We all employ technology to streamline efforts or offer new capabilities, but it has become increasingly obvious that the technology alone accomplishes nothing.

You need talent, both eager and trained, to syphon every last drip of innovation your tools can produce. That talent also has to understand the business enough to tell you when the tool just isn't good enough.

Without that talent, you are apt to under-utilize the tech you own, buy more technology than you need and not be ready to move when the industry moves. That's dangerous.

One tool that Rooster employs in great depth is Brandwatch for social media monitoring. It's part insurance, in that we are able to see when things happen for the industry or our clients. It's part offense, because it allows us to watch the competition. But it's also a fantastic education, allowing us to constantly be monitoring the conversation in U.S. domestic agriculture.

There have been 256,000 relevant mentions tied to U.S. domestic agricultural topics over the past 31 days. Without a tool, it would be a challenge to know there was a spike on Nov. 2 at 8 a.m., the most popular day is Monday, joy is the emotion most prevalent and the top bubble of mentions throughout the day is over lunch. See below:

TECH: Most marketers expect their marketing technology budget to shrink. MORE

SOCIAL: Some brands left Facebook and Twitter in July and didn't return, finding success in places like the Peacock network, SnapChat, Pinterest, YouTube and others. MORE ... The step most businesses leave out of their social strategy is actually being social. MORE ... Amid the political chaos, some users are leaving Facebook for Parler. MORE ... Concerned about censorship from the platforms? Livestream. MORE

DIGITAL MARKETING: Experts from around our industry discussed the musts and must nots in digital marketing during the third session of Ag Marketing in the Digital Age. MORE ... 5G has the potential to change how you do things and make you more comfortable to challenge the status quo. MORE ... If you just took full advantage of the tools you already have in 2021, you will be ahead of the game. MORE ... We are in a tool innovation lull. Time to get introspective. MORE .. A Biden presidency will not curb tech scrutiny. MORE ... How much of your marketing is devoted to retaining your current customers? MORE ... If the Google antitrust story doesn't have your attention, think about a world where Google has to sell Chrome. MORE ... Marketing Mix Modeling could be the en vogue digital marketing strategy in the post-cookie world. MORE ... Here are a few upcoming webinars covering digital marketing issues:

PROGRAMMATIC/DISPLAY: Still trying to figure out what programmatic is and isn't? Here is a primer. MORE ... Cheap impressions out of context and with muddy audience targeting is a bad tactic. MORE

CONTENT MARKETING: 2020 is thankfully coming to an end soon. Learn from it by looking back, auditing the tools you use, spend your remaining budget, look for broken things and seek feedback from your various audiences. MORE ... There are many ways to do content marketing, but inserting considerations for your resources and production are musts. MORE ... Live-stream videos can tell your brand or product stories effectively with substantially more reach than sales people dialing for dollars. MORE ... Video has ballooned in usage due to the popularity of TikTok. If you are still skeptical, read this. MORE ... should you write more short-form content or long-form content? Depends. MORE ... Seasonal checklists, holiday-themed ebooks, 12 days of Christmas email campaigns ... these are a few of what could be your favorite things. MORE ... Consider where, when and how your reader will use your content and then write to that style and length. MORE

SEARCH: SEO is complex and ever-changing. Sounds like a good area to turn over to the machines. MORE ... AI, voice, videos and mobile will all play larger roles in 2021 ... on, and Google, of course. MORE ... SafeCont is one player in the AI/SEO realm. MORE ... Amid the political chaos, some users are leaving Google for Duck, Duck Go. MORE ... Be nimble in 2021 because data won't be as plentiful. MORE

VIDEO: The connected TV market, along with the programmatic players pouring advertising into them, is a growing market and something you should be doing in 2021. MORE ... Bloomberg is all in on a streaming future. MORE ... Is the CTV ad fraud problem as bad as we thought? Probably not. MORE

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: Ethical frameworks are failing due to lack of specificity. MORE

EMAIL: Endeavor to personalize, design for the audience and serve your audience (not those you hope to acquire). MORE ... Adding alt text to your most important call to action image is one of the nine areas this email send checklist covers. MORE

PRIVACY: 55 percent of consumers would happily share data in return for some value. The trouble is that this value exchange hasn't been explained up front, fueling the current privacy-centered, dataless future of digital. MORE

DATA: First, grow your first-party audience data. Second, supplement with other data sources where you are lacking. Third, make your data usable for real-world marketing. Then, measure performance and grow your data in new directions. MORE