“Every day is different, and that’s the real beauty of my job,” says Danielle McFadden, President and CEO of the Greater Lowell Chamber of Commerce.
Danielle first got involved with the organization as a member 10 years ago. Shortly after joining, she set a goal for herself to sit on the board. One year later, Danielle was elected to both the board of the Greater Chamber of Commerce and the Young Professionals of Greater Lowell.
“I attended events, I volunteered, I responded to emails and social media posts. I made myself an asset and both groups saw that and asked me to become a part of their team,” Danielle shares.
Five years ago, a full-time position opened up to work at the Chamber and she jumped on it.
Danielle now heads up a community that educates, advocates, and provides resources for small businesses across seven towns in the state of Massachusetts. “It’s a huge soapbox that levels the playing field for mom-and-pop shops and home-based businesses,” she says.
Between running events and creating content, Danielle spends a lot of time teaching her businesses about social media.
One of her go-to-tools is Bitly. “I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t using Bitly,” she says.
This week, we sat down to chat with Danielle about just how her and her team use Bitly to brand, track, and optimize their marketing efforts.
What does Greater Lowell Chamber of Commerce do?
We are a regional Chamber of Commerce with 600 members serving seven communities, including the fourth largest city in the state of Massachusetts.
Our mission is to provide opportunities for our members through education, marketing, networking and advocacy. A large part of this is through social media.
What does a typical day look like for you?
Some days we have events, other times I’m in the office getting things done. We host over 100 events a year as well as a weekly radio show and monthly TV show, so we’re pretty busy!
How do you use Bitly at Greater Lowell Chamber of Commerce?
The most obvious use is shortening our links to make them look more aesthetically pleasing.
A lot of times when I post content on Facebook or LinkedIn, I’ll want to use a photo along with the link. Bitly allows me to insert a link without it taking up the whole body of the post!
We also use Bitly to create custom URLs for all of our marketing materials, both online and offline.
Pulling In Sponsors
I always include a Bitlink in my email signature, and because of that I’ve been able to see that a lot of people click on my signature line. Recently, I was able to use this data as a sponsorship opportunity for our annual Business Expo conference.
Our 21st annual conference is coming up this year on October 18. I included a link to sponsor CircleHealth’s website in my email signature and was able to show them how much additional traffic I’ve driven to their site. It’s an easy, cost-effective way to provide extra value to our sponsors.
Testing & Tracking Facebook Giveaways
You may have come across looped giveaways on Instagram before. This is where a few influencers partner together to run a sweepstakes. They all post about the giveaway at the same time and drive followers to participate in three steps. You first like the post, follow the influencer, and then tap through on the influencer tagged in the photo to do the same on the next photo and so on until you close the loop by landing back on the original post.
In June, we started running these looped giveaways on Facebook. Since we hadn’t come across many looped giveaways on Facebook before, and weren’t sure how effective these campaigns were on the platform, we used Bitly to track the performance.
I gave each member a Bitlink, so we could see exactly how much traffic each individual was driving to the landing page. We were also able to see how much traffic the campaign generated at a macro level. The biggest spike in engagement was when we kicked off the contest on Monday, and then it slowed on Tuesday and rose again during our final push on Wednesday.
We started with eight members in this first campaign, but after seeing it really take off, we’ve since ran another with 11 members.
Boosting Productivity
I’m a big believer in not hopping on every site and spreading yourself thin across social channels.
Bitly helps me determine the place for us to spend our time. So I can see that Facebook is where we’re getting the most traffic. We’re also on Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter, but I’m focusing the most on Facebook because I can see in our Bitly dashboard that’s where most of our audience is engaging.
What does customer experience mean to you?
Great customer service is imperative.
Word-of-mouth used to be the best referral source but now with social media, people should be thinking about world-of-mouth. Customers have access to hundreds if not thousands of people through social networks. Bad customer service is magnified these days.
On the flip side, most people love raving about businesses or a brands they connect with or have had positive experiences with. A business can have brand ambassadors without even knowing it! That’s a powerful thing when it comes to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
What Bitly tips would you like to share with the community?
Use Bitly’s analytics along with insights and analytics from other sites. While social media channels have built-in dashboards, Bitly can help you see across all of these channels and determine the best places for you to be spending your time.
What are your predictions for digital marketing in 2017 and what do you have planned for the Lowell Chamber Of Commerce?
I see a lot more businesses getting comfortable with using video in 2017. When I first started at the Chamber, no one was using video. Facebook Live has a ton of potential and I’m excited to see what businesses do with the channel in the new year.
As for the Chamber, we’re always doing something new and exciting here. To kick off the year, we’re hosting a Young Pros Month for our Young Professionals Group in the month of January.
We’re also going to do a social media tip every day, similar to the Tuesday Tip series we currently run:
To check out what the Greater Lowell Chamber of Commerce does and more on how they use Bitly, be sure to follow them on Twitter.
