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!

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

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.

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!

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?

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

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 . . . . . .

• Social media is a global phenomenon happening in all markets regardless of wider economic, social and cultural development.
• All social media platforms have grown significantly over the three Waves: Video Clips are the quickest growing platform, up from 31% penetration in Wave 1 to 83% in Wave 3.
• 57% have joined a Social Network, making it the number one platform for creating and sharing content: 55% of users have uploaded photos, 22% of users have uploaded videos.
• Blogs are a mainstream media world-wide and a collective rival to traditional media – 73% have read a blog, 45% have started a blog.
• Social media has strong impacts over brand’s reputation – 34% post opinions about products and brands on their blog – 36% think more positively about companies that have blogs.

Here’s the percentage of respondents who agreed with these statements:

• 56% Blogging is a good way to express yourself
• 36% I think more positively about companies that have blogs
• 33% I have a favorite blog that I read regularly
• 32% I trust bloggers opinions on products and services
• 31% Blogging is an important way to socialize with friends

There’s so much information in this report that I can’t even begin to point it all out. It’s all good. Just take some time, take a deep breath and say, “I will read it and I will try to “get it.”

Via Podcasting News

His most recent post struck a nerve and I posted a comment on it. I thought I’d point you to it and won’t post it here. One sentence in his post struck a real nerve with me and is probably what most prompted me to write a comment.

Worse yet, some seem to think that if you do find a way to make your living successfully, you’ve “sold out” and are no longer true to your audience.

That couldn’t be less true as Tim knows. I am very happy and thankful for the success we’ve had. It has allowed ZimmComm to continue to develop and help a growing number of companies who want to make use of new media tools to communicate with their customers.

We’re going to keep working at it.

Imagine having this done for your event or company.

Besides posting on these clients blog sites we’ll also be posting on our own, Domestic Fuel, AgWired and World Dairy Diary. These ZimmComm-owned sites provide you with a “sponsorship” opportunity to have online exposure even if you don’t have your own site to provide this kind of event coverage.

Let’s face it, there’s no more interactive, up to the minute, interesting, search engine optimized way to showcase your activities than with online coverage on the websites we create. Let me know if you’d like to discuss doing this for your company or group.

Here’s the ranking for a couple of our sites:

Domestic Fuel 96,541
AgWired 143,900
ZimmComm.biz (this site) 305,717

“Major corporations use blogs differently while abiding by the same rules and etiquette,” said Blog Council CEO Andy Sernovitz. “Individual and small-business bloggers don’t face the same issues. For example, we still need to deliver a responsible and effective corporate message, but we need to do it in the complicated environment of the blogosphere. We have to speak for a corporation, but never sound ‘corporate.’ And we have to learn to do it live, and in real-time.”

Take blogging for instance:

Via Podcasting News

For example:

20,603 Blog Participated
23,327 Blog Posts (Google Blog Search)
14,631,038 RSS Readers

That RSS Readers number doesn’t count visitors to the respective websites which is a much bigger number generally speaking!

The graph below shows the frequency of terms appearing in the blogosphere courtesy of BlogTrends. Additionally “Blog Action Day” was the top Technorati search term AND tag for the day.

Pretty impressive showing for the blogging community if you ask me. That’s what I call a viral campaign.

• Now playing roxette mp3 (by RealPlayer Windows Plugin)

You can request a complimentary Top Line report from the most recent survey online.

BIGresearch’s American Pulse™ Survey is collected online every month, utilizing Survey Sampling International’s (SSI) U.S. Panel exclusively. BIGresearch conducts this survey to find out what Americans really think and feel about topics like politics, religion, pop culture and the economy…just to name a few. American Pulse™ provides a platform for participants to voice their true opinions about real and timely issues in our society.

I think it’s interesting that they’re separating bloggers from media. How do you do that today? We publish several news sites that use the blog format and consider ourselves bloggers. However, we register as media at events we cover and are considered media by most people I know and work with. I know many mainstream media reporters who have their own news blog.

Maybe it’s the fact that blogging is more personal generally speaking and that creates more of a trusting atmosphere for the blog reader? I’m betting that’s part of it. It’s one of the reasons we encourage blogging. Put a more personal face on you and your company!

One of the things we’re supposed to do is point you to 5 other blogs you may not be aware of. Although I do this regularly on many of our sites and we’ve got blog rolls on some of them I’ll point you to 5 here. Why these? Because they’ve got some good resources for you if you’re wanting to become a better blogger or podcaster.

ProBlogger
Smays.com
Podcasting News
iLounge
Engadget

BlogDay was created with the belief that bloggers should have one day dedicated to getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest. On that day Bloggers will recommend other blogs to their blog visitors.

Comment spam wasn’t something I knew much about until about a year ago when AgWired, my main agricultural communications blog started to get hit hard. That’s when we made a decision to install Akismet on all our sites and all of our client’s sites as well. In fact, Akismet is a standard feature of any site we build today.

As a total of all the sites Akismet is being used on they’ve captured 2,412,431,831 spam comments. In that same time frame they allowed 178,927,948 total hams. This was as of early July btw.

