IACCE News & Resources

Web 2.0 and Social Media for Chambers

By Curt Moss, WebLink International

There’s a lot of talk these days among chambers about using Web 2.0 services and engaging your members with social media. First, what is web 2.0?  Web 2.0 represents the changing of websites from providing information or e-commerce to interactive, collaborative, engaging communities.   Examples include social networking sites, blogs, wikis and photo-video sharing sites where visitors participate in the content generated and the “experience.”

Second, should chambers use social media?  After all, chambers are one of the original “social networking platforms.”  According to the 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study, 93% of Americans believe that a company should have a presence on social media sites and 85% believe that these companies should use these services to interact with consumers.  The answer is yes.  

Your members are more tech-savvy.  They will expect you to communicate in ways they want vs. how you want.  That is the essence of Web 2.0.    The young professionals you hope to engage already use new media. If you don’t provide an “experience” they won’t be interested in your chamber. 

Using Web 2.0 services and social media is a necessity to engage your audience and demonstrate that your organization is still relevant in the world of virtual business.  Here are a few items you can do to get started:

• Start a blog and generate relevant content for your members and your community
• Redesign your website to have a Web 2.0 feel – open layout and easy to use
• Create profiles for your chamber and your staff on social networking sites
• Post photos and videos of your events to your website
• Add social bookmarking links to your website and blog

To remain relevant to your audience, your chamber needs to be aligned with the newest media trends.  The local business conversation is already happening online in your community.  The key question for you is:  Do you want your chamber leading the conversation, or do you want someone else taking a leadership role in your community?  

10 Ways Chambers Can Use Social Media

By Curt Moss, Director of Communications, Weblink International

Chambers of commerce were one of the first “social networking platforms” where people share ideas, make new contacts and conduct business. Today, many of your members are able to connect to anyone in the world using web 2.0 and social media tools. To remain relevant to your audience, your chamber needs to be aligned with the newest media trends. Below are some ways your chamber can use these tools to stay connected to your members today and engage your members of tomorrow.

1. Use Social Networking Sites

Create profiles for your staff on sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn. Include a photo and create strategic descriptions for each person’s job and your chamber. (I’d avoid MySpace unless you’re starting the Britney Spears Chamber of Commerce.) Create groups on LinkedIn for your chamber and young professionals group and encourage your members to join these groups. Find member profiles and invite them to connect to you. Engage your members with questions and answers using the tools these sites offer.

LinkedIn has also recently added applications you can add to your profile. Two of these applications, Slideshare and Google Presentations, let you embed presentations on your profile. For example you could create and post presentations of the reasons to join your chamber, recent accomplishments or promote an upcoming event. You can also start your own social network using Ning, brand it with your logo and colors, create your own sub-groups, allow photo/video uploads and more. Add links to your profiles and/or networks in your email signatures and on your website to let you audience know about them.

2. Start a blog - or starting using your existing blog more

Blogs are a great way to generate content for your website and begin conversations with your audience - and they are easy to start. There are free services such as Blogger, Wordpress and Live Journal; paid, hosted services such as TypePad and Compendium; and paid, installed solutions such as MovableType. These services vary in the level of customization you can apply to your blog, but all of them will allow you to changes colors, add a custom header or other branding elements. Many of them also permit you to redirect the blog so it appears to reside on your domain and add numerous widgets that help you engage your audience.

Once you’ve got your blog going, be sure to frequently add content that’s relevant to your members and your community. Also, make your blog an email newsletter and promote it elsewhere to help engage members who don’t yet use social media. Feedburner, Google's RSS publishing service, makes it easy to offer any RSS feed, including the one your blog should publish automatically, as an email newsletter. Make sure your content follows Seth Godin’s Three Secret to Web Traffic: Unique, Useful and Updated. And, have multiple staff at your organization post to the blog. By doing so, you’ll be able to get more people involved in the conversation and your attempt to utilize social media. And you’ll show that you are an expert, have opinions and keep up with current trends.

