Web 2.0 And Business Attraction Canadian Cities Online Marketing Index

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Web 2.0 And Business Attraction Canadian Cities Online Marketing Index®

Canadian Premiere 2009

By Isabelle Poirier, Ian Smith

Canadian Cities Online Marketing Index© ‐ September 2009

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Contents Preamble: Why is “F” in “FDI” does not mean « foreign » anymore! ................................ 2 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 4 1. Methodology ............................................................................................................... 5 2. Best Practices of Social Media Tools ........................................................................... 6 3. Best Practices of Site Selection Information ............................................................. 13 4. Results ........................................................................................................................ 16 5. Final Thoughts ........................................................................................................... 20 Frequently Asked Questions ............................................................................................. 22 Biblography ....................................................................................................................... 24


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Preamble: Why is “F” in “FDI” does not mean « foreign » anymore! Here are a few thoughts of an old timer of the EDO profession in Canada Thirty years ago, the investment attraction world was simpler. There were two principal sources of investments: domestic and foreign. Domestic was here and foreign investments were mostly in US or UK. It was considered exotic to talk to an investor or a head office located in France or Italy. Economic developers traveling to Oslo or Amsterdam were facing dismissal or at least a severe reprimand. Decision making process was relatively straightforward; decision makers were a handful in headquarters if not a single individual. Over simplification? Maybe… What is clear though is there is a real shift in paradigms in FDI attraction. Consider:

a) Decision making process is not a “behind‐closed‐doors‐process” anymore and a myriad of individuals and/or consultants are involved making it very hard to pinpoint THE decision maker;

b) The number of levels of decision has also increased and “Yeah or Nay” situations are even present outside the corporation itself. Environment related decisions are just one example of this phenomenon – research can prove to be a very important deal maker or breaker, etc;

c) Investors and financial decision centers are shifting from developed countries to emerging countries;

d) Corporate ownership is not stable anymore; a Canadian corporation yesterday may be Australian today and Chinese tomorrow. Is GM still American? (Canadian collectively own 20% of the Corporation and a large portion of the ownership is financed through Chinese banks).

The result is that your former antennas in the USA and in Europe are not enough anymore. In order to be a player on the FDI field, it is essential to be aware of decisions and discussions in a myriad of exotic places. It is next to impossible for a small, even medium‐size corporations to efficiently carry out the cost of monitoring FDI with traditional means. This is why new challenges call for new tools. One of the most promising tools to keep contact with selected targets world wide are social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc). As their usage is spreading, social


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networks have the undisputable advantage to regroup communities of interest around any topic regardless of frontiers and boundaries. As a two‐way, real‐time, low‐cost communication tool, social networks allow small communities to be “on the radar” by providing updated information on their community development targets but also by providing a window on the world and a capacity to respond to opportunities. Social networks are just one of the new tools to answer new challenges. What we want to stress is that attraction strategies will always demand hard, sustained work and a sensible investments in both financial and human resources. What has shifted is where this investment shall now be directed. So now you know what the “F” stands for…It is Flickr or Facebook…Bet you thought it meant something else!

Perspectives from Louis Grenier, Associate at E&B DATA

September 17, 2009


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Introduction

Social Media Marketing (SMM) applications can be seen everywhere on the web. There are fewer and fewer websites without a Facebook button, a "Follow Us on Twitter" hyperlink, or a blog or a RSS feed. Social media marketing tools permit companies to execute various branding initiatives to reach established marketing objectives.

According to study conducting by Penn State University in September 2009, 20% of the messages or “Tweets” send via Twitter are brand‐oriented1.

Chris Brogan, president of New Marketing Labs and an expert of online communities and social media refers to blogs as "great way to establish thought leadership, and further, to encourage lead generation." 2

Can the same Web 2.0 tools apply to Canadian cities for their needs to promote their territory as the best location for investment attraction? How many cities have a set of tools that compliment a section on their website dedicated to site selection? How can these two marketing avenues work together to showcase investment opportunities for economic development?

In order to answer the questions, E&B DATA conducted its first benchmark exercise of assessing top Canadian cities’ economic development agency websites.

