blueprint to social media success...blueprint to social media success for chambers of commerce jeff...

Blueprint to Social Media Success for Chambers of Commerce

Jeff Kline, President Accrisoft Corporation

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Accrisoft Corporation�0�83 State Road 7 • Suite 400 • Boca Raton, FL • 33498 • 888.965.3330 • www.accrisoft.com

This guide provides practical advice and a blueprint on using social media to help your chamber improve communication with existing members, attract new members, improve internal communications, and remain a vibrant force in your community.

The guide is a handy reference for you to use in considering the social media strategy that’s right for your chamber. It begins with a list of the major social media tools and describes how each one can be used by chambers. The guide ends with tips on preparing for a successful launch and monitoring results.

Social Media for Chambers of Commerce - A Practical Guide

Page References

Social Media Tools

Blogs ........................................................................................................................... 3

Twitter ........................................................................................................................ 4

Podcasting ................................................................................................................ 4

YouTube .................................................................................................................... 5

Facebook .................................................................................................................... 6

Private Communities ................................................................................................. 7

Wikis ........................................................................................................................... 8

Forums ....................................................................................................................... 10

Ratings and Review ................................................................................................... 11

Preparing for a Successful Launch .............................................................. 12

Monitoring Results ....................................................................................... 13

Chambers of Commerce Guide to Successful Blog Topics

Introduction ............................................................................................................... 14

Membership ............................................................................................................... 14

Public Policy ............................................................................................................... 15

Community Development ......................................................................................... 16

Tourism and Press Releases ........................................................................................ 17

Success Stories and Economic Development, Existing Business ............................... 18

Economic Development, New Business and Community Events ............................. 19

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Social Media Tools

Blogs Blogs are especially useful because they allow a chamber to communicate its message and also listen to the feedback. Blogs usually reside on your own site, but can be listed elsewhere. Sites like Technorati list popular blogs, and sites like Facebook can be used to broadcast notifications of a new blog post.

Practical applications for Chambers of Commerce

Your blog can be used to communicate your purpose and initiatives, or to promote the advantages of doing business in your city. Blogs can also be used to solicit support for public policy initiatives.

The best strategy for blogging is to start by listening and monitoring blogs that relate to your city. Find out what blogs are saying about your respective city and then begin adding comments. Next, plan and rehearse for your blog by writing ten blogs before publishing anything. 9 blogging topics for chambers are provided on pages 14 through 19.

Then, develop an editorial process so blogs are only published when they’re ready for prime-time appearance.

Make sure you design your blog to fit with the design of your chamber’s website.

Develop a plan so that people can find your blog. You can introduce your blog to your members through an email marketing campaign. Also, you can cross-link other relevant blogs in your own blog, and post comments on these blogs with links back to yours.

Be prepared to monitor the comments on your blog.

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TwitterTwitter is a site that features micro-blogs, which can help improve member services. Twitter posts, called “tweets,” can be no longer than 140 characters long, so keep your messages concise.


First, many chambers have important retreats that can be difficult for some of their members to attend. Your chamber can use Twitter to keep those who missed the retreat up-to-date with regular posts on what’s happening, and even allow them to vote on matters where it is needed.

Also, chambers often arrange trade mission trips to other cities. You can use Twitter as a medium to communicate with your members back home regarding exactly what is happening on a day-to-day, hour-to-hour, and even minute-to-minute basis.

PodcastingPodcasting can be leveraged to grow membership, provide a better grade of service to existing members, promote economic growth, and serve as a medium to amplify your chamber’s voice regarding public policy.


Chambers can distribute podcast feeds of chamber programs and events to its members. This gives members the benefit of having access to content without having to attend every meeting.

Additionally, your chamber can conduct interviews with companies that have relocated to the area and send out a podcast of the interview.

Lastly, chambers can conduct interviews with government officials that share their public policy views and podcast these to the community.

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YouTubeYouTube is a popular video sharing website. It can help you accomplish goals that relate to economic development, tourism and marketing your chamber. YouTube is a very highly-trafficked website and features an extremely accurate search component. Posting on YouTube leverages their traffic and search technology.


For economic development, videos can be created or taken from your chamber’s archive to promote your city as a thriving and vibrant business community. These videos can be uploaded to YouTube, which makes them easy to find for companies considering relocating to the area.

Next, chambers can create videos that promote the city for potential tourists. These videos can serve as personal invitations to visit the area. Also, you can create tourism material focused on targeted areas of the city to targeted audiences.

Lastly, chambers can videotape key luncheons with important speakers and post these videos to YouTube.

