Courtney Vondracek

Dr. Qu

AgEds 412

October 29, 2021

Iowa State University Extension and Outreach - Linn County

Professional Internship Project

Objective

The concept of extension services was first born in Iowa, more specifically near Hull,

Iowa. With the creation of the land grant college system in 1862, Iowa was the first state to

accept this provision, and thus Iowa State University was born. The university had firm roots in

agriculture, as at the time the United States had a clear agricultural orientation. In 1877 Congress

saw the need for the growth of agricultural education, and approved funds for research stations

which further set the stage for the creation of extension services (Heronemus). Iowa State

Extension and Outreach first began with the enactment of the Farm Aid Association Act of 1913.

This bill permitted and then later required each county in the state of Iowa to set aside funds for

county extension work and agents. Local Farm Bureau offices initially filled this role but in 1955

Iowa legislature passed the County Agricultural Extension Law which created the county

extension councils we see today (Iowa State University Extension and Outreach History).

In 1914 Congress saw a need for nation-wide extension services, passing the Smith-Level

Act. This was a partnership between USDA and the states, in which the states were given funds

for extension services as long as they provided matching funds. Throughout the over 100 years

that extension has existed, various principles have guided the work done at both county and state
level (Heronemus). Today, the mission of Iowa State University Extension and Outreach is to

“build a strong Iowa by engaging all Iowans in research, education, and extension experiences to

address current and emerging real-life challenges. Iowa State Extension and Outreach operates at

both the county and state levels, with state headquarters located in Ames and county offices in

each of Iowa’s 99 counties. Local offices create programs and partnerships based on their area’s

needs and interests, but follow guidance from the state office (About ISU Extension and

Outreach).”

The specific audiences that I identified in my time working with the Linn County

Extension Office were 4-H families, non 4-H families with elementary aged children, and the

general public who does not have an agricultural background but has an interest in locally grown

foods. The primary way that the Linn County Office communicates with their 4-H families

audience is through the use of electronic communication. Part of my duties included sending

email updates and reminders of upcoming dates and deadlines. A large facet of education and

outreach in extension services comes through day camps marketed towards elementary aged

children. These camps allow children to explore various aspects of STEM and agriculture

through camps with themes such as “Invent STEM,” “Dig In,” and “Fizz, Bubble, Goo (4-H Day

Camps).” By providing an opportunity for these children to explore topics related to Iowa

agriculture and STEM related topics, extension services are able to begin sharing the benefits

and realities of agriculture at a young age.

Another large form of communication is the 4-H fair. The 4-H fair allows the opportunity

to communicate with all three audiences at various levels. There are more specialized education

opportunities for the 4-H members, such as livestock shows and judging contests. There are very

surface level educational opportunities for elementary aged children such as a petting zoo and
baby chick hatching. Finally they are able to communicate with a general public with an interest

in local agriculture through various food contests. Other forms of communication through

extension services include social media, newsletters, television and radio ads, and written

articles. Altogether, extension services work to educate both knowledgeable and uninformed

audiences on subjects related to agriculture and life sciences.

The objective I chose to focus on during the course of my internship was increasing the

organization’s visibility. My specific goal was to inform the non 4-H families audience that I had

identified as to the benefits and programs offered by the local extension office. I found this goal

to be of interest because not only would it allow me to help educate others but would also focus

on recruiting members for the 4-H program. This goal is important to this organization because it

specifically addresses the mission of the Iowa State Extension and Outreach organization.

Increasing the visibility of the Linn County office would help to engage their publics in

education and enrichment programs while helping to address current and future challenges.

As my role this summer was the 4-H and Youth intern, I wanted to focus my energy

specifically on the visibility of the 4-H program and the outreach programs that the Linn County

Extension Office offers. This included the many facets of their 4-H program as well as their day

camps. Increasing the visibility of these programs was especially important this year, as they

have seen a drop in numbers due to the Covid-19 pandemic. An extremely successful project

would not only bring membership numbers back to where they were before the pandemic, but

would surpass these numbers to increase the involvement of the community in extension

programs.

