Rebecca Wilson, 29, is a former member of Boroughbridge YFC in Yorkshire and was recently named one of the people on The Sunday Times’ annual Young Power List, celebrating the 30 most powerful people under 30 in the UK.
Rebecca shares her experience in becoming a successful content creator on social media and the skills she learnt in YFC.
I was a relatively late starter to join YFC as a member due to being away at university and with my employment commitments before returning to work on the family farm so I was actually in my early 20s when I joined. I think the beauty of the organisation is that it doesn’t matter what age you join or what your background is, it’s an extremely welcoming group of people bound by their common interest and passion for farming and rural life.
Since leaving Young Farmers, I continue to keep in contact with the friends I made during my time there. More recently, through my involvement with the National Sheep Association (NSA), I have been able to start building a fantastic collaborative relationship between the two organisations. Coming up, the Northern Region of the NSA are sponsoring Northern Area Stockjudging which I’m very excited about!
A few years ago, I was lucky enough to be an NFU Student and Young Farmer Ambassador – it was a great opportunity to meet lots of other young people who wanted to make a difference in farming as well as learn some new skills and build up my network.
I was thinking about how I could put my younger voice to good use, and I thought that I could use social media. Naively, I thought that social media was used more by the younger generations but since I’ve been posting, I’ve found out I was completely wrong and my followers are of all different ages and demographics.
Growing my platform, though, was a complete accident! To be honest, I’ve been completely overwhelmed by how interested people are in farming and seeing how their food is produced. Farmers who are on the ground living and breathing agriculture are in an unrivalled position to show the true realities of our industry.
I think more and more people are calling for authenticity in the content that they watch online and, for me, breaking down misinformation and myths about British agriculture is now a crucial reason why I post online.
I wouldn’t say that building my profile has been intentional as such but as it grows it opens up more and more things.
I try and say yes to as many opportunities as possible and these can be anything from speaking at Young Farmers’ meetings, working with farming charities such as RABI and FCN, to appearing on television programmes like Good Morning Britain and Newsnight and hosting panel discussions at events and conferences.
Recently, I was honoured to be selected for The Sunday Times' ‘30 under 30’ list! This is a hugely proud personal moment for me but the accolade is also about putting farming on the map when it comes to mainstream media.
I’ve definitely learnt a lot about social media and how it works over the last few years, but I don’t think we’ll ever fully get to grips with the changing algorithms and demands of the different platforms because the changes happen so quickly!
One of my main tips would be that an awareness of your analytics and engagement figures is good but obsessing over the numbers can really take out the enjoyment from creating content and make it more of a chore.
There’s a lot of brilliant free apps which I use such as CapCut for editing and Canva for design. You can also take advantage of the in-built features in the social media apps themselves such as cross-posting from Instagram to Facebook, scheduling tools and collaborations with other creators.
I’m always conscious of the content that I post because after all, some of the things on farms can be a bit squeamish and we do deal with life and death, but sometimes you just have to be brave and get posting!
I feel like I developed many skills during my time in YFC, whether that’s organisation from being Secretary of my club, confidence to say yes to competitions I’d never done before or being able to find the right word as a result of taking part in public speaking. The breadth of opportunities in YFC is mind blowing and I think you can only truly appreciate this once you get involved!
Going forward, I’ll be remaining active on my social media and saying yes to as many events and opportunities as possible. I want to help consumers learn about food production and farming, to keep building a community for farmers and highlight the challenges we are facing, and the solutions agriculture can provide, to the people making policy decisions.
I have also very excitingly partnered with Cumbria dairy farmer Charlotte Ashley to bring our listeners the Wilson & Ashley podcast!
It combines a unique mobile studio concept to optimise sound quality with discussions on the latest trends, social media videos and mainstream media topics. Watch this space for episodes to be released very soon!
You can keep up to date with Rebecca: @rebeccawilsonfarming @wilsonandashley
