Content Marketing Today

Why the Business Community Must Become Community Organizers

Social media-powered grassroots marketing is vital to drive changes required to build strong regional economies.

The social media outreach that worked so well for Barack Obama must be put to work for businesses individually and collectively. That lesson came home to me at the January 15, 2009 meeting of Project innovation which is designed to develop a strategy to diversify and strengthen our local economy.

Our speaker was an articulate South Carolinian, Jim Fields, Executive Director of the Palmetto Institute.  He and his colleagues have been working hard to make their state a magnet for the kind of people, jobs, and companies that will ensure long-term prosperity. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that his organization is talking to the same folks that helped Barack Obama devise his social media version of community organizing, Blue State Digital. 

Now it’s time for business to do the community organizing.

In Southwest Florida, we face a problem common to many communities that have relied too extensively on one or two industries for their survival.  In Detroit it was the automotive industry.  Here it has been homebuilding and development whose success counted on an ever-increasing stream of retirees and pre-retirees.  That has now come to a screeching halt and is affecting every corner of our regional economy.   

Because we have so many of these older, affluent folks, they wield an enormous amount of power with our local politicians. Not only do they vote in huge numbers, but they are also incredibly vocal.  Because almost all of them came from somewhere else and have no ties to the local business community, they think they have no vested interest in the health of our local economy.  They are dead wrong, but it’s unlikely we will change their minds anytime soon.

To counter their probably unintentional anti-business attitude, the business community must energize a large group of people who, in turn, will motivate our politicians and bureaucrats to partner with the private sector for the benefit of us all.  I’m now convinced that the effective use of social media may finally provide the leverage we, as business owners, need to drive positive long-term change that will strengthen the local economy without compromising our quality of life.

Social media to the rescue

What Ronald Reagan did so effectively in the 1980s is what Barack Obama has done in the 21st century: he has bypassed the media and gone directly to the people with this message. President Reagan used television.  That was his only choice.  Of course, President-elect Obama also used television.  But he extended his reach to those younger voters for whom newspapers and network television are largely a quaint artifact of another era.

How did he do it? He made extensive use of social media to drive the ultimate word-of-mouth campaign for his message of hope and change that resonated with so many young people.  Rather than expecting to influence them via media which they no longer used, his team knew that they needed to communicate with this young idealistic generation in the way that they communicated with each other.

That’s all about MySpace, Facebook, twitter, texting, IM, etc. Here is how the new social media rock stars at Blue State Media(BSD) described what works and why:

In particular, we can help you use the BSD Online Tools to provide integrated online followthrough via your Web site to offline events and campaigns, so that each of your constituents has the opportunity to interact with you via the channel that is most likely to encourage him and her to maintain an active, rewarding relationship.

We will also work closely with you to ensure that your external online promotional activities — including online advertising, viral video, social networking sites, and blog outreach — make their greatest possible impact, in synergy with your activities on your own Web site, your outbound email program, and your offline communications program.

We all know how well this strategy worked for Barack Obama.  Lots of skeptics in the political establishment doubted that young people would turn out to vote.  But vote they did and in large numbers with a two to one preference for President-elect Obama.

Now the business community must go grassroots with social media.

Here in Southwest Florida and other similarly hard-hit regions, the business community must energize and engage those same young people and their idealism.  We need to make it clear that we all benefit from a thriving local economy that attracts lots of smart young professionals and the businesses that want to hire them.

Once the younger generation becomes an army of vocal voters, you can bet that our local politicians will develop a swift understanding of the importance of an enlightened pro-business response to the challenges we will all face in the years and decades ahead. 

Project Innovation has made a great start here in Southwest Florida by engaging senior business and community leaders any effort to drive sustainable growth.  I’m convinced that our ultimate success will be achieved, just as it was for Barack Obama, from a passionate grassroots, word-of-mouth movement.

Now that would be change we can believe in!