A lot of the people who are involved in agriculture and who write blogs will probably recognize the social media hero I want to highlight this week. It’s Judi Graff aka @FARMnWIFE. There are a lot of reasons she is a social media hero to various people, but I get to make the list so we’ll focus on my reasons.

Judi and her family are actively telling their farm’s story. There’s the Big Green Combine blog where she does a great job helping you get to know her & what’s she’s doing through social media saying:

Following this blog, you will learn all about grain farming and raising cattle in the mid-west. I will be writing about the good and the bad aspects of farm life. Being dependent on weather and commodity markets for a living is not for the faint of heart by any means.  It is not a glamorous life but it is never boring. (Well, driving a combine back and forth for 12 hours a day for two months can get a little tedious.) I would love it if you would join me. It should prove interesting.

There are other websites and channels too:

• Her husband Bill has his own blog, where he posts podcasts on Farm and Ranch Country.
• They have a farm website for Graff Land & Livestock.
• Of course the Graff kids tell their stories occasionally on Kids’ Cattle
• Judi tweet as @FARMnWIFE
• She has a family YouTube channel for FARMnWIFE
• There’s her FARMnWIFE Facebook page for blogging efforts
• And the Google+ profile she has

But I haven’t even mentioned the reason I thought of Judi so soon after starting this series on social media heroes…. The biggest reason by far is she is helping other people be better at social media EVERY SINGLE DAY. See, in addition to all the farming, all the telling of their farm’s story, Judi also has a blog (FARMnWIFE.com) devoted to highlighting ways to improve blogs, written in a way that is totally geared to farmers and others in the ag community!

And in case that’s not enough giving back to the online farm community, she decided to up it even more for the month of January doing a special program based on the book 31 Days To Build a Better Blog by Darren Rowse of ProBlogger. She wrote a post in early December explaining how it would work and that a small group dedicated to building better ag blogs would help each other improve during January. I signed up hoping that my travel and work schedule would allow me to participate…. well people, the enthusiasm level was infectious! HOW COULD I NOT FIND TIME? I just had to do it! Now I will openly tell you that by participating in #BlogChat for a long time, a lot of the info was familiar or things I had even accomplished, but I have been doing a lot of adds and updates. Some in the group are brand-new to blogging and others are like me, have been doing it a while — all of us are enjoying the small group dynamic and the trusted feedback (both constructive coaching and the positive feedback!).

If I were you, I’d start following Judi EVERYWHERE. She’s the kind of person you can ask a question or just read what she’s got going on and get better in your own blogging efforts. Oh, and Judi & Bill don’t need to worry, I won’t actually follow them EVERYWHERE while we’re at the cattlemen’s meeting. 😀

Other Social Media Heroes:

• Danyelle Little @TheCubicleChick is One of My Social Media Heroes! — It has been a little while since I did a post in my social media hero series, but this weekend I was clearly reminded of one I needed to write up. That’s because Danyelle Little and her Show Me the Blog conference has rocked my world again. Yeah, I know I wrote about the conference […] Continue Reading
• Ryan Goodman, Ranchhand & Social Media Hero – Over the past few months, I’ve done several posts about some of my social media heroes. I have a lot more to go. But recently I sat down to write a post for the AgChat Foundation’s website and realized I was writing a lot of the things I should put together explaining why Ryan Goodman, […] Continue Reading
• A Social Media Hero With a HUGE Heart & Great Hugs @JeffPulver of #140Conf – I’ve written about Jeff Pulver before — he’s an integral part of my post about the faces of #140Conf Small Town and Monday’s #140confDM.  And while I talk a bit about Jeff in those posts… you don’t really get the feel for the guy cause all of that was within context of the conference and lots […] Continue Reading
• Creating the #BlogChat Community Leads to Hero Status for @MackCollier, Darlin’ – Writing that headline was fun. Blogging and social media have to be fun for me, cause this blog is a personal passion. I have no interest in “monetizing” my blog (I hope all the scammy folks who send weird messages will read that). I have a great job where I get to do communications.This blog […] Continue Reading
• The Farmer Who Broke My Twitter Sound Barrier @FarmerHaley – I’ve talked about how I came to be on Twitter before but what happened after I got on…. not sure I could have anticipated that. Within a few months of being on Twitter, the tweeting agricultural community was clearly as a great source of information for me. I can still remember when I broke the […] Continue Reading
• Who Convinced Me To Sign Up For Twitter? @Kath_Manning That’s Who – In doing this series highlighting some of my social media heroes, its hard to decide what helps someone reach true hero status. But its clear to me, that one of my colleagues, Kathleen Manning aka @Kath_Manning has to be on the list. Its really pretty funny to think about that first day so long ago. […] Continue Reading
• Social Media Hero, Farmer & Blogging Coach Judi Graff aka @farmnwifeA lot of the people who are involved in agriculture and who write blogs will probably recognize the social media hero I want to highlight this week. It’s Judi Graff aka @FARMnWIFE. There are a lot of reasons she is a social media hero to various people, but I get to make the list so […] Continue Reading
• Who Are My Social Media Heroes? Hero #1 is @ArveyColumbus – Recently, my friend Cheri Albritton (Twitter’s @ArveyColumbus) wrote a blog post asking if you are a social media hero in the making. She was nice enough to point to me in her post. That was awesome to see pop up in my email! I decided to do at least a short series of posts highlighting […] Continue Reading