The URL can be used to link to this page

7.2. HRSR 06-03-2019 Request for Action To Item Number Housing and Redevelopment Authority 7.2 Agenda Section Meeting Date Prepared by General Business June 3, 2019 Colleen Eddy, Economic Development Specialist Item Description Reviewed by Marketing Update Amanda Othoudt, EDD Reviewed by Cal Portner, City Administrator Action Requested Item presented for information. Background/Discussion Informational Marketing Meetings: Staff is working with CEE to schedule two informational meetings this year. The meetings will be held at City Hall and will be advertised in the Star News and on social media sites. EDA/HRA Website: Staff is working with Golden Shovel Agency on news feed content. They increased social media posts and news articles regarding the housing and the rehabilitation loan program. The rehabilitation loan information and application are posted on the HRA website. Advertising/Ad Campaign: Staff is working with Star News to place a couple ads in upcoming editions. We are also working with the city’s communications department on an ad campaign which will start the first week of June. The ad campaign will include a logo created just for the Rehab Loan Program and will highlight specific items/projects homeowners will be able complete by utilizing Rehabilitation Loan Funds. Video: We are working with the cable coordinator and senior communications coordinator to update the HRA Rehabilitation Loan Program video which will be aired on the HRA website, the city’s YouTube page, and on social media. Staff is also working on a HRA video, which would promote the HRA and some of the projects it has accomplished over the years. Financial Impact Funding for marketing and advertising are included in the 2019 budget. Attachments  1st Quarter Google Analytics Report The Elk River Vision A welcoming community with revolutionary and spirited resourcefulness, exceptional service, and community engagement that encourages and inspires prosperity Prepared for City of Elk River Economic Development Quarterly Analytics Report Q1 2019 Golden Shovel Agency 43 East Broadway Street Little Falls, MN 56345 Phone: (320) 639-0110 Toll Free: (888) 266-4778 www.GoldenShovelAgency.com Confidential: This report is intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain confidential information. Any dissemination, distribution, copying, or other use of this document is strictly prohibited. Website: City of Elk River Economic Development | http://econdev.elkrivermn.gov ______________________________________________________________________________ Recent developments/upgrades to the Economic Gateway Platform 2019 started off strong for Golden Shovel and our development team has again been diligently working on making our websites better and easier for you to use. We have been listening to our clients requests and needs in order to provide them with new developments and updates that ensure security, enhance website’s capabilities, and improve site functionality. Our main focus has been to make our product better for you, building tools that are aligned with the latest trends in the industry, this way allowing you to increase efficiency, while at the same time helping to keep your website current and visually appealing for people that will be visiting your site. Our team has implemented highly valuable upgrades to our Economic Gateway Platform and as usual, they are all available to you at no charge. Some of the most relevant additions are: ●System Efficiency/Performance Improvements - Further implementation of the CDN to serve files (upon opt-in) were implemented. Functionality to minify files – which were previously uncompressed – without loss of edit-ability was built. Server logging was improved and further work on blocking unwanted requests to the server was completed. Performance testing and benchmarking was performed. ●Twitter cards- Upgrades were made to the News module to allow for the inclusion of information now required by Twitter in order to display rich 'cards' of website URLs included in tweets. ●Parent Page Template - It is useful for scenarios where you have organized a group of pages under a shared parent, but do not have any overview or summary text to provide for the parent page, or if you wish to supplement your overview text with information about the available subpages. The banner, page title, and an excerpt from the beginning of each child pages' main content is automatically included on the parent page. Demo: https://www2.economicgateway.com/demo/directories Golden Shovel Agency Groundbreaking Economic Development Communications Page 1 ●Residential Real Estate - A new module and template were built dedicated to showcasing Residential Real Estate information (separate from the Commercial Real Estate module). The template features a dynamic search form and grid layout of results with optional toggle to allow the user to switch to list view in order to see added information about the properties. The user can sort listings by age, sale price, lease price, location, and unit type. The detail page shows information about the property and all units listed as available for the listing (for multi-unit facilities). A public submission form is available for this module to allow the website audience to provide property listings for consideration. Demo: https://www2.economicgateway.com/demo/directories/commercial-real-estate/residential-real-estate Get in touch with our Gatekeeper team for more details about improvements available for your website and in the meantime, our development team will continue working on more developments and upgrades. Be on the lookout for these to take place and be implemented on your website! We have been here, there and everywhere! Our executive team was busy this quarter and attended interesting events traveling across the country and beyond. We are always staying on top of the best practices and new trends in the economic development industry so our clients have the most current information. Here is a brief list of events we attended: ●MEDC 2019 Legislative Conference