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.
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!
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.
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
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
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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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.
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!
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Learn how you can partner with Community Matters, Inc. to produce your next Chamber Directory, Community Guide or Map.
Our guest for this episode is Cindy Cobb. Cindy is the Executive Director of the Rutherford County Chamber of Commerce in North Carolina. Cindy is a lifelong resident of Rutherford County at product of the Rutherford County school system and a graduate of Western Piedmont Community College. She and her husband Andy had been married for nearly 37 years have three grown children and two grandchildren. Her professional career began as a dental assistant. After her children came along she was a full time mom and domestic engineer until they became school age. Her father had a well established independent insurance agency and after consulting with him, Cindy decided to become a licensed Life and Health Insurance agent. Prospecting and meeting new people was something she enjoyed many of these were business owners. Well in the insurance business. She was awarded the Rookie of the Year top agent in the region top agency in the region and was a member of the President’s Club. Cindy was asked to help visit current Chamber members and prospective members temporarily while the chamber looked for a new executive director. A month later, the board asked if she would accept the position of executive director. Cindy’s been in this role now for two years and is looking forward to many more. That Cindy, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you a moment 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. Well,
Cindy Cobb 2:45 good morning and hello to all of the chamber champions you all are, are just a fabulous bunch of people. And over the past two years I have met so many wonderful people. I have never enjoyed getting up and going to work more. An interesting thing about me is that I am not only a lifelong resident of Rutherford County. My family is lifelong residents of Rutherford County before our country was even a country we were still a British colony. We have been in Rutherford County since 1726. And so I use that to my advantage with van a history buff and love listening to the stories and tales that that my grandparents and parents have shared with me. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 3:41 no, I’m a history buff myself and to be able to know that history from your family is awesome to be able to hear some of the stories passed down and to feel like you’re part of it is something special. So that is a an interesting factor that you said thank you. It tell us a little bit about the Rutherford County Chamber just to give us some perspective. Before we open up our topic for discussion today. Give us an idea of size, your chamber the scope of work, you guys are involved with staff budget, that sort of thing, just to kind of set the table for us.
Cindy Cobb 4:17 Well, the Rutherford County Chamber as far as chambers go, is not sure if you call us an adolescent, or maybe a teenager we have only been in existence since September of 1992. Okay, before that, each little town kind of did their own little thing and had their so called chamber. And in that day, 92 after one of the chambers had some problems, they decided to merge and form the Rutherford County Chamber, which really just made more sense because we all know that working together and being unified is when you can really get things done it specially in a rural area of Lot, Rutherford County. While we have a large landmass, we are one of the largest counties in North Carolina as far as land size, but we’re, we’re all spread out. There’s plenty of room for us to grow our chamber. We have currently just under 400 members, and we have a budget of $200,000. And, you know, we’re a two person team. We’re located in Forest City. Rutherford Eaton is the county seat. And we were once there but just before I started, they moved to Forest City, Forest City has been more of the kind of the epicenter of activity and our counting. And so that felt like that was a good place for the chamber to be.
Brandon Burton 6:16 That makes sense. Your your comment about being an adolescent or teenager chamber. I see that as you guys were kind of trendsetters back in 1992, because we’re seeing a lot of chambers today that are going through mergers and acquisitions like that as especially through the pandemic and certainly, you know, chambers are stress members, businesses are stressed. And being able to combine efforts to be able to use staff in multiple ways really made a lot of sense for chambers today, you know, in recent, the recent past to to merge, and you guys did it back in 1992. So I would take that as being a trendsetter, so
Cindy Cobb 7:03 I love being a trendsetter.
Brandon Burton 7:07 So for our topic today, we’re going to spend time, the majority of our time today talking about how you go about adding a personal touch to your communication amongst Chamber members and throughout your community. And we will dive deeper into that discussion as soon as we 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!
All right, Cindy, we are back. As I mentioned before the break we’re going to be talking about adding a personal touch to communication today. And full disclosure I did feel a little bit of guilt as we’re lining this up because of automation processes to line up guests and to send reminders and everything and maybe it takes away some of that personal touch but nonetheless it worked. We got you on the show. So and I will say it this came about because of a personal touch and communication from Chris need who introduced us and I believe the the introduction was that he wanted me to meet this firecracker from North Carolina. So No, Chris Mead has a way of adding a personal touch to his communication. But I’m excited to learn more about how you implement the personal touch and communication as we go through this today. But I guess first of all, you see you have this career in insurance, which I see a lot of correlations and building those relationships, and especially when it comes to that personal touch, you know, getting to know people’s names and family members. And you know, what’s important to them? How have you seen that in your previous career translate over into your chamber career. Now, as far as adding the personal touch goes
Cindy Cobb 10:40 on that. I don’t know if anyone has ever really been knocking at a door, looking to buy life insurance. That is something most people don’t get real excited about. And my dad was really old school, and he told me, you know, we don’t buy leads, you have to go out. And you like his term was shake a lot of bushes before you can catch the birds. And so I followed things back. Back during that time, which was quite a while ago, I’ve looked at the newspaper. followed that you started with small town papers, you had wedding announcements of land transfers were listed. Yeah, births. And so all of those things, along with this band were of a new business that would have been was the perfect lead for someone to need life insurance? Yeah, the health insurance would follow. That was something most people realize they needed. And so I had to be really kind of, at ease really comfortable going in and first few times is, you know, it was kind of nervous going in and meeting these people. I didn’t know where to pick up the phone and contact someone. Why should they listen to me? So it was a matter of making them feel comfortable? And not a hard pressure top sales job, really want to approach it? As you know, congratulations of saying you’ve had birth or congratulations on your marriage or new business? Have you thought about this with preparing your future? And so with that, it has really helped me and the, in the chamber world to approach things the same way. Um, these prospective members are the ones that that kind of took under my wing when I came into this that were already members to know that they could trust me, that I was someone they could feel comfortable picking up the phone and calling or emailing me with a request or if they had a question. And I think that was one of the biggest things little did I know, so long ago, that it would prepare me for this time and this, this calling that I have with the chamber? Yeah.
Brandon Burton 13:50 And I think a lot of people can relate with the nerves that you talked about, about approaching businesses, and who am I to kind of that impostor syndrome, as they call it today? And in my career, I’ve had been in sales most of my career, and as I train new salespeople, one of the things I have to remind them because they’re nervous doing the same thing approaching businesses, and what if I don’t know this? What if I don’t present it right? And it’s like, you know, what, this is the first time that they’re hearing about this opportunity. You know, this is the first time you’re the expert in this room. Right? So that helps to alleviate some of that pressure some of those nerves about who am I? Because when you put it in that kind of perspective, it’s like you’re right. So even as you’re approaching prospective Chamber members or current Chamber members, you’re the one that knows the offerings that your chamber has to offer. You’re the one that knows the ins and outs and you’re there to learn about them so you can better align what you have to offer to serve them better. And going with that perspective, I think helps alleviate some of those nerves. That
Cindy Cobb 14:57 and and believe it In your product, you know, whether it was for for me at that time, my the insurance I was offering and believing and knowing the benefits of it. And the same with the chamber. And having lived here my whole life, I do remember when the chamber was organized and the the challenges and the struggles that they went through, as well as the triumphs. And so I’ve really believed it. And before I agreed to go out and see members on which I thought was going to be a temporary thing. I really studied the chamber as study, not only our chamber, US study chambers in general, to know, what we what we’re all about, and the influence that we can have, and how we can advocate. You know, we’re there for them, and, and to bring unity. So that can make our, our area a better place to live. So with knowing the product, and really believing in it, the enthusiasm is genuine. Yeah.
Brandon Burton 16:25 So with our topic today about adding a personal touch to our communication efforts, I see it really is relationship building. And maybe you see it differently. I don’t know, I think when you sum it up, that’s what it comes down to is building relationships and showing that you care to these people, these members that you’re communicating with, what are some of the ways that you’ve learned and adapted to show your care and your interest in these individuals as you communicate with them?
Cindy Cobb 16:56 Well, if at all possible, if they have a social media page, follow it. And I interact with them on layer, that that helps them to know that we’re watching that we know what’s happening us if I see something interesting, some type of announcement, they don’t always contact the chamber about it. But I see it there. So I can repost that with some personalized comments. And I can also share that with my assistant. And let’s include this in our newsletter, this is big news, or if it’s something on accomplishment, forum, you know, we’d like to do that. People, people like to know that they’re being noticed. So there’s some things that I do.
Brandon Burton 17:59 So I’ve seen it, I don’t mean to cut you off or interrupt. I think this ties in well, I’ve seen some chambers where to make sure their members feel noticed is for those who maybe purchase an ad space in their chamber directory, or there’s their chamber map or the sponsors of certain events, to give them special shout outs on social media, and even resharing. Like if it’s an ad in your chamber directory, for example, to share that ad on social media and leverage that a little further add your personal touch on it, but it also drives people to the awareness of promoting the chamber in whatever publications or events that you’re promoting with that. So yes, I think it’s two birds with one stone.
Cindy Cobb 18:45 Yes, that that is really just the, I see it as the very least that we can do. If people are willing to be a sponsor. We, we always, always make sure that they are acknowledged in our newsletter, or any emails, our social media, always make sure I do that. And you know, it is is this something that is like they really feel like, Oh, why I’m getting the recognition, I am getting that exposure. One of the things that I’ve recently started doing is a local radio station has a community Morning Report. This is something you probably wouldn’t have in a larger city. But in our little area, they call around. They talk to different people and they give a report for each community. I watch them on Facebook Live so that way I can use the live chat and it’s a good right way to do plugs for the chamber. anything as far as, like a new member or ribbon cutting, I always mentioned that on layer. If we have something special coming up, like, for instance, we have our annual golf tournament and fundraiser that’s coming up soon. And the sponsors would that, always make sure to mention them that way? It’s free advertising for us. Yeah. But they’re getting advertising, too. Yeah.
Brandon Burton 20:34 It doesn’t cost the chamber really anything. But a few minutes to post it. event, it makes a huge impact for that business. So next time when they consider being a sponsor, or participating in whatever event, instead of saying what’s in it, for me, at least they know that tangible thing, the Chamber went that extra step to make sure that their business is being noticed. Yes. Adding that personal touch.
Cindy Cobb 20:59 Yes, that’s right. That’s right. You know, when you’re reaching a whole other audience, like with this with the radio station that may not have thought about following the chamber on Facebook, but I have found since I’ve been doing that, that our Facebook following has increased? Yeah, yeah, there’s, that’s a different group that listens at seven in the morning, to a community kind of round up and report with what’s going on with the union meals area. Nobody, but someone in Rutherford County knows. Union meals, where’s laps? Right,
Brandon Burton 21:51 right. Yeah, those are, they’re gonna tend to be people who care about the community and want to have more involvement possibly. So Right. That’s, that’s key. What are some of these other ways with personal, the personal adding the personal touch and the communication that you? Well,
Cindy Cobb 22:10 face to face? That, that is that definitely a personal touch, you can’t get much more personal. So when someone joins our chamber, or they renew their membership, and the certificates are printed out, you know, not only sign those and frame them, take them and deliver them, to them with their new little claim for their door to their business. And I just hand deliver it and, and thank them for renewing or becoming a part of the chamber, and inform them about the benefits membered member discounts, and I encourage you, you know, you need to, you need to try this. And this, you know, letting them know less, I have enough time to come out and see you now do Trump planet, to where when I know where I’m going for the day, I have those things with me that are going to be on my route of where I’m going. But it doesn’t take much time to drop that off. And just stop by and say hello and see how they’re doing. It really makes difference not have found. Everyone always has come for at least a brief chat. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 23:44 yeah. And even without an appointment, necessarily. I mean, you’re gonna run across it, where they’re in a meeting, and they can’t see you. But if they if they can, and you’re dropping something off for them, you’re going to show gratitude for the investment they’re making in the chamber. They’re gonna take two minutes to say hi, and and receive that. So yes, I love that. So I know. I mean, in today’s world, people are so busy, especially when you look at chamber executives are so busy, you know, there’s so much going on, that we’re looking for ways to maybe shortcuts or ways to systematize or be able to leverage our time in a in a more efficient way. So what would you say to those who are like I need to really hone down my time to encourage them to add the personal touch, what are you? What kind of return are you seeing on that investment of taking that time to add the personal touch and your communication? Well,
Cindy Cobb 24:46 I’m sure I’m not the only one that has their email account on their phone so they can check their emails because I have found if I’m just sitting in the office, really not doing my job. So I will. I’ll be checking emails when I wake up every morning. That’s one of the first signs that I do. And so I look at it, we just recently had a presentation, our professional women’s group called the chamber cheeks, by the way, now take that later what it means that the program was on time management. And so there was some good things have learned from that. So prioritizing the ones, go ahead and read them, go ahead and look at it. And then if it’s something where I can answer quickly, I try to go ahead and answer it quickly. If it’s something urgent, definitely try to try to answer that. And if not, if it’s an a male might be where they’re just wanting us to check on something. Yeah, I will, I will forward that to my sister, Lily, and then she’ll take care of it. So I’m not answering every one of the emails because any of these other chambers, they can tell you. And I’m sure they could share a lot more with me because their years of experience. A lot of the emails are kind of sale you set up then OR gate day, they said, those are the ones that kind of go into file 13. Right.
Brandon Burton 26:45 That makes sense. That makes sense. So I know, we’re gonna start wrapping things up here, but I wanted to give you an opportunity of to share any tip or action item for listeners who are looking to take their chamber to the next level, what kind of suggestion or tip or advice would you offer for that?
Cindy Cobb 27:08 I would say, first, listen to what your members are saying in a nice way, or I think the relationship part is important when they listen and observe what’s going on with their business men where their struggles are. And if at all possible, try to help them through that. Through that rough patch, whatever they may be dealing with. I’ve really feel like this important. Also, in our case, not just mentioned our women’s group. I saw a need and, and also, as I shared the idea of forming a professional women’s group that a lot of ladies were interested in that. So we’ve only had two meetings now. But each one is growing and spreading more people are talking about it. I’ve got spine this language checks. Yes,
Brandon Burton 28:19 I was gonna ask you you had mentioned that gave us that teaser. Tell us tell us what that’s about? Yes.
Cindy Cobb 28:25 So I can’t think of okay. You know, I’ve got to think of something where people can remember it. And I saw some of these were women on fire, fire or power up and all these really strong things. And I’m like, Oh, my gracious. I don’t I don’t know, I’m not sure what I don’t want to do. And I don’t want to mimic somebody. I want it to be something that’s original. I’m sure. The there’s been some other chamber cheeks, but ours is an acronym. Okay. Shakes stands for community health, influence, connection, knowledge and support. And I feel like that pretty much sums up what our group is about. We want to help our community, promote women’s health, the influence of the each of those women on hmm to know they’re vitally important to the to the success of that group, because their sphere of influence can make an impact. The connections, obviously, you know, if you’re a business woman, that those connections layer, you can Meet people that you may not you may not know about this is brought some out of the woodwork that were even some home based business women. One lady for instance, she she’s in like the cryptocurrency another one is a marketing firm that she’s just working from her home. And making those connections, the knowledge, like the, the program on time management, that was something I felt like every one of us could benefit from, and support so that we’re there for each other. There’s a variety of ages. So whether you’re a young woman starting off in the business world, you have these mentors that can help support you, and kind of carry you through whether it’s with your business or even in your personal life, those things. So that’s what Chix stands for.
Brandon Burton 31:07 Yeah, I love that I love that you were able to make an acronym out of it gives a little more meaning to it shows the intentionality behind the name. But another maybe tidbit when it comes to creating a name for a group like this or an event. And I did this when I started chamber chat podcast that was trying to figure out what would be a name that people would remember that they could tell us what it is without, you know, being too wordy. And if you can come up with the name that you like the most. And have some casual conversations with other people. Maybe it’s Chamber members and say, hey, you know, we’re thinking to do in this women’s networking group and maybe call it like chamber chicks or something like don’t have that be the focus of the conversation, but drop it in there. Right? And then like two weeks later, circle back with that person say, Hey, do you remember that conversation we had about this women’s group? Do you remember the name that I told you were considering? If they can repeat it back to you? You got a winner? Right? Yes. Whereas they’re like, I remember, I don’t remember what the name was. But you just casually drop it in there. And if it doesn’t resonate, go to the next name on your list and have those casual conversations with some other people until you get a winner.
Cindy Cobb 32:25 Yes, that’s that is something that that I have. I have been doing slug. I’ll say someone’s like, hey, we would love it. If you could join us. Would you like to get away at least once a month during lunch? Was mother ladies? And when I tell him the name, they always smile. Yeah, no. And they, you know, I’ve had some that, that haven’t even mentioned that too. And they’ll they’ll say something to me what? Oh, yeah, I’ve heard about you cheeks.
Brandon Burton 33:07 I love it. Well, 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? Oh,
Cindy Cobb 33:22 I think while it is a really an age old and tried and true resource for businesses is something where we have to continue to educate because there’s new generations that don’t realize what chamber is. But when take the time, and you share with them, and you let them know. They’re excited about it too. And they they do like that personal touch the interaction. Some meaning especially during COVID Everything was done remotely. And from you know, just behind a screen. And when people can be a part of a chamber and it’s like, oh, this is promote my business. It’s, it’s really a good value. Look what you get. And you get to meet all these other really great folks that have businesses and wow, this is really gonna help man I love this. It says stories when people connect and they do business with one another later. But I think it’s something where we can’t just sit back and leave people educated about what the Chamber’s about is a process that way or this having to repeat there’s this those foundations that we have to lay, but are really see that there’s a real name for it. Because in today’s economy, some of the things are not always pro business. And it’s making it tough for them. So knowing that they have someone an organization of backing, that’s their advocate, and keep them and touch with these grants are available or this go to this resource, this, this will be great, or even just some simple things slack. Up until just this past year, we did not offer a monthly dues, or it could be, you know, drafted. And I saw how some of the businesses were struggling. And so when we allow that, oh, Ma, they just they’re like, Oh, that’s great, because I really want to stay, I really want to retain my chamber membership. And that just, that just really lifts me up. Because then it’s like, well, they, you know, if they’re really, you know, they’re struggling, but they see and they really want to keep this ties with the chamber. I think that’s a great testimony as to the future of both chambers.
Brandon Burton 36:31 Right. But you’re doing a great example of keeping the community informed on what chambers do with your involvement in these Facebook groups and chiming in and saying, Well, this is what the chamber does. They’re given the plug where it makes sense, not hijacking the conversation at all, but just being there is that voice of voice for business? Right saying, chamber does? I think it’s a great example. And yes, with a membership dues, I think, in today’s world with the way software is structured now, with your invoicing, it’s so easy to set them up on a monthly dues schedule, if that’s what makes sense for him. Why would you eliminate somebody because they can’t do the one time payment or quarterly payments, just make it easy, make it fit for them, meet them where they’re at, and support their business, they tend to be the ones that need the most support from a chamber. So that’s
Cindy Cobb 37:22 right, those that have struggled, when you’re sticking with them, they tend to be the ones that are growing faith and whilst loyal to. And that’s something as I look back with my past career, when, you know, something tragic happened, and some I had to do a death client, and you deliver that or with, you know, they can use their cash value at their policy to go in and have a downpayment for a home, and it’s helping them to get established. They remember that, right? And so some of those from my past are now my Chamber members. Yeah, yeah,
Brandon Burton 38:14 that’s great. Well, Cindy, I wanted to give you a chance to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect with you and build a relationship or learn from from things that you’re doing what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?
Cindy Cobb 38:30 Well, they can always email and my email is cindycobb@rutherfordcoc.org. Can also if they would like to call the chamber 828-287-3090. That’s one way. We are on Facebook. Rutherford County Chamber of Commerce. There is a Rutherford County, Tennessee. We occasionally will have those that are in Tennessee, that
Brandon Burton 39:09 are members in Tennessee, you know,
Cindy Cobb 39:12 believe it or not, we’ve had some where they start following our Facebook page. And they applied online to our chamber.
Brandon Burton 39:21 They just liked the work you’re doing. Yeah.
Cindy Cobb 39:25 Well pick up the phone and give him a call. It’s like Thank you. You may have applied to the Rome chamber.
Brandon Burton 39:32 That’s good. It’s funny. This has been great. It’s a so it’s a good conversation just to have these reminders of adding that personal touch building those genuine relationships, having those those touch points on a regular basis, not just when you’re asking for dues and renewing a membership or sponsorships. So building those relationships and keeping it genuine I think is key but say appreciate you being with us today here on chamber chat podcast sharing your insights and experience and the value that you brought to the show today. Well,
Cindy Cobb 40:08 thank you so much. It was quite an honor. And the Kismet that keep it simple, stupid, does some simple things can make a world of difference. That is correct.
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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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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.
