Expanding your Community\'s Presence Online with Social Media

Expanding
your

Community's
Presence
Online

with
Social
Media

Economic Development & Community
Marketing Experience

WHO
WE
WORK
WITH

  Website Design
Economic
Development
  Community Branding
Organiza3ons

U3lity
Company
ED
Teams

  Retail Recruitment Guides
  Wayfinding Signage
Chambers
of
Commerce

  Target Industry Marketing
Tourism

  Social Media & Blogs
Downtown
Redevelopment

  Content Development
Main
Street
Programs

  PowerPoint Presentations
Local
Governments
  E-Newsletters
Na3onal
Heritage
Areas
  Graphic Design

?
Why is having a strong
online presence for your
community important?

The vast majority of
research to narrow
down a list of potential
sites is done online.

!
If you haven’t made a
commitment to provide a
great website and actively
use social media, you are
missing the boat.

What We’ll Cover Today
1.
Deﬁning
Your
Community’s
Brand

3.
Exploring
Your
Social
Media
OpJons

4.
Managing
Social
Media
AcJviJes

2.
Monitoring
Your
Brand
Online

5.
Measuring
Results

6.
IntegraJng
with
Other
MarkeJng
AcJviJes

Establishing a strong, consistent brand
will help your community stand out.

Think about who you are
trying to reach

Site Selectors Retailers Industry Sectors Existing Industry

Industry Reps Stakeholders

Branding Your Community
  Your community brand captures both tangible
and intangible qualities that create a community
personality and make your community truly
unique
  Your brand is your
reputation and your
promise of distinct value We’re
Different!
  Your website is the primary place
to develop your brand online, but your brand
should be consistent across all social media

What can you talk about?
  Industry announcements
  New business startups/entrepreneurship
  Workforce programs and education
  Company profiles
  Local business news
  Unemployment updates and related reports
  Share blogs, videos, photos
  Learn from organizations featured in this
presentation

LinkedIn
  If nothing else, participate here
  Broad reach beyond local market
  This is your top business networking
tool, without having to travel to a
conference or other networking
event at a distance
  Participate daily - or weekly at a
minimum

Make sure all key employees have
profiles and actively build connections

Search for and actively participate in
industry groups locally, nationally,
internationally

LinkedIn groups are a great way to
monitor buzz and trends

Communicate and engage with site
selectors online

Make status updates of your own to
show up in feeds

Twitter
  Rapidly growing in importance
  Young professionals
  Tech Savvy participants
  Broad reach beyond local market
  Participate daily or multiple times
per day

Share videos, local news and
communicate with others

Promote your organization’s tweets with
your individual tweets, and vice versa

Search for topics to monitor trends
(#hashtags)

Using # and @
  Use @ to mention an organization or individual
by name – this shows up in their feed (and is
very desirable) @RedSageAL

  Use # to highlight topics to show up in searches
such as #EconDev #SiteSelection #Branding

  Create your own #hashtag for an event or
campaign such as #SEDC2012 or
#RS_SageAdvice – use to create buzz at an
event

Facebook
  Engagement and relationship building
with your local market primarily

  More personal, informal and friendly

  Know your goals for using this:
  Top of mind in local market
  Sharing local business news, or building
support for a local issue
  Cross sharing/SEO opportunity

Promote action on community issue

Share local economic
development news

Google+
  Very small (but growing)
audience
  At a minimum, duplicate the posts
you are posting to Facebook or
Twitter
  Cleaner navigation than Facebook –
almost works like a micro-site with
social media engagement

Blogging
  Terrific opportunity to give your
take on local news and trends –
plus this is the best way to:
  create new personalized content to
share across web and all channels
  Drive traffic to your website
  Increase the odds you will show up in
search engines – awesome SEO tool

Blogging
  Personal thoughts about current
news or situation
  Keep short – 1 paragraph is fine

  Best is at least once a week, but
even a well maintained once a
month blog is better than most
communities

Blog Topics
  New business announcements
  Career tech education locally
  Expansions – and why
  Entrepreneurship
  Local business resources
  New regulations
  Top jobs locally
  Etc.

