Field Notes

Ohio Stories: Sustaining a Legacy

Hashtags help facilitate and organize conversations and communities online, and have even started worldwide movements, yet they remain one of the most divisive tools on social media. Social media holdouts use them as an excuse to avoid joining because they “just can’t understand how they work.” On the other extreme, some people include a dozen or more hashtags in their Facebook posts, where such a practice just isn’t appropriate or useful. So do you really need to utilize hashtags for successful digital marketing?

Working for one of the largest agricultural businesses in the world might seem like an unlikely career for a fourth generation city girl, but if you’ve ever talked to Janice Person you know it makes perfect sense. At her core, Janice is a storyteller and has built a career telling farmers’ stories and helping them tell their own story. In her current role as online engagement director at Monsanto, Janice uses storytelling to help people in online spaces better understand agriculture.

While he describes his career path as meandering, Andy Vance’s experiences as an agricultural broadcaster, business owner and writer have given him a unique perspective on consumer engagement in agriculture. In his current role as account director at Penton, Andy uses these experiences to work with agricultural companies on advertising and marketing strategies. Beyond this, he is also a popular keynote speaker, trainer and consultant for agricultural organizations.

Today more than ever, consumers want to experience the brands they buy. They want to know a brand’s story just as much as they want to know the features and price of a particular product. Your customers want to know what your brand believes in and what you stand for and they want to believe in you.

While it may seem like a large amount of work, there is a process that is standard throughout the industry that can help you break your production into manageable chunks and also allow you create the best video possible.  The production process is split into pre-production, production, and post-production with each one having an equal level of importance.

Especially in portraiture, those beautiful blurry backgrounds can really make your subject pop, drawing the viewer’s eyes to the most important part of the image, while eliminating distractions. Here’s how you can get better bokeh with any zoom lens.

Typically, people who grew up farming describe their experiences with memories of harvesting grains or caring for newborn animals, but Mark Jewell’s experience in agriculture was a little different. Mark grew up working every day in chest waders and a boat on his family’s leech operation. This early entrepreneurial experience with fishing bait operation combined with exposure to leadership training and speaking through FFA led Mark on a journey of personal growth rooted in agriculture.

Farm blogs are great. The number of farmers sharing their everyday story online, whether it is on a blog or on social media, is extremely important. As critical as these efforts have been in raising agricultural awareness, there’s a good chance the people we need to reach the most are probably not seeking out blogs about farming. In fact, they probably don’t even know they could learn about their food that way.

The Capture Agriculture Photo and Video Contest is officially open, but before you send those entries in, you might be wondering how your contest videos and images are going to be evaluated.

After growing up on a small farm in Ohio, Susan Crowell wanted to leave rural life for the bright lights and big city. Shortly after college, her career led her right back to agriculture. Susan has been the editor of Farm and Dairy since 1989, where she has been telling agriculture’s story by providing news and information to farmers of the region.

Every team and brand we work with have someone on that team in charge of taking pictures, and they may not necessarily be a trained photographer. But that's OK because the most important part of capturing those moments is actually being there to witness them. Here are four tips that will help if you are that on staff photographer, and if you're not, pass this on to somebody that is and maybe it will help them out!