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Category: Marketing

AI Applications After 300 Episodes with Brandon Burton

Miles Burdine Chamber Chat Podcast promo image.

Below is an auto-generated transcription. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

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Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor for this episode is Bringing Local Back. Remember when your community could turn to a local TV station or newspaper for the latest updates and affordable ads? Those days may be fading, but the need for local connection remains. That’s why we created Bringing Local Back, a game changing platform that restores the local visibility and advertising power to your community. It’s more than just tech. It’s about driving engagement and creating new revenue for your chamber. Ready to see the future visit bringinglocalback.com to schedule your demo today. This is the future of local commerce.

For this episode, I am the guest. This is a solo episode. It’s one of those milestone episodes, as it is, episode number 300 of Chamber Chat Podcast. When I started the podcast about six years ago, I I imagined I would be doing it for a while, but the idea of having 300 episodes now is something else, so I wanted to spend some time on this episode, just talking a little bit about some of the things that I’ve learned with the leading up to 300 episodes, but I wanted to spend a lot of time on what I’m learning, what I’m finding, to apply in the field of AI to make processes a little easier, a Little more effective marketing with AI and just some real applications, and hopefully y’all are starting to dabble with AI to some degree. So I plan on diving in with this episode, a little bit of some of those examples of ways that I’ve been utilizing AI and how it’s really just made the process of producing the podcast and and all my responsibilities just a little bit easier. So we’ll dive into that much deeper as soon as they get back from this quick break.

Are you looking for a year round affordable and timely shop local campaign for your chamber or CVB Look no further build a custom each shop play mobile app with App My Community by visiting appmycommunity.com/chamberchat. App My Community mobile apps are not just simple membership directory listings. They provide many more capabilities to engage with your community. Provide your residents with a robust events calendar partner with a local fare festival or Farmers Market provide a schedule map and other resources to promote the event. Run a Small Business Saturday campaign any time of the year using built in scavenger hunts allow your membership to communicate directly to their customers via push notifications. Your app my community mobile app will be a unique member benefit allow you to generate non dues revenue with sponsorship opportunities and best of all provide a valuable resource to your community please visit appmycommunity.com/chamberchat now to receive 10% off your first year of an App My Community mobile app.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

Attention all chamber of commerce leaders! Are you looking for a powerful tool to help grow and manage your chamber? Look no further than Chamber Nation! Our comprehensive platform provides all the features you need to streamline membership management, host events, communicate with your members and provide amazing services to your members. Plus, our expert team is always available to provide personalized support. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to take your chamber to the next level at a price you will truly appreciate. Visit www.RichardsCalendar.com to learn more about Chamber Nation today!

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

All right, we are back. So 300 episodes. When I started this in February of 2019, AI was not on the scene yet, and everything I did was very much manual processes. And there still is quite a bit of manual process to the podcasting and editing and editing and so forth. But it seems like every week, there’s some new innovation in the realm of AI that is really making everything a little bit easier and more efficient. So this episode, I’m going to dive in on some of those things that I’ve. And utilizing and see what could make sense at your chamber, and see how you might be able to utilize some of these tools as well. So first of all, probably the longest running type of AI that I’ve been using is a software platform called otter, and that provides transcripts for each podcast episode. So as I record the the episodes, I take that mp three file, I upload it to otter, and it does a transcription. Now I will say the transcription is not 100% so as I use that in show notes for each episode. I have a disclaimer at the beginning saying, these are auto generated transcripts, so it’s not perfect, but I do try to skim through it and clean up some of the things that I know it misses. For example, the title chamber chat podcast, I would like it to be capitalized, and it doesn’t capitalize it all the way through. So I have to go through and and it’s easy enough to do a search on the screen and see where it pops up. There’s other times where it doesn’t recognize the words correctly. So for example, chamber chat, podcast, it might hear it as chamber tap podcast. So when I do a search, it misses it. So as long as you don’t need 100% accuracy with the transcript, but you need something relatively good that helps us search engines. It really is a great option. I like that. It breaks up who’s speaking, so you can type in, you know, the names of who, who’s speaking, and it matches it to their voice, and it provides a little transcript summary. So the next step with the AI production is, I’ll, I’ll put the uploaded file, the mp three of the episode, into otter. I’ll get that transcript with the automated summary, and then I go over to chat GPT. I take the summary and I feed it into chat GPT to give me social media posts that highlight what the episode’s about and to try to encourage people to to get on their podcast player and give it a listen. So within chat GPT, it’s important to tell chat GPT how you want it to act. So I’ve got a command that I’ll use, and I’ll say, act as a social media expert and take this transcript that I provide to you and and put together a potentially viral Facebook post. I usually start specifically with a Facebook post, so it’ll generate the the posting, you know, tailored towards Facebook. And then I have another software that I use to schedule my postings, called Metro cool. So with Metro cool, I can go in schedule the Facebook post on when I want that to go live or when I want it to hit the scene, so to speak. And then I’ll take the And granted, the auto the AI generated social media posts. I always tweak them. I never just copy paste, because you get all the extra characters that it puts in there, hashtags that don’t necessarily make sense, things like that. So I always make some edits to it before I just post it out there. But then I’ll take what I use on Facebook and within metric cool, it has an AI component to it where I can say, optimize this for social media platform. So I can say, optimize this for Twitter, and that way it takes it and compresses the amount of characters so it fits within, the requirements of Twitter. So that’s a neat tool that I use, saves me a lot of time, allows me to really batch a lot of the production process that I do, but also schedule things to go live when I want them to go live.

Another use case that I’ve used AI for is a lot of you are familiar with the bringing local back platform that we released just a few weeks ago, and with that so there’s AI built into that platform to help build out your members websites and business listings and coupon codes and all the different things that are related to their business profile, and that’s within the bringing local back platform. Now, when we were preparing to launch bringing local back, I thought, let me put chat GPT to the test. So I went to chat GBT explained what it is that we’re doing with this, this new platform and launching it. And I told chat GPT to act as a marketing professional and to create a content calendar to promote and to solicit registrations for webinar, for bringing local back. And along with that, I gave a list of resources. I said, I have an email list, I have social media followings, I have a podcast, I have a website, you know, all these different ways that I can use to market and promote the platform that we were getting ready to launch. So I put that into ChatGPT, it spit back out me a nice marketing plan. It had email campaigns, the structure to them, what the topics would be. It had ideas for podcast episodes. It had email and social media campaign, so it was all right there. I thought, This is great, but the only way I’m going to really make this be effective for me is I need this to be some sort of a calendar, some sort of a checklist that I can go through. So I asked ChatGPT to export that social media calendar to an Excel sheet so I can check boxes along the way as I go. I had no idea if it would do it or not, but a couple seconds later, it gave me a file to download that had an Excel file with everything there. Now from there, I did do some customizing, because it had all of the email campaigns grouped together all the social media strategies, grouped together all the podcast stuff, grouped together. So I did mix it up so it wasn’t all heavy email for two weeks and then heavy social media. So I wanted to be a regular campaign where it kind of intermingled all of those different platforms. So that actually got really good response, lots of good registrations for that platform, for the the webinar launch. And I was very, very pleased with how that worked, so much so that I’ve, I’ve leaned upon it in other areas to to create marketing campaigns and and things of that nature. One thing that I’ve been doing lately is trying to automate some processes. And I’m sure at your chamber you have some systems and processes that you would like to automate. And just going to ChatGPT and saying, I have an idea to do X, I want it to do, you know, ABC, and have the output be XYZ, and ask ChatGPT, what do you think? And is there a way to do this? And it will give you back step by step answer on how to implement whatever it is that you’re trying to do. So it’s just a fun exercise. Even if you just have an idea of something that you want to try, it will generate a roadmap that will help you understand and to see how it may be possible. So I’ve done this. I’ve been using chat GPT very heavily for the last several weeks in trying to extract code for Google Apps, App Scripts and things of that nature, to again, automate processes. So take an idea, plug it into chat, GPT, and see what happens. It’s kind of cool. Another new tool that I just learned about this week, and I thought I’ve got to give that a try, is it’s called notebook LM, and it’s a AI language model from Google. And it really you can put all sorts of different data resources in it, and it will compile the data resources it’s meant for. If you think, think about going, you know, taking a college course or something, and you take notes in class, or you, you’ve got your your notebook and and notes from the teacher and whatnot, and if you wanted to put all of that into notebook LM, then it will give you different feedback. So it can give you quizzes. It can give you, you know, just different different formats, question and answers, where you can kind of really digest the the information in different ways, but one of my favorite things about notebook LM is it will create a podcast so you can give it the information that you want it to extract information from, give it a little bit of context, and within a couple of minutes, you have a podcast episode. It blew my mind, so I had to give it a try. I’m going to insert this. It’s just a couple minutes of a podcast episode that was totally generated by AI, by notebook. Lm talking about this being the 300th episode of chamber chat podcast. So here it is.

Unknown Speaker 15:21
Can you believe it? 300 episodes, 300

Unknown Speaker 15:24
it’s incredible, isn’t it?

Speaker 1 15:26
Seriously, when we started Chamber Chat, I don’t think either of us imagined we’d hit such a milestone.

Unknown Speaker 15:31
It’s really something special.

Speaker 1 15:33
It really is. And you know, it’s all thanks to you the listeners. Absolutely,

Unknown Speaker 15:36
this deep dive is really a celebration of you guys.

Speaker 1 15:39
It is. And what better way to celebrate them by looking back at the incredible journey we’ve been on together,

Speaker 2 15:45
totally. So what makes Chamber Chat so special? Well, for

Speaker 1 15:51
me, it’s about making the chamber world a little bit smaller. You know, chamber pros are busy. People busy. They wear so many hats. Yeah, it’s hard to find the time to attend every conference, read every article, connect with every

Speaker 2 16:03
colleague, exactly, and that’s where Chamber Chat comes in,

Speaker 1 16:06
right? It’s like a well, it’s like having a cheat sheet right, a direct line to the best practices and innovative ideas from across the chamber industry. And

Unknown Speaker 16:16
you don’t even have to leave your desk exactly,

Speaker 1 16:18
whether you’re on the treadmill or, you know, stuck in traffic,

Speaker 2 16:21
or even just taking a break from planning your next big event.

Speaker 1 16:25
Exactly, Chamber Chat is there ready to inspire and equip you with the tools you need to

Speaker 2 16:30
succeed? It’s true. And you know, when I think back over the past 300 episodes, what really strikes me is the sheer diversity of voices we’ve heard. Oh,

Speaker 1 16:39
absolutely, CEOs, young professionals, rural chamber leaders, big city folks, we’ve had it all.

Speaker 2 16:46
We’ve explored everything from membership growth to advocacy to what was that one episode building community resilience? Oh

Speaker 1 16:54
yes, that was a powerful one. I think it was. Wait, was it? Michael Johnson from the small town chamber,

Speaker 2 16:59
yes, him talking about bringing his community together after that factory closed, talk about resilience, right?

Speaker 1 17:05
That’s what I mean. Chamber chat isn’t just about theory. It’s about real stories, real challenges, real triumphs from the front lines of the chamber world.

Speaker 2 17:13
And let’s not forget about the man behind the curtain, Brandon Burton. Oh

Unknown Speaker 17:16
my goodness, Brandon, where do we even begin?

Speaker 2 17:18
I mean to dedicate yourself to documenting the voices and experiences of so many chamber leaders 300

Unknown Speaker 17:24
episodes. That’s dedication.

Speaker 2 17:25
It’s remarkable. He’s created something truly special. And it’s not just about the podcast itself. It’s the community he’s fostered. The

Speaker 1 17:34
Chamber Chat community is incredible. It’s a place where chamber professionals from all walks of life can come together to learn, to share, to support one another. And

Unknown Speaker 17:43
that’s something really worth celebrating.

Unknown Speaker 17:45
It really is.

Speaker 2 17:45
So as we celebrate this 300 episode milestone, I think it’s important for us to ask ourselves, How can we, each of us, take action exactly,

Speaker 1 17:54
what can you do today with the insights and inspiration you’ve gained right

Speaker 2 17:59
dive into the Chamber Chat archives. What resonates with you?

Speaker 1 18:04
What challenges are you facing that maybe, just maybe, someone has already addressed on this show

Unknown Speaker 18:09
exactly, and you know, don’t keep it to yourself, right?

Speaker 1 18:12
Share what you’ve learned with your colleagues. Connect with other listeners. Let’s

Unknown Speaker 18:16
keep this incredible conversation going.

Unknown Speaker 18:18
Here’s to the next 300 episodes.

Unknown Speaker 18:19
Cheers to that.

