By NANCY VORIS
Indiana Correspondent

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — “I’m not your teenage daughter,” Tia Agnew repeatedly told her audience regarding her technology savvy. “I didn’t come out of the womb texting.”

But Agnew knew it was essential to have an Internet presence to market her agritourism venture, New Day Meadery in Elwood. She also knew that in our social media age of blogs and text messaging, a Web page and e-mail newsletter weren’t enough.
Agnew sat herself in front of the computer and made herself learn Internet tools like blogs, RSS feeds, Facebook, Myspace and Twitter.

“I had to learn on my own,” she said. “If you’re not on the Web, you’re seriously doing your business a disservice. It’s the best marketing time and money I could ever spend.”

Agnew was one of three agritourism entrepreneurs who shared their experiences at the Indiana Horticulture Congress Agritourism Preconference Workshop last week, which focused on Putting the Internet to Work for You.

A fast-talking, animated woman of Italian heritage, Agnew’s wine roots go back generations to California’s Napa Valley. New Day Meadery uses fresh fruits and raw honey from small, family-owned Indiana farms to create a line of honey wines.

Agnew’s marketing goals are direct sales, foot traffic and customer loyalty, stating that “the best customer is a repeat customer.”
Essential to those goals is a 24/7 web presence, a colorful, engaging website that says “check me out,” she said. “It’s your billboard to the world.”

Agnew’s website, www.newdaymeadery.com, includes hot buttons for retail sales, a shopping cart, directions and maps, a wine club, special events and even profiles of the winery’s suppliers. Also she offers links to area eateries, hotels and shopping.

“Elwood is not a hot tourist destination like Nashville and Brown County, so we want to make it fun and appealing to come here,” she said. “We’re creating community through our business, selling connectivity and community.”

Also on her website is an easy signup to be on her e-mail newsletter. With a mailing list of 2,500, she said “e-mail addresses are gold.”

But beyond the typical Web page, Agnew advised other entrepreneurs to be informed about “viral marketing,” where readers of the page are doing the marketing. The strength of such marketing cannot be overstated.

“There are examples of the Web generating as much traffic as a Super Bowl commercial,” she said.

Free social networking tools such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter – online conversations that allow people to express opinions, thoughts and daily happenings, and traditionally the domain of teenagers – are becoming mainstream with all age groups.

Agnew calls it the “new word-of-mouth” advertising. Let your business pop up on someone’s Web page after they visited one weekend, and suddenly their whole network of Internet friends is talking about it, she said.

Taking social networking one step further are photo sharing sites like Flickr and video sharing giant YouTube. Find a family sharing photos or video of a trip to your location and you could get permission to place it on your website.

She also believes that online marketing firms like www.constantcontact.com are money well spent.
Those who have worked with their own websites know that their time is wasted if a search by keyword does not bring their page to the attention of readers.

Tim Fitzgerald of Exploration Acres, a family farm near Lafayette, Ind., that reinvented itself last fall as a recreational and educational farm, believes that sharing links on www.explorationacres.com allows the site to move up the “food chain” on search engines.

Fitzgerald works with promotional partners such as Subway and Tractor Supply, sharing links to each other’s websites. Linking with Follett’s Purdue Bookstore, for example, put him at the fingertips of 40,000 college students. He worked with Subway to provide a 50-cent per ticket kickback to the Boys & Girls Club of Tippecanoe County.

In turn, Web surfers looking up those businesses would find a link to a local attraction - Exploration Acres, with its 15-acre corn maze, pedal car races, corn cannon, straw mound, farm house and hayrides.

The website also includes a page for articles and videos by local media, including a video by the Big Ten Network of attractions near Purdue. The entertaining video gives site visitors a chance to take a virtual tour of the Exploration Acres before their actual visit.
“As articles are written, we make a PDF file and post them,” Fitzgerald said.

There is also a media and press information kit on the website that provides photos and press releases for writers.

Other features on the website include a map of the corn maze, heritage photos of the farm “back when,” the winner of a gas card from their first season, and an RSS subscribe button allowing updates to automatically be sent to e-mail addresses.

Tim Burton of Burton’s Maplewood Farm in Medora said entrepreneurs should not shy away from Internet marketing tools.
“You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to learn this stuff,” he said. “You just have to have the courage to get in front of the computer and learn it.”

Burton snagged a feather for his cap when he realized there was no national maple syrup festival and set about creating one the first and second weekends in March. At www.nationalmaplesyrupfestival.com he created a website to promote the event, which benefits the Heads Up Foundation for children with facial-cranial anomalies.

He took his marketing one step further by buying domain rights for 16 other maple-syrup producing states. Now when Web surfers type in www.vermontmaplesyrupfestival.com for instance, Burton provides information on Vermont maple syrup venues but also provides a link to the National Maple Syrup Festival.

He is also a firm believer in links to local hotels, restaurants and attractions. “The best way to get a higher ranking (on the search engines) is to get those links,” he said.