ZimmComm Update and a Little Biodiesel Willie

Chuck Zimmerman February 13, 2007

You may not have had a chance to hear Emily Richard’s new version of “Biodiesel Willie” but if you listen to this week’s ZimmCast you will. Since I’m in between event blogging gigs I thought I’d share an update of how things are going here at ZimmComm New Media and a couple of sound bites from Merle Haggard and Larry Hagman on biodiesel. The program ends with “Biodiesel Willie.”

I hope you enjoy it.

You can download and listen to the ZimmCast here: ZimmCast 106 (15 min MP3)

Or listen to this week’s ZimmCast right now:

zimmcast106-2-13-07.mp3

The ZimmCast is the official weekly podcast of AgWired which you can subscribe to using the link in our sidebar. You can also subscribe in iTunes.

Audio, Biodiesel, ZimmCast

Gibbs & Soell Big Winners

Chuck Zimmerman February 13, 2007

You know the NAMA convention is coming up soon when the regional Best of award announcements start coming out. Congratulations to Gibbs & Soell for doing great in their region.

Gibbs & Soell Public Relations captured Best of Show in public relations honors at the recent Carolinas/Virginia Region Best of NAMA (National Agri-Marketing Association) awards competition. The annual Best of Show award goes to the entry that is judged tops in quality and measurable results by a panel of judges consisting of marketing and communication peers. Additional honors captured by the agency included 11 first place and merit awards for public relations campaigns, product brochures, educational feature articles, news releases and trade show promotion materials.

The Best of Show winning entry, The 2006 Business of Tomatoes: Building Relationships through Educational Experiences Seminar, was developed for Gibbs & Soell client Syngenta Crop Protection. G&S worked with Purdue University to provide a select group of California’s largest tomato growers with a unique opportunity to enhance their business skills in human resources, finance and strategy. At the same time, the program strengthened the customer relationship with Syngenta and its portfolio of products and services.

By the way, I’m working with Gibbs & Soell and their client, Syngenta, this week at the National Farm Machinery Show.

Agencies, NAMA

Farmers Online In Web Forums

Chuck Zimmerman February 13, 2007

I know I just did a post on this but I’ve had enough people emailing me links to this AP story that I thought I’d post it again. I think that since it’s starting to show up in numerous websites more people are finding it. Like on CNN.

My main takeaway from this story is still the fact that farmers are going online to find the information they need and can’t get anywhere else. Several things are at play here. To start with, farmers want information now as in right now while they have the need. They don’t want to wait and hope it shows up sometime in the future. Next up is the fact that the internet allows them freedom of choice, their choice. They choose what they want and when they want it. Finally, and this is the hard part for traditional communicators to accept it seems to me, they are getting their information from other farmers and people like yours truly who have adopted and promoted the use of self publishing platforms like blogs and podcasts.

Now, this story focuses on online farmer user forums and doesn’t say anything about blogs and podcasts. I don’t know why but I hope you’ll understand that the more choices there are for farmers to get the information they want, when they want it, the more fractionalized the audience will become. I like to call it the online conversation and I want to be a part of it. I have no grandiose idea that I’ll capture all of it and that’s just fine by me. However, I think I do have a loyal audience and they are people who find useful and interesting things here that they will pass along (word of mouth) to their peers. That’s what this is all about.

Farming, Internet

The Latest From Osborn & Barr

Chuck Zimmerman February 12, 2007

Osborn & Barr just announced some staff additions and changes. Here you go.

Osborn & Barr Canada has announced the creation of a new position, Managing Director, and has hired Melain LaBelle for this role. A specialist in the field of marketing communications, LaBelle has held senior account management positions with Canadian and International marketing communication firms for over 20 years. Prior to founding her own boutique pr agency, she was senior vice-president, public relations, with a major Toronto marketing firm, where she developed and managed an Agri-business division.

In addition to her professional experience in the Agri-business industry, LaBelle has a personal farming background as part-owner/operator of a large family-owned Manitoba and Ontario-based beef cow/calf operation for more than 10 years. “We are happy to have Melain on-board and believe her public relations and entrepreneurial background will lend itself well to our client base in Canada,” said Joe Osborn, President, Osborn & Barr Communications.