1 Penn State University, “Tweeting is more than just self‐expression”, September 2009,

http://live.psu.edu/story/41446. 2 Brogan Chris. “How to Create Business from a blog”, July 2008,

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/how‐to‐create‐business‐from‐a‐blog/


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1. Methodology

To perform this exercise, researchers and analysts adhered to the following guidelines:

1. Provincial capital cities and cities that are ranked in the Top 10 Canadian Census Metropolitan Statistical Areas (CMSA) as defined by Statistics Canada in 2006 were selected to create the list along with their respective economic development agencies. For cities that have more than one agency responsible for economic development such as Toronto and Montreal, E&B DATA selected the agency representing the CMSA. Overall 20 cities (metropolitan areas) were retained.

2. Each site was examined on the basis of the presence of social media marketing applications that are directly linked on the agency’s sites such as:

• Blogs • Online Social Networks (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) • Podcasts • Content sharing tools (i.e. YouTube, Flickr, Digg, StumbleUpon) • RSS Feeds

In addition, Web 1.0 applications (forums, news alerts and newsletters) were also assessed.

In evaluating sections destined for investors and site selection, the following criteria were considered:

• Easy access to location factors information (i.e., taxes and incentives, infrastructure, labor market and costs, utilities, real estate availabilities, etc.)

• Complete contact information for the individual(s) responsible for investment attraction (i.e., name of the representative, email address, phone number.)

• Multilingual functionality of the website. (i.e., content available in more than two languages.)

3. Representatives of three finalists were willing to share their insights behind their

strategy using social media marketing applications and information resources for site selectors.


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2. Best Practices of Social Media Tools

This section attempts to validate the following hypotheses:

“You must take advantage of web 2.0 or social media tools to be easily found by investors and site selectors on the web”.

“You must also tackle into these tools to facilitate knowledge sharing and feedback to get the buy‐in of your community and prospects”.

While most cities didn’t wait for the slowdown of the economy and some available time on their hands to look differently at the way they promote their territory, it is interesting to realize that since the beginning of 2009, top Canadian cities and capitals are working on new ways to push information and interact with their stakeholders.

Digital marketing guru, Mitch Joel suggests in his book, “Six Pixels of Separation”3, that "We are all a click (or a pixel) away from one another. This means a big change for business. This means a change in how you sell people your products and services."4 The same can be held true for economic agencies

Cities such as Halifax, London and Hamilton are building the pillars of their new economic development strategy taking into account new internet applications, commonly known as social media tools and applications.

Halifax

The Greater Halifax Partnership agency began its presence in the Web 2.0 environment almost two years ago with its Facebook page. Since then, the agency has adopted a full complement of social media marketing tools on their site which will play a role in their relatively new marketing plan. Visitors to the site are able to access:

o A LinkedIn profile o A Facebook Fan Page o A Twitter feed o A blog o A Flickr page o A YouTube Channel (see Figure 1)

3Joel Mitch, Six Pixels of Separation, Hachette, New York, Boston: Business Plus, 2009, p. 4. 4 Ibid. p. 4


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Figure 1 Greater Halifax Partnership’s YouTube Channel

Greater Halifax Partnership acknowledges LinkedIn is their preferred social network to reach CEOs and government employees. Seen as “Facebook for grown‐ups” their LinkedIn page allows them to test new strategies and get the reliable feedback they need before the official launch.

The use of Twitter is assisting Greater Halifax Partnership convey confidence. Their Twitter page acts as a tool to receive questions from “followers” efficiently. Even more, the agency’s tweets are been “retweeted” by the followers on a weekly basis.

The agency was willing to share some of the challenges they are facing in regards to their strategy.

• How long will Twitter be around? Like many other entities that utilize social media marketing tools, the agency keeps in mind the shelf life of these applications and must be on alert regarding the newest tools to reach and engage stakeholders.

• The capacity of capturing the “total” audience. Is the online marketing function

of the agency able to reach the right individuals? It takes time to assess all the information on visitors. But one of the signals that convey the agency to pursue in this approach is that it now welcomes more specific inquiries about the region opportunities.

• Dealing with “no access” internet policies. Some companies and governmental agencies still deny access to social media sites to their employees. However, it’s just a question of time before this policy changes. Indeed concerning the later point, Josh Gordon with Social Media Today, shares the following: “in 2009,


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41.2% of businesses have employees whose job function includes spending time on social sites, while only 9% report blocking internal access for employees”.5

This trend will just continue to grow and become reality. Everyone remembers the days where browsing the Internet was perceived as the evilest thing to do while they were at work. Today organizations and companies that don’t have a website don’t exist.