Going on 3 billion. That’s ridiculous. Just think about the fact that Akismet is only one of the options you have to capture and manage comment spam!

As of right now I’ve spent 67 days on the road doing event blogging and Cindy has spent about another dozen. That’s quite a few and I think shows how interested companies and organizations are to have the story of their event unfold as it happens on their website or on one of ours.

I can go into so many reasons why this makes sense but I think I’ve done that before (search engine optimization, multi-media content, direct customer/member communication).

You can see examples of my most recent trip on Appaloosa Blog Spot from their National Show that just concluded in Oklahoma City. In 3 days I post 22 times on their site. Those posts contained 18 audio interviews, 1 YouTube video and an online photo album containing 155 high quality digital photos.

At last night’s dinner one of the participants wanted to use my camera so I let her and she took a picture of the photographer (me). Her name is Fran Doig and her husband, Paul received one of the CAHI “Recognizing Its Leaders” awards last night. You can read more about this on AgWired.

I thought I’d post some of the resources I’m using here and later I might add the audio recording of my presentation too just in case you’re interested and only if I think I sound okay. So linked to here are the agenda for my presentation (Word doc), my Power Point slides (PPT file) and a little resources handout (Word doc).

I’ll also be giving away a few sets of ZimmComm retractable ear buds to some lucky winners too.

Here’s an excerpt from his post that I really like. This is what so many people have trouble understanding.

I also received a great education in syndication. While publishers, advertisers and agencies get caught up in site visitors, I found it interesting that I have roughly five times as many active RSS and email subscribers. And I now can understand why; I’m making it easy for others to discover and regularly consume my content, on their terms.

Another webinar you might want to check out is on blogging and being offered by PR Newswire. It’s called “Blogging: Get in? Get out? or Get out of the way?” You can probably guess what my answer is.

PR Newswire has brought together a panel of online veterans to discuss blogging as it pertains to the PR professional and the news reporter. Learn how blogging has changed journalism, how it has opened new lines of communication outside the traditional press and how PR professionals should (or shouldn’t) react to the trend.

This webinar takes place on April 12 at 2pm-edt. Here’s where you register.

Besides designing and building these websites we also host and continue to maintain several of them:

• AgNetOnline
• Appaloosa Blog Spot
• Beef Board Meeting
• Biodiesel Conference Blog
• Evan Slack Network
• Farm Policy
• MFA Health Track
• Missouri Beef Council
• Precision Pays
• The Ethanol Report
• WorkLifeFit

I think we may need to get beyond the fact that these are blogs and just consider them websites that can be updated easily and frequently, are highly search engine optimized, can be subscribed to and provide a direct channel of communication to customers who are searching for information and probably the thought leaders in their business.

Example number one: Beef Board Meeting. This cattle producer-targeted website now has 30 new posts from the Cattle Industry Convention that all contain pictures and most of them contain interviews or audio files of press conferences and speeches. The posts were done while the event was taking place and traffic is 5 times higher than last year when the site was introduced. Additionally, all my pictures were placed into an online photo album for anyone to find and view (241 pictures).

Example number two: Biodiesel Conference Blog. This consumer/industry-targeted website now has 37 new posts from the National Biodiesel Conference that contain all the same type of content (pictures, interviews, speeches and press conferences). Additionally, 21 of the audio files were placed into a podcast series for people to subscribe to and download to their computer/iPod. And all my pictures were placed into an online photo album (296 pictures).

Now while I was doing that I was also cross posting onto AgWired, Domestic Fuel and World Dairy Diary which are ZimmComm owned and operated news blogs. This places the content in another highly search engine optimized environment. I don’t know about you but I think this beats a printed daily conference newsletter any day!

Our schedule is filling up during these busy farm meeting months. If you’re interested in learning more about it all works and how we can work for you please let me know.

Now, one way to look at this is to get angry. That big of an attack from spambots of what they call “pills, poker and porn” has caused problems with that website. Maybe that’s their goal.

On the other hand when I look at each of our websites I can see that the more times I’ve posted and the more traffic the website receives, the higher the number of comment spams. So one way to look at it is the price of corporate blogging success.

That’s the way I’m looking at it right now.

You can still find the Blog Business Success Radio show on Blog Talk Radio.

We had a nice hour long conversation which you can still listen to if you missed it live. We talked about agricultural communications, Talking News Releases, blogging, podcasting and all from the perspective of how these new communications tools can be used for business purposes.

So, if you have time feel free to listen in.

He’s now looking for a new gig and is blogging his way along.

Imagine that you’re applying for a job and you call a prospective employer. They say, “Send me a resume.” I think it would be cool to say, “Why don’t you download it from my website.” That’s what John can do. He can also say, “Want to see/listen to some examples of my work?” Instead of making your prospective employer wait for your resume or a “tape” of your work, let them have instant access even while you’re on the phone with them.

I know it would impress me, while showing me that you’ve got some initiative that will set you apart from the pack.