Perhaps you’re still wondering if your company or organization should be getting involved in new media. Have you started participating yourself (Facebook, LinkedIn, Blog, YouTube) to become personally familiar with it? It’s kind of hard to evaluate a medium you’re not familiar with.
I just saw some interesting new data on how Inc. 500 companies are making use of social media. Here’s a chart comparing their use in 2007 (green) with 2008 (blue). You can click on the image to see a bigger version of it. Research Highlights:
* Four out of five companies in the Inc 500 rate social media technology as important or very important;
* 21% of the companies are podcasting and 39% blogging;
* The number of companies blogging and podcasting has doubled in the last year;
* The Inc. 500 are adopting new media technologies much quicker than Fortune 500 companies.
The research suggests that companies that are using social media & new media technologies are growing faster than other companies.
In the last week I think I’ve helped bring almost a hundred agricultural marketing and communications people closer to an understanding of new social media mechanisms. If you weren’t one of them then you’ve got a chance next week. On August 6, I’ll be participating in a tele-seminar that’s being conducted by Mark Jewell, Aggie-Lance. I do like being called one of . . . “ag industry’s brightest social media minds.” Register here.
Tune your phone lines to a special event this August 6th, as some of the ag industry’s brightest social media minds converge in one jam packed tele-seminar. Hosted by, Aggie-Lance.com, founder Mark Jewel this seminar will feature Chuck Zimmerman from Agwired.com and Zimmcomm.biz, John Blue from Truffle Media, and Liza Markle from the National FFA Organization. The topic at hand: What is social media, and WHY do we need to be using it in the agriculture industry today? Expect to come away with a couple tangible ideas that you can apply straight away!(more…)
While we’re still celebrating iPhone 3G release day I thought I’d point out something that may make it a more desirable choice for bloggers. If you’re a WordPress user like me then there will be an application which allows you to post directly from your iPhone.
The WordPress for iPhone App is nearly ready to go. It supports WordPress.com blogs as well as self-hosted WordPress.org blogs running version 2.5.1 or newer.
Timing wise, with the launch of Apple’s iTunes App store this morning, we expect to see this showing up very soon.
While we wait, here is a brief video showing the App in action. (It’s high quality, so may take a moment to kick off.)
High speed internet access is growing in America and according to a new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project the overall growth was 17 percent in the last year. It was 12 percent the year before. It also looks like rural America is getting connected. Here’s some interesting tidbits:
Some 55% of all adult Americans now have a high-speed internet connection at home, according to a May 2008 survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The percentage of Americans with broadband at home has grown from 47% in early 2007 and 42% in early 2005. Among individuals who use the internet at home, 79% have a high-speed connection while 15% use dialup.
Older Americans: Those age 50 and over experienced a 26% growth rate in home broadband adoption from 2007 to 2008. Half of Americans between the ages of 50 and 64 have broadband at home. Some 19% of those 65 and older had home broadband access as of April 2008.
Rural Americans: 38% of those living in rural American now have broadband at home, compared with 31% who said this in 2007, or a growth rate of 23% from 2007 to 2008.
This looks like a really good conference to go to if you want to learn the latest in what’s happening with new media. It’s the Blogworld & New Media Expo. The dates are September 20-21 in Las Vegas. I’m thinking about going.
They’ve got these interesting tidbits about blogging on the Expo homepage. You’ll find links in them to where they got the information. Important Blogging Statistics
* Over 12 million American adults currently maintain a blog.
* More than 147 million Americans use the Internet.
* Over 57 million Americns read blogs.
* 1.7 million American adults list making money as one of the reasons they blog.
* 89% of companies surveyed say they think blogs will be more important in the next five years.
* 9% of internet users say they have created blogs.
* 6% of the entire US adult population has created a blog .
* Technorati is currently tracking over 70 million blogs .
* over 120 thousand blogs are created every day .
* There are over 1.4 million new blog posts every day .
* 22 of the 100 most popular websites in the world are blogs .
* 120,000 new blogs are created every day .
* 37% of blog readers began reading blogs in 2005 or 2006 .
* 51% of blog readers shop online .
* Blog readers average 23 hours online each week .
It’s been a while since I’ve been able to post here but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been posting. Just last week between Cindy, Laura and myself we posted web content from 4 different meetings onto more than 5 websites. That’s a lot when you consider all the photos, videos and audio interviews we did as part of it. However, the tools to do what we do continue to develop. Let’s take the mobile phone for example.
I’m not sure if mobile computicating is a term but the phones of today are computers that let us communicate on the go and today the iPhone took a step forward. I followed along with Tom Kravitz on One More Thing as he wrote about the stage show at the Apple WWDC. I really like the idea of updating your post during a presentation like this.
For you ag meeting planners out there, “How about some wireless internet access during the presentations and in the meeting rooms?” I know many of you are finally getting a media room with internet access but we’re way beyond that. Of course, we can update our websites from our phones and with more AT&T 3G, it’s getting easier.
If none of this makes sense to you then we need to talk about how you’re communicating in a web 2.0 world.