Brandon Burton 18:20
All right, so what did you think that was kind of cool, right? Having the conversation. These are two AI bots, so to speak, talking back and forth, really, just I fed them my website, chamberchatpodcast.com, and that’s what it came up with, which is pretty amazing, but I really like what they talked about at the end, about let’s take action, right? So hopefully, as you’ve tuned in and listened to chamber chat podcast, you’ve heard from different chamber leaders, people from you know, different walks of life, different experiences, that are bringing things to the table that can help make your job at the Chamber better, that can help you better serve your members and your community. That’s the goal of the show. So it’s my hope that as you take these things, implement, do your rip off and duplicate your R and D, Please share the show with somebody who you know, who may be new to the chamber industry, if you take a minute and think about especially over the last couple of years, since 2020 there’s been a lot of turnover in the chamber industry. And if you think of anybody that’s new to the chamber world that could benefit from hearing from a documented resource of over 300 chamber leaders at this point and extract value from that to help jump start their career. Please share chamber chat podcast with them and encourage them to subscribe and listen to it regularly, because there there really should be great takeaways, great value that anybody especially. Those that are new to the industry can take away and really help their career get off to a great start. So I want to say thank you for being with me, for listening to the podcast, for sharing it with others, for paying attention to sponsors of the podcast. That’s what makes us keep going, is having sponsors. I know as a chamber leader, you understand the value of sponsors, and having people act on that to continue having sponsors. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I can’t do this show without you, and 300 episodes is really a testament to being able to have a great fan base, a great listenership, and it’s my goal to just keep this going and keep providing value. So please share it out. And I’m always happy to hear feedback or ideas of potential guests as well that you think would be good for the show. People you see making a big impact, let me know. But anyways, that’s all I’ve got for this week, and I’m just incredibly humble and grateful to been able to be at this for nearly six years now and 300 episodes. So it’s been quite the journey, and I look forward to a lot more. Thanks a lot.


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Chamberpad with Houssem Touil

Miles Burdine Chamber Chat Podcast promo image.

Below is an auto-generated transcription. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.

Join the Facebook Group

Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor for this episode is Bringing Local Back. Remember when your community could turn to a local TV station or newspaper for the latest updates and affordable ads? Those days may be fading, but the need for local connection remains. That’s why we created Bringing Local Back, a game changing platform that restores the local visibility and advertising power to your community. It’s more than just tech. It’s about driving engagement and creating new revenue for your chamber. Ready to see the future visit bringinglocalback.com to schedule your demo today. This is the future of local commerce.

Our guest for this episode is Houssem Touil. Houssem, for the past 10 years, has worked with chambers of commerce, business associations and employer organizations across the Mediterranean Africa and Eastern Europe, where he’s delivered projects which have impacted the private sector and civil society on both the local and regional scale. During that time, he wore many hats, such as employee, consultant, member, board member and chamber president, which gives him a new perspective on the private sector challenges and opportunities. By the age of 27 he co founded the Tunisia Estonian Chamber of Commerce, bilateral chamber between Estonia and Tunisia, his home country, where he serves as the president since 2019. He is now the founder of Chamberpad and newsletter for chambers of commerce, Houssem, I’m excited to have you back with us on chamber chat podcast. Sam was a guest back on Episode 120 for anyone who’s curious and wants to go back and check out that episode as well, but please take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions who are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little

Houssem Touil 2:25
better. Yeah, sure. First of all, thanks, Brandon, so it’s been three years and a half now I think I think you’re right. Yeah, yeah, three years and half, like Time flies. So thanks for having me, and thanks everyone for for tuning in. So my name is Houssem. I’m the founder of Chamberpad and also presidential comms, just like you mentioned it. So I had the privilege of working with Chambers of Commerce of several sizes and budgets, and had many hats, as you mentioned earlier, which has given me unique insight into how businesses and chambers can effectively collaborate. So this experience, coupled with conversations with industry peers, has really fueled my passion for launching chamber pad, and also have a background in media communication. So yeah, so we know that chamber pad aims to be at the forefront of those discussions. That’s

Brandon Burton 3:23
kind of a natural fit with the media and communications background, to do something in that field, right and blend it in with the Chamber world. Yes, and I definitely see it being relevant in today’s world, where the world just keeps getting smaller and smaller with technology and communication skills. And you know, for you and you know, for you and I to be able to be on the opposite sides of the planet right now and be able to talk over zoom as if we’re in the same room, and the world is very small, and a lot of the trends that we see happening globally are happening in our own backyard. So being able to know what’s going on and maybe getting that glimpse, you know, a step or two before it happens in our own community is crucial to staying relevant as a chamber. So I’m excited to have you on for that perspective. But maybe before we, before we go down that road of talking about chamber pad and what it is, it is kind of a unique situation with the Tunisia Estonia Chamber. So take a moment just to explain what that is for listeners, and how does that work at the bilateral chamber and and just give us that perspective.

Houssem Touil 4:31
Yeah, sure. So, so it’s not for profit. And so, so it’s so why is 21st so it’s 20. I mean, it’s like, this small country, and they have, like, 99% of their public services are digital. So basically, you do pretty much everything online with with the government, and also it’s, it’s very tech savvy. They have, like. You know, it’s, it’s startup country where they have, like, the most numbers of of startups per capita. And at the same time, you know, my country, we are small, but not that small in size, but I’ve seen that. There’s also a lot of similarities, and we can learn a lot from them, start by implementing, or at least learning from how they build, like digital savvy, digital side country. So basically, in Tunisia, we have also, like a lot of IT companies. So most of the time this is it focused more than everything else. So basically, we’re like a technology chamber, or at least technology focus chamber, where we help our local startups to expand via startup visa, for example, in Estonia, they can also this enable them to to get access to to European markets, to alleviate a lot of a lot of barriers, and reduce the cost of doing business. Sometimes it also offers them to other markets, not just the European market, also in Tunisia, every year, we have over 65,000 graduates, about 10,000 to 11,000 of them are engineers, or at least they work in the stem so, so basically they are trilingual, and most of the time they don’t just, like, find a job right away. Give me the perspective, like the local economy and so on. So it’s not that easy to find a job like right away when you graduate. So basically, most of them, they end up, like working as freelancer, or they leave the country to other places. And so here comes Estonia with a model called the residency. So basically you become like a virtual resident of the country. But it doesn’t give you, like additional rights, like additional civic rights. They just give you most of the time, like, let’s say, commercial rights to interact with the government, and you can stay wherever you are in the world. So you don’t relocate. You stay where you are. You can have access to the same opportunity just like, or at least almost like you would relocate over there. So, yeah. So this is another, another pain point that we have addressed, especially that we have, like, a massive brain drain. So we’re trying to keeping tasks local

Brandon Burton 7:33
well, and it’s another example of the world getting smaller and and you guys definitely can’t do things the way things have always been done as chambers, because it’s very technology focused and needing to stay on the forefront of all that. Out of curiosity, how do you measure membership and growth and that with with the chamber with this type of structure?

Houssem Touil 7:57
Yeah, so this also another way we looked at how we could operate at the chamber. So usually a chamber would just, you know, like, you set up the chamber. Let’s say, if you’re like, private, low chamber, you set it up as a nonprofit. You bring in some, like, industry, industry peers, and you say, Okay, we’re going to set up the chamber. And you start, like, drafting the roadmap, and start acquiring members to get to what you have planned, like do events, trade delegations and policy briefs and so on. But we have acted differently. Said, Okay, instead of focusing on having members, how many have renewed? How many are engaged or not or job that. So I said, Okay, we are going to act as a cluster. And so basically we said we are going to be like, not just like a local cluster, but on both sides. So we went to the clusters over there in Estonia, and we said, Okay, so here are the possibilities where we can collaborate in the short term, mid term and actually long term. And here are probably, like, some discussions that you could also take, take part of, like knowledge exchange, for example, and trade delegations or bid for tenders like Tunisia, spending like lot and working with multilateral stakeholders like World Bank and African Development Bank and so on to digitize the public services so and they have experience with that. So I say, okay, maybe let’s just like match sometimes we do on a case by case basis. So instead of bringing you like 500 companies from both sides together, or even 100 let’s just do it like on case by case basis. So we started operating first for startups, and we had like few startups getting there. They had that they. Startup visa. We also had a couple of startups from Australia coming here the startup shop. We have, like, a unique framework here for startups called the startup act. And they operating thanks to its thanks to its framework incentives. Then we had some IT companies bidding together as joint ventures. They are working not just Tunisia, but also in Africa, actually in the Middle East. So, yeah, we are seeing, like a lot of it’s actually new perspective. So it’s we find it, it’s a new, I’m not gonna say like it’s a new model or something, but we just like explored something that you wouldn’t just like think of when, when, when you draft your roadmap. So usually we think of events, trade delegation and so on. But I said, Okay, let’s just go with whatever opportunity we can see is, let’s just go with that. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 10:58
I like that. So Houssem is obviously an outside the box thinker, which is why we wanted to have him on the show. Today, we’re going to focus most of our conversation around Chamberpad. This is a new newsletter that hose him has founded and put out into the world. So we’re going to learn about what it is, what the purpose is, and everything about it. As soon as they get back from this quick break.

Are you looking for a year round affordable and timely shop local campaign for your chamber or CVB Look no further build a custom each shop play mobile app with App My Community by visiting appmycommunity.com/chamberchat. App My Community mobile apps are not just simple membership directory listings. They provide many more capabilities to engage with your community. Provide your residents with a robust events calendar partner with a local fare festival or Farmers Market provide a schedule map and other resources to promote the event. Run a Small Business Saturday campaign any time of the year using built in scavenger hunts allow your membership to communicate directly to their customers via push notifications. Your app my community mobile app will be a unique member benefit allow you to generate non dues revenue with sponsorship opportunities and best of all provide a valuable resource to your community please visit appmycommunity.com/chamberchat now to receive 10% off your first year of an App My Community mobile app.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

Attention all chamber of commerce leaders! Are you looking for a powerful tool to help grow and manage your chamber? Look no further than Chamber Nation! Our comprehensive platform provides all the features you need to streamline membership management, host events, communicate with your members and provide amazing services to your members. Plus, our expert team is always available to provide personalized support. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to take your chamber to the next level at a price you will truly appreciate. Visit www.RichardsCalendar.com to learn more about Chamber Nation today!

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

All right, Houssem, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we see the world getting smaller and smaller. There’s great value in getting perspective from people and other other parts, other regions of the world, just to see what’s going on there and see what we can apply in our own community. Tell us what is Chamberpad. We talked about it being a newsletter, but I know it’s new. I think you’re what four, four newsletters into it and, and I will say, from a content producer myself, sometimes our best stuff comes out early before we have a big following. So I’m going to urge everybody to start following Chamberpad right now so you can get all the good stuff. But it’ll, it’ll continue to be great, I’m sure. Yeah, tell tell us what it is and what it all it entails, and where the idea come from. Yeah,

Houssem Touil 14:06
like that. But you know, like when you start at the beginning, you’re like, you put yourself, yeah, you put

Brandon Burton 14:11
your best foot forward. You got great content, and you’ve got a small so you gotta, gotta grow it and get in front of more people.

Houssem Touil 14:19
Yeah? You can relate, yes, yeah, and so. So Chamberpad is, is a newsletter designed specifically for the chambers of commerce ecosystem. So the staff, the executives, the board members, the volunteers, the members also, and also the service providers, the policy makers and so on. So anyone who is like on the could be around, like the Chamber of Commerce ecosystem. So, like, I’ve seen, like a pattern I saw, like a gap in the market where chambers needed, like, easily digestible. Or centralized source of information. And so this comes as frustration as the chamber President myself, so I find, I mean, I know that, like, the perspective sometimes could be different, because it’s just like between two countries. So basically, you can have like, top two, three news outlets between two countries, where you could just, you know, see the news everything related to to the government or private sector or whatever. But this, also, I have another hat, which is working with chambers in from all sizes, different culture, different countries, different cultures. So basically, you are like, you know, sometimes you you find yourself in information overload, so or overload that you don’t know where to get your information exactly. You can see, can go through, you know, like your Twitter or x spread. You can go through your Facebook timeline and go through the LinkedIn news feed, and basically you wouldn’t be able to digest, like, all of it. So basically, we said, okay, let’s have like, one source of information. And I started thinking more into it to see, like, how relevant it is. So started like, let’s say, tracking how many news there are related to all of this, like, related to to the chambers, to the employee organizations, to Business Association and so on, versus like there is, on average, about 14,000 euros per month only related to to chambers and and, yeah, and this is actually just in English, so it’s not like, also like, try to imagine how many this could be in other languages, like in French or in Chinese or in Arabic and in Spanish or Portuguese. So I guess it’s going to be more like just in English, just like 14,000 and so say, okay, maybe we can do something and be so the first, first idea would be to become aggregator. But also that wouldn’t solve the problem, since there are actually 14,000 years. So I wouldn’t read 14,000 years per month, because the context is extremely different. So I said, Okay, so maybe do like a digest, like every week you spend the whole week, like hustling, doing whatever you do with requiring members, visiting your member, advocating on their behalf, you know, talking to the media, doing events or whatever said by the end of the week, or at least. So basically we release every Thursday. They said, by the end of the week, you’ll get the top news and the top events and the top publications, and now also the best latest Podcast, episode, chamber, chat podcast, yeah, that you can listen to. So it’s not just about reading it, but also listening and any I mean, I find that format better than actually doing an aggregator, some, something like Hacker News. I don’t know if you know what I can use. No, I’m not familiar with that. Yeah. So it’s like, you know, in circumvent there’s like, there’s like, hacking news. It’s a platform where, like, hundreds and hundreds of news drop every day, almost, about technology and so on. So I said, I mean, you gotta spend like, your day in front of hacking news to read in years. So basically, you went to the anywhere. So I said, Okay, this to just do the newsletter and take it from there. So we set up like a roadmap, and I said, okay, like our missions to provide actionable insights, trends, events, best practices to chambers across across the globe. So whether they are a local chamber in a small town or a large international network, they could be a continental chamber or State Chamber or whatever. So yeah, for now, we’re just newsletter but and we’re also have like subscribers from North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and also even from the Caribbean. So yeah, I mean very much this is like exciting times, and very much looking forward to where this is going to take us. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 19:32
no, I love the idea for it and and, like you said, to be able to try to curate these different articles and news outlets from, you know, worldwide, from the global scene. And it would be quite the undertaking to really dive in and do that all, but as you come across these things of interest, to kind of keep note of it and put it together. And what I like is it’s an easily digestible newsletter. So you’re not seeing just article after article, but you you have it broken down. Right at the top where it says, like, for example, this week there were six news articles that you referenced, three publications, one podcast episode, and four events you know around the world, yeah. And then you have it broken down by those categories, and like, bullet points and links to the full articles or registration for events and things like that. And I don’t know just kind of future casting this, I see you could become that source where people are coming to you with articles and information. You know, here’s something for the newsletter. You know, our Chamber’s doing this, or our, you know, National Association of chamber in certain countries doing this, or whatever it may be, just to put it out there in the newsletter. I think it’s a great platform. And glad to see somebody’s picking up the ball and running with it and doing doing this. So, yeah, kudos. Kudos to you the idea.

