AEP-OU-social media-04-24-13

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By

Mark J James, CEcDAmerican Electric Power

[email protected]

http://twitter.com/AEP_EconDev

Social Media for the Practical Economic

Development Professional

2010 © ED Solutions, Inc.2


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5 Ways Social Media has changed economic development

1. Even less control about what’s being said about our place. The “democratization of information”

2. Exponentially enhanced our marketing reach.

3. Able to create communities within and between our communities

4. We can now crowd source ideas/initiatives

5. Social CRM and Social SEO

Audiences



Just say no

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Depending on organization, a reasonable inclusion

of SOME social media applications

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The Practical ED’r Starts with a Social Media Strategy

• Consider-– Objectives– Identify your audience-key leaders, stakeholders, etc.– What calls to action will you use?– Identify some benchmarks– Keyword/SEO analysis– How Will You Measure Success?

• Visits• Followers• Return on conversation?

– (Last) Best Tools for You

Some Typical ED Goals

• Brand awareness

• Program/practitionercredibility

• Drive traffic to web

• Create community

• Connect resources

• Lead development

Case Studies- Strategy

Round Rock, TX McAllen, TX Cobourg, Ontario

Provide add’l channels of input for citizens

Promote programs and events

Enhance tourism

Increase the transparency

Disseminate timely information

Fully utilize all platforms

Reach new audiences Engage with wider audience

Integrate into overall marketing strategy

Facilitate a sense of community

Tell our story

Create relationships

10 2011 © ED Solutions, Inc.

What’s missing from these?


What’s Your Strategy?

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Social Listening

2010 © ED Solutions, Inc.

Social Listening…community

…existing employers

…State/Province

…prospective employers/ targets

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About your

-Google Alerts -Hootsuite (or Tweetdeck) -LinkedIn

Social Listening


How?

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Social Media Integration

Websites have a crucial new role

Old view: Destination

New view:Content Engine

Source: Mark W. Schaefer Slideshare- http://www.slideshare.net/Rialta/social-media-best-practices-for-economic-development

http://www.slideshare.net/Rialta/social-media-best-practices-for-economic-development

http://blogs.business2.com/photos/uncategorized/slideshare_1.jpg

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Get “Social” EasilySocial Media for Practical ED Pro

addthis.comor

sharethis.com

Check this out…

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SEO & SMO

• Social media optimization (SMO) is a set of methods for generating publicity through social media, online communities and community websites. Methods of SMO include adding RSS feeds, social news buttons, blogging, and incorporating third-party community functionalities like images and videos. Social media optimization is related to search engine marketing, but differs in several ways, primarily the focus on driving traffic from sources other than search engines, though improved search ranking is also a benefit of successful SMO.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publicity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media

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Deeper Dive

• Facebook

• LinkedIn

• Flickr

• Slideshare

• YouTube

• Twitter

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Using FacebookSocial Media for Practical ED Pro

• More than a billion monthly active users as of December 2012.

• Approximately 82% of monthly active users are outside the U.S. and Canada.

• 618 million daily active users on average in December 2012.

• 680 million monthly active users who used Facebook mobile products as of December 31, 2012.

• 50% of active users log on EVERYDAY• 30 Billion Pieces of Content• 1.5 Local Business Have Pages• People install 20 million apps/day• Daily over 10,000 websites are integrated with FB


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- Who’s Your Target Audience? ProspectsExisting BusinessInvestors

- Find Your VoiceBusinessCommunityStakeholder

- Post Current Relevant ContentDiscuss the organizationPush traffic to your websiteEngage your communityCreate “Super Fans”

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Best Practice- Hudson River ValleySocial Media for Practical ED Pro

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Best Practice- Richmond JobsNetSocial Media for Practical ED Pro

Beginning to see third party

apps



http://www.insidefacebook.com

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LinkedInSocial Media for Practical ED Pro

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Don’t forget Keywording…

xobni


ww

w.w

aynealliance.org


“Maps, maps, my project for a map!”