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FacebookSocial networking sites like Facebook can be very effective in helping a chamber accomplish goals pertaining to marketing, promoting attendance at events, and increasing non-dues revenue, economic development and tourism. There are three key components to a chamber’s presence on Facebook.


First are profiles. Chamber employees should be encouraged to create profiles under their own names. The more information they post about themselves the better. Do not set the profile up under the chamber’s name. Chamber members should try to add as many members as friends as possible.

Next, you should set up a group. This is a great way to promote the Chamber. Your entire calendar of events can be posted to an employee’s profile. From this post, the employee can RSVP and push the event out to all their friends stating that they plan to attend the event. This is a great way to promote events because it’s extremely viral, which will result in improved attendance at events and increase non-dues revenue.

Also, a fan page can be used to promote your Chamber to existing or potential members, business leaders in the local community, companies that are thinking of relocating to your area, and people considering visiting for business or pleasure. The fan page should be well-branded and carefully thought out.

It would be advisable to deploy a similar strategy with the social networking site LinkedIn.

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Private CommunitiesPrivate communities are extremely important and should be thought of as the cornerstone of any chamber’s social media strategy. Private communities can really help with goals that pertain to retaining existing members, adding new members, and improving membership services and economic development with existing businesses.

Private communities are similar to social networking sites, except you have to be a member of the chamber to join their private community. Like any social networking site, there are profiles, the ability to upload photos, and discussion forums. The main difference is that no one can join or see this information except invited chamber members, staff and moderators.

A private community usually has between 25 and 500 invited members who regularly spend time brainstorming ideas, offering advice to the chamber and one another, sharing experiences, discussing trends, and helping the chamber with marketing and business issues.

Private communities allow chambers to uncover wildly successful ideas and services, accelerate decision-making, discover new ways to out-market competitive organizations, build membership loyalty, and enable members to buy and sell their goods and services to one another.


With private communities you can tap into the rich insights of your members, identify trends, discover whether member needs are unmet, avoid mistakes, make faster and better decisions, develop intense member relationships, and discover methods to build member loyalty.

Private communities also help with economic development for existing businesses because it enables members to buy and sell goods and services from one another. They also enable chambers to track and monitor these transactions so they can report back to the members how much they bought and sold through the private community. This helps with member retention.

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WikisWikis can help you accomplish goals that pertain to improving your chamber’s internal operations and in the creation of an overall marketing plan. In addition, wikis can help with economic development, influencing public policy, travel and tourism.


One of the most powerful things about wikis is they can create living processes that can revolutionize the internal operations of your organization. A chamber should create a wiki that has two sides: one just for chamber members and the other for the public. With the internal wiki, chambers can significantly improve internal operations by systematizing and creating processes around everything that a chamber does. For example, when an event is planned and coordinated, each step should be put into the wiki. When it’s time to put on the event the following year, it becomes a turnkey process. As actions are improved, it’s easy to update the wiki. Potential processes include:

Processes for programs and events, such as annual golf outings

Management of incoming calls and Web-based inquiries

Processes for members to ask for help with local policy-related issues

Processes to inform members of important issues

Coordination of relocation and business inquiries

Delivering of committee work plan progress and issues

Response to tourism and visitors’ requests

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Wikis (continued)On the public side, a chamber can create a resource guide of best practices for doing business in the community. The important thing about starting a resource guide of this type is having enough content to start a grassroots movement in getting chamber members, businesses and citizens to want to contribute. At first you may need to have a staffer collect existing information from internal documents and the Web and post them to the wiki. Once you have enough quality content, show it to members and other citizens and let them know they are empowered to contribute.

Begin with quality content. This is what makes your wiki infectious and motivates others to contribute.

Then, get employees, members and citizens to contribute content. This requires creating awareness of your wiki and promoting it constantly.

You need to make sure that you have a clear set of policies as to the type of content you are going to allow, and how the content will be monitored, vetted and edited.

Be patient. It may take years to develop a great chamber wiki. However, you’ll start to see tangible results quickly.

Lastly, go to Wikipedia and look up your city and chamber. If it doesn’t already exist, create a page about your chamber, and add content about your chamber to the city page.

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ForumsWith forums, chambers can accomplish goals pertaining to membership, economic development, public policy, tourism, internal operations, promoting paid events, and volunteering.


Traditionally, chambers had to conduct interviews through the use of personal committee visits and ambassadors. Now this can all be done through the use of forums. With forums, you can ask members about their business needs and concerns, and obtain suggestions regarding the services that the Chamber offers.

