A couple of weeks ago, dad came into work just flat out mad. You could tell when he stepped out of the truck to just leave him be, so that’s what we all did.
About an hour later my phone went off saying our Hillcrest Farm Facebook page had some notifications. I clicked on it and realized dad has posted a video. He does this from time to time and I was busy, so I didn’t click on it to watch. About 30 more minutes went by and my phone kept going off with the notification tone. So finally I stopped and pulled my phone out to see what was going on. I went to the video and watched it. Then I looked to see how many shares and likes it had — about 100 likes and 43 shares.
I walked up to the hospital pen to work on some cows. Dad passed by and asked if I had seen his video. I said yes, that I had just watched it, and he yelled, “I’m going viral!” I laughed and said, “Dad, 43 shares is a lot, don’t get me wrong, but you haven’t gone viral.”
We had a lot going on that morning so I didn’t pay much attention to my phone until around 2 p.m. that day. When I pulled up Facebook, I felt like I needed to “open mouth and insert foot.” Dad had reached 500,000 people, had 2.5 thousands shares, and over 1,000 likes. By the end of the day he had reached over 1 million people, had around 6,000 shares, 415,000 views, and around 3,000 likes. It blew my mind.
Y’all, this post was about the nomination of the United States Secretary of Agriculture. Dad shared his opinion and asked other people and farmers to stand with him on this issue. That one post about agriculture reached over 1 million people.
Advocating for agriculture is literally one simple Facebook post away from reaching over 1 MILLION people. It’s simple, fast, and easy. We have the ability to share our stories and our world with consumers with a simple touch of a button.
If you would like to see the video, this is a link to our farm’s Facebook page.
Mark and Caitlin Rodgers are dairy farmers in Dearing, Georgia. Their “Father and Daughter Dairy Together” column appears every other Thursday on HD Notebook. The Rodgers have a 400-cow dairy that averages 32,000 pounds of milk. Follow their family farm on Facebook at Hillcrest Farms Inc.
