FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2009

Follow NC Mountain State Fair updates via Blog and Facebook pages

Contact: Jim Knight, Media Director
jim.knight@ncagr.gov

FLETCHER---Want to know the latest happenings pertaining to the N.C. Mountain State Fair coming Sept. 11-20? Check out the fair’s blog at www.mountainfair.blogspot.com for frequent updates, and don’t miss the fair on Facebook, either.

“We want these social sites to be interactive and have lots of input from fairgoers,” said fair Manager Matt Buchanan. “We’re now reaching out to a generation that in many cases wasn’t even born when we started this fair 16 years ago.”

Search for the N.C. Mountain State Fair after you log into Facebook using the search feature in the upper right corner of the home page. Post comments, photos from past fairs, even video clips.

“We’ll also be putting our new Marshall Mike commercials on YouTube again in 2009 since everyone had so much fun watching them last year,” said Buchanan. “We’ve made Mike Stiles, who is one of our Veterinary Division employees, a celebrity in western North Carolina playing the role of Marshall Mike. Folks are all the time offering him quarters to keep the horse going.”

Social marketing and personal posts are a hot trend in personal communications from fairs across North America. The N.C. Mountain State Fair routinely appears on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and other public forums in multiple locations.

The fair relies on its website at www.mountainfair.org as the anchor for electronic marketing, and even features a secure order page for advance sale tickets at substantial discounts. Links to many of the other sites can be found from the home page.

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