Being "AGtive Online"
If you’ve ever been to YouTube to watch videos, you know how hilarious, creative and even interesting people can be with a simple hand-held camera.
But put that camera in the hands of an FFA group and give it 30 minutes to come up with an agriculture-related video, all of a sudden you’ve not only got a hilarious, creative and interesting YouTube video—you’ve got a social media message with a purpose.
That’s what Social Media Specialist Kathleen Manning and Multimedia Specialist Tyne Morgan presented to an audience of farmers and FFA members at the 2009 Farm Progress Show on Sep. 1.
During their presentation, titled Be AGtive Online, on using social media to tell agriculture’s story, Manning and Morgan revealed the top five FFA student-produced YouTube videos from the 2009 Washington Leadership Conference (WLC). FFA student-leaders filmed a variety of 3-minute videos to educate the public about agriculture in the hopes of winning Monsanto-sponsored prize.
FFA members from all over the country are represented in the videos. Each of the students in the winning videos will receive a Flip, a hand-held video camera, so their local chapter can create videos to communicate agriculture’s story.
The five winning videos illustrated how anyone—and everyone is capable of using online tools to communicate agriculture’s story to the general public.
“Social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter are great ways to really quickly get out there and tell a bunch of people at one time exactly what you’re doing, whether it’s riding on your combine or something else related to agriculture,” Manning said.
Manning and Morgan as well as other Monsanto employees have been blogging about agriculture-related issues—and even Farm Progress—from Monsanto’s Twitter and Facebook accounts as well as on multiple different blogs.
So what can you do to join the conversation and promote Monsanto’s—and agriculture’s—story?
“The first thing to is if you don’t have a Facebook or Twitter or blog, try it out,” Morgan said. “And then talk as much as you can about agriculture. I don’t think there are enough advocates for agriculture out there right now, and so we’re doing all that we can to promote the industry and we hope you’re doing the same. Also, be positive. A lot of the time we hear negative things about agriculture and when we’re talking about ag it’s best to be as positive as we can to promote what ag does for the U.S.”
