Gentlemen of the Road stopover in Bristol

Bristol, TN/VA is a unique place.  “Two States; One State of Mind” is their motto, but navigating two sets of  building regulations, garbage pickups, tax codes and general government type operations can get a bit confusing.

Famous Bristol Sign Across State Street

However, Christina Blevins, executive director of Believe in Bristol, Bristol’s Main Street organization, bridges the gaps everyday in a positive, energetic and infectious manner.

Her coalition’s building skills recently paid off when Mumford & Sons were looking at communities  in which to hold their traveling Gentlemen of the Road music festival.

Already known worldwide for the Rhythm & Roots Reunion and as the Birthplace of Country Music, Bristol had an inate attraction for the band.  However, the ability to coordinate the many moving parts that an all day outdoor festival requires, in addition to the evenings music selections across the street (and consequently across the state line), Bristol cinched the deal.

Already, Bristol is getting tons of press about this event, but the real lesson is to be prepared when opportunity knocks.  Keep building relationships, offer value to all of your partners, understand the needs of your stakeholders, offer assistance without reservation and become indespensible.

Read more about the festival here, here, here, here and here.  Discounted tickets are on sale June 1.

Virginia Tourism is way ahead of the pack…again.

One of Virginia Main Street’s most prized relationships is the one we have with Virginia Tourism Corporation (VTC).  We often plan our strategies to complement theirs and they often ask us what’s going on downtown that they can use to better market Virginia.  They believe in Virginia’s historic commercial districts as tourist attractions to the point that they designed a special category of their Passionality quiz called Small Town Hound.

Many of the really exciting innovations at VTC have been ways to get your information out to travellers, whether they be from out of state or just down the street.  The Richmond Times Dispatch published an article touting VTC’s new iPhone app.  The application allows small businesses to directly reach travellers in a number of ways by self posting information about their businesses in a way that the app users can find them while they are travelling.

Features of the Virginia is for Lovers app include:

• a “near me” feature which finds all attractions within a 15-mile radius;

• directions and mapping for every listing;

• direct access to making reservations via phone or website;

• customer reviews of restaurants and lodging properties; and

• pet-friendly attractions listed by locality

The Virginia.org website has many tools to help local businesses and organizations promote their events and products.  You can go here to add your events now or you can contact a VTC representitive here.

Who needs all that negativity?

It turns out you do.  At least if you are trying to gain traction and trust in the online world.

It may seem purely intuitive that bad press or reviews are not good for sales, but this short article from Fortune magazine says otherwise.  This article is geared toward online sales, but the idea can be expanded to include any online presence.

The idea is that a negative comment helps build trust in your site, making it less likely that a potential customer will look for information about your product elsewhere.

“If they leave your site to look for reviews, they most likely won’t come back,” says Larry Freed, CEO of ForeSee Results, which provides customer satisfaction surveys for Web sites

The other item you’ll notice is that negative feedback can help you address problems that your end users may be having.  Rather than deleting the negative comment, make a follow up post that helps correct the problem.  This shows you care and are listening.  Beware, however, of ever coming across as defensive; it can be hard to listen to people criticize your hard work, but in the end knowing exactly what people think about your work or product is important to your future planning.

Sample Comment Page From Zappos.com

As you can see here, most comments are good; in fact, excellent.  The two “negative comments” are very constructive and describe the fit and fabric.  The positive reviews are more about function.  This leaves the decision up to the consumer as to whether the fabric is what they are looking for or not.

If the comments were almost all negative and the complaints were more along the lines of “This jacket is made from poor material and the sizing is wrong,” then Zappos might discontinue the item and work out a refund deal with dissatisfied customers, hopefully maintaing trust in their brand.  Without the comments, they might not know why they were losing the customers forever.

Turning the economy on its head

Fast Company reports that Facebook is increasing its staff by 50 percent.  The nearly 500-employee increase is substantial in a good economy, and in current recessionary times, it’s a flat out boon.  But why, at a time when ad revenues are down, would an expansion like this make sense? 