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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.
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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. You’re joining us for a special episode as part of our 2023 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist Series.
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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.
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Our guest for this episode is Amanda Lea Kaiser. Amanda is a keynote speaker and author of Elevating Engagement: Uncommon Strategies for Creating a Thriving Member Community. Through her research, Amanda is at the forefront of exploring how member and attendee engagement is rapidly changing when within professional communities. I’ll have to say as a side note, as I read through her book, I very much was able to visualize all of you as listeners, both attending your state and national chamber conferences and engaging on those levels, but also taking some of these lessons learned to your local chamber organization. So as we go through our conversation today, I hope you can see some of those parallels as well. But Amanda, I wanted to welcome you to the show give you a chance to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are listening and if you wouldn’t mind sharing something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.
Amanda Lea Kaiser 2:58 All right. Hey, Brandon, thank you so much for having me here on your podcast and hello Chamber Champions. It’s it’s great to be here. Okay, something interesting about myself. So I got my start at Crayola and I rose up the ranks and marketing so I’ve got a classic marketing background. And and now I’m the keynote speaker but maybe even more interesting than that. I’ve got a two kittens adopted me during COVID I don’t know if if you’re a cat dad, but they adopt us I don’t think we adopt them. And and I named them after Muppets. So I love the Muppets, Kermit and all of those guys. So so my cat’s names are Robin in between. And you might see them running in and out because that’s what they do. Awesome.
Brandon Burton 3:44 Yeah, I did notice the Kermit quote in the book as well. So that carries through. I’m not a cat, dad. But I understand what you mean. It doesn’t matter how much you like the cat they have to like you to adopt. Right? Well, I am excited to get into our topic of conversation today. I think chambers across the country, even globally, are constantly thinking about the ways to elevate the engagement of their membership or their investors or those who participate in their organization at at any level. I often will out I’ll hear chambers talk about doing the yellow highlighter exercise where they will print out their membership list and then with a yellow highlighter, go through and mark any chamber member who’s participated or actively engaged with the Chamber in any way. And that may be the main sponsor of their annual banquet. It may be the sponsor of their board room, or maybe just somebody who’s constantly liking their Facebook posts. So literally any level of engagement and as they do this yellow highlighter exercise, oftentimes there’s not a whole lot of Yeah, low on that sheet once it’s marked up. So I think we’ll, we’ll be in for a treat today with a lot of these tips and ideas around how to elevate engagement with our memberships. So we will dive into this discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.
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Brandon Burton 8:31 All right, Amanda, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re, we’re talking about elevating engagement, you’ve got a book all about it. Some could say maybe you’re an expert on it. And I’m a little bit hesitant at all really setting the stage that way. I think I told you before we got on the recording. It’s like introducing a comedian and telling everybody how funny that comedian is and then your your setup to deliver. So you know, no pressure at all, but I’m looking forward to an engaging conversation. Good. So maybe let’s just start with why did you write the book like what what was it about your background and maybe personal history that led up to this moment where you’re like, there needs to be a book about elevating engagement of these membership organizations? Yeah,
Amanda Lea Kaiser 9:21 so Okay, so let me give you just a kind of quick, sober, quick, speedy history to get us to this point. So like I said, I started at Crayola. And then I had a couple of jobs in my career where I worked at an advertising agency and then I landed in a NAT at a national association. So I worked I worked in for a higher ed Association. Super cool. It was the first time that I even realized that associations and chambers and they were even a thing I just didn’t know until that point until I started working for them and I was director of marketing there. And and it just completely We opened my eyes. And I was so delighted by how collegial these professional groups are. They’re, they’re really fantastic. So I decided to open up my own business. And I was a qualitative researcher, my, my marketing focus has always been on research. And I decided to pursue the qualitative research side of things. And during my time, as a qualitative researcher, I worked with 33 different associations and got a chance to personally talk to 477 members from all different walks of life. And the conversations with them did two things, one, I would ask them about their industry or their profession. And the second thing that I asked them about was, what is it like to be a member? What is it like to attend? You know, what is engagement like, and all of that, and as I was conducting these interviews, one thing that I found is there’s this gap between members, and attendees and, and leadership, right. And so, so that’s why I wrote the book, I wanted to close that gap. And just to give you a sense of the gap is, is, you know, members, our members are having an experience there, whenever they engage with us, they’re having an experience, and very often when we’re on the inside, and I can say this, for sure, as the as being a staff person on an association, a lot of what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to provide value, we’re trying to do the administrative stuff very right. And we’re not, we’re not focused on the experience. And so, so that’s what this book is all about. The book is all about closing the gap. And and I’m also doing a ton of keynoting. Right now. And so I start out every time by saying we’re here to close that gap between you and your members.
Brandon Burton 11:52 Yeah, I like that. I think that’s a good summary. And that does kind of set the stage a little bit here. So my background is in chamber publishing. And often I’ll even joke with some of the different advertisers Chamber members that were selling ads to that. I often will hear a chamber member say that they want to advertise and whatever the chamber publication is, because there’s almost a sense of guilt, that they join the chamber at some point. And they see all the emails from the chamber about the networking mixer, the after hours, the Chamber luncheon, annual banquet, you know, there’s always something that golf tournament. And there’s a sense of guilt that they can’t be at all of the things, you know, they work during the day, so they can’t go to the luncheon or they’ve got family life after work. So they can’t go to the after hours. So they see doing some sort of advertising with the chamber as a way to engage. So how would you look at engagement? How do you define engagement? As you look at a membership organization, I guess what counts when it comes to? To engagement? Yeah, yeah.
Amanda Lea Kaiser 13:04 So So advertising counts and attending accounts. So so let me let me kind of step back, though, because what I tend to do is I tend to define engagement, the way a member would defined engagement and the way members define engagement is almost solely around emotions. And I actually, I asked when I when I keynote, I asked my audience this, I’ll ask them what is what does engagement feel like when you’re really engaged? What does that feel like? And I’ll ask them to, to recount a professional or personal community that they’re very, very engaged in, you know, what, when that makes their heart very happy. And so this is some of what they’ll say they’ll they’ll say, I feel valued. I feel welcomed, I feel belonging, connected, excited, inspired, it’s energizing, I feel included. I feel focused, I feel peaceful, I feel worthy. I feel like I’m being seen. That’s just some of the words this is I got 139 responses. But those are some of the key words that came up over and over again, so. So engagement is all about emotions. And when you’re when your members or our members are making decisions to engage, they’re making very emotional decisions. That what they’re what they’re what they’re trying to work out and might not be even conscious. But unconsciously they’re trying to say is this community for people like me, do people like me join a chamber like this? You know, do people like me go to events like this? Do Am I gonna find my people here? Am I gonna be long am I you know, all of those things. That’s, that’s the kind of what’s going on in the back of their minds. And so, I, I love to define engagement all around how members see engagement, because you’re right when we when we on the business side, talk about engagement. We’re talking about joins and when rules and registrations and opens and reads and click throughs and all of that. So we’re talking about the metrics of engagement. But I love to think about engagement as that, that very emotional emotions and feelings that drive those decisions to engage. And so that’s that’s typically where I’m coming from. Yeah.
Brandon Burton 15:26 What you said almost sound like a Seth Godin quote, right? People like us do things like this. Yeah. And it’ll often talked about enrollment, right? So the engagement level kind of at Next stage is yes, I want to engage. And now I’m going to enroll I am all in, I’m going to fully participate. And I know that’s a few steps down from where how you kind of break down that, that member journey, or that the experience journey. So maybe touch on that a little bit, because I think so much of that, the beginning of that membership journey is where that emotion really is probably at its peak. There’s some reason why they’re choosing to attend the conference or choosing to join the chamber. And I’ll say everybody does it for slightly different reasons. But understanding what that emotion what that driver is, I think, is so key to being able to help them have a successful journey going forward with the chamber. Yeah, can outline that for
Amanda Lea Kaiser 16:28 us? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I’m so glad that you started touching on well, you know, what, what happens at the beginning, because So, for most professional communities, what they find is new members are the most fragile members. And, and so, you know, people, if you look at your metrics, you might see people join, and then they never engage. And then it’s not a surprise when they don’t renew, right, and, and so, so they’re very, very fragile. And, and so what we need to do is start appealing to their emotions, one of the one of the things that I often will say, when people are asking for, like, what is the definition of engagement, I’ll say, there’s two parts, there’s, there’s value, so we got to provide value. And the other part is positive experiences. So you want to provide good value and positive experiences. And when you do that, members will engage. And I would wager to bet that your chambers provide lots of amazing value, you know, people, all of you chamber pros, you’re doing all of these events, you’re publishing, you’re emailing, you’re providing all kinds of really amazing things and lots and lots of value. And it’s, it’s frustrating when people aren’t joining, and or it’s or renewing or engaging in, in some way. And so the, the piece that’s often missing is the experience part, the the part that triggers all of the emotions, and, and so this is very salient for new members, you know, new members join, they often don’t understand how to really engage, there is the old the emails are coming in there is I’ve heard that, Brandon, that guilt factor that you were talking about in so from so many different types of members, you know, they’re, they’re sending me emails, I feel like I and what they will say is, I’m not engaging, and it’s, it’s my fault. It’s not them, they’re, they’re making every effort, it’s me, right? And, and I can see that there’s a lot of benefits, I can see that there’s a lot of events and in what they would normally tell me is I feel like I’ve got to start going to these events, which I can never do, because the timing doesn’t work out. Or I’ve got to spend a lot of time on their website, understanding what they do. And I just don’t I don’t have the time yet. And, and so I think what we need to figure out is how to connect a lot quicker with them, you know, how to have how to provide a teeny bit of value so that they understand that taking that leap to come to your events makes a lot of sense. And also connecting on that emotional level. And you do that with experiences. So are there phone calls? Are there? Is there kind of a special quick Fitbit fun email that you could write to them, you know, what are all of the experiences that you can provide to new members that will get them saying this is not only going to be worth my time, but I think that this is going to be a really fun group. There’s a lot of energy. I’m super excited.
Brandon Burton 19:35 Yeah. And as you’re saying that it reminds me in the chamber industry, there’s a lot of focus on with the engagement of members to try to make the shift from being a transactional relationship to be more of a transformational relationship and that way, hopefully, if that’s communicated and modeled in correct ways, the guilt factor hopefully isn’t there. as much because they’re not in it, they didn’t join to say what’s in it for me, but they’re they joined to be part of something bigger, that’s making a positive impact in their community. I see some chambers that have the option to join their chamber right on their website, we can enter your name, credit card information, and click Submit. And you’re done. You’re a member. And I’m sure there’s the onboarding emails that come in. But that chamber doesn’t know anything about that member, why they joined, they didn’t really share their mission, their vision, any of that. And oftentimes, those are coming from another member as a referral. So you know, you need to be a part of the chamber, right? So I think right from the beginning, there tends to be a little bit of a disconnect. And I love in the book, you talked about doing a listening tour. And I think that could probably come in and in a couple different stages along the member journey. But to really tap into that emotion and their why you want to maybe expand a little bit on the listening tour, and how that can kind of pull on that emotion. Yeah,
Amanda Lea Kaiser 21:08 absolutely. So let me let me give you a couple of tangible stories that I heard dirt while I was while I was interviewing members. So. So there’s a couple of associations that were doing a really good job, and I got a chance to figure out what they were doing from their member saying I was on I was the recipient of the listening tour. And so there’s one, one association that did a very interesting thing. Now they had not very many members joining. It wasn’t like they were having hundreds of members join every week, they might have been having 10s of members join every week. And and so the the director of marketing of that particular organization, would schedule a call, it was about a 20 minute call with every single new member. And during that call, she would ask them a series of questions, you know, hey, tell me about yourself. And when did you start working at this company? Or when did you you know, when did you start the company? She would, she would ask them questions about projects, they were working on what their goals were, what their mission was, what if they’re having any challenges, she might even ask them, you know, what, tell me about some trends. And she would, she would take careful notes, and she listen intently. And at the end of the call, probably with maybe, I don’t know, three, four minutes to go, she would say this has been so interesting. And there’s a couple of things that I heard you talk about, that we might be able to help out with, there’s you talked about this really interesting project that you’re working on. And not many of our members are working on a project like this, but I know that Sue is. And I would love to introduce you, it’d be okay, if I introduced you to Sue, I think she’s a couple of steps ahead of you. And, but you know, I can introduce you via email in and then she will, she would also say and I also heard you talk about this system, that we’ve got some data from some of our research, or we’ve got an event coming up where we’re going to be talking about this topic, we’d love to have you I’m going to follow up with some emails. And so you know, she get off the phone and immediately send some emails, one introducing that new member to sue a longtime member and tell in telling Sue and you know, reminding this this person while why she was introducing them, and then she would follow up with a separate email saying, hey, you know, as we were talking, I told you, I was going to send you this research report and this invite to this event and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that that’s very time consuming very hands on for this organization that works. Because they don’t have a lot of members. Other organizations, there is the listening tour where you get into your car, you know, or your your get your staff into a van, and you book breakfast, lunch and dinner. Or you go to people’s offices or places of work or factories and and you spend 15 or 20 minutes with them doing the same kind of thing, asking them questions, touring, just being there letting them be seen. And it’s such a pleasure because now when they come to an event, they already know a friendly face. So there’s there’s that part. The other thing is if you are with a chamber that’s maybe spans a large geographic area, there’s a virtual orientation events. Now the virtual orientation events are not orientation webinars, there are much more responsive than that. So so people come you know, your new members come into a Zoom meeting. And then you ask them the same kind of questions, you know, where, where do you work what what kind of organization is your company? Tell us a little bit about it. What are some of your goals? What are some of the projects that you’re working on? And then as everybody’s feeding information to you, you the host can do some pattern matching for the biggest things that people are They’re struggling with and then make that link for them between their problem back to the to what the chamber provides in terms of, of benefits or upcoming meetings or something like that. So. So I love that you were talking about, you know, these these member listening tours, because there’s so many ways that they actually work, Brandon. And that’s really the key to it all. When when you know your members and you hear them talking over and over about their goals, then then we serve them a lot better. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 25:30 there was one chamber executive I talked to one time and he talked about how he’ll do three breakfasts each day, they’ll go meet with different members there. The first one maybe is just having a coffee is the second breakfast, awesome makes the third one, maybe a phase three. So he’s breaking it up. But he’s getting to three different member businesses to have these breakfasts. And he’s meeting with other members there. So like the levels of engagement with the organization with the members is on multiple levels, and able to gather a lot of that very important information to be able to better serve the member. And I love that. So it does kind of seem like though in today with everything digital, and we’ve got in person events, we got virtual events, we get emails, get social media, we’ve got podcasts, we’ve got YouTube, we’ve got all these different ways to get our messaging out there. Does that make it harder or easier to engage members? Like how it I think I can see both sides of the coin, but I’d love to hear your approach and maybe how chambers might want to look at this. Yeah,
Amanda Lea Kaiser 26:41 what I’m hearing across the board is, is engagement is getting harder, it’s harder to engage attendees most virtually and in person, it’s harder, harder to engage members, it’s harder to get those opens and reads. It’s just I think it’s harder. And some people are saying, you know, this is not uniform. There’s some associations and some chambers that are seeing these bright spots, like, hey, we went back into person. And and, and we’ve got some of our in person events are doing amazing. And we’re still doing virtual, and some of those are doing amazing. So this is not, engagement isn’t universally going down the tubes. But I think it is getting harder. And one of the reasons why it’s getting harder is is really time and attention. You just hit on it, Brandon, there’s so many ways that we’re trying to reach members. But there’s so many ways that they’re getting content and they’re connecting. And they’re you know that it’s just sort of, we all have a very frantic pace of life these days. And so we’ve got to do something different to engage members than what we did before. And I’m so glad that you asked that question about communications, because this is sort of a really great time to talk about how you not only provide value, but you also provide the experience so so every time we communicate, there’s two things that we’re trying to do. The first is the what we say. And that’s the value, it’s the message we’re trying to get across. The second thing we’re trying to do is is or the second thing we communicate is how we say it. And this is the tone, it’s the voice. And and this might be something that you’ve talked about a lot in publishing is the tone or the voice. And so I love to think about tone on a continuum. And so on one side of the continuum, there’s the very institutional tone, the very professional polished tone, it’s a lot of big words, it’s when we’ve got our business hat on, that’s the tone we tend to fall into is the institutional tone. On the other end of the continuum, I have a what I call the best friend forever tone, sometimes we’ll also call it the happy dog tone. So if you go into your personal email, and you read, you just quickly, like scan your personal email of all of the brands and companies and products you really love. They’re talking to you and the happy dog tone, there’s emoji, there’s hashtags, it’s casual, they’re talking to you like they’re your best friend. But for some reason, when we’re doing business to business, and we put our business hats on, we talk very, we tend to talk very institutional. And so I just like to remind everybody, that tone is on a continuum, and you can pick anywhere you want to be, and especially with your new members, they’re they’re looking for all of those cues on whether to belong, you know, is this the place for people like me, they’re looking for those belonging cues. And when you can warm up your tone in your emails or warm up your tone and your phone calls, you know, or any of the information you’re sending out to new members. They the sense that they sense that this is going to be a happy, warm, lovely place for them to meet other people and connect.
Brandon Burton 29:54 Yeah. So when I think of, maybe an in person or even a virtual event I think to on an event stage, it’s a maybe a little easier to gauge the engagement. You can see if people are looking down at their phone or distracted or getting up to get a drink or, you know, just the distraction, where as we try to with these communication channels, I’d love that you brought the the tone and the voice into the happy dog messaging. Besides maybe some of these metrics that we look at the open rates and social engagement tools, are there other ways that we can see if our message is landing, right? If we’re how do we get that kind of feedback when we’re not in a room or a Zoom Room even to be able to get that that instant? Hopefully, positive feedback. Yeah,
Amanda Lea Kaiser 30:47 yeah. So people are always asking me how, how do you measure engagement and and there are, you know, I think when your members are doing the yellow highlighter exercise, they’re measuring engagement, looking at your renewals, it’s a measured metric and a measure of engagement. And so as you’re engaging members and attendees differently, you’re going to see that metric go up some some organizations use Net Promoter Score, some of them do things as sophisticated as Engagement scoring. And so again, over time, if you’re, if you’re focused on those experiences, you’re gonna see those those metrics go up. But, but it’s engagement is a tough one. Because it’s very hard to make one change, it’s very hard to say, Okay, we’re gonna make this one event more experiential, and we’re gonna see renewals fly off the chart, that’s not the way it works, right? There’s, there’s, there’s not a lot of like one to one direct comparisons, you just sort of see a general lift over time. So So I think sometimes we have to measure engagement, again, with our own emotions, which is, you know, is there what’s the energy like? Okay, so we’re making it we’re making some improvements to try to be more engaging and say this one event? Was the energy better? Did people walk out smiling, you know, for virtual, one of the things that I think is a really good predictor of a virtual meeting is what’s going on with the chat. Now, you can do a lot of things to have a really robust chat and as a, as a very often speaker, I love the robust chat. I love when I’m talking. And people are busy in the chat and they’re talking to each other. And they’re asking each other questions and they’re tuning in to listen to me and they’re plussing up what I say and then plussing up what everybody else says. And that’s for me that schools because because they’re sure they might be listening to me and engaging with me, but they’re in if they’re engaging with each other. That’s lovely, too. So, so if you’re doing lots of virtual events have chat ambassadors in there. And that can be a micro volunteering opportunity for one of your members. Or it could be a staff, you know, job, but have those chat ambassadors in there that are, you know, they’re plussing up what other people say? And they’re asking questions, and they’re, they’re kind of saying, Oh, this, you know, the speaker said this, what do you think about this, everybody and, and really try to foster that excitement and get it going. And that’s, that’s You’ll sense the energy, you’ll, you’ll sense it, whether you’re virtual or in person, and that that’s almost I think, is Valley or it is as valid as some of those tangible metrics.
Brandon Burton 33:26 Yeah. So I hope this doesn’t feel like we’re taking a step back. But I was thinking about the emotion as people engage with an organization that emotion is, you’re able to maybe give them some small wins along the way. So in the book, you talk about, like speaking from stage, there’s little engagement questions or things you can do to warm up the room, right. So they’re engaging on a very minimal risk or risk free environment where they have nothing to lose if they just participate and engage. And as a member joins an organization. And there’s other little quick wins, I’ll say that you can do to kind of trigger that emotion or positively reinforced that emotion of yes, you’re here for a good reason. We’re here to listen to like, all of those things. Are there any strategies or tips that you want to share around maybe those small quick wins to warm up the audience or the new member, to help encourage them to give them that confidence to be able to engage at higher levels as they progress through their their membership journey?
