The City of Roanoke was invited to present at the International Economic Development Council (IEDC) Conference in Atlanta last month on the topic of attracting and retaining young adults in the creative economy. The conference amassed over 1,400 individuals from around the world – Mayors, economic development officials, corporate CEOs, consultants and vendors – offering specific expertise to bring back to their regional economies. We were able to share our progress and methods with others around the world, as well as, learn from others.  

The key theme at the conference was the importance of regional branding. It was clear by the exhibitors and speakers how technology shapes these brands. One vendor, ZoomProspector.com, distributed a book called Economic Development Marketing (2008) based on their research of economic development organizations. The organization found the most effective marketing strategy used by economic development organizations was the Internet /website. Yet, funding allocations were not aligned with this proven strategy.

Our region’s web presence is a tremendous opportunity to showcase ourselves to the world. There are so many fantastic web resources we can use to position ourselves in the global economy such as blogs, Twitter, Fwix, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr, Craigslist, etc. These resources are easy and inexpensive to use. It’s not one group, organization or website that will create our web presence – everyone can and should participate.

We need people to establish their own blog or use Twitter to communicate our story. We need people to add positive videos to YouTube. We need people to showcase the region’s beauty by submitting their photos on Flickr. We need people to tag Roanoke online content on Digg. These and other activities add to the online image and perception of a geographical region. 

We have made financial investments in the offline image and perception of our region by creating welcome signs on the side of interstate highways as travelers pass through the region. However, what’s the return on investment for these expenditures? Could a percentage of those funds be used for search engine optimization? When people search Roanoke on Google, what will they see on the information highway?

We must drive more on the information highway by positively participating in these online communities. Everyone can help and we need it. Below are definitions of 10 online resources you must be using. 

Text Box – 10 Online Resources You Must Use

Source: Wikipedia.com

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

Flickr is an image and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community platform.

Fwix is a physical regional aggregator of content in over 30 online communities. Roanoke is one of 21 U.S.cities listed.

Digg is a website made for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the Internet, by submitting links and stories, and voting and commenting on submitted links and stories.

Craigslist is a central network of online communities, featuring free online classified advertisements and forums on various topics.

LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site mainly used for professional networking.

YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips.

Google Reader is a Web-based aggregator, capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds online or offline.

A blog is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.

Wikipedia is a free multilingual online encyclopedia.

A local firm started by a young professional to help college students with their classes has received $25,000 in funding from Facebook as part of its fbFund competition. Koofers was also Tech Crunched. Congrats Michael!

We examined the Roanoke Facebook community in a previous post on July 6, and recently looked yesterday about 8 months later and the growth is phenomenal. In July, Roanoke had just under 10,000 registered users and in 8 months the number has soared to 28,344. That is 2,300 a month or 75 new users a day!

This is compared to growth in the Virginia Tech community from 44,000 to 48,504 during the same time.

Many of the top interest categories remained the same during this time. For interest, the top interest of the community is music and the favorite type of music is country with rap a close second. The favorite book is the BIBLE and the favorite TV show is Family Guy.

In July, 2007, 67 people were on Facebook in their 40s now that number is 2,180. (In looking at the comparison to the 50s this number seems low in July, but nonetheless, the growth is substantial.)

For the 50s age group 247 in July and now 1,164.

The 60s was 57 now 118. 

There are 92 people over the age of 70 on the Roanoke Facebook community and kudos to Sgt. Bennington at the age of 80 for having a photo on his profile and having some friends. (There were others older, but the profiles were sketchy.) Also, Kudos to Frank L. Moose Jewelers in downtown Roanoke for having a profile!

The 40 and over age group comprised just under 10% of the Roanoke Facebook community in July now that number is 12.5%. It’s a nice increase and encouraging to see more older Xers and Boomers join social media outlets, even if their motivation is to keep tabs on their children. Also noteworthy, is that the older a person is the less likely they have a photo or image on their profile.

The big aha is - just focusing on Facebook and not MySpace - the Roanoke Facebook community is about 10% of the Roanoke MSAs entire population. This is significant and it shows the emergence of online Roanoke compared to offline Roanoke. Offline Roanoke must connect to the growing online Roanoke so that both groups can better understand and communicate with each other.

Small business owners, marketers, salespeople, civic groups, non-profits, charities, etc. must have a presence to better connect to this growing population.