Mark M. SweeneySenior PrincipalMcCallum Sweeney Consulting


Facebook/Flickr-Project 365



• We moderate uploads• As a community builder• As a resource for free pictures – our

Terms of Use allows us to use submitted photos in City promotional materials. In return, we give credit to photographer



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Social Media for Practical ED Pro

Where does Twitter “fit in”?

• Link sharing, not trite sharing

• Offer twitter feeds to chamber members

• Search twitter to see if existing companies in your community are tweeting

• Start conversations on Twitter- e.g., does anyone know which skills their employees need and aren’t found in X.

• Celebrate newsworthy events



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Let’s Admit This….

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A Word About Followers

• Its not how many, its who

• Look for people to follow who have more followers than they are following

• Beware of ‘someone’ with very little followers and lots of people they are following. This = spam

• Check this out-

http://twittercounter.com

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Create A Custom Background

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How… http://www.ehow.com/how_4613303_twitter-

background.html

Step 1• Create a Twitter account. If you haven’t gotten around to signing up for Twitter

yet, what are you waiting for? Go to twitter.com and sign up for an account. If you need a little more help, read How to Set Up a New Twitter Account in the resources below.

Step 2• Decide what type of image you want to portray. Part of the difficulty in setting the

correct background is deciding what you want your Twitter page design to say about you. Many folks take any image or graphic and upload it to their Twitter account without much thought. Take some time to come up with something that speaks of your style, taste and personality.

Step 3• Consider the screen real estate. The important information to be viewed on

Twitter occurs in the center of the page. No matter how many images or sayings you have on your background, the center of the screen belongs to Twitter. Therefore you have to create a background that gives Twitter center stage.

Step 4• Go large. Larger images and/or graphics reduce the necessity for tiling an

image. It gives the appearance of one large background specifically made for Twitter. Try starting with an image as large as 1600 x 1200.

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How…Step 5• Remember that all screen resolutions are not the same. The smaller the

screen resolution, the lower the likelihood of your image will have to repeat. In other words, if you elect to use an image that has a flower located to the extreme left of the screen, on a lower resolution screen (800 x 600 for instance), the flower displays once. A screen with a resolution of say 2048 x 1536, the flower will display tiled on the screen several times.

Step 6• Think about using a border. When creating an image, remember that a small

portion of the top of the screen is dedicated to the Twitter logo and user navigation. It’s a little easier on the eyes if the design included a boarder over which the Twitter logo and navigation could sit without having to fight against a busy background.

Step 7• Upload your image to Twitter. Once you’ve played around with the image,

upload it to Twitter to see how it looks. Log onto your account. Click “Design” found under the “Settings” tab. Once on the design screen click “change background image.” Once you upload your image, check it out to see if you like it. If you don’t you can change it or use one of the Twitter default images until you come up with something you like.

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Top Twitter Apps

http://twitter-client-review.toptenreviews.com/

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Create a Profile On…

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www.tinytwitter.com

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Keep Your Tweets to 120 Characters

Retweets!

RT@AEP_EconDev....

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Keep Your Tweets to 120 Characters

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YouTube Statistics

Viewership

•More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month

•Over 4 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube

•72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute

•70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the US

•YouTube is localized in 53 countries and across 61 languages

•In 2011, YouTube had more than 1 trillion views or around 140 views for

every person on Earth

•Millions of subscriptions happen each day. Subscriptions allow you to

connect with someone you're interested in — whether it's a friend, or the

NBA — and keep up with their activity on the site

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YouTube Statistics

1. Inventory the assets you have 2. Categorize them by audience3. Identify your communications needs, and plot

how video could help you tell your story:• About your program of work• Virtual familiarization tours• Industry specific presentations• Expansion or relocation announcements• Case Studies• Company or stakeholder profiles• Annual accomplishments

4. Identify a low cost production partner or invest $2,500 to $5,000 in the tools

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Establish a YouTube Channel

1. A place for all of your community’s videos

2. Can include multiple organizations in your community,

such as economic development, tourism, workforce,

and more

3. Develop a profile

4. Invite others to subscribe

5. Subscribe to other channels

6. Solicit comments

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Get your video indexed-http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2010/03/videos-indexed-by-google/

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1. Put a video on your page : I mean a real video, hosted on your site, not on Youtube or DailyMotion. You need a .flv file (or .mpg, .avi, .mp4) and a video plugin that supports this kind of video formats. Jing is perfect to record onscreen action and make nice video tutorials.

