This presentation was made at the Economic Development Association of Alabama Winter Conference in January, 2013.

1. Expanding
your
Community's
Presence
Online
with
Social
Media

2. 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

3. ?
Why is having a strong
online presence for your
community important?

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

5. !
If you haven’t made a
commitment to provide a
great website and actively
use social media, you are
missing the boat.

6. What are your top options?

7. 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

8. 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

9. Make sure all key employees have
profiles and actively build connections

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

18. Where else can you find groups?

20. LinkedIn groups are a great way to
monitor buzz and trends

21. Communicate and engage with site
selectors online

22. Make status updates of your own to
show up in feeds

23. You can now create “company” pages on
LinkedIn

24. Visitors can view your staff and bios

25. And learn more about your products
and services

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

27. Continue your branding

28. Share videos, local news and
communicate with others

30. Using # and @
 Use @ to mention an organization or
individual by name – this shows up in
their feed (and is very desirable)
@RedSageAL or @EllenDidier
 Use # to highlight topics to show up in
searches such as #EconDev
#SiteSelection or #Branding

32. Communicate with re-tweets and
responses

33. Search for topics to monitor trends
(#hashtags)

35. Create your own #HashTag
for an event or promotion

43. 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

44. Promote action on community issue

45. Share local economic
development news

46. 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

47. Google+ Profile example

48. Google+ Profile example

49. 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

50. 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 pull off

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

52. 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

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

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

60. Jacksonville-Onslow, NC

61. 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

62. 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

63. 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

64. 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

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

66. Monitor all networks
from one place

67. Distribute posts to all your
networks at once

68. Schedule your posts to show
up later

69. 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

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

71. What’s the point?
 Make Connections!!!
 Online Networking!!!
 Spread News!!!
 Discuss Trends!!!
 Educate!!!
 Engage Stakeholders!!!
Economic Development is a relationship
business when it comes to closing deals

72. 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

73. Thank you!
Ellen Didier, President
Red Sage Communications, Inc.
www.RedSageOnline.com
Stop by my booth!
#RedSageCar #EDAA2013
facebook.com/redsage twitter.com/ellendidier linkedin.com/in/
ellendidier