Hello and welcome to the ZimmCast. I’m Chuck Zimmerman.

The ZimmComm Team are enjoying some time in paradise right near the Gulf of America. The weather has been great and we’ve had enough rain so that everything is green and growing.

In this episode Cindy and I discuss the changes we’re making to ZimmComm. We recently announced that we are going to retire from business travel starting Jan. 1, 2026. That has been a very big part of the work we pioneered along with the use of social media in agricultural marketing.

But we’ve got plenty to do as we continue to distribute news releases with our AgNewsWire service. In fact, we started out with the idea of including audio files in news releases for our clients. We called them Talking News Releases and because of our background in farm radio we knew the frustration of not being able to get an interview or sound bite. When you want to have an audio interview included in your news release we will produce it and publish it with no extra cost. We’ll work with you on the interview and can also add your own audio file if you would like, including logos, photos or other images. Here is an example of our latest news release for AgTech PR for their client, PowerPollen, that includes an interview.

To have us distribute your release to our contact list all you have to do is use your credit card on the AgNewsWire form here and then just email your release and any multi-media content to include.

In addition to news releases we will continue produce podcast like this one, The ZimmCast, as well as The Ethanol Report and the Daugherty Water For Food Podcast. If you would like to start a podcast just give us a call.

We’ve still got several trips planned this year including these in July. Tech Hub Live in Des Moines, IA, Southern Peanut Growers Conference in Panama City, FL and Ag Media Summit in Rogers, AK. 

So, keep ZimmComm’s in your plans. And that’s the ZimmCast for now. I hope you enjoy it and thank for listening.

Hello and welcome to the ZimmCast. I’m Chuck Zimmerman.

In this episode I’m going to share a couple of interviews from the NAMA Agri-Marketing Conference. One is with Gardner Hatch, Executive Director, NAFB and Debbie Boyle, Vice President, Kynetic. They talk about a new NAFB listener survey. Then I have an interview with Melanie Rice, Brownfield Ag News, about becoming the new President of NAMA.

Before I do this I’m going to talk about a ZimmComm announcement Cindy and I published last week. Basically, we are retiring from business travel starting at the end of 2025. Besides our 21 years with ZimmComm we traveled a lot for many years before we started ZimmComm. 

We founded the company in 2004 as the first social media-based agricultural communications company and pioneered “event blogging” for farm and biofuels conferences, capturing the sights and sounds in photos and interviews. Nearly 225,000 photos and countless interviews and miles later, we have decided to hang up our traveling bags and spend more time at home. A lot of people look to retire to travel the world. We’ve been blessed to see all the places we ever wanted and more!

We plan to continue our AgNewsWire news release service as well as AgWired.com, Energy.AgWired.com and our podcasting and other audio production services. We’re just giving up the travel portion of our work.

So that’s the ZimmCast for this week. I hope you enjoy it and thank you for listening.

Hello and welcome to the ZimmCast. I’m Chuck Zimmerman along with Cindy Zimmerman.

Welcome to another year of agriblogging and farm podcasting. It’s hard to believe that we’re coming close to 21 years since we started ZimmComm in 2004. Cindy and I have worked together in the ag marcom field for about 21 years before that. Now we’re doing some thinking and planning for 2025. I sense that this year will be a big one for us

We’ve already got plans made for the same conferences during the upcoming months. We traveled to work at 20 different events last year. So, we’ll see how things go as time moves on.

We started taking photos at events 20 years ago when Flickr started. Since then we’ve uploaded 222,000 photos and they have collectively received 38 million views. In 2024 we uploaded 6,611 photos from the events and they have been viewed 1.1 million views.

On the audio side of things we started using Libsyn as our audio/podcast server platform in 2017. In that time, and just looking at our ZimmComm Golden Mic Audio podcast, we’ve received 2.8 million downloads of those files, with 137,000 in 2024.

Our AgNewsWire service had a banner year in 2024 with the distribution of over 80 news releases for our clients. And speaking of news releases we’re offering a 2025 discount for existing or new customers. If you sign up for an advance purchase of 4 news releases you will receive a 10 Percent discount. Regular price is $525 but your discounted price will be $472.50/each! Feel free to contact me about how AgNewsWire works and we’ll help you reach our comprehensive list of ag media.

AgWired and Energy. AgWired have also really kept us busy. Besides Cindy and me we’ve had 40 editors work for us and that includes interns, many of who are in high level jobs in ag media and agencies, and freelancers who have started their own companies. We can’t say how thankful and proud for all of them

So, that’s what’s on our minds as we contemplate the how/when/what and why of another year on the agriblogging highway.

So, that’s the ZimmCast. We hope you enjoyed it and thank you for listening.