With over 24 years of professional agricultural business experience, Ron Taylor brings an exceptional mix of marketing, sales and technical abilities to the Osborn & Barr Canada team, as Vice President, Director of Business Development Canada. Ron’s expertise in crop protection, seed and biotechnology stems from many years in a marketing management role for such global companies as BASF and Monsanto. This, coupled with his experience as Director, Agricultural Strategic Planning for a premier Canadian Agri-business based marketing communication agency, provides Osborn & Barr Canada clients with the best of both sides of the business.

Osborn & Barr Canada has named Doreen McFarlan to Account Director. In this role, she will serve as director of client services, overseeing the account management of Osborn & Barr’s Canadian clients serviced from the Guelph and Winnipeg offices. Formerly Account Supervisor, McFarlan has a proven track record of exceptional client service for accounts such as Monsanto – Canada and US, and Intervet during her three years with the agency. Before joining the agency, McFarlan held various account management positions for some of Canada’s most prominent Agri-business agencies, and brings over 10 years of experience in agency client service to her new role.

Agencies

Emetrics Summit

Chuck Zimmerman February 12, 2007

After having just written about the whole website statistics thing a couple days ago, I came across a notice about the Emetrics Summit coming up in San Fransisco in May. I just thought I’d pass it along in case you want to find out more about this issue. I view the analysis of website statistics to be an art form and science all wrapped up in one. I’ve had the opportunity to manage a number of websites including ones that have had over a $million invested in them and I never cease to be amazed about how little understood this topic is, especially the people making the buying decision.

I like a couple of lines on the website for this conference:

You cannot manage what you do not measure
Not everything that can be counted counts
Strategies without metrics are only wishes
Do not use statistics as a drunkard uses a lamp post – for support rather than illumination

I quite agree.

Internet

Learn About Syngenta’s AgriEdge 21-60 Promotion

Chuck Zimmerman February 11, 2007

One of my sponsors for AgWired coverage of this week’s National Farm Machinery Show is Syngenta. They’re very bullish on beans right now and growers attending the show will have lots to learn about their AgriEdge Soybean program.

For starters they’re going to see “Ask me about 21-60” everywhere throughout the show. I had no idea what that meant until I spoke with Jon Scharingson. He says it’s a premium of up to 21 cents per bushel per acre, up to their first 60 bushels of soybeans, for each qualifying order of NK Brand Roundup Ready soybeans with Garst, Golden Harvest or NK Brand. According to Jon growers can match it with qualifying Syngenta crop protection and it adds up to cash back of up to $12.60 per acre of beans. Sounds like a lot of cash to me.

Download and listen to my interview with Jon here: Jon Scharingson Interview (3 min MP3)

Or listen immediately here: nfms-preview.mp3

Speaking of cash, growers can visit the Syngenta booth or attend one of the 21-60 seminars held throughout the day to learn more – and receive a crisp $10 bill for their time!! If you want to see a preview of the AgriEdge Soybean program you can find it online. This will be my first time attending this annual show and I’m really looking forward to it.

AgWired coverage of the National Farm Machinery Show
is being sponsored by: and

Agribusiness, Audio, Equipment, John Deere, National Farm Machinery Show, Syngenta

Mike Cady Doing Affiliate Relations For Brownfield

Chuck Zimmerman February 11, 2007

When I managed the Brownfield Network Mike Cady was one of our engineers. He was one of the people we would call as soon as something didn’t work right and he never lost his cool. Maybe that’s why he’s moving into the affiliate relations field. I don’t know. Maybe he’s just a little bit crazy too. If you don’t know what affiliate relations is in the farm radio network business then listen up. It involves traveling on the road a few days a week and visiting the owners and managers of radio stations and convincing them to devote a portion of their broadcast time to farm programming, specifically your farm programming. Doing it right means you know more about their family than you do your own sometimes. I’m not kidding when I say this is a challenge. I’m sure he’s up to it though.

