What is all this fuss about social media? Who has time to be checking the their phones, tablets and computers all day long, just to keep up with the latest chatter? Don’t people have anything better to do with their time? Say, seeding?
I too am anxious to get the crop in the ground and time that is spare is short. However, I do really enjoy hearing and seeing how other people are doing on their farms and social media is a great way to do that.
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The more than 20,000 folks that are following The Western Producer on Twitter (@westernproducer) and Facebook shows others are enjoying the medium too.
The seeding hashtag #Plant15 is currently my favourite Twitter address. It’s also the name of our Western Producer spring photo contest (a shameless plug for the online contest you can view online at www.producer.com/plant15). We’ve had spring and fall reader photo contests online for many years and they would attract, at most, 25,000 views.
Last year, our #harvest14 contest drew more than 230,000 views. This was in no small part related to the growth of social media.
The number of entries we receive for our contests has grown dramatically too. That’s a result of everyone now carrying a camera all of the time.
Spot a nice sunset from the cab of the sprayer or the top of the aircart? Shoot it with your iPhone and you don’t have to go back to the house and download the images from the camera to share them. No need to look up email addresses either. Just post them on your, or someone else’s, Facebook wall or with a Twitter hashtag like #westcdnag. Within seconds, your farm experience is being enjoyed by thousands of other folks with interests in our region or industry.
Being able to take a live, instant peek into other farmers’ lives from around the prairies and the rest of the world — when I’m not busy spraying or seeding, of course — fascinates me. It’s best when I’m waiting for fertilizer or cleaning grain. I can get caught up with what my neighbours are doing — even the new ones that are hundreds or even thousands of miles away.
Other folks’ stories and experiences are a big part of what we do at The Western Producer, and based on your responses to them, online and in print, they are big part of farming too.
mike.raine@producer.com
