Since we made the change in our AgWired Mobile service this week by working with Joel Jaeger at Commodity Update I thought I’d get him on the phone to find out how things are going in the text messaging world and discuss these new media communications platforms we’ve been developing.

There is a growing amount of data from public sources like USDA-NASS to private (Nicholson Kovac, Successful Farming) that shows how fast the adoption of web based social and new media and mobile phone technology is among farmers. This means that companies and their ad agencies are scrambling to take advantage of the low cost investment in mechanisms that let them communicate directly with their customers and members. I’m betting that agribusiness still shows a lower rate of social media adoption than the general public but that gap is narrowing in my opinion. According to a post on Mashable, 2/3 of marketers now use social media in some capacity. The few who still aren’t don’t cite that they see a lack of value in social media but rather that they don’t know where to begin or how to measure effectiveness. This according to a story on eMarketer. Ahh, that measurable effectiveness thing. I just wonder how marketers measure the effectiveness of any campaign, including ones that use traditional media options. Do you know? I don’t believe that “impressions” necessarily means anything. I’d rather know how much product I sold as a result of my marketing investment. How are you measuring that? Are you measuring that?

So, listen to my conversation with Joel as we kind of ramble along about these subjects and bring up some anecdotes from our own experiences.

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