Lack of visibility is a problem that affects the agriculture industry as a whole. Even when

consumers are aware that the organization exists, there is a fundamental disconnect between
what the organization actually does and what the consumer thinks they do. For example, when

speaking to people at various community events this past summer the initial reaction I had when

telling people about the programs that Linn County offers was “oh I thought they just did the

fair.” Oftentimes they had not heard about the day camps, healthy living programs, or gardening

help services offered by the extension office. This is a large-scale problem in the industry,

especially on the livestock side. The average American is at least three generations removed

from the farm, and has virtually no idea where their food comes from. Although the industry is

working to try and show consumers the realities of modern agriculture and farming, the truth is a

lot of the audiences they are trying to reach have very outdated ideas about what goes on at a

farm.

Literature Review

In today’s world it is important for communicators to understand a variety of

communication models and theories as they are useful in a variety of situations in order to help

their audience receive and understand messages. As stated by a report on the competencies

needed by today’s agricultural communicators “communication competencies and skills needed

by agricultural communication graduates are constantly changing because of the dynamic nature

of the technology used by communication professionals (Morgan).” With the nature of

agriculture constantly evolving, communicators similarly need to be constantly changing their

strategies for reaching their audiences and how they compose their messaging.

In order to ensure that a message is clearly and accurately received by your intended

audience, framing your message correctly is just as important, if not more important than the

actual contents of the message. The basis of framing theory is that “an issue can be viewed from

a variety of perspectives and be construed as having implications for multiple values or

considerations (Chong).” Framing a message can influence how the audience understands and

perceives that message. In one study, researchers looked at what factors led an audience to have a

negative or positive attitude towards a message. They found that audiences had a more positive

reaction to messages framed through a lens of being a small family farm rather than “a big

industry farm.” Researchers concluded that in order to increase favorable attitudes from

consumers, communicators should focus on framing their messages through lenses that are

important to their audiences and avoid messaging that are inaccurate (Goodwin).

In an article reviewing the concept of Framing Theory the authors recalled earlier studies

which researched how framing of messages influenced people’s opinions on the subject. They

found that when surveying people about their opinion on the rights of groups to hold a rally in

which they spread hate speech, when framed through the lens of protecting free speech

participants were more likely to have a favorable opinion than when framed through the lens of

preventing violence (Chong). In this way, communicators need to be careful in the framing of

their messages because it is easy to cause subtle shifts in the attitudes of their audience. It is also

important to remember that although messages might be received by multiple audiences, those

audiences will have different feelings towards the framing. For example, for a message about

new technology farmers might prefer a more science focused approach, while consumers might

prefer framing that focuses on how this will affect animal welfare.

With the main focus of our advertisement for our recruitment event being through social

media, it is important to understand how to effectively communicate over the internet. One

article made the claim that “McLuhan’s well known argument ‘the medium is the message’

might be rephrased ‘the channel is the message’ (Jeffres).” There may be many different options

for channels within the same medium. For example, within social media we can choose to
advertise on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, and many more. It is important to

know what channel is best to reach your intended audience, as well as how to craft a message

that they will understand and act on. The article goes on to explain how various communications

theories need to be updated when being used in terms of social media and changing technologies.

In particular it talks about how important it is to link the media being created to a place or

community. It suggests that when a person is online they are “‘everywhere’, and thus ‘nowhere

in particular’ (Jeffres).” This is relevant to my objective as it is very important for us to link our

event to a specific community, Linn County. We will need to be specific in our communication to

build a relationship with our audience which focuses on the local community.

An interesting benefit to using social media as a marketing and communication tool is

that it switches the audience from being passive to active. One article analyzed a marketing

campaign by Queensland, Australia which challenged the traditional linear model of

communication. This campaign utilized a job ad which was titled “‘The best job in the world,’

offering $150,000 for six months of work as an island caretaker in the Great Barrier Reef.” The

marketing campaign was extremely effective and garnered more than thirty thousand video

applications. This resulted in a boost in tourism and media coverage (Ketter). The reason that

this campaign was so successful was not simply the subject, the Great Barrier Reef, but because

of the inventive way that it was marketed. The communicators used their receivers as active

participants and invited them to submit videos talking about why they wanted to go to the island

for six months. This allowed the campaign to spread like wildfire across the internet and

increased the size of the audience and opened communicators eyes to a new way of reaching

people.
 Within the realm of using social media as a communications platform, there are many

options for types of posts. One study that was done compared the engagement on different types

of Facebook posts. The researchers found that posts with photos get significantly more

engagement than any other types of posts. They also found that longer posts tend to get more

engagement and posts with links get less engagement (Carboni). This is relevant to my objective

as in order to promote our recruitment event, we will be running a marketing campaign on the

