Blogging 101: An Introduction to Successful Ag Blogging
Michele Payn-Knoper, Cause Matters Corp.
Michele Payn-Knoper is a certified speaking professional and founder of Cause Matters Corp., whose mission it is to help give farmers a voice. Nominated as one of Mashable’s Top 5 Twitter Users of the Year, Michele created #Agchat, a weekly streaming conversation that brings ag professionals together on Twitter.
Like to write? Have strong opinions? Interested in regular interactions beyond the short updates found on Facebook and Twitter? Blogging may be just for you. Here’s what I’ve learned about writing a blog.
Frame your topics around a central subject that’s targeting a specific target audience. Posts and resources should always be focused on that target. See the “USB Thinking Ahead” blog for an example of broad-reaching topics that appeal to same target at
http://www.usbthinkingahead.com/Personal tidbits and insight is important; people like to read about other people! Be sure to include at least a paragraph about yourself and why you blog. Andy Kleinschmidt, an agronomist in Ohio, has a great following at
http://agvanwert.wordpress.comand puts personality into his writing.
- Serve as a resource rather than just an opinionated person. A Canadian seedsman does a nice job of this at Real Agriculture. Offer links to other sites related to your subject matter; consider what your readers need in order to take action.
- Regular blog posts are important. You need to blog once per week at minimum.
- Comments from readers can be set to be approved prior to posting, but understand that conflict drives traffic – and transparency is important in today’s social media age. A California dairy farmer, Barbara Martin, does a great job with transparency at http://dairygoddess.wordpress.comwith regular video posting (also known as vlogging).
If you decide to set up a blog, it’s relatively straightforward once you choose your tool. In my opinion,
WordPress is best business blogging tool out there; it is so robust that websites are being built on it (such as my own). It has more tools to make it customized, works well with Google on searchabilty and offers a back-up. Blogger is most used blogging platform and has “widget” for fun offers.
Blogs have moved from a hobbyist phenomenon to a shaper of news and opinion according to Newsweek magazine, agriculture could use more blogs to chronicle farm and ranch life – I’d encourage you to explore more about how this might be a fit for you. Even if you decide it’s not, reading other blogs can provide new information that can help you on your farm. More on that in the next column.
Blogging 101: An Introduction to Successful Ag Blogging
Michele Payn-Knoper, Cause Matters Corp.
January 11, 2011
Michele Payn-Knoper is a certified speaking professional and founder of Cause Matters Corp., whose mission it is to help give farmers a voice. Nominated as one of Mashable’s Top 5 Twitter Users of the Year, Michele created #Agchat, a weekly streaming conversation that brings ag professionals together on Twitter.
Like to write? Have strong opinions? Interested in regular interactions beyond the short updates found on Facebook and Twitter? Blogging may be just for you. Here’s what I’ve learned about writing a blog.