Thanks so much to Zachary Adam Cohen for this great cross-post from Farm to Table.  Zachary is a social media strategist and local foods blogger based in New York City. He blogs at Farm to Table and does some of his best work on Twitter @ZacharyCohen.

I’ve been writing lately a lot about what we in the local foods movement need to do in order to make the next leap. I tell you this, the opportunity is there, and anyone who thinks it is inevitable that we win this war is wrong. We have to work for it, we have to use our resources, we have to muster our numbers and show the true power and force of a people powered, bottom up movement.

The Community Consists of:

-farmers reclaiming poisoned land and healing it with their holistic approach to growing produce and raising animals, restoring heritage breeds of animals, and enriching rural communities

-chefs making it their mission to source their produce locally, educating their patrons with seasonal dishes that that work with nature and the rhythm of the seasons, even bringing a little glamor to farmers markets all over the country

-Artisinal cheese makers, bread bakers, granola makers, chocolatiers, coffee aficionados and wine makers heralding a renaissance in traditional American food customs and rituals

-Policy wonks, journalists, nutritionists and advocates working tirelessly to untangle the web of government subsidies, unintended consequences and insane governmental policies that have distorted the free market, made us fat, ruined our food heritage, decimated the land and turned our food into the cheapest commodity possible

-Foodpreneurs finding innovative ways to connect capital with sustainable business opportunities

And then there are the bloggers. Yes the bloggers. And guess what? We are important! Like, really important. The amatuer cooks, chefs, farmers, writers, foodies, recipe mavens, podcasters, video makers. All of us. We SO matter.

I’ve been writing for a the past few months about some of the things we, as amateurs, need to do. We need to play our part. I’ve talked about finding good leaders, and I’ve talked about banding together. I’ve talked about forming community blogs, overcoming our differences, marginalizing people who allow “perfect to be the enemy of the good.”

And yet the one thing that we haven’t done to date, at least with any kind of coordination and organization, is work out a social media policy. And the truth is that we haven’t done this because its been staring us in the face all along. Many of us have been slowly incorporating the tools of social media to broadcast our message, share our expertise and connect one another. The wisdom I have accumulated about social media, its tools, its philosophies, its best practices have been some of the most rewarding aspects of my experience as a blogger, writer and editor of others.

So what does a social media policy look like?

Well for one, it doesn’t involved techno-gimmickry, something I decry personally and see no reason to incorporate professionally. The web is awash with SEO gurus who will pump your site in order to attract the higher traffic. I prefer organic traffic, traffic that I have worked for. I prefer to concentrate on content first and I’ve found that traffic follows consistent production of quality content. Blog consistently for three months and it will come.

A Group Blog: I’ve already written that I think the local foods movement needs a group blog as a way to maximize our traffic. I won’t lie, I want my writing to get in front of your viewers. But I also want my viewers to see you! I’ve received commitments from almost 30 people to contribute to the blog. That means we could have fresh content multiple times a day. We could also take on other features like podcasts, videos, interviews and leverage our larger networks to grow the community from there by giving them a unique landing space with the authority to positively their further experiences.

Twitter: Probably the best marketing tool ever created, and that is because we are only too happy to help out people we share interests with, people who we have gotten to know through conversation. The follower/ following aspect is also ingenious. We should make a study, but I’ve got to believe that if you took the follower count of the most active local food twitterati, the numbers would be in the tens of thousands, even counting for overlap. Now THAT’s a number! If the community rallied around 1 or 2 stories a day, we could drive some serious traffic around the web. We need to encourage this, and we need to find a way to make this equitable, so that one blog or story is continually getting hundreds of RTs and links.

Facebook: How many FB groups do you belong to having to do with local sustainable food? Have you organized lists on FB to separate out foodies from non-foodies? I personally have a Farm to Table list with over 250 people in it. I check this list most often for status updates and blog posts. But really, its SO disorganized, and the noise is overwhelming. How can we get more organized on facebook? The days when I have had the most traffic on my site are days when influential players on Facebook like Cooking Up a Story or Michael Dimock have linked to my pieces. I am always so grateful for that, but there has to be a better way to coordinate this influence.

FriendFeed: Friendfeed is one of my favorite services and really encapsulates the aggregating and real time aspects of the social networks. It is where I push a lot of my information, blog posts, and other content into the streams of Twitter, Facebook and other sites. But more than that FriendFeed has amazing real time chat capabilities that far surpass Twitter. We have 3 ProFood rooms up that are each geared to a specific audience and weekly profoodchat’s in one of the those rooms that is open to the public. This is one of the best ways that the community has come together to discuss things without limitations of character limits etc…I strongly urge you, if you want to get more involved, to join friend feed and subscribe to this room. Here is the link: http://friendfeed.com/profoodchat We already have 81 subscribers and if you are not already a member, you will definitely recognize some familiar faces in there.

Delicious, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon: Personally, I only use Stumble Upon on a regular basis and it is a wonderful driver of traffic to my blog. I love discovering new sites, and the algorithm that runs Stumble seems to be getting better every day. When I stumble through Food/ Cooking I see fantastic sites, amazing recipes with gorgeous photos, and all sorts of ideas and opportunities to share. So honestly, please go join Stumble Upon now and then let us know in the comments section so that those already using it can add you to our friend list!

It behooves the entirety of the local foods movement to get a stumble account, and start using it. This way, we can create our own group. If one or two pieces a week gets anointed by the community, we can use our numbers to thumb up those pieces allowing not just ourselves to see them, but to drive it in front of people who never would have in the first place. From there its only a hop, skip and jump to a whole new level of RSS subscribers, blog readers and eventually more community members.

But what am I missing? How do we coordinate this? Can anyone speak to Delicious, Digg or Reddit with any kind of authority? If so, leave your input in the comments section and I’ll elevate it to a post if its really helpful!