Amanda Lea Kaiser 34:38 Yeah, let me let me tell you about a totally unexpected story that I heard when I was doing those interviews and it’s a it’s a story that I heard over and over and over in different ways with different words. But what I would hear people say is I went to my very first event for this organization. And while I was waiting in the registration Mine welcomer I didn’t know it at the time, but people were circulating, and they were talking to all of us in the line. And in somebody stopped and talked to me, and it was maybe just two sentences. And it was it, it made me feel like this community is super open and warm and welcoming. And it and I felt like I had to step out of my shell and I am going to, to just talk to other people, I’m going to introduce myself to other people and just see how it goes. And so, so it’s like, new members come in, and we have to give them the teeniest little nudge or a teeny little bit of permission, so that they can go and make their experience great for themselves. And so whenever we can do that, it’s great. So So let’s see, how do you do that you can do that with welcomers that in person events, you know, kind of warming up the crowd for in person or virtual events. Think about your icebreaker, you know, what is what is a an icebreaker question or an activity that is super safe and super easy. And so I’ll give you just an example, when I’m getting together a group and I want to get them to be really creative, I want to I want the group bubbling up lots of ideas, I want them collaborating with each other. And the topic is not is not very serious, you know, it’s we’re working on, we’re just going to work together on this problem. And we’re gonna have a really great time doing it. One of the questions that I love to ask is, would you like to be a dragon? Or have a dragon and why? And in the why is the key, you know, you can pick either one, but I love to ask why. And so you can ask that, you know, in person, with a smaller group, you can ask it on, you know, virtual meeting and get people responding in the chat. But that, you know, again, you’re you’re popping them out of the expected stuff. And in the their professional world, and you’re bringing them into sort of a different surprising experience where they can have a little bit of fun with it. They tap in their answer, and now they’ve started participating, which is half the battle, because once once you start once, then you’ll you’ll form that habit and you’ll keep participating. That’s
Brandon Burton 37:12 awesome. Having read the book, I knew that was the question you’re gonna you’re gonna bring up it’s I was waiting for the dragon question. So I’m glad you glad you brought it out. As we begin to wrap things up here, I wanted to ask usually I’ll ask for maybe a tip or action item for listeners who want to take their organization up to the next level. And what you would offer I think I may want to read phrase that too, for an organization that a chamber listening who would like to level up the engagement of their members to the next level? Where should they start? Yeah,
Amanda Lea Kaiser 37:50 yeah, absolutely. Oh, let me backtrack and tell you one other one. So if you’re looking for more icebreakers, or energizers the other one that is surprisingly, super fun, and people get you know, they have this very fun argument about it is, is a hot dog a sandwich. So what do you think Brandon? Is the hot dog sandwich? Or is it not a sandwich?
Brandon Burton 38:13 I’m gonna go yes. Is it the same way a cheesesteak is the sandwich.
Amanda Lea Kaiser 38:17 Oh, there you go. Yeah. Yeah. So so interesting. Usually, usually groups completely divide. And there’s some squabbling around if a hotdog is a sandwich and to my knowledge, there’s no real answer, you know, just like, Alright, are you know, is white chocolate, chocolate, you know, again, you get the you know, those are those are fun cup questions to ask.
Brandon Burton 38:40 In cornbread, and you have a corndog. Now, that’s a whole nother topic. I don’t agree with that. Yes,
Amanda Lea Kaiser 38:47 yeah. Yeah, that feels not sandwich like to me, but yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, so. So what, you know, what can they do to take things to the next level, what, what I would suggest is go and start identifying all of your transactions anytime you have a transaction. So joining as a transaction renewing as a transaction, opening an email is transaction registering as a transaction registration at your events as a transaction. And in so think about and so like, anytime the staff has a job to do, you’re doing administrative stuff for that transaction. So think about how you can seamlessly keep doing the administrative part of it, and then layer the expensive experience on top of it. So that’s, that’s how you close that gap is to keep doing what you’re doing in terms of the transaction and the administrative stuff, but now figure out how to layer the positive experience on top. It’s easier than you think it is. So like, let’s say you’re, you’re you’re doing registration at one of your events, and you’ve got you know, 100 people coming through the door, and you need to give them all badges within 10 minutes or something like that, you know, people are coming at you, and you’ve got to log them. And you got to give them all their badges, even even in those moments where you’re so busy and so frantic, just smile, like just keep giving them a genuine smile. And now you’ve layered on that positive experience. I
Brandon Burton 40:22 love that. And I was thinking, I don’t know, man, I don’t know if this holds true all the way through or not. But if, in talking about those micro wins, as you know, micro positive experiences and micro engagements. Hopefully, if they’re engaging on that small risk free level, a way of maybe measuring that as if they’re engaging again, like if they’re taking another step, you know, on that journey. And if they’re, if they’re stalling out, if you make that initial engagement, and they stall out, maybe the communication needs to be refined, maybe you need to get more information. But they hopefully should be making another step and other engagement along the way. Would you agree with that? Or is that just totally my own thought? totally
Amanda Lea Kaiser 41:13 right. So I have identified it fine. I’ve identified six stages of engagement, and is exactly what you’re talking about that that at each stage, there’s generally speaking, a barrier for people to take that next step into the next stage of engagement. And so to the extent that we can be aware of all of those six, six stages, and just constantly helping people have those micro wins, and in sort of taking that next step, if they want to, one, one thing that happens is you know, sometimes like, boards will get burnt out and a new member, a new face will come to an event for the first time and a board member will rush up and say, We’re so happy you’re here. Have you ever thought about being on the board and the new members panicking and saying, oh my gosh, I don’t even know who you people are yet. And so you can’t rush people up the six stages of engagement, but what you can do is make the opportunity available if they want to. So if you you know, the book is elevating engagement, and right there in the beginning, I detail all of the six stages, and each chapter is devoted to one of those stages. And I talk about the the kind of go no go decisions that members are making at every single one of those stage stages. And then I just try to give you hundreds of ideas for helping them move from one stage to the next. Again, if they want to work, we don’t rush them, we just make those opportunities all available to them. And, and yeah, I think I love I was taking notes while you were talking Brandon, because this idea of micro wins or micro engagements. I just I love that terminology. And I hadn’t thought about it or articulated it that way. So if you don’t mind, I’d like to steal that from you. Because I think it’s cool.
Brandon Burton 43:04 Yeah, just reference me twice. And then you can own it after that. So a real life example that, that I was reminded of and reading the book, you you mentioned that the board members, you know, maybe seeking a replacement for their seat during the board recruitment. So my, my wife was the volleyball Commissioner for our local youth volleyball organization. And our two youngest, well, all of our girls played volleyball through it. So we felt invested. And she was giving back to the community and doing her thing and just ended up with a lot of things on her plate. And she was completely overwhelmed. It was draining all of her energy. So she would talk to the other volleyball moms, she would say, this is wiping me out. Do you want to take it from me? Do you want to do you want to do this? And everyone kept saying, No, it was like, You need to change your approach. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It doesn’t have to be a negative experience. You don’t need to lie to them, but just share what it entails, share what the upsides are, and let them make a decision. But if you sell it as you know, this is so time consuming and is totally drained me. I think the example he gave in the book is a board member saying you know, I’ve I’ve been affected finite, you know, negatively financially, you know, in serving on the board. Nobody’s gonna want to take your spot, right. So you don’t want to scare people away with being over engaged, maybe? Yeah, yeah.
Amanda Lea Kaiser 44:35 And then then a staff members, we can also get a handle on that as well. You know, if, if we feel like it’s hard for volunteers to volunteer, we can look at their roles. We can look at the time commitment, we can look at dividing things up we can but just like it just like we were talking about with new members, you know, we want to take new members and give them that little nudge to help them keep progressing along their membership journey, you can do the same thing with volunteers. I love thinking about the volunteer journey as well. And, you know, start the volunteer journey with a micro volunteering opportunity and then slowly build. And I think a lot of time as a staff people, we tend to think about volunteer roles is very specific things if you’re on a board, if you’re on a committee, those are volunteer roles, but to members welcoming as a volunteer role speaking is volunteer role hosting as volunteer role, right, and, and so, so think about all of those non traditional things that we want to do to engage members like like being a chat ambassador, and have that be a volunteer role. And, and so, you know, maybe people are spending three minutes volunteering, or 10 minutes volunteering, or 30 minutes volunteering, but now you’ve just flex their muscles so that if there’s a chance to do another volunteer role, they might take you up on it. Right.
Brandon Burton 45:59 I love that. So I like asking everyone that I have on the show this question that as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, and I’ll broaden that and say, just associations in general, how do you see the future of chambers and associations going forward?
Amanda Lea Kaiser 46:17 Yeah, I see it really bright. There’s, there’s such a need, you know, when, whenever there’s a need in the community, there’s the business propositions, I think the future is really bright. And it’s just about how to engage differently. And I, from the research, I see that the answer is in the experiential side of things. And again, I think I said this a little bit earlier that I would wager to bet a lot of your chambers are offering a ton of value. And if you offer even more value, that’s great. But it might not get you to engagement, what you got to start doing is focusing on those positive experiences. And so a really quick way to think about that in this is something that you can play with you with your staff or talk to your board about or your committees about is just start saying, you know, the any, anytime somebody starts asking what do our members need, you know, what do our website visitors need? What are our attendees need? What do people need? Start laying or layering on that question, which is how do we want them to feel? And so? So when you ask, how do we want them to feel? And this is an easy thing that we that you could try even tomorrow, right? The next time you’re writing an email, think, how do I want the reader to feel and you kind of lock in that emotion in your brain that you want them to feel happy or joyful or hopeful or something like that. And when you type your message will actually totally change in quality? In in, that’s a really great experience. So just always, always keep asking, How do I want people to feel? How do I want them to feel when they come to our website? How do I want them to feel when they walk in the door of our event? How do I want them to feel when they’re advertising or hosting or sponsoring or any of those things. And that that’ll that’ll get you to the experiences part. I
Brandon Burton 48:11 love that that’s a good gauge right there just to kind of make sure that what we’re doing is the right thing and getting people to to engage and feel good and hit on those emotions that brought them there in the first place. So Amanda, I enjoyed this conversation and having you on the podcast, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect or share where they can find your book or anything like that, that you’d like to share with the audience feel free.
Amanda Lea Kaiser 48:42 Yeah, absolutely. So you can find me at amandaleakaiser.com. It’s Amanda, Lea, and then Kaiser like the role.com. There’s information about the book there. It’s there’s information about speaking, there’s a newsletter all about engagement that I put out once once a week that you can sign up for if you’d like or you can type elevating engagement into Amazon or any online bookseller and you’ll find my book there.
Brandon Burton 49:09 I love it. Well get that in our show notes for this episode. But like I said, this has been an engaging conversation and I hope the listeners feel so as well. And that it may prompt them to make some micro wins to put themselves out there a little bit to touch on those emotions understand why their members are there and what can you do to make them feel the way that you’d want them to feel. So Amanda, thanks again for being with us today and for sharing your your insights and for for sharing this book as well.
Amanda Lea Kaiser 49:41 Thank you so much, Brandon, this has been delightful.
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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. You’re joining us for a special episode as part of our 2023 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist Series.
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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.
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I’m excited today to have Kelly Goodman Schaffer with us on the podcast for those of you don’t know. Kelly is the President and CEO of the Bedford County Chamber in Pennsylvania. She also serves as the Executive Director of their 501 C three Bedford County Chamber Education Foundation. Kelly was named to the chief executive posts of the chamber in February of 2010. Prior to her entrance into the chamber profession, Kelly served as a marketing director for the Allegheny Mountains Convention and Visitor’s Bureau and Game Director of the PS FCA east west all star football game and Administrative Manager for the Pennsylvania scholastic Football Coaches Association. She also spent more than 20 years as a broadcast sports journalist in Johnstown Altoona State College Television market, most notably leading the award winning sports department for their local CBS affiliate from 1998 to 2008. And host slash writer of the Emmy award winning Penn State Women’s Basketball Coaches shows for WPSU. She was the first woman to hold the post and sports director at the Pennsylvania television station, a multimedia professional, she has additional experiences that have included writing a weekly sports newspaper, column, and magazine features and serving as a play by play announcer for women’s college and high school basketball games, both in television and radio. Kelly served the chamber industry as the 2020 and 2021, Chair of the Board of Directors for the Pennsylvania Association of Chamber Professionals and served on the organization’s board for six years. She’s a graduate of Penn State where she captain, the Lady Lions, varsity softball team. Kelly, we’re excited to have you with us today, you’ve got quite the background there. But I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening. And if you can think of anything else interesting to share with us just so we can get to know you a little better.
Kellie Goodman Shaffer 3:59 I think that was a pretty, pretty thorough, you know, view of my background. But um, it’s very nice to be with you today. And I guess I would just say, you know, I started in, in television and thought really that was like the ultimate dream job, doing sports on television and having that be your job every day. But I am very blessed to say that I have found chamber work to be another dream job. And and I’m glad I get to use the experiences that I’ve had in my previous careers and in the work that I do every day to to promote our business community and, and I love the chamber industry. I love how how generous we all are in sharing our ideas and our successes and what we’ve learned from our failures. And so I appreciate that, that you give this opportunity for chambers to talk about what they do and hopes that we can help each other along.
Brandon Burton 4:51 Absolutely. That’s the whole idea of this platform. Let’s share those successes and failures and for those people who are vulnerable enough Why don’t you take a few minutes tell us a little bit more about the Bedford County Chamber just to give us an idea of the size of the chamber, the scope of work, you’re involved with staff budget, that sort of stuff just to kind of set the course.
Kellie Goodman Shaffer 5:13 So our chamber was incorporated. The modern day chamber was incorporated in 1986. We have found records of our chamber dating back to 1921, we found a ledger of like paper or paper and pencil minutes of a more localized chamber here and in the early 1920s. But our modern day chamber is a county wide chamber. We have about 48,000 people in our county, but we serve the Bedford County region. So we have quite a number of members who are located in counties around us but do business in Bedford County. Today, we have 652 members, we represent over 24,000 employees in our region. And, you know, our job is we really live by the Chamber three cities to be a catalyst for business prosperity, a convener of leaders and influencers and a champion for strong communities. And every single thing that we do, whether it’s an event Initiative Program is measured against those those three aspects of services that we provide to our community. We have a fairly small staff, we have three full time people, including myself and a contracted bookkeeper, we do have another contracted person who helps us with one of our leadership programs, youth leadership, Bedford County, but we are heavily supported by a volunteer community here that have ambassadors, volunteers, volunteer board members, we have an incredible network of servant leaders in our county, many of whom have gone through our own leadership programs, but others who are just very committed to to making the community around them a better place. And so while we have a small staff, we have a lot of power because of all of the of the help that we get from volunteer leaders in our area.
Brandon Burton 6:56 Absolutely. And we just did a couple episodes on volunteer engagement and leadership program. So for people that have been listening to all the episodes, they understand the value of leveraging those those two opportunities specifically. Well, I am excited about our topic for discussion today is a as everybody heard, as I went through Kelly’s background, she’s she has a great background in media and specifically sports media. But our topic that we settled on today is going to be about how we can help your chamber kind of get some of that attention and spotlight from media and news outlets to shine a light on the work that you guys are doing in your own communities. So we’ll dive deeper into this conversation as soon as we get back from this quick break.
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Brandon Burton 10:20 All right, Kelly, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re talking today about getting your chamber in front of media and news outlets to really showcase the work that your chambers involved with. And I like that you have a background in the sea, you know, to some degree with these news outlets are looking for for stories, and, and maybe some connections, I don’t know, you can get into that a little bit more maybe as he tell the stories, but what are some of these ways that that you’ve found successful to kind of put the spotlight on the chamber and the work you guys are doing?
Kellie Goodman Shaffer 10:57 Well, I think as with most chambers, you know, so much of what we do is about relationships, and about networking and building that network. And I think it’s every bit as important to build your network of media partners and friends, as it is to build sponsors for events, and attendees to come to your events. So, I mean, obviously, I have some natural connections with members of the media in our region. But you know, there’s been a lot of new people who’ve come into the media since I moved from the media to the chamber. So you know, we really try to, you know, make welcome anybody who comes into new media outlets in our community, we invite them to our programs and events, not just to cover them, but to to be part of them as a business. You know, your media outlets are also businesses within your community. So recognizing the needs that they have, I think is important. We always have members of the media on our board, whether it be a television representative, a newspaper, representative, or radio, I think that’s really important. We have a lot of partnerships with our local media outlets. So once a month, we provide a full page of content about the chamber and our members and things that we’re doing for the local newspaper. So that’s a win win, because local newspapers need content, they, you know, like many businesses, they’re doing more with less. And if you can provide them with quality, professional content, they will likely use it because they need they need it, they need it as part of their paper. So we have a full page, once a month in our local newspaper, we also contribute feature stories to an annual magazine that we do, we’ve actually had a number of magazine partnerships over the years and magazines tend to come and go or, or evolve and in in what they and what they do. We’ve done a couple of print magazine partnerships, and they’ve transitioned to online, things like that. We also have a partnership with our radio stations, we do a an agriculture, little agriculture minute. So it goes over four stations, we actually have it sponsored by a local business. So we’re able to share information about the importance of the agriculture industry on the radio, and it’s a win win because the radio gets content and they get the advertising dollars, it’s paid for by local business that is positioning themselves as a champion for local agriculture. And the chamber gets the credit for championing that industry in our community. So I think a lot of media, a lot of the media partnerships, and a lot of the media work that we do is under that champion banner of our mission. But the other thing too, I think is really important is to not just use the media to promote yourself, use the media to promote your members. Because if we, you know, I will call I have I have a Monday morning call every week with a local newspaper reporter to give them ideas. Every reporter that will take my phone number, I give them my number. And if they have a day, or they don’t have anything going on, they’ll call me and say do you have a story idea and 99% of the time, the story ideas I offer them are not about the chamber, they’re about our members and about our community and are things that that lift our community up. So whether it’s a nonprofit, or a young entrepreneur, or a new business or whatever, to position your chamber, as you know, a conduit to promote your business community actually promotes your chamber in the process, because those members are appreciative and they’re and they’re your member. So, you know, hopefully they buy into into your mission. So I think that’s another very important piece of it is, you know, the Chamber should be a media outlet in terms of your social media, your website, things like that. And you should also be a conduit to helping your members get media exposure and positioning yourself as kind of a, you know, that convener of leaders and influencers and matching media with stories from your business community.
Brandon Burton 14:49 Right? No, so you hit on a lot of great points there. So one of the things I wanted to highlight is as far as a reporter any reporters out there you need to know your local chamber President right Right, I know that there’s a website out there called HARO, it stands for Help a Reporter Out. And where people can do reporters can go there to find stories or freelancers can post stories on there to help reporters out. And really, chamber is the best help for a reporter because you’re full of stories, you’re plugged into the community. So any any reporters listening, take advantage of that. But I wanted to circle back to you had mentioned that these media outlets, their businesses, so as a chamber to understand what the needs are of those businesses, and I think you’ve touched on some of those, but as far as understanding some of the stories that they need, or what would be applicable for them and helping them be successful. Are there other needs that you think of when you look at a media company as a maybe a magazine or a newspaper or news channel? That is, as far as understanding their needs are things that have stood out? Right?
Kellie Goodman Shaffer 15:56 Well, you know, they’re all businesses. So most of them are in need of employees, just like a lot of businesses now, right? I mean, I think our local media outlets are always looking for salespeople, always looking for reporters, looking for all kinds of different positions. So we plug our media into our career fairs or job fairs, and to have like the local television station roll into a high school career fair. It’s such a nice Win win, because they’ll take they’ll typically cover the story if they have people attending. But it’s a, it’s a really cool thing for students to see, you know, a media truck or even a newspaper, or radio, it’s just kids like technology. So it helps it helps build interest in that career and industry in the future. And then also, like I said, just get putting them in leadership positions, because media outlets want the community to be successful as well, media outlets run on advertising, it is in their best interest for businesses to be successful, because businesses that are successful, have money to spend on advertising. So you know, it’s just allowing them to be partners. So we have media partnerships, on almost every event that we do, they’re in kind partnerships. So we we list, you know, a television, radio and newspaper on every event. And we generally get free advertisement from all of them to promote those events. Now, there are some events that we do paid advertising, and we try to recognize that we shouldn’t expect everything for free from the media, because again, they are a business. So you know, we kind of tried to balance that giving them certain benefits that goes with with membership or with event promotion. But also understanding that we need to do some some paid buys, as well, when when we’re able to do that. And then just letting them be part of the conversation. Like I said, we always have a member of the media on our board of directors, and it helps them be tapped in with other other community leaders and other industries. And it also helps those other industries recognize what those media outlets need as well. So really just building those relationships and making those connections.