You can create a forums focused on strategies to stimulate economic development.

You can create a forum that promotes chamber policy positions that support the directives of the chamber board, as well as interests of the general business community.

You can create a forum for potential visitors in which you discuss vacationing destinations in your city and allow visitors to share their experiences.

For forums to be successful, your chamber has to be prepared to listen. Understand that people will talk about everything, including the value of being members, membership dues, and other competing organizations. That said, members and citizens will discuss these things regardless of whether or not the chamber has forums. The advantage is that if your chamber is running these forums, they get a front row seat.

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Ratings and Reviews Ratings and reviews can assist chambers with increasing and retaining members and improving the overall attendance at events.


Your chamber can create a Member Idea Exchange: Present your members with a list of suggested new services and programs and let them rate and comment on them. Also empower them to suggest their own ideas. Instead of having internal meetings to determine what your members want, let them tell you directly. This allows you to focus your efforts on creating the services and events.

Have members rate and comment on what the volunteer process has meant to them. Once again, encourage potential volunteers to read these reviews.

Have members rank and review events and programs. When other members read about the great time that was had at last year’s golf outing and the great networking opportunities that presented themselves, they’re more likely to attend the next outing.

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Preparing for a Successful Launch

Take your time and think through the consequences of each step in your plan. Have an internal discussion about each social media strategy and go through worst case scenarios.

Appoint a high-level executive to the project. For a social media project to be successful, it must be fully supported at the top.

Listen before engaging. Don’t just go out there and start writing blogs and creating Facebook pages.

Listen to what is already being said on blogs by using tools like Technorati. Review the existing social networking sites and decide which are best for you. See what information about your city and chamber is currently on Wikipedia.

Formulate a set of goals and determine which social media tool is best suited to assist in the accomplishment of each.

Know your audience. Do your members already have Facebook or LinkedIn profiles? Would they participate in a private community? Would they read a blog from the chamber president? Are they interested in rating and reviewing proposed new programs and events?

Anticipate the appropriate amount of staff time to monitor and manage your social media strategy. If you do not allocate the proper time and staff, your strategy will fail.

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Monitoring Results

Monitoring results on your own site can often be achieved with statistics provided by your software provider or hosting company. Google Analytics is available at no cost.

Email marketing analytics can help you judge the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns. Pay attention to the view and clickthrough rates.

Monitoring your popularity on social networking sites can be done simply by seeing how many friends/followers you have, and also the level of participation on your pages.

For forums, the level of participation indicates effectiveness. But also take into account the number of people who read the forums but don’t post.

Use your results to revise your strategy and continue to implement and monitor programs.

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Chambers of Commerce - Guide to Successful Blog Topics

IntroductionThe purpose of your Chamber’s blog is to facilitate (and underscore) its connectedness to the community. The blog format is a unique tool that allows you to communicate with speed and precision that traditional media cannot. It does not replace the newsletters, reports, press releases, and other mass announcements that have valuable roles in your activities. But the blog is a wonderful, brief, and accessible way to communicate. Visitors to your website blog will be able to see information that’s easy to find, fresh, and pertinent.

To help you get started with your blog, we’ve outlined nine major topics to be covered. These topics correspond to the critical themes most chambers address, regardless of geography or size.

Keep in mind that one of the benefits of blogging is that it allows readers to introduce comments into the discussion, so feedback is swift. Also note that you can freely ‘tag’ a blog post with more than one subject if the content matches multiple subjects. Tagging makes the blog – taken as one long, continually updated document – more searchable for readers and bloggers alike.

Each section below identifies a major topic that should be covered by your blog, and identifies specific ways your blog post could address that topic.

Topic 1 - MembershipThe membership-oriented blog posts demonstrate how much you appreciate members’ commitment to the community and that chamber membership empowers them to contribute their opinions to critical discussions in a meaningful way. A successful chamber engages its members before it acts on their behalf, and an updated, open blog will facilitate immediate input and feedback from members.

Appropriate membership-oriented blog posts can:

Communicate how members receive a return on their membership investment; and identify new ways to add value to membership

Promote Chamber events, meetings, and newsworthy activities

Highlight specific membership advantages

Ask for feedback to gauge opinions on current matters

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Topic 2 - Public PolicyYour Chamber needs to engage with government in order to maintain its importance in the community. Local policy makers will respond to the business community only when the business community stays current on issues and makes its voice heard. The Web is a powerful tool not only for raising awareness of public policy issues, but also for generating support and triggering activism. Your blog can enhance your profile as a vigorous player in local public policy.

