ZimmComm – New Media, LLC

July has been hot all over the country and we have been where the action is, no matter what the weather!

We saw a lot of corn in July, starting with the Conservation Technology Information Center tour of the Indian Creek Watershed in Illinois, where we learned about a farm family that caters to corn connoisseurs, among other things. Check out the photos from that tour here, and watch for coverage from the Conservation In Action Tour, sponsored by CTIC and AGROTAIN, August 9 in northwest Ohio.

The following week, Chuck drove out to York, Nebraska to check out the FMC plot tour in that area, then turned around and drove all the way to Springfield, Illinois for the 2011 InfoAg Conference, where our coverage was sponsored by AgLeader Technology on Precision Pays.

Wyffels Hybrids kept us going from sunrise to sunset on two days in July – one in Illinois and one in Iowa – for their annual Corn Strategies. Cindy went to Dixon, Illinois and Chuck attended the Malcom, Iowa event. Lots of great photos there!

We headed for the deep south at the end of the month. Cindy went to Panama City, Florida to cover the Southern Peanut Growers Conference for the fourth year in a row, while Chuck attended the Ag Media Summit in New Orleans, thanks to the sponsorship of BASF and AgHaven.

August is shaping up to be a hot one as well. Heading to Florida for the Cattle Industry Summer Conference, to Indiana for the AgCareers Ag HR Roundtable, South Dakota for the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally on behalf of the Renewable Fuels Association, Ohio for CTIC, Nashville for AgChat Agvocacy 2.0 sponsored by New Holland, Indianapolis for the John Deere product launch, Chicago for GROWMARK’s annual meeting and finishing up at Farm Progress show in Illinois.

See you down the road – stay cool!

Registration is now open for this year’s BlogWorld and New Media Expo. I attended last year and am hoping to do so again this year schedule permitting. If you really want to hone your new media and social networking skills then this is the place to do it. It would be cool to have other ag folks there!

Join us at the World’s Largest New Media event and learn about Content Creation, Distribution and Monetization strategies, step-by-step techniques and bleeding-edge tools from the most successful Bloggers, Podcasters, Social Media Pro’s, Internet TV and Radio Broadcasters, and Podcasters! From the premier educational sessions at the Social Media Business Summit and BlogWorld Conference, to the resource-rich New Media Expo, to Amazing Networking events…it’s One economical trip, One weekend, One Big Show you can’t afford to miss!

The 2009 Technorati State of the Blogosphere is worth your time to read through. The final segment of the report will be released today. Here’s just a couple of tidbits from the report and you can listen to my interview with Richard Jalichandra discuss the report here.

The rise of the professional blogger continues. 70% of Part-Timers, Pros, and Self-Employeds are blogging more than ever . . .

Over half of the corporate bloggers blog to attract new clients for their business, while most part-timers (61%) want to make additional money and almost three quarters self-employed bloggers try to draw in new customers for their business. But no matter the type of blogger, the most important reason for them all is either to share their experience and expertise or to speak their mind.

After the Introduction you’ll find report segments on:

Day 1 — Who Are the Bloggers?

Day 2 — The What and Why of Blogging

Day 3 — The How of Blogging

Day 4 — Monetization And Revenue Generation, Brands in the Blogosphere

Day 5 — 2009 Trends: Political Impact of Blogging, Twitter Usage

The Wall Street Journal has a Microtrends article about blogging that has some interesting points. However, like most mainstream media reporting on “new media” you can see their blinders clearly. When I see statements like, “Already more Americans are making their primary income from posting their opinions . . . ” I know they just don’t get it. These traditional journalists see blogging as only about someone posting their opinion. It isn’t. I can show you lots of examples of the opposite, of blogs being used to post facts and figures for example, or even “news.”

For some reason mainstream media want to position blogs as something other than a communications tool that effectively reaches niche audiences, something they can’t do and don’t want to do. They’re all about reaching a huge mass audience and charging a fortune to advertisers to reach it even though the advertiser really only needs to reach a small segment of that audience. I think they’re jealous and scared to death of those of us who have figured out we don’t need them any more. Why should I pay huge sums of money to reach an audience I only need about 2% of? Why not invest in my own medium and reach my own customers/members? I’ll save money and have direct interaction with my audience. No more relying on some gatekeeper to deliver my message for me.