Houssem Touil 20:51
Yeah, thanks. Thanks. Yeah. I mean, we already started having some people reaching out, actually. So they reach out even by the email that they find at the bottom of the newsletter, or by link there, I’ll say, oh, you should actually put this. Or why not look at this? So, yeah, basically, so feel free to send, I mean, yeah, we’re happy to to include it,

Brandon Burton 21:15
yeah. And I think for a busy chamber executive or chamber staff to be able to to get this email every Thursday. Open it up, and you can scan right through it, see what what things are of interest to you and what’s relevant to you. Click on that. And I know, you know, lots of people get different emails from various organizations, maybe like Harvard Business Review. I know they do like a weekly email, and people really look forward to those because it has so much valuable content in it. And that’s how I see Chamberpad being, is that resource specific for chamber executives, chamber staff, to be able to see what’s going on in a lot of different markets all at once, and you can go back and reference it. It’s got all the links there. So you’re not needing to search worldwide to find these things, but it’s being curated and presented to you. So nice job. What else would you want to share about Chamberpad for listeners, just to get them into it, to get them to understand what it is and where it offers value for them. Is there anything else that you’d add?

Houssem Touil 22:24
Yeah, sure. So so far now we started as as a newsletter we read by chamber leaders from 29 countries so far, and and what we what we plan on doing, is actually to become one stop shop for all affiliations related to chambers. So this is just like the digest you get to just digest of 10 years. But eventually, we’re planning on starting doing our own webinars, for example, in the beginning, we have also started to initiate discussions with chamber industry events, where we are could become media partners for the events as well. We’re also working. We’re about to roll out our platform so it’s the same address, like chamberpa.com is the same for now, you can just go there and subscribe for the newsletter. We will keep the newsletter, of course, because we all need to keep the weekly digest over there. But also, we are going to start doing interviews and promoting. You know, most of the time we have to promote economy. So we just hear about the top economies most of the time, always doing what, but we often forget about all the others in all the great job that they are doing. Some subjects, for example, like the free trade agreements, like if your chamber, for example, you have members who export, let’s say, like, fruits and vegetables. You would want to know about another your chamber peer in another country which says, you say, hey, both are our country are actually have a free trade agreements, and fruits and vegetables are actually included in that. So we have either eliminated tariffs, or we have actually reduced the the tariff rates. So basically, you as a chamber, you would actually tell say, Okay, why don’t you just like, go to this country, listen to this webinar, lead to everything they have to tell you about how you could export to their countries, and thus you make more money, you hire more people, and also you stick with the chamber. So basically, it’s it’s sometimes I see that maybe can talk about it later. A place like future for chambers and so on. But sometimes you can just, like, do it all as as the chamber executive yourself, like, you know, you can just do everything, right? Sometimes someone has to do something for you resist

Brandon Burton 25:15
the temptation, right? Yeah,

Houssem Touil 25:20
yeah, absolutely, yeah. I mean, it started, I mean, like, you know, I’ve been listening to your your podcast for three years and a half now, and every time, you know, I get, like, new perspectives from new people. Sometimes, you know, it’s sometimes it could be related to, to the place where they are operating from. Or sometimes it could be like subject. So yeah, like we can do, we can do, like webinars on specific subjects, but basically they’re going to be around countries. And we’re very thrilled to be like partners with chamber chat podcast. I mean, it’s like, really my favorite podcast, like every week goes into it. So basically, we have that you listen to Brandon every week, but also you read what her writes to you every week. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 26:08
goes hand in hand. I love it, yeah. So you’d mentioned earlier you have a marketing communications background. So how is that? Have you been able to lean into that as you’ve launched chamber pad?

Houssem Touil 26:26
Yes, very good question. So, so you need so when you look at for example. So I said earlier, would be like tracking the number of news that we find, like every week we also, let’s say, like since the opportunity and checked, let’s say the trainings related to related to chambers, what they are talking about and so on. I’ve seen that most of the time they’re still operating in the same way. And what do I mean by that? I mean from immediate perspective, like for now, when you go through all kinds of reports, you can go to reports just related to like certain sides of chambers, or in certain continent for chambers, you will see that many say that they have reduced engagement rate, while others say that they they have like, more members dropping than actually renewing. Others said that they were actually seeing like spike in membership. And we said, Okay, so maybe I should, like, you know, initiate some discussions with some people, and try to see why, like what’s going on. And sometimes what what you get is just you find that these people, they communicate with different generations at the same time. So they communicate with my generation, the millennials. They communicate also with the Gen Z. They communicate also with the boomers. And so I think that chambers, right now, should become a media machine. I mean, at certain time they become a network. Actually, they started as a network. And, you know, actually started about, like, over 400 years ago in the port of southern France, Marseille. They’re just, you know, they started, you know, like going to the port over there, and they had, like, issues with the pirates in the Mediterranean. And then they see the occasion, and they find out that traders, merchants are meeting with each other. So basically, they also see the occasion to start doing business together, and then later on. So So it started as a network, and then from the network key to move to a network as a powerhouse. And you know, you go, you become member your chamber is going to defend you. They’re going to, you know, voice your concern to the local, state, federal, nation, whatever authorities your concern and and now I think that they should become actually medial nation. And this is, this is not an option, because the world has changed a lot, and even with covid, like covid is actually despite, like, all the negative downsides of covid and so on. But I think that it has also, like, accelerated the future, and it has actually brought it to open doorstep. So I think, yes, chambers should become media machines.

Brandon Burton 29:46
I love that, and I’m going to take that as an endorsement. You know, recently launched the Bringing Local Back platform that was part of the vision is chambers being a media machine and establishing a platform that makes it easy. Easy to put your content out in your community, to really showcase your members, to really be that go to source for information in your community. So I love that testimonial of it, because that is the that’s the idea about that, that bringing local back campaign. So thank you for that. Sure. I like asking everyone I have on the show for any kind of tip or action item that you might have for listeners who are looking to take their chamber up to the next level. What would you suggest for them?

Houssem Touil 30:33
Oh, yeah, actually, there are quite a few. So first of all, maybe actually start to embrace AI like, you know, AI is not like chatgpt, it’s not clothing, it’s not perplexity, and it’s not Canva and like the magic writer of LinkedIn, or whatever it’s, it’s much more. I mean, it’s this, it’s part of this. It’s empowering, like content creation and all of that. But there are also other things that you should actually embrace in AI, for example, something like automations start to automate. And actually, I think that I’ve said this in the first episode with you, I think said automate. And actually, even three years later, I still talk to my peers, and most of the time they don’t automate, yeah, but actually automate. Automate often. Like, there’s so many things that you cannot automate for sure, but things which are repetitive make it automated, make it autopilot, like, save even like five hours per week or 10 hours per week, or even as low as two hours per week, like, just automate your workflow, like, try to gain some time, automated repetitive tasks and to get more space for creative work, for example, or to have more members, or to talk more to to your to our existing members, also at the same time, maybe you should actually shift more of their member engagement strategies online, for example, like, you know, we live like in digital era, and sometimes remember, expect real time expand real time updates, sometimes like some personal content. I know that it’s not that obvious to do it for certain types or sizes of chambers, but do as much as you can from where you understand, like, for example, I’ve seen some chambers they said, Okay, we are going to do like, virtual secretaria. So basically, don’t call us on the phone and tell us what, what you need and so on. Like just, there’s like, there’s like a chat bot in in the website, you can just talk to it, and if it is something that you know, like your interface, you chat with the interface. If it doesn’t give you the proper answers to what you want. This is actually when would be able to get access to a phone number and call us, but you can also send us an email. I mean, try to automate as much as possible, also with different engagement stores, I found that some chambers, for example, they do work with us consistently. I know that, for example, some chamber in in small town doesn’t mean I mean they probably they, they cannot do that because, you know, they can just like, do an event, like, every once in a while, and that’s enough. But if you’re like Metro Chamber, like very big city, you cannot, like, reach everyone at the same time and bring them together on site. So have something like, you know, give them real time date. I mean, they don’t need to get to wait for your monthly newsletter to tell them what you did for them, like, do it real time. Do it Real Time. I mean, they will feel that you actually care more about them, that you are more present than you actually wait for it. And do you know it’s just like another thing that you just another thing yet to check at the end of the month, and said, Okay, this news database, what we’ve been doing, like, No, do it real time.

Brandon Burton 34:31
Yeah, I like that. Doing it real time and also recording it, having a library of these real time, going back to being that media machine, right? If you can provide asynchronous information where somebody can digest it on their own time, instead of needing to be at the meeting or at the luncheon at a specific time in person, they they have the option to catch it virtually, or if they can’t see it today, but they can watch it tomorrow. Then that’s even better, because you’re getting more exposure to more people that way. Your your your thought about automation too, I think is spot on. I’ve seen it’ll free up time and the give give room for that creative work, like you mentioned. But it also makes your systems that much better when you can automate processes, because the input every the data that’s coming into, it’s going to be the same. And just a simple example, as I’ve seen with some chambers, is they input membership information, for example, the contact name, depending on who is entering the information in, they might include a prefix of Mr. Or Mrs. You know, Jones or whatever, and then the next person who’s entering in membership information just as first and last name. So then you have inconsistencies in your data all over the place. So having a system and automating it’s going to clean things up a ton and make it so much easier to process that data in a meaningful way. Well, Hussein, before we let you go, you alluded to it earlier, but as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Houssem Touil 36:22
Yeah, so, so, as I mentioned earlier, so chamber stars as network and then as advocacy powerhouse, and now they should become media machines. But actually, in order to become media machine, you should be able to I think that instead of like everyone doing their own thing, you know, aside, maybe you should have something that we have our own key message, the same key messages that we deliver like we harmonize all the benefits that you get from joining channel. But also, at the same time, we should also harmonize the key messages of what could not work in your favor if you don’t join as well. Because, for example, if you have some kind of issue, sometimes you just cannot solve it on your own. We we sometimes forget that channels of commerce also have mandates depending on the countries they’re operating from. So sometimes, if you want to deal with the government, for example, on a certain issue, you cannot do it on your own, only vi chamber. So you have, for example, you want to advocate to change some regulations, for example, which are harming you. Or maybe you said, Okay, I have suggestions for something new, which actually we could implement, which kind of bring us more dollars and hire more people, and especially keeping both local. So you can only do that with your chamber. When you look at the world’s biggest companies, actually, what they do is just, you see that everything is online, but no like, they have like public affairs team who actually or which actually work with chambers to actually negotiate with the governments and so on to implement new kind of regulations. So, yeah, I think that it’s like Bill Gates, or, I don’t know who said it before, like, if your business is on the internet, then it will be out of business. I think that should, like, harmonize the set of key messages which go like, if your business is not chamber member, then your business will go out of business. So, yeah, I think yeah, that’s it. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 38:57
No, that’s great. I appreciate that. I want to give you a chance to share any contact information for listeners who want to reach out and connect to learn more about what you’re doing, but probably most importantly, how to subscribe to chamber pads. They can get this news, this curated news, sent to them each week. What’s the best way? Where would you point them to do these things? Yeah,

Houssem Touil 39:21
sure. So you go to chamberpad.com so basically, you will, it’s a landing page. The first thing you’re gonna see is to actually just insert your email and subscribe, and later on, you can start reading, have access to all the archives. And every week, like every Thursday, you will you will have, like the weekly digest every week, every Thursday in your inbox. You will also find my contact information within the newsletter, so you can find my full name. We send 12. It’s the same on LinkedIn, and you can. Also find my email. It’s my initials, so ht@chamberpad.com,

Brandon Burton 40:07
that’s perfect, and as normal, we’ll get all this in our show notes for this episode to make it easy to find and subscribe and get people in contact with you. But Sam, this has been great having you back on chamber chat podcast, the partnership going forward with with chamber pad as well. And wish you best of luck going forward and and seeing it grow and see see where it goes from here. So thanks for being with us today.

Houssem Touil 40:33
Yeah, sure. Thank you for having me.