The blogosphere continues to grow and amaze people in marketing. I remember when I first talked about it and some of my friends thought I was crazy to think that anyone would really read blogs, much less consider them as “tools” of communications. Times have changed.
My favorite place to keep up with what’s going on in my new media world is eMarketer. They’ve got a new report out, “The Blogosphere: A Mass Movement From Grass Roots,” which has some interesting information. Here’s a couple of excerpts:
More importantly, by 2012, more than 145 million people—67% of the US Internet population—will be reading blogs at least once a month. That is up from a readership of 94 million in 2007, or 50% of Internet users.
“A big factor driving the increases is the niche orientation of the blogosphere,” says Mr. Verna.
Like podcasts, blogs tend to appeal to specific audiences. Accordingly, much of the demographic targeting that marketers work so hard to achieve in the mainstream media is already done for them.
“Furthermore,” adds Mr. Verna, “the rates at which blog readers notice and click on ads suggest that they are a well-primed audience.”
Where are you placing your advertising these days? Same old, Same old or . . . . . .
Just in time for a presentation I’m giving at the Turf & Ornamental Communicators Association meeting tomorrow (Blogging and podcasting for profit. Sponsored by Ewing Irrigation and PBI Gordon) is this report from Universal McCann titled, “Power to the People, Social Media Tracker Wave 3.” (pdf-24MB) They’ve done this study globally 3 times now so it’s got some interesting comparative data in it. Basically folks, new media is where it’s at in today’s online world no matter what country you’re in or what your occupation or age demographic. So for those of you who still wonder why you should know more about this, your questions will be answered. If you still wonder then let’s just say you have gotten off the Cluetrain. Here’s some interesting points and I urge you to download the report with the link above to read the whole thing.
Social media is a global phenomenon happening in all markets regardless of wider economic, social and cultural development.
All social media platforms have grown significantly over the three Waves: Video Clips are the quickest growing platform, up from 31% penetration in Wave 1 to 83% in Wave 3.
57% have joined a Social Network, making it the number one platform for creating and sharing content: 55% of users have uploaded photos, 22% of users have uploaded videos.
Blogs are a mainstream media world-wide and a collective rival to traditional media – 73% have read a blog, 45% have started a blog.
Social media has strong impacts over brand’s reputation – 34% post opinions about products and brands on their blog – 36% think more positively about companies that have blogs.
Here’s the percentage of respondents who agreed with these statements:
56% Blogging is a good way to express yourself
36% I think more positively about companies that have blogs
33% I have a favorite blog that I read regularly
32% I trust bloggers opinions on products and services
31% Blogging is an important way to socialize with friends
There’s so much information in this report that I can’t even begin to point it all out. It’s all good. Just take some time, take a deep breath and say, “I will read it and I will try to “get it.”
Here’s my buddies Steve Mays and George Kopp getting ready for a live Ustream.tv webcast from the Coffee Zone in Jefferson City, MO. I stopped by before they started then went home and watched it.
I’ve been testing the cameras I’ve got to see if I can get a better picture for my streams. Below you’ll find a test I did with my Dell Latitude and a Logitech RightSight webcam a few minutes ago. I think that a small camera is best so I’m going to get a webcam that works with my Mac and take that on the road to experiment with.
I don’t know what you think about live web streaming but I think there’s a lot of very cool applications for in in agricultural communications and I’m going to be trying it in the coming weeks.
It’s just a continuing development of the community we’ve developed and our way to be in the online conversation. If you’d like to get a perspective on what that means then you should check out this post on “From the X Degree.” via Teaching Online Journalism
You might want to say that we’re just “early adopters” and that somehow this means that since not everyone in America is doing this or consuming this then perhaps it’s not something your company or news organization should be doing. Tempting if you’re afraid of the future I guess. However, it is the future of journalism and how people will and are consuming news.
I’ve always been proud of the fact that I keep my email in-box at no more than 100 but that’s getting hard to do. Right now it’s over 400. My feed reader has over 900 unread. Yeow.
Although I’m an evangelist for using new media and various social mechanisms to stay connected I know people are having some trouble coping. Here’s a video interview with Steve Rubel on just this topic.
Last week I appeared on the Brian Lehrer show talking about my role with Edelman Digital and how I track trends. We cover marketing pollution and tips on how to manage information overload with desktop search, RSS, simplified GTD and the Gmail Personal Nerve Center.
Here’s the latest from the Association for Downloadable Media on their draft of standards for advertising and download measurements:
Guidelines and Standards Comment Period
On April 16th, ADM released two documents for public review. We encourage public comments in order to refine and enhance the documentation. The public comment period will end on May 16, 2008.
Advertisement Unit Standards
Draft posted for discussion April 16, 2008. PDF Download
The purpose of the Advertisement Unit Standards is to provide baseline recommendations for advertisement units in order to better facilitate advertising transactions relating to downloadable media.
Download Measurement Guidelines
Draft posted for discussion April 16, 2008. PDF Download
The purpose of the Download Measurement Guidelines are to establish baseline recommendations for how individual publishers, companies and organizations can measure how downloads are delivered to consumer audiences.
