atlas / iedc leveraging social media

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Leveraging Social Media

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Your Hosts

Ben WrightCEO, Atlas Advertising

Marty VanagsCEO, EDC of Bloomington-Normal IL

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About Atlas AdvertisingAtlas Advertising helps economic developers reach national and international prospect and site selection audiences. We deliver branding, website development, GIS mapping, research, social media, and creative services professionally and with a staff experienced in economic development. Unlike firms with little or no economic development experience, Atlas Advertising uses a proven mix of economic development marketing tactics that generate interest from site selection audiences.

Atlas Advertising is led by a former economic development practitioner and has worked with 50+ different economic development clients in 30 states. Our approach and experience means that our campaigns generate an average of three to ten times the response of other campaigns.

Featured clients:– State of Ohio– Indy Partnership– City of San Francisco– Greater Phoenix Economic Council – Greater Omaha Economic Development Partnership

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About the Economic Development Council of the Bloomington-Normal area•The EDC helps businesses in McLean County grow and attracts new businesses to our community. •We are a leadership organization, investing our community's assets to grow and improve our prosperity and quality of life.

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Poll Question: What Social Media Tool do you want to learn about the most?

a) facebook

b) Twitter

c) LinkedIn

d) Blog

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Poll Question: Do you have an active LinkedIn account?

a) Yes

b) No

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Poll Question: Do you have an active Twitter account for your organization?

a) Yes

b) No

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Question format for this webinar, and for discussion afterward:

Use this hashtag on twitter:

#getsocialed

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Cool stuff to do/download

• Join us for future “Compete Smarter 2010” webinars

• Follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/AtlasAd

• Read more at our Blog, “Latitude”: http://blog.atlas-advertising.com

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Outline

1. Introductions

2. Social Media as a Conversation

3. Social Media as a way to achieve tangible goals

4. Eight things you should be doing with Social Media today

5. How one practitioner has made the most of social media

6. Wrap up

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Social Media as Conversation

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Why all of this seems so simple…

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Social Media as a Tactic to Achieve Tangible Goals

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Goals that mattered to Bloomington-Normal• Drive more visits to the BNBiz.org

website• Drive more visits to the blog• Highlight the technological acumen of

the organization• Improve our standing in the community

—public relations

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Eight Things you should be doing with Social Media Today

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Eight things you should be doing with Social Media today

1. Start blogging – or else you will be swallowed up by hyperlocal content

2. Develop a dialogue with your workforce and residents with Facebook

3. Use Twitter to engage your investors and community stakeholders, and to share information about your community

4. Integrate Social Media and sharing into your websites5. Use a variety of tools to recruit Site Selectors and

prospects to online meetings fam tours. 6. Develop a dedicated approach to using LinkedIn for

prospecting 7. Extend your inbox by using Xobni and LinkedIn

Dashboard8. Keep and eye on new platforms, such as foursquare

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Items the EDC of Bloomington-Normal has focused on

1. Started blogging – to drive traffic and increase conversation

2. Develop a dialogue with your workforce and residents with Facebook

3. Use Twitter to engage your investors and community stakeholders, and to share information about your community

4. Integrate Social Media and sharing into your websites5. Use a variety of tools to recruit Site Selectors and

prospects to online meetings fam tours. 6. Develop a dedicated approach to using LinkedIn for

prospecting 7. Extend your inbox by using Xobni and LinkedIn

Dashboard8. Keep and eye on new platforms, such as foursquare

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How Bloomington – Normal Got started

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Step 1: Observation and Study

1. Listened to my daughters “We don’t email.” 2. Read books, such as “Growing Up Digital” and

“Socialnomics”

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Step 2: Enhanced our website and blog

1. Website detail here2. Blog detail here

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Poll Question: How often does a member of your organization post content to your website? a) Every day

b) Weekly

c) Monthly

d) Quarterly or longer

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Poll Question: Does your organization have a blog?

a) Yes

b) No

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Step 3: Experimented with Twitter and Facebook1. We use Twitter multiple times per week to distribute blog

posts2. We use Facebook multiple times per week to engage our

local audiences

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Poll Question: Do you have an active Facebook fan page for your organization?

a) Yes

b) No

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Step 4: Augmented all of it with a local radio show1. We also get the message out through our radio show2. The focus is on getting the word out about

entrepreneurship, the challenges and joys of operating a small business and highlighting the programs we offer to small business.

