View Larger ImageFarmers for the Future social network 
By Agriculture.com/Successful Farming magazine, Meredith Corporation
The Farmers for the Future is a social network for young and beginning farmers. The goal: Help them grow their farms and be successful through networking with others facing similar issues and challenges. It's a network that provides the ability for members to connect with one another through member pages, forums, blogs, photo-sharing and video. We have had a series of feature articles in our magazine, Successful Farming, as well as web features on our website, www.agriculture.com, for some time. We recognized the young and beginning farmer group as both a key target demographic for existing features and assets, as well as one that would be the most web-savvy of our entire readership and viewership. We chose the Ning social network platform for two reasons: It is simple to use, yet has the range of basic features we were looking for in building a social network like this; and it allows for considerable manual page design manipulation and feature management.
The Farmers for the Future is a social network for young and beginning farmers. We have had a series of feature articles in our magazine, Successful Farming, as well as web features on our website, www.agriculture.com, and saw ths as a natural fit in continuing to engage a key target demographic. See http://farmersforthefuturenetwork.wordpress.com/ for more information, including demographic and traffic statistics. This group represents the future reader of our magazine and user of our website, and we feel we're engaging them in a way that can foster a long-term relationship if maintained correctly. We're giving the Farmers for the Future social network members ownership of the group. Once they feel a sense of ownership over their part in the network, we will continue to provide content that will engage members, strengthening both the relationships among members and those between the members and our brand.
October 2008 to present
(25 votes)
