For the second year in a row, Hoard’s Dairyman has captured the top three webinar awards from the American Agricultural Editor’s Association (AAEA). In five of the past six years, we have won the best webinar. We also have claimed eleven other second and third-place honors during that time. That’s a total of 16 out of 18 possible webinar awards!
We diversified our approach to webinars this past year. For the first time, we had a dairy producer and an author as presenters. This shift produced our winning and third-place webinars.
The judges watch the submitted archived webinar entries and evaluate the content and delivery of the presentations. They also take into consideration the number of live attendees and archived views.
The announcement was made at AAEA’s annual Ag Media Summit, held in Scottsdale, Ariz., last week. Ag Media Summit attendees go to workshops and network with others in the agricultural communications field. There are also awards recognizing excellence in photography, writing, design, marketing/communications, and digital and social media. Editorial team members Mike Rankin and Maggie Seiler were on hand to accept the awards won by the Hoard’s Dairyman and Hay & Forage Growers editorial teams.
The monthly webinars provide timely and valuable information for dairy producers and those who serve and support their businesses. Industry experts, university researchers, and veterinarians fill the one-hour time frame with the latest dairy information to a world-wide audience. Live-presentation viewers have come from 31 states, eight Canadian provinces, and 29 foreign countries.
“Over the years, we have had a solid core of attendees who are with us each month, while some listeners join us depending on the topic. Generally, about one-third of our live audience is made up of dairy owners or managers, with consultants and advisors being the next largest group,” shared Abby Bauer, the Hoard’s Dairyman staff member who co-hosts the webinars with Mike Hutjens of the University of Illinois.
There is no cost to register and participate thanks to the generous support of our sponsors. Once people are enrolled, they receive a link via email with access to the live presentations. The webinars are held on the second Monday of each month at noon (Central time).
About one week after the live presentation, we post the archived video, including the question and answer period, on our website. Since 2011, the archives have been viewed nearly 150,000 times.
“The success of the webinars is due to the combined work of our production teams at Hoard’s Dairyman and the University of Illinois, the presenters, and our monthly sponsors. But our webinar attendee feedback really proves the value of this digital offering. Together, the webinars have grown into an industry standard,” remarked John Mansavage, Hoard’s Dairyman Director of Marketing.
If you have not taken advantage of this resource, maybe it is time to watch an award-winning Hoard’s Dairyman webinar! Today, Mike Hutjens, University of Illinois, will present “What’s different about Jerseys . . . and what’s not.”
Or, take a peek at our 92 archived webinars including our latest winning presentations:
1st place: Animal Fats: Separating Fact from Fiction, by Nina Teicholz, New York Times best-selling author (February 2018)
2nd place: Monitoring and managing metabolic diseases in the transition cow, by Daryl Nydam, D.V.M., Cornell University (June 2017)
3rd place: How they achieve 40,000 pounds per cow, by Tom Kestell, Ever-Green-View, and Steve Woodford, dairy nutritionist (January 2018)
The author is the online media manager and is responsible for the website, webinars, and social media. A graduate of Modesto Junior College and Fresno State, she was raised on a California dairy and frequently blogs on youth programs and consumer issues.