This WSJ article is so full of misinformation it’s ridiculous. Here’s another item that shows where this writer’s head is at, “It takes about 100,000 unique visitors a month to generate an income of $75,000 a year.” Say what? Can you over generalize any more? There are lots of examples of people with small audiences making very good money blogging. It’s not about how many but “who.” If I reach 100 people you want to reach then I have a valuable audience that you might be willing to pay me to get exposure to. It’s happening all over the place.

The id who wrote this article even refers to unions and bloggers working long hours of up to 60 hours a week. Must be a union member I would guess. The article also says that bloggers are overwhelmingly happy with their work but that may change if they lose work and don’t have unemployment insurance, yadda, yadda. I guess it’s hard for a non-motivated anti-entrepreneurial 8-5er to understand people who value their independence and who don’t need to rely on unions and the government to care for them.

Full time bloggers I know, me included, don’t want or need the safety net this reporter obviously relies on. I highly recommend starting a blog and with it your own business. It’s working for a lot of people. This article shows me why so many are no longer employed by newspapers today.

My main man, Steve Mays, the Obamanator, is on the ground in Washington, DC to attend today’s inauguration. He’s blogging it and tweeting it, using Flickr and even some video. I’d rather watch his coverage than any of the network blather. We may be miles apart politically but he does a good job and gets the new media thing better than most.

I’m not sure where I’ll be at actual inauguration time. Heck, I’ve got to look up what time it is. I haven’t really been that interested. However, I did download the new Ustream.tv app to my iPhone and it works great here at KCI Airport wifi. It requires a wifi connection but allows you to watch live streaming video like Agwired Live TV! They’re supposed to have a live feed from the event. You can already watch some live webcam video from the area.

Just think of the possibilities for events of your own!

I just can’t say this any better than Dean Froslie did at Sundog. Saying you’ve got a blog when you really don’t is just one of my pet peeves. It fosters misunderstanding at best.

In recent months, I’ve noticed a few instances of “blogs” that are simply long pages of text. (A favorite sports talk show host is one example.) There’s no way to comment, no way to receive posts by RSS or e-mail, no categorization, and no way to link directly to a post. The content likely gets read, but it requires more reader effort and lacks the conversation and community-building.

Technorati, the blog indexing authority, is releasing its annual “State of the Blogosphere” in 5 installments. Here’s an example of information from the first one.

Bloggers Self-Identified as Personal, Professional, or Corporate

Of course, these groups are not mutually exclusive. More than half of professional and corporate bloggers are also personal bloggers. This could be on a separate blog, or they may blog about personal interests within their professional blog.

Where do you fit in?

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:

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.

While we’re still celebrating iPhone 3G release day I thought I’d point out something that may make it a more desirable choice for bloggers. If you’re a WordPress user like me then there will be an application which allows you to post directly from your iPhone.

The WordPress for iPhone App is nearly ready to go. It supports WordPress.com blogs as well as self-hosted WordPress.org blogs running version 2.5.1 or newer.

While we wait, here is a brief video showing the App in action. (It’s high quality, so may take a moment to kick off.)

The blogosphere continues to grow and amaze people in marketing. I remember when I first talked about it and some of my friends thought I was crazy to think that anyone would really read blogs, much less consider them as “tools” of communications. Times have changed.

My favorite place to keep up with what’s going on in my new media world is eMarketer. They’ve got a new report out, “The Blogosphere: A Mass Movement From Grass Roots,” which has some interesting information. Here’s a couple of excerpts:

More importantly, by 2012, more than 145 million people—67% of the US Internet population—will be reading blogs at least once a month. That is up from a readership of 94 million in 2007, or 50% of Internet users.

“Furthermore,” adds Mr. Verna, “the rates at which blog readers notice and click on ads suggest that they are a well-primed audience.”

Where are you placing your advertising these days? Same old, Same old or . . . . . .