Economic Development and Social Media

The buzz about social media and how it can help business is all around us and now our industry is talking about how it can work for economic development organizations. Whether it can help or not is still too early to say. But one thing I know for sure is social media will never work for you if you’re not plugged in.

The first thing I suggest is to get involved and one of the easiest social media tools out there is Twitter. Before signing up with Twitter take a little time to decide what it is you want from social media. Just like having a strategy plan in place for your organization, have a social media strategy in place before heading in blind.

Here’s five easy steps get you started:

Signup for a Twitter account – Its free and all you need to do is go to their homepage and click the green button that says “Get Started” to create your account.

Select a good username using keywords or a brandable phrase – Your username is what people will use to communicate with you, so it's important to pick something related to your field to better brand you as an expert. You can use your real name, organization or you can use keywords to help you rank better in searches. It's a 15 character limit. Remember, you can change your username at any time after signing up.

Create your profile - Start to update your profile by adding a picture of yourself or organization’s logo and include some information about yourself /organization to your page. You can add the picture by going to the Settings section on Twitter.

Follow people with the same interests as you (including us http://twitter.com/ecdevcomdev. The more people you follow, the more will follow you back but be careful not to follow people just because you want followers. Understand what it is you want from the people you follow or who follow you. For example, EDCD Consulting wants to provide relevant economic development and business information to our followers.

Send out your first tweet - You can start just by saying hello. You won't have many followers yet. The key is getting started.