For one, costs of doing business can be lower.  The talent that Facebook is hiring is in abundance on the market.  New hirees will work for less.  There’s a good lesson there; transfer it downtown. While construction costs are lower, properties are bringing less rent, and an empty space eliminates the major opportunity cost of construction, it may just be the time for a property owner to reinvest. 

Of course Facebook is in at an impressively expansive point in consumer adaptation as well, and it wants to expand its services to advertisers to capture the market. There’s something, too, to be said for striking while the iron is hot.  With trendwatchers capturing the steadily growing fashionability of downtown living, shopping, and working, what is your community doing to make the most of that most of your opportunities today?

Entrepreneurial stories

We have been promoting the idea that recessions and layoffs, while very difficult to navigate, provide the impetus for an entrepreneurial boom.  Now, the Kauffman Foundation has issued its report supporting our claims. In economic gardening terms, this is the equivilant of burning last years crops to make way for the new “green shoots.”

 

Entrepreneur magazine has an article called “Bringing Wall Street to Main Street” that describes several laid off bankers/financial services professionals that started their dream businesses after losing their jobs.

Richmond Biz Sense describes how three former S&K Clothing employees are translating the knowledge they learned from their now defunct former employer into their own online clothing store.

Virginia’s Main Street communities are well suited to attract some of these newly minted business enterprises for several reasons.  Virginia, as a whole, is a business friendly state.  Many communities have low property tax rates (especially gauged nationally) and underused or empty warehouses that can be purchased or leased at a good rate. 

More importantly, though, as these entrepreneurs leave the world of high pressure finance and begin focussing on enjoying their lives – the scenery, friendliness and plethora of activites in and around Virginia’s Main Streets proves very attractive. 

Making sure that your community is welcoming and has an entrepreneurial spirit can go a long way to attracting new businesses.

Growing a success narrative

Is Abingdon on the brink of a new renaissance? That was the title question of a front page Bristol Herald Courier story this week connecting new businesses in the Washington County town to a strategic investment in Southwest Virginia’s cultural heritage.

This little town might be the next Asheville, at least according to the buzz downtown,” opens staff writer Debra McCown.

“It’s been a sudden, subtle change, but seemingly overnight, the same sort of art galleries and crafty, eclectic shops that define that North Carolina tourist center are popping up in Abingdon, Va. – another artsy mountain town that some say is on the verge of discovering its creative economy.”

While people behind the scenes in any community revitalization effort know the development process is far from overnight, the article is a good sign for the systematic investments  in a job-creating, quality-of-life enhancing, tourism-attracting infrastructure made over the past decade. And it’s just the beginning.

Ground’s due to break on  Heartwood: Southwest Virginia’s Artisan Gateway early next month. While the cultural center is to be located in Abingdon, its mission is to send travelers, well-armed with tour itineraries and a piqued curiosities, out into the region to discover the authenic Southwest Virginia for themselves.

The Herald Courier article makes the connection.  And just by asking the question, “Is Abingdon on the brink of a new renaissance?” the paper establishes the narrative (and it’s more than that of an Asheville wannabe).  

Visible improvements downtown will now reinforce that storyline for local residents and answer the question with a resounding, heartfelt and fully engaged, “Yes.” It’s an opening, an invitation for further investment, and it’s a call to action.  There’s an opportunity at hand.

While Heartwood can help build a regional narrative for all of Southwestern Virginia, it’s up to individual communities to use it to construct their own success story, building on very local and unique assets.  And there are other opportunities out there in other regions.  The Blue Ridge Parkway celebrates its 75th anniversary next year. The civil war sesquicentennial represents a major marketing opportunity. And regional toursim trails add possibility throughout the Commonwealth.

But first your community has to know where its been and where its headed.  It’s part of every good tale of a hard-working community making good.  It’s the heart of our work.  What’s your revitalization story? And who’s telling it?

Tell us what you think.

When a financial crisis arrives, it is too late to try to make the case for all the services your downtown organization provides to the community.   You need to be spending that time engaging your support base and selling the future.  To do that, there has to be a broad based system of support throughout the community made up of stakeholders that know who you are and the value you provide.  This requires constant communication with the community as a whole and your primary stakeholders in particular.

