Shout Your Agriculture Story From The Barn Tops!

USDA

We received a note from a reader on a post about Jeff Simmons (President of Elanco, a division of Eli Lilly and Company) sharing how Elanco sales teams felt working in the animal agriculture industry (http://agtoday.us/o9s5gU ). The person worked in the poultry industry in Arkansas and felt "very little positive information is being illustrated by the media" about his industry. He highlighted many of the valued activities the poultry industry does and told of the positive efforts to continuously improve the industry. He ended with a question "Do you have recommendations of how to get this out in the media? Below is the response from John Blue:

To your desire to share the story of poultry and its value to the state of Arkansas, one activity I highly recommend is building up your digital connections. It can be said social media is sometimes too much about things not of interest to you. However, the channel itself is widely available and can be used to share and extend your stories of why poultry production is important to many people.

For example, since the people you are aiming to inform and persuade are most likely not in the agriculture industry, you have to go to them to share stories (See "Do you build the bar or be the bar fly?" http://www.trufflemedia.com/home/content/do-you-build-the-bar-or-bar-hop ). Examples include multiple groups on LinkedIn that focus on food (Search "food" in LinkedIn groups; same with Facebook, Google+, etc) or using the hashtag #food or #foodies in Twitter, or using Google+ .

After having discovered those "bars" of people, build up the connections, add back to their conversations, and build up your pools of interested groups. This does take time but is of value when the time comes to amplify your voice when needed.

I would also develop an in person delivery of several poultry industry stories. Social media is good for reaching a wider audience but delivering in person connects you to people face to face. It also serves as a method to refine the stories and delivery.

Back to the Elanco story Jeff Simmons told. He shares this story (and a few others) to people at every opportunity he gets. And he shares this story not just at ag events but at non-ag events.

Your original question was "how to get this out in the media?" The only way to get the attention of traditional media is to build up that interesting story telling with people outside of media.

An example of this is Steve Tucker, a corn grower from Nebraska. He picked up using Twitter as a way to talk with people during his long days planting and harvesting. He used Twitter (https://twitter.com/Tykerman1 ) to share everything about agriculture, his hobbies, and other interestes besides ag. He used Twitter so much that local media picked up on his use, which lead to CNN (http://articles.cnn.com/2009-07-02/tech/twitter.farmer_1_smartphones-far... ) and the 140 Conference series (http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/15418332 ) expanding his story sharing.