London

The London Economic Development Corporation (LEDC) applies social media marketing applications on many of its micro sites and by doing so it targets different stakeholders. By using a customized approached when creating a page on one of the Web 2.0 platforms, the agency can address the needs of different audience segments.

Videocasts are utilized pretty effectively to announce and promote new investments in the region (see figure 2). This is a definite change from the dry press releases that are often used.

Figure 2 Videocast Announcing Dancor's Investment In London

Though a little hard to find on their website, London initiated two targeted strategies that with time should be effective. 5 Gordon, Josh: “The Coming Change in Social Media Business Applications, Separating the Biz from the

Buzz, Social Media Today, 2009, p. 4.


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Via the Student‐2‐Business Networking Facebook page, the agency has established a resource in which students and local businesses can connect and network.

Also, in terms of promoting a sector, LEDC has created the following tools to act as promotional vehicles for the city’s digital gaming industry.

o Facebook Fan Page o Twitter Page o Blog o Wikipedia entry

Hamilton

Hamilton Economic Development Office launched its new website including social media marketing tools this last spring. Implementing new tools is never easy. However, the agency worked through the process of implementing the different web 2.0 applications, with the unconditional support of the mayor into the initiative. In addition, the information technology department was very receptive, which is not always the case for this type of organizations.

The Invest In Hamilton website offers over 50 + bookmarking and content sharing applications to push information across the web as seen in Figure 3. These tools are efficient and effective for viral online marketing efforts for the city.


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Figure 3 Bookmarking And Sharing Applications Via Invest In Hamilton

Courtesy of the media centre section, visitors can access links to the following social media tools:

• Facebook • YouTube • LinkedIn – As a person • Twitter

Representatives from the agency believe that having a “phone number or email is not enough”. To connect with people they need to use the tools young entrepreneurs are using. Twitter and Facebook are part of them.

Hamilton is building its foundation via Facebook with its “Invest In Hamilton” and more specifically with the “Hamilton Business Ambassador Program”. The use of the Facebook pages is one of the many ways the agency is slowly engaging local businesses and university into a more complete worldwide connection with potential investors. This spring, McMaster University representatives were equipped with the “Ambassador Program” (In depth information on the region characteristics and opportunities) on memory sticks to share with their counterparts in China. Since this trip, they have seen a steady number of visitors from China on their website and more specifically from the province that was visited. It’s little, but taking into account that they were not on the


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radar of Chinese investors prior to the program, they are confident that they are working in the right direction.

Representatives of the agency can see one important challenge with this promotion strategy. The investment of time needed to supply information and interact with stakeholders on the different platforms is getting more and more important. They foresee the challenge of hiring more qualified personnel to manage the different tools if the strategy proves to be successful.

Ottawa The Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation (OCRI) offers six main social media marketing tools on its website.

• LinkedIn Page • Facebook Group • Twitter Page • Blog • Podcast • RSS Feed

Courtesy of OCRI Radio (see Figure 4), a resource where podcasts are available, the OCRI does a very good job at positioning Ottawa as the best place to invest in terms of the high technology sectors.

Figure 4 OCRI Radio Website


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Notable Mentions

• Calgary Economic Development created, “Calgarypedia”, a wiki‐based tool where Calgarians can communicate and others can find any information about Calgary (see Figure 5). In the “Working in Calgary” section, there is some relevant information for investors.

Figure 5 Index page of Calgarypedia

• Saskatoon Regional Economic Development Authority (SREDA) Inc., a public‐private partnership has a small collection of podcasts (audio). These podcasts are meant to inform individuals about SREDA.

Therefore considering the hypothesis stated at the beginning of this section, one can conclude that the paradigm of top down communication is fading away. Economic development agencies that embrace social media tools to connect with stakeholders and prospects slowly but surely live by the principal that there is no time to conduct “business as usual”


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3. Best Practices of Site Selection Information

In the following section, E&B DATA assesses how the following hypothesis is applied in Canadian cities’ websites destined to potential investors.