Brandon Burton 18:01 So I want to that was the next thing I want to touch on is building those relationships building that network, do you just have a section of your say Rolodex, but wow, that data is right. Now? Do you have a tag in your contacts list? It says media so you can you know, kind of keep track of these people? Or are there just you know, a certain certain ones that you know, you know, with this story, this needs to go to this outlet? How do you approach that? And? And really, how do you build those relationships? So it’s nurtured enough. So when you do have a story, they listen and are willing to run with it?
Kellie Goodman Shaffer 18:35 Right? Well, I think part of it is, you know, making an effort to be to have a relationship with decision makers. So you know, we’re a small market here, we get a lot of entry level reporters that come in cover things here. And we want to help them as much as we possibly can. I think sometimes that can be a little frustrating, because they are new, they don’t always get things, right, whatever. But some coverage is better than nothing. And having those relationships and building them as those reporters get better as they, you know, improve in their careers is important, but also having having the decision makers at those stations or radio or newspapers. So like at this time, I have a promotions manager of a television station on my board even though the television station is not located in Bedford County, but they appreciate what we do. They appreciate the connections that they make through our chamber. And so they’re part of our leadership. We also have the associate publisher of the local newspaper on our board of directors, they have to kind of be a little bit careful and have a conversation with them beforehand saying that what you hear in the board meetings is confidential and they can’t use that, you know, as stories that kind of thing and we’ve never had that problem with you know, we we we set the expectations for our board members and have them sign confidentiality agreements and we’ve never had somebody from a media outlet on our board you know, betray a confidence and, you know, report something About that another member has, has shared in the board meetings, all of the the relationships that we’ve built through the board and the leadership have been positive. But we’ve had quite a few stories that have come out of board meetings, positive stories about anniversaries of businesses, or new products or new relationships, new partnerships. So just to make sure that those that those people have influence and people that make decisions are included in your chamber, and a lot of that is just calling them and introducing yourself inviting them to things. You know, if they’re able to go to lunch with us, sometimes we’ll invite them to do that. Or just, you know, just to reach out, I think that we rely so much today on texts and emails, and you know, electronic newsletters and social media, but a personal touch, I think really goes a long way. And that I make sure that the media has my cell phone number. And I know part of me hates that I give that out. Because I will I will get texts and calls at all hours of the night. Do you know about this fire? Do you know that this is going on. But I feel like that’s kind of a necessary evil to help to keep those relationships going. And if if they’re calling us about, you know about something that’s happening in our community, sometimes they know before we do if it’s happening, like in the middle of the night or something. So just being part of that conversation, so that you can react to it to help your business community and also, you know, for the media to trust that you’ll give them the right information and help them to the degree that you can, I think is is valuable.
Brandon Burton 21:34 Yeah. I appreciate that. That gives good perspective. And I really appreciate, you know, touching on the, I guess the touchiness of what it could be having a member of the media and your board, because I know that’s a question that a lot of listeners may have is just how do you navigate that? That sounds like just having that open conversation. And it’s worked well for you guys. And it’s worked well all around is what I get out of that.
Kellie Goodman Shaffer 21:59 Yeah. And we have built in safety nets. I mean, our board members signed confidentiality agreements, and if they violate them, we have the right to remove them. So I don’t Yeah, we’ve never had to do that. So I would hope that that would never be the case. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 22:12 that’s good. So I’m curious to have you share maybe any interesting ways you’re able to attract the attention of media outlets, or maybe some some innovative ways that you guys have approached this. anything come to mind?
Kellie Goodman Shaffer 22:29 Um, yeah, I think that one of the ways that we’ve garnered a lot of media attention is through programs and events that we’ve done. And this is one thing I would say to to my chamber friends, and that is, don’t, sometimes we downplay what we do, I think in general chambers do not champion ourselves enough. We don’t value what we provide to the business community enough, we don’t express that value, and we don’t promote ourselves enough. So we do a lot of news releases, both for our own organization, and also for our members. We write stories and send them to the media, as I said, but we also when when we do something innovative, or when we’re part of something in our community that’s innovative, we want to make sure that the businesses we’re working with, and our community gets credit. So when we’re planning events, there’s three things we think about when we plan events, we, you can raise funds, you can make friends, and it can make you famous, and we would never do an event that just makes fun. It has to make funds, and either make you friends or make you famous. But the perfect trifecta is an event that raises funds, makes you friends, and makes your community famous. And we have two of those that we have done in recent years actually, pandemic through the pandemic, that the pandemic actually helped us get these things done. And and they they, you know, were off the charts on all three of those things. So one of them was during the pandemic we share Yeah. During the pandemic, the height of the pandemic. So this is the summer of 2020. Actually, it was in May 2020. I took this idea to our board, you know, what if we if we put up a temporary drive and movie screen, so that we could hold some outdoor events, because here in Pennsylvania, there were very strict rules about gathering inside and everybody was moving events to outside under tents or whatever, because that’s where you were allowed to get people together. So I called a local contractor and I said, you know, if you were going to build a temporary screen, how would you go about doing it? And this tremendous community leader said to me, Oh, this is a great idea. Give me a minute, I’ll get back to you. He called me back the next day. He had engaged an engineer, they had plans and he’s like, we’re not building a temporary screen. We’re building a permanent screen for doing it. We’re doing to do it right. And I’m in 50 days from the time that I got permission from our board to pursue this project. So that was the middle of May, to the day that we cut the ribbon which was July 2 Right before the Fourth of July weekend. We we got to watch our business community come together. 22 to businesses to build a 72 foot wide by 55 foot tall drive and movie screen. It is made with power poles from Bedford Rural Electric Cooperative, the face of it is eight foot by four foot wide fiberglass panels that are fabricated by a local company that in the real world would cost $900 each. And they they did it for us for a song. It was painted, the phrase was painted by a local painter, it was framed by, you know, local construction guys who weren’t allowed to work at the time, like their their projects were all shut down. But they could do this. And we partnered with the Bedford County Fair for a spot on the fairgrounds that we could put this big screen with lots of room for, for parking. And you know, in 50 days, like we say, it was hope, hard work and hometown magic that, that this project came about. And as a result of that, I mean, we got tons of we’re still getting publicity for this. I mean, I’ve gotten calls from, oh, seven or eight people from other states who’ve seen this online or, you know, searched how do you build a drive in movie theater, found our stories on on YouTube or whatever, and ask how you get it done. And it was just, it was the perfect combination of circumstances of businesses that had resources and wanted to do something great in their community. And it was just such a really tough time, you know, for the community. And it was such a good news piece, a good news story, I got a ton of of media and continues to, but we call it the silver lining driving because it was mining in a bad you know, we didn’t call it you know, the Bedford road electric drive, and they would never have wanted us to do that. But because of that we were able to hold church services, we’ve done community theater there, we held our annual dinner there the first year that we had, like 300 people in their cars, beeping their horns for the winners instead of clapping. And and it just, it’s just been such a huge boost for our community. And the other thing too, is one of our big initiatives here is we try to do things that will help us to retain youth, you know, we’re in a rural community. So we lose a lot of young people and to be able to have an event, a resource for events that are family friendly and young people can go to is really nice, it connects young people to the community. So it’s part of our bigger mission, which is to, you know, to enhance the life experience of young people here. So hopefully they want to stay. And because of the support of businesses, I mean, we had almost nothing out of in fact, I will say this, we had nothing out of pocket from the chamber. In this project. It was 100% supported by local businesses, either donating materials, time, talent, we had sponsorships that helped us cover the movie licenses and things like that. But we have so much support for this project, that we make it free for anyone 18 and under to attend, and 19 and over is $5. So we have people coming every Saturday during the summer for old movies, you know, like old Disney movies and Greece. And you know, the classics, we don’t compete with the local movie theater at all. We don’t really show any new new releases. But that was a that was a project that really, I think shows what chambers can do. You know, we could not build that. But we couldn’t get the people around the table that all had the right resources to do it. So we were a catalyst. We were a convener and we were a champion. So yes,
Brandon Burton 28:36 that is awesome. And you guys still use that today? The theater?
Kellie Goodman Shaffer 28:39 Yes. Yeah. So we’re getting ready for our fourth season. So we had 2021 22. There’s 23. So the fourth season of of community movies, and we partner with the Bedford County Fair. So we run the theater, we share the profits, profits with the Fair, which is also a nonprofit entity, and they support agriculture. So our number one industry, it all just is such a great, a great partnership.
Brandon Burton 29:01 That is perfect. So you had mentioned that there were two programs that came to mind what is the what’s the other one? The other one
Kellie Goodman Shaffer 29:09 actually, we started the year before the year before COVID. But it really blew up during COVID. So I’ve had this this dream for years and years to put together some kind of drive thru holiday light display, because there’s a really huge one like an hour away from us. And by the time we drive kids up there and sit through the line that’s like several hours long, they never get to see it. So we partnered again with the Bedford County Fair. And because it has lots of barns and electricity and stuff like that, and we said let’s try to do a drive through Christmas light display that promotes our local businesses. So rather than going out and buying commercial lighting, we put it out to our community businesses, organizations, schools, churches, families, if you want a free spot at the fairgrounds to build a light display, you know we’ll we’ll manage it and then we have you know cars that drive through from Thanksgiving to Christmas. We we put it out on I’m on Halloween 2019. And we said we picked a little small spot in the campground at the fairgrounds, and said if we get 30 businesses, we could make this work. We had 72 businesses sign up, we had to put it in a much bigger spot. Last year, we had over 150 participating businesses, the light display is like a mile or just over a mile long, we had, you know, the license plates on the cars from 18 Different states that came through, it’s a really inexpensive family friendly thing to do, it took off during COVID. Because again, it was something people could do in their cars, all the other Christmas events were cancelled. This was a safe, socially distant thing to do. And it just, you know, snowballed. But again, it wasn’t something we could not set up 150 displays ourselves, it has to be things that your business community can do together. But the chamber gets so much credit for it, even though we could never do it by ourselves. You know, so I think positioning ourselves, you know, knowing what we can do, knowing what we’re good at. And what we’re really good at is connecting people and sharing ideas and letting people you know, be part of our ideas and, and letting them build on it is what really has been successful for us. And those two things have gotten our community probably more attention than, you know, much of anything else that I can think of in the last few years.
Brandon Burton 31:18 That’s both make for great stories for any reporter anybody looking for content?
Kellie Goodman Shaffer 31:25 Well, we actually even have people like they’ll bring a drone over and fly over the drive in and then they will put it on their website, you know. So that’s, you know, amateur drone operators, but you get that on, you know, on Facebook and stuff. And we couldn’t pay for that advertisement, honestly,
Brandon Burton 31:41 right. Now, that is fantastic. Well, as we start to wrap up here, I wanted to ask you, if there’s any tip or action item that you’d want to share with listeners who are looking to take their chamber up to the next level, maybe something related to this topic, or or totally unrelated, what would you have to offer?
Kellie Goodman Shaffer 32:00 Well, I think I would just say, you know, we spend a lot of time talking about really serious topics. You know, we we spend a lot of time talking about the latest government affairs, you know, news, businesses, closing people needing work, all those kinds of things. And it’s really important for chambers to be engaged in all of those serious conversations. But I think that the the most traction that we have gotten from our chamber, and that I think chambers have an opportunity to do is really focus on being that champion for your community, tell great stories in your community and tell great stories about your members. So like, here’s one more quick example, we have a new program, we decided that we wanted to support young entrepreneurs, so any entrepreneur under the age of 21, gets a free chamber membership, until they turned 21 In our community, because that’s our way of supporting them, you know, starting their business, our very first one was a seven year old second grader who has a tie dyed t shirt business. And he has been one of the greatest champions for our chambers that I could possibly imagine. And we love being his greatest champion. Yes. And you know, people love stories about young people doing great things. And when we could have our name associated with helping him along the way. And he’s so proud to be a chamber member, when he got his little plaque from our ambassadors, he was just beaming. And just so so proud to be part of something bigger. And I think it made our Chamber members proud to to be Chamber members because he was so excited. And so just all those those kinds of things to just tell the good stories, tell the good news, and be the champion for your chamber. Because in the process, you get so much credit back, I don’t feel like we deserve the credit that we get sometimes. But we’re grateful to have it because that’s what allows us to continue to tell more good stories, and to really be the champion that our business community deserves.
Brandon Burton 33:51 I love that and these days are so many ways to get your story out there. So in the stories of your members is your your highlighting. Kelly 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?
Kellie Goodman Shaffer 34:08 Well, I think that coming out of the pandemic chambers have an opportunity that we have never had before. I know for our chamber and many of the chambers that I work with here in Pennsylvania through the PACP. We did such good work as an industry during the pandemic. We were truly that conduit between government and businesses like we were I think oftentimes chambers were the ones that businesses called looking for help with PPP looking for help with, you know, SBA loans needing information about how to keep your business clean, and even if all we were doing was passing along information from the government or the health department or whatever. We were the ones that our communities turned to in that really dire time. And I think because of that the Chamber industry enjoys a certain degree of loyalty from businesses that maybe we didn’t have before. I think many of our members have have gone from being transactional saying, Am I going to get my money’s worth for this membership to really understanding the aspirational value of our organizations and why it’s important to be connected to something bigger than yourselves, when we could put on, you know, when we could share a, you know, a town hall over the phone with one of our legislators trying to help businesses navigate the waiver system, or, or whatever it was, the chamber was chamber industry was such a key player in trying to keep businesses going through the pandemic. And so these few years since the pandemic, I think, have been an incredible opportunity for chambers to build on that loyalty and to build on the success and the value that we showed during that really hard time. And we would be, I think, remiss if we didn’t take advantage of that opportunity. I think for many, many years, chambers have worried about how, how cheap their dues need to be to get people to invest. And I think we really need to start giving ourselves more credit, and understanding how important Chambers of Commerce are. And if you’re in business, you absolutely should be in the chamber, you should be part of the larger business community, and not just for what businesses get out of it, but for what businesses bring to it by being part of the larger conversation. So I mean, that’s what I would say that we’re trying to do in our chamber, that’s what we talk about in the PACP is really understanding our value as an industry and then working toward, you know, providing what our members need in the future and what our communities need going forward.
Brandon Burton 36:36 I’d love that. That is a great response. So Kelly, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect with you or learn more about how you’re gaining the attention of the media outlets in your community. What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you
Kellie Goodman Shaffer 36:56 are you can reach me by phone at 814-623-2233 or by email at director@bedfordcountychamber.org. Our website is BedfordCountyChamber.com. We have you know, Facebook, you can reach me on Facebook if you want to. But we always love talking to other chamber people. I’m always inspired by how how much chamber people want to help each other. My best friends are chamber people. And I just feel so fortunate to have found this industry and the great people that are in it. So anything we can do to help someone else we’re more than happy to.
Brandon Burton 37:33 Absolutely, I appreciate that. And I’ll make sure to get your contact information in our show notes for this episodes, anyone can pick those up and reach out and connect with you and learn more. But thank you for spending time with us today on chamber chat podcast for sharing your experience, your knowledge, your background, and especially these, these two examples that you shared with us are really highlighting the ways that chambers can be champions in their community and, and go about highlighting the businesses in their community as well. So thank you for for being with us today. Kelly,
Kellie Goodman Shaffer 38:06 thank you so much for having me. It was nice to talk to you.
Brandon Burton 38:10 If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.
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Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Jordan Clemons. 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.
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.
Voiceover Talent 0:14 And now your host. He has seen many great opportunities come out of LinkedIn connections is my dad Brandon Burton.
Brandon Burton 0:22 Hello Chamber Champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.
Our title sponsor is Harmon brothers membership sales solutions. Let’s hear Our title sponsor is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Let’s hear from Tony Felker, President and CEO of the Frisco Chamber to learn how the Holman Brothers have provided value for him.
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Guest Introduction
Our guest for this episode is Jordan Clemons Jordan is a senior investor Development Manager at Greater Louisville Inc, the Metro Chamber of Commerce in Louisville, Kentucky. His role at GLI is to work with their 1700 Plus investors to facilitate connections and foster goodwill among the Louisville business community. In his role, LinkedIn plays a paramount role in developing new relationships and staying top of mind in the local community using LinkedIn Jordan as his primary prospecting tool. Jordan has exceeded his sales goals for 2021 and is on track to do even better for 2022. Jordan, I’m excited to have you with me here on chamber tap podcast. I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all Chamber Champions. and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Yeah. Hey,
Jordan Clemons 2:35 Brandon, thank you so much for having me. And it will come as no surprise to anyone listening after hearing that bio that Brandon not and I met on LinkedIn. So a testament to the platform right there. I’m really excited to get into this topic. I’ve been giving a lot of talks presentations I’ve spoken at the last two ACCE sales conferences in LinkedIn has been a topic that people ask about time and time again. So there’s a need for it out there and I’m here to try to deliver that knee but As Brandon mentioned, Jordan, I work at the Louisville Chamber of Commerce here greater Louisville, Inc. Interesting fact about me, I guess. I’ve got twin two year olds, twin two and a half year old boy and a girl. I’m looking at them right now on my desktop wallpaper. So when I think of interesting facts, that’s that’s my other job in life is being a dad to them, and they keep me extremely busy.
Brandon Burton 3:37 That will keep you running. I’ve myself, I’ve got four kids, but my youngest two were 14 months apart. And so like as one was walking, the other was crawling and was just constantly chasing one, you know, different directions, but yeah, keeps you in shape. That’s right. Yeah, that’s for sure. Well, tell us a little bit about GLA kind of size staff budget, just to give everyone kind of perspective. I mean, we know Louisville and being a Metro Chamber, but just kind of give us some perspective for our discussion.
Jordan Clemons 4:08 Yeah, absolutely. So Louisville is blessed to have a few chambers here. We’re sort of big, small town as far as Jefferson County goes. So we have a few neighborhood chambers here in town. But when you were thinking about goI critical voices, were the Metro Chamber of Commerce, so we encompass 10 counties in Kentucky, and five in southern Indiana. So if you’re looking at the map, and you put Jefferson County in the middle, it’s a pretty big circle around all of that. So that’s our MSA. That is the region that we’re working to grow. So we’re agnostic as far as Kentucky, Indiana County, we’re really just looking to bring economic growth to the region as a whole. So that’s sort of our thing growing the regional economy. at GE ally we have it hovers around 1700 to 1800 investors more on the on the top side and our staff is around 30. We do work in economic development, talent, workforce policy and advocacy, business development for our investors, which is the word the part that I work in the traditional chamber side. Budget, I think it’s 5 million plus somewhere around there. So as far as the categories of ACCE we compete and the top category for the awards and things like that, did that answer all your questions? Brandon, did I miss anything? Yeah,
Brandon Burton 5:29 no, that’s, that’s good. Sometimes people will, you know, have some added information in there. But yeah, I think you covered it all. So that’s it. It’s interesting with more of that regional focus, and to not be agnostic, like you said to Kentucky, but even focusing on some of those bordering counties in Indiana, and looking for the overall growth of the region, I think is great. It’s great approach.
Jordan Clemons 5:52 Yes, absolutely. I mean, what’s good for southern Indiana is good for us, too. We’ve really seen a big boom, over there. The last few years, Google has seen a huge boom as well. So it sort of bleeds across the river. And we’re more than happy to see development over there.
Brandon Burton 6:05 Right. So as Jordan mentioned, our topic we’re going to focus on LinkedIn, specifically LinkedIn for growing your membership at your chamber. And we’ll get into this discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.
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Topic-LinkedIn for Membership
All right, Jordan, we’re back. So you came recommended to me it’s kind of a roundabout way that we we ended up connecting and like you said LinkedIn was our first interaction with each other which is very fitting for this topic. But the idea of using LinkedIn for membership, I think is an interesting thing. I don’t know that a lot of chambers have really dived in to exploring LinkedIn on this one. level, they might connect with some of their members. But I’m excited to learn some of these strategies that you’ve employed and what’s working for you. And let’s just jump in there and tell us kind of how you came around to using LinkedIn as a tool, and how things have evolved for you.
Jordan Clemons 10:18 Sure, yeah, I’m gonna get up on the soapbox. And if you need to knock down, please do it. But I spend a lot of time up here. And I’m very comfortable here. And I think that there’s a lot to say. So I’ll try to be as brief as I can. It was, so I wasn’t always working at Goi. I was previously a financial advisor before this. And when I started as a financial advisor, I had no experience in sales or networking, or talking to people over coffee, all of the things that are crucially important to sales and crucially important to the job I do now. So I was at a conference, and I heard this guy speak, his name is Kevin Canibal. And he’s this sales coach, the old school scale sales coach, and he gave this presentation on how to use LinkedIn, for financial advisors, financial advisors, traditionally door knocked people and cold call, you know, it’s a numbers game. That’s exactly what they did. And that’s the advice that I got when I started was go knock on some doors. So I did it for done. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I, I had to tell myself, I didn’t just totally ignore the advice. But I knew there was a better way to get people to know like, and trust you. So when I saw this talk from Kevin, this light bulb clicked, I took his course, it was sort of like an intro to LinkedIn, and just a way to look at it. But it was geared specifically for financial advisors. So I used his approach for years and years in that in that role, a lot less freedom, compliance wise, and everything like that. But when I came over here to goI three years ago, I had in place the perfect network, the perfect platform, the perfect strategy, to supercharge my efforts here and make myself known and seen and seen as a thought leader in the business community using this platform that I had gotten really familiar with, over the last few years. So now or I’ve gotten three years into this, it’s it’s, it’s exploded, it is.