Brandon Burton 40:36
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Marketing on a Shoestring Budget with Sean Evans

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Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor for this episode is Bringing Local Back. Remember when your community could turn to a local TV station or newspaper for the latest updates and affordable ads? Those days may be fading, but the need for local connection remains. That’s why we created Bringing Local Back, a game changing platform that restores the local visibility and advertising power to your community. It’s more than just tech. It’s about driving engagement and creating new revenue for your chamber. Ready to see the future visit bringinglocalback.com to schedule your demo today. This is the future of local commerce.

Our guest for this episode is Sean Evans. Sean is the President and CEO of the Meridian Chamber in Idaho. He has 29 years of experience in organizational management, marketing, media and nonprofit management. During his career in the media industry, he served as a publisher for newspapers in Oklahoma and Arkansas, before moving to Idaho to be publisher and vice president of the Idaho business review from 2009 to 2014 and also spent time with the Idaho press and meridian press. Sean served as president and CEO of Junior Achievement of Idaho from 2016 to 2020 he joined the meridian chamber in January of 2020 and led the organization during the fastest growing three years in its history. Sean understands strong partnerships and how to support our their business community, which is a priority for the chamber. He also is a proven leader who’s motivated and driven to lead their chamber to the next level. Sean was recognized in 2023 as a CEO of influence by the Idaho Business Review. His commitment to the community outside of his day to day job is shown in his board service with the Junior Achievement of Idaho Girl Scouts of silver stage board development committee, usglcs, Idaho Advisory Committee, and Sean currently serves as the board chair for the Idaho chamber Alliance. Sean and his wife Amanda, live in Meridian and have two daughters that have graduated from Mountain View High School and both currently attend Boise State University. But Sean, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Sean Evans 2:58
Brandon, thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me on the podcast today. Something interesting about myself we you shared in my bio the my experience in the newspaper career and transition to nonprofit management. The unique thing about where I am today is when I look back over my previous career, I’ve actually served on five different chamber boards throughout my career. So it’s, it’s, you know, I’m on the other side of that board table from my board members and executive committee, but five different chambers in my career as where I’ve served, uh, so I’ve seen it from both sides. That definitely

Brandon Burton 3:47
gives you a kind of a unique perspective. I’m curious, do you look back at your time as a board member and think, Oh, I wish I approached it differently, or do you take your position now and think I understand where they’re coming from, and probably a little bit of a mix of both.

Sean Evans 4:01
Well, I can tell you, I look back and I say I could have been a much better board member.

Brandon Burton 4:09
That makes sense. Makes a lot of sense. Well, if you would tell us a little bit about the meridian chamber, just to give us an idea of the size of the chamber, scope of work, budget, staff, that sort of stuff, just to kind of set the stage for our discussion today, as it’ll be very relevant to our topic.

Sean Evans 4:28
So Meridian chamber is located here. Meridian Idaho is located right next door to Boise, the capital, here in Idaho, and second largest city meridians, about 150,000 population. Our chamber has been around since 1956 meridian, though, for the longest time, was just seen as a, you know, a pit stop on your way from Boise to other parts. And I. Idaho and meridian has just grown when I moved to Idaho in 2009 Meridian was 75,000 people, so it has almost doubled in size in the time that I’ve been here, and just continues to grow for the longest time. Meridian was just seen as a bedroom community for Boise and Nampa, the city a little bit further to the west. At the time, Nampa was actually larger than meridian, but you lived in Meridian. It’s where you got your suburb house and things. Your kids went to school in Meridian, but you commuted into Boise, or you commuted into Nampa for work. Well, that’s changed over the last 10 years. In 10 years, Meridian has become not only a destination for retail with all the different types of shops that have opened here, we just recently opened a shield sporting goods store, the first in Idaho. We’ve also seen our office complexes just grow because the businesses and the corporate communities started saying, Well, wait a minute, all of our people live in Meridian. Why don’t we just locate in Meridian and drop the commute for everyone? So the meridian chamber has been a part of a community that’s been rapidly growing for about a decade. Covid definitely impacted everyone a little bit when I joined the chamber in January of 2020 covid hit in March my first year was nothing what I thought it was going to be when I actually, you know, became a staff member for a Chamber of Commerce. We had to lay off half our staff and just basically go into, you know, how do we survive type mode? The here in Idaho, things opened up pretty quickly, and we got back to to normal business pretty rapidly. When, when I joined the chamber, we were just under 500 members. Today, we’re 923 members total in the the meridian chamber. So you know, a lot of that is, you know, the the approach that we took during covid of really trying to support, promote and advocate for our members. We also, as I mentioned earlier, we’re in a community that’s growing rapidly. I mean, I hate to brag like this, because I’ve had conversations with others, but we’re averaging 18 new members a month. Wow, that’s our average for the last three years.

Brandon Burton 7:36
So awesome.

Sean Evans 7:38
You know, we’re having the drops. We’re having members not renew. Of course, we have the people that come on that just want the ribbon cutting and the the exposure of opening their business, but growing our chamber and really trying to help that business community has been our our board’s mission, my mission, and really trying to improve the support and advocacy that we do for the the membership. That’s

Brandon Burton 8:07
awesome. So what’s your staff size look like now?

Sean Evans 8:11
We are only a staff of four, okay, four full time employees here at the meridian chamber. So, you know, the we get a lot done with the the small staff that we have, we are growing. We’ve got plans fourth quarter to add another staff member specifically in the membership area. But, yeah, we’re, we’re small, small, but mighty team.

Brandon Burton 8:40
Yeah, running lean and mean. I like it. It’s very good. Well, that definitely helps kind of set the stage as to what the context is for the meridian chamber as we get into our topic for our conversation today, which will be focusing most of our conversation around how a chamber can go about marketing on a shoestring budget. And I’m sure there’s some good stories along with that, as we dive into this topic. As soon as I get back from this quick break.

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All right, Sean, we’re back, as I mentioned before the break, our topic today is on Marketing on a Shoestring Budget, so you may be coming from an advantage, coming from a publisher background, and that definitely helps with marketing and seeing things that work and don’t work. But let’s share some of that knowledge with these Chamber Champions that are out here listening. What are, what are some of these things that you see from a marketing perspective with your chamber that are effective and helpful for others to hear. Yeah,

Sean Evans 11:27
Brandon, thank you. You’re absolutely right. I spent 21 years in the media world, print media, primarily publishing newspapers, magazines, print product. Towards the end of my career, we were shifting into digital media, internet advertising and things like that. So definitely, you know, have been a part of that, that mix of advertising, marketing and promotion, not only for you know, my my businesses that I ran, but was helping others to do that. I left the newspaper industry because there had been such a dramatic shift to online advertising, social media and things so chambers typically don’t have a tremendous marketing budget. You know, the ones that are well established, you know, they’re they’re going to be marketing their own activities and things like that. They don’t do much as far as marketing, you know, just the value of what the chamber brings to businesses and things. So one of the approaches that we have taken is with a small team that we have four members, we can’t get it all done. So we really engage our ambassadors. Most chambers, you’ve got an ambassador committee that acts as your hospitality arm of your your committee. We’ve really empowered our ambassadors to be, you know, basically an additional sales force for us out there in the community. We get most of our referrals from our ambassadors. They’re out working the community for their day job all the time. They are our champions. They are doing things we reward that we take care of our ambassadors very well and give them a lot of the the credit for what we’re bringing on board the so I would just encourage the chambers out there to find ways to get your ambassadors even more engaged and empower them to be that that additional sales force for you.

Brandon Burton 13:39
So let’s lean into that a little bit more and learn more about how to do that. You mentioned you reward the ambassadors. What are, what are some of the motivations, maybe training that goes into empowering these ambassadors and really helping to give them that charge, because most of these ambassadors are going to have jobs and careers of their own, and so how do you get them to balance the time and really give priority to or give time to prioritize advocating for the chamber and getting the chamber name out the community? Well, one

Sean Evans 14:11
of the easiest ways is feed them. I mean, you give them food, and you can get a lot of things out of them. We have a monthly Ambassador luncheon. Is something that we have been doing for quite a while. It’s a great time to bring together these, you know, people that are, for the most part, are all extroverts and really want to get out and network and have a good time. During that luncheon, we’re giving them new member packets. We’re giving them our renewal packets to take out they want to go out and engage other businesses. And this gives them a foot in the door for not only their business, but, you know, for them to make connections in the community. And that’s that’s really what one of the biggest rewards for an ambassador on our committee is you. To be on that front line of welcoming new businesses to the community, being one of the first through their door, and just being a part of that, that welcoming bandwagon for for new businesses in our community, and then also engagement the activities that we do with our ambassadors, we’re always, you know, giving them the mic at events so that they can be the ones that do some of the welcoming and things to give them more exposure, to help boost their company and their exposure. Social media posts on what ambassadors are doing, we encourage our ambassadors to take pictures when they’re engaging members and things like that. So people will see, you know, all the things that the Chamber’s doing on social media or events and activities in the community, and our ambassadors wear name badges. So you know, many people confuse them for, oh, you work for the chamber? No, I’m just an ambassador, but they have that kind of appearance of working for the chamber. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 16:08
I like that, yeah. And there’s some really creative ways to utilize ambassadors. And I like the name badge. I like that. It gives that representation of we’re here on behalf of the chamber. But also, like you said, engaging these ambassadors at events, they’re having their business plugged as well, and they get to be the first ones to welcome these new businesses in the community. So those are all great things. And who doesn’t like a good lunch, right? What are, what are some of these other ways that you found to be effective when it comes to marketing with the limited budget,

Sean Evans 16:40
yeah. So the one thing I will tell you is post covid. When we came back and started staffing back up, the first position that I hired coming out of covid was a new position for the meridian chamber, and it was our marketing and communications coordinators position, we felt like, you know, with events, maybe still on the fence, you know, people coming back to events and things, we had to do more to market and communicate to our members and to just the the general Business community. Our marketing communications coordinator has really leaned into utilizing social media heavily, not only just promoting our events, but communicating. You know new members? What new members are about? The we have a program online, similar to your podcast, ours is called Business buzz, to where we basically, every week, interview a new member on a social media program, broadcast it out across Facebook, LinkedIn, our YouTube channels. And that would that came out of covid, but it was such a great success that we we’ve kept it going, and once a week, we feature a one of our business members, and it’s such a huge success, we have a calendar booked out until February with businesses that are lined up to be on that program. So once again, and that goes out over social media. My previous career, I definitely saw the shift going towards social media and digital advertising. And the more that you can do in that realm, the better. Much of it is free that you can do when you’ve got to do a little bit of boosting or or spending the money, a little bit of money goes a long way on on social media platforms. Yes,

Brandon Burton 18:49
so with business buzz, you mentioned you do these interviews over the social platforms, is it? Does it live on YouTube at the end? Like, can people go back and see past episodes or past interviews. It

Sean Evans 19:01
lives on YouTube and our Facebook account, LinkedIn doesn’t necessarily keep the recordings there for everybody, but definitely on our YouTube channel and on Facebook, you can go back and look Facebook. I mean, I said we started this during covid. So there’s programs that were just, you know, me and another person on a camera today, though, we actually take our camera gear into that member’s business and sit down with them in their business, sometimes even walking around their business to feature some of their products or their services.

Brandon Burton 19:40
Yeah, I love that. I would love to see more chambers doing things like that, whether it’s a podcast or like a video, like you guys do these video interviews. But everybody likes a good story of an entrepreneur, success stories, how you got started, that sort of thing. And if you can highlight those successes and be able to share them and any. And if there’s an opportunity to to have them talk about the impact that the chambers had in their success even even better, it’s a win, win, win all around. So

Sean Evans 20:08
I love that. And then Brandon, you know, to to add to that. The other thing that I would just encourage chambers to do is, you know, if your marketing communications team let them, let them get creative with social media. We’ve got an amazing marketing communications coordinator. She’s young, she’s in tune with the things Instagram, all of the social media trends and things. She’ll go out and create reels for new members or for an event that we’ve got coming up. She just recently had a very successful reel hit over 700,000 views, and it was just a cute little reel that she did at one of our monthly networking events. And that just brings more and more exposure to your chamber and what your Chamber’s doing, and the engagement that your chamber has in the community.

Brandon Burton 21:06
That’s right, do you know about how often she’s posting different reels? A couple times a week? I would

Sean Evans 21:12
say she’s doing, you know, two or three a week. You know, she’s constantly trying to find that next viral reel that she’s gonna create. So,

Brandon Burton 21:22
so, and I asked that just, I know some people have kind of dabbled with reels, and they don’t see a lot of traction with it, but from what I understand, it takes the repetition, it takes, you know, getting several in there and that consistency, for the algorithm to really pick it up and get in front of people. So if you’ve tried it before, don’t just give up on it. Keep, keep doing it. Have a plan. So like, he’s how you said, doing reels for events and new members. And if you have a strategy to say, this is what we’re doing reels for, this is for how often, and put it out there on a regular basis, I think you have a higher chance of being able to see success like

Sean Evans 22:00
and you know, it’s that type of marketing, that type of branding that you’re doing that creates that in my former advertising world, we call Poma pop of mind awareness. So anytime a new business is coming to town, the word is out there that, oh, you’ve gotta join the chamber. You gotta join the meridian chamber. It’s, it’s the fun chamber. There’s lots of activities. They’re always doing things. They’re, you know, they’re growing. That is the type of brand that you want to build in your your area, your community, especially whenever you know, there’s a lot of different options for businesses to be involved in, whether it’s a another networking group, the bnis of the world, or things, you want that membership to know that you know you’re there to support, promote and advocate for them, but they need to be involved. They need to be coming to your events and activities, to be engaged, to get the most of their membership. That’s

Brandon Burton 23:01
right, and engagement is so key. Everybody engages in different ways. And for a lot of people, their engagement may be with social media, but it keeps them there long enough. It keeps them seeing the value. It keeps them involved, because that’s what they have, what their attention, what their schedule allows for them to do, engagement wise. So meet people where they are. Are there any other of these strategies that you guys have employed to really magnify what you guys are doing on that limited budget?