Blog Software
  Part of your website
  Blogger
  Blogspot
  Wordpress

Doesn’t really matter what you use
as long as you are sharing and
promoting your blog

YouTube
  Highly recommend starting to
incorporate video into your
efforts, if you are not already
doing this

Greenville, SC
http://www.youtube.com/gogadc
  About GADC video
  Industry profiles
  Testimonial videos from young
professionals

Growing your audience:
Follow to be followed
  Follow industry leaders on social media and
on their blogs
  Promote those already championing for you
  Be an active follower by retweeting, sharing,
and commenting
  Actively participate in LinkedIn Groups
  Continuously find and add LinkedIn
connections

Give it time!
  It can take up to a year of diligent work to
see the results of a good social media
participation

Choosing How to Participate
  Choose how and where to participate:
What do you have time to be consistent
with? (Don’t start a blog if you aren’t
committed to keeping it going)
  Give it time: You won’t see results
overnight, be patient and be consistent

Carve out time:
  Devote a realistic amount of time for social
media each week – half hour a day? One
hour a week?
  Make it a priority and be committed to it
  Scale back and focus on one thing if time
is an issue
  Don’t forget to take the time to plan in
advance

Build a process
  Add an agenda item to a weekly or
monthly meeting: what should we blog
about this week? What is going on that we
want to talk about in social media?
  Decide what topics you’ll cover: use an
editorial calendar to keep things organized
but make sure you build in flexibility too

Share the load:
  Encourage ideas from employees or
members of your organization
  Give others a chance to create blogs,
posts, videos, photos, and more
  Share the floor with other industry experts
and guests
  You don’t have to create everything –
retweet and share other’s posts

Schedule ahead:
  Great free (or inexpensive) tools for this:
•  Facebook – allows scheduling now
•  CrowdBooster.com – Facebook Page & Twitter
•  HootSuite.com – Facebook and Twitter
•  TweetDeck – Facebook, Twitter

Know what is being said
  Whether you use social media or not,
people will still be talking about your
organization and your community online

  Monitor all social media platforms for
comments and respond to comments as
quickly as you can

Respond quickly to any
negative posts
  If at all possible, respond to negative posts
rather than deleting them from your feeds
  Do not get into a “he said she said”
argument if the post was negative –
respond professionally and move it offline

A textbook best practice
response:

Easy monitoring:
NutshellMail.com
  Offered by Constant Contact
  Monitors mentions and activity:
•  Facebook
•  Twitter
•  LinkedIn
•  Foursquare
  Reports are emailed to you
  FREE!

Twitter.com/Search
  Search for variations
  Find people singing your praises and
follow them
  Search for your competitors
  Search for industry terms

www.Google.com/Alerts
  Set up alerts for your company name,
products, and other identifying keywords
  Set up alerts associated with your
competitors
  Set up alerts for terms associated with
your industry

Sample Social Media Goals:
  Increase the number of people who
actively engage with a like or a share or a
mention by 5 each month
  Get three-four responses on average for
all posts within one month
  Gain 10 new followers/fans each month

Measure website traffic
with Google Analytics:
Answers questions such as:
  How much traffic is coming to the site?
  How did visitors get to the site?
  What keywords are working best?
  What content is working best?
  Is social media & blogging driving traffic?
  How did social users engage with the site?

Facebook Insights
  Answers questions such as:
•  How did people respond to my posts?
•  How far is my reach?
•  How much has my following grown?
•  Which types of posts are the most shared and
commented on?

Measure your online influence
with Klout.com
•  Measures engagement with your social media accounts
•  Measures reach by the number of people who share your
posts and how many followers they expose you to
•  Requires very consistent effort and very high quality posts
to score high
•  Great way to look at who is most influential online and
how they are using social media

Don’t forget to promote social
media engagement
  Links and feeds on your website
  Icons on your business cards and print
materials
  Actively promote and link to from e-
newsletters
  Anywhere you market yourself – make
sure you are promoting social media

We’re done!
1.
Deﬁning
Your
Community’s
Brand

3.
Exploring
Your
Social
Media
OpJons

4.
Managing
Social
Media
AcJviJes

2.
Monitoring
Your
Brand
Online

5.
Measuring
Results

6.
IntegraJng
with
Other
MarkeJng
AcJviJes

Thank you!
Ellen Didier, President
Red Sage Communications, Inc.
Stop by my booth!

www.RedSageOnline.com
www.CommunityResults.com

facebook.com/redsage twitter.com/ellendidier linkedin.com/in/
ellendidier

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