Please participate in the refinement of these documents.
Please comment the following ways:
1. Enter your public statements in the comments section in the document comments pages:
We just launched a new service today tied in to our AgWired site called AgWired Mobile.
Free AgWired news headlines to your mobile phone. Sound like a deal? You bet it is and it’s available immediately.
Now you can have “What’s New In The World Of Agribusiness” delivered right to your mobile phone. It’s headline news via text messaging that will keep you agricultural marketing professionals on top of your game. Sign up now:
Just text “agwired” to 46786
That’s it. You’ll get confirmation immediately and then you’ll get AgWired headline news updates automatically. News will normally be sent between 8am-5pm, Mon-Fri.
We’d love to have your feedback and ideas as we develop this new service.
The new media pioneers just keep on opening up new channels of communication. Stay up to date on your phone or on your computer with AgWired!
If you ever want to unsubscribe (why would you?) then just text “agwired stop” to the same number.
You could say “Wow” when you talk about 40 percent growth. So go ahead because that’s what a recent study by Arbitron-Edison Media Research study titled, “The Infinite Dial 2008: Radio’s Digital Platforms” found. Here’s some nuggets from the study:
iPod/Portable MP3 player ownership continues dramatic growth. Nearly four in ten
(37 percent) own an iPod or other brand of portable MP3 player; up from 30 percent in
2007 and more than two and a half times the number in 2005 (14 percent). Nearly three-
quarters (73 percent) of those age 12-17 own a digital audio player.
Audio podcasting usage continues to increase along side the proliferation of
iPod/MP3 player ownership. Eighteen percent have ever listened to an audio podcast;
up from 13 percent in 2007. Nine percent have listened to an audio podcast in the past
month (an estimated 23 million).
The study also found out how important mobile phones are to people today:
More than one in five (21 percent) consumers said radio has a big impact on their lives; ranking second only to mobile phones (33 percent) as the audio platform/device that has the biggest impact on people’s lives.
Why do we care about mobile phones? Can you say iPhone? And what about texting to that “audio” device eh?
I am hoping to attend the New Media Expo again this year and have been keeping up with Tim Bourquin, founder, via his emails and now I’m subscribed to his blog, Webernetting.
His most recent post struck a nerve and I posted a comment on it. I thought I’d point you to it and won’t post it here. One sentence in his post struck a real nerve with me and is probably what most prompted me to write a comment.
Worse yet, some seem to think that if you do find a way to make your living successfully, you’ve “sold out” and are no longer true to your audience.
That couldn’t be less true as Tim knows. I am very happy and thankful for the success we’ve had. It has allowed ZimmComm to continue to develop and help a growing number of companies who want to make use of new media tools to communicate with their customers.
If you’re managing any kind of an RSS feed then I hope you know about Feed Validator.
I’ve been using this little web application since I started blogging and podcasting and it has been the biggest help of almost anything I use. All you have to to is enter the url for the feed you want to check and click on the word “Validate.” That’s it.
Either your feed is valid or it’s not. If not then it will tell you exactly where you have a problem and suggest how to fix it. I love simple things that just plain work.
Perhaps you’re still wondering if your company or organization should be getting involved in new media. Have you started participating yourself (Facebook, LinkedIn, Blog, YouTube) to become personally familiar with it? It’s kind of hard to evaluate a medium you’re not familiar with.
The latest edition of ZimmNews has now been pumped out into the world wide web.
In the last week I think I’ve helped bring almost a hundred agricultural marketing and communications people closer to an understanding of new social media mechanisms. If you weren’t one of them then you’ve got a chance next week. On August 6, I’ll be participating in a tele-seminar that’s being conducted by Mark Jewell, 
While we’re still celebrating 
High speed internet access is growing in America and according to a new study by the 
This looks like a really good conference to go to if you want to learn the latest in what’s happening with new media. It’s the 
It’s been a while since I’ve been able to post here but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been posting. Just last week between Cindy, Laura and myself we posted web content from 4 different meetings onto more than 5 websites. That’s a lot when you consider all the photos, videos and audio interviews we did as part of it. However, the tools to do what we do continue to develop. Let’s take the mobile phone for example.
The blogosphere continues to grow and amaze people in marketing. I remember when I first talked about it and some of my friends thought I was crazy to think that anyone would really read blogs, much less consider them as “tools” of communications. Times have changed.
Just in time for a presentation I’m giving at the Turf & Ornamental Communicators Association meeting tomorrow (Blogging and podcasting for profit. Sponsored by Ewing Irrigation and PBI Gordon) is this report from 
Here’s my buddies Steve Mays and George Kopp getting ready for a live Ustream.tv webcast from the Coffee Zone in Jefferson City, MO. I stopped by before they started then went home and watched it.
Here’s the latest from the Association for Downloadable Media on their draft of standards for advertising and download measurements:
We just launched a new service today tied in to our AgWired site called AgWired Mobile.
You could say “Wow” when you talk about 40 percent growth. So go ahead because that’s what a recent study by 
If you’re managing any kind of an RSS feed then I hope you know about