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Economic Development Online Monday Musings - President's Day Edition

Many of you may not actually be working today, so what better way to get your economic development fix than catch up with the latest and greatest economic development marketing news online! Today in the United States we commonly celebrate Presidents' Day, though to the federal government it's officially Washington's Birthday (Observed). While we've had good presidents and bad presidents over the years, the impact they have on our national history and the character of the United States is undeniable. Google set up a tribute page to help you learn more about the U.S. Presidents. I'd also like to give a personal recommendation for the song "James K. Polk" from one of my favorite banks, They Might Be Giants.

We celebrate Presidents' Day mainly in recognition of the close proximity of George Washington's and Abraham Lincoln's birthdays. If you'd like to learn more about either of these men, two really solid books are "Plain, Honest Men" by Richard Beeman, which describes the Constitutional Convention and soon-to-be President Washington's role in the formulation of that document, and "Team of Rivals" by Doris Kearns Goodwin about President Lincoln's ascendancy to the Presidency and how he managed relationships with the men who formed his cabinet.

I don't have a lot of economic development industry specific news in this edition, but please don't forget to sign up for our free webinar this Thursday on how to use your website to generate productive leads for your economic development organization.

Now on to the links!

Applications you might like...

MixTent, A Professional Reputation Graph - This is a relatively new application that hasn't be highly adopted yet but will probably start to see more activity. Mixtent builds on your LinkedIn profile to identify key skills that you might possess. You can unlock those or other skills by rating other professionals in your network who share those skills. Mixtent could be really useful if you're trying to identify contacts that have expertise in specific areas for projects you might be working on. Their emphasis on critical skills matches up well with the general trend of looking at workforce development from a skills-based perspective.

BranchOut - This application is great for people that would like to leverage their personal Facebook networks for professional connections or networking. In a way, BranchOut brings some of LinkedIn's functionality to a Facebook application. They just recently added a voting feature as well similar to that of MixTent.

Online Marketing...

An Update to Google Social Search - We've mentioned how Bing and Yahoo had started utilizing social media connections via Facebook logins to impact how they rank results on SERPs, now social media items will be appearing in and among traditional webpages on Google's SERPs. Even if you don't make much use of it, every economic development organization needs to establish a social media beachhead of sorts so you can secure the ability to communicate your brand effectively online.

Are You Willing to Make the Commitment to Social Media? - A good short video that discusses the discipline of getting involved with social media. While we understand not everyone has the time or resources to make a major commitment to social media, the Google item just above makes a great case for engaging in this area now to make sure your content shows up for people searching for opportunities to make an economic development investment in your community or looking for opportunities in industries your trying to target.

How to Use the New Facebook Photo Viewer as a Marketing Tool - A neat idea for using some of the new Facebook features to better engage your followers on Facebook. Economic development organizations are often challenged by how to make this medium deliver tangible results, some of these tips could help you find more productive uses for your Facebook page.

What's in a Name? - An example from the world of politics, but still relevant to your economic development organization, particularly if your community has a name common across many different states. For example, I've lived, worked in or visited at least three different Montgomery Counties. Search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is an important tool for any economic development organization, but play a significant role whenever there is an opportunity for people to get your community confused with someplace else.

That's all for this week. Remember, you can receive an early edition of the Monday Musings via email on Friday afternoons if you sign up for our newsletter! Don't forget to follow LEDO Suite on Twitter and like us on Facebook!