Things seem to be looking up online at the Soldotna Chamber of Commerce. Executive Director Shannon Davis gave an exuberant quarterly status update to the Soldotna City Council last (Wednesday) night.
“It really just feels like things are starting to click at the chamber, and really just in our community. We were firing on all cylinders last quarter.”
One place that’s seen more of a turnaround than an uptick is the chamber’s Facebook page, as Davis explains.
“My last report to you I had to tell you that we only had nine new likes on our Facebook page, and I planned to turn that around. And as of March 1, we had our contractor up and running. And she is Linda Sage marketing. She's taking over Instagram and Facebook. On Instagram, have been posting to Instagram all along, but we haven't been tracking or followers. So we now have a baseline of 100,270. And I'll be reporting those numbers to you each quarter. Our Facebook likes; we're up to 10,800, which was an increase of 270 likes in the past quarter. But remembering that only one of those months we had a contractor on board. So I think we're just going to start seeing those numbers skyrocket.”
Meanwhile, she says the chamber’s website analytics were good.
“Page views are up about 35%. I'd like to say that our marketing was responsible for all of that. But I think those numbers were boosted a little bit by the fact that we released an RFP for a new website developer in March. And I think that a lot of traffic to the site was people checking it out trying to figure out if they wanted to take on the project or not.”
Davis says the chamber chose an Anchorage company, Hype Digital, which has a Soldotna connection.
“This is an Alaskan based company. Matt Nath does live in Anchorage now but he spent I'm not sure if he was born into that no, but he lived here for quite a while so he's very familiar with the area. And his work was really beautiful and I think will fit with our brand really well. So to date for launch will be in December.”
Davis also described a program through a company called “Crowd Riff,” that will increase the use of Instagram photos that have Soldotna in the hashtag on the chamber’s various digital platforms.