Linn County Extension’s social media pages. This data will help us to target our social media

posts in a way that promotes engagement. The study was done with a focus on non-profit groups,

which Linn County Extension is, which makes the data even more relevant to our project.

Although this research was done only on Facebook, it is likely that it will be relevant to other

platforms as well. We also plan to do the majority of our marketing through Facebook using

targeted ads and by asking our current followers to share posts and bring friends to the event.

Overall, there is a lot to be considered when developing a communication plan. The

above information should be considered when deciding how to implement the marketing strategy

for Linn County 4-H Extension’s recruitment night. It is important to consider all factors when

communicating to various publics as the information needs to be accurate, understandable, and

relevant. The communication theories and models discussed in this literature review provide a

solid foundation for building a successful strategy.

Strategies and Implementation

When beginning to put together a marketing strategy for our recruitment night, the first

discussion point was the framing of our message. From my literature review it is clear that how a

message is framed is vital to the understanding and positive response from the intended

audience. Rather than promoting the event strictly as a recruitment event, we chose to market it
as a 4-H fun night, in which existing 4-H families were invited to bring their friends and all

community members were invited. We further implemented this strategy by focusing the

activities offered and advertised to be appealing to our target audience of young families, such as

rock climbing, a scavenger hunt, and lego challenges.

It was also decided that our main message channel would be the social media site of

Facebook. We came to the conclusion that this channel would allow us to reach the largest

number of people within our target audience, parents with children in kindergarten through high

school in Linn County, and would allow us to target our advertisements to them most effectively.

Our biggest target section of our audience was parents with children entering into a grade

between first and fourth grade who live within Linn County. This is because we wanted to target

our recruitment towards people who most likely had not already heard of 4-H or been a part of

4-H, and who would be longtime members should they decide to join. The implementation of

this strategy included boosting our posts about the event and targeting them to parents in Linn

County.

Our final marketing strategy involved using specific types of posts on social media in

order to boost our engagement. As seen in my literature review, posts with photos get

significantly more engagement as do longer posts. We also encouraged engagement by creating

an event post which allowed people to mark if they were interested in the event or that they

planned on attending, and also allowed them to see other people that were interested in or

attending the event. Part of our marketing strategy implementation was the tagline “bring your

friends” and we encouraged our existing 4-H families to share our posts about the event for their

friends to see.

Results
 The strategies that we utilized in order to promote our event were very successful. Before

the recruitment night happened, we created an event on Linn County 4-H’s Facebook page which

allowed people to mark if they planned to attend or were interested in the event. This proved

successful as we had 15 people mark that they would be attending the event, and 34 say that they

were interested (Figure 1). These results came directly from our strategy of using social media,

and specifically Facebook as our main marketing channel to connect with our audience. Of those

who responded to our event, the majority of them were within our target audience, and a good

number were not already involved with 4-H.

Beyond responding to the event post, we got a lot of interaction with our other posts

about the event. We used our marketing strategy of sharing posts with images and posts that were

longer in order to try and increase interactions with them. This proved to also be very successful,

with posts about the 4-H Fun Night being among the most popular on the Linn County 4-H page.

Although not the most liked post that was made, one post in particular from September 17th

which invited community members to come to the event had 7 shares, a large number compared

to other posts on the page (Figure 6).

Overall, the event proved to be a large success for Linn County Extension and Outreach.

A total of 137 youth attended the event, with a good mix of 4-H members and non-members.