Sean Evans 23:34
You know, the only other thing I would say is we’ve really leaned into networking events, and we have two networking events a month, standing on our calendar and after hours and a First Friday. We see this as an opportunity for members and guests to come together. So, you know, we’re a membership organization, but we’re always trying to bring in new members. These networking events are an opportunity for that potential, that prospect, that that new business coming to town, to come and engage, learn about the chamber, see how engaged the rest of the membership is at these events. And it just makes them want to be a part of that. We we have a saying here at the meridian chamber. Is when you join the meridian chamber, you’re joining the meridian chamber family, and that’s how we try to treat all of our members. It’s getting a little harder with 900 plus, compared to, you know, 400 the big family. Yeah, big family. But it is something that those networking events have really helped us. Do we see, you know, 1015, new members, potential guests, coming to each one of our networking events. And then you have our ambassadors. Then you have our members that just you know, show everyone you know, how welcoming. And this chamber is and the support that we do for all of our businesses, and right there that’s another salesperson for us, and just helps bring more people into the fold. So, you know, what little you’ve got to do to you know, put on some of these networking events. Make them free, make them where you can bring in lots of people to see the engagement that your chamber has with each other. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 25:28
that’s great. Sean. As we start to wrap things up, I wanted to see about for a chamber listening who wants to take their chamber up to the next level. A lot of that has to do with marketing. But what kind of tip or strategy might you offer to one of these other chambers that’s listening in that situation to try to help them accomplish that goal?

Sean Evans 25:51
Really invest in that marketing and communication role. I can’t tell you how important it is for to have someone in that position that’s planning out your social media programming, because, as you mentioned earlier, it’s about repetition. It’s about being consistent. It’s about being providing content for your members and your non members on there. I mean, social media is open to everyone. We don’t have a closed Facebook page or anything that we do this on, because we’re promoting those members through social media. We’re promoting us. So you know, everybody in our business and community is getting some value out of that, but really having a consistent program, plan, schedule of what you’re going to do is really how you’re going to be successful in that. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 26:46
I love that tip, and I think some chambers probably not as much anymore, but there was a sense a while back where it’s like, I don’t want to inundate people with seeing too much of us, right? But I think people are kind of getting over that and realizing the value of the repetition and being able to be in front of people, because you’re not going to get everybody with every social media post. So no

Sean Evans 27:07
and, and there’s so many different social media platforms today. I mean, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, you lean into Tiktok and some of the others. You’ve got different audiences on all of those. I mean, you know, Facebook audience is different than Instagram, even though it’s owned by the same company, that’s why they have two different products. Then your LinkedIn. You know, you definitely gotta, you know, know what to post on LinkedIn compared to Tiktok. So those are the things that to look at

Brandon Burton 27:38
absolutely well as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, I always like to ask, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Sean Evans 27:50
Oh, I think chambers have a bright future. We are an association membership organization, and the more we can do to demonstrate to the business community the value that we bring, whether it’s from the the initial ribbon cutting or the the ability to keep you engaged in what’s going on in the the community, I think chambers will be successful if they continue to just go by that mantra of support, promote and advocate for our business community. It’s different than some of the the networking groups out there that really try and, you know, focus in on specific leads and things like that. Chambers are truly helping all businesses in the community, whether the businesses know it or not, you just got to find ways to make sure that your members see the value of being a member. Absolutely.

Brandon Burton 28:49
I love that, and I like the distinction between other networking groups too, because I think a lot of a lot of people will look at those as competition and really seeing the distinct differences and leaning into here’s where the value that our chamber offers that none of these other networking groups provide, and you can be a member of those groups too. That’s great. I mean, get the leads, make those relationships. It’s that’s fantastic. But here’s what we’re doing to support business in the entire community. So I love that. But Sean, I want to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect and learn a little bit more about your guys’ strategy and how you’re doing things there in Meridian, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect? You

Sean Evans 29:35
know, visit our website, MeridianChamber.org, you’ll find a lot of information on there about our events, our activities, the committees that we have, the ways that we engage our members. You can find my email there under our staff directory as well, and just you know, see what our community has to offer. As I said from the beginning, I. Very fortunate that we’re living in a community that’s growing. I’ve been in markets in my previous career where the community wasn’t growing and and that’s a much bigger struggle than having a community that’s growing fast. So absolutely

Brandon Burton 30:13
well, we’ll we’ll link your website in our show notes for this episode as well. So make it easy for people to find and find your email and and see your mug shot on there as well, if they wanted. But this has been great. Sean, I appreciate you spending time with us today, here on chamber tap podcast and sharing some of these insights and approaches you guys are taking to market your chamber throughout your community and really make an impact, as you guys are seeing this high growth there too. So some of this is, uh, attributed to that, to getting yourselves out there and being, you know, on the forefront of the marketing as well. So great job. Well,

Sean Evans 30:50
thank you, Brandon for having me today. Appreciate

Brandon Burton 30:55
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Chambers Promoting Themselves with Brian Bondy

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Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

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Let’s hear from Becky Womble, President of the Bastrop Chamber to hear about her experience with Community Matters.

Becki Womble 1:03
I’ve been using Community Matters for probably six or seven years now. And in a previous life, I sold commercial printing so I can highly recommend Community Matters because it’s a complete turnkey job for any busy chamber exec and it’s a wonderful, beautiful printed product whenever you’re finished. And I just I’m very sold on Community Matters. And with a printing background I just big endorsement from me.

Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Brian Bondi, Brian has been with the Granbury Chamber of Commerce in Texas since April 21. Brian has been a part of the Chamber of Commerce work in Texas and Missouri for over 30 years serving as a volunteer committee member, Committee Chair, Board member and board officer before transitioning to the other side of the desk with the Northwest communities Chamber of Commerce in suburban St. Louis. He has been a Rotarian for more than 20 years, having served as club presidents in both Kerrville and San Marcos, Texas, and is also at Paul Harris fellow. Brian has graduated from Stephen F. Austin State University and also has earned the IOM designation through his participation and graduation from the US Chamber of Commerce Institute. Brian and his wife Jean have two adult daughters and Lauren who teaches in Mansfield ISD and Aaron earned her master’s and PhD from Washington University in St. Louis, and one awesome granddaughter Emery who turned to in July. But Brian, I’m excited to have you with us today here on chamber chat podcast, I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Brian Bondy 3:16
Brandon, thank you so much for having me on the show. Really appreciate it. There’s really not a lot to me, other than I can truly say that my claim to fame was I was a contestant on the prices, right. And I got up on stage with Bob Barker a long time ago, did not win the car. And, you know, I still have to live that down to this day.

Brandon Burton 3:40
That is awesome, though. Not many people can say that. I mean, I guess a lot of people can but not many people, you know, can say they’ve been on the prices. Right? Exactly. That’s right. That’s cool. So maybe just a side tangent, my wife’s uncle. He was on prices right in the 80s. So Bob Barker, and he did win the Showcase Showdown, one at all. And then like 30 years later, so just it was just a couple years ago, actually that he was back on again with Drew Carey, and won both showcases. So he’s been on twice and one one at all twice. And I don’t know many people have done that. But it was it was pretty amazing. And he shared pictures of you know, when he was on in the 80s. And then just a couple of years ago and it was pretty neat.

Brian Bondy 4:27
That’s pretty awesome. Yeah, my my true memory array of it wasn’t the show itself. But immediately after the taping was over all of the contestants that got on stage that won something were immediately taken behind stage to fill out the appropriate tax forms,

Brandon Burton 4:42
right. The important stuff was Yeah, yeah. Well, that is that’s interesting. That’s neat. I appreciate you sharing that with us and DeMonte to take a few moments and tell us a little bit about the Granberry chamber just to kind of set the stage for our conversation. Since the day to give everyone an idea of the size of the chamber scope of work staff budget, that sort of thing before we dive into our discussion.

Brian Bondy 5:08
So the robbery chamber was founded in 1952. And we are about 40 miles southwest of Fort Worth, Texas. We are a true standalone community even though a good portion of our workforce commutes to the Metroplex of just under 900 members and a budget of a little over $600,000 We do not engage in economic development with the city or county and we do not engage in any of the visitors bureau with the hotel motel tax dollars. So everything that our chamber generates is done through membership investments, or special events and our programming and in marketing marketing events. And the chamber that we like to say is where the largest chamber and the smallest city in Texas

Brandon Burton 5:58
Yeah, no, that’s true. And you guys you guys do definitely have things working on on all cylinders that they’ve been blessed to do some work with you guys down there in the Granberry chamber and love the community and you guys are rocking it so keep up the great work.

Brian Bondy 6:14
Thank you appreciate that.

Brandon Burton 6:16
As we get into our topic today I think it’s a very relevant topic for chambers across the country and as we talk about the need and and value and chambers promoting themselves and very often chambers don’t want it to their own horn or it may feel a little awkward to be no self promotion tends to have some negative context to it. But I think what the chamber self promoting is not so much the chamber necessarily is it’s promoting your members and activities and the benefits and the ways that you can promote your members so I’m super interested to hear your your spin your angle on this as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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All right, Brian, we’re back. So tell us how does the Granbury Chamber approached the idea of promoting the chamber? As I mentioned before the break, there’s that that idea of self promoting maybe has that negative context. But I don’t believe it has to be that way. And I don’t think you believe that either. So what’s your guys approach to it?

Brian Bondy 9:13
So just by way of background, you know, for years and years, you know, chambers focused almost exclusively on their members. And there’s nothing wrong with that, quite frankly, that’s a big part of what our mission is, is to help our businesses grow and get better and tooting their horns is a big part of how we grew. But the worst thing in the world that I have heard over the years is I had no idea that chamber could do that, because we don’t get our message out.

Brandon Burton 9:40
Or what does the chamber do? Right. Exactly.

Brian Bondy 9:44
And how many recordings have you done over the years that have said that exact same thing? Our aim is not necessarily to put an end to that but at least put a dent in it. And I’ll just start with when we move to Granbury I Right community, great Chamber of Commerce. But the messaging had had been totally lost in in the COVID translation, right. So not only did we take the steps to rebrand the chamber, create a new logo, build a new website, but we really did hit on the idea that it’s time to promote ourselves. And that involves a lot of social media. Because let’s face it, back in the day, we had a couple of options, you could promote yourself through your newspaper, maybe some radio, but for the most part, doing any kind of television or video was was really kind of out of the realm of realistic unless you were a Metro Chamber of Commerce with with especially deep pocket, the advent of relatively inexpensive video opportunities, as well as social media members should be jumping on this right now.

Brandon Burton 10:56
Absolutely. So as you guys take that approach, what what is the type of messaging you tend to get out as you are maybe some of the recent campaigns maybe that you guys have put out there to promote the chamber and the work that you guys are involved with.

Brian Bondy 11:10
So I’m really excited that we’re having this conversation today. Because within the next week or so, we’re going to be rolling out a testimonial campaign. In fact, we’re going to roll it out at our banquet at the end of January. And essentially, we recorded probably two dozen people at our marketing firms headquarters. And we wanted them to say what’s the one word that makes you think of the Chamber of Commerce. And the beauty of this is you’re gonna get a different word for every person that we talk to. And that’s going to be an opportunity for us to toot our horns, it says, it’s not just about networking, it’s about advocacy. It’s about marketing, it’s about relationships, it’s about going the extra mile, it’s about caring about the community. And so I’m talking about chambers have to be willing to step up to the plate to promote themselves.

Brandon Burton 12:05
Yes, I love that, that whole idea of testimonials in general, I mean, you’re you’re able to generate great feedback one, so you can learn, you know, the impact you’re making on your Chamber members. But then you’re able to see where they see the value in the chamber. So you can you know, take that information and get from them leaning a little heavier or, or maybe find those areas that you feel like you’re doing some positive work, but nobody’s mentioning that. And maybe, maybe you need to lean in a little harder, or maybe you scrap that piece of that work. But these testimonials, then you’re able to repurpose in several ways to say you’re capturing him on video. But then I would imagine there’s a strategy out there to, you know, unroll, you know, some other posts and other other ways of sharing these messages that they’re putting out there with their testimonials, am I am I hitting on point with that

Brian Bondy 12:59
you are nailing it to the wall, let me tell you, you know, the beauty of having a lot of good B roll footage is we can pull tidbits anytime we need to right. And that’s what I would tell the people that were coming in look, I’m not looking for, you know, a 10 minute discussion. I’m just looking for a couple of soundbites that I can pull out edit down and use whenever we have something going on. And and the real beautiful thing about promoting yourself is it’s not coming from staff, it’s coming from people who are already members of the chamber, they believe in the mission. And the message also goes out to those who are Chamber members, why they should become part of the organization.