2. Create a thumbnail of your video : that’s the thumbnail that Google will display on its search results page, so making a good quality thumbnail out of your video is an important step. Personally, I’ve found that 160×120 gif or jpg works well for that purpose….and they actually don’t need to be extracted from your video. Any image pertinent to the content of your video will make the trick.

3. Create a video sitemap : Video sitemaps are XML files similar to usual sitemaps but using a different syntax. See an example below.

4. Submit your video sitemap to Google : Video sitemaps can be submitted in Google Webmaster Tools exactly as a standard sitemap. If you had not yet registered your site in Google Webmaster Tool, that’s the perfect occasion to do it now.

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Social Media Metrics

• Not mature yet- things like;– Return on Conversation– Followers– Impressions

• There are a few things which you can and should do– Monitor what’s being said

about your community– Measure the numbers– Regularly go back to the

strategy


A Wonderful

Social Media Report Card!

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Social Media Metrics

• Some interesting metric tools-– Compete.com– Google Alerts– Xinureturns.com– Bit.ly– search.twitter.com– Twittercounter.com


twitt

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r






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Wrap up

1. Social media extends the reach and influence of you and your organization.

2. It allows you to reach and connect with people/companies in much deeper ways than has been possible with traditional ‘marketing’.

3. By cutting through the confusion on focusing on the right tactics, you can save time.

4. It can be done for low or no cost (other than the currency of time).

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Read These…

http://www.socializedpr.com

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90%

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Our web sites need to be about

COMMUNICATION,not marketing


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The Rule of

• Home Page

• Content

• Format

3’

s

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The Rule of 3’s Home Page

• Orient to Geography

• Who the site is for and what can be found there

• Drive to Contact 2010 © ED Solutions, Inc.


www.TeamNewEngland.com

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2010 © ED Solutions, Inc. 80

Try one yourself…

Also…

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Place PageEconomic Development Websites

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What can be found on the site?

• Who the organization is- what do they do?

• Where do they do it?

• Keyword density… www. SouthwestIndiana.org


ContentEconomic Development Websites

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Driv

e to

Con

tact

…


www.ChooseNEIndiana.com

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The Rule of 3’s FormatHTML

Print this pageCascading Style Sheet

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Share this page

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A Word about Mobile versions-Not sure we need to invest in entire site

-Same content as Home page

-Yet another reason to put contact information in TEXT in upper left or right

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www.m.southcentralKY.com

www.choosecincy.com

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Content Management SystemsEconomic Development Websites

• Add/edit/delete pages

• -Manage digital media

• -Updates weekly

• -Eliminate dependency relationship with design firm


Evaluating Your Own SiteEconomic Development Websites

Check your site www.netmechanic.com

How’s it rank? www.trafficzap.com

How many linked to you?

www.websitegrader.com

SEO (and SEM) www.searchenginewatch.com

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Hiring a Web Developer

• Specify-– Audience– Do an outline “nav”– Functionality– Performance criteria– Timing– References

– Programming language

– How many design schemes do you wantbasis for selection

– Who will do what-• Graphics• Copy writing• Data tables

– Estimate (if you can) the # of pages

The RFP is EVERYTHING


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Most important Formula for Success

• Get a great content management system

• Create “best fit” equilibrium between-– Business goals– Audience expectations– Financial Resources

• Revise, revise, revise 2010 © ED Solutions, Inc.

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Thanks for your attention!

[email protected]