotion: Instagram Story Takeovers
In August 2023, we launched our Instagram Story Takeover program. We invited all Round 1 and Round 2 grantees to participate in the program and select a day to take over PCC’s Instagram Stories and share a “day in the life” and information about their PCC grant. This was an opportunity for the dairies to share about themselves with a new audience (ours) and an opportunity for us to showcase some of our grantees through their own voice and introduce ourselves to their followers. This cross-promotional activity created new relationships and strengthened existing partnerships across our digital platforms. Five grantees volunteered to do a takeover: Foggy Bottoms Boys, Stepladder Creamery, Lost Peacock Creamery, Rumiano Cheese, and Mount Rainier Creamery.
PCC developed detailed guidelines, asking the dairies to include photos and videos and also talk about their PCC grant. We asked them to tag themselves on all of the stories so it would be easy to share the content they created on their Instagram as well, making this a true cross-promotion. Once the takeover was over, we saved all of the content in our Instagram Highlight called “Spotlight” so everything can still be viewed after the stories expired.
For example, Stepladder Creamery’s takeover happened on August 10. They shared a combination of roughly 40 photos and videos showcasing their new butter pump, milking the goats and other happenings in the creamery. They also mentioned the takeover and in an email blast that went out to more than 8,000 subscribers. In the eblast they also offered an extra entry into their cheese giveaway if people followed PCC.
After the first four takeovers, PCC’s Instagram following went from 72 to more than 600.
Below are example IG story posts from each grantee’s takeover, and a photo of Stepladder’s email blast.
