Marketing your city through technology

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Marketing your city through technology

• By Carla Pendergraft

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About You

• Tell me about your technical knowledge
• Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced?

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What Well Cover

• What are we marketing, and to whom?
• City websites and what they need to contain
• Intro to Search Engine Rankings
• Concepts Tag clouds, long tail
• Web 2.0 for cities
• Blogs
• Podcasts
• Social Media (MySpace, YouTube)

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Discussion Questions

• Should municipalities market themselves?
• If so, to whom?

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A Typical City Website Goal Statement

• Key business goals of this website are
• to use the Internet and other emerging
  technologies to improve City service
• to use the Internet and other emerging
  technologies to increase opportunities for
  citizen participation in government.

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Who are our markets?

• Citizens (not the main focus here)
• Potential New Businesses
• Potential New Citizens (relocation)
• Visitors
• Anyone else?

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Why are we marketing our city?

• Citizens information
• All others
• Growth in our businesses job creation
• Growth in our wealth

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Marketing to Outsiders

• Billboards overrated
• Media travel, business magazines
• Web - The first place they will look for you
• Does your city have a website?
• Can they find the information they want?
• Can they find the back-story?
• Where do they go for additional information?

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Overlapping Constituencies
Chamber of Commerce
Convention Visitors Bureau
Businesses (Hotels, Realtors, etc.)
Municipality
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Chambers of Commerce

• Internally focused on their members
• You can always find out how to become a member
• But you cant always figure out how to start a
  business in that city
• And their websites suffer from ad clutter

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Convention Visitors Bureaus

• Focus on visitors from over 50 miles away
• Filling hotels is their bailiwick
• Most are funded by hotel/motel occupancy tax

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Businesses

• Each focuses on its own needs and customers
• Realtors - Relocation
• Hotels/Motels Visitors
• Restaurants Visitors
• Etc.

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Municipalities

• The municipality has the responsibility and
  unique opportunity to address these needs
• Visitors
• Economic Development
• Relocation
• Not driven by membership or ad sales

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Websites are our Main Tool.

• How to answer these needs in a cohesive, easy to
  use manner?

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The Rules for All Websites

• Dont Make Me Guess
• Dont Confuse Me (and make me feel stupid)
• Keep it Simple
• Give Me the Info I want Dont Throw a Bunch of
  Ads at Me!

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The Silent Questions

• Is this the right website?
• Is this an official website?
• Will I find what Im looking for?
• Am I dealing with professionals?
• Do they deal with my needsor theirs?

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Lets look at some Texas websites!

• El Paso
• Waco
• Dallas
• Houston
• San Antonio

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ElPaso.org - portal

• Doing Business on the Border
• Living in El Paso (relocation)
• Visiting El Paso
• Our Government

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Waco-texas.com
Business in Waco Chamber, Economic Development
Visiting Waco
Citizens
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Dallascityhall.comCity Web Portal
Businesses
Visitors
Citizens
New residents guide
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Houstontx.govThe Official Site for Houston
Businesses
Visitors
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Sanantonio.govOfficial Website of the City of
San Antonio
Business
Recreation
Request a Pothole repair
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Award-Winning Sites

• Center for Digital Government Best of the Web
• www.centerdigitalgov.com, click on Surveys
• The program judges state, city and county Web
  sites on their innovation, Web-delivery of public
  services, efficiency, economy, and functionality
  for improved citizen access.

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Washington, D.C.

• What Do You Want to Do?
• Start a Business in DC
• Start a Nonprofit in DC
• Finance a Business in DC
• Do Business with DC Govt

• Apply for a Business License
• FAQ
• Fulfill Annual Business Requirements
• Learn About Business Improvement Districts

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www.dc.gov--Business Services

• Overview
• Licenses Permits
• Development Incentives
• Tax Services
• Business Planning
• Nonprofit Planning
• Business Resources

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Issues

• Most City website graphics are not compelling.
• Often use in-house marketing staff
• Dont hesitate to outsource graphics!
• Dont be afraid to market, even though you are a
  municipality!

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What Do Tourists Need?

