AgWired

During a conversation this week about AgWired I was told “You’re not trying to reach farmers.” That is correct and I was kind of glad to hear this person say it. That doesn’t mean I’m not reaching a growing number of farmers btw. I’ve had some farmer leaders tell me that they’re fascinated to learn how companies are marketing to them. However, since I made the decision and commitment to move forward with AgWired I’ve focused on the professional agrimarketer. I’m trying to provide a place to get ideas and information to help you in your job or your business. I’m not trying to compete with traditional online farm news outlets whose sole focus is informing the farmer. In fact, the people who are doing that are some of the ones I’m targeting here in the hopes they’ll find something valuable to take away from the time they spend on AgWired.

I just checked and we’re approaching 14,000 unique visitors here on the website this month. That’s fantastic and I’d like to think that the people who want and need to know what’s going on in agribusiness like what they see and hear. Traffic just keeps growing.

Beginning next week you’ll see some display advertising on AgWired. I waited a long time to pursue advertising. I wanted to develop the AgWired community first and make sure that this channel of communication was viable and had legs. It does. I love the challenge of feeding the “blog monster” every day. Now, in order to continue to grow and develop this sense of community within our business I want and need support and am thrilled at the initial response I’m getting. You who visit, subscribe and pass us along to your friends and colleagues are making AgWired possible. Together we’re helping each other become better at what we do and that’s good for our clients.

If you agree with what I’m saying please feel free to contact me to discuss ways we can work together in this online community. I’m reaching out as fast as I can but don’t be shy about reaching in. And thanks for all your support.

The World Congress on Communication for Development got kicked off today in Rome. I guess we’re not the only ones to come up with the idea of a virtual press room. This is something I’d like to help companies and ag groups develop by the way.

Having participated in an event like this at FAO headquarters in the past, I know there’s a lot of dignitaries gathered there who want to help alleviate hunger in their respective countries. Of course food is essential and good communications is necessary to efficiently produce food. Ask any American farmer how important information is to him/her. What I think will be interesting is to see how the communications platforms develop in these countries. They probably aren’t going to be stringing wires all over the place to plug telephones into. Radio is going to be a big part of it (already is) and so will internet strategies.

USDA gets involved and had a report on the Congress out today which you can listen to:
fao-world-congress-1.mp3(1 min MP3)

My presentation here in Cedar Falls is over. We gave my Dell equipment a good workout and I hope I contributed some information that’s useful.

There were a few bloggers in the audience and even a couple of people involved in a podcasting project. Great questions were asked. As usual I found that the “comments” feature of blogging got a lot of questions. This is a challenging aspect of blogging for companies to deal with. How do you handle feedback and what if it’s negative? I think you just remember why you’re doing this to start with. Hopefully it’s to be more open and honest with your customers. I think we all learn from our critics. I know I have. I’ve also seen negative commenters turn into positive customers when they not only felt like their voice was heard but they got immediate company feedback (or saw positive comments from other customers) that addressed their concerns.

So long from here. It’s road time back to Holts Summit, MO (near Jefferson City).