Mark your calendars for the next NAMA Webinar, The Confluence of Social Networking and Mobile Marketing: The Value Proposition for Agribusiness, which will be held Thursday, October 9 at 1:00 p.m. Central Time.

Social networking refers to a broad class of web sites and services that allow people to connect in innovative and meaningful ways with friends, family, and business colleagues, as well as collaborate with people who have similar interests.

Over the last few years we’ve observed both the commercial maturation of and business interest in social networking, but marketing has not followed so quickly due to the lack of standards recognized across the many different social networking sites. Marketers are now better understanding how to monetize such sites.

With online ad spending exploding into a $50 billion+ market in 2008, there is plenty of opportunity. Marketers are excited by the prospect of reaching millions of consumers who are spending more time on their online profiles than in front of television and movie screens. They are particularly intrigued by the prospect of customizing ads to people’s specific interests.

Mobile marketing has experienced similar growth in the US over the past few years, and is now providing the means for brands to monetize the mobile channel, to make it engaging and compelling for consumers, while enabling those brands leverage another channel to create and solidify their position with consumers. The release of smart phones like Apple’s iPhone is allowing mobile marketing to gain traction in the US while at the same time providing owners with feature-rich interfaces. The mobile web now allows for highly personalized, location-specific marketing communications, and recent technology improvements have made it easier for marketers to deliver targeted and relevant content.

Social networking has become a global phenomenon, and going mobile with it is the next big thing. We’re now seeing millions of users of LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook and other social networks interacting with their virtual spaces while they’re on the move.

We’ll spend an hour with John Gilbert, Bader Rutter, examining the place where social networking meets mobile marketing, and understand the possibilities for marketers in the agribusiness space.

Register now for the webinar at http://payment.nama.org/webinar.htm. You will receive a confirmation email with the log-in information for the webinar.