Improving your Social Media Marketing Skills for Agribusiness Success

November 1-2, 2010

Henry A. Wallace Center at the FDR Presidential Library and Home

4079 Albany Post Road, Hyde Park, NY (Nov. 1)

Cornell Cooperative Extension – Dutchess County, 2715 Route 44, Millbrook, NY (Nov. 2)

Social media may be a phenomenon, but it’s not a fad. It has already changed the way people and organizations communicate. Traditional outbound marketing efforts are being trumped by customers talking to customers. With the increasing popularity of social media, it is important to leverage your inbound strategies -- you getting found by customers, with targeted outbound marketing campaigns -- you finding customers and enticing them to buy.

The 2010 Cornell Strategic Marketing Conference is aimed at helping agricultural producers and agribusinesses develop and improve their social media marketing practices with tools that attendees can take back and apply to their own businesses right away. The goals of this year’s conference and workshop include: (1) highlighting educational and service opportunities with social media marketing for agricultural producers, value-added food processors, and marketers; (2) showcasing success stories from the field; and (3) identifying how to evaluate the performance of your social media marketing skills. If you want to know how to use or better develop your social media marketing strategies for your agribusiness and improve your products, customer service, marketing performance, and communications, then this conference is for you!

*Farmers and agribusiness organizations will be on hand to highlight their success stories and offer their advice on identifying opportunities and obstacles as you advance your firm’s social media presence.

*Kerry Trueman, co-founder of Eating Liberally and regular contributor to the Huffington Post and Civil Eats, will be this year’s opening keynote speaker, bringing her expertise and insights on the interactions of social media, food, and agriculture.

* Our closing keynote speakers are internationally recognized leaders in web analytics and online marketing evaluation. Rand Schulman and Pelin Thorogood, principals of the Schulman+Thorogood Group, will lead an engaging discussion on maximizing your marketing return on investment in the rapidly evolving world of social media and online marketing.

*And if that’s not enough, a second-day hands-on training workshop will address the specific needs of attendees looking to gain a better and more thorough understanding of their websites, social network marketing efforts, and how they can and need to work together. 

The conference will be held on November 1st at the Henry A Wallace Visitor and Education Center at the FDR Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, NY, with the post-conference training workshop on November 2nd at the Cornell Cooperative Extension-Dutchess County office in Millbrook, NY. Both events are organized by the Agricultural Marketing and Management Program Work Team, with support provided by the Cornell Program on Agribusiness and Economic Development, the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University, and Cornell Cooperative Extension of Dutchess County. All members of the agricultural and food system community are encouraged to attend.

For more information and to get the registration information go to http://marketingpwt.aem.cornell.edu and follow the links to the conference web site.