Social Media and my local Chamber of Commerce…

by Todd Schnick on December 15, 2008

In today’s daily e-Journal…

Chris Brogan (www.chrisbrogan.com) recently published a blog entry that presented 100 fresh ideas on what to blog about.  One idea that he offered was to “explain social media to your chamber of commerce.”

Something I had been thinking about and noodling in my head for months suddenly came into focus.

I have been a member of my local chamber of commerce for almost two years now.  It has been a very rewarding experience.  I have made dozens and dozens of great friends, and added many great clients.  But something I hear about often from my fellow members is that the chamber doesn’t cater to small business, probably defined as businesses with 10 or fewer employees.  Many feel it is a club for the big boys.

I have long been thinking about what I could suggest to help deal with this concern of my colleagues.  And after seeing Brogan’s list, it suddenly dawned on me: social media!

Why couldn’t the chamber use social media tools to provide a forum for small businesses to network in and above the networking opportunities they offer at bricks and mortar locations?  Why not provide this as an active resource of dynamic content that all small business people can turn to find helpful info on how to grow their business?

It would also provide a forum for members to demonstrate their expertise – thereby helping them both contribute value to their fellow members AND perhaps find new clients.

(And note to chamber development people: this may be a great way to identify new prospective members!) 

Building community is the main goal of social networking.  What a wonderful opportunity to grow that community and benefit from all the cool social media tools that exist.  Not only would the members benefit from that community – but it would provide another forum for the members to shine and demonstrate their products or services!

Does anyone know of other chambers of commerce that have a great social media program?  If so, please share.  I would love to hear about it and learn.

Todd Schnick.  Be Intrepid.  www.intrepid-llc.com

Tagged as: Atlanta Marketing, Cobb County Georgia, Daily e-Journal, Social Media, Social Networking

  • http://www.weblinkinternational.com Curt Moss

    Todd, yes your local chamber of commerce should be using social media to engage their members (and prospects). Our company provides services to chambers around the country and a number of chambers are using social media as one more method of communications. The Maryland State Chamber has a several targeted blogs and uses Twitter. Kyle Sexton of the Salem Chamber has started a social network for chamber staff at fastchamber.ning.com. Here are a couple of posts from our blog on how chambers can use social media:

    http://blog.weblinkinternational.com/blog/weblink-international/0/0/how-chambers-can-use-social-networking-sites
    http://blog.weblinkinternational.com/blog/weblink-international/0/0/5-reasons-your-chamber-should-blog
    http://blog.weblinkinternational.com/blog/weblink-international/0/0/should-chambers-be-expected-to-have-a-presence-in-social-media

  • Todd Schnick

    Curt – thanks for your contribution! Appreciate the valuable info – I will pass it along to my local Chamber…

  • http://bethbridges.blogspot.com Beth Bridges

    Todd,
    I don’t know if our Social Media program is great yet … but we do have one at the Clovis Chamber (in Central California).

    Our goals are to increase the Chamber’s visibility, position ourselves as leaders by using the tools and showing our members how to use them, to increase traffic to our website, connect better with Gen Y, and for me – as Membership Director – recruiting and retention of members.

    What we’re doing: staff are all on LinkedIn and Facebook, we run a Facebook group called Clovis is a Way of Life, we have a blog, I Twitter, we use BlitzTime.com for Virtual Networking, and we post videos on YouTube.

    At first it seems difficult to fit into our already maxed responsibilities, but we’re finding that it can be quicker than other marketing tools and more efficient (i.e. free).

    Thanks for bringing this to people’s attention. As we say in my Chamber, if you have the suggestion, you get to be the Committee chair!

    Regards,
    Beth

  • http://www.detroitchamber.com Farms

    The Detroit Regional Chamber recently launched an interactive version of its magazine at http://www.detroiteronline.com. We’re working aggressively to move out of beta/improve functionality and are aggressively expanding our social media presence.

  • Pingback: Posts about Social Media as of December 18, 2008 | The Lessnau Lounge

  • http://www.chambervoice.com Randy McCallum

    A few years ago I became a member of my local chamber of commerce and their chamber website couldn’t be updated, and was being held hostage by a local web designer who yet once again wanted more money to make simple changes, and did not deliver on promises to teach the staff to add and manage content, so I volunteered my time as a social media consultant and designed and trained their staff to manage their own chamber of commerce website using the popular open source Joomla CMS content management system. It has been a huge success for the Trail Chamber, and they even managed to encourage me to become a chamber director.

    In my 2 1/2 years experience with the local chamber (Trail & District Chamber of Commerce http://www.trailchamber.com ) I found that the Trail cChamber and most all chambers of commerce in the province of British Columbia, Canada, as well as most other chambers of commerce have limited financial resources, and limited social media development expertise, but the definite need for social media tools and training so I decided it was time that I created a central social network for chambers to to connect, share and inspire each other and give them access to engaging content that can teach them about social media, and show them how they can make it available for their members.