“Know what you’re selling; know what your client needs and fulfill their needs”

London

Potential investors in the city of London are supplied with a wealth of information regarding site selection. On the homepage, the section, “Site Selection” contains details such as:

• Real Estate Inventory • Infrastructure • Taxes & Incentives • Workforce • Education • Quality of Life • Cost Estimator

By understanding that the capital investment market is not national but international, the content on the London Economic Development Corporation website is available in six different languages: Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Korean as illustrated in Figure 6.

Figure 6 Multilingual Functionality of LEDC’s Website


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According to LEDC, the multilingual option has translated into an increase in the request for information from 1 to 10 queries per week. A Korean version of the website combined with visits to Korea by the agency’s representatives has led to an average of 14 inquiries per week.

The agency welcomes constructive critics. Two years ago, they invited American site selectors to assess their website. From there, they continued to improve customized and compelling content for their visitors.

Clicking on the “Contact Us” and the LEDC Team links, individuals may access complete information about the economic development officers including biographies.

Hamilton

The “Invest In Hamilton” website provides a very good database for site selectors via Locate & Expand tab. Potential investors have the option to search for land, buildings or both for free by property type (i.e., agricultural, commercial, industrial). After the query is submitted, a detailed property report is supplied with information such as the address of the site, property type, size of the property, leasing details, the price of the property and general description of the property (see Figure 7).

Figure 7 Screen Shot Of The Result Page For Property Search Query


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Edmonton

The Edmonton Economic Development Corporation furnishes an extensive list of resources for businesses which are seeking to locate their operations in the city. The list includes series of updated promotional documents and videos packaged as “Edmonton Marketing Toolkit” (see Figure 8)

Figure 8 Edmonton Marketing Toolkit

The documents are available for download in “pdf” format and the videos can be viewed directly on their site in English, Chinese and German.

At the end of the toolkit, the individual responsible for business development contact name is displayed along with phone number and email address.

Thus, given the assumption brought up at the beginning of this section we can see that some cities know their product and are really seriously investing resources to come up with relevant and up‐to‐date content to sell their region for foreign direct investment.


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4. Results

This third part integrates results from previous sections and identifies early adopters of web 2.0 marketing strategies with existing initiatives.

E&B DATA recognizes that these results are a snapshot of available information of the last three months. No doubt that by the time the information is released new tools and content could be added within the 20 agencies websites.

Table 1 presents the top early adopters of web 2.0 applications integrated in their branding strategy and ranked in order on a scale from 0 to 13:

Top Canadian Cities

City Agency Website Score

London London Economic Development Corporation

www.ledc.com 10 /13

Halifax Greater Halifax Partnership

www.greaterhalifax.com 10/13

Ottawa Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation

www.ocri.ca 9/13

Hamilton Hamilton Economic Development

www.investinhamilton.ca 8/13

Table 1: Top Early Adopters of Web 2.0 Applications


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The complete picture of the score per city is shown in Figure 9.

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Top 20 Canadian Cities

Top 20 Canadian Cities Web 2.0 Usage

Figure 9 Scores for Top 20 Canadian Cities Web 2.0 Usage

Three Ontario cities are leading along with Halifax. One can observe that the three largest cities of our 20‐cities sample are not embracing social media tools as quickly as you would expect.

This benchmark is not about being dogmatic about technology. Effective use of social media is not the only key ingredient for good marketing strategy. If the information on the website has been well referenced over the years, there is a good chance that these cities are doing a good work on the web.

The site‐selection process as documented by the World Bank in the Global Investment Promotion Benchmarking 2009 Summary Report6 outlines that “companies undertake a

6 Global Investment Promotion Benchmarking 2009 Summary Report (World Bank, 2009) p. 54

http://www.ifc.org/ifcext/fias.nsf/AttachmentsByTitle/GIPB2009/$FILE/GIPB2009.SummaryReport.pdf


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structure strategy in researching possible locations”. To aid in the process, especially in the benchmarking phase, relevant, up‐to‐date, and good‐quality information must be online and easily accessible to individuals who are conducting the web‐based research.

To evaluate the specific information that is offered to site selectors by the top Canadian cites, each agency site was examined based on:

• Currency of the content (i.e., year of the latest publication) • Ease to retrieve on the web (i.e., using the search engine Google Canada with

keywords: • “Invest in” and the city’s name, • “Investment” and the city’s name, • “Incentives” and the city’s name,

• How many pages on Google Canada before finding the link.

