American Society of Agronomy Members' Interest, Usage, and Obstacles in Using Social Media.

Social media is prevalent our daily lives and it is important to determine the most effective way to incorporate its use.  The American Society of Agronomy combines many different groups from undergraduate students to retired professionals and academic faculty to private consultants.  Therefore, it is important to identify how social media is being used by the Society and some of the interest, perceptions, and obstacles present within.  Survey research was implemented to identify these factors by emailing an online questionnaire to all current members (n = 6916) in March 2014.  Based on the responses received, the top 5 social media resources used for professional activities were LinkedIn (47%), Twitter (15%), Facebook (13%), ResearchGate (7%), and Google+ (5%). About 62% used social media in some way for their professional duties.  Of these 62%, however, only 16% felt that they used social media to its fullest extent.  For those that did not use social media in their professional activities, most identified that it was too public (49%), they had no time (45%), and they were not interested (43%).  For those that did use it in their programming, most felt that it was an effective way to reach larger audiences (85%), connect with colleagues (80%), broadcast their messages (77%), connect with clients or customers (74%), reach their target audiences (69%), keep updated on new research (62%), enhance job effectiveness (56%), and accomplish tasks quickly (54%).  This disconnect between users and non-users indicates the need to provide more education on using social media effectively.