Driving economic development, promoting members, attracting new members, getting donors and sponsorships, selling event tickets and building relationships are just a few ways Twitter is helping Val Trevis, General Manager of the Greater Vernon Chamber of Commerce in Vernon, B.C.
Val Trevis, Manager of the Greater Vernon Chamber of Commerce (GVCC), started looking at social media (Facebook, Twitter) at the end of 2008. The GVCC signed up for Facebook, but ran into issues about privacy and posting pictures. So they kept the Facebook site active, but not proactive.
A local GVCC member and an early Twitter adopter, Brenda Ellis (known as Brell), met with Val in July 2009 and told her about a Twitter business day that was happening in Kelowna. Twitter business day was the brainchild of Nick Kellet. He had a vision to have Kelowna business connect on Twitter.
The Kelowna Chamber got involved and Connecting Kelowna became the Twitter business day that Kellet envisioned.
In visiting this site, where Kellet posted 722 Twitter Feeds for Kelowna and Okanagan Valley, and information on how to use Twitter, Val then said, "Hey, I get it."
She began using Twitter in August 2009 more seriously, and created Vernon biz day, a day designed to connect greater Vernon area businesses on Twitter. She put an article in the local paper, and got some response.
It was slow to start. Then on October 20th, Scott Davis came to Vernon and showed her group Tweetdeck. Val said, "That's when the light turned on.
With the various columns in Tweetdeck, she could see what her various accounts were doing. The GVCC has accounts for membership, chamber, Val and eco business (@gvccmembership, @vernonchamber, @valtrevis and @ecobizniz).
Val says, "One
of the most
valuable things I learned from Scott Davis, is that you have to be
human on Twitter." That is one of the reasons why Val did not set up an
automated message on Twitter, why she does her own tweets and why she often retweets her members and, even, non-members.
"Twitter brings out electronic conversations. Then, they are connecting physically and it's much easier for them to talk to each other in person," Val said. At a Vernon Women in Business function, one Twitter follower even said to Val, "I feel like I know you because we've been Twittering." Val was at a meeting and a man stood up to introduce himself. She thought, "Hey, I Twitter with that guy." Afterwards, the conversation with him was warm and friendly, like they already knew each other.
Val attended some Canadian and BC Chamber functions last September and October and quickly realized that the GVCC is an early adopter of Twitter and one of the Chambers taking off with it in BC.
Val says, "I help a couple businesses each week by showing them what they can do. First, Twitter, then Tweetdeck. That's when most businesses get it."
One comment to Val from a member was: "We've been able to connect to business up and down the valley using Twitter." One Twitter follower recently mentioned to Val that he is hearing great things about the GVCC, and its use of Twitter, in the south Okanagan.
Val says that it has also created a network in Vancouver who want to have accessibility to the Vernon market. One Vancouver company sent two gift certificates worth $1800 when Val put a call out for donations on Twitter for GVCC's upcoming Christmas party. She says, "I've done over $2200 worth of business this week alone, selling tickets for the Christmas Party and getting door prizes for the Chamber, on Twitter."
Val is now working on a "Tweet Up". This will be an event to get members and non-members into one room to discuss Twitter and how it can benefit their businesses, provide Twitter training, introduce the Chamber benefits to non-members, get examples of how Twitter has helped local businesses and allow the Twitter community to connect with one another."One of my mandates is to drive economic development in the community." Trevis says, "Twitter is a free way of doing this."
"I throw up questions on Twitter and get answers now to help my members. We feature new members that join the Chamber. This is marketing that our members can do. And our non-members are helping us too," she remarks.
She says, "I tell businesses that you can isolate yourselves. Or, you can expand and look outside your boundaries of who can support. I am a huge proponent for shopping local, but try to draw people to your business from outside your community."
One board member asked Val why she was spending so much time on Twitter. Val asked the board member to try to understand Twitter, think about the role of the chamber and connect the dots. The board member got it.
"My husband says I'm a Twitter junkie. It's social. I don't have TV. I look for news on Twitter, email or the web. In that way, I'm never really off the clock," Val says. The GVCC just hit one thousand tweets, something Val is very proud of.
Val says, "We are looking at
working with a social media college student to help us with Facebook
and Twitter. We want to know what else we can do that we're not already
doing." Val, at one time an anti-blog proponent, is also looking at blogging as a potential social media marketing opportunity.
A couple of weeks ago, Val wrote a Morning Star Article called "Unsung heroes" about how volunteers are the backbone of our community. She said, "I tweeted out a link to it and got two responses from New York, one from Columbia, one from Boston and one from the UK. They all said it was a great article. To think that people retweeted a local column written for our little Chamber in our community makes me think that blogging is no longer a bad idea too."
Membership has its benefits. Join the Greater Vernon Chamber of Commerce. (I just joined today.)
Thanks for reading!
Courtenay Pitcher, brand spanking new Greater Vernon Chamber of Commerce member and Twitter touter too.
http://www.vernongirl.com
Great article Courtenay... Keep em coming!:)
Posted by: Adrienne Harris | 12/04/2009 at 05:25 PM