    Yes, there are a few networks for chambers to connect that have been made available because of the Ning social media creation tool, but being an avid user of Ning since day one, I found that it has it’s limitations to create a truly dynamic and flexible social network for chambers. So I resourced a more flexible open source social network development environment that could provide chambers and small businesses a set of social media tools to network and become centrally engaged above the networking opportunities offered at bricks and mortar social network locations such as Facebook and Twitter.

    The goal in 2010 is to launch ChamberVoice.com http://www.chambervoice.com which includes Chamber! Answers and Chamber! Micro http://www.chambervoice.com/microblog and provide a set of active resources full of dynamic content that all chambers and small business people can turn to find helpful info on how to grow their chamber of commerce and assist small business.

    In January I will begin added screencast videos and rich media enabled tutorial guides to show chambers and their staff how they can implement their own ChamberVoice.com type social networks for their local chamber and area.

    ChamberVoice.com and Chambervoice.com/microblog are currently in beta testing at this time, but they are fully functional and can be used now. The network provides:

    1. ChamberVoice.com Social Network – has full rich media enabled social network features and forums for members to demonstrate their chambers and small business expertise – thereby helping them both contribute value to their fellow members AND perhaps find new clients.

    2) Chamber! Answers – a Yahoo! Answers type question and answers section for chambers to ask, answer and discover things about chambers, small business and tourism. Yahoo! Answers and other answers sites are fine to promote chambers, but they are not focused on Chambers and small business, and Chamber! Answers is focused exclusively on chambers small business and tourism categories.

    3) Chamber! Micro – Facebook and Twitter are fine to provide chambers with the short messaging tools to promote and market chambers, but they lack the chamber related focus to identify and attract and keep new prospective members engaged after the initial hype has worn off! That’s why chambers need a central chamber of commerce focused Twiiter type social network such as ChamberVoice Micro. Take a look at http://www.chambervoice.com/microblog and you’ll find that it offers Twitter features, but with Group and dynamic media capabilities that can be tailored to a chamber’s needs and that of their members.

    If Building community is the main goal of social networking, then chambers need their own social network so they can brand chambers and what chambers have to offer members.

    Early in 2010, the goal is to gain some early adopters that understand the benefits of social media to chambers and provide them the opportunities and the social media forum for them and members to shine and demonstrate their products or services!

    Check out the beta of these chamber focused social networks:
    http://www.chambervoice.com/
    http://www.chambervoice.com/microblog/

    I do hope to attract others to join in and assist me to create an dynamic and engaging social media network for chambers and members that is focused on open source and sharing of ideas and content that all chambers and their members can benefit from.

    Look forward to hearing any feedback and ideas, suggestions. I am but one person, and I share the ideas of many others that chambers need to become social media aware sooner rather than later to provide members long term benefits.

    Randy McCallum
    Founder
    ChamberVoice.com
    rustymac@chambervoice.com
    250-368-9877
    Director – Trail & District Chamber

  • http://www.facebook.com/theNetworkingMotivator Beth Bridges

    Hi Todd,

    I’m commenting on this post looonng after you wrote it. Wondering if your Chamber of Commerce has picked up on social media yet. We’ve been using it to great effect for the Clovis Chamber, picking up new members, engaging some we never see in person and generally building an even stronger reputation for providing value to members.

    If your chamber is still working on it, I know of a Social Media expert who is touring the U.S. over the next year and he is specifically working with Chambers of Commerce. He used social media to double the size of his chamber.

    His name is Frank Kenny and you can find out more at http://frankjkenny.com/

    Hope you’re doing well!

    Thanks,
    Beth Bridges
    The Networking Motivator ™

  • Todd Schnick

    hey beth! thanks for following-up…

    to be honest, i am no longer active in that chamber. so, i am not sure how active they are.

    but that said, with all the time i spend on twitter and facebook and blogs, i don’t ever see anything referencing the chamber…

    i will forward frank’s contact info to a few people i know still active there…

    thanks!

  • http://ariwriter.com Ari Herzog

    Why did you leave the chamber? No value?

  • Todd Schnick

    there was a lot of value, but i was getting too many clients, and as a solo practitioner, i was overwhelmed with too much work, and was worried that i wasn’t executing on the projects as well as i wanted to.

    i had to adjust my strategy to get fewer, but larger projects…

  • Emcie Media

    The Sanford, Florida Chamber has started using Social media in a few creative ways.  They encourage their members to post events and specials on the Chamber’s Facebook page, and they just launched a new LinkedIn group where members can post questions or seek/give advice about any topic of interest.  Check them out:  http://www.facebook.com/mysanfordchamber

  • http://frankjkenny.com Frank J. Kenny

    Thank you Beth. You always have my back, don’t you? Just like a good chamber of commerce.

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