Brandon Burton 13:41
Right? So with these members that you’ll be highlighting, I love the idea of being able to repurpose that content, as you put it out there for the community to see for other potential members possibly to see. Are you somehow identifying the individual, their company, what type of business they are just to kind of give that flavor in the community as to what types of businesses you serve? Or what’s that part of the vision look like?

Brian Bondy 14:10
Yeah, we’re very fortunate. It’s a it’s a small town. And most of the people that have come into the studio to do the recording are pretty well known. So we may not do any any character generation with our first generation of of spots. But we can see that going down the road as we create other content, where we want to be able to identify that, you know, this is our CEO of our hospital, or superintendent of schools. So then it ends an air of credibility to the person who’s who’s talking. And that way the person who listens and sees what they’re, what they’re going what we’ve put out there. They’ll like, oh, I never even thought about doing something like that. Right

Brandon Burton 14:52
now. That’s so valuable. Now, you had mentioned social media being a great tool. Are chambers to be able to get messaging out like this and affordable way? What does this strategy look like across the different social platforms? Because I can see maybe having a YouTube channel and obviously Facebook, a lot of people are on Instagram and reels and all that as the list goes on and on. But what are some of those things that you guys have thought of as specifically, it may be good just to hone in on this campaign. As you you know, repurpose content and take those those tidbits out that you edit down? What are some of those ways you envision being able to maybe amplify these messages?

Brian Bondy 15:37
That’s a great question. And we’re very fortunate, I’ve got some very tech savvy staff members, which is really good for me, because it keeps me out of that fray. And it’s safer that way. But, but we have consciously built a calendar of posts, Facebook, Instagram, are our primary tools right now. We are building a setting up a YouTube page where we can take these videos and but but we consciously post something three times a day, whether we’re doing a spotlight on one of our ambassadors, one of our board members, one of our members themselves, and most of the time, they’re either live video, or they’re they’re created in a real. And we do that with our ribbon cuttings, we do that with our special events. And what we’ve seen over the last two and a half years, is a significant increase in followers. But even more so a significant increase in the organic reach of our of our posts, and a lot of shares that are taking place. And that just helps get our message out to even that many more potential customers. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 16:53
I often will think that chambers are built for social media, right? I mean, you’ve put up a post and you highlight a member. So you’ve got the individual who has an interest in sharing it that their business has an interest in sharing it. So that organic reach, ideally should just, I mean, you guys should have very deep roots in the community by just highlighting your your members and board members and ambassadors, and all these different things that you just mentioned. And the

Brian Bondy 17:20
really good example is we we’ve started a business summit every September. And it’s two years old, both years it’s been a sellout. And both years, we’ve used social media at the front end to promote our speaker lineup, and then at the back end to do a wrap up. And the views range from six to 7000. Post event. And so what we’re learning is we’re building this following that they want more, they want to see what else we’re doing. And we’re hoping to push that to those that are not necessarily members right now. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 18:01
So the organic reach is super helpful, super important. But we also know these different platforms are constantly changing algorithms, and they want to make sure that you’re paying to play it often in a lot of cases. So do you guys set aside a portion of your budget to purposely promote certain posts or to have certain campaigns that you want to put put a few dollars behind to get a little more traction? Right

Brian Bondy 18:32
question? And the answer to that is absolutely, yes. And this is where we fundamentally changed how we want to operate. We know that we have to spend money to make money. And the cost per spot on social media is still relatively inexpensive. And if you’re a chamber that really is trying to promote what you’re doing, who you are, who your customers are, and who your customers could be, then even if you set aside $500 a month, you can see impact from that money.

Brandon Burton 19:05
Yeah. So for some businesses, and I say businesses rather than chambers, they can promote their product or service on social media, and they can see the ROI, right you put you know, $1 in you get $2 back. What are some of those key metrics that you guys look at as a chamber to see that you’re getting a positive return on the the ad spends that you’re putting out there?

Brian Bondy 19:32
Like question again. So ROI on testimonial is going to be hard to measure. A lot of that is we’re building awareness, we’re building confidence that the brand is one to be very reliable, and one you can hang your hat with. Well, the flip side of that is if we are doing events specific, like the previously mentioned women and Business Summit, or our banquet or for to July celebration, those we’re gonna see in potentially more participants buying tickets, more sponsorships. And that’s kind of what I look for is, especially as we are event related, are we seeing a bump in in interest? Are we seeing a bump in potential sponsor inquiries? And I would have to say that the the initial results are yes, that’s exactly what’s happening.

Brandon Burton 20:23
That’s, that’s great. Yeah, a lot of times, we’ll look at the likes and the views and shares, which are good, they make you feel good that it’s getting the message out there. But some would say that they’re vanity metrics, right, that they don’t really bring the money in. But I think it’s a little different with the chamber where you are so event focused, and, you know, getting the awareness out there driving people in to whatever those events are. So as long as you’re able to keep track of attendance and ticket sales and revenue generated from these events, I think that’s a great correlation to see that these, the ad spends and the it beyond the the money put aside for spending on social media, but the time and staff effort to to put in to build that brand on social media, it’s good to have that, that returned to be able to see that it’s worth that time.

Brian Bondy 21:19
So that the it goes back to the one of the things that I said, at the very beginning of the worst thing we could hear is I had no idea that the Chamber did that. And some of this begins to address that very issue. To fact that whether it’s a special event, or even a testimonial from a member, to have somebody come and say, Hey, I saw that, I am so glad to know that you guys have the ability to do X, Y, Z, tell me more. I just opened the door to a potential customer, a potential member sponsor. That’s where the intangible part of the promotional dollars spent begins to pay off. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 22:01
So do you know do you ever have direct engagements with posts where they say, those those kinds of words, I had no idea the chamber does this and tell me more? Are they reaching out to the chamber directly? Or is it when your membership person reaches out that they make those connections? How do you see these things kind of develop?

Brian Bondy 22:21
Yeah, that’s a great question as well. It’s interesting. We’ve had a couple that have responded in the in the chat line, hey, can you send me some more information and reach out to me, and we’ve done that, and I think that’s a terrific direct response, direct opportunity that that came up. We also do, we do our candidate forums for the various election cycles, we’ll stream those live on our on our Facebook page, and the engagement that we get from that, not always positive, but we’re getting engagement. And that’s, that’s a big part of marketing, the chamber is doing things like that, where we have engaged members and the community in the product that we’re putting out there.

Brandon Burton 23:07
And that’s a great point with streaming the candidate forums. As far as getting engagement and algorithms, algorithms like it when there’s a little bit of controversy. So if you can get the negative and positive comments going in something like a candidate form, I think that’s going to really help that organic reach and get it in front of the people that you’re hoping to reach.

Brian Bondy 23:30
So exactly, exactly that.

Brandon Burton 23:34
Well, I like asking, for chambers that are out there listening, if if there’s any tips or action items that you might offer to a chamber who’s looking to maybe take their chamber up to the next level, what might you offer to the to that organization?

Brian Bondy 23:52
A couple of things. Number one, I can’t underestimate the value of a good relationship with your local media, whether it’s a local newspaper, a local radio station, even a local television station, they they’re looking for content just as much as you’re looking to put content out there. And we were fortunate to have some really good relationships with our local media. And part of that equation is, you know, we all have smartphones that have video and audio capabilities, you’ve got a marketing tool in your hand every time you’re out there. And don’t be afraid to use it because that that’s a big part of how you can make your chamber stand out was just a moment of talking to somebody with the recording on and put it out there. Hey, remember you’re gonna love it, but be we’re going to hear you and and once again, it goes back. I had no idea you guys could do that.

Brandon Burton 24:50
Yeah. So do you ever see any awkwardness if you’re talking to a member and pull out the phone Hey, do you mind if I record I know a lot of men members love it because they know you’re going to put it out there on social media. Do you ever get any of the awkward cameras say, oh, no, I don’t know, I’m not I don’t have my makeup, you know, or whatever. Any any awkward moments that the media lighten the conversation a little bit.

Brian Bondy 25:16
Obviously, we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t have those awkward situations. The reality is, you know, people don’t think they look that good, until they see themselves and they’re like, Oh, that wasn’t so bad. And, and we’ve had that before. But for the most part, I would say, an overwhelming majority are a okay with it at the end of the day, because they know what the end result is. They’re gonna get some publicity out of it. Right?

Brandon Burton 25:42
Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s, that’s great. And just to be able to overcome that, and know, you know, there may be those awkward moments. But in the end, it’s, it’s to help that business win, right, help that individual get their message out to so. And we both die at the end of the day with that? Yes, absolutely. So I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Brian Bondy 26:11
You know, chambers have changed so much over the last 25 to 30 years. For the most part, if I look back to the 90s. Yeah, we were pretty much networking based organizations, everything we live for was based on that, it will forward to advocacy being probably our number one focus. And that’s where chambers going forward are going to have to step their feet into into that muck. It doesn’t mean they have to take positions, but they need to be able to inform their members on what’s going on in their community in their region. Because business and government don’t always see eye to eye, the chamber is fortunate and should be fortunate enough to have the bully pulpit to be able to say, Whoa, timeout, this is going to affect a lot of people, the larger Chambers of Commerce in metro areas have been doing this for a long time, I can tell you that rural America needs to wake up and start doing this. It can’t just be about parades, it can’t just about all of the events that we’ve done for 50 6070 years, we’re going to have to get in and get a little bit dirty. And that makes boards very nervous. And it makes staff very nervous, because it’s something that we’re not comfortable doing. But all of my training tells me that if we don’t, we risk losing our members interest because the value proposition begins to decrease. And ultimately, just like any business, if we can’t show the value for the investment, we’re gonna lose them. And

Brandon Burton 27:44
well, and as we’ve talked about today, being able to have those conversations around advocacy and policies that are being put out there, it also helped drive your your social media engagement. So get it out there stand up for the for your businesses and your community. And it may cause some controversy. But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. You can lean into that and really have some positive effects and influences out of a little bit of controversy. So

Brian Bondy 28:15
I think our members have come to expect something like that. And I think that as chambers continue to stay relevant in the in the coming years and decades, we’re going to have to continue to evolve ourselves. We can’t, you know, it’s advocacy today, it could be something totally different 10 years from now, that we all had saw that was coming, but it kind of hit us squarely between the eyes. But that’s part of how we we manifest and grow ourselves is to be aware of those trends that are coming down the pike.

Brandon Burton 28:51
Right. And I’ve seen in working with chambers and Chamber members for several years. Like you said, members come to expect the advocacy part from the chamber. And there’s been Chamber members that I’ve talked to that have expressed their frustration and disappointment that their chamber didn’t advocate for their business when, you know, XYZ happened, you know, when the road was torn up for an expansion and nobody consulted the businesses about the impact or creating a driveway for people to sell access to businesses, like where’s the chamber and you know, they created an expectation that the Chamber should be standing up for their rights and helping them be successful. So great point.

Brian Bondy 29:33
Yeah. And the hard part is, you know, if you’ve talked to a lot of chamber professionals, and that is, you know, it’s one thing to say it’s another thing to do it because you’re dealing with a lot of interior political climates within each of the communities where that may be frowned upon. And so what really becomes important is for that, that board of directors and that chamber staff to be on the same Ah, understanding that, hey, get a bloody nose on this, but we’re doing the right thing for the right reasons. And at the end of the day, used to say there’s no such thing as bad publicity. And that kind of can can live with that.

Brandon Burton 30:11
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, Brian, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and learn a little more about how you guys are approaching things at the Granberry chamber, especially when it comes to promoting yourself, what would be the best way for a listener to reach out and connect? Obviously,

Brian Bondy 30:32
the best way for us is through our email. I mean, that is, that’s probably the quickest, easiest and best way. brian@granburychamber.com. And of course, you can always call us My office number is 817-458-8442 to look us up on Facebook. And we’re getting ready to branch out into a few other platforms. But that it’s a good idea for if you want to see what we’re doing to take a look at us either on the web or on our social media.

Brandon Burton 31:12
Right Do I will get all that in our show notes for this episode too. And, and hopefully, as you branch out into other areas of social media, there’s going to be some cross promotion so that anybody wants to follow your Facebook page and see some of those other things that are coming on the horizon. I’m sure exactly. That, Brian, this has been great having you on chamber chat podcast with us today. I appreciate you sharing your perspective lessons that you guys have learned and promoting yourselves and the great value that comes from chambers being a little bit bold and saying this is what we do. And we’re here to show you. So thanks for for spending time with us today.

Brian Bondy 31:48
Ryan, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

Brandon Burton 31:51
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Chambers Leveraging AI with Kaytee Lorentzen

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Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor is Community Matters, Inc. With nearly 20 years in the chamber industry and over 100 media awards presented to their chamber partners, community matters provides the R&R that every chamber needs, revenue and recognition.

When it comes to publishing a Chamber Map directory or Community Guide, Community Matters has a trusted experience to help your chamber accomplish your goals. With different advertising sales models and publication styles, Community Matters will help you create a non-dues revenue machine!

Let’s hear from Becky Womble, President of the Bastrop Chamber to hear about her experience with Community Matters.

Becki Womble 1:03
I’ve been using Community Matters for probably six or seven years now. And in a previous life, I sold commercial printing so I can highly recommend Community Matters because it’s a complete turnkey job for any busy chamber exec and it’s a wonderful, beautiful printed product whenever you’re finished. And I just I’m very sold on Community Matters. And with a printing background I just big endorsement from me.

Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Kaytee Lorentzen. Kaytee is the Director of Communications and events at the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce. She spearheads the Chamber’s multifaceted marketing communications initiative engaging with a diverse array of stakeholders including Chamber members, the public media board and staff members. Her role involves closely collaborating with every department to craft coherent and compelling communication and marketing materials that cater to their unique needs. Beyond communications, she meticulously organizes and oversees the myriad of events that the Chamber orchestrates ensuring that they align with the organization’s objectives and standards. Kaytee has been a part of the chamber team since May of 2021, initially as a marketing and communications coordinator before stepping into the role as marketing and communications manager in January 2023, and subsequently evolving into her current position in September 2023. Before joining the chamber as a staff member, she was a member of the chamber with her photography business for four years. Kaytee holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism with a concentration in photojournalism from Ball State University. She’s a graduate from the Indiana chamber Executives Association, who’s your chamber Academy in June 2022, and is currently pursuing a master’s degree at Purdue University. And Kaytee, I am very excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I would love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Kaytee Lorentzen 3:37
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Brandon, for having me on. I’ve been listening to your podcast ever since I have been a chamber professional. So I was super excited to get this opportunity. You helped me grow into this position. So I appreciate that. And everyone that’s been on the podcast as well. Just a little something interesting about myself. That isn’t in my bio. If I had a you know, a separate universe life, then I probably would have been a detective. I love true crime stuff. It’s kind of weird. Much I Love it. But even growing up I was, you know, doing forensics, trying to figure out fingerprinting and putting clues together. So that is what, but I would be in a different life. That’s

Brandon Burton 4:21
That is interesting. And there’s something to that the thrill of solving a mystery. You know, my my wife, she works at our kids elementary school. She’s the front desk receptionist and every now and then she’ll come home from work and say, I should have a detective badge. Like my GED today, you know, usually it’s some you know, kid in the neighborhood that’s caused some mischief, and they get caught on a ring doorbell camera or something. So the police will bring it to the school and say Do you recognize this kid? So she solves the mysteries. But there’s there’s something to that at the thrill of solving a mystery for sure. Oh,

Kaytee Lorentzen 4:55
yeah, like watching it on television shows I’m all about okay, I wonder if this happens. Next. Right,

Brandon Burton 5:01
right. Well tell us a little bit more about the greater Bloomington chamber just to give us an idea of the size staff scope of work. The tight you know, what kind of work you guys are involved with just to kind of set the table for our discussion. Yeah,

Kaytee Lorentzen 5:14
absolutely. So the greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce is located in Bloomington, Indiana. We are the home of Indiana University. So go Hoosiers, which is very ironic considering I go to Purdue University for graduate education. We Are Rivals so that’s really fun to be a part of. But the greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce, we have six full time staff members and one part time staff. And all ton of interns. Currently we have one high school intern to undergrad scholar intern. So they’ll be with us for all four of their undergrad years, and two grad fellows which are also going to be with us for their whole grad program. So that’s how many we have a ton of people here. And we have about 850 members currently, Bloomington itself, the size is about 80,000 people. And then Monroe County, which is the county that Bloomington resides in is about 140,000 we say we are the greater Bloomington So yes, we do have a lot of Bloomington businesses but also more Monroe County and surrounding.

Brandon Burton 6:25
Very good that that definitely helps to give some perspective and even going through your bio just in the marketing communications as you’ve had different roles, shows you guys are you’ve got to you’ve got a good amount of staff and get a good team there to work with. So that’s awesome. Well, our topic that we’ve settled on for today is very relevant and timely for all the buzz that’s going around right now around chat GPT and AI and generative AI and so we’re gonna dive in deeper in that discussion today. Katie has done some some great presentations on this at different conferences. So we’re going to kind of tap into her her wealth of knowledge to be able to share some of that, with all you chamber pros as we as we move forward in this conversation. We’ll dive into that as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 9:03
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Brandon Burton 9:57
All right, Kaytee, we are back And so I’m excited to learn how you’re using generative AI and just AI in general, as a chamber professional, where you see the use cases and where it’s helped to save you time make your job easier. And does it save you time at this point? You know, or is it just the learning and everything, but it ends up making your job easier. I’d love just to hear how you’re integrating this. And hopefully spark some ideas for listeners maybe want to explore some of these aspects of utilizing AI at their chamber.

Kaytee Lorentzen 10:32
Absolutely. So first and foremost, like artificial intelligence is just this plethora of things. So it pretty much all ultimately is intended to make computers do things that when done by people are described as having indicated intelligence. So I was very skeptical at first, I’m not one of those people who typically jump on bandwagons. So in November of last year, or sorry, to it would be November 2022. At that point, when it came out, I was like, I don’t know about this chat. GBT, it kind of seems a little not in my realm. Then I tried it. All I did was just asked a few questions. And I was like, wow, I just opened the door to something that’s going to make my life so much easier, just by asking it simple questions. And the more I’ve been using it, the more I have learned how to write the prompts that are necessary for it to generate the kind of answers that I’m meeting. So for example, the one thing I use it a lot for is just rewriting a lot of our website copy. It sounds very dated, and some of its not customer focused. And that’s more of what it needs to be. You want it to say, like I asked it, this is what we currently have on our website for our membership benefits. Can you rewrite this in more of a customer focused realm or point of view, and also give some examples of why it’s important for somebody to join the Chamber of Commerce. And they will give you a full list like, a lot of the time, if you ask it for list, it’ll give it to you. And now that I’ve used it so much, it thinks that I like list all the time. So it will continuously give me list until I say please stop putting into the list. I just need a paragraph. Yeah. And then it typically apologizes. It goes, Oh, I’m so sorry. Let me fix that for you. Right, right. The big thing that I’m doing right now is just rewriting a lot of our website copy. I’ve also used it for social media copy. I’ve even asked it to create social, like a social media plan. Small Business Week was something I was like, Okay, I want to do something different. I don’t just want to say, yeah, it’s Small Business Week, let’s celebrate small business. Let’s actually make some sort of content with it. And so it was able to give me five different days of social media content that all I had to do was just pretty much copy and paste and find some graphics and photos to go with it. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 12:59
So talk to us a little bit more about rewriting the website copy. Are you literally are you copy and pasting paragraphs from your website, login in chat? GPT? Are you able to give a link to the website and say, scan this page? And tell me how how does that interface work for those listening?

Kaytee Lorentzen 13:15
Yeah, it depends on what program you’re using, and what version of the program you’re using. I know, some websites will do that. But not all of them, like I primarily use to actually btw and chat GPT for. So I use the paid version. But I don’t put a link in there. I literally copy and paste the exact information so that way I like because a lot of our content is pretty long website page. So I just was like, No, I just want this section rewritten in this point of view, and then obviously, the main thing is, I always say, double check, it’s work. Because you never know what is gonna pop out and you want to edit it. I don’t ever think that you should copy and paste directly from whatever chat GBT or you know, whatever generative AI system you’re using, you need to go in and, like have oversight, it gets you 80% of the way there. But you need to go in and edit and finesse it and make it more your voice.

Brandon Burton 14:16
Yes, so you shared your experience in November of 20 I guess it’s 2022 right when chat GPT was made public and available for everybody to use. And I remember going to Thanksgiving dinner my brother in law was like Oh, you gotta check this out. And he’s he’s a very loud in your face kind of person anyway, so he’s shoving his phone everybody’s facing you ask it a question and just very excited about it and like, Okay, calm down. You know, so I asked him a few questions and and really the responses I got back because I was asking business related questions. You know, how can I create a social media posts from my podcast or tell me about a chamber of commerce, like what Chambers of Commerce do and just that feedback I was getting from it initially. You needed to verify, you know, the stuff it was kicking out. And granted, this is Chad GBT three. So it wasn’t it hadn’t scanned, you know nearly as much of the of the web and things like that. But an example of just this last week, I’ve got a daughter in fifth grade, she came home with a math problem in her homework that she wasn’t able to figure out. And my, I think it was my son who’s a senior single as chat GPT. And, like, first of all, it seems like cheating or, and then your homework to plug it in. But like, we worked through the problem, got the answer? And then I’m like, I’m gonna try this, you know. So I asked chat GBT exactly how the question was on the homework. And immediately it spit back an answer. And it wasn’t the right answer. So I gave it some clarifying, you know, prompts along with it, then it apologize, spit back and other answer, and it never came up with the right answer. And after verifying, like more and more of the criteria with it, it kept apologizing, but then we kept giving me the same answer over and over. And like, okay, and this is still catch up three GPT 3.5. So it wasn’t the paid version, maybe that would have gotten me better results, but goes to the point of you need to verify you can’t just trust everything that it puts out as being doctrine, like you got to, you got to really read it, you got to make sure it’s accurate. And some may say, Well, does that really save you time then? So how would you approach that with if you need to verify everything? How does that aspect work and time saving, or you know, the application into real world scenarios?

Kaytee Lorentzen 16:36
I think it varies on what you’re planning on using chat GPT for so if you’re using it for research, that can definitely still take you some more time, it hasn’t been able to scan everything, and it’s still learning, it’s still, you know, it’s still a child, and it’s learning new tech. Yeah, it’s still a baby, it’s still trying to figure out what it’s doing. But for me, I use it more for things that I know are fact based, like hard numbers type of thing. I use it more for like the colorful language. For an example, there was one way someone emailed us and I was trying to explain to them, I don’t think you understood what I was trying to say. But also saying it in a much better way. Because right, there are some times where your brain just you know, when that clicker icon just keeps going on a blink word screen. That’s how I felt with this. I was like, I don’t know how to say this. So I just asked chat GPT. And it gave me a much better way of writing it. That actually was exactly what I wanted to say. But I just didn’t have the words or the sound mind at that point. I think it was like 430 on a Friday or something. And it put it all together and flowed nicely. So that was something I more use it for is earliest for chatty BTW I use it more for that aspect. Even if you asked it to give you a source, sometimes it makes it up. So but at least if you can look up and see if that source even exists. And that sometimes works. I think I’ve only used it a few times with statistics. And then what I’ll do is I’ll just copy and paste this statistic that it gives me and look up where it is in Google. Yeah, just to verify, make sure that’s fine. But yeah, it varies, because I’ve also heard similar situations with homework, where someone it was I think it was NPR that I was listening to. And they were saying, Well, my daughter was doing homework. And they and I’m a history major. And it asked if this particular person in history was pro separation of church and state or against it, and it gave the wrong answer. And they were like, That’s not right. So I if you ever ask it fact, based information like that, then I would at least just copy and paste what it gave you and ask it as much question as you can to get where they got it from, quote unquote. And then you can find it on the internet pretty quickly. So

Brandon Burton 19:10
is there a value to giving it feedback to say that’s not a correct answer? Or yes, I’m gonna challenge the answer a little.

Kaytee Lorentzen 19:18
I think so because it’s learning based off of what you are giving it as well. So like if you there’s even after every single prompts that it gives you, was this, what you were looking for? Was this not and then there’s a thumbs up, thumbs down and you just put that in there it actually is teaching it. That’s another way that it’s learning on giving the correct answers. So if other people start asking similar questions or something like that, it’s it’s now learning based off of our responses, right, right.

Brandon Burton 19:49
And I think you know, although some of the information you get may not be totally accurate need to verify if you’re having some writer’s block going on or looking for ideas Just to be able to put a prompt in and receive, you know, a ton of ideas and, you know, pretty much instantaneously, things that will get those creative juices going in your mind, again, that I’ve heard it said that it’s not to replace your own thinking in your own mind, but it’s to supplement it’s to add to what you’re already doing. Yes. Yeah. I know, in an example that I had, there was a chamber professional that I mentioned, how much they enjoy the podcast, and you know, very nice email about what they have appreciated. So this is great. Would you mind putting this as a review on Apple podcasts? And they try it and try it couldn’t figure it out? Like, can you tell me how to leave a review? Like, let me ask Chet GPT. So I just did, how do you leave a review for by and just copy and paste it? And I could have typed the response and said, Here’s how you do it. But to look up each, you know, the website and give a link and here and there and back and forth? Just that plug it in chat? GPT it was all right, copy, paste, send and it was done. And it was easy. It was easy.

Kaytee Lorentzen 21:05
Yeah, as long as you just review it and be like, Yeah, that’s exactly how you do it, then you can just copy and paste, which is nice. And that’s kind of what I’ve done. Even for scripts for videos that we do. I’ve asked it to make it you can even ask it. Can you make this more of a TED Talk style, and it will completely read rewrite it? I did that actually the first time I presented this at the Indiana chamber Executives Association Conference. Hi, how do you write my intro? I didn’t like how it was like, have a we tried TED Talk style? Yeah, very different. It was, it almost felt like when you were reading it out loud, exactly how it starts. Right. Any TED Talk? So

Brandon Burton 21:50
maybe let’s talk about that a little bit about the prompts that we put into to any AI, generative AI assistant. What kind of things do we need to consider? Because I think we’re very much a lot of the public is very much still in the mindset of Google, right? You put in? What is this? He put in a question, get a response. So talk to us about a prompt, and maybe becoming a prompt engineer, so to speak.