3. It serves as another way to tie potential listeners, clients, and others into the EDC and again, show them that we are advanced in all our communications styles.

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Step 5: Shed old ways of doing things that weren’t adding value

1. Social media has allowed us to make our newsletter quarterly instead of monthly.

2. We also staffed the workflow so that our staff writes for the blog, then we use the blog postings as our newsletters material. The information may hit some people twice, some for the first time.

3. We now have our own “channels” to advertise, promote and communicate our programs, services, and other activities. We don’t have to rely on traditional media “one-way” tools (i.e. radio, tv, newspapers)

4. It gives MORE opportunity to communicate in ways we didn’t have before.

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Step 6: Used common sense to avoid controversy

1. I talk about the following topics online and in out various media:a) The TED video of the week. A great source of interesting video about

innovation, science, the arts, awesome ideas (Monday).b) Professional and personal development. Information about

professional development tools, skills and practices; Examples include organizational skills, active listening, education. (Tuesday)

c) Economic Development best practices and tools. What can ED professionals do in their own community to be better ? What are some of the best practices among local EDO’s. Include articles and personal experience. (Wednesday)

d) Entrepreneurship. What are the trends in small business development and entrepreneurship? Articles, experiences and information from my radio show. (Thursday)

2. I stay away from the following topics online. a) Politics….local and national in particularb) Local controversial issues

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How the Research Shakes Out – Are your customers really using social media?

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Who we interviewed, October 2009

• Estate Inc., New Mexico• Mike Barnes Group, Inc., Texas• Colliers Location Agency &

Incentives Practice, Indiana• McCallum Sweeney Consulting,

South Carolina• Koll Development Company,

Texas• CB Richard Ellis, Washington• Studley Inc., Pennsylvania• Greenfield Development

Company, North Carolina• CB Richard Ellis, Arizona• The RSH Group, California

• Moran, Stahl & Boyer LLC, Florida• Sherwin-Williams Co., Georgia• Trione & Gordon/ONCOR Intl.,

Texas• Colliers International,  Toronto

CANADA• Little & Associates Architects,

North Carolina• Palm Inc – Sunnyvale, California• Visa – San Francisco, California• Foote Consulting Group –

Glendale, Arizona

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What new media advancements have you seen that you think are valuable to your profession?Though respondents mentioned many advancements, online meetings and LinkedIn topped the list.

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What social networks or tools, if any, do you use?

71 % use LinkedIn, and just over 50% use facebook.

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How frequently do you use each?

72 % use some form of Social Media at least weekly.

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What is the applicability of Twitter to your profession?

63.6% say Twitter has no/very little applicability to the site selection profession.

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What is the applicability of LinkedIn to your profession?

52.6% say LinkedIn has good application to the site selection profession.

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What is the applicability of LinkedIn to your profession?

“I have used it along with Hoovers to check who is LinkedIn and contact people for business meetings.”

“I think it has good application. I have gotten proposals through this tool.”

“Pretty low rated.”

“It’s okay.”

“I already have the contacts I need in my email – how is this different?”

“Not much”“Good for seeking independent information.”

“Good for finding contacts, and to keep in touch with peers.”

“More of a business site”

Useful networking toolDon’t know yet.

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An indication of what is to come?“Young companies are all about social media. Their whole concept is open source everything. They rely on an online community. They’re building enthusiasts for their product online. I have a current client in the auto manufacturing space that loves social media. These guys are choosing their locations based on what their online community says they want.

