Farmers embrace social media

Use newest tools to communicate message to public, activist says

By TIM HEARDEN

Capital Press

When it comes to farmers' quest to reach the public, information is different from communication.

Agriculture "is infamous for getting out information," said Jeff Fowle, an activist and cattle rancher in Etna, Calif.

But communication means to actually get through, Fowle said. And these days, there's no more powerful way to do that than through social media -- e-mail, Web sites, instant messaging, blogs, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter, he said.

With these tools, companies are employing a laser-like focus on specific audiences, Fowle said.

Using interactive media, a producer can potentially reach millions from the back of a horse. While it took radio 38 years to gain 50 million users, Facebook and the iPhone achieved that many users in nine months, he said.

"Social media is amazing," Fowle told attendees of a recent logging conference in Redding, Calif. "If Facebook were a country, it would be the world's fourth largest."

The picture is changing so fast that now even e-mail is considered passé, Fowle said. Now people are using cell phones for texting and tweeting, he said.

"You no longer search for news. The news finds you," he said. And most people these days trust their peers the most for news, he said.

Fowle asserted that the Humane Society of the United States exploited that trust to pass California's Proposition 2, the 2008 initiative imposing new space requirements for confined chickens and certain other farm animals.

Proponents of the measure used chicken, dairy and hog farmers in TV commercials to promote the initiative, while opponents used a veterinarian and a business person to explain their side, Fowle said.

An American Farm Bureau Federation survey found that many who voted in favor were persuaded by the producers depicted in the ads, he said.

"We didn't use our own people to deliver our message," Fowle said. "You in timber and we in ranching can no longer rely on people with scientific degrees to share our message. ... The people trust us."

Producers showed they can flex some social-media muscle recently when they joined hunters and other groups in using Twitter and Facebook to convince the Australia-based Yellow Tail wine company not to contribute funds to Humane Society of the United States, Fowle said.

"You're message is only effective if you're reaching people," said Fowle, whose tweets are read by up to 18 million followers a day. "Tweets get read by followers. If they re-tweet, then their followers see it and then their followers see it. It has the potential to be exponential."

Fowle advises people to consider several factors when joining the social-media movement, including the people they're trying to reach, the objectives they're trying to accomplish and the format that best suits them.

Tools can range from a simple blog to a more-interactive Facebook page to a Twitter feed, which is "where the training wheels come off" because a published tweet can't be taken back, he said.

Whatever the tool, it can help a producer mount campaigns or communicate with consumers or buyers, Fowle said. The technology's biggest contribution to agriculture, he said, is that it has fostered a sense of unity among producers of all types.

"This has been the real positive thing about social media," he said. "Cattlemen have not always been good friends with dairy ... (but) we have got to put our differences aside. If we continue to fight amongst ourselves, we're easy pickings."

Social media

Here are some of the latest in interactive online tools with which people are using to communicate:

* Blogs: Short for "web logs," these are written essays of varying length on a Web site, often geared toward a certain subject or specialty.

* Instant messaging: Real-time text communication between two or more people using the Internet, cellular network or other type of connection.

* MySpace and Facebook: These are social networking sites on which each user has a page, and can post essays (similar to blogs), photos, video or information about themselves, their product or their movement.

* LinkedIn: A professionally oriented networking site, it allows users to gain business contacts or connections.

* YouTube: A video-hosting Web site on which users can share video, often shot from their cell phones, cameras or hand-held devices.

* Twitter: A sort of micro-blog on which users post messages of up to 140 characters, and "followers" can spread the messages to other users.