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Tech Trendy South Dakota
April 6th, 2010 by Mike Knutson
Yesterday, Keloland TV in Sioux Falls featured Tea, SD and the Facebook page created for the community by its economic development director, Jenni White.
(Note: Thanks to Jonathan Garcia answering the “help request” I posted on Twitter last night. I initially had to post a link to the Keloland site because their embed code wasn’t working. Jonathan sent me this YouTube file, which I’m able to embed Thanks Jonathan!)
White says she created the tool as a way to share information with the community’s residents. Even though it’s only been around for a few months, the page has attracted almost 400 fans. Nice job Jenni!
But Tea is not the leader in the pack of South Dakota communities using Facebook. I marvel at how effective Miller, SD has been with their Facebook page. Any community of approximately 1500 residents that is pushing 1000 Facebook fans is doing a remarkable job. And there are others. I know of half dozen other communities that are using Facebook pretty effectively, including Lennox, Miner County, Chamberlain, Webster, Deuel County, and Oldham.
But you know what? Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that so many communities using Facebook. After all, South Dakota a national leader in our percentage of Facebook users.
Mashable give us the goods
Yes, you heard me right. Yesterday, I learned about South Dakota’s high adoption rate for Facebook in research posted by Muhammad Saleem on Mashable.
In short, the research tells us that South Dakota has the highest percentage of its population with Facebook accounts-coming in at 31.1%. (Get all the goods with the graphics below or at the Mashable article. )
I’m proud of this statistic! It wasn’t all that long ago that I considered South Dakotans as social media/networking laggards. When we started ReImagine Rural in the fall of 2008, I conducted an informal survey of rural community development leaders asking about their social media usage. I didn’t find anyone with a Facebook account (myself included), and only 10% said they read blogs with any regularity.
Why should we care?
The Mashable research has me thinking about what this means for South Dakota. I’m actually perplexed by why our Facebook usage is so high, especially when compared to our neighboring states. Why do you think that is?
But the bottom line is that Facebook is a great tool for South Dakota communities to use as they attempt to “build community.” In rural communities, we used to have stronger “third places” that helped build this sense of community.
In their absence, I think Facebook and other social networking tools offer an alternative for getting people together for conversations that helps build trust. That doesn’t mean face-to-face conversation isn’t important. Hopefully, communities with Facebook pages like Tea, Miller, and Chamberlain discover ways to use Facebook to generate more offline personal interaction.
It’s when this starts to happen, that we will really be able to say “South Dakota is Tech Trendy.”
Note: Thanks to Hugh Weber at Deep Bench for drawing my attention to this info.
(source: Muhammad Saleem , “By the Numbers: Facebook vs the United States (Infographic)” Mashable, April 5, 2010).
Tags: Facebook, Mashable, Miller SD, social capital, social media, South Dakota, Tea SD, trust
Posted in Community Development, Economic Development, Rural | Comments (
5 )
April 6th, 2010 at 8:57 am
[...] in the context of this amazing statistic from Mike Knutson at Reimagine Rural: South Dakota has the highest percentage of population signed on to Facebook in the country, 31.1%! Knutson also points to other communities making good use of Facebook, like [...]
April 6th, 2010 at 10:25 am
It is surprising Mike. And, yes, encouraging.
Here’s my question: what makes a win? Is recruiting 1000 Facebook fans to follow your page a win? Or is it connecting with 2 people who feel a stronger love for their small town because leaders are talking (and listening) in their language?
There are so many measurables on the internet, but I’m wondering how many of them–or which ones–really matter. What do we do with social media that engages someone else in the movement? How does it translate into offline interaction and collaboration?
Questions on my mind today…
April 6th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
Joe,
There’s no easy answers are there? Number of fans, number of comments, number of page views. Those are the easy measurements. But as your questions suggest, they are probably not the most important ones.
It obviously depends on the goals for the effort, but I think the communities that are most effective at using Facebook are those that use it as a lens into the off-line activity that already exists in the community. For instance, many small towns are confronted with the perception that there’s nothing to do in small towns. A good online conversation can showcase all that is happening. It reinforces a sense of belonging with the town’s residents, as well as shares a view of the town that isn’t often visible to outsiders.
But what do I know? I’m still at the stage of asking the questions you ask. That said, I’m not going to wait around to figure everything out until I dive in and try.
April 7th, 2010 at 6:09 am
I’m going to throw out a couple of possible reasons for our high FB adoption rate: distance between people and the relatively high number of universities/colleges per capita.
The City of Vermillion has a few pages: City of Vermillion, Vermillion Recycles, AND Vermillion Census. We also had a page for our Vermillion Citizens Academy, though the number of fans/friends there is fairly low (there were only 20 people in the first class).
This FB campaign is due in large part thanks to our city PR person and USD grad student Evie Johnson. She has been a great resource and booster for our community.
April 7th, 2010 at 7:54 am
Rebecca,
“The relatively high number of universities/colleges per capita?” I would never have thought of this.
I was wondering if the age of our population also impacted the state. We learned at the OTA Sessions last week that there are more grandparents on Facebook than high school students.” If true (and I have no reason to believe it’s not), it might suggest a factor as well.
And kudos on the FB pages your community uses. I tried finding teh Vermillion citizens Academy, but a search turned up blank.