Working together with small groups, empowering others to strengthen their advocacy skillsets is absolutely my favorite part of what I get to do for a living. Earlier this month, I had that opportunity in collaboration with the New York Beef Council as we hosted an advocacy training workshop in Morrisville, New York.
New York Beef Advocacy
For the past several years, I’ve had the opportunity to work first-hand with the New York Beef Council on several different programs. New York beef advocacy efforts have been at the top of that list as we’ve worked with the state’s farmers to gain the confidence and skills to share their stories with New York consumers who want to know more about where their beef comes from.
New York state is home to more than 19.4 million people, many of who have questions about beef and how it was raised. By helping farmers share their stories online and in their communities, we’re able to help more people gain access to that information.
Through work with the New York Beef Council, I’ve had the opportunity to help farmers gain more confidence in sharing their daily work on social media, open their gates to group farm tours, and answer questions people have about what farmers do when raising cattle.
Beef Advocacy Workshop
During our workshop with a group of farmers from across New York state, we touched on several different topics with the goal of being more confident in answering questions about beef and leaving the workshop with a plan for reaching goals to grow beef advocacy efforts.
In this workshop, we focused on a few core efforts to accomplish these goals.
- Why is beef advocacy important? Understanding why this is important to us as we invest time and resources into advocacy is a critical foundation.
- Who is our audience? It’s easy to say we want to reach everyone through adovcacy efforts, but defining the audience we want to reach makes us more effective and efficient in this work.
- What can we share through advocacy? We can attempt to talk about everything, but that doesn’t mean we need to do so. In this workshop, we took a deep dive into trending topics and discovered that sustainability, animal welfare, and the health/nutrition of beef in the diet are three areas where farmers can share their personal experiences to address concerns their audiences may have.
At the end of the day, farmers attending the workshop departed with new skills in using social media, goals for how they will increase their reach on social media, and a map with plans for how they’ll achieve those goals.
Sharing Your Story
The crew at New York Beef Council is doing incredible work on behalf of their cattle farmers working to supply consumers with beef and answer their questions about how cattle are raised. I definitely want to thank them for letting me have a small role in those efforts!
Are you looking for an opportunity to strengthen your skillsets for advocacy, social media, or managing the reputation of your business or organization? I’d love to connect with you and see how we can work together for an upcoming workshop or training event for your group. Send me a message to get started.
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