Stoned cows. That’s what this story is about. Actually Cindy alerted me to the full story which you need to read, including the comments. It’s on Muley’s World. The picture was one of the best parts and it’s not the only one you’ll find.
This is what I love about the blogosphere. There’s just a lot of good stories floating around. Cindy found this one on Catholic Pillow Fight.
I just wonder what a barbeque of steaks from these cows would be like.
I always thought the corner convenience store was really just an American thing but after travelling in other countries you realize that’s not the case. I just came across a story on China Daily about the huge growth in convenience stores in Shanghai. According to the story there are now over 5,000 of them! That’s since they got started about 10 years ago.
The story quotes a representative of the China Chain Store & Franchise Association saying that the stores have become a part of everyday life in Shanghai. According to the story over 5o percent claimed to be have a profit last year
This message just came in from Steve Mercer. When you grow sometimes you gotta go!
Hello Friends:
AdFarm is relocating our Kansas City office. We have outgrown our original KC space and are moving a block or so south from our current location. We’re really excited about the move, the new space and the reason for it. As of Monday August 29th, our new address will be as follows:
AdFarm, 100 East 7th Street, Suite 301, Kansas City, MO 64106
Phone numbers will not change (main number is 816-842-5983; fax is 816-221-5833), but please be advised that our phones will temporarily be turned off starting at noon central time Friday, August 26 then be active again starting the following Monday.
It looks like the GoE Summer Roadtrip is over (at least for this year). I’ve been following them on their blog (have you?). They took a lot of pictures which you can see on their photo album.
What do you think of this use of a blog in a marketing campaign? Post your comments. Come on now. That’s what the blog thing is all about you know.
I wonder how you measure the success of this campaign. Are more people buying ethanol blended gas in North Dakota? Is it how many stories got published about the campaign? These guys not only personally interacted with people throughout the state but online through their blog. If I can find out any statistics I’ll pass them along.
I think it was a great idea and pretty well executed. I would have like to have seen more consistent posting on their blog though. There were some big gaps of inactivity for example. This is due to just conducting a few multi-day trips but for subscribers it meant we could almost forget about it before anything new comes along. They took a lot of pictures and should have featured them on the blog. I liked their humorous writing style including the typos which really didn’t bother me considering who was writing (although no typos is always better).
On the GoE website there’s a link to “GoE Guys In The News” that only shows their press release. I know they had news coverage and links to it would be appropriate and expected here.
It is a good looking promotion overall though. I’ll see what else I can find out and report.
More and more agencies are building an interactive team and with good reason. Here at ZimmComm that’s me so far. However, we do have people like Eric we can go to when needed.
Swanson Russell Associates (SRA), Nebraska’s largest marketing communications firm, has hired Eric Gautschi as interactive supervisor for its Lincoln and Omaha offices.
Gautschi will lead SRA’s interactive team in helping clients design and develop Web sites, develop e-mail marketing campaigns and conduct online surveys and research.
For more information contact Renee Sprengeler.
The International Federation of Agricultural Journalists Congress 2005 is getting closer. In this week’s ZimmCast I interview one of the organizers. He’s Markus Rediger, Agricultural Information Center, from Switzerland. I met Markus at the Ag Media Summit and he clued me in on what we have to look forward to and why he thinks any ag journalist should consider attending.
You can listen to the ZimmCast here 
(2.5MB) The ZimmCast is our weekly podcast which you can subscribe to using the link in our sidebar.
While I was visiting the Agricultural Information Center website I found links to a few of the television commercials they had produced targeting consumers and showing them how food gets to their town from the farm. As the site says “As a result of the whole campaign we want consumers to feel that – Swiss Farmers welcome them.” You can see the spots here.
AgWired reports on IFAJ Congress 2005 are sponsored by Pioneer Hi-Bred.
Subscribing and listening to podcasts is getting even easier. MobilCast, a Melodeo product, just makes sense to me. As long as I can install this on my Treo 650 and save the audio to the SD card I’m good. I will be looking into it more.
Also, if you’re a Treo owner, you can now get RSS feeds on your phone.
It’s the end of the day, the last session. The main thing I got out of the “metrics” session had to do with registering you blog on search engines, using “keywords” in posts and keeping an eye on how you’re doing. One place to look at how your website (or blog) is doing is Marketleap. It has some neat online tools for seeing how your site is doing, especially in comparison to other sites and for keywords!
This last session on strategy and policy for corporate blogging is certainly relevant for companies that are considering creating a blog or blogs. I’m going to point you to the Blog Business Summit website for more information.
This has definitely been a great opportunity to learn more about the blogosphere and most importantly talk with others who are using blogs as a business tool. Glad I came and will be doing the long travel home thing tomorrow.
I didn’t realize that we weren’t really supposed to take pictures of the presenters and post them without asking permission (whoops). I only know this because they have a big screen slide that was up with this instruction between sessions. So I gave myself permission to post my own picture.
I’m in one of the last sessions of the day that I hope to get some concrete information on. It’s “Measuring Success: Setting Goals and Establishing Metrics.” There’s that word “metrics” again. Gotta have metrics. We’ll see what Sally Falkow has to say. I ate lunch at her topic table on RSS. One of the key things I had wondered about RSS was “Can I measure how many subscribers I have to my site feed (RSS)?” Basically, the answer is no but there are some ways to get an idea of what level of subscribership you have to an RSS feed. I can tell you that we do have subscribers to AgWired both because of the feedback I get from them and because I can see the activity on the website. However, without going into a long explanation, I really can’t tell you how many actual subscribers AgWired has. I’m going to continue to research this.
The folks at Farm Journal Media announced a whole new site design for AgWeb.com this week. I don’t have a “before” shot to compare it to but you can visit and see for yourself. Here’s what they say about why they changed it:
AgWeb.com Site Manager Derek Benthem points to a new user-friendly design to make navigation and utility easier. “AgWeb has greatly expanded its editorial content this past year and now features more than 40 agricultural editors and contributors,” says Benthem. “The new design makes much of this content accessible with only one click offering our users faster and easier access to information and editorial commentaries.”
“Adoption of the Net among America’s top farmers now exceeds 70% – and we’re seeing strong growth in broadband. This medium is changing right before our eyes!” says Jerry Shafer, AgWeb Vice President of Sales. “Producers want information at their fingertips. To stay ahead of these needs, we have to constantly adapt.”
For more information contact Jerry Shafer.
