Gulf coast weather permitting, Cindy and I will be be live blogging AgNite during the Republican National Convention. This is going to be very cool and a lot of fun. There’s an impressive list of companies and organizations already supporting this opportunity to showcase American agriculture to a national audience.
You can count on seeing some live video via AgWired Live TV and lots of photos and interviews. My coverage will be sponsored by the Minnesota Agri-Growth Council and AgStar Financial Services.
Perhaps you’re still wondering if your company or organization should be getting involved in new media. Have you started participating yourself (Facebook, LinkedIn, Blog, YouTube) to become personally familiar with it? It’s kind of hard to evaluate a medium you’re not familiar with.
I just saw some interesting new data on how Inc. 500 companies are making use of social media. Here’s a chart comparing their use in 2007 (green) with 2008 (blue). You can click on the image to see a bigger version of it.
Research Highlights:
* Four out of five companies in the Inc 500 rate social media technology as important or very important;
* 21% of the companies are podcasting and 39% blogging;
* The number of companies blogging and podcasting has doubled in the last year;
* The Inc. 500 are adopting new media technologies much quicker than Fortune 500 companies.
The research suggests that companies that are using social media & new media technologies are growing faster than other companies.
The research was done by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research. You can download the study, which I recommend.
Via Podcasting News.
The latest edition of ZimmNews has now been pumped out into the world wide web.
In case you didn’t get it or just want to look at it online then you can find it here: August ZimmNews
Some highlights include:
I hope you enjoy it and thank you for reading.
In the last week I think I’ve helped bring almost a hundred agricultural marketing and communications people closer to an understanding of new social media mechanisms. If you weren’t one of them then you’ve got a chance next week. On August 6, I’ll be participating in a tele-seminar that’s being conducted by Mark Jewell, Aggie-Lance. I do like being called one of . . . “ag industry’s brightest social media minds.” Register here.
Tune your phone lines to a special event this August 6th, as some of the ag industry’s brightest social media minds converge in one jam packed tele-seminar. Hosted by, Aggie-Lance.com, founder Mark Jewel this seminar will feature Chuck Zimmerman from Agwired.com and Zimmcomm.biz, John Blue from Truffle Media, and Liza Markle from the National FFA Organization. The topic at hand: What is social media, and WHY do we need to be using it in the agriculture industry today? Expect to come away with a couple tangible ideas that you can apply straight away! (more…)