• Accommodations
• Restaurants
• Attractions
• History
• Calendar of Events
• Map
• PDF of your visitors guide
• Link to your CVB

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Visit Pittsburg
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San Antonio
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Other Kinds of Visitors

• Media Travel Writers
• Film Crews
• Prospective University Students
• Tour Operators / Motorcoaches

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Advanced concepts

• Search Engine Rankings
• Tag Clouds
• Web 2.0/Social Media

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2-minute intro to Website Rankings

• Search engines read real text, not graphics
• Search engines like incoming links
• Search engines like official sites with good
  content
• They love Web 2.0 features like blogs.

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Tag Clouds
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Tag Clouds

• They show the page as a search engine sees it,
  with the most popular words appearing largest.
• They can help us understand how search engines,
  and people, see our websites.
• Does your website convey what you want it to
  convey? Check it with a tag cloud generator.
• http//www.tagcrowd.com

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The Long Tail for Cities

• The long tail selling 1,000,000 bestsellers
  vs. selling 1,000,000 of many different books on
  Amazon
• The long tail for municipalities using
  various social media to reach as many small,
  niche audiences as possible.

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The Long Tail

• Green part is the bestseller one book, many
  buyers
• Yellow part is the long tail many books to
  many buyers

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Web 2.0

• Blogs
• Podcasts
• Various popular social media
• MySpace
• YouTube
• Flickr

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Discussion Question

• Are any cities represented here, using any of
  these techniques now? If so, how?
• Does anyone here have a MySpace or Facebook page
  of their own?

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Web 2.0 Defined

• refers to a perceived second generation of
  Web-based servicessuch as social networking
  sites, wikis, etc.
• Participatory
• Generally unregulated, unfettered and free
• And relatively unused by municipalities.

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Some Numbers

• Facebook 58 million members
• Extensively used by political candidates
• Creates a friends network you can easily
  communicate with
• MySpace 200 million members
• YouTube hosts 60 million videos
• Blogs over 75 million (maybe 15 million active)

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Blogs

• Free and easy to start (www.blogger.com)
• Little technical knowledge required
• Harder to keep going
• Why not a blog for a municipality?
• Mayors Musings
• City Managers Thoughts, Philosophies
• Info and observations not available elsewhere

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about-arlingtontx.com
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Example Blogs

• http//metroblogging.com/
• Think Global, Blog Local
• Municipalities are behind the curve on blogs!
• Enter convention visitors blog into Google
  search box 193,000 examples come up
• http//visitcolumbia.blogspot.com

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Blog - Columbia, SC Convention Visitors Bureau
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Podcasts

• Usually an audio file in MP3 format
• Mayors Hour Tampa, FL
• City of Moore, OK Inside Moore
• Why I moved to Moore follows a young family
  with children, a doctor and a retiree
• City of Davie, FL Mayors podcasts
• Disaster preparedness, affordable housing, and
  one that addresses a news articles inaccuracies

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Webcasts/Vidcasts

• U.S. Conference of Mayors webcasts
• Clips of up to 1 hour in Windows Media Format
• Require broadband

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Tampa Mayors Hour podcast feed (RSS)
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Social Networking

• MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Digg, Technorati,
  Flickr
• Completely user-generated
• The Library of Congress uses Flickr to post
  pictures of their content
• CVBs use MySpace and YouTube frequently

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Flickr photos of a community
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MySpace Columbia, SC Convention Visitors
Bureau
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YouTube San DiegoOpen for Business after
Wildfires
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YouTube Las Vegas Be Anyone
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YouTube Contests

• Detroit Video Contest from Detroit CVB
• Ecotourism contest for Filipinos

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Cameron Park Waco, TX

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vtNntxSkFZLs (2,000
  views)
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vp8V_cDmCTKY (400
  views)

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Social Media Dos and Donts

• Cleverness works boring does not
• It must be appealing
• It cant simply promote it must engage.
• It must be kept up to date.
• Show unique things about your town
• Try some contests!

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Social Media Issues

• Do you control visitor comments?
• Racism, foul language, tirades against the city
• IT departments disallow most of these sites
• All of it takes time

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Conclusions

• Be sure your website has all the information your
  various audiences need
• Youre behind the curve if you dont.
• Look into how social media might benefit your
  city
• Youre not behind the curve if youre not yet
  using it--yet.