“If you can find companies on social media, you can reach them. Big corporations not using it this way, but small guys are for sure.

“As people who live in the community find these great companies, they could connect ED with companies. Blog with your citizens about what they like and what they know about. Tips are good. Fear is how do you know you have the good information in these channels? I am just learning myself.”

-A Site Selector, early October 2009

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What the research says: Other Opportunities with Social Media

1. Started blogging – to drive traffic and increase conversation

2. Develop a dialogue with your workforce and residents with Facebook

3. Use Twitter to engage your investors and community stakeholders, and to share information about your community

4. Integrate Social Media and sharing into your websites5. Use a variety of tools to recruit Site Selectors and

prospects to online meetings fam tours. 6. Develop a dedicated approach to using LinkedIn for

prospecting 7. Extend your inbox by using Xobni and LinkedIn

Dashboard8. Keep and eye on new platforms, such as foursquare

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1. Fam tours consistently rank as the best communication tool you have. However, they are expensive, roughly 5-10K per participant.

2. Using standard tools that are free or <$50 per month, you can have 5-10 prospects with you virtually.

3. Tools include Webex, GoTo Meeting, Fuze Meeting, Adobe Connect Pro

4. Set a schedule, one per month, and set a content schedule

5. Recruit using email and Linked In6. Make the content “inside” information7. Offer an incentive for Site Selectors to attend.8. Consider private, one on one meetings as well. 9. Record the presentation, post your content on

Slideshare and YouTube, then embed in your website.

Recruiting site selectors and prospects to online meetings

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1. Build your profile

2. Build your contact list

3. Work your network

Using LinkedIn for prospecting

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1. Your email inbox is the main source of your online relationships.

2. Microsoft and LinkedIn know this, and have given you tools to extend email into Social Media.

3. Check out LinkedIn and www.Xobni.com

Extend your inbox by using Xobni and LinkedIn Dashboard

http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=outlook_toolbar_download&trk=hb_ft_otool

http://www.xobni.com/

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Keep and eye on new platforms, such as foursquare

1. Simple description: “Life as a game.” 2. Foursquare launched a year ago this

week at SXSW3. It is a mobile social network that ties

social networks to place. 4. Users “Check in” at places around the

community and get the following benefits:– Earn badges, become “mayor”– Get tips from others who have left tips

in places– Distribute your location through Twitter

or facebook networks– In the future, will be used by locations

to reward loyalty with discounts– Generates a tremendous amount of

geotargeted data

5. In year one, foursquare has attracted 500,000 users

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Wrap Up: Eight things you should be doing with Social Media today

1. Started blogging – to drive traffic and increase conversation

2. Develop a dialogue with your workforce and residents with Facebook

3. Use Twitter to engage your investors and community stakeholders, and to share information about your community

4. Integrate Social Media and sharing into your websites5. Use a variety of tools to recruit Site Selectors and

prospects to online meetings fam tours. 6. Develop a dedicated approach to using LinkedIn for

prospecting 7. Extend your inbox by using Xobni and LinkedIn

Dashboard8. Keep and eye on new platforms, such as foursquare

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Poll Question: What is holding you back from doing more with social media?

a) Not enough time

b) Still trying to figure out how to make it effective

c) Trying to decide which tool to focus on

d) Nothing

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To view this presentation:

Visit our Slidespace:www.slideshare.net/wright0405

Join our LinkedIn Group: Next Gen Economic Development

Marketers(Once you sign up, you will need to be

approved)

Then, click, the link on the presentation, in Discussions.

We look forward to having you!

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Contact Information

Ben WrightContact

information:

t: 303.292.3300 x 210benw@Atlas-Advertising.comwww.Atlas-Advertising.comLinkedIn Profile | LinkedIn Group | Twitter | Blog | Slidespace

Marty VanagsContact

information:

t: 309.452.8437mvanags@bnbiz.org www.bnbiz.org Twitter | Blog