Network Mindshare : Wisconsin

Showing posts with label Wisconsin. Show all posts

Monday, November 7, 2011

How Social Media Can Help Biking and Ecotourism in Columbia County WI

I am an avid bicyclist. I wouldn't call myself rabid. I have bike commuted to Madison before, and try to ride to my office in Lodi from my house one or two days each week, but I am not consistent. I wish I had a position that would allow me to do that since I would be a lot happier overall. I am also very committed to my local community in the Scenic Lodi Valley, the Town of West Point in which I live and Columbia County. There is a passionate group of individuals in the Columbia County who are working hard to make biking and other outdoor activities like hiking, kayaking, canoeing, camping and walking part of every trip into this broad community. To that end, I have been working on a bike route mapping project that I hope will be successful in ensuring that the US Bicycle Route 30 comes into Columbia County via the Merrimac Ferry and through Lodi on its way to hook up with the Bike Path on Hwy 12 and onto Madison.

It starts with goals.
I made my project also something of a work-related project. As a certified social media strategist, I wanted to use this as a case study on how one person could make a difference with a thorough strategy, action plan and a few social media tools.

My goals looked like this:

Get US Bike Route 30 through Columbia County WI
Showcase Columbia County as a bike destination in Wisconsin
Make the Scenic Lodi Valley a central hub in a 50 mile radius for eco-tourism

My strategy looked like this:

Share stories and experiences of the people who bike in Columbia County
Use multiple forms of media
Build evangelism
Create amplification of all digital

And my current action plan rides like this:

Create a social media map for entity that manages social profiles for Lodi Silent Sports
Audit digital asset inventory for re-purposing
Develop geo tagging and keyword system for digital assets
Map 10 routes for each town in Columbia County
Map minimum of 1 route from each town to USBS 30
Document each route with pictures, video, article posted online

Results

This is an ongoing project and we have accomplished much this year. If you do some searches for Columbia County Biking, you can judge for yourself how we are appearing in search results under blogs, images and video. I have included my presentation given at the WI Counties Association Annual meeting where I presented.

Presentation on Slideshare:

How Social Media Can Help Biking in Columbia County WI

View more presentations from Wendy Soucie Consulting LLC | Business Focused Social Media Strategy

Monday, August 22, 2011

WisconsInnovation: Co-created Military Vehicle

WisconsInnovation: Co-created Military Vehicle

This article about Local Motors is pretty interesting. Jay Rogers, CEO of Local Motors got to meet with President Obama just before a conference I attended in Phoenix on CoCreation and Social Product Development. The point is that a flexible small microfactory made this military vehicle. Ultimately, Local Motors plans to have many small micro factories located in many urban areas to serve the needs and wants of customers and vehicle requirement in that geography. Case in point, while a dirt and sand optimized vehicle was designed for Arizona, the Boston vehicle design included electric and urban city driving features. One for our area in Wisconsin might include diesel fuel options as well. Keep and eye on Local-Motors.com and consider joining their community if you want to contribute to the thought leadership!

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Alan Bergstrom of Brand Insights talks about Disney Institute's Approach Programs

Disney Institute is bringing its renowned professional development program, Disney’s Approach to Quality Service, to Madison on August 30, 2010. Sponsored locally by Wendy Soucie Consulting the full-day event will give area professionals an opportunity to “experience the business behind the magic.” The program will be held at Monona Terrace Community & Convention Center and will give participants new ideas for creating a service-driven organization that delivers excellence.

Local Brand expert shares his opinion

I met with Alan Bergstrom one of the attendees from the program that was presented last year (Disney Institute - Keys to Excellence Program) here in Madison. Alan is the Principal and Chief Strategy Officer for Brand Insights, a brand-centered consulting agency focused on helping organizations “activate” and unleash the full power their brand to improve market success. Alan is a 20 year veteran of brand strategy and implementation working with clients of all types and categories to enhance brand performance. He is a nationally renowned expert with deep experience in positioning, operationalizing, measuring, and guiding brands to greatness. Previously, he founded and led one of the top three brand agencies in the US. I thought Alan would have a unique perspective on what information Disney offered at this program.

Alan was interested in attending this event because he is convinced that Disney is the recognized expert in delivering a compelling brand and customer experience. He wanted to learn more about the tools and approaches they used to do that. He knew he would learn something valuable with key take away to share with clients, use in his consulting practice and for himself personally.

Alan defined the significant points he learned at this events as follows:

#1 Happy employees make for happy customers - everything starts here.

#2 Engaging the emotions of your customers is a powerful aspect of delivering a great customer experience. This contributes most of all to a great experience

#3 Formalizing and institutionalizing a quality service approach to employee and customer engagement creates a culture of excellence within an organization. It takes a conscious effort to embed this within a culture for it to become second nature.

Here is Alan talking about how he feels about Disney: