MCEDC, Social Media and Just Being Awesome!

One of my ToDo List items as Chairman of Marshall County Economic Development Corporation (MCEDC) was to see a new website up and running and get MCEDC tied into some of the social media outlets.  Thanks to Jennifer, Derek and Pam, this is one I can strike off my list.  (The benefits of Chairing organizations is that you can direct other people to do things and then take credit for their hard work.  Thanks guys!)  If you haven’t visited the new website, you can do so here.  It takes most of the good things from the old site and has added some functionality.  Some of these originated internally and some were the result of our work with Ady Voltedge on our marketing plan.

The website has been up since the first quarter of this year.  In the past month, Derek has added the social media connections.  MCEDC is now posting to Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter.  You can go to the MCEDC home page and there are a couple of places with the connection buttons for these services.  Visit the site!  More clicks there help our SEO (Search Engine Optimization) ratings and that could mean the difference in attracting new business to Marshall County.  If you Google it to find it, that helps even more…

I’ve had the blog at Easterday Construction (ECC) for ages now.  I’ve resisted the other social media because of time constraints.  Each blog post averages an hour to put together.  Some with more links and pictures take longer, while others are a stream of conscious ramblings and go pretty quick.  I was talked into joining Linkedin a while back and since I pushed MCEDC into it, I’ve decided I can’t hold out any longer on Twitter.  At this point I’m still a Facebook holdout.  (I’ve heard too many horror stories about Facebook, plus it seems like it would be a terrible time-suck for me.)  MCEDC is using Hootsuite to manage their accounts and I may get talked into that if it appears to be effective.  For now, I have my blog posts repeated on my Linkedin profile and I have started tweeting when there’s a new blog post along with a link to it.  As I learn the tricks, I may expand that.  (We’ll see if I figure out how to add a twitter link button to this post or even better, to the blog itself!  If I do, that will be a new skill.)

From Twitter I’ve been following Ryan Hanley.  He gives tips on SEO and different web-based marketing idea.  One of his recent posts was on his favorite SEO system, Just Be Awesome!  I don’t know how often I’m achieving awesome, but that’s kind of been my philosophy with the blog from the start.  I write about things that interest and excite me, mixed in with a little personal information that helps readers get to know me.  Hopefully if they run across something interesting that gets them to follow me, then they’ll remember Easterday Construction when it comes time to do a project.  I have more lurkers than commenters, but that’s fine.  It’s always interesting when I run into either IRL.

Hopefully I’ll inspire MCEDC to follow Just Be Awesome SEO as well and everyone that visits will want to return.  For both MCEDC and ECC, clicks become important when the right person is looking for the services we provide.  All the clicks in between just help us be visible when that important one is looking for us.