It is my basically source 100% of my business, through LinkedIn, by just employing a very simple strategy every single day. And I can sort of go into that I can go into the philosophy of why it’s such an important place to be for someone in the chamber world. Let me just try to start there. Yeah, yeah, because I talk about the strategy sometimes. And I think it’s better to talk about the why, versus the how first, because if you don’t really understand what makes LinkedIn different from other social media platforms, none of which I’m a huge fan of, then it’s not really gonna stick. So LinkedIn is purely for business networking, you can caveat that with, it’s great to shout out your promotions on there. It’s great to humble brag about your community volunteer experience, all that stuff’s great. But the whole point of LinkedIn is to connect business professionals, and to advance your career. And both of those things are symbiotic because the more connections you have, and the more robust your network is, the more resources you have at your disposal, when you’re trying to climb the ladder, or make a lateral move, or whatever that is. So sometimes people get lost in understanding exactly what the platform is there for. It’s your online resume. It’s your online Rolodex, if that’s even a word that people use anymore. I have it’s my outsource brain. For business. I’ve got like 10,000 Plus connections, most of them are here in the market. And when I’m trying to recall how I know someone where they work at what we’ve talked about, it’s all there. It’s not in our it’s not in my CRM I use for sales at work, because that’s all manual data inputting. It lives on LinkedIn. And guess what, whenever you talk to people and they end up moving jobs, LinkedIn knows that if they update their profile, you don’t have to put that information in your you’re notified of it, even if you have that notification turned on. So for someone whose job is to be in the business community, to know what’s happening in the business community, to talk to people in the business community, to stay engaged with them and to be seen and known as a thought leader in the business community. It’s it’s like the perfect perfect platform. And it’s it’s it’s not hard to use, that’s the other. That’s the other piece that I think people get tripped up on, they might understand exactly what I’ve just said. And, you know, that might be copacetic with their way of thinking, but then they’re like, Okay, that sounds great. But I’ve got no experience using the platform at all. It’s, it feels weird and awkward and indifferent to me, but it’s really not it, you just got to kind of find your voice. And I did that over a number of years. And I hope people do that all the time these days.
Brandon Burton 15:29 Yeah. And I think that’s important to cover that, that philosophy and kind of the thinking behind it. And one of the things you mentioned is showing that you’re a thought leader in the space or in your community, what are in maybe I’m getting into more of the steps and strategy of how you do that, of how you go about using LinkedIn. But I want to make sure we touch on that part about becoming a thought leader in showing that you’re a thought leader. So as we go through strategy, let’s make sure that we cover that as well.
Jordan Clemons 16:01 Yeah, I mean, you can find a ton of people on LinkedIn that are doing this already, to, to great success, you know, you think of great sales, mentors, and people that have really carved out their niche. And the thing that they’re really good at, you can find them on LinkedIn and look at this content that they’re putting out in the post that they’re putting out, they’ve established themselves at this thought leader about whatever it is that they do. And when you work in the chamber world, your job is so dynamic, and you talk to so many people and do so many interesting things. There’s just an abundance of content that you can create. And it’s really, you know, creating content seems like oh, I don’t know how to use Canva. That’s not for me. No, it’s just writing about what you do and pulling out the amazing camera that’s in your pocket and your smartphone, snapping some pictures while you’re out. And then tagging people and sharing them. It’s it’s not super hard.
Brandon Burton 16:54 Yeah. That’s great. So let’s let’s dive into some of the strategy then about how to you. So you, I think you’ve established you need to kind of create a base show that you’re a thought leader, and what’s next, how do you go about making those connections? How do you decide who to reach out to? And how do you do it in a way that doesn’t seem salesy, you’re like you’re, you’re coming at him to strictly for a membership and come join GLA?
Jordan Clemons 17:21 Yeah, absolutely. So I’m glad that you position that last part, because that’s exactly the way that this strategy works. And, and I, every conversation that I have, is, is a warm conversation, there are no cold conversations like zip zero, none, I do zero cold calling, zero cold outreach to anyone, obviously, that’s like, that’s a crucial part of your, that should be a crucial part of your sales strategy. If you’re newer to LinkedIn or newer in your sales role, or not to say that it doesn’t have a place, but this is where it can get is what I mean by that. So I’m gonna, I’ll tell you the steps, and they’re just gonna sound super easy. I’ll go into each of them. Yeah. But it’s almost like they’re so easy. They’re the people who really don’t understand how to take them or they’re disarming. So this is what I do every day, I post once per day. preferably in the morning, I try to get it in at like 755 or so I found that if I post around eight o’clock, preferably right before eight o’clock, the post, my posts do the best. It’s like it’s 1026 on a Friday. And that’s not to say you can’t post them. But if you can try to get your posts out early in the morning, to post once per day. It some people are like, Oh, that sounds easy. And then some people think that’s a ton to do. It’s five posts a week, you can do it, I promise, verbally in the morning. Number two is reach out to those people who are interacting with your content. So every day I post something, and then my next step is to look at what I posted yesterday, and to see who was liking this post who was commenting on this post. And then I go through, and I look at all of these people, a lot of them are first degree connections, which means that we’re already connected, and we’ve already had a conversation. But some of them are second degree connections. So the second degree connections, that means they’re connected to someone in your network, who are interacting with your posts saw it because someone in your network reacted to it. You know how this works. We should all pretty familiar with this by now, as far as social media goes. But those are people that just saw your face and just saw your name and liked something that you’ve posted, you know enough to press the little button, either clap at it or thumbs up it or whatever you may have. So I always reach out to those people and request to connect. That’s the second step. So you’re posting content every day. You know, positioning yourself as a thought leader. So writing a business showing people the cool stuff you’re up to, I could talk strategy. And I’m like, which posts do really well for days and days and days. But the point is that you just do it. You do it every day, no matter what, okay, consistency is key. And then you harvest your engagement, and you look at who’s actually engaging with the stuff and it will naturally grow your network, by way of reaching out to these second degree connections, and connecting with them. You know, it’s, it’s totally fine. It’s not a cold connection, they saw something of yours, they’re familiar with you, they might have forgotten that they liked your post, who I mean, you can’t control that. But what you can control is reaching out to say, Hey, thanks for liking my post about so and so would you like to connect, that’s I literally write that out,
Brandon Burton 20:46 I was gonna ask if you include a message when you reach out, David.
Jordan Clemons 20:50 Exactly. That’s, that’s him. That’s him. That’s a little more granular, the details, but that’s exactly what you do. There’s a couple of reasons. Number one, most people don’t do that. So you’re going to stand out. And then number two, when you start doing this a lot, you’re going to be getting 2030 connections a day, sometimes I’m telling you, it’s it really, really ramps up. And when you connect with them, they fall in your little messages, area of your LinkedIn. And you there’s no way you’re going to be able to remember how you connected with this person, what caused this. But if you include that message, and say thanks for commenting on my post about such and such, then you’ll be like, Oh, that’s what it was. And then you can keep the conversation going from there. Literally Ctrl C, go to the next one, Ctrl V, enter, I’ve got this down to the minimal amount of time that it takes to complete this process, because it’s getting so busy. That’s the second step. So you’re gonna reach out and connect with people that engage with your posts, second degree connections, specifically to grow your network, but when you’re starting this out, when you’re starting this strategy out new, you’re not going to get a ton of second degree connections, you know, doing this at least, that’s my, that’s my thought. But look at all those first degree connections to, you know, like anyone connected to you on LinkedIn, if they’re not a member of your chamber, is a potential prospect. So even if they’re a first degree connection, is it someone that you would like to start a conversation with, if it is, that’s, that’s the prime time to do it, it’s just like, going into a coffee shop, seeing somebody that you know, oh, it would be great to pick back up on a conversation with them, but I really don’t have a reason to call them. And that might make you feel uncomfortable, say you just like saw them in a coffee shop waved at them and said, Hey, how’s the family and we’re on your way. Calling them after that is a lot less intimidating, and will probably lead to more success. If they comment or like something on LinkedIn, that’s the exact same thing. As far as I’m concerned, you know, it’s just the digital version of networking. Right? So well, I’ve
Brandon Burton 23:00 heard that explained is returning every handshake, you know, if they’re engaging with your social media, it’s like they’re putting out their hand to shake your hand. And if you just leave them hanging, you know, they’re not going to engage with you anymore. But if you return that handshake, it continues to build that relationship.
Jordan Clemons 23:15 That is, that is a perfect way to put it, Brandon, I’ve never thought of it that way. But what I do, essentially, I wish I could return every handshake, I wish. My posts get like 10,000 views now they always get like over 100 reactions or so it would literally be a full time job responding to every single person, something I wish I could but all the second degree connections, you better believe they get a connection request saying thank you. And then that leads to the third step. So what have we gone over so far? You post once per day in the morning, not not super hard. You reach out to people who engage with your posts. You know, this is just that the next step, if you just do this again, consistently, it will get you the results. And then number three, you once you connect with these people just start the conversation with them. You know if more conversations equals more sales, so I can’t tell you exactly what to say to folks. But when I talk to people on LinkedIn, if it’s someone I’ve never met before in my entire life, but I found them and connected with them through this process, then they’re going to wind up in my messages inbox. I’m going to see why they what what post it was that got us connected because I put it in that message right so that I can have that to reference. Then you can go to their profile and look what they’re about. Did you go to school with them? You can see common connection requests. There’s so much data on here to help make the sales process go much more smoothly. And think about that compared to looking at a phonebook and dialing a number of a person you’ve never even heard before and you’re on the phone and you have no Data to go off of whatsoever. That’s literally how people used to do sales or knocking on their door. And I mean, you have the benefit of, you know, being face to face there. So it’s a little more of a connection. But on LinkedIn, you can see everything professionally about someone that they want to share. And they have it on there because they want to share it. And you don’t have to think of a perfect response. Right? That second, as if you were on the phone or in person, you can take all the time in the world, I don’t suggest you do. But I’m just, I’m trying to highlight the fact that there’s so much potential here. But if I connect with someone, we just have a conversation I, we talked about what they liked, we or the post or whatever, you know, we talked about, if it’s one if it’s their business, and if I really don’t have anything else to say, I’ll just say like, Hey, this is the first time I’ve heard about insert whatever their business name is, can you tell me more, or whatever. I mean, if you’re a sales professional, you know how to do it, you ask open ended questions, you get people talking. But the point is, you can have conversations with people on this platform that you meet naturally through this way. And then get them to a coffee, and then do your normal thing, the exact treat them exactly as if you met them at a networking event. And, you know, ask them out to coffee. So that’s the whole thing. It’s posting once per day, preferably in the morning, connect with people who engage with you, and then start a conversation. And by doing that, I’m on track to hit my annual sales goal by the end of this month, that will be June. So it’s working out pretty well. It takes some time for this stuff to build up. Don’t get me wrong. But that’s why I believe in the platform so much.
Brandon Burton 26:44 I think there’s a lot to be said about that, as you can call it asynchronous, asynchronous. I’m not saying the word right communication are Yeah, you get that time you get a little bit of a buffer, if you need it to respond in a way that’s going to provide the most value, it’s going to answer their question the best that’s going to align them with the right people, if you’re helping them make other connections and and it’s not that immediate response need to give if you are talking to somebody in person or on the phone where you need to have that back and forth dialogue immediately. So I wanted to circle back on the posts that you do. So posting once a day. Couple things came to mind. Do you ever use any scheduler? And how do you decide when it’s worth tagging another person or business in a post?
Jordan Clemons 27:35 Yeah, so great questions. I don’t use a scheduler, I’ve tried to go down that path a couple of times. But what works best for me is I like when I’m out and about is um, this is so ingrained in my my process every day. Pictures are great for LinkedIn, if you’re at cold places, doing cool things, take a cool picture of it, people love that stuff. I just sort of bank them in my phone. Sometimes I’ll schedule what I want to post that day on the calendar. So I don’t forget, but I don’t put it in something like buffer or anything like that, you totally can. But I think you’re missing out on the ability to post about cutting edge like current things. You know, if you’re subscribed to say the business first publication of your area, they put that stuff out, it’s fresh, it’s like happening that day. And tying off to that and being a person that shares something that’s like, that just happened, there’s a lot of value in that. And not to say you still can’t do that. But you are missing out a little bit of that if you do schedule it. But if it would work better for you to block off time, on a Monday or Friday and like get all of these scheduled so that you know that they’ll go out at the right time. I think that’s a great strategy. And there’s tons of free tools to be able to do that. What was the second part of the question, Brandon, sorry. So
Brandon Burton 28:55 yeah, before. So using a scheduler, I’m wondering if if it’s a Monday afternoon, and you know what you want to post on Tuesday morning, but you’ve got a standing Tuesday morning meeting or something that still work the same as you know, to say, this is what I’m going to post I’m going to post a schedule, so it goes 7:55am and then not have to think about it. When you’re in your you’re standing Tuesday morning meeting.
Jordan Clemons 29:22 Yeah, absolutely. Whatever works best for you, like know yourself as a sales professional. There’s a ton of value in that knowing your strengths, knowing your weaknesses, know how you operate the best sometimes. So I go to the gym at seven in the morning, a lot of days, and it’s over like right before eight so I literally will get done with the workout and go sit on the bench and get on my phone real fast. And post something it’s not ideal. I probably be a little bit more strategic about it. But yeah, if I if I was more adept at using the scheduler, it’s just that Have a matter of habit for me at this point, you know, it’s going to have morning no matter what, for me. But if if if you think that that’s something that would help you achieve step one, because without step one, step two and three don’t happen. Definitely look into that some of them. I’m not sure if you can tag people, though, if you do that, which I think was your second part of
Brandon Burton 30:20 your question, it was yeah, some things are obvious where you tag somebody, but how do you give thought as to whether or not you tag a person or another business on the post? Well, I
Jordan Clemons 30:29 would say automatically default to tagging as many people as you can that’s related to your post, that’s going to increase the visibility of it, they’re gonna get a notification, their network is going to see it. Again, social media has been around for a little bit of time now. So I think we all understand that the more people you tag, the more visibility your post gets, which is what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to get as many people to see this as you can. You know, that’s the that’s the purpose of the post. That’s one of the purposes of the post. Not everyone has LinkedIn, but most people do. Honestly, it’s, it’s it’s kind of crazy that most people do not every business does. But most Well, I wouldn’t say most businesses do but more more than you would think do. So I would default to you know, if you’re taking a picture of a ribbon cutting your app, definitely post the the business or I’m sorry, tag, the business tag, the business owner, tag anyone that would be related to whatever it is that you’re posting, so that it gets as much visibility as it can.
Brandon Burton 31:32 Okay, the next question I have for you is, so I have the the alerts set up on my phone. So if somebody interacts with something with me on LinkedIn, I’m seeing a message or a icon on my phone, but I’ve got a new, new alert. How do you manage your time? Do you block out time specifically for responding to LinkedIn? And, you know, an hour to a day just to block for that? Or do you just respond as it comes? Or? What’s your strategy for responding?
Jordan Clemons 32:03 Yeah, great, great, great question. So if you’re asking my opinion, I would say turn off the notifications, and block time out every morning, the LinkedIn strategy is literally the first thing I do when I fire up my computer, I don’t open my email, I don’t do anything else, the link, LinkedIn comes up, I knock it out, and then it goes down. That’s how that’s how I think is the best way to manage this. I mean, when you’re when you’re starting out, you can, you know, check it a couple times a day depends on how busy you Davis but the beauty of the of the whole system that I just told you is that you you open LinkedIn, first thing you do is you you post your content, you have that it’s done, it’s gonna live there for the next however long. Second thing you do is go to your notifications, and their groups nice neatly is going to be everyone who’s responded to something you posted yesterday, or the day before content can live for a long time, there’s some times it only lives for a day, you know, the feed is is sort of different than other social media platforms, you don’t have like a page where you can well, you can navigate to see everyone’s posts, but you know what I mean? So you can post and then say, I’m done with that part, then you go to the notifications. And you can look at the whole list in chronological order, I literally right click on each one, open in a new tab, and then knock it out that way. So I don’t lose that page. And I’m done with all of those notifications, it’s very methodical. Once you’re done with that, you have harvested all of that engagement 100%. And you put all that out there, you’ve sent out all those connection requests, you put all of it in motion. And then once you do after that step through, you’re gonna go to your messages, and you’re gonna see all of those people that responded positively to your connection request yesterday, or the day before, or the week before, you never know how much someone uses LinkedIn. But you do this methodically, every single day, then whenever it is that they come around to it, you know, they’re either gonna get back to you or they aren’t, it’s not really anything you can do about that. But you just make sure that you come through this every day. So respond to all of your messages. You know, keep that going if someone responds back, or if it’s something that you really want to make sure you don’t let slip through the cracks. You know, if I have, I literally have 1000s of messages, 1000s of conversations, it’s, it’s crazy. So you can keep it open if if the dialog is going, but you don’t have to. So when you first start, when you first start out using this method, it might take 510 minutes, do this, and then like be on with the rest of your day. But if you’re worried about notifications, sidelining you all day long, just turn them off. You don’t need them. Like you’re saying that asynchronous communication. That’s the beautiful part about this is that no one’s expected to get back to you immediately. You’re going to be totally forgiven. If someone’s like, I want to join them. chamber today because we connected Can we do that? They’re not gonna do that, just because you responded to them the next day? Because you’re busy doing the rest of your job. Right. So that would be my answer to that.
Brandon Burton 35:12 Yeah, no, that’s I think that’s a good response. So one thing that I noticed as I engage with people on LinkedIn is the response rate is much better than, say, email or other methods of reaching out there. Do you see the same kind of thing? I see your head nodding?
Jordan Clemons 35:30 Well, um, I don’t know. It’s, I get that. I mean, I should really be saying, yes, absolutely. I guess I’m just trying to think I can’t really put my finger on that. I would just say, Here, cut that maybe cut that a little part of the answer out, because I could definitely a better answer than that. I would say yes, yes, people respond on LinkedIn, a lot more than you think they were. And they will respond to you on LinkedIn, a lot more than you think they will. If you’re genuine. With your outreach, if you don’t try to sell them, the moment they start talking to you. If you’re just easygoing, and work a normal sales process, it’s really not hard. Think about the messages that you’ve received on LinkedIn. In the past. I’m sort of outlier because I use the platform like crazy, but if you don’t, you’re probably like, oh, anyone who’s ever reached out to me is sent me a paragraph about how they want to secure my financial future or something like we’ve all been there, I get it. So you can either look at it one of two ways, you can say, Okay, well, that’s just, that’s a useless part of this platform, because that’s all anyone ever does. Or you can say, well, the bar is set pretty low. Actually, if I just provide someone a message, that’s not as sucky as that, then they’ll probably respond positively, which is what happens. The other part that I would add to that, Brandon is that, as far as responses and communication goes, in the messaging part, specifically, the people that are going to be good prospects for you, at least as far as this whole strategy works out, are going to be the ones that respond to you. And then the people that aren’t, are going to be the ones that don’t connect, and don’t respond. So what you’re left with is the people that are self selecting themselves in to your pipeline. And then the people that are going to be a waste of time, because they don’t use the platform a lot. And they’re just going to be difficult to reach in this way, are just going to let you know that by either not responding to your connection requests, or not responding to your message that went along with that. So you can totally forget about them focus on the people that are engaging with you. And then the pipeline goes down from there. If that makes sense.
Brandon Burton 37:52 It does. And what I like about this strategy is when you’re reaching out and engaging with people that are engaged with your posts, you know, their user of LinkedIn, because they were on there to make that engagement to begin with, then you reach out with that warm interaction, that warm handshake, you know, returning, your response is going to be much higher than just the cold calling and knocking on doors is a traditional membership salesperson. So I love you know, the strategies you’re implementing. I know we can go a whole lot deeper in a lot of different channels of this. But I wanted as we start wrapping up here, I wanted to ask if you have maybe one tip or strategy for Chamber Champions listening that they can implement to help take their organization up to the next level?
Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions
Jordan Clemons 38:39 Yeah, absolutely. Well, it’s gonna come no surprise, and I’m just gonna say, use LinkedIn, it’s such an I use the free, I use the free version. I’ve always forget to caveat that because when I give these talks, it inevitably comes up that someone thinks that you premium versions pricing, there’s a lot of bells and whistles with that you can do this with an account that you create today. And there’s I’m not, there’s nothing that’s gonna stop you from doing that. But I’m, I’m not a social media savvy person. All I’ve done is what I’ve told you here today for years and years and years. And here I am talking about it with people all the time. So the juice is worth the squeeze as far as spending a little bit of time every day, getting familiar with the platform, and finding your voice and figuring out how you can comfortably use it. But the best tip is just to do it, put it on your calendar, five minutes every morning. You know, it doesn’t take a lot of time I promise you. But there’s only so many networking events you can go to and the day and the week in the month LinkedIn lives on there and perpetuity people can secret shop you all day long. So if you don’t really put time and effort into just getting that off the ground then you’re missing the boat on a ton of sales. I promise you.
Brandon Burton 39:55 Yeah. I love that. You mentioned that use the free version. And because there is so much power that comes with that. And it reminds me of back in the day, if we can remember back when Facebook was a lot more robust. As far as you know, if you had a Facebook page for your business, you know, all your followers would see all the posts that you put out there because they followed your page. And then now Facebook, of course throttles it, they make you pay to get in front of your audience. So right now, there’s a lot of power in the free version with LinkedIn. Who knows how long that’ll last for before they put on, you know, a different pay barrier or whatever. So for anyone listening, I would say, jump on this now start building that network, because you never know how long a good thing is gonna last?
Jordan Clemons 40:41 Yeah, well, I mean, I have confidence. Microsoft purchased LinkedIn. A few years ago, I can’t remember exactly how much so I have confidence that it’s it’s like the last unpainted social media platform as far as I’m concerned. Right. So half of me is saying, like, shut up about talking about LinkedIn. But the other half is just like, This is so great. I can’t not tell people about it.
Brandon Burton 41:04 That’s right. So Jordan, I like asking everyone, as we look to the future and chambers of commerce, how do you see the future chambers in their purpose going for?
Future of Chambers
Jordan Clemons 41:14 Yeah, that’s an interesting question. I wish I had a correct answer. Or if there was a correct answer, I am 34 will be 35. In about a month here. I’ve been in July for three years, I’ve been involved in the community via networking and sales since 2013. So that’s, that’s my experience, in my view, I would say, chambers of commerce in the future. I don’t, I don’t know, membership based organizations, there are two types of members, there’s transactional members, and there’s transformational members. So transactional members want the value that is equal or greater to the amount of dues that they pay you. And the transformation or members are bought in for the vision and the strategy. And the goal of what it is that your chamber is out here doing, you’re going to have to have a mix of both of those types of members in order to thrive in the future. Obviously, younger businesses, I don’t know that they’re super familiar with a chamber of commerce, I’ve not started a business of my own. But if you’re young and upcoming business, I think of some of the other older organizations that you don’t hear about too much anymore. And I’m not sure who’s out here. Besides, you know, you and me and other young chamber professionals that are advocating for chambers for these smaller businesses that I have sort of a fear of that as we go in the future. So I think there just needs to be a lot of education around what it is that chambers do, which is literally what I do all day long. But that’s a long winded answer that probably didn’t tell you anything.
Brandon Burton 42:52 That’s all right. It’s all about perspective, you know, everybody comes to it from a different perspective. So that’s why I like asking that question. Because we can kind of aggregate those perspectives and maybe come up with some sort of a crystal ball as to what the future looks like.
Jordan Clemons 43:06 Yeah, I’ll say that, um, the future will be the future. And, you know, efficiency is what is where things go. And that’s, that’s economic. So I’m excited to see what happens there, change is a good thing. I don’t think change is a bad thing at all. So I’m, I feel good to be in the position that I’m in to help navigate whatever that looks like. So bring it on.
Brandon Burton 43:28 Right. So I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information, because I’m sure listeners to this episode are going to hear this and think, you know, they’ve got their own questions they’ve got they need to connect with you on LinkedIn if they’re not already. And so how can they reach out and connect? Obviously, LinkedIn would seem to be the obvious choice, but what other ways and you know, opportunities are there to reach out and connect with you?
Connect with Jordan Clemons
Jordan Clemons 43:52 Yeah, just use LinkedIn. I mean, you can email me but I want less emails, rather than more honestly. Reach out to me on LinkedIn connect with me, and we can message it will help get you familiar with the platform. I’ll get back to you. And we can just have a one on one conversation there. It’s super duper easy. Go to LinkedIn search for Jordan Clemens, senior investor Development Manager at GE ally you can do it I promise you, you can find my profile, click that little Connect button. And then when it says do you want to include a message include a message say You know, you heard me on the Chamber Chat Podcast or whatever you want but that I’m coaching you on how to use the platform here, but I can help you from there too.
Brandon Burton 44:37 Absolutely. And I’ll I’ll put a link to your your profile in our show notes for this episode as well. So we’ll make it easy for people to find you and connect. But yeah, I’m all about making it easy. Connect with Jordan say Hey, I heard you on Chamber Chat Podcast help. So and Jordan is air with a wealth of knowledge Ah to be able to help you help your chamber through using utilizing these tools that he mentioned with through LinkedIn. So thank you, Jordan, for joining us today on Chamber Chat Podcast. And I think you provided a ton of value in the little bit of time that we had together. But hopefully it ignites in interest for those listening to explore the opportunities that LinkedIn provides.
Jordan Clemons 45:26 Yeah, thank you for the opportunity, Brandon. Sorry if I was a little long winded, but anybody that has any additional questions again, just send me a message. I’m here to help.
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How does your chamber show up as a storyteller in your community? What types of stories do you tell? Our current social media environment shows us that people love to consume stories. Infact, some social media platforms are shifting from “social media posts” to “stories”. We often hear how Chambers of Commerce need to be storytellers. This is because we live in a world where facts and benefits about your organization are important but largely overlooked if you don’t have good stories to back up what you offer.
I have seen many chamber websites and membership brochures that list the key benefits of and reasons why a business should become a member of their chamber. While these “lists” have their place, showing the impact and value of your chamber is done much more effectively when done through stories.
Story Platforms
Your storytelling can take place face to face. Stories can be shared in newsletters, emails, or on social media in snippets. Some chambers may have a talented staff member who can shoot and edit video to tell their stories. As you might guess, my preferred method of storytelling is through podcasts.
When thinking of the stories you have to tell, think about who is the ideal audience you want to share the story with. Where are they? Where do they hang out digitally? Do they prefer printed text, pictures, video, or audio? Are your stories better formatted towards a specific media?
Many chambers like to go straight to social media to tell their stories. So do a Facebook Live video. My observation and opinion is that people open their social media apps when they are bored, tired, or stressed. Social media becomes a mindless activity to pass time without truly engaging on any kind of meaningful level. For this reason, I would strongly recommend NOT having social media be your primary medium for telling stories. By all means, use social media to magnify and perpetuate your stories but choose another medium to host and share your stories from. You may choose to repurpose some of your stories on social media as a teaser or an advertisement for the story in its entirety.
For most chambers, this would leave two primary content mediums, video and audio. Of course YouTube is the place to host any video content as viewers can subscribe to your channel to receive any updated content. For audio, podcasts are the place to be. I have a wholepodcast course to teach you how to get started with a podcast. Every iPhone comes with a podcast app already preinstalled. This makes it super easy for your audience to listen.
Storytelling Content
Once you know what platform(s) you want to focus on to share your stories, you can then dive into the content for story creation. I have identified eight types of stories you can tell through your podcast or YouTube channel. You can choose as many as you feel are relevant to your community or that would add value to your members or attract new members.
Member success stories or member spotlight. You can interview your own members and have them share how your chamber has helped their business find success. You can also go a little more generic and have your members tell you about their business or entrepreneurial journey. People love to hear a good original story and it ends up being a great commercial for your member business as well.
Impact of nonprofits. Identify and interview other local nonprofit organizations in your area to tell the story of the impact they are making. You can make the connection of how your chamber helps to support these nonprofits or ways you have partnered with them.
Community Partnerships. Community partnerships often need a bit more of an explanation for the general public to understand why the partnership exists and what the combined mission is about. There are often success stories that can go along with partnerships and the impact that is being made in the community.
Advocacy Efforts. In a very generalized sense, many of your members are still transactional members. They want to know what the chamber can do for them and if they don’t see it on their bottom line, then they don’t see any value. By sharing the stories of your advocacy efforts and the direct impact to each member of your chamber, you may sway some of your transactional members to become transformational members. Promoting your advocacy work also will show your community that the chamber is about business and what is good for business. The chamber is the sane center where both sides of the isle can come together for the good of your community.
Impact of Events/Initiatives. If you have people in your community who complain about why the city and/or chamber of commerce shuts down traffic each year for a festival that runs the whole weekend, then it might help to share why. Telling of the economic impact, increased sales tax revenue, and hotel occupancy in addition to the other positive outcomes of your events might help your community better understand what the chamber is about.
Staff Spotlight. Do your members and your community know your staff? Do they understand what the role is of each member of your staff? If they have a need, wouldn’t it be nice if they felt like they knew the person they were reaching out to? Doing regular staff spotlights will lead to building stronger relationships with your members which should help with your retention numbers.
Why Members Join. You are well aware that there are always businesses in your community who don’t know what a chamber of commerce is or why they should be involved. Collecting and sharing stories of why businesses join your chamber can help to tell a better story or what your chamber has to offer without producing a long list of member benefits. Remember, people have short attention spans and taking time to highlight just one or two reasons businesses join your chamber at each time will have the most impact.
Testimonials. A while back, I had Shari Pash on the podcast to talk about testimonial strategies. This is actually a very simple way of telling very short stories. Testimonials can be used in many ways. From reading a testimonial on a podcast episode to including a member testimonial in your email signature, you should be gathering and sharing testimonials all the time! Testimonials create credibility, social proof, and help with recruiting and retaining members. Feel free to leave a testimonial or review for Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple Podcasts and see how I might integrate your testimonial into my storytelling strategy. 🙂
You are now equipped with eight strategies for your chamber to be a storyteller. Now, you just need to lean into your medium of choice (audio or video) and then amplify your stories on your social media channels. You may find it beneficial to tell some stories over video while others are better on a podcast. If you utilize this strategy, you can also cross promote your platforms to each other and continue to grow your audiences.
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Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Hope Kennedy. 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.
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.
And now your hosts his Saturdays are full with his daughter’s volleyball and basketball games. He’s my dad Brandon Burton.
Hello, chamber champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and you’re joining us for a special episode as we interview the 2022 ACC chamber the year finalist in this chamber the year finalist series.
Tony Felker 0:47 One of the key benefits that we’ve realized from Holman Brothers it’s actually happened many years after we started using them. We just completed our new strategic plan and understanding those subtle differences between transactional benefits and transformational benefits. The companies that knew what they expect has been a key part in our strategic plan. And we really want to thank Holman Brothers for that.
Brandon Burton 1:09 You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.
Click here for a FREE trial of Next Level Coaching from Holman Brothers.
Successful membership salespeople are problem solvers. They ask better questions, uncover more problems and pinpoint how their chamber can help. It’s how they consistently drive better membership sales outcomes. Here’s the hurdle. Most membership salespeople don’t get enough coaching to recruit like this. Holman Brothers Next Level Coaching supplies the year round guidance that your membership rep needs to drive growth for your chamber. Visit holmanbros.com/nextlevel to learn more and request a free trial of Next Level Coaching.
Guest Introduction
Our guest for this episode is hoped Kennedy Hope is the president and CEO of the North Tampa Bay Chamber in Florida. Hope assumed the role of president and CEO in July of 2012 and as a Florida certified chamber professional. Since this time, she’s led the organization through two chamber acquisitions, a name and brand change and a stringent certification process. In 2019, the North Tampa Bay chamber was recognized as chamber the year by the Florida Association of chamber professionals hopes work to support businesses of all sizes fans her entire career. Before joining the Wesley Chapel chamber in 2012. She served Pensacola Chamber members as the organization’s vice president of membership. During her tenure hope was instrumental in the recovery efforts post Hurricane Ivan and the BP oil spill. In this role hope also successfully designed implemented strategies resulting in the engagement of more than 200 of Pensacola businesses business leaders in a campaign to attract Southwest Airlines. Hope has also led membership and business development for United Way and the capital area as well as the greater Jackson chamber partnership both in Jackson, Mississippi. In 2001, her chamber received a prestigious recognition for being a pride business ally from the tampa bay business journal. In 2017, the tampa bay business journal named her as one of Tampa Bay’s most 100 influential business people. In 2005, the Mississippi Business Journal recognized hope as a top 40 under 40 for the state of Mississippi in 2008. ACCE awarded her for outstanding membership and in 2010 The Independent News in Pensacola named Hope a rising star. Hope is an MBA candidate at the University of Florida and earned her undergraduate degree in business from Belhaven University in Jackson, Mississippi, and resides in North Tampa with her 16 year old daughter. Hope I’m excited to have you with me here on Chamber Chat Podcast. First of all, congratulations for being selected as a chamber the year finalist. But why don’t you take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and yourself?
Hope Kennedy 4:11 Yeah, hello to all my Chamber Champions. Those of us who are doing what I call the Lord’s work. They jack of all trades and the masters of nine. Thank you so much, Brandon, for having me here with you today. As you can tell them a chamber junkie. I’ve been doing this started in the basement in Jackson, Mississippi. Um, you wanted me to give a something a lot of people don’t know. In the chamber world. I was bitten by a pygmy rattlesnake. I’m live to tell about it. So there’s my fun there’s more of a story there. Yeah, there’s a very good story behind that of it. I stepped on the little guy and and ended up in ICU for five days. is so so there’s my fun fact of me.
Brandon Burton 5:04 Yeah. Wow, that is that is something interesting for sure that you weren’t expecting that one. No, I get to know people on a different level by asking that question. Well tell us a little bit about the North Tampa Bay chamber just to give us some perspective. Before we get into our discussion, just give us an idea of the size of the chamber type of chamber staff budget, that sort of thing.
About the North Tampa Bay Chamber
Hope Kennedy 5:28 Yeah, sure. I love to talk about it. So we’re a baby chamber, we’re only 27 years old. In the chamber world, we all know that as being a baby chamber. You alluded to it in my bio, we were the formerly the Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce. Back then, I took over in 2012. I like to refer to us with no disrespect to anyone in the industry. But we were the Mary Kay sorority, our chamber was doing all of the the fun stuff, the three P’s. Because we had to because we were the only organization in our community that was organized enough to produce events and these outcomes. As the years have gone by, we have had two mergers with two separate organizations leading us to become a Regional Chamber, we have a very large geographic footprint that we call our service area. But as we all know, chambers do not have boundaries, are you some some do just by geography of their names. But in general, US chambers have service areas. So we encompass a very large service area, just north of Tampa Bay in the city of Tampa. There are many chambers of commerce in our, in our area and our communities. And I, I love to say if you’ve seen one chamber, you’ve seen one chamber, each individual organization presents something different. And I always try and encourage our members that if you can join all of them, most certainly do that, because you’re gonna get something individualized for each and every single one of them. As far as the size of our organization, we have always been very lean and mean. We are now a staff of three. That includes myself, during the time in which we submitted this application. It is for the years, 2019 and 20. And we were a staff of two, during during that time, we had to make some very hard decisions at the beginning of COVID. We did and those are the reasons that I think that we’ve been been successful, we have just shy of 600 members. Within our within our chamber, we have a very small budget, which I’m actually not ashamed to say we are $400,000 budget. We are at 5% membership dues, which is an interesting model. And I’m sure I’ll have some interesting things to say and people will look at me just kind of a little cross eyed when when we talk about if we get a chance to talk about those things, but I have a very strong conviction that we are a membership based organization and that we should be reliant on our members to sustain our organization. So we set our budget each year based on actual retention numbers. We do not take any funding outside of our our membership organization we have a little bit of non dues revenue streams. But as far as other things we are 85% membership based
Brandon Burton 8:56 Wow. Yeah, that’s that’s not a normal thing to see these days.
Hope Kennedy 9:00 So it’s definitely not and I can tell you that it very much works for for us then in for our members and that’s
Brandon Burton 9:10 what it’s all about. But what works for your for your community. So that’s awesome. So as we do these chamber, the are finalists interviews, what I’d like to do is touch on the two programs you submitted on your chamber that your application and I look forward to diving into these programs with you learning more about what’s making the North Tampa Bay chamber great into the noticed at this level. And we’ll get into that discussion as soon as they get back from this quick break.
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Alright, hope we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’ll talk about the two programs that you submitted on your chamber the your application. So let’s let’s first approach them both from maybe a high level just what the two programs are. And then we can circle back into a little bit more detail on each of them.
Topic-Chamber of the Year Application Programs
Hope Kennedy 12:16 Well, I’ll start by saying this was not an easy exercise to nail down to programs that we wanted to showcase. And ACCE gives you the opportunity to send in your topic, synopsis reel, just a very brief and the first one came back and they loved it. The second one, they were like, No, everybody should be doing that one that one’s not going to move the needle, we want to see something else. So we looked internally to try and figure out what it is what you know, because when you do it all day, every day, and over these past couple of years, you kind of forget what you did that made an impact and what we submitted. Our first one was called the chamber roadshow. And it was a we are open a campaign that happened extraordinarily organically. There was no budget, there was no plan, there was no nothing. It just it just kind of happened. And I’m happy to dive into that and share that. And then our second one was our award show. And it wasn’t because that we took it virtually at all. That wasn’t what we wanted to highlight. What we wanted to highlight is us to focus on business Small Business of the Year Entrepreneur of the Year, new business over the year, Yatta Yatta, yatta. We knew those did not have any significance whatsoever with the year that just happened. So we had to reimagine what the awards would look like we knew that our community needed to have a celebration of sorts. As we were coming out of the shutdown, we we took a deep dive in and said, Well, why don’t we use our core values as an organization to award to our members. So instead of having Small Business of the Year, large business of the year, we went with the innovation award with the collaboration award, the inclusivity award in the integrity award. And so we set all new metrics and criteria for each of those and we spelled it out what those really meant it and then we were able to sprinkle in some community heroes into that as well. So we’re we’re very, very proud of being able to turn that into something that meant that meant our organization was highlighting the things that we hold dear. And we did it again the second year as well and our members have really taken to that in the those awards.
Brandon Burton 14:57 So I’m I want to learn more about both of these. But I have to ask the question, since you told the backstory to it, which one of these programs is one that you got the positive feedback from initially, and I only asked to help other chambers. Yeah, by in the future.
Hope Kennedy 15:12 The chamber roadshow got that one got a thumbs up. Our second submission was not our awards, if we were going to submit for our dei work. And the comments back were that all chambers should be doing that show something that you have moved the needle. Yeah. And so we, again, had to come back and look internally and say, Well, gosh, all of the stuff that we did, we couldn’t show metrics. We didn’t keep track of all of this information, to submit for an award. Just a backup really quick. Chamber of the year, ACC was not on our radar for this year. It it was I just wanted to submit the benchmarking survey. Yeah, to make sure that I was in line, I love ACC, and I love everything that they do. And I love to be able to have that data to show our board to show our volunteers. And so that was all I was doing. I was proud that I completed it, actually. And then we get the note that says, hey, you’re eligible to submit. And I sent it to my board chair, thinking, I don’t know what I was thinking I didn’t really know. I was just like, excited that we could submit. And then I started looking at some of the other applications from the year before and I was like, ready to pull the plug. I was like, we’re not ready for primetime. There’s no way we can get this done. It’s turned around. We don’t have a graphic artists, we don’t do this. Well, thankfully, my board chair who a phenomenal leader says to me and he says hope I don’t own this statement, but you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. And so I said, Alright, let’s do this. And so it was a awesome exercise. For for us in being such a small staff. I had four volunteers from my board that assisted with the application.
Brandon Burton 17:22 That’s great to get them involved with the process as well. So
Hope Kennedy 17:25 it was it was interesting, the questions that they came back and asked me, yeah, so you know, it was, again, the whole thing was just a really great exercise.
Brandon Burton 17:35 And that’s awesome. Well, let’s, let’s maybe start with the award show, you talked about reimagining the awards, making it more of a celebration, kind of looking at new metrics and criteria. Tell us how that unfolded. What did some of these new awards look like? How was how were they received, and just dive into whatever you feel would be relevant for listeners? Sure.
