“Her presentation empowers agriculture to tell its story with credibility, respect, and impact. Michele helped me navigate tough conversations with compassion for the urbanites who have little connection to where their food comes from.”
- Jeannette Andrashewski, Canadian Canola Farmer
What drives Michele to write? ▶ Bridging the gap from farm to food with story and science.
"You are a gift to agriculture – you do an amazing job connecting non-ag folks to agriculture in a relatable and logical way that's welcoming and opens the door to a deeper understanding.”
- Lana Frantzen, PhD, RDN, DairyMAX
A fifth generation farmer in Nebraska who grows corn, popcorn, soybeans and alfalfa has found his use of social media growing. Learn about Ryan Weeks experience in starting with Facebook, then moving to Twitter, YouTube, Linkedin and now blogging. This modern day farmer challenges others in agriculture to find their voice to counter misinformation.
Nine states. More than 50 hours of training...
Leadership in agricultural advocacy through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Linkedin and other tools is becoming increasingly critical! Facebook is now about the same size of the U.S population with 300 million users. Hopefully that spells opportunity to you – watch professional agricultural speaker give you some quick video cliffnotes on how agriculture can benefit.
An estimated 1.9 million tweets are sent daily. There are more than 225 million people on Facebook and it reached 150 million users nearly three times faster than cell phones. Do the math about how many opportunities you have to connect agriculture if 98.5% of those people aren’t actively engaged in farming. Call social media a fad if you wish, but know that agriculture is missing an opportunity to be proactive if you don’t take the time to harvest the benefits of at least one of the tools. What’s holding you back?
Last night was one of those moments to learn from others; we had our first #agchat on Twitter. It was energizing, thought-provoking, eye-opening and tough to keep up with speed of conversation. Agchat is similar to #journchat on Twitter, which brings together writers and public relations people. Believe it or not, there’s even #GNO as a chat. As I participated in these chats and saw hundreds of people coming together to discuss a common topic, a chat session for agriculture seemed logical – so #agchat started on Tuesday nights, 8-10 p.m. EDT.
Why should you take the time to engage in social...
Technology that increases productivity excites me, but I wasn’t one of the early adopters of social media. Frankly, it seemed like a waste of time. However, when I saw a “movement” created online before the 2008 U.S. elections and learned that half of FaceBook users are older than college age, I decided social media was worth a second look. Same goes with webinars; I’ve never been a huge fan, but have found the technology to be a great training tool to reach people across the world without requiring any of us the pain and cost of travel. And, since piloting them in December, I’ve found webinars make even more sense when you need the users to be looking at a computer screen, such as training about social media.
Online communities-whether you call them social...