Between the two of us and our hardworking freelancers, we did 4310 posts on all websites, including Agwired, Domestic Fuel, Precision Pays and World Dairy Diary. We also did 176 podcasts and too many audio interviews to count.
We visited over 60 different cities, from Panama City to Portland, San Antonio to Minnetonka, and San Diego to Boston. Read our travelogue here.
Best of all – our readership was up significantly on all websites: Agwired – up 45% to 158,400 unique visitors
Domestic Fuel – up 15% to 269,000 unique visitors
Precision Pays – up 166% to 29,000 unique visitors
World Dairy Diary – up 68% to 110,000 unique visitors
Thanks to our of our wonderful friends in the industry for making 2009 a great year for ZimmComm. We look forward to continuing our relationships in the new decade.
The ZimmComm team wishes you and your families a very Merry Christmas and Happy New year. We have had a wonderful year and are looking forward to the new one just ahead.
I finally got around to adding this site’s rss feed to our Twitter feed (@ZimmComm). So posts from here will feed the Twitter account now. Remember that you can subscribe to the blog feed or to Twitter and keep up with our posts.
I’ve been holding off on new posts here on ZimmComm.biz while we decide about some major changes to the site. Those are in the process of being developed and I decided it’s time to provide some updates about what’s going on in the ZimmComm world.
To start with, we can’t say enough good about our relationship with Dave Larson and Larson Enterprises. In just a few months, with Dave’s assistance, we have obtained a number of new clients who are utilizing our services and websites. He’s keeping us busier than ever and our schedule is filling up for the next few months.
I’ll start more regular posting here and bring you more up to date on ZimmComm activities in coming days.
Many of you know Dave and for those who don’t I recorded a conversation with him yesterday about our new deal. In it you can learn more about his background and what our plans are. Listen here:
After five years of growth, our company is now at the point where it makes sense to retain the services of an established media representative to market our products/services. Dave will help us more effectively serve our many clients in the agribusiness industry.
Larson Enterprises is a full service advertising, marketing and consulting firm located in West Des Moines, Iowa. Dave has over 25 years of advertising, marketing, public relations and public policy experience with both public and private sector clients including national and international trade associations in food safety, agriculture, recreation and legal fields.
“I am pleased to have the opportunity to assist ZimmComm in representing the targeted advertising, marketing and media opportunities provided through their network of sites,” says Larson. “This truly is a unique opportunity of future growth for advertisers in reaching their key target markets. As a part of this new opportunity we will be offering new packages and schedule opportunities for those reserving advertising placements prior to July 15.”
So if you’re looking for a great new media deal Dave is your man. You can contact him via email or 515-440-2810.
At this year’s Agri-Marketing Conference I’ll be moderating a sizzling breakout session on social networking. We’re going to have some hot solutions for all of you who are scratching your heads over Twitter, Facebook, forums, blogs, podcasts, YouTube, Flickr . . . Pictured are (l-r) David Coustan, Vice President, Digital, Edelman Digital, Kyle Flaherty, Director of Marketing and Social Media, BreakingPoint Systems, David Brazeal, General Manager, Learfield Data and yours truly. The session is titled, “Social Media DOES Fit in Your Marketing Decision – Moving Beyond This Decision.” Here’s the session description:
Social media is everywhere these days. It is no longer a question whether social media fits your marketing strategy. Now it’s a decision of, “How? Where? What type?” Learn how to take the first steps in answering these questions and working to complement existing strategies.
The panelists, from both inside and outside of the agriculture industry, will share real-life examples of social media successes and failures. Take their hot ideas and lessons learned to create sizzling solutions that make your organization stand out!
Dave was one of the first official corporate bloggers for a national brand, serving as blog master and social media strategist for Fortune 1000 Internet service provider EarthLink. He has led best practices sessions on social media strategy and corporate blogging at nationwide events.
Kyle is an experienced social marketing and technology communications professional with a broad range of skills characterized by successes in high-tech marketing communications, public relations, social media, web development, community creation and community engagement.
David Brazeal, General Manager, Learfield Data
After attending J-School at the University of Missouri, David Brazeal worked as a radio reporter and wire service editor. Then the Internet lured him away from the newsroom. Now, he uses his experience to help clients communicate better with their customers and employees through a wide range of social media tools.
This weekend we’re moving to a new server. Doesn’t that sound like fun? It’s kind of like moving your home. You’ve got to pack everything up, move it to a new location and then hope all is well. Which it will be.
So why are we doing it? Because we’ve continued to grow and are now hosting 26 different websites! Of course that doesn’t count others we manage on client servers.
