MANDY Matthews is a sheep farmhand who has made a name for herself as an agriculture influencer using her popularity on social media to help educate people on the various aspects of rural life and the livestock industry.
With 16,300 Instagram followers and 227,000 following her on TikTok (a platform where people create personalised videos), Ms Matthews said the popularity of her accounts came about organically.
Having found she had a lot of opportunities to take great photos and snapshots of life in the country, she decided to invest in a decent digital camera and join Instagram in 2017.
“I used to think Instagram was just pictures of pretty girls showing off, but once I joined I realised there are actually a lot of people from the agricultural sector on it and some really talented photographers – so that’s where it all started for me,” Ms Matthews said.
TikTok was a later addition for Ms Matthews, who created her own account while quarantining in Western Australia after returning home from a trip to New Zealand early last year.
Late last year a video of her kelpie border collie-cross dog, Blue, jumping up on hay bales to the song ‘The Real Slim Shady’ went viral, attracting about six million views.
Resulting in a dramatic increase in her number of TikTok followers, the video continues to be shared on various social media networks and online pages, making its total audience hard to determine.
Comparing the two social media platforms, Ms Matthews said she experienced greater engagement with her Instagram followers.
“TikTok tends to draw a wider audience who will still follow you but might not have a great amount of interest in who you are, but with Instagram I feel you have a bit more of a connection and discussion with your followers,” Ms Matthews said.
Uploading pictures and videos of everyday occurrences on farms, such as a lamb being born, the practices of mulesing and trimming a ram’s horns, Ms Matthews said her goal was to provide a clear depiction of livestock practices to help educate the general public on what farmers did.
However like most online influencers, her raw view of farm life has also drawn backlash from animal activists and the like.
By participating in The Livestock Collective’s leaders workshop last year, Ms Matthews said she had learnt how to have conversations with people who might not completely understand the industry or disagree with some of its more controversial aspects.
More than 100 alumni have been put through the course which helps young people working in agriculture advocate for their industry via social media.
“It’s been a really supportive network for me and really helpful when my own social media blew up, as I didn’t feel like I was alone in managing how I responded to people’s different views,” Ms Matthews said.
Acknowledging that a lot of time does go into being a social media influencer, Ms Matthews is working on how she might be able to monetise her social media platforms.
If successful she plans to use the extra funds to buy better photography and video equipment.
With 16,300 Instagram followers and 227,000 following her on TikTok, Mandy Matthews uses her social media presence to help advocate for the agricultural industry.
Growing up on a sheep and cattle farm about an hour inland from New Zealand’s central North Island, Ms Matthews wanted to be a farmer ever since she can remember.
Her dad still manages the family farm which runs Romney sheep, red black suffolk rams and beef cattle over about 1200 hectares of land.
“In our primary school years my cousin and I tried to set up this thing called ‘easy farm, easy go’ to help educate our friends who didn’t know much about farming – so we were always super passionate about it, even at a young age” Ms Matthews said.
After finishing high school she stayed and helped on the family farm before completing a six month stint in Queensland to play polocrosse.
Following that trip, in 2013 she decided to move to Western Australia.
“I stayed with people I knew through polocrosse and started working on a live export quarantine sheep feedlot near Kojonup,” Ms Matthews said.
“I loved working there, it was busy and full on – each day I’d be counting sheep, picking up on any welfare issues, feeding them and moving them around and they also had a farm there which had some cattle.”
After two years Ms Matthews briefly worked as a farmhand for some sheep farmers down the road in Kojonup before being offered a job in Corrigin as a sheep manager.
“Those days would involve checking and feeding the sheep, a lot of checking water because most of it was on scheme and your general management practices such as shearing and yard work,” Ms Matthews said.
She has since moved on to a sheep and cropping farm in Brookton, which has about 7500 breeding ewes.
“I do everything on the sheep side of things and I’ve been working there about three years,” she said.
Looking forward, she plans to continue to advocate for the agricultural sector through her social media accounts.
With the number of farmers in WA continuing to halve about every 20 years, Ms Matthews said the city and country divide had continued to widen.
“I take it quite personally when people are anti-farming and they aren’t educated about the industry,” she said.
