Many ag bloggers start a blog to tell the world about how food is grown. They imagine if they just post enough and are forthright enough that their blog will be read by anyone looking for their information.

I am going to be honest with you. It ain’t gonna happen. You might get a few people to stumble across your site and read a few passages. But these numbers aren’t enough to make a dent in what you were hoping for. These internet surfers don’t know you from Adam. They would have to return again and again to even start to trust and get to know you; which again is very unlikely.

Sure there are some popular farm blogs that have a large number of followers. But I am talking to the majority of you who aren’t there yet.

All Is Not Lost

Now that I have you down in the dumps and thinking about abandoning your blog; here is the good news. You can make an impact for the farm industry AND It’s much easier than you think. Are you excited yet?!

It is called…. wait for it….

Facebook. You might have heard of it. A quaint little social media site where you share things with friends and family. And I’m talking your personal account not a business/fan page.

The people on facebook already know, trust, and hopefully like you. So they are more open to what you have to say about food in general. You have your ready-made audience to educate about agriculture. This is where you can make a difference. If your personal facebook crowd is like mine: people from church, extended family in the bigger cities, just friends in general. Just about everyone I interact with on twitter is in ag. But not so on facebook. They are from all backgrounds and levels of knowledge about farming.

Plus 25% of my traffic to this site comes from facebook.

Bringin It Home

You might think that your target audience for your blog is anyone who eats food. But if you think on that more, it would be really difficult to actually accomplish bringing all the general public in. And not really feasible. So let’s focus on a group of consumers you already know and can have some influence with.

Stay active in the other social platforms but keep in mind where you should spend the majority of your time educating and talking about farming. If you are not on facebook yet. Join up and start connecting with all your friends and relatives that already are.

If you are making an impact on another platform, I would love to hear about it.

They demonstrate to search engines that your site is considered valuable to other people in your market or industry. Thus placing your site higher in the search engines rankings. The ultimate goal being on the first page of Google and then the pinnacle of being ranked in the top three for that search term or topic.

How to obtain backlinks?

This is also called link building. There is a whole industry just to buy/sell/ provide links. They are what google is trying to end with their algorithm updates. So how to get quality links.

1. Guest blogging
2. Article Marketing
3. Blog commenting
4. Social Networking
5. Forum Commenting

If you would like more info on each of these, just do a search there are tons of articles written about them.

The best backlinks are from bloggers and sites that naturally link back to you because they appreciate what you have to say. How to do that?

What is more important?

All this backlinking jive doesn’t mean a hill-o-beans if you don’t have the great content to back it up. Are you writing posts that people want to read and then share with others? Are you connecting with readers? Are you sharing good content from other bloggers?  It’s not hard but all this is time consuming. So I would rather focus on helping create fabulous blogs and websites. Then create backlinks as time allows. What about you?

This is the final in a series of posts on the topic of links:

1. Improve Blogger’s Post Titles for SEO
2. Is Your Permalink Dragging You Down
3. Lots of Link Love

With bloggers new layout they took away the option to edit html; so removing the date from the permalink or post title url isn’t an option for the normal blogger. So to make the best of this situation is to do the following

1. Keep your post titles short
2. Use important keywords in the first part of the title

Blogger limits the number of characters in the URL to 35 to 40 cutting off any characters after that. Knowing this you can strategize your titles that will follow the date stamp.

Part of Link Series:

1. Lots of Link Love
2. Is Your Permalink Dragging You Down
3. The All Mighty Backlink

I did not intend to make the topic of links a series but it’s funny how things work out. (or is it called snowballing?). In the last post I defined the basic link types. I probably should have written about this posts topic long ago but I didn’t have the information I do now. What I am talking about is permalinks. If you are on a self hosted wordpress blog and your post titles look like ?p=123 in the address bar you are loosing serious search engine favor, priority, and the almighty optimization. That kind of permalink is like a big weight strapped to your ankle while you’re trying to swim upstream. Think about it. Who is searching for ?p=546. And if it does show up on a google search page who will click on it? No one. Because no one will know what the post is about. So, let’s remedy that right now.

This is also important for those who might be moving to a self hosted site sometime in the future, so please listen.

For most blogs this first step is all you need to do. It’s simple and all you do is click.

Dashboard–Settings–Permalinks–select Post Name–Save changes

and you’re set. WordPress will magically redirect all your posts that have links to the old URLs. Yay!

Now for those whose sites don’t magically redirect, you will have to use a plugin.

