Hi everyone!  I thought I had better share the details of one of the upcoming CAFRE courses for the New Year! I’m always up for some online learning – especially when it’s free! Do you have an interest in Online Social Media for Equine Businesses? Then you might want to enrol in this free course!

The email I received indicated:

Online Social Media for Equine Businesses

CAFRE will be delivering their online social media course for equine businesses in January 2017. The course will be delivered completely online and will consist of three presentations over a six week period. There will also be online discussion groups and support and an online assessment to test your knowledge. There will be a certificate of completion from CAFRE.

If you are interested in enrolling in the course, then check out this CAFRE Short Courses link and fill in your details!  The enrol tab is found on the right hand side of the page.

The course will be looking into the likes of:

• Social media channels and tools
• Measuring the success of social media and also
• Monitoring social media

The course is free of charge and will go live on Wednesday 11 January 2017 for 6 weeks.  If you’re interested, then participants need to register online by Wednesday 4^th January 2017.  You can’t go wrong with free education – especially if it’s focusing on your horse and business knowledge!

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On a side note, did you know that Equus Education is on Facebook?  Be sure to check it out and like the page to stay updated!  You can also follow me (Christine Meunier) on Twitter for site updates.  And for those on Pinterest, be sure to check out Equus Education here, too!

“A horse loves freedom, and the weariest old work horse will roll on the ground or break into a lumbering gallop when he is turned loose into the open.” ― Gerald Raftery

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I have started reading a book on ponies by Jenifer Morrissey. It is titled The Partnered Pony. One of the first chapters highlighted a job that a particular woman’s ponies had been carrying out since 2010: conservation grazing. In fact, she says:

Beginning in 2010, my ponies have done a very different kind of work. As conservation grazers, their job is to keep down the shrubs and coarse grass to keep the habitat suitable for rare butterflies to breed. I have no idea what my ponies and I might do next, but I’m sure they’ll do well. They’re all-rounders!

Conservation Grazing and Horses

What an interesting concept! This woman and her ponies are based in the United Kingdom and a quick search online allowed me to come across the Grazing Animals Project. The focus is on encouraging grazing from animals that helps to benefit wildlife, landscape and also cultural heritage.

The benefit of conservation grazing is twofold.  It meets the welfare needs of livestock whilst also allowing natural processes to occur. It is a process that focuses on less intensive land management techniques. The type of livestock utilised for conservation grazing takes into consideration feeding preferences of stock, their physiology and also animal behaviour. According to the GAP website:

Grazing livestock and associated activities played a key role in the formation and maintenance of many semi-natural habitats including grassland, heathland and pasture-woodland, through slowing or altering the successional trajectory of these habitats towards increased woodland cover. In addition to maintaining or restoring such habitats, grazing is also an essential component of many habitat (re)creation projects for example managed reversion from arable fields to species-rich grassland or the recreation of heathland.

I had never considered the use of horses or ponies by doing what they naturally do. And yet how wonderful to make use of grazing animals to benefit a particular habitat!  If you’re curious, you can read about the Focus on Equines section of their site. Training is also provided as shown on their site.

Recently I was informed by an entrepreneur that I am signed up to that there is one particular aspect of their business that brings in the most money. You may have guessed it by the title of this post – webinars! So I got to thinking, why not horse webinars?

At the end of the day, a webinar is a great way to share a concept or information with a large group of people, all around the world. An event time is chosen and people follow a particular link to all come together at the same time to view a webinar. So how could webinars be of interest to those in the horse industry?

They could be held to help educate horse owners about a particular product or service. They could be run as an interactive part of a horse course for students. There is really no limit to what could be presented in the webinar, as long as it is able to be shown over an internet connection!

How could this benefit those wanting a horse business? Easily! The webinars can be made in advance – they need to be visual and have audio, but that’s it! You can provide a section at the end for questions and answers – people can send questions to you in advance or they can type them in as the webinar proceeds. You can offer your products at the end at a discounted rate for those who attended the webinar, encouraging sales that benefit you financially.

A recent webinar I attended by Melyssa Griffin focused on making use of Pinterest for your business. It was free and I got so much out of it! I’m sure this was the same for the 200+ other attendees. And at the end I have no doubt many people signed up for her paid, Pinfinite Growth course. So people benefited from free information and Melissa presumably benefited from sales.

And the best bit? Because the webinar was pre-recorded, she was able to run the exact same webinar at a different time.  And this could suit other potential paying customers. Thinking residual income, again? Think horse webinars!