“But you can’t blame them either as there isn’t as much of a connection with the agricultural sector these days.
“When I was younger the country schools used to have exchanges with city schools but that doesn’t seem to happen as much now.
“Most people would have had at least one family friend or a second cousin or someone that lived out in the country so they were able to have some involvement and understanding of agricultural and rural life, but that is also less common now.
“These days, I think social media is probably one of the best ways to help educate the general public about what we do.”
‘This year will be the first time that we’ll see a global ad spend of over a trillion’ U.S. dollars, says Charles Etienne Morier
Published Apr 23, 2024 • Last updated 26 minutes ago • 5 minute read
Like their partners in the Canadian news industry, the country’s media agencies are undergoing unprecedented transformation. The National Post is holding conversations with leaders of Canada’s largest agencies on the fast-changing fundamentals. This week, Charles Etienne Morier, chief operating officer of Touché! & Omnicom Media Group Montreal, speaks to writer Rebecca Harris.
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It has dramatically changed with technological advancement and shifts in consumer behaviour. Now, more than 80% of digital ad spend is transacted through digital buying platforms, so it has become increasingly important for our workforce to have a good understanding of the algorithms and how to maximize them.
The process has changed also. It’s no longer about creating a 30-second spot and then selecting a media channel to distribute the message. We start with the audiences, the channels where we need to reach them, and then tailor a message that will be appealing. And so, we need to work even more closely with our creative partners.
And we think 2024 will change even more. It’s going to be an inflection point despite all the changes we have gone through over the last three years. This year will be the first time that we’ll see a global ad spend of over a trillion (U.S. dollars). It shows the responsibility that we have as advertisers and agencies to spend that money wisely and ensure we make every ad dollar count, and that we are engaging consumers in a way that speaks to them in an age where there’s a lot of uncertainty about how they share their data and private information.
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The team now needs to be proficient in so many areas. We used to have strategy, media buying and planning, and optimization and reporting. Now, we need to be able to help our clients navigate within this complex digital ecosystem with clean rooms (environments where brands, publishers and advertisers share data), the deprecation of cookies, and dynamic creative optimization. Our agency has changed dramatically in the sense that we offer much more depth in our services now. So, our leaders need to be proficient in being able to discuss those subjects with clients. We have a strong learning system in place and it’s part of our value, to make sure that our teams stay curious because it’s changing so much by the day.
Brands that are breaking through are able to prioritize authenticity, relevance and creativity in their messaging and their approach to media. Consumers are bombarded with messages every day and there’s ad blocking, so we have to find new ways of capturing consumer attention… We need to make ads relevant to consumers and bring more value into their lives. And leverage the data we have at our disposal to tailor the message to specific audience segments and engage the consumer in multiple touchpoints.
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We’ve been working for almost two years on educating our clients, making sure that they are prepared. So, we are doing assessments to make sure we have everything in place to prepare for the impact of the deprecation of cookies. It will change a lot for measurement because we will not be able to measure the same things the same way. We will not be able to target in the same way. But I see it as an opportunity somewhat, to be able to come back to (advertising) that is more creative and more around content and context… and more in relation to targeting the right people in the right moment instead of relying too much on the data.
Retail media (platforms that allow retailers to sell ads to brands) will be expanding. Now, the stat is one in five dollars will be spent in retail media globally and 20 per cent of the commerce ecosystem will be done online. So, it’s going to be more important to have a strong omnichannel approach and deliver a positive consumer experience.
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There’s also social commerce… There are so many influencers – there are 50 million creators globally. So how, as an agency, we’re able to harness that and power that at scale is crucial, and how we can partner with creators effectively. It’s changing a lot in media planning on that front. There is a real shift from curation to generation of content.
Television as well is changing a lot, from linear to connected TV. There is a streaming war at the moment, so we need to create new standards, overcome walled gardens (where the platform provider controls the content and data) and figure out measurement.
And obviously automation will play a bigger role. The way I see it is (artificial intelligence) will bring more value to what we do to bring smarter, faster and more effective work. For me, it’s not just about AI itself. It’s more about connected intelligence with the human at the centre of it. So, it’s how we can use the tool to amplify what we are doing.
