Page Tools:
Non-Idle Chitchat
business, licking county, licking county chamber of commerce, networking, technology,
The old “business after hours” standby is getting a new lease on life thanks to online efforts from the Licking County Chamber of Commerce.
With a blog on the chamber’s Web site and a presence on business and social networking sites such as LinkedIn, the chamber has joined the online community in a big way, and members are taking notice.
“I began the blog as a way to just attempt to keep up with the technology as much as possible,” says Cheri Hottinger, president. “I read a lot of blogs, and so when it was suggested to me that the chamber have one, we set about making that happen.”
As for the other Web sites, Hottinger says that when she and her staff began to study how members communicated with one another, they realized that many of them were doing it through LinkedIn and other networking sites. With that in mind, they set up outposts and connected everything back to the chamber’s own Web page.
“We have a news page, but we wanted to also have something where our members could comment on what we are saying and doing,” Hottinger says. “There are things we do that are newsworthy, and other things that really are just general information and this gives us another place to post that information.”
The blog also allows the chamber to post photos and embed video they shoot themselves. “There are lots of ways to enhance what we’re trying to do online,” Hottinger says.
Next up she hopes to host some guest commentators, thus bringing the membership even more into the project.
There’s been a bit of resistance from some of the chamber’s 700 members who feel that the whole online social world is the domain of young people or is just for fun and not for business. Hottinger says she understands the stereotypes and is working to correct that perception.
“Business is about building relationships, and sometimes you have to go about doing that in a nontraditional way,” she says. “Our members who have Web sites are linked through the chamber’s site, and I know it gets them business. This is just another way of connecting them to each other – and to clients.”
In the end, she says, it’s about finding a new, and often more relaxed, way of doing business.
“We’re encouraging this kind of social networking, because networking in general is the No. 1 benefit of chamber membership,” Hottinger says. “Meeting and communicating on the Web is just as important now as meeting face-to-face, and rather than taking the place of that personal contact, it’s enhancing it.”
Story by Joe Morris
