Featured Sites
News Flash
| Site Dynamics Continues Solar/Wind Incentives Policy Support in Oklahoma City |
Site Dynamics recently visited OKC to review the SIP program and enhancements to recruit solar and wind firms. |
Join our LinkedIn Group | Getting the Message Out to Site Consultants |
 |
 |
| Written by William Hearn | |||
| Thursday, 15 October 2009 11:54 | |||
|
As a site selection professional, I have often said that we have a partnership with the economic development profession in meeting the needs of our clients. We rely on economic developers around the country to support us in identifying sites and buildings by having local policies that will support the operations of our clients. At the IEDC (International Economic Development Council) conference in Reno that concluded last Wednesday, it was apparent to me that in this economy both site selectors and economic development groups are in alignment on many issues. During the site consultants forum I discovered that one of these issues includes the types of projects we are working on in general (more on that in an upcoming post). This was my second year of being asked to participate in the site consultants forum (on the last day of the conference). It is an interesting opportunity because the event includes a meeting prior to the forum where, for one time during the year, I get to sit down and meet with my counterparts -- sometime "competitors” -- in the site selection community. While they are not all there, there are many in attendance that I would otherwise never get to meet. The meeting is followed up the next day with a session in which we are introduced as a group and then peppered with questions from the economic development community. Some of the questions were:
What types of projects are you seeing? I was trying to avoid having to provide an answer for the last one, honestly, because there just is not a great answer for it. The economic development community spends a great deal of time and resources on marketing. Are site selectors as an industry not providing the right avenue for “staying in front of site selectors?” One issue is clear, though; print media is about the least attractive means to stay in front of site selectors. I personally get so much of it that our mail room sorts out the bulk mail for special handling (i.e. it may not make it to my desk). Upon reflecting on the question, here is my position and it has three reasons. First of all, I am interested in your community when I have a project that is looking there; second, I am interested in knowing important and relevant information about your community that can have a potential significant impact on projects. Lastly, I want the information to be brief (one – two sentences) which allows me to get more detail if I want it without having to make a call. Email has become too crowded with junk mail to justify having to sort out the good from the bad and therefore I diminish the importance of direct emails (though I do read a good deal of them). Over the next year, I am looking at using Twitter and ask that your follow our Twitter account as the best means to stay in front of activities in communities. If you follow Site Dynamics on Twitter, we will follow and read your updates. Also, we will follow communities that link to us through our LinkedIn site. We are using these two avenues to push information out on our activities. Of the media outlets available to us, we believe that these two will allow us the optimal means to get brief information on communities (info you want to push out) and also to share what we have going on. Absent of getting us to come and visit your community, and in light of scarce resources, I am going to see how this works until the next IEDC conference.
|