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Social Media and Economic Development

Author: Robert Ady
04/01/2009

Do you Facebook? Are you Linked In? Have you read a blog post? If you haven't, you could be missing the boat on communicating to prospective entrepreneurs, alumni, investors, visitors, and business owners.

It seems as if we just got used to cutting through the clutter of millions of internet search results for common searches (Google shows over 103 million hits for "economic development"). Add more than 9 million blog posts, over 400 Linked In groups, and dozens upon dozens of Facebook pages also related to economic development. The result? Information overload on a whole new level.

The economic development field relies on information and relationships, and to the extent that social media can help facilitate those activities, social media will become another fact-finding tool that practitioners use to find out information about a community. The best website developers already take this into account when developing their search engine optimization strategies, and the best ED marketing firms already include a mix of social media tactics along with more traditional tactics.

It's not as simple as just firing up a Facebook page and putting a happy face on your community, however. The real opportunity - and threat - of social media is the acknowledgement that communities can no longer control their marketing messages. Instead of visiting your town and asking the hotel clerk or the fast food worker what the job opportunities are for young people in your town, I can now find that information online (if I wanted to).