Figure 10 illustrates how well agencies invest on customized information and tries to keep up‐to‐date.

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Figure 10 Level of Currency and Customized Information


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Figure 11 gives us an idea of how cities through their economic development agencies are easy to retrieve on the web using Google.ca.

Figure 11 Level of Ease To Retrieve An Agency’s Website Using Google Canada

This figure is interesting because it discards the effect of new tools and concentrates on the effect of relevant and well referenced content.

Is the combination of web 2.0 marketing tools and compelling content for investors and site selectors enough to attract investment? At E&B DATA, we don’t believe so. Facilitating the whole process from being on the long list, to the short list to negotiation remains the key to landing an investment.

But the contribution of the three pillars of a successful business attraction agency: (1) innovative marketing strategy, (2) compelling information and (3)outstanding facilitators welcoming inquiries and questions from investors and site selectors, will position these cities as the best place for business in addition to increasing the awareness of their area among potential investors.

The performance of these cities over the next 24 months, given the willingness to adopt web 2.0 tools, improving their capacity to provide site selectors with up‐to‐date and relevant information and reinforcing there assistance to prospects, is certainly the subject that everyone will be interested in knowing more about.

Looking at the age of the technology and speed at which it is evolving, it is too early to try to do correlation between these initiatives and actual capital investments. Surely enough, E&B DATA will continue to investigate this avenue, based on its capital Investment observatory.


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5. Final Thoughts According to the report, “A View From Corporate America: Winning Strategies in Economic Development Marketing by Development by Counselors International (DCI)7, articles in newspapers and magazines and online sources were among of the top five responses by corporate decision makers when asked about sources that influences their perceptions of a region’s business climate. The response of “online sources” has seen a significant increase between 1999 and 2008. “Dialogue with industry peers” is one of the leading sources of information influencing executive perceptions (response based on respondent type, i.e., large company, midsize company and location advisors.) Social media tools address both issues:

o Tools such as Twitter, YouTube and Flickr can supply data (which is not seen as being “controlled”) will contribute to the decision making process of site selectors.

o Networking platforms such Facebook and LinkedIn facilitates “peer‐to‐peer” interactions among stakeholders, especially economic development officers and potential investors.

Economic development agencies that have started to adopt social media marketing strategies are challenging the conventional “Top Down” communications paradigm that is attached to Web 1.0 and costly marketing campaign. By accepting to connect with stakeholders such as potential investors, agencies via social media tool have opened up another outlet to share information and communicate in an efficient and cost effective manner. Agencies with limited budgets and the necessary “buy‐in” can formulate in‐bound marketing strategies using the applications to enhance existing promotional efforts for their region. This study has uncovered that some Canadian cities have been slow to adopt social media marketing tools. Possible reasons that can serve as discussion points regarding the integration of the tools to promote their territory are:

o Business as usual Decision‐makers have not bought into the use of social media tools for business purposes. Web 1.0 tools, phone calls and face‐to‐face meeting are judge sufficient.

7 Development Counsellors International (DCI), A Continuing Survey of Corporate Executives with Site Selection

Responsibilities, July 2008


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o Feedback is not always pleasant to read Do cities really want to deal with real time feedback courtesy of Facebook, LinkedIn and/or Twitter?

o The notion that the web only plays a small part of the site selection process for potential investors According to Mark Schaefer8 specialized in marketing strategist, if you are not online, you do not exist. Site selectors are searching for content on promising region across all platforms on the web. Cities remain in the old paradigm of using expensive media offline vehicles in the form of tradeshows, magazines and journals to market their region. And more specifically for large cities…

o Bureaucracy gets in the way The decision making process by a multi‐agency structure responsible for economic development and investment attraction is often slow and decisions are delayed. The department system in large metropolitan areas is typically quite powerful and not always a help in pursuing innovative practices related to business attraction.

8 Schaefer, Mark. "Social Media Best Practices For Economic Development" (Presentation) 2009, p 10

http://www.slideshare.net/Rialta/social‐media‐best‐practices‐for‐economic‐development


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Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How did you select the cities to be included in the benchmark study?