Virginia’s Main Street in the news

The Sunday, April 5 edition of the Richmond Times-Dispatch had several articles of note about Virginia Main Street communities.  First was an article about Abingdon’s latest downtown promotion, then an article about Page County’s (including Luray) attempt to be designated as the “Cabin Capital of Virginia.” Then yet another article, this one talking about the Lynchburg Museum’s new exhibits.

Lynchburg, Altavista and Manassas all were noted for their recent milestone acheivements.

An editorial in the Star Exponent of Culpeper extolls the signs of a strengthening economy as evidenced by the entrepreneurial spirit in Culpeper’s Historic Downtown.  The Martinsville Bulletin ran a story on another entrepreneur who is doing his part to revive a local economy hit hard by factory closings.

Lastly, at least for now, the Franklin News Post has an article on Rocky Mount’s uptown facade inprovement program.

Trading Faces: Building and caring for your online reputation

You’ve spent years building your professional reputation and protecting your organization’s good name, but in today’s interconnected, information-rich world it’s easier than ever for the actions of others to damage the goodwill you’ve established.

Networking is a basic responsibility of business owners and organizations serving them. We network to keep abreast of best practices, to identify opportunities and attract new customers, clients, and members. There’s a big upside. But Entrepreneur’s networking columnist Ivan Misner points out that there’s a risk involved as well (Word-of-Mouth Marketing Can Bite Back, March 4, 2009). When you pass on information, you do so with an implied stamp of approval.

That’s just common sense. If you recommend a consultant to another community, and the consultant overcharges or performs poorly, some of that negative feeling is cast back on you.  But now that online networking has stormed the nation (No, Grandma, I don’t want to be your Facebook friend), haven’t we all gotten a little liberal with our recommendations?

Being a fan, befriending, posting, and inviting are all ways to put your stamp of approval on an organization or person. Do it thoughtfully.

Forbes’ Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg make this connection, encouraging readers to consider their reputation as currency (Is your reputation worth $15 Billion?). Trading posts on social networking sites and Web sites is one popular way to increase traffic to your organization’s message, but it’s worth considering how readily you trade links. Is your organization still on message? Are you linking to anyone you wouldn’t want to go into business with?

Search Engine Optimization guru Jim Boykin says who you link to matters. While page rankings currently rise with traded links, search engines can tell who’s linking to you, and may soon screen out the links on sites where an extraordinarily high percentage of links are reciprocated. Reciprocal links with natural partners are good, but if there’s not a match with what you do, you might want to clean them up. And don’t link anywhere you wouldn’t want your grandmother see.

New media

Question: What took 89 years for the telephone; 38 years for the television; and 14 years for the cell phone?  The answer? How long it took for each of these communication devices to be adopted by 150 million users.

In only five years Facebook has attracted more than 175 millon users – and it’s not just for college kids anymore.  This “social media” network has captured the attention of everyone from grandmothers to corporations.  It has also captured the time of many an innocent Web-surfer.  A CNN.Money/Fortune magazine article says:

Try logging in to quickly check a message, and you may find yourself scrolling through new baby photos from that guy who used to sit next to you in Mr. Peterson’s English class.  Soon you’re checking the friends you have in common. This addictive quality keeps Facebook’s typical user on the site for an average of 169 minutes a month, according to ComScore. Compare that with Google News, where the average reader spends 13 minutes a month checking up on the world, or the New York Times Web site, which holds on to readers for a mere ten minutes a month.

You can read the whole article here.

Half of the population of the USA has a Facebook account and more than 3 billion minutes are spent on Facebook every day.

So how can you use this to promote your downtown?  The general idea is that you want to help people connect to your downtown; the services, the special events, the retail promotions and the whole neighborhood feeling. 

In short, you want them to be friends with your downtown.  There are some inherent shortcomings of using Facebook for promotions, but only you can decide if this free outlet will be worthwhile to you.

Here are some examples of how some designated Virginia Main Streets are doing it (be forewarned, you’ll have to sign up to view them):

Staunton; Lynchburg; Harrisonburg; Martinsville; and Martinsville again.