Posts Tagged ‘Blogging’

Hood River Biz Buzz

June 7th, 2010

Last week I wrote a post suggesting rural communities should conduct video interviews of entrepreneurs in their communities as a way of showcasing local businesses and building their community’s brand as a great place for entrepreneurs.  A couple days ago I stumbled across a blog that’s doing something very similar.

Hood River Biz Buzzrepresents the community of Hood River, OR (pop. 5831 according to the 2010 Census).  The blog’s “About” page offers the following as its purpose: 

A big part of what makes Hood River special is the vital business scene. Frustrated with the lack of local media attention to business news, I thought that a blog would be a good first step to share what I learn in my various work and volunteer activities.”

Peruse its posts and you will discover articles featuring local businesses, upcoming community events, and the latest news.  It’s a bit more expansive and eclectic than what I was talking about the other day, but I think that’s what makes it so fun and interesting.  It definitely leaves me with an impression that Hood River is a place I’d enjoy.

Stu Watson, the blog’s publisher, is a professional journalist with over thirty years of experience.  The blog, however, is a volunteer activity and a display of his love for his community. 

When I called on people to interview entrepreneurs in their community, I had in mind community volunteers being engaged in the project.  After all, that’s who gets the work done in most of the rural communities in our part of the country. 

If your community has someone with Stu’s experience, I’d highly recommend you engage him or her in the effort.  If not, look for other alternatives.

I like the idea that Rebecca Terk left as a comment on my blog post:

I do think this is the kind of project that community volunteers could pull off with some assistance, but I also think that group of volunteers has to be diverse enough in order to be able to identify different facets of the entrepreneurial efforts in the community.

I wonder if it’s also something that could be accomplished in a media/journalism course (do they still have such courses?) on a high school level if the school had faculty savvy in this area. That ties in young people and what they see as valuable/cool/attractive about a community (the promotion of which could attract more young people to the community).”

I love the idea of youth engagement.  I can see the project being a perfect match for a media/journalism course or even a business class for that matter.  It’s also an opportunity for community volunteers to contribute their knowledge to young people.  I know most educators would welcome a volunteer with knowledge of video production expertise in their classroom.

Whether it’s a blog like Hood River Biz Buzz or a series of video interviews with student involvement, I hope you find a way to lift up entrepreneurs and build a stronger brand for your rural community. 

Note:  I discovered Hood River Biz Buzz in a blog post by Rural Tourism Marketing, another excellent resource.

Photo Credit:  BillFromSpokane - Flickr

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Economic Development, Rural | Comments (0)

Do you have “mommy bloggers” in your marketing plan?

April 28th, 2010

I’ve been to Galena, IL.  I saw the Ulysses S. Grant home and attended my first wine tasting there.  

It’s been about twelve years, but I remember Galena as a fun place with a lot of tourism potential.  I had heard about the community from some friends who lived in nearby Dubuque, IA. This raises an important question:  “How do rural communities get the word out to tourists?”

 

The transition from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0

The old way of marketing a community was to print a brochure, join a tourism association, create a website, and maybe try to attract the attention of some tour operators.  That’s so Web 1.0.

Galena may still be doing those things, but they have also moved on to include Web 2.0 strategies in their tourism efforts They recently invited 8 “mommy bloggers” from the Chicago area to tour their community.  The obvious hope was that these influential bloggers would write about their experience and encourage their readers to discover Galena’s hidden treasures. 

Why mommy bloggers?  According to the blog post where I learned about the event:

Mom bloggers were specifically targeted because when they reviewed who was following their Twitter account they found moms to be the common thread. Plus, families are taking shorter trips closer to home and Galena is a 3 hour drive from Chicago - where many of the women are from.”  (source:  Esther Brady Crawford, “Rural Jo Daviess County Turns To Mom Bloggers For Tourism Boost,” She Posts, April 22, 2010.) 

 

It’s about Trust

Great idea.  Reach the decision maker in the family through a source of information they trust, their favorite mommy blogger. 

Some people may criticize this approach saying that the old way of marketing offers the potential to reach more people.  They are right.  You can print a million brochures and pay to get your community recognized by Google. 

But I’d respond to those critics by asking them to consider how I got to Galena twelve years ago, in the days before social media.  I didn’t Google a website, I didn’t pick up a brochure at visitors center.  A friend told me about it.  Someone who’s opinion I trusted.

Social media has helped us discover new friends, and rural communities need to figure out ways take advantage.   Congratulations Galena.  We look forward to hearing more about the project and what you learned in the process.

 

( Thanks to Becky McCray for sharing the post via Twitter. )

Photo Credits:  Ulysses S. Grant House  (top right)  by Yark64 - Flickr and Galena, IL (bottom left) by Josh Be Me - Flickr

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Economic Development, Rural | Comments (5)

Pumping Sunshine: the Ord, NE way

February 23rd, 2010

Have you been thinking about developing a blog as a part of your community development strategy?  If so, I highly encourage you to check out Ord Pumping Sunshine, a blog published by Caleb Pollard, Executive Director of Valley County Economic Development & the Ord Area Chamber of Commerce.

