It has been a while since our last major post on the ECC blog, so we wanted to take a moment and catch everyone up on what we have been working on. You may have noticed that in recent weeks, the banners proclaiming things about buying local, 3rd Friday, and the farmers market have shifted and increased in number on our site. Look at those as an indirect indicator of what we’ve been working on.

In our work, we have consistently identified a significant need for capacity building in the areas of marketing, branding and communication. Successful businesses, community development activities, and social movements must begin with getting the word out, so good branding and communication are absolutely essential components of development.

For communities in crisis, marketing, branding and communication can not be lost in economic uncertainty. In fact, branding, marketing, and communication afford great opportunities for creativity and innovation. This is especially true when it comes to the use of technology and the internet, given the minimal price associated with using the growing array of free web content and social networking tools. For $10 a year, any business or organization can create an interactive, constantly changing web site that can be used to develop relationships with customers or stake holders [*as a note, the total cost of the sites featured in this post is $30 per year]. As we have often find, value can be seemingly created out of thin air by branding and positioning a particular asset in a new way using on-line tools [we've highlighted some useful tools we've found in creating value on our Energize Your Community section].

For these reasons, we have recently invested our time and energy to work on building capacity and value in Clinton County through on-line marketing, branding, and communication. In our experience, rural communities that are usually slower to adopt innovations and new technologies related to marketing and communication are in particular need of capacity building related to the use of information technologies, so we believe there is a great deal of opportunity in this area.

Below are three examples of web sites we have developed for organizations/initiatives in Clinton County. The first two web sites have already been “launched.” If you follow these sites closely, you’ll notice they’re never “finished products.” We really believe that a good web site or marketing campaign is a never ending creative process. Like Google’s approach to launching products that seem to be in a permanent state of “beta,” you’ll find that the web sites we’ve developed are always in a state of evolution.

Another reason we really push on-line communication is that it provides opportunities for evolution. Our web sites provide us with a constant stream of feedback data which allows us to adopt new and creative ways to more effectively get information to the site users, an asset not easily provided through print mediums. This data only provides half the story, which means we want your feedback, ideas, questions, or complaints. We greatly appreciate the direct feedback we receive about your experience with these web sites. Its all part of the interactive web experience.

Buy Local First Clinton County: We’ve been working on the Buy Local First web site since March, and as the first site we built after the ECC site, its been quite a learning process for us. Our main goal working with the Buy Local First campaign (an intiative of the CCRPC) is to promote locally owned businesses that may have fewer resources for marketing and communication by connecting them with consumers in innovative ways.

Focusing on this main goal, we had decide on whether to build on a dynamic, blog like framework or a more static, phone book style site. Given that our typical audience would likely check the site only when a need arose for finding a business, we went with a fairly static main page which features two ways for find businesses. First, a standard business directory (still under construction) with useful information about the businesses, and second, an interactive Local Business Map built on the Google Maps platform which provides more streamlined, but less detailed information.

The site also features Buy Local First blog, but you’ll notice that it is currently set off from the main Buy Local First page in an almost standalone position. Currently, the main use of the blog is to publicize promotions for Buy Local First businesses. Our hope is that the blog role format will better serve customers by allowing them to see a range of promotions at once, as opposed to situating the promotions on each businesses individual directory listing. Since at this point the blog does not serve our primary goal for the site, it has been relegated to a less centralized location (and receives about 30% as many hits as the main page). Yet, with opportunities for further developing the main page, the blog area of the web site may present the greatest potential for future development, and we would hope to integrate more multimedia content into the blog in the future. In that case, you may see the blog move to a more centralized position.

Clinton County Farmers’ Market: ECC has also partnered with the market to provide it with a new on-line home. As with the Buy Local First campaign, marketing and branding are essential to increasing the market base for the Farmers’ Market, so we have worked closely with the market to develop new graphics, logos, and branding.

There are many similarities between the Farmers’ Market and the Buy Local campaign. Both sites must serve to educate, provide valuable information, and connect consumers with local sellers. What makes the Farmers’ Market (and our approach to its web site) unique is that we have found that when people drawn to the Farmers’ Market not just for the produce, but for a specific type of shopping experience. We have therefore built the web site around conveying that sense of experience by using a blog framework and closely integrating the web site with Facebook and Twitter. While the site provides traditional informational resources such as grower profiles, a produce calendar and recipes, our goal is to produce more personalized, multimedia content for the web site to connect customers with the unique experience the Farmers’ Market provides.

This final web site is still in the development stage, but we wanted to share it with you so that you can get a sense of our process for building a site.

Clinton County Green Alliance: In recent weeks we have been working with other green organizations in Clinton County and the CCRPC to form the Green Alliance. This umbrella group is working to promote the broad efforts to improve the environment and quality of life in Clinton County.

Our efforts to develop a web site for this organization is two-fold. First, we are seeking to create a “One Stop Shop” for all things green in Clinton County. For many organizations, the Clinton County Green Alliance web site will be their first on-line presence, so each organization will have its on profile with a range of multimedia content.

Although the site will feature more traditional static profiles, the main framework will be a rolling blog. There are two reason why we like this format. Firstly, it provides a very easy framework for representatives from each organization to post news and information. Our hope is that this dynamic roll of content will be provide a more engaging experience for visitors then static profiles. Secondly, one of the goals of the group is to promote communication between member organizations. One of the drawbacks of limiting the site to just organizational profiles is that groups might be inclined to only view and interact with their particular profile. By encouraging each organization to share content side-by-side other with organizations in a centralized blog location, we hope to increase intergroup awareness and communication.