Foodies are hungry for information. But watching the Food Network and reading cooking magazines just aren’t enough to satisfy them anymore. They want to be online, posting recipes, learning new culinary tips, sharing their own exquisite creations and absorbing feedback from other like-minded foodies. This diverse group of individuals — who continue to influence the food grown by America’s farmers and ranchers — and their thirst for knowledge have created the perfect recipe for social media outreach.

Fortunately, online cravings for fast and easy information are satisfied by just a few clicks in the social media world. Foodies are grazing and gorging on all types of social media: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, blogs, podcasts, social bookmarking sites and RSS feeds, just to name a few.

According to a Consumer Internet Barometer survey, the most popular site is Facebook, used by 78 percent of online households, followed by MySpace (42 percent), LinkedIn (17 percent) and Twitter (10 percent).

The growing popularity of Web-based tools like Facebook and Twitter is not only changing the way people communicate with one another, but also shapes the way they form opinions and decide which trends to follow.

Gilmer Dairy Farm in Lamar County, Ala., is reaching out to consumers through Facebook. The farm family uses a Facebook page to entertain and inform consumers about their business and industry trends while encouraging healthy habits. The farm’s Facebook “status update” section serves as a reminder to consumers: “Be sure to get your recommended three servings of dairy products today!”

In addition to updating fans about how the dairy operates, the Gilmers encourage interaction.

“Ask a farmer” is a discussion board on the fan page where people can ask questions about the farm, the dairy industry or even agriculture in general. A recent voting contest for “Best 2009 Milk Mustache” proved to be extremely popular and allowed fans of the site to interact with the Gilmers. Fans quickly clicked through a series of milk mustache photos and voted for their favorite in celebration of “June is Dairy Month.”

“Social media offers farmers a global platform to interact with consumers directly instead of depending on a reporter to do it for them,” Chuck Zimmerman, co-owner of ZimmComm New Media told Foodie News.

Gilmer and other producers also use the micro-blogging site Twitter, with its 140-character-limited messages (tweets) to share their viewpoints with consumers who “follow” them.

It’s fast and easy to open a free Twitter account at www.twitter.com. Once you have joined, search for “FarmBureau,” "GilmerDairy" and people you know by name...follow them too, to receive and share the latest information.