The team understood the agenda.

AGENDA:

• Meet with Susan Ruland - newsletter article, social media strategy/engagement
  • Deadline for article was 2/16 - can we still make it?
  • Can article be reused in other media outlets?
  • What is the best way to pursue a social media strategy for SPADE? How to engage with overall AgGateway Communications Team?
• Urgent Items
• Board Decision on Communications Team scope
• Review progress on open items
  
  • Core Documents Flyer
  • Newsletter Article - way forward
  • Draft Reference Data API Elevator Speeches
  • Centralization of Communications materials

DISCUSSION:

Newsletter article - deadline by end of the week

• we can either provide content ideas to Susan (bullet points) and she can help shape the article.
• Flexible on length - room for 5-6 paragraphs but could be shorter or longer if needed.
• reuse - could be press release or column; no restrictions on reusing but voice for newsletter is different from the industry - would need to revise in order to reuse - explain more and use different tone. Provide info to Susan on the specific outlets for determination of appropriate place to repurpose. Provide suggestions of media outlets in which we are interested so they are on Susan's radar. AgGateway is interested in spreading the word more in this fashion.
• Shannon to ask Andres for content bullets to provide to Susan - Jim to review and provide builds; Jeremy wants to share 2 diagrams on core documents and get the word out that there is content out there for standards and guidelines; Jim would like to see by the time mid-year meeting we have published one round of content and will be ready to launch 2nd round and working on 3rd round. Need to get into rhythm of releasing content even if very modest things to publish. More about the progress than the immediate deliverable.
• Need to have conversation with Andres to take to the management team to motivate urgency around deciding how to break core documents down to phases of publication/announcement.

Social Media

• All content in newsletter is also used in social media - linking to content. If we want to have article highlighted in social media, we need to flag that to the person responsible.
• Communications committee last year made a push to become more active on social media - created a special team with 7 people currently including Brandon Olstead. social@aggateway.org email address to contact the team about social media requests.
• Turn around is quick - depending on frequency of checking emails - different person each week.
• Hootsuite - allows us to post to 4 channels at once, linkedin, google+, twitter and facebook. Most pickup are in twitter and linkedin. 500 followers on twitter and 300 on linkedin.
• If at a conference, good opportunity to tweet about it; promote a meeting; promote a resource to direct people to where we want. If not sure of wording, we can send our message intention and they can wordsmith appropriately for us to send it out.
• There hasn't been a lot of social media input from outside the communications committee. Our team should reach out to various Precision Ag teams to identify opportunities to plug on their behalf.
• Communications Team is currently putting together a one pager to share with everyone on how to engage and utilize social media more.
• Frequency - trying to do one tweet a day from AgGateway. Once a week or every two weeks would be great from Precision Ag.
• Best way to encourage people to start following us? Retweets are often the best way. Encourage our folks to retweet is a big way to spread. Communications committee will talk more about this to advise. It should start organically with AgGateway participants sharing and tweeting about it to get people to start following. People will want to follow if we are posting interesting things. Need to provide incentive to follow us.
• May get a linkedin group going to attract followers and increase presence.
• Need to have valuable content going out on a steady basis to get people like Meister Media to follow us.
• Our flyers can be used as content for social media - direct people to the PDF to find out more about each topic.
• Susan to contact Dan regarding upcoming PAIL news about to come out.
• Progress report on Precision Ag Council is an appropriate topic for press releases; alert about work being done for upcoming AgGateway meetings.
• We should focus on news/message we want to get out and the Communications Team will determine the best ways to get the word out. Need to get a centralized handle on content becoming available to bring Susan into the loop to help us determine how to communicate.

Communications Team scope

• Shannon talk to Mike about liaisons to each working group to determine how to reach out to support them.

Reference Data API Elevator Speeches

• Need to run the speeches by the API team; there may already be something developed.
• Next API meeting - Jim Wilson will walk them through the speeches to get their input. Speeches can be found on the wiki in the Communications toolbox.

Unapproved minutes of previous meetings are approved.

• Complete

 Recurring meeting schedule has been set.