Brownfield, Ag News for America, is pleased to announce Mike Cady is joining the Brownfield team as the Brownfield Affiliate Relations Manager. “Mike’s extensive background in local radio and his high level of professionalism make him a true asset to the Brownfield team,” said Cyndi Young, Brownfield Farm Director. “For the past nine years, in addition to other engineering responsibilities, Mike worked closely with Brownfield affiliates, offering technical support as needed. He brings a valuable skill set to the position of Affiliate Relations Manager for Brownfield.”

Media

Website Metrics Questions

Chuck Zimmerman February 11, 2007

As the audience for AgWired has grown so has the need for us to keep close tabs on how we measure it. You’ve started seeing more advertising and sponsored event coverage and those companies and organizations want to know what they’re getting for their investment. One of my online mentors pointed me to a pretty well-written AP story on this subject. It deals mostly with the issue of whether “page views” is still a reliable metric to evaluate your online advertising expense. I think the case is being made that it isn’t but the problem is what to replace it with.

Hopefully you know that “hits” is really not a useful number when looking at the actual traffic to a website although I keep seeing companies brag about it. I just don’t even report it although it is the biggest number we can measure. If you wonder why feel free to call me and I’ll explain. Here’s an excerpt from the story that provides one of the reasons why page views is now becoming an unreliable metric too.

Other technologies that could deflate page views include Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, which pulls a news site or blog’s new entries, allowing a visitor to bypass a site’s home page and ads for the item of interest. Likewise, someone can watch a three-minute video clip without needing to retrieve a new page.

In such cases, visitors may view fewer pages, but they are more engaged and thus more likely to pay attention to any advertising, said Steve Rubel, senior vice president with the public-relations firm Edelman Worldwide.

Another reason has to do with websites using Ajax, something I can also help you understand if you’re interested.

Besides all this I’ve been finding that no two website statistics packages seem to come up with the same number for the same categories of measurement. For example, we’ve been using Awstats here on all our websites and I’ve been evaluating Google Analytics and most recently a new one called Mint. All three come up with different traffic numbers. I wish I was tech savvy enough to know why. This doesn’t help in the confidence department. Without a standard I have to wonder if we’re comparing apples to apples sometimes when evaluating different websites.

I know how important measurements and numbers are when it comes to justifying an investment. However, as we continue to see the development of standards and software to accomplish this online I would urge companies to also looks at customer feedback and take the time to properly develop a new channel of communication. Sometimes having a smaller group of very engaged customers or members is more important than a larger number who don’t spend much time with the information you’re trying to convey.

Advertising, Internet

AgTalk Welcomes Farmers Online

Chuck Zimmerman February 11, 2007

AgTalk welcomes farmers who are looking for a little help from their friends. I was unaware of AgTalk until reading an AP story sent in by alert AgWired reader, Gary Truitt. This looks like an online forums spot that’s been up and running for quite some time. I don’t know much beyond what you can see but maybe I can get in touch with them for an interview to learn more.

The AP story makes a point about farmer use of the internet that I think some in the ag communications world are still finding it hard to accept, “Online message boards and chat rooms are replacing rural coffee shops and feed mills as places for farmers to talk farming and trade tips as more of rural America goes online.” Any of us who have been immersed in online agricultural communications know this and we also know how difficult it is to quantify it and qualify it.

I thought it was interesting that the story doesn’t mention blogs or podcasts at all even though we’re seeing a real growth in the number of both dedicated to agriculture. Blogs that are updated frequently and in reaction to the requests and comments of readers can be a very good interactive communication tool to help farmers keep up to date more quickly than with traditional methods. I can see how user forums can be very useful to farmers too as they get direct feedback from their peers.

Do you think AgWired should start a user forums section? I can implement it fairly easily and quickly.

Internet

Kenna Rathai Helping Out AAEA

Chuck Zimmerman February 11, 2007

If you’ve wondered what Kenna Rathai is up to then wonder no more. To start with she jumped into the business world last fall when she launched Kenna B. Rathai Communications. She does independent public relations and freelance writing assignments. And now she’s got a new gig helping out the American Agricultural Editors Association (AAEA) as associate director on a part time basis. Kenna will assist Den Gardner, AAEA executive director, in managing the day to day activities of AAEA. Her responsibilities will include editing The ByLine and managing Ag Media Summit exhibit booth logistics and other duties.

ACN, Public Relations

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