NZIPIM & social media

Let me say that in New Zealand,

as with most countries,

we have particular areas that are much derided

as of the banjo playing, six toed, no teeth, cousin marrying ilk.

Southland is generally that place for us.

I flew from Hamilton in the north

(also much derided as a bland no hoper town)

to Invercargill about as far south as you can go
on Monday to speak at the

NZIPIM South Island conference.

I also spoke to their North Island conference

a week or so ago about the following.

Email Etiquette - yes there is such a thing

and

Social Media - my favourite thing at the moment.

Email is actually a tricky thing

because how we use email is changing.

Originally, like 18 years ago, email was considered to be like letters.

We would write long involved letters which heaps of information.

Now we pass information along very quickly and

emails have been an easy way to get things off your desk and

on to anothers.

Email use is decreasing as the younger generations move to

even more instant modes of information sharing like twitter.
More instant and shorter.

My next presentation was on social media.

Which is our theme for the week

(see previous post).

Ok kiwi farmers and social media haven't really gelled

 namely because rural broadband has been pretty sucky.

But that is changing,

not just because the Rural Broadband Initiative

is bringing broadband to most rural schools

(please note: most is not all)

and thus some

(please note: some is not remotely all)

rural homes will enjoy better Internet access,
but also due to better cell phone coverage.

In my humble opinion,
 social media is best used on a smart phone,

preferably an iPhone in my biased and totally converted opinion.

So yesterday I took the farm consultants over using twitter

and how one might use it to connect over what
one may choose to connect with others about.

So here's the thing that most newbies do not understand about twitter

it is all about creating

communication, connection and communities.

Seriously it is.

Communication, connection and communities.

Sums it up.

Here's the other thing....

like most things, twitter is what you make it.

You can be totally immersed and involved
gaining solid, trustworthy, surprising connections

or participate as much as you want to or not,

or lurk and just watch the conversations.

With all of the millions of tweets each day you only ever see

a fraction of what happens.

So what I have done is create rules for myself to manage my time and involvement.
My rules are simply too many dogs, cats or lunch photos or tweets
I do not follow you.
If you blitz twitter with inane comments,
I do not follow you.
If you tweet once a day but you tweet a heap all at once,
I do not follow you.

As far as time is concerned,
either twitter is something you make time for or you don't.
When you get practiced and savvy at using it
it takes no time at all.
As far trusting information on twitter,
use the same rules as you do when you meet people in person,
do they seem trust worthy? 
Then chances they are.
You learn which are reliable sources of info which are not.
Just like life.

Tomorrow's forum all about farmers and social media.
It is about putting faces to places and jobs.
Help the world to realise that the food chain starts somewhere
and there's some serious pressure on our farmers.

My goal to use twitter to create agvocates
and who knows what can happen????

Anyway back to Invercargill.
As we were all seated on the plane to leave,
the hostee removed a half drunk bottle of beer
from a particularly hairy passenger
who had arrived with crutches but was walking fine.
Interesting people in Southland.
I think the crutches were insurance for any speed wobbles later on.

Other exciting thing was that RadioNZ Rural News picked up
on our wee Social Media for Farmers Forum
and I was interviewed for tomorrow's news.
I was quite chuffed about that.
See you at #AgChatNZ

Farm on.