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A 13-year-old western Quebec boy accused of harassing and threatening another child online is facing four charges and conditions restricting his internet activity.
In a news release issued Friday, police in the MRC des Collines-de-l’Outaouais said the alleged victim’s parent filed a complaint after being “subjected to the suspect’s wrath for several months.”
Police said they went to the accused’s home on Sunday to arrest him, but had to return with a warrant the following day after his parents initially refused to co-operate.
The 13-year-old was arrested Monday evening and detained. He was formally charged on Tuesday with criminal harassment, uttering threats to cause death or bodily harm, distributing child pornography and unauthorized possession of an unspecified restricted weapon.
Among his release conditions, the boy can’t access social media and can’t use the internet without adult supervision.
Police didn’t offer details about the alleged threats or where the youth lives. The municipality includes the communities of Chelsea, Quyon, Val-des-Monts and Wakefield.
I don’t generally believe in life hacks. As much as I’d love to imagine that one easy tweak could resurface my life like it’s a cracked tennis court, time and experience have shown me that positive change usually comes slowly and incrementally.
But there is one hack I fully believe in. It’s fast and free, and will instantly change your life for the better: just mute people who annoy you on social media.
The process is different for each platform – typically, you go to the offending poster’s profile page or one of their posts and tap “mute”, “snooze” or “unfollow” – but then that’s it! This digital dusting leaves your social media spick-and-span, or at least less grimy than before. They’re gone from your timeline, and so are the various minor irritations they brought. And, unlike unfollowing or blocking someone, the muted party has no idea they’ve been silenced, so you don’t risk any awkwardness or drama.
I have a handful of people muted. A couple of them are people I don’t want to unfollow. Others I have unfollowed, but I’ve also muted them because someone else might repost them and sully my pristine timeline. One is a semi-famous person who was rude to me many years ago about a work thing; another was rude to my friend. There’s also an ex and someone who constantly humble-brags in a way that makes me want to bang my head against something hard.
These individuals brought out the worst in me. When I saw their posts, I felt angry, petty and small. I wondered how much it might cost to buy billboard signs along major highways printed with bullet points detailing how, actually, they are terrible.
Fortunately, I almost never think of these individuals anymore because I’ve muted them across all platforms. Unless someone brings them up in conversation, I usually forget these people exist. They have been weeded from the lush garden of my brain.
But don’t just take my word for it.
“Muting accounts that repeatedly upset you is putting in digital boundaries to create a healthier digital environment,” says Bailey Parnell, founder and president of the Center for Digital Wellbeing. It allows you to avoid distressing content without severing connections, she says – a solution for those perplexing situations in which a relationship with someone is important to you, despite their bothersome online presence.
“This can preserve your mental wellbeing while maintaining social or professional networks,” she says.
This might seem like obvious advice. Yet it can be hard to follow. The irritation we feel when seeing someone’s bad posts can come with a satisfying rush: look at them! Being annoying!
“There can be a dopamine kick that comes on the back end of big emotions,” says Monica Amorosi, a licensed trauma therapist in New York City. We may come to crave the adrenaline spikes that accompany content that makes us feel shock, rage or disgust.
“If we have mundane lives, if we are understimulated, if we are bored or underwhelmed, then consuming this material can become a form of entertainment or distraction,” Amorosi says.
Amorosi emphasizes that it’s important not to create a “space of ignorance” on our feeds by avoiding different perspectives or troubling news about current events. But this does not mean that social media should only be a place to access upsetting information. Our feeds “can be utilized for healthy, positive education, connecting with like-minded people, seeing nuance and variety in the world, fact-checking information, learning new hobbies or ideas”, she says.
As such, muting is perhaps most effectively deployed against those who irritate you in a bland, quotidian way – a pompous co-worker, for instance. Not seeing a humble bragger pretend to be embarrassed about another professional success isn’t going to limit my worldview. Instead, I am regaining five to 10 minutes I might have wasted taking a screenshot of their post and complaining to my friends about it.
Candidly, I have done nothing with the time I’ve gained from not bad-mouthing the people I’ve muted. But how nice to have days that are at least five minutes more pleasant.
So, mute freely and often. And if you don’t agree with me? Just mute me. I’ll never know!
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