Heather Gorringe - Around the World in 80 Megabytes.

Social Media in Action

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As you may have picked up my scholarship is a tad different to the norm in terms of Nuffield Scholarship Topics, and so I have been making a conscious effort to gain my contacts and places to see and stay at through social media.

So far just about all my connections and visits have been based around a web and social media connection - but what becomes interesting is the knock on effect of those connections in terms of information spread. So far I have been in over 20 of other people's blog posts, have been interviewed for 4 other podcasts, and appeared in 2 live streaming videos and 4 web videos....

And the moral of the story - news spreads using Social Media. I will link to all these podcasts and videos shortly.

In the meantime loyal podcast listener sent me these corking red neck rules for weddings. As Jodie from Wiggly Wigglers is getting ready for her wedding next week I thought I would share the rules for all you farmers out there.

Top wedding tips for farmers - from farmers.

1.        Livestock, usually, is a poor choice for a wedding gift.
2.        Kissing the bride for more than 5 seconds may get you shot.
3.        For the groom, at least, rent a tux. A leisure suit with a cummerbund and a clean bowling shirt can create too sporty an appearance.

You'll be pleased to read I have bought Farmer Phil a new outfit from Crew today in Boston to smarten him up a bit.

Packing a Big Punch for a Small Farm.

"If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been to bed with a mosquito." Betty Reese

City Farmer in Vancouver is not large by any means. In terms of land there are just a few acres, and in terms of people Michael, Marie and Sharon run the non profit enterprise.

However what farm do you know that not only teaches local authorities about composting and small scale farming and gardening, but has literally hundreds of school visits and talks?

Thats great granted,  but what other farm do you know that has a webcam that updates with a new photo online every hour? That has produced podcasts, and videoblogs for many years and actually connects on a worldwide scale. Michael told me that he has had contacts and people watching his videos worldwide. What a great case study - local action, global inspiration.

Watch what happened when I got there on my scholarship! The band are called the Regal Trio!

This blog is climbing higher according to Technorati

Thank you dear reader. As my Nuffield Scholarship study is Web 2.0 and Social Media I thought it would be worth sharing my latest blog stats for you.
So far:

Lifetime page views:

722

Average per day:

80.22

In the past 7 days:

487

and here's the technorati ranking:

Heather Gorringe - Around the World in 80 Megabytes.

       

http://www.heathergorringe.com

       

                      

       

Authority: 3

       

Rank: 2,124,856            

                                         
Not a bad improvement me thinks in terms of ranking - we have managed to climb several million within the last few days.

Checked Google search and currently this blog is not within the first three pages when you type in "Nuffield Scholarship" but this is most definitely one of the aims.

 

How to get people to stay LONGER with you on the Web

I was interested to read Steve Rubels' post about the fact that as there is more and more content on the web the measurement should not be on how many page views we have, but on other measurements such as the length of time people spend on your blog or your website.

I think that engagement is the most important thing and also that you are managing to stand out from the crowd - building your brand.

Despite the fact that there is more and more content available - whether its 30 new TV channels - 6 new extra supplements in your Sunday newspaper - 40 new podcasts or 4 million new blogs, to me and many others "there's nothing on the TV..." I can now FIND (thanks to google) the content that I want by just subscribing to the subject matter I am interested in. I can still keep a track of the news so to me I can be more efficient using Social Media than not, and as a farmer it seems to me there's plenty of space online for a few more of us!

Woohooo I get my audio file on FIR!

Thanks Shel and Neville for playing my "Help I'm a 43 year old woman aiming to shake up the World with Web 2.0 and Social Media..." on the FIR podcast. I am grateful for your help. These wizards have a great show which I think is supposed to be for sort of PR professionals, but if you are in small business and want to know more about the web - tune in.

Anyway, so far my research has found ....

There's not many in the agricultural industry involved in web 2.0....

if you know different

let me know me dears! THANKS   

Three really cool Social Media Tools for my non geek buddies...

• 

• Blogging is very cool. Lee from Google is still trying to fix a visit for me to Google and I am grateful for his help, but the Blog inspired a couple of "Twitterers" Tweeting!!!!!

• Twitter. For all of you who think it may be likely that I've flown away with the budgies its true. Twitter is a sort of really short blog - an SMS but the key about it is ONCE again you can use an agregator. So you can collect a load of people to follow and read lots of different view points really quickly. If you have a Mac you can do this in your browser like Safari... or for you poor old PC folk you can use GoogleReader.Anyway, Anna Farmery from The Engaging Brand wrote:   Anyone work at Google or know someone to help? as did Linda from the PodcastUser Magazine Now between them there network of followers is 150 plus, so I have 150 chances for a bit of help - isn't that amazing? If you would like someone to follow - try me - it will be the clueless leading but no matter.

• Michael from home sent me this:
  
  Here's something really cool. It's for the iPhone but works with Safari on the Mac too.
  Visit the Veveo search engine for on-line videos and start typing  c a n - o - w o r m s  slowly into the search bar. Type very, very slowly and watch the results come into focus.
  When I tried it our videos were top of the tree before I'd even typed the m and s at the end of worms.
  (And before you ask, no, you can't have it on the wiggly website; it's apparently cost $28 million dollars to get this far :-)

WOW! and lastly dont forget Cows are Cool - Really Cool. Today I bought a wonderful book of photos of COWS. This cow picture is taken by Mark Eccleston
Thanks Mark. (If you want to see more of Mark's photos check out www.wigglywigglers.co.uk)