Extension staff spoke with visitors that were interested in joining 4-H, and also provided

activities and snacks to 4-H families and the general public (Figures 2-5). A total of 20 families

wanted more information about 4-H and how to join. Currently the Linn County Extension

Office is working with six of those families to find a 4-H club in the county that is a good fit for

them and will be enrolling in 4-H within the next month. This event accomplished my objective
of increasing the visibility of Linn County Extension, and also my goal of recruiting new

members for Linn County 4-H.

Reflection

Throughout my time with Linn County Extension this summer I was able to practice my

communication skills and think critically about problems that are faced by agricultural

communicators in today’s society. The biggest challenge that I identified for Linn County

Extension specifically was organizational visibility. Before being tasked with planning an event

to cap off my summer, part of my internship required me to be at various events and interact with

the general public in Linn County. The most common piece of feedback that I got when

discussing all of the programs and events put on by 4-H and extension was that people were not

even aware that these were extension programs.

During the planning and marketing process I gained key insights into how this problem of

lack of visibility can be solved. I learned that when the biggest challenge is a lack of visibility,

the most important factor is knowing exactly who your target audience is. This is so you can be

very specific about targeting your communications, so that you can not only reach your audience,

but have your message understood. It is also important to know your audience to ensure that the

product or service you are promoting is something that would actually be of interest to them.

The next step that I foresee for Linn County Extension to continue working on their lack

of visibility is to continue to work on outreach with the public, and to target various audiences

with different messages and communication channels. Although 4-H is a large part of extension,

it is not the only service that it offers. Another large part of the Linn County Extension Office

was their master gardeners. This has a very different target audience than 4-H, and I believe that

it should be their next service they promote to increase visibility within the community.
Increasing organizational visibility is one of the hardest, but most important, challenges in all of

agricultural communications. Overall, I feel that I was able to successfully increase the visibility

of Linn County Extension through my internship project of planning and marketing a recruitment

event.

Revisions and Reflection

The only changes that I made in my revision process were some grammatical corrections

and adding or changing punctuation. These were the only suggested edits from the feedback that

I received. I read through my paper again, and ensured that everything was grammatically correct

and made sense with the flow of my thought process.

 Supporting Figures

Figure 1

Figure 2
Figure 3

Figure 4
Figure 5

Figure 6
 Bibliography

“4-H Day Camps.” Iowa State University Extension and Outreach,

www.extension.iastate.edu/linn/content/4h-day-camps.

“About ISU Extension and Outreach.” Iowa State University Extension,

www.extension.iastate.edu/content/about-isu-extension.

Carboni, Julia L, and Sarah P. Maxwell. “Effective Social Media Engagement for Nonprofits:

What Matters?” Journal of Public and Nonprofit Affairs, vol. 1, no. 1, 2015, p. 18.,

doi:10.20899/jpna.1.1.18-28.

Chong, Dennis, and James N. Druckman. “Framing Theory.” Annual Review of Political Science,

vol. 10, no. 1, 2007, pp. 103–126., doi:10.1146/annurev.polisci.10.072805.103054.

Goodwin, Joy N., et al. “Is Perception Reality? Improving Agricultural Messages by Discovering

How Consumers Perceive Messages.” Journal of Applied Communications, vol. 95, no.

3, 15 Dec. 2011, p. 21. Gale Academic OneFile.

Heronemus, Cheryl. “History of Iowa State University Extension and Outreach.” 31 Mar. 2014.

“Iowa State University Extension and Outreach History.” Iowa State University Extension and

Outreach.

Jeffres, Leo W. “Mass Communication Theories in a Time of Changing Technologies.” Mass

Communication and Society, vol. 18, no. 5, 2015, pp. 523–530.

Ketter, Eran, and Eli Avraham. “The Social Revolution of Place Marketing: The Growing Power

of Users in Social Media Campaigns.” Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, vol. 8, no.

4, 2012, pp. 285–294., doi:10.1057/pb.2012.20.

Morgan, A. Christian, and K. Jill Rucker. “Competencies Needed by Agricultural

Communication Undergraduates: An Academic Perspective.” Journal of Applied

Communications, vol. 97, no. 1, Mar. 2013, p. 50. Gale Academic OneFile.