Appropriate public policy-oriented blog posts can:

Highlight issues of importance to local business and the related legislation

Develop, communicate, and promote chamber policy positions that support the directives of the chamber board as well as interests of the general business community

Report on votes and legislative action

Remind local businesses about opportunities for political discussion and other events/channels for advancing a commerce-friendly message to policy makers

Connect business leaders with political leaders to foster dialogue

Focus attention on political developments underreported in local media that will have repercussions for local business

Profile and endorse local politicians

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Topic 3 - Community DevelopmentThe Chamber needs to make efforts to raise public awareness of its functions, to create an atmosphere of friendliness to business, and to serve not only as a voice for local commerce but also for the community itself.

The goal here is broader than simply one of formal public policy. It is to establish your credentials as a dynamic presence in the community itself. Engagement in public life facilitates your long-term agenda. An effective blog lets you demonstrate that your organization is not just a foreign body interested solely in a narrow set of business initiatives. An effective blog can help to establish your chamber as a living, breathing community player interwoven with the community.

Appropriate community development-oriented blog posts can:

Publicize positive local news

Highlight photo albums

Feature non-business individuals whose efforts have improved the region’s social, economic, and cultural capital

Take the local community’s temperature/pulse on a range of topical issues

Announce sponsorships and partnerships with local organizations

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Topic 4 - TourismThe Chamber enhances the community’s economic vitality by promoting what it has to offer and bringing in non-local dollars. Given the high impact-to-time ratio tourists can mean to local commerce, making their visit as smooth as possible while facilitating their use of as many destinations/merchants as possible is a critical Chamber duty.

Your blog can help prospective visitors to your area find the very latest in news and developments concerning the attractions, restaurants and businesses. Blogging is an excellent way to help ensure that non-local money comes into the local economy.

Appropriate tourism-oriented blog posts can:

Highlight brochures and other tourism material available on the Chamber web site

Link to other local groups and organizations (i.e., museums, parks) who have great web visuals and news regarding local attractions

Quickly update local businesses about tourism initiatives, events and opportunities

Provide news regarding traffic, transportation, accommodations, and other issues of particular interest to visitors

Topic 5 - Press ReleasesYour blog provides a great format for broadcasting press release news. Whether a press release covers a ribbon cutting, a major transportation change, infrastructural development, or new public policy, there is value in transmitting it to as broad an audience as possible. Positive information generates business. One of the most basic and still underutilized advantages of the Web is its capacity for self-organization. By tagging items under ‘press releases,’ your Chamber has an easily searchable record of all developments it has seen fit to publicize.

Appropriate press release-oriented blog posts can:

Have weekly round-up of Chamber-related activities and news

Use the blog format to post quick third-party news

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Topic 6 - Success StoriesPeople want good news, especially in our current economic straits. Your Chamber has an invaluable advantage here, and a great blogging opportunity. By profiling local people and businesses meeting with success, you can generate momentum for your long-term initiatives and drive traffic to your site. You can use the blog as a tool to interview and link to local leaders – people whose names and locations have real resonance with visitors to the Chamber site.

Appropriate success story-oriented blog posts can:

Solicit members for suggestions for local success stories

Use profiles to demonstrate how Chamber actions help businesses succeed, even in difficult times

Topic 7 - Economic Development, Existing BusinessYour blog can help promote local business development and expansion, identify positive and constructive ways the business community can grow and develop, and work with the city, county and neighboring jurisdictions to foster cooperation on economic development issues and other initiatives that will enhance business development for the area.

Appropriate economic development-oriented blog posts focusing on existing business can:

Feature seminars, training sessions, programs, and events that will facilitate quality business growth and development in the area.

Discuss the thriving and vibrant business community and how it can help your members prosper

Profile various member businesses

Interview veteran business owners

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Topic 8 – Economic Development, New BusinessEffective blogging can also attract new businesses to the area by discussing favorable business development issues.

Appropriate economic development-oriented blog posts focusing on new business can:

Feature economic and business development information and assistance to prospective businesses

Highlight events, and educational and marketing initiatives that will promote and strengthen the local business community

Topic 9 – Community EventsOne of the true joys of writing a blog is discussing community events. Your blog can provide notices of upcoming events and can also serve as a forum for discussion and review of past events.

Appropriate community events-oriented blog posts can:

Generate excitement in new businesses and new branches

Highlight technology news and needs

Highlight infrastructure news and needs

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blueprint to social media success...blueprint to social media success for chambers of commerce jeff...

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