Team Ethanol is at it again. At the end of next week the EPIC is hosting the media at the Indianapolis 500 Speedway to see the ethanol car in action. Yours truly is planning on being there, blogging it to you!
The event is to let the world know that performance can be earth-friendly at 220 mph. Do you think they’ll let me behind the wheel? Keep an eye on AgriMarketing Pros for more on this event next week.
I told you we were having a new design done! The transition is taking place and should be completed within a few days. I’ll tell you more about it when complete and we announce it.
Feel free to let us know what you think during the meantime. It won’t stop the blog machine from cranking out material. That’ll happen when they pry my cold dead fingers off my Logitech keyboard!
Hope you like where we’re going because our course has been steered by the comments, feedback and support of so many of you.
I’m a fan of RSS as a web content distribution mechanism and know there’s a lot of interest in using it for things like company newsletters. Imagine how much money you could save if you didn’t print and mail a newsletter and your reader just subscribed to it from an RSS feed (.xml file) on your website? Since RSS doesn’t go through email your reader doesn’t have to be worried about getting spam or infected by a virus.
Although it’s a little dated a great article explaining RSS can be found at PC World.
I’ve been asked several times lately about how to use RSS for a paid subscription publication (e-newsletter). I’m still looking into this and don’t have an answer. Does anyone reading know? Is there a way to create an RSS feed that is password protected?
Last month we asked farm radio reporters to send us feedback about our Talking News Release service. We told them that if they emailed us with their thoughts they’d be entered into a contest to win a digital audio player (Ipod Shuffle). Today we are happy to announce the winner. She’s Leah Guffey, ag director for WFMB-FM in Springfield, IL.
Leah was very kind with her remarks:
Chuck and Cindy,
Congratulations for making it with a new business venture! I appreciate getting the “Talking News Releases” from you.
Much continued success,
leah
Thank you Leah. Ironically, Leah’s station is running a contest for listeners who can win an Ipod Shuffle. She says the staff was just talking about how they’re ineligible to win one and she got our email letting her know she won one in our drawing!
I’m going to write a series of articles about news releases and how reporters use them in coming days which will feature the feedback we’ve received from people like Leah. Stay tuned!
The meeting’s over. A few people are still hanging around chatting. We had a group of about 30 agrimarketing professionals gather to learn a little bit more about blogging, podcasting and RSS. It takes about 45 minutes to go over the basics, looking at examples and then leave a few minutes for questions and answers.
I see a lot of interest and people were asking good questions about how they could use these strategies for specific projects in their company. For example, one questions centered around setting up a subscription e-newsletter as an RSS feed. I’ve got to do a little research on this and will write about it soon.
Thank you Midlands NAMA for having me. I enjoyed it and hope it was productive. Please send feedback to help me improve my presentation!
Here we are at the Midlands NAMA Meeting in Ashland, NE.
They got here early to do their work – the Midlands NAMA board. Good board attendance! They’re currently talking about their golf tournament.
I’m going to write several posts from Quarry Oaks Golf Club, where I’m going to be giving a presentation to the Midlands NAMA chapter in just a little while. I wanted to play 18 holes first but just didn’t have time and with the wind today I’m almost glad I didn’t. Almost.
This post is just for instructional purposes to use during my presentation.
I was just looking around at all the websites that have “agrimarketing” in their URL and found this one. Nice looking site and interesting business – Seabridge Marketing.
They describe their company as follows:
Our company is a professional agri-products, food, seafood marketing and promotion company run by a group exports specialized in marketing, promotion, PR, consulting, project management, cooking and cuisine development, food processing. We engage in delivering professional marketing, promotion and consulting service for overseas government, trade associations, farmers’ association and individual farmers, processors and suppliers of agri-products, seafood, livestock products, food and beverage, food ingredients.
Hey NAMA how about we start a WAMA? (World Agri-Marketing Association) I’ll bet we’d find plenty of interest in developing members all over the world. Then we could start the “International” Agri-Marketing Conference & Trade Show!
Me, I’m a food enthusiast. I like it in just about any form you can think of. Now, Parke Wilde? He’s a food economist. If there were a profession called “nutrition economics,” he would belong to it. At least that’s what it says on his blog: U. S. Food Policy “U.S. food policy and economics from a public interest perspective.”
I came across it when Googling (one of my hobbies). Parke wrote about our decision not to sell advertising. He makes a very good point about it.
I’ve commented on his post and invited him to be interviewed for an upcoming ZimmCast. I’ve only read a few of his posts so far but he’s obviously put a lot of thought into what he writes. Let me know what you think.