3. Comment on other blogs

Find blogs that deal with local business issues, tourism, government affairs or some other aspect of your community. You can use Google’s Blog Search to find blogs talking about your interests. Follow these blogs for a while to understand the general positions of the authors. When you find a post that’s relevant to your chamber, add a meaningful comment. Don’t just say “great post” or “you’re all wrong about that.” First, show the author that you “hear them” and then briefly explain why you agree or disagree. If you have a blog post or content on your site about a similar topic, include a link so that the author (and other blog readers) can learn more about your ideas. This can be a great way to get more traffic to your blog if you contribute useful information that furthers the discussion.

4. Add videos to your site

Remember that song, “Video Killed The Radio Star?” Well, video is reaching equal status on the web. If you don’t use video – you might be dead. Good news, though - there are lots of ways to add videos to your site, ranging from free to very expensive. Google Video and YouTube are two of the most popular free services. These services are a great way to experiment with video on your site. They will usually let you upload a video to their site and then embed the video on yours. You may already have visitor, relocation or business videos that you can convert to digital and upload. If not, contact members in the video production industry to have them convert your existing videos or produce new ones. Record your events and post at least a portion of them for members to view. Create spoofs popular videos or commercials to promote your programs and events. Have a contest among members to see who can create the best testimonial video. Adding a bit of humor to your video can make them more memorable and more likely to be shared with others.

If you start using video extensively, you’ll probably want the additional options and robust services you’ll get from a paid video hosting provider such as VideoHost or MultiCast’s Vidego service. See how the Greenville (SC) Chamber of Commerce uses video on their site.

5. Add photos to your site

Chambers are social organizations and your members love to see pictures of themselves and others. Make sure you have a photographer at every event and take lots of pictures. (They’re digital, so there’s no reason not to.) Photo sharing sites such as Flickr, Photobucket and many others let you upload photos and share them with others. Picasa is a photo organizing tool that makes it very easy for you create photo galleries or slideshows you can embed in your site. Also, be sure to include photos of the local area and attractions throughout your site or in additional galleries. Consider running a photo contest to collect great photos of your area. Give the winner a great prize and promote the best pictures on your site.

However you choose to add photos, just be sure to add them frequently, make them easy to find and tell your members about it. Using photos on your site shows that you are connected to the community, your chamber represents a vibrant area and that your site is not just all about text. Check out the Los Angeles Chamber’s photo gallery of recent events. And, the Winter Haven (FL) Chamber has great photos on their home page – you can almost feel the excitement of the local area.

6. Redesign your website

While redesigning your site won’t by itself add any new social media features, it can go a long way toward improving usability for your site visitors. Many Web 2.0 sites have similar design features that make them easy for visitors to navigator and find the information they are looking for. These items include:

• Open design with white space around the text and graphic elements (DropSend does a good job with this)
• Reflections on graphics (Apple uses this extensively)
• Use icons to designate content areas. This creates more graphic appeal and lets you use more white space.
• Varied type – Large font for section titles, smaller fonts for content/text
• Rounded corners and gradient colors
• Centered design, rather than left-justified

Steal ideas from other chamber sites and Web 2.0 sites, too. You can get some great ideas from SEOmoz’s Web 2.0 award-winning sites. Streamline your main menu navigation items into as few items as possible. This will help you create a clean, open design that is welcoming to your site visitors.

7. Add social bookmark links to web pages and/or blog posts to improve sharing.

You may have seen these links on other sites and not known what they were. These are links that allow your visitors to easily share content and discuss it on sites such as Digg, del.icio.us, Technorati, Newsvine and many others. Just as your members today may refer another company to join your chamber, many of the younger generation receive information or news that has been shared with them from another friend or colleague. Adding these links to your site makes it very easy for them to share your information.

But, how do you know which links to add? Won’t 10-20 link and icons clutter up the site we worked so hard to keep “clean” in Tip # 6? ShareThis and AddThis are services that let you place code on your webpage that displays one simple “share this” icon. When clicked the icon expands to give your site visitors the choice of sharing the content via numerous social media sites, email it or link to the content from their own blog. See how ShareThis works at the bottom of each post on our blog at blog.weblinkinternational.com.