I’ve never met Caleb in person, but I’ve been familiar with Ord, Nebraska since the late 1990s when both Ord and Howard were active with the Rural School and Community Trust.  Since that time, I’ve been impressed with the community’s entrepreneur support system and continued investment in young people.   There’s no doubt they are one of the rock stars in rural community development. 

Caleb has been the executive director of the chamber and development group for about a year and one-half.  He brings with him experience with sales and marketing in the technology and health care fields, which might explain his zeal for blogging.  Caleb recently answered the following questions for me, which I hope will inspire more rural communities to recognize the value that blogging offers. 

 

What’ the purpose of Ord Sunshine Pumping, and why use a blogging platform?

First, I love to write, especially about issues involving rural development.  It’s my passion and I find blogging is a great way to share a story about rural issues.  I feel we have a great story to share in Ord, because of the tremendous success we’ve had in the last 10 years and blogging is such a great social tool to share it with, like communities facing the same issues we’ve had.  Since we’ve had this great success, blogging makes it easy to take those models, ideas, examples and overall rural economic philosophy and share it with the world.

More importantly, however, is the that the blog allows me a direct conversation with my community, in a dynamic and social way, to weave the “what” of what we are doing with the “why” of its importance.  There is no filter, and with social media like a blog, you can connect it to a greater whole and then you begin to see why the work we accomplish in Ord is so important to all rural communities.

We often hear from community leaders who say they don’t have time for writing on a blog. How do you deal with time issues?

Everyone has time.  Saying they don’t have time is a total cop-out.  Many people don’t like to write, and that’s totally okay.  But using the “I don’t have time” routine is just an easy way out.  As for blogging, I find it is a great outlet for me to tell our story.  But making time is about prioritizing my schedule to make it work.  Plus, blogging cuts down on a ton of extra time I spend with press releases to local and statewide media, along with our monthly, quarterly and annual reporting.  Blogging actually saves me time.  Prioritizing my schedule means something has to lose or it’s delegated to one of my staff.  I’m blessed to have great staff that gives me the ability to dedicate my time to blogging.  Plus, I find when you’re passionate about something, getting it done isn’t too tough.

When did you start the blog and what have you learned about the process of operating a community blog since then?

I’ve been blogging on and off for about 6-7 years now, and our current blog has been in operation for a little over a year.  What have I learned?  First, building a robust conversation about *positive* things is much harder than talking about the negative.  Second, finding local contributors that are willing to take on the workload of actually doing the writing is difficult.  I’d love to have more contributors on our blog and we’re just starting to expand our efforts this year.  I anticipate having 2 additional contributors by year’s end, but like you said above, it’s a time sink.

Finally, I think honesty is appreciated.  While I’m the Chamber dude, and pumping sunshine is part of my modus operandi, being honest about my love for rural communities, especially in Nebraska, has won our blog a lot of fans.  Authenticity counts BIG TIME.

Do you have any stories that exemplify the impact the blog has had on your work?

Yes, two specifically.  First, in Spring of 2009 I wrote an innocuous post about wine tasting in Central Nebraska.  While some of the wine aficionados may bat an eye at this, we really do have some fab wineries in Central Nebraska and their wine is pretty darn competitive to what I’ve had out of Chile or Napa.  Seriously.  This one post here earned us a lot of publicity.  A writer from NPR happened to be driving through the Great Plains and picked up on the blog post and bam!  We had national coverage.  The piece ran on NPR here: 

The other post I would say exemplifies our “what” and “why” would be this post on our 100 new business in Valley County (and Ord) since 2000.  Of those 100, 78 are still in business, lending to the power of dedicated economic gardening.  We spend a lot of time and effort grooming entrepreneurs and building supportive programs to keep their businesses in operation.  To say we’ve seen 100 new businesses in a county of 4500 and a community of 2200 is straight amazing.  That post can be found here.

Photo Description:  The above photo show FFA students from Ord H.S. who participated in a project with the local economic development group and an ethanol plant.  It’s an example of Ord’s continued commitment to engage the youth in their community.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Community Development, Community Engagement, Economic Development, Rural | Comments (1)

Blog about your rural community

November 12th, 2008

Blogging is a great way for rural communities to connect to people both within and outside their community. The Rural Learning Center has been setting up blogs in the communities they work for the last three years. (Check out the Faulkton, SD blog here.)

If you are looking to establish a community blog, I’d encourage you to look at the presentation and read the post created by Ann Treacy of the Minnesota Horizons program. The presentation was created specifically for communities that are members of the Horizon’s program, but there’s still lots of good ideas in there for everyone interested in a community blog. Ann also provides additional information on how to use programs like Flickr and Picnik, so you’ll want to check out her whole post.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Community Development, Leadership, Rural | Comments (0)