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May 2010
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Newsletter Contents
- Chairman's Message
- Social Media Corner
- Upcoming Events
- Samples
- Network Development
About the Division
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Chairman's Message
 Reinventing your chamber - and communicating it
Strip away all of the events, the affinity programs, the policy battles, the recruitment campaigns. You’re left with the core of what chambers of commerce do: serve our members and our communities.
In this type of service-based business, the ability to communicate clearly (and for chambers—quickly) is essential to success.
Recognizing that, the ACCE communications division focused on fundamentals for the 2010 convention, being held August 4-7 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Sessions will help you know your members better, leverage opportunities to communicate effectively on a tight budget, measure your progress and harness new technologies to reach communications goals. Plus, you’ll have the priceless opportunity to connect with and learn from your peers at chambers from across the country.
Visit www.acce.org/convention to see the conference schedule and to register.
See you in Milwaukee!
Christina Donegan
Vice President, Communications
Greater Seattle (WA) Chamber of Commerce
It’s Time for Business—Marketing with Multiple Channels
When it comes to marketing, chambers need to get out our message but often have limited resources in terms of both money and time.
What we do have is a powerful combination of member talent and multiple channels. At the Greater Seattle Chamber, these two forces came together for our new promotional campaign called “It’s Time for Business.” First, we teamed with Martini Design, a Chamber small business member to shoot a short film featuring cameos from local leaders, including Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Washington State Governor Chris Gregoire and Alaska Airlines CEO Bill Ayer. Each of the participants told a fictional character named Frank Chambers that “It’s Time for Business." (See it on www.youtube.com/seattlechamber.)
When the campaign launched just over a month later, we deployed all of the Chamber’s channels to drive traffic to the new website, www.itstimeforbusiness.com. We used meetings and events, ranging from our Annual Meeting to Business After Hours, to tell members about the campaign. We created a standalone email blast plus incorporated the messaging into our newsletter and event blasts. We distributed collateral materials and met with Diplomats. And we leveraged Twitter and Facebook, creating a hashtag and running a contest asking people to tell us why “It’s Time for Business” at their organization.
Taken altoghether, we had a wealth of resources. Two months into the campaign, we receive multiple postings per day on the website, see the Twitter hashtag being used by new audiences, and have volunteer leaders using the slogan to open and close meetings. Most satisfying though is the feedback from members on how much they appreciate the positive message.
So, next time you need to communicate, take a look at all of the channels at your disposal. I think you’ll find that “It’s Time for Business!”
Christina Donegan
Vice President, Communications
Greater Seattle (WA) Chamber of Commerce
Social Media Corner
The Power of Mobile Marketing
by Starr Hall
My latest article from American Express Small Business- Open Forum:
Mobile marketing, a permission-based marketing tool, is making waves across the internet and rapidly becoming a major communications channel for reaching customers.
According to an independent survey from Airwide Solutions in 2009, 200 million Americans carry mobile phones. That’s more than half of the country’s population. In addition, this study reports that 40 percent of major brands have deployed text messaging (also known as SMS, or short message service) campaigns. Nearly 40 million U.S. consumers received SMS advertisements, and 12 percent responded to them, according to the Metrics Study, “Cracking the Mobile Marketing Code.”
Read more >>
Thank you for checking this out. Would love to hear your questions, thoughts and experiences with mobile marketing.
Cheers,
Starr Hall
International Speaker/Author/Publicist
CEO & Founder of SmartyVA.com
5 Tips to Increasing Your Membership with Social Media
by
Your members are tweeting…are you? Chambers of Commerce all over the country are helping their members discover how to effectively engage in social media to grow their business. Why then are so many chambers not yet fully involved in the process themselves? After hearing story after story about companies that are developing their brands online and increasing their business simply by creating an effective social media marketing strategy, why are chambers hesitant to do exactly that?
We, like other small businesses, have limited time and marketing dollars and engaging in social media has already proven to be an effective way to grow so it’s time for us to get in the game. These 5 tips are sure to jumpstart your chamber’s social media plan and increase your membership. Let the tweets begin.
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Get Your Members in on it!
Many of your members are already involved in some type of social media, but if they aren’t (but know they should be), get them involved by becoming a fan/friend, invite them on LinkedIn and have them start following you on Twitter. You could also partner with a member who has a social media business and coordinate a webinar or workshop to help your members discover the benefits of social media and how to get started or enhance their current involvement. Not only will you be able to recruit new members, but your existing members will love you for providing them with education and tools they need to be more successful in this area of their business.
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ABC – Always Be Closing
Or as I like to say - Always be Connecting! Show your members the love! Once they are engaged on your sites, comment on their status updates, retweet their posts/comments, Tweet about them and the good news you read about their businesses, connect them with others that you think may be a good contact for them. When a new member joins your chamber, be sure to get their contact information for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Once they join, reach out to them via these channels and welcome them publically to your chamber. Not only will they feel awesome about their investment, but hopefully they will also start to engage with you and their fellow members which could ultimately lead to their friends and contacts inquiring about a membership as well.
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It’s not all about you!
Become involved with groups and join fan pages of local organizations and start to join their conversations. Remember, your social media plan isn’t just about posting your chamber events (although they’re fabulous I’m sure) it is about engaging with your members and learning more about them and their needs. Retweet posts that your members share, include links to their blogs and articles, stop by their wall to thank them for coming to one of your events, start discussions of your own and provide great content that will help your members in business. Write and post articles about member success stories that may encourage others to leverage their membership in similar ways.
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Connect with the right people.
Read local and national publications and bookmark various websites in order to know what is going on in your area. The people being featured in articles and making things happen are the kinds of individuals you want involved in your chamber so if they aren’t, try connecting with them through your social media platforms. Send them a friend request explaining where you found them and congratulate them on their success or find other people who may know them and ask for an introduction. Once you are connected, let the conversations begin.
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Have fun and be consistent.
Like most small businesses, chambers don’t have a ton of time to invest in their social media marketing plans, but the good news is that you don’t have to. Design a plan that works for you and most importantly stick with it. Decide which platforms make the most sense for you to become involved with and go from there. Whether your activities include posting at least three times a day for a total of 20 minutes or five times a day for up to one hour, as long as you are consistently maintaining your presence and connecting with your members and prospects, you will start to see results.
Isn’t it exciting to think that your next new member could be just one tweet away? The bottom line is that social media isn’t going away any time soon so the faster you jump right in and start playing in this space, the more successful you will be and your members will love you for it.
Kate Volman
VP, Business Development
Greater Boca Raton Chamber of Commerce
Upcoming Events
ACCE Convention (register now!)
August 4-7, 2010
Samples
Call for Samples – This month we are requesting Policy/Issue Survey samples. Please forward your samples to cmoore@acce.org.
Network Development
 ACCE is on Facebook! ACCE is expanding its social media presence and is now on Facebook. Connect with ACCE on its Facebook Fan page today!
 LinkedIn
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