Hope Kennedy 18:01 So you know, I had some reservations, at the time of having an award ceremony, we still were not able to gather in the state of Florida, our awards had always been a cocktail attire, celebratory, you know, VIP event prior to just a big production. So we knew that we were going to take that all the way down to virtual in what the virtual looked like, was completely different. None of us knew what was going on. We figured it out. We lived through the logistics of that. And then when we set out for nominations, we explained what each category what we were looking for. So for collaboration, we were looking for programs from our members that showed that they collaborated with somebody else and what their metrics were and how they, they utilized it. The integrity award was more of an internal process than an examples of how they were. They showed integrity during COVID. And we used it for the last for those years. So we wanted to hear their stories about their business and how they were able to do these things to have inclusivity in within their organization when you couldn’t even meet. So
Brandon Burton 19:32 there’s kind of some healing that goes on as they’re able to tell their stories and kind of get that out there and kind of put it behind them as they move forward, I’d imagine.
Hope Kennedy 19:41 Right? And it was cathartic. It was you know and then to be able to celebrate those that were the recipients that hey, you did and do deed do some great things very similar to what you know we’re going through as an organization right now with this award. So it’s kind of like coming full circle. So we do request, nominations. And then the the business that is nominated submits an application. So we sent them the application, the application is six, five or six questions. And every application is in the same format so that it returns in the judges, they all get the same questions. And so they we had a record number of submissions that year, usually will have, I don’t even know the number right off the top of my head, I’ve heard I’ve already buried this one, onto the next thing. But usually, we have about a third that actually submit the application. That year, we had a little bit over half. So those that were nominated, actually took the time to submit their applications. So they are scored by an independent panel of judges. And then the, the judges don’t even come together. They don’t talk about it. It’s just based on those numbers. And then they’re presented. And then we have the finalists. So what we did was we made it into a storytelling opportunity. So each one of the finalists were highlighted within their categories. And so the world that was watching because we did have people watching from around the world, which was great, too. So some of the businesses whose family was out in another part of the country wouldn’t normally be able to attend a chamber award show, was able to attend and participate and watch it live. And then, so we got to tell their stories. And so the business community got to hear more about what they did. And we had watch parties. So people who were comfortable watching together as groups, a lot of the finalists companies kind of had like a company, company happy hour. And we would go we would show pictures from their watch party on the live feed. And it was great. And they were able to actually give acceptance speeches. So it was it was interactive. And, and it was great. But what we’re most proud of is that we were able to tell their stories, and it wasn’t about the chamber. At this point it was about them, and what they had done to come out of it. And you know, if one of the examples of innovation was one of our winners, was a wine company, they sell wine, they did Wine tastings, they did all of these wine pairing events, and all of these different things. Well, they weren’t technologically advanced. However, they managed to figure out a way to do wine tastings via zoom. And they did. And they have been extraordinarily successful. And they were able to get the wine to the people in the cheese, just all of the different components and then do the class online. And then all of these people could could participate. So they tapped into a whole new market that they didn’t know was even there. And so for them to share that story and how they partnered with other businesses in our community to do the same thing. So
Brandon Burton 23:25 that’s awesome. So I I’ve really liked the aspect you touched on about having viewers from all over the world, you know, in these finalists, yeah, these people have been selected to have their stories highlighted. I can imagine them sharing the link that to YouTube, or Facebook or whatever it is, for their family members or friends out of the area to watch. Like what a way to show the impact that a chamber has in a community than a broadcast. And I know we were forced to during COVID to go digital and broadcast things. But I think even going forward, there’s still some value to broadcasting some of these award shows, you know, let these people these recipients broadcast this out to their networks and show what a Chamber of Commerce is and what you do.
Hope Kennedy 24:11 Yeah. And you know, that’s very interesting, because we’re, we’re still doing that we’re able to tap into national speakers now and do in person or live stream or whatever the case is that we wouldn’t have access to had it not been for COVID. So we’re still doing hybrid type programming. Yeah.
Brandon Burton 24:37 And I think at some point, it may go away from being a hybrid, and just this is the program and we have it being broadcast as well. So absolutely, yeah. Just to reach
Hope Kennedy 24:46 out where you’re, yeah. So you have to go where your members are. Yeah, and if they’re stuck at their desk, let’s go to them there.
Brandon Burton 24:52 Right. Well tell us more about the chamber roadshow and what that entails because that obviously caught some attention initially. So let’s say let’s learn more about that program. Oh, well.
Hope Kennedy 25:05 So it all starts with a story. And I think as chambers you’re starting to catch the theme of of our world in those times is we were storytellers. And we have to be able to tell the story of how great we are as an organization, but then also realize that it’s not about us, it’s about our members and telling their story. So after we could go back to the office, during the the height of the pandemic, and we were all at home, I bought the ring light that everybody buys, because I was on Zoom, and my house obviously wasn’t set up for a professional studio. But then I also said, I can’t look like this on, you know, national broadcast, I need to look presentable. So anyways, I had this zoom light, and we had some other video equipment at our office, we had a tripod, and I literally came back to the office when we opened up and I just looked around, and we have a very beautiful office, very big boardroom. It was empty, 100% empty. And I sat there and I just said, I don’t I don’t know what to do. I literally have no idea how to help my members, or what, what to do. We what started. That was my members were calling me saying, Hey, can you help us get our message out about being open? And I said, Well, absolutely. So I called one of our board members who owns an LED truck, you know, the LED signs, change the advertising. And he and I created a we are open logo that was on the side of his truck. And he would go sit in front of our members business that says we are open. So anybody that was open, so I put out a message and said, Hey, if you’re open, let me know what your times are. And we’ll have somebody come sit there, well, they would, they would go and sit there, they take photos, and his guys did some social media around it. And it was great. And then as things started to open back up more, that wasn’t a feasible way of getting the message out. So when I got back to the office and just tried to figure out what we were gonna do, I made a video, and it goes something like this, Hey, everybody, we’re back in the office. But we don’t really have anything to do, because we can’t, you know, put all of these events together yatta yatta yatta. So I’m going to take this show on the road, and I’m going to come to you if you’d like me to come to your business and highlight your business and your protocols for being open. Just give us a call here at the chamber and we’ll get you scheduled. Well, that video started to get that in, let me just share with you is just me in my phone. And my ring light. And the quality is terrible. The sound is awful. But the message got out. And it was organic. I did it in one take for each business and like just tell me what your what you’re doing for businesses, what we need to know about your business. Are you open? Are you curbside? How you know what’s going on? And then I’d kind of tee up at the end, any lessons learned anything you want to share with anybody? I wouldn’t edit. I put up the raw footage on YouTube and then linked it to our social pages. I did 135 videos. Wow. Over the summer two years ago, I was able to tell the story of 135 of our member businesses. My my the last official one that I did on the chamber roadshow, I got to sit down with the president of the university, Saint Leo University and do more of a like a wrap up. You know, what, what did what did you learn? You know, what, what is something that you want to share with the business community. And so it was organic storytelling, and it was natural. It was raw, there were bloopers there were laughs There was cars.
It didn’t matter. I actually had a production company reach out to me and say, Would you like us to do this for you? And I said, No, no, actually, I don’t I want it to be real. Some authenticity. Yeah, it loses the authenticity and or the organic conversation that we have. When we did that. And my staffer at the time, she was at home base, she she doesn’t leave the chamber office and she would feel the call. She’d make the schedule and I tried to do three a day geographically Be respectful and then do that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then we trickle out the videos.
Brandon Burton 30:07 That’s awesome. I’d love that. And I know, it’s easier here almost to be able to make those visits and shoot the video. But then to set aside the time to upload it to YouTube and share it here and link it there. That’s where the time consuming part of it
Hope Kennedy 30:21 that is where the time consuming was. And I did not do a fabulous job of hash tagging, and, and all of the, you know, tags and different things. But again, we were learning as we went. And you can see the first one to the last one, there’s a huge difference. And, and what I probably should have led with was that I hated doing videos, I would never do a live interview on TV, because I said videos will live in infamy. Way beyond me. And then all of a sudden, here I was this, I just went into all my vulnerability and said, You know what, it’s not about me, it’s about these businesses. And so I sucked it up, and it did it. And they’re still in infamy. And I’ll live with that. Every time I turn on our YouTube channel, I have to hear my voice. Yeah.
Brandon Burton 31:17 But and I’ve seen some chambers do even a similar thing. But with, they’ll release it as a podcast, you know, go and interview the business in, you know, tell the story, and release it as a podcast. And there’s all these different ways now to be able to, you know, we always hear about chambers need to be storytellers. And there’s now a variety of different ways to be able to help get the stories out there of your chamber, and of your members and your community and things going on, and showing that you’re a convener of leaders and influencers and bring them you know, do those interviews, like you’re talking about at the college and, you know, you’re doing all the things, which is awesome.
Hope Kennedy 31:56 We we are and again it you know, when you’re in it, and you’re in the thick of it, and you know, you’re you’re trying to figure it all out, you don’t none of it was with, I’m gonna win an award, you know, none of this was for that. It was necessity for our business community. And now our members can look back and say, That was value, you provided me a value for my membership that I would not have been able to get anywhere else. You gave me a platform, you gave me a mic gave me an opportunity. And so, again, that goes back to our our being membership focused. And that we have a really good solid base and members that remember that stay members. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 32:49 that’s awesome. So I’d like to ask you, as we kind of shift gears here a little bit. As a chamber, the year finalist, how do you view the role of your chamber in your community?
Hope Kennedy 33:04 We are in a really unique position, because we are a to county, actually kind of three County Regional Chamber, we have several municipalities within our footprint of our service area. We view ourselves as the connector, the convener and the catalyst, the three C’s. We do those things extraordinarily well. And we we will say we do not have the answer. But we can sure connect you to the person that does for if they don’t let’s be the catalyst for that conversation for change or or or moving the needle as is that seems to be our buzzword here and ACCE land for for this year. And, and that is that is who we are. We are a very strong voice of business. We are extraordinarily good at ensuring a pro business environment. We will also fight against legislation. Anything that’s not pro business focused. And so we are what what makes us great and I share this because it’s it’s important for for other chambers to you cannot do business the way that you’ve always done business. This world is different. We’re not even doing business the way we did business a year ago. So as a chamber of commerce, our board knows that we have to be nimble enough within our strategic plan to be able to change and adapt to the needs of our community and what those needs are Are Not now but what they’re gonna be years from now. We We can’t stay focused on what’s happening right now or or our next event or what this or what that we have to be thinking of what this business community is going to look like, five years from now, we have to be futurist, we have to think about that. And it’s important for our board, when we’re sitting in a board meeting to have that in mind, of what is the future of our community? And how does the chamber fit into that, and some chambers and organizations have not been able to do that. And their their relevance may not be there in the years to come. And if, if you’re you’re focused or fed by one particular income source, or one particular event that’s not sustainable, as we’ve all learned, so being able to look forward and say, what, what are the needs of our community. And I can share our priorities. And because we take a very deep dive each year, when we set our strategic plan in our program of work of what was happening, and what are the effects gonna be, and the folks that sit around our boardroom table are thought leaders, and we are very comfortable being uncomfortable. And that’s part of the catalytic leadership and part of the horizons report, all of the things that I read six years ago are now you know, we’ve been working on them. And so housing and workforce, there’s a direct correlation between those. And that’s a huge priority, not just now, but we can see for the future, proper planning for your community now sets the stage for later. And think decisions that are made by certain municipalities might have unintended consequences that perhaps they haven’t thought about, and what certain actions that a governing body takes is going to have a trickle down effect later on the business community. So make sure that
every stakeholder within the conversation understands how the ecosystem works of the business community. So I think that that is that’s where we excelled and what sets us apart within our community, I do want to give a huge shout out to our region, because we have a, we call them our MOU partners. And so there are eight of us chamber CEOs that are in a partnership agreement together, that we support each other on issues. We don’t have to always agree, but we’re not going to come out against another local area Chamber. It makes a huge difference. When we have legislation in our state, when we, we all come out with a letter with all of our logos on it with all of our names on it, and say, Hey, we are now speaking for the entire region, this business community in it, they pay attention. So so we don’t do this alone in a silo with all of our all of the things I just talked about being a connector convener and a catalyst, we work very hard at making sure that we are bringing together the whole region.
Brandon Burton 38:45 That’s fantastic. Yeah, a lot more impact can happen that way, for sure. Absolutely. Um, what would be maybe a tip or an action item that you might suggest for listeners who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level.
Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions
Hope Kennedy 39:02 It all starts, it starts with you, as the CEO, as the leader of your organization and in ensuring that you have a really good understanding or a picture of where you want to take the organization with one thing in mind and that your members and the community in which you serve, and then ensuring that your board of directors is there right there with you that they are preaching the they are walking the talk, you know, whatever, whatever you want to come up with. They’re they’re right there with you and that you all have one goal in mind and that is x and that everybody’s there on the same page that there’s consensus or at least conversation around the consensus and just thinking towards towards the future of what? Look at the past of why chambers exist became a chamber in the very first place. And then look at that and start to look further ahead.
Brandon Burton 40:16 I like that. As we wrap things up here, I wanted to ask you, I know chambers all over are always interested in the future. You mentioned chambers need to be futurist. How do you see the future chambers and their purpose going forward?
Future of Chambers
Hope Kennedy 40:34 So I think that chambers are in a very unique position right now. Every every one is looking to someone to to help heal, fix, try and make better, whatever was broken a few years ago. So as chambers, I think this is our opportunity to really take the lead in our communities and to really elevate our organizations by coming out with a a plan of action for the future, taking that show to the commissioners, to the City Council, to your legislators and saying, This is what we’re going to do. How are you going to help us get there? Because we are the voice, we’re the leading voice of business and chambers, chambers have a very unique opportunity. And if we don’t seize them, your relevance within in your communities are probably questionable. Yeah. So, so that that’s my that’s my tidbit.
Brandon Burton 41:44 I think you’re absolutely right. But hope I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information. If any listeners wanted to reach out and connect with you about how you guys are doing things in the north Tampa Bay chamber, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect?
Connect with Hope Kennedy
Hope Kennedy 42:00 Absolutely, please, I’d love to talk chamber to anybody that will listen, my email address is hkennedy@northtampabaychamber.com case our URL couldn’t get any longer. And that’s the easiest way to connect with me, you can check out our chamber website or social media. I’m very easily Google trouble. You can find Google and YouTube, you can watch all the chamber roadshow videos you ever wanted to watch,
Brandon Burton 42:39 you know what I will. I’ll link to that in our show notes. And see those videos that are out there to live on forever. And I’ll get your contact information in the show notes as well so people can can find that and reach out and connect with you. But hope I appreciate you joining me today on Chamber Chat Podcast. And I think you guys are doing some wonderful things there and the North Tampa Bay area and I wish you guys Best of luck as chamber the year.
Hope Kennedy 43:07 Thank you so much, Brandon for having me. And we’ll we’ll circle back when we come home with the hardware.
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I just launched a Chamber Podcast Course with the goal to get your very own podcast started within 30 days. Visit chamberchatpodcast.com/pivot. To learn more and to enroll in the chamber podcast course today. For a limited time as a launch promotion. This course is being offered at a 25% discount. Be sure to purchase the course today to lock in your savings before the price goes up., even if you’re not ready to start right away. Again, that’s chamberchatpodcast.com/pivot.
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Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Allyson Gutwein. 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.
Voiceover Talent 0:14 And now your host. He recognizes great power when advocacy is done at a regional level. He’s my dad, Brandon Burton.
Brandon Burton 0:21 Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.
Matt Morrow 0:45 Holman Brothers provide a great training for our sales team in terms of just outstanding sales techniques. But maybe even more importantly than that, they were able to provide us with a system a process that was repeatable and in that we’re able to see very clearly from one month to the next how the how the pipeline is doing, what prospects are in it, what kind of progress we’re making and what we can do to coach people to success.
Brandon Burton 1:07 You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.
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Guest Introduction
You’re joining us for our 2022 ACCE chamber the year finalist series and for this episode, I have Allison Goodwin with me. She is the executive director of the Zionsville Chamber of Commerce. Allison serves as the Zionsville Chamber of Commerce and Zionsville Rhys foundation as executive director in Zionsville, Indiana. With a background in small business development, retention, growth and attraction. She has dedicated more than two decades of her life to creating and supporting small businesses. Allison was named Businesswoman of the Year in 2009. Business of the Year in 2012, was an ACC II national events speaker in 2021. done virtually member of the IC e a Hoosier inner Leadership Academy class, and her chamber is a five time Excellence Award winner with the IC EA. Recently Allison was one of 34 individuals nationwide named to the sixth cohort of the US Chamber of Commerce business leads Foundation, the preeminent program for workforce development in the United States. Alison and her team have gained more members in the Zionsville Chamber of Commerce in 22 months than the previous decade combined. In that same time period they grew their social media reach from 250,000 to over 2 million in 2020 and 2.8 million in 2021. They know that visibility is key element to success as a business and as a chamber. The Zionsville chamber team was recently named and ACCE communications excellent Excellence Award winner for digital content in 2022. Allison is a graduate of Indiana University and has earned certificates and leadership and development grant writing and chamber management from ACC. She has served in the capacity of President for the Indiana University Alumni Club. Herman B will Wells Chapter board member for the Boone County racial diversity coalition board member for the wisdom Hospital Foundation President of Lebanon vitalization Inc. and TEDx Zionsville. Organizer. She is the proud wife to Andrew step mother of two mother and loved one and step grandmother to one. Allison, I’m excited to have you with me today on Chamber Chat Podcast. Congratulations for being selected as a chamber of the year finalist. Why don’t you take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.
Allyson Gutwein 4:29 Well, I don’t know who you just read that bio from but they sound like a pretty cool check. So I would love to get to know her. No, nice. Talking to all of you today. We’re excited to be a finalist, incredibly excited to be a finalist for the ACC. We’re in the small size chamber of the Year category. We truly are a small chamber here in Central Indiana. But we tell everyone we’re small but mighty and We do a lot of things with very few people by being exceptionally efficient. You know, I love to do a lot of things outside of work. One of the cool fun facts about me is that I am a sixth time Indiana State Fair floral design grand champion. What random stuff people do some people golf, some people go out and play tennis. I make wreaths. And that’s my hobby outside of work. So we all have fun.
Brandon Burton 5:29 Being competitive is in your blood. It’s in your nature.
Allyson Gutwein 5:33 Probably more than I like to admit. Yes.
Brandon Burton 5:36 That’s awesome. Well, it tell us a little bit more about the Zionsville chamber you mentioned, you guys are small and mighty. But give us an idea of what that size looks like of your staff and budget and scope of work that you guys are responsible for.
About the Zionsville Chamber
Allyson Gutwein 5:51 So we are just north of Indianapolis about 20 miles. And if you are looking at kind of Indianapolis as the face of a clock, we’re at about 10 o’clock. So kind of gives you an idea. And you know, we are truly a charming small town, our town looks like it was pulled straight out of a Hallmark movie, and is the top tourist destination in our county, we have a lovely Main Street brick street that really draws a lot of tourism. So our chamber really has some interesting dynamics because that brick Main Street doesn’t have any chain restaurants doesn’t have any chain stores. So we really have the core of our chamber as small business. So our focus for many years has been on what can we do in order to accelerate and advance many, excuse me, many of these small businesses in our area. Because we have really no corporate headquarters for many businesses, we have a couple kind of on the outskirts of our area. But we really are a small business focused chamber. And we love that and you know, the businesses there are larger, understand that this chamber really has this really unique area because of what Zionsville is, it used to be called the village of Zionsville. So it does have that kind of quaint village II feel. And as it has grown, it really has wanted, you know, the people who’ve lived here, we’ve been a chamber for 61 years, we celebrated our Diamond Jubilee last year. And people have really wanted to kind of keep that quaintness as it has grown. And for many years, people have wanted to really make sure that it’s different and unique and charming. And that’s what one thing that really draws people to us here in Central Indiana, but also makes our chamber vastly different than many others. So some of the challenges we experience is, as a small town, where a small chamber doing a lot with what we have as a staff of three, our town really doesn’t have any public transportation outside of a Boone County Senior Services, which allows seniors and some other folks to get around. So we have some workforce challenges trying to, you know, and attract people and help retain folks in the service sector. So we don’t have a lot of workforce housing. So there’s some challenges in our area that we experienced that I’m sure many other many other areas in the country do as well. But we’ve done our best to work through them and find unique and innovative ways in order to overcome those, or at least address them and say, Hey, this is a long term challenge. We know that what can we do in order to kind of look at the long game. And part of that is we created a foundation for our chamber. And I know many chambers are kind of going to this model and looking to see how they can utilize a 501 C three arm in conjunction with their traditional chamber and for us, we just got that paperwork as of last October. So we’re really excel excited. Yeah, thanks to be able to do that. But now it’s standing that up. What does it mean to address kind of challenges that are long term and we use a golf reference that the Chamber itself has kind of a heads down what’s going on today? It’s the short game, but the 501 C three is kind of a long game. And what are we doing to kind of look at the overall picture of how our community is changing so that we can best utilize our C three arm, which has three tenants. One is environmental stewardship. One is D and AI and the other is workforce and workforce initiatives through leadership and development. So what are we doing within our community in order to make sure that not only is our chamber looking to take care of things today, but looking to take care of things tomorrow,
Brandon Burton 10:26 right. Now that that definitely gives us a good a good scope. And for anybody who’s read Dave Atkinson’s book, horseshoes versus chests will understand the importance of having that foundation that see three arm of your chamber especially looking forward as chambers look into the future. So for this, for our discussion today, we’re going to focus primarily on the programs you guys submitted on your chamber the your application. So I’m excited to get into those programs learn more about how you guys are making an impact and influencing the community or the village Zionsville. As soon as we get back from this quick break.