Dashboard–Plugins–Add New–type in Redirection–follow its directions

I have not used this plugin but from all research I have read that this one works well.

In my next post I will answer the questions about back links and the different ways they are created.

If you are not on a self hosted site, you still need to pay attention to how you title your posts. It is extremely important to how you show up in a search engine and if someone decides to click through to read what you have to say.

Do you agree?

Part of Series on Links:

1. Lots of Link Love
2. The All Mighty Backlink
3. Improve Blogger’s Post Titles for SEO

Inbound links, Back links, Outbound links, nofollow links, external/internal links

Lets start with the basics.

Link: short for hyperlink which is code that can be embedded into anchor text (or image) that when clicked will take you to another page, site or information.

Internal links lead to pages within your sited.

Outbound links lead to other web sites. Can also be called external links.

Back links or inbound links are links on other sites that point to your site.

No-follow links have extra code that makes the links invisible to search engines but still clickable. Their purpose is to not give search engine “credit” to the targeted site. Commonly found in blog comment sections.

Have any more link questions? Leave them in the comments.

Part of a Series on Links:

1. Improve Blogger’s Post Titles for SEO
2. Is Your Permalink Dragging You Down
3. The All Mighty Backlink

I started my Facebook fan page the first of January this year. I have had some decent response to it. And as much as I am a twitterholic, facebook is number one for referral traffic.

But the question is can your facebook replace your blog?

I would say, “Perish the thought.” And if you are visual like me, the following infographic will get the point across so much better than a list.

Do you agree with these points? or is there one or two you would dispute?

Sidebar

Sometime you might want to display a photo or image in your wordpress sidebar. You could use code from an image hosting site such as photobucket or picasa. But I don’t like relying on a third party site to display my images. I have had them stop displaying for no reason. To easily get around this problem, is to hold the images right on your own blog. Follow these easy steps that I show in the video tutorial:

1. upload the image into your Media tab in your dashboard by clicking Add New. You will want to have the image height and width already to specs. So know what size works best with your sidebar. (the width of the image I uploaded was 224 to give a reference)
2. Add a new post
3. Click onUpload/insert media icon and select the image to add to post
4. Click HTML tab in upper right corner
5. Copy code
6. Paste code in Text widget in sidebar

That’s all there is to it. Now watch the video tutorial.

Click here to view the embedded video.

P.S. I know you don’t pronounce the “s” in Des Moines. It was a slip up. If you add an image to your sidebar, leave a link in the comments. I would love to see it.

A few weeks ago I gave a presentation to an Ag Communications class at Missouri State University. I had a wonderful time talking to the students and viewing their blogs.  One topic came up that has stuck with me. It seems that all their blogs looked alike. At that time we discussed changing the theme to solve the problem. As I have come to think on this further, it’s kinda the way it’s supposed to be.

The Guitar Part

Think of it as learning to play the guitar. Everyone starts the same way. You have to learn the cords first. Every new player starts out sounding the same; making the same mistakes. They begin with the basics, practice. Those who stick with it improve and can sound amazing and impressive even.

Blogging is the same way. New bloggers have to learn the basics, make the mistakes, and practice to improve. Every blogger starts out the same. Those who have stuck with it have unique, impressive blogs.

What’s Important

I know it doesn’t sound sexy but don’t worry about how your blog looks just starting out. Focus on learning how a blog works and finding your voice. These two are so critical in earning your reader’s attention. Sure the aesthetics are important but readers will return for the content not how cute your header is.
Just like you can’t play guitar like Carlos Santana (famous guitar guy) the first time you pick it up; it’s going to take time to get your blog to where you want it to be.

What do you think? What are you focusing on right now?

2. What made you want to start your blog?
 Those of us involved in agriculture really are a minority.  With such a small percentage of the population involved in agriculture and food production, a large disconnect has grown between the American consumer and knowing exactly how food got on that plate.  With social media being so popular, it’s not hard to spread a message – whether it is the truth or a lie. There are people and organizations that spread misinformation about agriculture and food production.   This spread of misinformation is why I decided to take a more active role in AGvocating.  The more people who blog, the more our story and message gets shared with others.  As farmers and ranchers, it is our job to share OUR story.  We know what’s best for our animals because we are the ones taking care of them 365 days a year, not someone who never has stepped foot on a farm or ranch!

