Social Media Reporters takes on AgriTourism Week

Where to now Social Media? Social media has become a very efficient means of communication nowadays. People (specifically youths) have revolved so much around technology, and the knowledge that they gain from these concepts have been utilized and applied to everyday life activities. Because social media is so big now, it is very easy to get a hold of a large group of audience all over the world. And having access and using the right social media tools, each and everyone has the potential to gather everyone’s attention and interact with one another on-line. 

History in the making

The first-ever Pacific Community AgriTourism week was held from the 29^th June to 3^rd July at Sofitel, Denarau, Nadi, Fiji, This history in the making event is a joint collaborative effort of the European Union funded Pacific Agriculture Policy Project (PAPP) implemented by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) and the EU funded Pacific Regional Capacity Building Programme implemented by the South Pacific Tourism Organisation (SPTO) as well as the School of Tourism and Hospitality Management, University of the South Pacific (USP). The African Caribbean Pacific – European Union (ACP-EU), Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) and the Pacific Islands Private Sector Organisation (PIPSO) were also strategic partners providing technical and business perspective to the events. 

Social Media's role

The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation’s (CTA) in collaboration with the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) was supporting a team of young social reporters to attend and report on the event throughout the week. Unfortunately there were only eight participants from around the Pacific region that were selected to report on-site for this historical event. Other interested participants were also welcomed to join in the discussions as on-line reporters. The two-day social media training for the young social reporters was held on 27th - 28th June just before the main event. 

Nevertheless, the main goal for the social media reporting workshop was to learn the concepts of social networking tools and applying them to raise awareness for a series of events and reaching out to a wider audience remotely. These social networking tools includes; Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Blogging, Hootsuite, Flickr, and Slideshare. 

What was accomplished...

Having the main event focusing "linking Agriculture to the Tourism sector", everyone gained so much from witnessing different perspectives from farmers, chefs, hoteliers and  relevant partners to the event. The social media team managed to cover most of the event sessions throughout the week, the articles can be followed up on CTA's blog site and tweet messages through #PacAgriTo

These types of training's can be applied to Niue's Agricultural sector in terms of communicating and collaborating information's worldwide. Especially when holding workshops, seminars and conferences.