So, basically we’re doubling our capacity and upgrading to some fantastic new server software which means our sites will perform even more reliably and faster. You shouldn’t notice anything during this move since we’ll have all sites up and running on both servers.
Have a Happy Thanksgiving from ZimmComm New Media.
And just in case you want to know more, here’s what Wikipedia says about it:
Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, is a harvest festival. Traditionally, it’s a time to give thanks for the harvest and express gratitude in general. Thanksgiving is a North American holiday with the dates and whereabouts of the first Thanksgiving celebration a topic of modest contention. It has generally become a national secular holiday with religious origins. Though the earliest attested Thanksgiving celebration was on September 8, 1565 in what is now Saint Augustine, Florida[1][2], the traditional “first Thanksgiving” is venerated as having occurred at the site of Plymouth Plantation, in 1621.
Today, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States. Thanksgiving dinner is held on this day, usually as a gathering of family members.
AgNite in Minneapolis was a hugely successful event, attracting over 3,000 people to The Depot.
ZimmComm was on the scene, publishing content on both AgWired and the AgNite Blog.
This is one of the over 300 pictures Cindy and I shot during the event. You can see 200 of them in our online photo album. We also conducted 12 interviews and produced 1 YouTube video. So far we’ve produced 15 stories from the event and counting.
That’s what you get when you bring in the agriblogging and farm podcasting experts from ZimmComm.
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.
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…)
This week you can see both Zimmermans in action road blogging for two of our clients, National Biodiesel Board and Cattlemen’s Beef Board. You’ll be able to see the posts we’re doing on the National Biodiesel Conference Blog and Beef Board Meeting.com. They both represent an excellent and effective use of this new medium. Both are focused on annual events and essentially provide a frequently updated multimedia newsletter on the web.
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.
ZimmComm has joined the Facebook network. Actually, I’ve joined and created pages for our business units. I’m still in the process of getting them fully set up but within hours of creating my account someone had already written a note on my “wall.”
The same is true with LinkedIn. If you’ve already got an account then visit me and let’s link up. I got started on this one from invitations from a few friends in the business!
Of course you can also just send me an email, text me to my phone (573-230-3024), call my phone, post a comment here or on one of my sites like AgWired, or contact me through my Flickr or YouTube account
Cindy and I and all the ZimmComm team would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and an early Happy New Year.
ZimmComm New Media has grown significantly this year and we want to thank all the wonderful people we get to work with. None of it would be possible without your faith and trust in us and your support.
The long holiday weekend allowed me to get caught up on a few things here at ZimmComm World Headquarters. For example, our work stations have been upgraded to include Behringer mixers and JK Audio’s Podcast Host digital hybrids which allow us to record phone calls, something we do a lot of. There’s also some Sonex going up on the walls and all the usual software updating and hard drive backup-ing.
This just means that the audio we create from over the phone interviews will increase in quality. We’ve been delivering audio to broadcasters, websites and other content users for years. These new tools just help simplify the process while allowing us to produce an even better product.
We’re very thankful for all that the good Lord has blessed us with this year and that certainly includes the many people and companies we get to work with.
When I first started posting video clips onto YouTube I got some very strange looks. I know they were thinking “He’s definitely off his rocker.”
Well, so far I’ve uploaded 73 video clips, mostly in just over the last year. Those clips have been viewed over 66,000 times collectively at this point. They vary from the highest one being the very first one I posted which has now been viewed almost 23,000 by itself to some as few as a dozen times or so.
One thing is constant though. The number of views keeps going higher for all of them. They stay archived in YouTube and I’ve made sure they’re all key word tagged with good descriptions which makes them very easy to find for people searching.
I was just showing someone my latest stats and he thought I ought to share them with you.
So why join and especially since they haven’t done anything yet? Because it’s a chance to get in at the beginning and have a voice and hopefully access to information that will help us and our clients. One of the things I can already sense is the need in this ADM to address niche topic/audience producers. When I joined they asked me to check a range of how many downloads my podcast gets in a month. The first choice was 1 – 50,000 and then they went higher! I don’t know about you but I don’t see this medium as a mass medium necessarily. In fact, if all they’re going to focus on is podcasting or other downloadable media content that’s just out to see how many downloads they can get then I think they’ll not only be making a mistake but missing out on what most of us are doing.
I produce podcasts for niche audiences. If my program is targeted to 40 people and I’ve got 40 downloads then I might be reaching my total audience. I don’t care about having thousands of downloads. It’s not just the total number of downloads but who those downloads represent.
So, it’s going to be interesting to see how this evolves. The traditional media buyers and agencies are so metric driven that they tend to overlook the quality of the audience. When you’re used to measuring CPM but now have a buy option that is only going to reach the target audience with no waste the numbers get a lot smaller but the message is making a much bigger impact and the cost is probably a lot lower. Of course then you have to ask, “How do I make a living on small buying fees/commissions?” Good question.