Kaytee Lorentzen 22:17
Yes, yes. So that is something I’ve definitely been trying to hone my skills on, is learning how to create the best prompts. I always say, garbage in, garbage out. So whatever. If you give it like subpar information, it’s going to give you a subpar answer. So you want to make sure that it has as much information as you can possibly give it. Like if you’re trying to make a all do something pretty simple, like a social media post, if you tell it your audience exactly who it’s supposed to cater to, you can even tell it more of like your customer persona, it will give you a much better answer and a less generic answer, it’ll become more personalized. So that’s a lot of the time why I copy and paste a lot of our content when I’m asking it to rewrite it. So I say take this and move it to something more like this other thing. So that could be you know, saying it needs it needs to have more colorful language, can you make it sound more professional, this needs to be more towards small business owner, not necessarily the big business, so you can change up exactly what you’re wanting it to do. But the more specific the better it is.

Brandon Burton 23:37
Yeah. So as you’re given that response reminds me I had recently read a book called The AI whispers method. And it it’s a, it’s an AI generative fiction novel. So it takes the whole hero storyline and plugs it into to teach you how to use AI. And it talks a lot about generating prompts. And even asking, like, for example, with Chet GPT, to act as a math teacher or act as a math professor to give me an answer to this problem or act as a sports historian and tell me why, you know, this scenario is happening or so being able to get that context of act as if or act as a different, you know, expert in different fields, it’s able to tap into different resources and really understand what it is that you’re looking for. So as I played around with that there’s a lot of power in the act as prompt when you plug that into chat. GPT

Kaytee Lorentzen 24:45
Absolutely. That’s actually something I do for our customer journey type of thing. I said to chat GPT act as if you are a brand new business. You’ve never heard of the Chamber of Commerce. You We are interested in it because someone mentioned that it’s a great thing to join, why should they join? What are their pain points? What are their objectives? What are the rebuttals to those objectives? So you can really start tailoring your content to better address their pain points and why you’re the solution to their problems.

Brandon Burton 25:19
Right. I love that. So let’s, let’s maybe circle back a little bit more to the generative AI. Discussion. So you mentioned you, you’ve used it to rewrite website content, you use it for social media posts. What other applications are you seeing in the chamber world, specifically for using generative AI? That

Kaytee Lorentzen 25:40
is a fabulous question. So for me, I have been using it more obviously, for the marketing aspect of it. I’ve even asked it to write event descriptions. So what makes people come into the event more? What makes it more appealing, besides just saying, you know, come to this chamber event at this day, on this time at this place, we look forward to expanding your network hope to see you there. It sounds the exact same every single time. So how do I change it up and make it sound more exciting? What makes that chamber member have to be at that event. So I use that a lot for to change up the descriptions. I’ve also asked it to make correct like full social media campaigns, not just the captions itself. Also, like I mentioned earlier, the market research different emails to members. So like how, like, if you’re saying I want people to fill out this survey, what makes someone fill out this, if you ask to attribute it, right, this email, enticing people to fill out this survey that doesn’t. Obviously, we’re all nonprofits, we don’t have a whole lot of money to give out as an incentive. So without incentives, I’m creating different types of plans for customer journeys. The one that I’ve used the most often is writing up ours, we have a sponsorship book that we do all at one time, kind of like why GM does. And so I’ve asked it to rewrite our sponsorship book and why people should sponsor it and why it’s important to sponsor it. And then lately, I have noticed AI disclosures on your website, writing a disclaimer for your website, we actually didn’t have quite a few like the privacy policies, those things that you’re supposed to have on your website. And so I was like, I’m gonna see if Chad GPD can come up with something very like simple and then obviously run it by our lawyer, just to make sure everything sounds great. But it really helps take out a lot of the guesswork for us. We didn’t have to do you know, how many hours of research trying to make sure that what we had in there? Would it be? Sound for us to use, even if it’s just like a blanket one? I think ours is our AI disclaimer is probably two paragraphs, just saying, you know, we use AI, there are things that may be generated by AI that come out here, but there’s always human oversight, ultimately, is what it says but in some more legalese term. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 28:15
Like that. So I guess that brings up a good talk at a good point to talk about as well, where I know I’ve been at chamber conferences and breakout sessions you you lead some these breakout sessions, where we talk about AI? And the question always comes up as far as the legality, the copyright issues if you’re especially like image generation, right? So if you’re asking generative AI to produce an image for you, who owns the rights to that, is there copyright issues if you’re bringing in certain elements into that? So if you would speak a little bit to the legality and regulations around AI and what we need to kind of be aware of and kind of look out for as we kind of navigate through this new world of artificial intelligence?

Kaytee Lorentzen 29:03
Absolutely. This is definitely something we need. As chamber professionals. If you’re using AI just to keep up to date on there are quite a few websites that you can track legislation. And there’s a lot on AI. Currently, right now, as of August 30, of 2023, the US Copyright Office issued a notice of inquiry in the Federal Register on copyright. And AR pretty much just means they’re going to be studying it to see kind of whether legislation or regulatory steps are even warranted, and also just steps to advise Congress on any legislation that does come through. But anything right now made by something other than human is not protected by copyright. So if I like the API disclosure I was talking about I can’t if someone else wanted to copy and paste it and use it, they legally can. And I can’t cry that that’s copyright. So that’s it. One thing that we have to look at, right now a lot of people are getting frustrated with the image portion of it, I haven’t used that aspect too much, because I still feel like there is a lot of stock photo that I can use in that aspect. And I don’t need to just create an image that we don’t have. But other people are saying that it’s very unfair to the artists, which I do, as someone who’s a photographer, I get that completely. And it takes, you know, scanning my work to use someone else’s yet that’s not exactly something I’m a fan of. But I am interested to see where that’s going to be going and legislations and any what Congress is planning on doing on that. And I do think that they’re in a very interesting position right now. And I think they do need to take that whole issue very seriously, that AI is here, and it’s going to, it’s, you know, people are still scared of it. But it was very similar to like, when the internet happened, it, everyone was scared of it, it was this big thing that everyone’s like, this is going to change the world. It did. But now if we look back, if you don’t have a website, you’re not really relevant. Or you’re not considered trustworthy. So if that’s something similar what AI is gonna do, that’s, I’m just very interested to see where it’s gonna go, what regulations we’re gonna have. So just keeping up to date, making sure that we are using it legally, then that is something that we do need to do, and do our due diligence on it, as you know, people that are in the community seen as a trustworthy and leader.

Brandon Burton 31:42
Yeah, for sure. Now, it’s definitely important to keep that on the forefront with any legislation that comes out. But I think to your point with the internet, you know, if you didn’t adopt the internet and have a website, now, you’re kind of irrelevant. And I see a very similar course with AI. And just the AI technology has been adopted quicker than any other technology in the history of mankind. I don’t know, besides like the fire, maybe I don’t know. But. But as far as the technology goes, it’s been adopted very quickly. And I could easily see in five or 10 years maybe doesn’t even take that long, that there’s going to be two types of chambers, right? There’s going to be the ones that use AI and the ones that are no longer around, essentially, because they’re not relevant. And they’re not able to really leverage the power that comes from Ai, especially when you’re dealing with limited budgets, and being nonprofits and all that. There’s a lot of leverage. Yeah,

Kaytee Lorentzen 32:38
and I completely understand why it would seem intimidating or scary at first, because I was in that same exact boat. But as soon as I tried it, I was very surprised at the fact that I felt like it was something that anyone and everyone can use. Even if you’re just asking simple questions like, can you give me a recipe for a very simple meal like something, it’s something you can just play around with and have fun. And the more you use it, the more you find things that you can use it for? Yeah,

Brandon Burton 33:09
I’ve heard people will take, you know, just random ingredients they have in the refrigerator and say I’ve got these seven ingredients, give me a recipe of something, I can make it it’ll do it. So where would you suggest somebody gets started with a journey in AI and just kind of getting their mind wrapped around it? Yeah,

Kaytee Lorentzen 33:28
I would say just pick up like one or any of the generative AI tools that we have available. Google’s version is Bard. And then there’s chat GPT. There’s all just, obviously, Google, because Google or cert, go in your search engine, and ask it for a generative AI tool, and just start asking it questions. And the more you do it, the more you’ll get better at asking the I don’t want to write questions, but better questions, you refine the questions, you refine the questions to get the answers that you’re looking for. And then you start, that’s when your wheels start turning and figuring out where can I apply this in my professional life? Right.

Brandon Burton 34:10
So I didn’t give you a heads up that I was going to ask you this question. So if we need to edit it out, we can but I’m curious. What are you excited about on the forefront that you see coming with AI in the next weeks, months years?

Kaytee Lorentzen 34:24
I’m just excited to see the evolution of where it’s going. It just reminds me of like when the first iPhone came out, like and just seeing how it evolves and where it’s at now that it’s pretty much a part of our daily lives. If you’re an Apple user, obviously. It’s something that I am just excited to see where it’s gonna go. I’m excited to see how our legislation will take this and you hopefully use it for the good obviously, there’s always some bad actors, but I think Oh, For all this is going to be something that’s extremely well received in, in our world. Right?

Brandon Burton 35:07
I think there’s just a world of opportunity available. And quite honestly, I don’t know if legislation can keep up with the trends and the way things will develop. But we need to be plugged in and not be burying our head in the sand pretending like it’ll go away because it’s not going to go away. Well, Katie, as we look to the future, actually, let me back up before I ask that question for a chamber who’s listening who wants to take their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share for them to try to accomplish that goal?

Kaytee Lorentzen 35:42
I would say, the tip to use is embrace playing. I know that sounds so weird, but embrace that it’s something new embrace change, it will make a world of a difference. Because I can even tell you even in my office, as soon as people started embracing this tool, it was a game changer. Like our membership director, she now uses that a lot to help personalize each individual sales email, instead of just having like this copy and paste mentality of the same type of email, she can personalize it a lot more saying, this is the industry this person is in. And now she says that she really can’t go without it. Our operations manager uses it to help create some Excel documents, like it’s different things, the more you play with it, and embrace the change that it can bring, the better I think we’ll all be.

Brandon Burton 36:41
Absolutely, it reminds me. Last year, our church, we were putting together a fundraiser for our youth program at church. And I was trying to get the text together for the flyers that we’re gonna go out and promote on social media and everything. And I was just having the hardest time trying to make all the words fit on this flyer without being crowded and like telling what we’re trying to accomplish. And I told my wife, this Super Chat GPT will say I plug it in, give it the prompts, and it spit back and answer those beautiful, perfect, and we use that going forward. Like if I would have just done that from the beginning, it would have saved me so much time and headache and just beating my head against a wall trying to figure something out. That wasn’t coming to me. And it was it’s a great tool. So I would encourage everybody to embrace the play and embrace the change. Because I think initially, you and I both had this similar initial reactions I get I’ll know about this chat GPT steps, the more you get into it, you see more and more applications where it can assist you and make your life a little bit easier. So as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Kaytee Lorentzen 37:53
You know, it’s funny as I was like, you know, how do I answer? Because I knew this one was coming, right? Because I hear from everyone. So I asked chat GPT what they thought. And it gave me a gave me a list of nine different things. But I would like to kind of summarize what because a lot of it is things that I thought of but I was like how do I make this sound? Great. I do see a lot of the future of chambers using innovation and technology adaptation, obviously, for me using AI and GPT. I do see that. And I think with that we will become leaders in the business space in general. I think it will bring forward I’m trying to think of the correct word that I want to use. But it will bring forward this leadership of how the standard should be set on business and how they can embrace it as well. And I think that we’ll have a lot of Gosh, I’m trying to figure out

Brandon Burton 39:04
here, but you can plug it as chat GPT

Kaytee Lorentzen 39:09
Pretty much yeah, just focusing on the technological changes focusing on small business and it’s going to just help leverage that and just, you know, promote this business atmosphere that I think will be that will occur encourage all of that.

Brandon Burton 39:33
Yeah, I can definitely see that and we need to be embrace the innovation that comes with technology. Yes.

Kaytee Lorentzen 39:43
You pretty much said exactly what I was wanting to say. All

Brandon Burton 39:45
right, well, whether you know it or not, you said it at some point in there because I wrote it down and he said well, Katie, I want to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who want to reach out and learn more, maybe Do you see some of the slides or anything you’ve shared at different conferences or whatever you’re willing to share and help out with them? What would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Kaytee Lorentzen 40:09
The best way is probably through either email or through LinkedIn. So my email is just klorentzen@chamberbloomington.org. And my LinkedIn, you can just find me, Katie Lorentzen, and I spell it differently. So I’ll spell it here for you guys. It is Kaytee and then my last name Lorentzen. And either a message on either of those are typically the best way to get a hold of me just because I am all over the place. And my phone is always on me. So those two apps right there for me.

Brandon Burton 40:45
That’s perfect. And we’ll get that in our show notes too. So people can pull that up and have easy access to reach out. But I appreciate all the value you offered to listeners today here on chamber tap podcast for sharing your experience of exploring and being innovative using generative AI and I just, you know, it’ll be fun to look back at this episode a year from now and be like, Wow, things have really advanced in the last year. So I know I’m excited. Yeah, but thank you for being with us today. This has been a fun and enlightening conversation. So thank you.

Kaytee Lorentzen 41:18
Thank you for having me.

Brandon Burton 41:19
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