My husband had a farm accident a few years ago where he cut some tendons in his hand and had to have a finger amputated.  Throughout the trips to Omaha and doctor visits, we became good friends with Troy’s doctor and his wife.  We invited them to our branding so they could see what exactly we do on our ranch.  They left with a new appreciation of all the hard work that goes into producing each pound of beef that is on their supper table.  I really enjoyed giving them a tour and spending the day with them.  His wife asked me several times to start a blog.  She enjoys reading my facebook posts and wanted to know more about what we do on a daily basis.  I had wanted to start a blog but didn’t think I had enough time to start one.  On a snowy day this winter I made time!  I decided to start writing, and my blog was born!

3. What has been the biggest surprise since you started? or something you didn’t expect: 
The biggest surprise so far has been the number of people that read my blog.  I really didn’t expect a large number of people to read it.  I enjoy reading the comments people leave.  I get a lot of compliments from my customers at work, co-workers and friends on what a great job I have been doing with my blog.

4. Where do you get your ideas? 
Most of my ideas have been coming from our daily activities on our ranch.  There is never a dull moment, or a lack of things to do.  I spend a lot of time driving during the day for my job , so I really don’t have a lack of brainstorming time!  I have only been blogging for a short amount of time, but so far it hasn’t been hard to get ideas.  I have some ideas for future blogs as well.  If I get stuck on ideas, I will turn to current events for ideas to write about.   I believe one of the most important things about blogging is to write about topics others either relate to or find interesting.  As long as I write about interesting topics, my readership will continue to grow.

5. What obstacles have you met and how did you overcome them?
One of my biggest obstacles seems to be time to write, as I knew it would be when I started my blog.  Between my job, helping Troy when I get home, and also riding my horses, it has been hard to sit down and write.  With spring quickly approaching and the days getting longer, finding time to blog is not going to get easier either.   But sharing my story is something I’m passionate about, and I will make time to write.  During the week, I try to write when I get a spare minute, but sometimes it is hard to find the time.  I try to write on Sunday evenings also.  Sunday evenings are my time to relax, and writing is relaxing to me.

I encourage others who are thinking about blogging to start writing.  It is a lot of fun to tell our story.  What we think as just a routine day, others find fascinating and love to hear what we do!

Thank you, Meghan, for being so willing to tell your story even on the slopes on vacation. Visit her blog at Husker Cowgirl. And follower her on twitter @HuskerCowgirl

New Blogger

I really love when I discover a new blog. Even better when one finds me. Elizabeth emailed me with a question about the featured farmers and here she is one. Circle the Wagons began on Ag Day this year. Elizabeth has a great start to her blog with nice photos and regular postings.

1. Tell a little about you and your operation.

My husband and I are from small Midwestern towns.  I grew up on a
diversified family farm of row crops and cattle! My husband grew up a
little different – with rodeo, cattle and horses. It really was a
romance between the farmer’s daughter and a cowboy.  In a turn of
events I ended up finding a job away from family and farm in an urban
area.  Luckily I had the love and support of my family and husband.
Together we moved from the rural routes to a little apartment on the
edge of town working towards owning an operation of our own.   It’s a
struggle as we live and work towards our dreams.  I know we are not
the only couple of Ag kids away from the farm or young couple saving
to buy a farm, so I thought I would share our experiences!

2. What made you want to start your blog?

My passion is agriculture education, and supporting producers and our
rural way of life. I believed in this cause so much that it was the
topic of my senior research project at the university I attended. (It
specifically focused on agriculture awareness and literacy amongst
college students)  It was an eye opening experience.  I recently
discovered that blogging could be a way to reach out to people and
share my agricultural experiences and encourage a healthy dialogue
between consumers and producers!  I really wanted to be a part of that
community and have a postive influence.

3. What aspects of blogging do you like the most?

I really enjoy sharing photos, stories, and ideas with others.
Blogging seemed like the right choice for me, and I am hooked!  I
think it’s an exciting, and very personal way to connect with people!

4. Are you using social media to promote your site? How?

Actually, no I am not currently using social media. I hope to utilize
it in the near future.

5. What obstacles have you met and how did you overcome them?

My biggest obstacle has been fear and writers block.  The fear was the
hardest to get over.  I agonized several weeks trying to make a
decision.  Finally I decided to just bite the bullet and start
blogging.  My blog went live on National Ag Day! I have decided to
write and let the chips fall where they may.  As for the writer’s
block – I’ve set goals for what I want to see on my blog – one day at
a time!

So glad Elizabeth bit the bullet and hope you keep up the good work. Please head over to Circle the Wagons and leave a comment to let her know you were there. Tell me below what you like most about the Featured Farmers.