Marketing the Message of Mushrooms Canada

Mushrooms Canada is a non-profit organization that represents its membership which include mushroom growers, processors and other allied industries. Mushrooms Canada works to advocate for food safety, good nutrition, and the proper care of Canadian mushrooms. (MushroomsCanada.ca, 2017) They do this through various methods that include attending trade shows such as the Gourmet Food & Wine Show in Toronto. They also maintain a strong presence on social media where they work to promote mushrooms to consumers.

Shannon Godelie was a long time employee of Mushrooms Canada and she shared some insight into how they ran their social media department. She told me, “Mushrooms Canada has a strict consumer-facing social media presence, geared to educate and inspire grocery shoppers.” (S. Godelie, personal communication, November 21, 2017). They strive to keep things light-hearted by sharing recipes that include mushrooms, which helps them build relationships with food bloggers. Working with food bloggers helps them access the followers of bloggers so that their message can find a larger audience.

One of the ways that Mushrooms Canada uses social media is to schedule posts where they share recipes from food bloggers around the world and then during three hot times each day they share a recipe that directs traffic back to their own content. Shannon said that these three times have the highest click through rates so they capitalize on this so that their key messaging is getting out as much as possible. .” (S. Godelie, personal communication, November 21, 2017).

Another way that Mushrooms Canada coordinates their social media program is to maintain a consistent ‘voice’ on the different platforms. One person runs the different accounts and when that person moves into a different job, the person replacing them does their best to mimic what their predecessor did. .” (S. Godelie, personal communication, November 21, 2017).

As mentioned before, the blogger outreach program is an important part of their social media plan. Mushrooms Canada uses the recipes that are developed by bloggers that contain mushrooms to build the content that they share on social media. Shannon commented that, “Recipes are our number one traffic driver to the website…Having a large library of content allows us to be constantly present and relevant to the seasons, holidays, and events, without being too repetitive.” .” (S. Godelie, personal communication, November 21, 2017).

Lessons for Others

Mushrooms Canada has developed a solid social media plan that is meeting the needs of their members. They maintain a consistent voice on social media and a lighthearted feel to the different platforms they engage in. This friendliness is shown through the sharing of content but they keep a keen eye on their purpose, which is to advocate for the increased consumption of mushrooms in Canada. This is demonstrated by how they schedule their posts throughout the day. The highest click through times are when they direct that traffic back to their site where they are most likely to get the information they want shared to the consumer.

If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site, please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Program Director, Social Media for Business Performance.

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