Awhile ago, Dave P. (a manager at JD) told me he was working with the National Agri-Marketing Association board to get a social media panel set up for the annual conference. He asked me for any recommendations on who could come to Atlanta to participate on this panel and give a perspective on social media outside of Ag marketing. I immediately sent out a message to my followers on Twitter asking for interest and received a few responses. Within a few hours, I had a list of potential speakers who were willing to do it and sent this list to Dave. Dave and his contacts reached out to a few and decided upon Kyle Flaherty to come.
Kyle told me through tweets that he was excited to attend this conference and see how marketing is done via the agricultural industry. I was excited for him as I knew he would be teaching so many there the power of social media tools and would be a great voice for social media advocacy. As I saw the tweets from Kyle as the day grew closer to when the social media panel would be held, I could sense the excitement through his notes and he even wrote a blog post about it:
http://www.engageinpr.com/2009/04/14/social-media-marketing-agri/
A few of Kyle’s tweets:
On the day of the panel discussion, I was able to sign in to TweetChat (http://tweetchat.com) and enter in the #NAMA room to watch the various tweets coming from the NAMA conference as people were getting ready to check out the social media panel session. It was very evident that there are a lot of people from the Agricultural industry who are active on Twitter, Facebook, you name it. These people are “leaders” and they are leading those who will follow later once they do, hopefully, see the power of these tools to connect with people. Throughout the panel discussion, many took pictures of the crowd and posted them on Twitter so those of us who could not be there could see what was going on. Also, the panel took many questions and they revolved around how can the Ag industry use social media tools to effectively connect and interact with the general public about the importance of the Ag industry. @mpaynknoper (http://twitter.com/mpaynknoper) started a Twitter live discussion (#agchat) on Tuesday nights and there have been two of those to date. She is a “leader” who saw the awesome opportunity to connect with fellow Ag industry professionals and farmers to share stories and examples of how others are using the various social tools to learn from one another.
If you wish to observe or interact with this growing number of Ag professionals, feel free to come to the #agchat discussion that are live on Twitter each Tuesday night from 8-10 am EDT. Sign in to TweetChat (http://tweetchat.com) using your Twitter username and password and search for #agchat or #foodchat to get into the room to share and learn.
Since I do work for John Deere, I want to make a few points about our customers. John Deere customers are some of the most loyal, die-hard people around. They are very similar to Harley owners who live and breathe the Harley brand and many people who own Harley clothing may not even have a Harley, but they identify with the brand since it is tied to their identity in some powerful way and it speaks about what they stand for or who they are as a person. The same truth is evident for John Deere customers. So many of our customers are very loyal to the brand. They have a passion that bleeds green and yellow and they love sharing and learning from other people about their equipment. All one has to do is look at the vibrant discussions and questions asked in popular forums like TractorByNet.com under John Deere to sense the deep passion and desire to connect with one another and have that feeling of community.
Screenshot from the John Deere > Buying and Pricing TractorByNet.com forum:
I track mentions of “John Deere” through Google or Twitter alerts that are sent to me via e-mail so I can see what people are saying about our brand or if some have questions that I may be able to help by sending them in the direction of someone in the company who can help. I did start interacting with customers on the John Deere TractorByNet.com forum awhile ago and the main reason why I did this is because I saw that so many on there were looking for a voice from the company about some issues they wanted to have addressed. These are loyal customers who just want to be listened to from the company and understood. They don’t want to be looked at as only a person that the company can sell a piece of equipment to and then forgotten. Many praises go to our John Deere dealers who do amazing work in connecting and helping our customers before and after a sale.
One simple question I posted on the TractorByNet.com JD forum said the following: What encourages you to buy a John Deere? All I wanted to do was see the stories and understand what made customers love what the John Deere brand brought to them. As you can see, this question had 79 replies and over 7,000 views alone. They absolutely loved this type of question so they could share story after story of how they grew up on a farm with John Deere equipment or how a fellow farmer told them about the equipment, etc.
Some of the stories:
John Deere customers love the connection and shared experiences that so many have had in using the equipment. As someone once told me, farmers were the “original social networks” when they met in coffee shops and talked about farming, etc. This is so TRUE!
So, it is only natural that as more farmers and Ag professionals start using the social media tools, they are starting to see the tremendous value there is in connecting online with one another and continuing the tradition of the original social network.
-----Original Message-----
From: David P.
Sent: Friday, April 17, 2009 11:22 AM
To: Van Baale Mark
Subject: Thank you
Hey Mark
Thanks for getting Kyle to serve on our panel today. He was great! Super session...standing room only crowd that did not want to leave. The movement grows!
Dave
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