8. Create a Wiki

You may be familiar with Wikipedia and what a great resource it can be. (If not, check it out and be prepared to waste a lot of time there.) Did you know that you can create your own Wiki (an encyclopedia-type site where the users create the content) and ask your members to contribute? PBWiki, WetPaint and Wikispaces are three services that let you create a Wiki and invite others to contribute, while maintaining approval rights for the content. Each one offers different customization and integration features so you can tie the Wiki to your website.

How could you use a wiki? Create wiki entries about your community, your chamber, local events, local companies, famous residents and other items related to your community. Creating such a resource can help increase your “findability” and drive traffic to your site. And, Wikis can be a great way to engage your audience to contribute to the content. And for all the Star Wars fans out there, check out Wookieepedia, the official Star Wars wiki.

9. Use Web 2.0 Tools to Learn More

All blogs and most news sites use RSS feeds publish their content to the web. RSS feeds allow people to subscribe and automatically receive new content rather than continually revisiting a site. Find a news reader you like and subscribe to the feeds of your local blogs, news sites and other information related to your community. There are plenty of great RSS readers today, including Google Reader, iGoogle, MyYahoo, Bloglines and many others. Microsoft Outlook 2007 allows you to subscribe to feeds and receive them just like email. Browsers such as Firefox 3.0 and Internet Explorer 7 also have support for RSS feeds, letting you create bookmarks or favorites that automatically update when new content is published.

Set up Google Alerts for keywords such as your chamber name or major local businesses. This service searches the web for new content with your desired keyword and emails it to you. You may be surprised by the publications and people that are talking about you. Or if you’re really advanced, set up a Twitter search to see who’s talking about you on the popular micro-blogging service. Yes, it takes some time to read RSS feeds, news alerts and other articles each day, but doing so can help you keep up on local issues, spark ideas for new posts on your blog and other ways to further use social media. If you’re still unclear how to use RSS feeds to stay informed, read the Wikipedia entry.

10. Create Podcasts

No, “Podcasts” is not some long-awaited remake of the movie Cocoon. (Am I showing my age with that reference?) Podcasts are audio recordings that someone can listen to on their computer and/or download to a personal audio device like an iPod. How could you use Podcasts? You may already have recordings of your chamber’s radio show or interview with local business owners. If you don’t, ask your local radio station to help you start recording such information. There are also plenty of podcasting resources on the web, such as PodcastingTools and FeedForAll.

Once you have your recordings in digital form, post them to pages on your site so visitor can listen to them. You can start slowly at first, simply manually adding these audio files to your site. As you create more content and start doing it on a regular basis, you’ll then want to create an RSS feed of all your files, creating a “Podcast,” so your site visitors can subscribe and automatically get all new files. See how the Muskegon (MI) Chamber uses podcasts.

11. Bonus Tip: Get your young professionals on staff to do this for you.

These tips all sound great, but you’re probably wondering how you can do it all. You can start by asking the young professionals on your staff to help. Find out what sites and social media they use to stay connected to friends and share content. Ask them to use similar tools to help your chamber communicate. It may not seem as “fun” to them as sharing personal photos and stories with friends, but challenge them to be creative in applying your chamber’s mission and goals to create useful content and employ social media to engage your members. Yes, still maintain your image as a professional business organization and engage your audience in creative ways. After all, social media is supposed to be fun.

Curt Moss is the director of communications for WebLink International, a membership management software and website services company based in Avon, Indiana. He formerly worked at the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, where he managed the chamber’s website, print communications, advertising and branding efforts.

WebLink International provides a powerful software suite that manages the operations, marketing, finance, website and member management functions of chambers of commerce. The software solution allows chambers to automate and streamline operations, reduce costs, optimize data for business intelligence, communicate and collaborate effectively, generate non-dues revenue and add significant value to the members they serve. WebLink is a Microsoft Certified Partner. Read the WebLink Blog at blog.weblinkinternational.com or visit www.weblinkinternational.com.