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Have you ever thought about creating a podcast for your chamber? We always hear about how chambers need to be storytellers. What better way is there to tell the stories of your members and the work of your chamber than through a podcast?
Your audience is waiting to hear from you as a convener of leaders and influencers champion for business and catalyst for change within your community.
I just launched a Chamber Podcast Course with the goal to get your very own podcast started within 30 days. Visit chamberchatpodcast.com/pivot. To learn more and to enroll in the chamber podcast course today. For a limited time as a launch promotion. This course is being offered at a 25% discount. Be sure to purchase the course today to lock in your savings before the price goes up., even if you’re not ready to start right away. Again, that’s chamberchatpodcast.com/pivot.
Get started with your own Chamber Podcast and shortcut your learning curve with the Chamber Podcast Course offered by Chamber Chat Podcast.
All right, Allison, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’ll be highlighting the two programs that you guys submitted on your chamber the year application. Why don’t you take us through the two programs just at a high level and then we’ll circle back in a little more detail on each of those?
Topic-Chamber of the Year Application Programs
Allyson Gutwein 14:27 Sure. So our first program was on micro economic development around small businesses and what are we doing to really look at our our membership very holistically and say, What are we doing to develop this group of businesses that are often easily overlooked? So micro businesses, as deemed by the SBA? Are those with 12 or fewer employees? And many of the businesses that we have in our membership are much smaller even than that Um, so many of you are probably familiar with kind of the standard of SBA as being 500 or smaller as a small business, which, for many people, they look at that and they’re like, that’s huge, especially in comparison to, you know, many businesses that have zero employees are maybe just one or two. So we’ve really taken a look at what we can do in our community to attract and retain those businesses, because many of them are startups that grow into something even greater. And we’re excited to see how that really works and develops as we do more and more of it. But the programs that we’ve put in place for our little staff of three have done a great job of attracting new members. So far, our home based business membership level is now our second highest category of membership in our in our chamber. We just started it two years ago.
Brandon Burton 15:59 Wow. That is awesome. Yeah, that’s, that’s one. What’s What’s the other program you guys submitted?
Allyson Gutwein 16:07 Sure. The second was focusing on a social media and social media series that we started, which was called working for you. So working for you, we literally went and worked alongside our businesses. And we started this before the pandemic, but we really embraced it and leaned in during 2020 and 2021. This business has recovered, wanting to show people, this is what these businesses do in our area. So it’s not just, you know, maybe I want to work in this area. Well, now they know what this business actually does. Or they say, Gosh, I could teach a music class or, you know what, I’ve always been interested in working with equine therapy, I think I could go and volunteer there. So we worked alongside businesses to showcase really what they did, and have continued this as a long term kind of campaign and program in our membership in order to highlight more of our members. But that is one part of our larger social media experience that we have for our members. And we found that that made a lot of sense as a low barrier, especially cost wise low barrier to entry. And great way to meet people right where they are, you don’t have to go out and find a new audience. And you don’t have to even bring them to your website. A lot of times they’ll do that on their own. But if you’re reaching them on social media, and they’re already on Tik Tok, they’re already on Facebook, they’re already on Instagram, and you’re sharing your information. They’re really excited to see that information of faces of their neighbors and friends and business owners that they know, how are we doing the best job of getting that information out about our members, and making sure that it did its job which during 2020 and 2021, was give our members visibility?
Brandon Burton 18:05 Right. So let’s let’s focus a little more on that on the working for you program dive in a little bit deeper on that. So how do you as you implement a new program within your existing social media strategy? How did that fit? As far as content creation calendar wise? And what platform you mentioned different platforms, but sure, I’m curious which ones you’re on and how you’ve grown that social media presence? Sure.
Allyson Gutwein 18:33 So many people who are familiar with social media, Facebook is your largest audience. And we really took to social media. In 2020, whenever we realized folks needed to be seen, they needed to know exactly where, you know. And I kind of say there’s two, there’s two sides to this. There’s kind of the forward facing, which are the customers of the businesses. So we were reaching the customers of the businesses. And then there’s kind of the back side, which are the your Chamber members that you’re trying to help. And there’s often many of our posts, many of our videos were meant to help both but in different ways, right? You’re building loyalty whenever you’re going to a business and you’re sharing their information whenever you’re able to talk about exactly what they do. But all those people in the front side are now seeing it going oh, how can I interact with that business? So you’ve kind of got two two pieces to the same pie that you have to be able to do a good job with your social media having both working hand in hand right? So whenever we started our working for you series, it was really meant to be let’s go inside businesses that people can’t go inside every day. Let’s go inside a plant where I pack beans and I have to wear a hairnet let’s go inside I’m mourning dove equine therapy where I’m mucking stalls. wasn’t talking about their horses, then it became let’s go up inside a church that’s being remediated for over 1000 bats. And I was standing knee deep in bat guano. Because no one had known that there had been bats in their attic for almost 40 years, until the pandemic caused, you know, people to be out of buildings. And then they were starting to see things because people weren’t cleaning the building, as often, they were starting to see that there were probably rodents around, you know, they’re small, mammal rodents. And so, you’ve got, you’ve got evidence now, oh, we needed to get this taken care of. So I went up inside a church, beautiful, historic structure, they were absolutely fantastic people to let us watch this process. But it helped me showcase a business that most people don’t see from the inside out. Most people don’t see what it looks like to remediate, you know, slang types of urine from that. In the midst of this talking about a chamber member, and you know, people want to watch. And that’s what made
Brandon Burton 21:18 me that type of content just draws people in, right?
Allyson Gutwein 21:22 Right, whenever I have a GoPro on, I have a handful of bat guano. And I’m like, it looks like glitter, because it’s all these bug shells that are shiny people are like, show me more. You know, it’s fascinating, and I am not doing anything that any of my members don’t do as a daily part of their business. But what can we do to showcase that? What can we do to say, this might be a career path for you, if you find this interesting, you know, contact these folks for a job, or watch your chamber, because this is what’s happening whenever you need to call these folks, they’re doing a good job of being cognizant of when you can even move the bats out because of breeding season. And, you know, they have to make sure that the bats are taken out in a certain ways to not harm them, because they’re a protected species here in Indiana. So you’ve got all these components that are important that these folks are doing really, really well as part of their daily job. What can we do to showcase that, and it becomes really interesting social media. Now, not every day, am I in McLaren Senna, you know, a hazmat suit, and a respirator. But, you know, there’s so many things that we can show people about our businesses that make interesting content. And that content, where we really put the member out there, as the star of our story becomes why people want to engage, engage with us, as a chamber engage with our members, it really made our chamber kind of rocket to the top of what we could do in social media very, very quickly. And we took that reach, with consistent posting with interesting content with video use, from 250,000 in 2019, to over 2 million in 2020, like you said, and 2.8 million last year. So you know, it’s, it’s all about if there’s anything that people learn about social media, give people content that they want to see, it doesn’t always have to be curated, it doesn’t always have to be those rounded corners, where it’s, you know, perfect. Whenever it goes out. It can be just really interesting content, show people what your members are doing, and people engage. Right.
Brandon Burton 23:51 And I think that often gets over thought when you as for chambers, putting out social media content, especially in the form of video where they feel like it needs to be perfected needs to look right. But, you know, social media gives us so much leniency as far as the content going out there. And really, people aren’t spending hours on that content necessarily. Either they’re scrolling through their feed. So if it gets if it catches their attention and tells a story of a member or something impactful that you’re doing in the community, and getting a portion of that attention, then you win, you know, that’s that’s the goal. And you don’t need to spend all the money and all the time and everything doing all the editing and making it just perfect. Just do it. Get started. It’ll get better as you go and get more experienced, but just get started. Yeah, and we
Allyson Gutwein 24:37 do have a video company that we employ to do some of our videos, but we also do a lot of our videos in house. But you know, the the thing is, the generations coming up, they see things that are a little too perfect, a little too curious, almost disingenuous. So you know Most of what they’re seeing on Instagram, it might be a little edited. But it is certainly not content that someone has always gone through a photo editing program. Not always, they just want to see. That’s right. They always want to see good content. So give your audience good content that they want to see and engage with. And they will engage.
Brandon Burton 25:20 Yeah, so which platforms are you guys on with social media?
Allyson Gutwein 25:24 So we primarily focus on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. You know, for a chamber of our size, there’s always so many directions to be pulled. You know, we have done a few things on tick tock, mainly ribbon cuttings, just trying to put something out there in that platform. But Twitter is kind of its own animal in and of itself, it takes so much time to constantly update, we just don’t have the bandwidth available currently in order to be able to do that one well, so rather than not doing it, well, we would rather step back until we have the chance to really engage more on that platform specifically. So we’ve focused on those three, and those three have done a lot for our visibility for our members and for our chamber.
Brandon Burton 26:11 That’s great. Yeah. Well, let’s shift gears a little bit over to the micro economic development. And this intrigues me I just, so this may go a little bit off topic, but I just actually posted a blog post yesterday, talking about how entrepreneurship tends to attract diversity. So as chambers are after, you know, diversity, equity inclusion, you know, putting attention into that area, are we paying attention to the diversity that entrepreneurship brings and provides. So as you focus on these micro businesses, 12 or less, a lot of these are entrepreneurs, people that are putting it on the line to get started and joke about sometimes these entrepreneurs are unemployable in other places, but they go out and hang their own shingle because they need to make a living, or maybe they’ve got a great idea, or there’s a lot of different reasons why. But I’d love to learn more about the the approach that you guys are taking to help, you know, shine a light on these micro businesses and economic development.
Allyson Gutwein 27:16 Well, and that’s an area where I think it is it’s very easy to kind of go after some of the larger marbles in the bag, right. And I think a lot of times, these small businesses are easy to say, oh, gosh, it’s, it’s a lot of work to deal with them. But we have a lot of programs already in place that we’re using to help all of our members, but it’s really quite easy to mix them in with what we do, we have a few programs that we have developed specifically for them. And that also, they’re they’re very complementary to the rest of what we’re offering to our members. So they made a lot of sense to just kind of bulk up our portfolio overall. So we were really excited whenever we first saw our members starting to come in that were home based businesses. So home based business for us is someone who might work from home, they might have this as a side hustle, they might have a business, that’s a full time gig and those go everywhere from financial services to p are to people who are doing jewelry making. So we have a lot of people in this, you know, this sphere that we find encompass a lot of different elements that we didn’t have as a part of our membership. And you’re right, that diversity piece really does allow us to even encourage our membership to diversify pipelines of suppliers, through some of the small businesses that we’re now attracting because of whom, you know, we’re now offering services for that maybe they aren’t able to find elsewhere. So some of the statistics, you know, in the US, the SBA in 2021, said there were 32 point 5 million small businesses in the US, which accounts for 99.9% of all businesses. That’s a lot.
That’s almost everybody. So again, that’s 500 or fewer employees. So that’s quite a few businesses that many micro businesses would say, well, they’re not small, well, the SBA, that is their standard, but then 81% of those of that 32 point 5 million actually have no employees. So I mean, you’re looking at a giant percentage of our small businesses in the US that are exceptionally small. And, you know, the SBA says that micro businesses are 12 or under so I mean, that percentage even grows whenever you’re taking into account those that do have some employees but are still 12 or fewer. But small businesses have created 65.1% of the new job growth since 2000. So as we look at Sectors of growth, and to your point, what were claimed it kind of look at for the the growth of chambers, what are we doing to make sure that these businesses are a part of our chamber? are talking to our other members are feeling supported? are being utilized locally? For many you have a grocery store chain? What are you doing to connect some of those micro businesses, with your grocery shops? What are you’re doing to connect your brick and mortars with some folks that could be local wholesalers mean, now you’re talking about all these individual components that come into it, that’s more environmentally sustainable than having to ship something halfway across the country that’s more environmentally sustainable is to be able to reduce the amount of packaging because they don’t have to use packaging in order to potentially deliver something. So there’s a lot of pieces that feed into this. But if we’re doing a really exceptional job as a chamber, to make connections, we’re able to help a lot of different aspects of business be created. And that’s exciting to see and exciting to be a part of. But for us, it also means that we’re attracting more people now, because we have options, and they’re seeing, hey, my size of business is being supported, I have a place at that table. And we want to make sure that whenever they come into this area, you know, other people are telling that story for us who are also small businesses, whether they’re a tech startup, or someone who’s you know, a mom, and maybe with a side hustle of making jewelry, who knows what these businesses are going to turn into, but we’re going to support them today. So whenever we need to say, hey, we’ve got maybe a new brick and mortar that is opening, who’s interested in going in, we already have a developed pool of candidates that we have worked with, to plug into those openings. So we never really have a gap on our main street, really here in town. Businesses fill those spaces quickly, because we have a curated pool of people we’ve worked with,
Brandon Burton 32:25 that’s awesome. And I can get fired up on this topic. Because this is something I’m passionate about is the influence and the role that a chamber should have with these small and micro businesses in their community. But often what I see is these, you’d mentioned these home based businesses. You know, it’s easy when you see a new business, open their doors, you know, they hang a new sign, and you can approach them about membership. And you know, let them know about the value proposition of your chamber. How do you go about finding some of these home based businesses and expressing the value? And once you get their attention, it’s easy to express the value of the chamber, but how do you get their attention initially?
Allyson Gutwein 33:03 To be very fair, a lot of them find us. And that goes back to our social media reach. Whenever we have a social media reach where people are seeing that we’re sharing information about members and our members are visible, that what we’re doing as a chamber for those members as visible, they find us. So yes, have we gone out and actively sought out? Some businesses? Most certainly, are we finding just as many businesses that are finding us? Yes. So one of the ways that we actually connect many of our home based businesses is through something called micro groups. So think of as a distillation of our membership down into individual components where if you are a real estate agent, you’re going to have different needs different concerns than those that own a restaurant. So what are we doing in order to address those needs more directly and more specifically, and we have a home based business micro group. So peers can really share information share tricks that they have learned in order to make their business more visible, in, in encourage one another through what has worked for them. We actually learn a lot from these micro groups because they’re able to really say, Okay, this is what’s going on in our area. What can you do to support us here and we’re like, man, we wouldn’t have known that. Had we not listened to our micro group, listen to our members. So these meetings go on in these individual kind of little groups, once a quarter. For us, they’re really, not only are they the facilitation of peer to peer communication, they give us ideas for programming for the future. And that is a really important for member loyalty and member retention.
Brandon Burton 34:59 Yeah, And so this next question, I think you’ve addressed it throughout our discussion, but I’ll ask it formerly and maybe have you put it in a nutshell for us a little summary, but how do you see the role of the Zionsville? chamber there within your community?
Allyson Gutwein 35:15 Sure. So we really are a conduit of information and a facilitator for visibility. So for many of our members, we are not only the source of information on how to be able to grow a business, but how do you make your your business seen and heard, once it’s up and running, or once you’re getting it there? What do you do in order to create that kind of solid foundation for business creation of any size. So we truly are meeting with members that run the gambit of large national corporations that are interested in coming into the area to someone who, their sole proprietor. And that’s exciting to see that we’re we as a small chamber are able to facilitate both of those conversations effectively in order to make our membership robust, and unique.
Brandon Burton 36:11 That’s awesome. So and I think that shows with as you’ve been going through these programs on your application of that, that role that you guys have in your community, but I like asking everyone that I have on the show, for any tips or strategies that you might have for a chamber champion listening who would like to take their chamber up to the next level? What would you suggest?
Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions
Allyson Gutwein 36:36 If you haven’t yet embraced the small businesses in your community, and those micro businesses do it, make sure that those those businesses feel as though they have as much place at the Chamber table as any of the other larger businesses. And as time goes on, you’re going to find that those people are some of your loudest voices supporting your chamber, because they feel included, they feel like they have a part of something larger than maybe they have ever felt that they’ve had a part of in the past. Many think gone are the days of, you know, chambers, just focusing on on large businesses, we have to make sure that if entrepreneurs are truly bringing 65.1% of the growth since 2000, what are we doing to be the voice to help them have a louder voice? So we’re the megaphone. We’re the people who are providing that information. And if we’re doing it, well, those folks are going to turn around and be our champions, too.
Brandon Burton 37:47 Yes, that’s what I was gonna come back to is oftentimes those large businesses, or maybe what funds a chamber and a lot of ways. But by being able to focus on those small and micro businesses, those are the ones that it’s kind of a paradox, right, because they tend to be the ones that need the most from the chamber, but can afford to pay the least in as far as their membership levels go. But as they see that impact that you can have on their business, they become some of your biggest advocates and best word of mouth and testimonials, you know, throughout the community to attract more business onto the mission of your chamber. So, Abdullah. So, Allison, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
Future of Chambers
Allyson Gutwein 38:34 Sure. I think for a lot of folks, you know, it’s, it’s kind of a interesting time where they see kind of gone are the days of many people becoming joiners, right, everyone joining a chamber because it was just something you did for the community, you have to show value, you have to show that there’s something there as a real interest to their business, everyone’s busy. And if you can show that there’s something in your chamber that is going to be worth their time and their money, you’re going to be a group that people still want to work with. chambers are vitally important to being liaisons for advocacy, and, you know, information as a whole. But people are saying, well, I can find that elsewhere, not in the same way that you can through a chamber not in the way that you can through networking with your peers, not in the same way that we can help facilitate. And if we can show that value, and long term legacy of, hey, there’s real power in having a singular voice. Whenever you’re trying to advocate for something that will help our members that and telling that story. How do we tell that story going forward? Many of you know our local newspaper that served just our area closed down during the pandemic. So you That goes back to what are we? Where are we reaching our audience? And if that’s on social media, are we telling our story effectively for our members and for our chamber in order to make sure that people are seeing us as a place of value?
Brandon Burton 40:14 Yeah, I like that. I actually, I like to help chambers get started with their own podcast. And one of the things I’ll ask is what void in your community could your podcasts fill. So when you talk about local newspapers, shutting down or, or drastically cutting back, there’s voids all over the community, as far as storytelling and information sharing goes, whether you’re addressing that through social media, or through my my choice of platforms of a podcast, but there’s ways to reach members in your community and fill those voids. And and you’re absolutely right, that Gone are the days of just people joining you need to show the value and, and a reason to be a part of your chamber. So I appreciate that. And Alison, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information with listeners that may want to reach out and connect and learn more about how you’re doing things in Zionsville. And, and to be coached on how to get their social media over to millions. What would be the best way for him to reach out and connect,
Connect with Allyson Gutwein
Allyson Gutwein 41:15 always happy to help because, in fact, we have something coming up soon called Social Media summer school. And you know, we’ve been encouraging even our peer chambers to come join us we want to help. We’ve been able to have amazing amounts of success for a very small chamber, we have 500 members, you know, we we have a small budget, in fact, I’m sure I am sure our full budget are smaller than some of the marketing budgets for our large share chambers and in the US, and that’s kind of nuts. You know, we we can show we have data to show that we outpaced chambers that are many times our size. And that’s truly through our visibility, consistency, and what we post, people want to see interesting content. That’s something that we can show people how to do so please reach out to me, my phone number is 317-873-3836 where you can reach out to me through my email, agutwein@zionsvillechamber.org. You can also find us on please follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. So Facebook is zville chamber and the rest are Zionsville chamber. So we would love to have you follow our content and ask any questions. Sometimes you may say well, why did you post that? Or tell me why you’re posting two or three times in one day? Well, I’ll give you an answer.
Brandon Burton 42:56 Yeah, no, I like that. I appreciate you being generous with the fielding those questions as well happy to do it. I’ll get your contact information in our show notes for this episode. And I’ll link to the your social media pages as well. So everybody can hop on and follow and take these tutorials from what designs they’ll chambers doing with their social media accounts. So
Allyson Gutwein 43:17 they’re also one ACC EADS website to
Brandon Burton 43:21 There you go. Yeah. I appreciate you joining us today on Chamber Chat Podcast and you provided a lot of value and great example, as you guys are chosen as a chamber, the year finalists are setting the bar and doing great work. So I appreciate you coming on and sharing some of that with us.
Allyson Gutwein 43:39 Thank you so much for having us today.
Brandon Burton 43:42 If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.
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