I know who owns it. Do you? He came to the Blasdell Cleaver Schwalbe open house astride this bad boy, strutting inside pulling off his biker’s gloves. I know you know him well. The first person to comment or email me with his identity will receive a “I’ve been blogged by AgriMarketing Pros” t-shirt. (We’ll identify him in a future post)
I am happy to report the whereabouts of my good friend Dave Mehlhaff. I was wondering what Dave was doing and I found him at the Blasdell Cleaver Schwalbe open house! He works there now.
As I said in the last post, it was a good party and everyone was having a good time. Hey, Illinois, I’m not a Photoshop airbrush expert so I’m sorry for the poor job I did trying to airbrush out what you were holding in this picture.
Blasdel Cleaver Schwalbe Communications that is. The trio hosted an open house today at their new offices in Kansas City. It was a long drive over but worth it for a great party. In fact the party’s still going on but I’m back home. I wouldn’t call them early in the morning. I think the office pace will be a little slow tomorrow.
Illinois is on the left, Kelly’s on the right, you guess who’s in the middle. I didn’t put a link to their website in the beginning of this post for a reason but you’ll have to listen to next week’s ZimmCast to find out why. I interviewed all three before things got going earlier this afternoon. They’re celebrating 2 years which is a milestone.
Congratulations BCS!
Blogging’s not for everyone and especially not for the guy who writes WebWatch for American Farm Bureau Federation. I didn’t come across this myself. It was forwarded to me and provided too good an opportunity to pass up.
You can read the full rant at the link above. It’s a rambling dialogue about blogging which doesn’t ever answer the question posed by the title “To Blog or not to blog?” Apparently the writer doesn’t really have much experience with blogs or blogging.
However, he poses a good question wondering how many farmers read blogs. I’ve addressed this subject here before. Although there’s no statistic we can point to, other studies suggest that farmers use computers and the internet pretty much like the rest of the population.
An interesting article about how Texas A&M is looking at blogging can be found here: Blogging Agricultural News
The WebWatch writer obviously doesn’t like blogs when he calls what’s written in them “dribble.” But he then tries to make a case that he’s actually blogging by writing a column a couple times a year that’s on the internet. Wrong. Not even close. Blogging is about a whole lot more than just writing an opinion and posting it on a website.
His column has no comment feature for one thing. Sure, you can email him but that defeats the comment feature purpose, which allows others to see what you write and post their own comment. Blogging allows someone to communicate very personally with others and very publicly. This is why so many company’s and organizations are looking at it. I think it’s an ideal mechanism for people involved in agricultural lobbying (hint Mr. Stallman). From a corporate standpoint it allows your customers, members and the public to get to know you better and to give you feedback.
Look at what Bob Lutz, or Alex Avery are doing.
If you really want to learn more about blogging and why you should consider it, give me a call or stop in at the Midlands NAMA meeting in Omaha next Tuesday!
A great resource of information can be found on Robert’s Echo Blog too.
Oh, and before I forget, the FB writer suggested that Keith Good, a blogger who’s been featured in one of our previous podcasts, “get out more.” That’s actually what blogging allows you to do. You can blog from anywhere. If you don’t believe it look over my blog posts this year. I’ve done it from planes, airports, hotels, convention centers, you name it. Blogging is mobile!
I just received my first issue of SHARE, Merial’s new e-newsletter. That stands for Strategic Husbandry and Research Education. It’s a nice clean design with several articles, some interesting facts and an “Ask Dr. Hawkins” section. Just about the right length I think.
Here’s how Merial describes their new customer communication vehicle.
Premier Issue
Welcome to the introductory issue of the SHARE newsletter. It’s written to help address the many educational needs of the cattle industry as part of the overall Merial Veterinary Professional Services (VPS) Strategic Husbandry and Animal Research Education (SHARE) initiative. This spring issue addresses the importance of strategic parasite control in beef cattle, with an emphasis on spring deworming. We hope you find this issue to be informative, and we look forward to sending you other SHARE newsletters and educational tools in the future.
I looked on the Merial website and couldn’t find any further information about the newsletter or a place to subscribe. I would suggest an RSS feed so that producers and others can use their news aggregator program (I like NewsGator) to subscribe. Then it could be distributed without going through email!
Meet Tracey Orsburn, the Beefmobile Wrangler, in this week’s Missouri Beef Industry Council Report.
Tracy was interviewed by Cindy Zimmerman last week. She talked to Tracey about how she became the Wrangler and what she does for the beef industry. You can listen here: MBIC Report
The most recent MBIC Report is always available in our “Audio Programming” sidebar. It’s set up as a podcast too, so you can subscribe to it. For more information on how, look at our FAQ’s page.
American Business Media, which has an Agri Media Council, just started a blog called Mediapace. Mediapace is supposed to focus on BtoB media.
Great idea. However, the first thing I notice is that the posts don’t identify who wrote them. I think this is important for readers so we know who’s “talking” to us. I know that when I read an article in a newspaper or magazine I like to know who wrote it. This is part of the appeal of blogs. We get personal and get to know each other.
I’m afraid that otherwise you appear to be just another corporate public relations piece. We’ll see what happens with Mediapace. Hey, they just started yesterday after all.
MachineryLink is one of our Talking News Release customers and with the wheat harvest upon us soon they thought it was a good time to send a targeted message (with audio of course) to the Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas area. You can download the full release at: MachinerlyLink Release
MachineryLink Offers Wheat Harvest Equipment Rental Options
(Kansas City, MO, May 9, 2005) The cool weather across the high plains recently may end up delaying the wheat harvest by a week or so this year, but its still high time for growers to be thinking about getting that crop harvested in a timely manner.
Renting or leasing farm machinery is becoming popular with more grain producers as a way to manage equipment costs, gain access to newer technology and secure equipment for seasonal demand.
For Janet Tregellas and her husband Rocky, this will be the third season they have rented a combine for their harvest in a managed lease program.
For more information contact Kelly Schwalbe.
In this week’s CornTalk, MCGA/MCMC CEO, Gary Marshall goes into more detail about the State Executive Staff Mission to Europe hosted by the U.S. Grains Council. He just returned from the trip, which included stops in Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland and Switzerland. Marshall discusses highlights of the trip relating to trade issues such as biotechnology, WTO negotiations, and the differences between Eastern and Western European nations.
You can listen to this week’s report here: CornTalk
The current edition of CornTalk is always available in our “Audio Programming” sidebar.
An interesting story on Reuters was brought to my attention that shows how much attention blogs are getting from advertisers who understand the niche audience they serve. It says that “as many as 64 percent of marketers are interested in advertising on blogs, according to a Forrester Research study, though their investment would still be a fraction of the $14.7 billion expected to be spent on Internet ads this year. Another 57 percent are looking to include marketing messages on RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feeds which allow a viewer to see instantly updating headlines from news, Web logs and other sites via a simple Internet browser.”