ZimmNews is the monthly electronic update of all things ZimmComm New Media. If you’d like to be added to the list to receive it please send me an email.
If there is one word to describe ZimmComm this year it would be BUSY! And we LOVE it! Our clients are just fabulous to work with and even though we are working hard we are really enjoying our safari in this new media frontier.
So, what have we been doing lately? For one, we have a few more contract part-timers helping us out. John Davis, a 20-year veteran broadcast news reporter, has been posting on Domestic Fuel since January. He has been a great help. Also, a new media world professional by the name of Laura McNamara is now trained to help us with on-site events with photography, interviews and posting. She helped out with the Indy 500 and quickly became an event blogging pro!
Where have we been lately? Since NAMA, we’ve been to Dallas, Memphis, Atlanta, Kansas City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Des Moines, Lexington, Indianapolis, Ontario, Nashville, Washington DC and a soybean field near Laddonia, MO. Some of the highlights include – interviewing Jay Leno, using a BIG boy lens to shoot some awesome photos at the Indy 500, covering the Country Music Association Music Festival, and watching soybeans grow.
Watching soybeans grow? Yeah – you’ll read more about that on AgWired in the weeks to come.
Where are we going? Upcoming trips include: the Iowa Corn Indy 250, the Fuel Ethanol Workshop in St. Louis, the National Appaloosa Horse Show in Oklahoma City, the Cattlemen’s Beef Board summer meeting in Denver, the Ag Media Summit in Louisville, American Coalition for Ethanol in Minneapolis, Farm Progress Show, and IFAJ in Japan.
Ag Media Summit will feature two ZimmComm workshops – Blogging for Business and Podcasting for Publishers.
Sponsor opportunities – currently available for Ag Media Summit, ACE, Farm Progress and IFAJ. Be our sponsor for online coverage of these events on our websites and receive the kind of coverage described below. You have access to all the content we create to use for your own post-event purposes which can include your newsletter, website, commemorative DVD’s, custom loaded iPods, etc.
Updated rate cards – now available for DomesticFuel, AgWired and World Dairy Diary. Please contact Chuck and he’ll send you one and a custom proposal if you’d like.
Some recent event coverage summaries:
Indy 500 – 52 posts (2 websites), over 1,000 pictures, 1 online photo album (222 photos), 25 audio interviews CMA Music Festival – 34 posts, 635 pictures, 1 online photo album (236 photos), 1 online slide show w/music (79 photos), 11 YouTube videos, 19 audio interviews Propane Days – 12 posts, 38 pictures, 1 YouTube video, 9 audio interviews
ZimmNews is being emailed to over 1,600 of Chuck’s agricultural marketing industry contacts. These are very influential people in the biz. Hey, you’re getting it aren’t you? If you’d like to sponsor ZimmNews let Chuck know and he’ll work out a sweet deal!
Between the two of us and our hardworking freelancers, we did 4310 posts on all websites, including Agwired, Domestic Fuel, Precision Pays and World Dairy Diary. We also did 176 podcasts and too many audio interviews to count.
Hey ZimmComm fans. We’ve got some big news for you today. Let’s just call it one small step for new media, one giant leap for ZimmComm.
At this year’s Agri-Marketing Conference I’ll be moderating a sizzling breakout session on social networking. We’re going to have some hot solutions for all of you who are scratching your heads over Twitter, Facebook, forums, blogs, podcasts, YouTube, Flickr . . . Pictured are (l-r) David Coustan, Vice President, Digital, Edelman Digital, Kyle Flaherty, Director of Marketing and Social Media, BreakingPoint Systems, David Brazeal, General Manager, Learfield Data and yours truly. The session is titled, 
Have a Happy Thanksgiving from ZimmComm New Media.
AgNite in Minneapolis was a hugely successful event, attracting over 3,000 people to The Depot.
Gulf coast weather permitting, Cindy and I will be be live blogging 
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, 
ZimmComm has joined the Facebook network. Actually, I’ve joined and created pages for our business units. I’m still in the process of getting them fully set up but within hours of creating my account someone had already written a note on my “wall.” 
The same is true with LinkedIn. If you’ve already got an account then 
Cindy and I and all the ZimmComm team would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and an early Happy New Year.
The long holiday weekend allowed me to get caught up on a few things here at ZimmComm World Headquarters. For example, our work stations have been upgraded to include 
Happy Thanksgiving from ZimmComm New Media.
When I first started posting video clips onto 
Membership is now open in the