E-newsletter Ends in Favor of Blog, Other Outreach

At South Dakota Corn, we’re always looking for the best ways to communicate with you, our state’s farmers.

Whether it’s through mailings, our website, social media, emails or our Corn Comments, it’s important for us to update you on current issues and let you know about upcoming events.

We’re not afraid to try new methods. That’s what we did more than a year ago when we converted our quarterly print publication Emerge into a monthly electronic newsletter. A survey of more than 200 South Dakota corn farmers indicated that was the preferred way of receiving news.

Each month, we emailed our newsletter to nearly 1,800 South Dakota farmers. Unfortunately, we learned over time that readership levels were lower than we had anticipated. We realize everyone’s time is precious, and each of our newsletters contained five stories, which required a time commitment.

Whatever the reason for the lukewarm response, we’ve decided to discontinue our electronic newsletter and concentrate our efforts and use of valuable resources in other ways.

One method of communication that we’ve found to be effective is our biweekly blog. Readership has been strong and consistent, and we’ve received good feedback. We thank you for your interest, and we’ll continue to reach you that way to keep you posted on topics that are important to you, such as state and national legislation, policy, trade, tariffs, developing markets or upcoming issues. If there’s a topic you’d like to know more about, or something you believe we should be covering, let us know.

We also strongly believe it’s more important than ever to share agriculture’s news and messages with consumers, which is why we also produce a consumer blog. We want people to learn about farming, get the facts and have their questions and concerns answered. Agriculture has many positive messages and we want to share them.

Communication is vital. That’s why we are active on Facebook and Twitter. Those social media platforms also allow us to learn what’s on people’s minds. We also updated the South Dakota Corn website, sdcorn.org, so it is more news-oriented with stories, blogs and information about upcoming events.

And as always, we’ll continue to reach out through this popular radio program, Corn Comments. In this high-tech world, methods to reach people are always evolving. South Dakota Corn remains committed to finding the best and most-effective methods to share information.