Filed under: Charlotte, community services, social media | Tags: chamber of commerce, Charlotte, facebook, linkedin, social media, twitter
Last week, I caught up with the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce‘s Julia Walton and Melisa LaVergne. I wanted to learn more about the Chamber’s recent use of social media.
They didn’t get on facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter because all the cool chamber kids were doing it.
Apparently, it was because the 2009 branding budget was slashed. To $0. So to get the word out about upcoming events and communicate all the great reasons to be a member, they had to come up with a marketing plan that was, for all intents and purposes, free. Talk about recession marketing.
LaVergne and Walton added that there are additional benefits beyond saving money. They’ve hosted popular workshops on getting started in social media, bringing even more value to their member businesses. Many members have leveraged these tools to catch podcasted events when they can’t network in person. And they’ve been able to recruit new members like myself, those who might not have run into them if it weren’t for social media.
Check out the Chamber of Commerce’s:
- fan page on facebook
- LinkedIn group (members only)
- Chamber President Bob Morgan’s twitter page. The Chamber also has its own feed.
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That is cool. Talk about creative marketing.
I just saw their Twitter feed and saw them talking about BarClt. I know Charlotte has a lot of social media activities, including WordCamp and various TweetUps.
I hope this social media venture proves successful for them.
Comment by Leo Wurschmidt July 30, 2009 @ 7:47 pm