Is marketing your community one of your many responsibilities as a chamber or EDO communicator? Many tactics can help you be successful at this, but one avenue that makes a big impact is ensuring your community’s online footprint is an engaging representation of your area, highlighting its best assets. Often a quick Google search may be someone’s first impression of your community, which is why your digital ‘front door,’ so to speak, is so important. Read on for a guide to marketing your community by putting its best foot forward online.
Audit Your Current Digital First Impression
Start by Googling phrases about your area to see what’s already out there about your community. Consider using private browsing, as your search history can affect results, and you want to see what someone would find who isn’t regularly searching for information about your community. What’s awesome about your city that you’re not seeing reflected? What would you like to emphasize? Putting yourself in the shoes of prospective talent, what stories would get you interested in a place? Let your thoughts on questions like these guide you in marketing your community.
Know Your Earned, Owned & Paid Media
It can be helpful to think about the components of your digital footprint in terms of your owned (platforms that belong to you), paid (advertising, sponsored content, etc.) and earned media (neither paid nor owned – mostly media coverage). While you control the messaging when it comes to channels you own – and that’s great! – often what others say about you is important, too, and provides increased exposure. At Livability Media, our branded content helps harness the impact of third party endorsement while empowering you to tell the stories you want to share via Livability.com, a high domain authority website. That means your Livability content is likely to be one of the first things prospective talent find via search engines – and we work with you to make sure those pieces capture your ideal messaging.
Focus on Great Storytelling
In today’s digital world, you never have complete control over any brand, but you can still focus on telling your community’s most inspiring stories and creating content that highlights why it’s the best place for talent and business. You can do this using any platforms you like, and the more you cover the numerous digital tools available to you nowadays – the better. Maybe it’s an online magazine like this chamber’s, getting creative on social or pitching media in a more traditional PR format. Faced with limited time and resources? We all are! Know you don’t have to go it alone – partner with experts like the place marketing specialists at Livability Media. Livability’s digital content can help you get the stories you prefer in front of the audiences you most want to reach, shaping your strategies in marketing your community.
Embrace Smart Repurposing
Make your storytelling go further by repurposing the same content and topics across platforms. You’ll save time (and your sanity), reach different audiences with different preferences for how they consume information, boost SEO with more content around similar keywords and more. You can find tons of ideas for repurposing your content here.