A: E&B DATA selected the provincial capital cities and the top 10 Canadian Census Metropolitan Statistical Area (CMSA) as per Statistics Canada in 2006.

Q: What were the 13 used criteria?

A: Below are the 13 criteria that were used:

o Blogs o Linked to Facebook o Linked to Twitter o Linked to LinkedIn o Linked to other sharing platforms (ie, (i.e. YouTube, Flickr, Digg,

StumbleUpon) o Podcasts (Audio or Video) o RSS Feeds o Newsletters o News Alerts o Forums o Home page including link for site selection section o Contact person name for site selection inquiry o Multi‐language functionality

Q: When did you visit each website for this study?

A: Each site was visited between the dates of August 1st, 2009 and September 1st, 2009 to monitor any additions or modifications.

Q: How do you define a “social media marketing application”?

A: A social media marketing application is defined as social networks, online communities, blogs, wikis or any other collaborative Internet form of media for marketing, sales, public relations and customer service.

Q: How do you define “multilingual functionality”?

A: “Multilingual functionality” allows users to access content in more than two languages.


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Q: What is a podcast?

A: By definition, a podcast is a video or audio file that can be downloaded directly from a website and be played via a media player. Video clips available on YouTube or other sharing platforms are not considered to be podcasts.

Q: What is meant by Web 1.0?

A: The Web 1.0 is the portion of the web that contains static pages (instead of dynamic user‐generated content) and online guestbook.

Q: What is meant by Web 2.0?

A: The Web 2.0 is the portion of the web that facilitates interactive information sharing, interoperability, user‐centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web.

Q: What does RSS stand for?

A: RSS is the abbreviation for "Really Simple Syndication" and is often offered in web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content.

Q: E&B DATA considered pages and feeds directly link to the metro area economic development agency website?

A: To avoid pages and feeds that are not deemed to be official, E&B DATA considered

only pages and feeds linked on the agency’s website.


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Bibliography

Brogan, Chris. “How to Create Business from a blog”, July 2008, http://www.chrisbrogan.com/how‐to‐create‐business‐from‐a‐blog/

Development Counsellors International (DCI): A Continuing Survey of Corporate Executives with Site Selection Responsibilities, July 2008. http://www.aboutdci.com/dci/media/docs/Winning%20Strategies/DCI%27s%20Winning%20Strategies%20Report.pdf Gordon, Josh: “The Coming Change in Social Media Business Applications, Separating the Biz from the Buzz, Social Media Today, 2009. www.socialmediatoday.com/ Joel, Mitch, Six Pixels of Separation, Hachette, New York, Boston: Business Plus, 2009. www.twistimage.com/blog World Bank: “Global Investment Promotion Benchmarking 2009 Summary Report”, 2009 http://www.ifc.org/ifcext/fias.nsf/AttachmentsByTitle/GIPB2009/$FILE/GIPB2009.SummaryReport.pdf Penn State University, “Tweeting is more than just self‐expression”, September 2009, http://live.psu.edu/story/41446

Schaefer, Mark: "Social Media Best Practices For Economic Development" (Presentation) 2009. http://www.slideshare.net/Rialta/social‐media‐best‐practices‐for‐economic‐development


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About E&B DATA

E&B (Economic and Business) DATA is a North American leader in the supply of economic and business information, specializing in the industrial, emerging and energy sectors. E&B DATA performs benchmark analysis for economic development initiatives. Equipped with proprietary databases and information systems, E&B DATA operates the largest business capital investment monitoring activity in Canada since 2000. Visit E&B DATA online at www.ebdata.com Follow E&B DATA at www.twitter.com/EB_DATA

About The Authors

Isabelle Poirier Isabelle Poirier is the Investment Strategist at E&B DATA. She has 15 years of experience in economic development and investment attraction strategy. Follow Isabelle Poirier at www.twitter.com/intelegia

Ian Smith Ian Smith is the Senior Competitive Intelligence Researcher at E&B DATA. Ian specializes in information monitoring systems for investment attraction intelligence.

Follow Ian Smith at www.twitter.com/citweetz

Contributor

Aicha Habiby

Aicha Habiby is Project Manager of E&B DATA’S Investment Observatory. Follow Aicha Habiby at www.twitter.com/EB_DATA