https://www.magconline.org/default.aspx- Jackson, MS - Feb 6-7 ●Next Move Group's Day Conference - New Orleans, LA - Feb 28 ●2019 British Columbia Economic Summit - Richmond, BC, CAN - Mar 3-5 ●Telecom Executive Forum - Clearwater, FL - Mar 10-12 ●CALED's 39th Annual Training Conference - Anaheim, CA - Mar 26-29 We are gearing up for more exciting events this year 2019 and the next in our list is the 2019 SelectUSA Investment Summit (June 10-12, Washington, DC), the highest-profile event dedicated to promoting foreign direct investment (FDI) in the United States. It connects qualified foreign firms directly with U.S. economic development organizations to facilitate business investment and job creation. If you’re planning on attending as well, please let us know, it would be great to connect! Golden Shovel Agency Groundbreaking Economic Development Communications Page 2 Join our free webinars and learn from the experts. Technology evolves at lightspeed and we know sometimes is not easy to stay on top of all these changes, but there is no reason for you to miss out the latest innovations and trends in the industry. You can join our free expert webinars to learn about relevant topics, innovative strategies and upcoming technologies. This is a free resource available to you and your colleagues to hear and learn from experts in the economic development industry. The following are the sessions from first quarter and if you couldn’t join any of them, don’t worry, we got you covered and you can always access the recording here! ●Being Opportunity Zone “Investment Ready” - What does it mean and what a community can do to attract investments? Opportunity Zone’s have been the talk of the Economic Development world throughout 2018, most of the conversation to date has been targeted directly at private-sector investors and how individual corporations can utilize the program to meet their tax goals. Springsted’s Housing and Economic Development (HED) clients come only from the public and non-profit sectors. During this Opportunity Zone Webinar, the focus is what local development leaders can do to become “Investment Ready” and how to encourage projects that meet their community’s goals in 2019 and beyond. ●Using Social Media for Economic Development - Learn the basics of social media, channels, features and benefits, type of content and tips on social media best practices to increase engagement. Economic Development tips and tricks on how to effectively use social media for both business and industry attraction and community engagement. ●Attracting a Workforce for Community Needs - Recruit people to our city? Why should we focus on that over attracting businesses? These type of questions from critics rarely surface now. Almost every economic development organization, urban and rural (especially rural), has started realizing the need for workforce attraction. The three elements to successful workforce development—developing, attracting, and retaining skilled talent—require short- and long-term thinking among community partners. Golden Shovel Agency Groundbreaking Economic Development Communications Page 3 It’s time to sign up for our upcoming Free Expert Webinar! “Opportunity Zone - Marketing Your Zone For Development” Still have questions about what direction to take your opportunity zone marketing? Have questions in regards to finding the right investment, or creating an opportunity zone fund? Do you have the questions in regarding to building your community prospectus and getting it in front of the right people? Join Sam Howard, Project Specialist of Northeast Kentucky Development and Kirstie McPherson, Director of Marketing for Golden Shovel Agency for a webinar where they will focus on a variety of opportunity zone topics to help answer any remaining questions you have about the process. The webinar will be April 25th, 11:00 AM- 12:00 PM CDT and registration is free, but space is limited. Save your seat here! How is your website doing? Having the right metrics is a good first step, but having a solid website content strategy in place is critical in today’s digital landscape, because it will also help to reduce the time and effort investment you need to make for improving performance. A content strategy will help to guide your plans for the what, where and when of content creation. Don't make your content about you, make it about your audience. Think about the stories you love. There is always a reason those stories stand out from the rest, and mainly it will be because they engaged you. Don’t underestimate the power of social media, it is a great way to amplify your online presence...if you have a success story, share it with the world! At the end of the day, the whole point of reviewing data is to act on the real information you have that shows you which content gets the most visits, so you can learn what type of content works and what doesn’t. This allows you to focus on the type of content getting more visits, so you can analyze and review to make better decisions Golden Shovel Agency Groundbreaking Economic Development Communications Page 4 about how to leverage your marketing resources and boost your site engagement. A content strategy will help to guide your plans for the what, where and when of content creation. First quarter of the year started out strong for Golden Shovel. We have big plans for the rest of the year, and we’re looking forward to the remainder of 2019 continuing our success! The Golden Shovel Team. Metrics The following data and metrics will provide you with an overview of your website’s performance through Q1 2019 and they will be of help for you to make adjustments and improve results to get the most out of your website strategy. Golden Shovel Agency Groundbreaking Economic Development Communications Page 5 Golden Shovel Agency Groundbreaking Economic Development Communications Page 6 Most Visited Pages Visitors Acquisition Channels Visits by State and City (Top 10) Golden Shovel Agency Groundbreaking Economic Development Communications Page 7 Golden Shovel Agency Groundbreaking Economic Development Communications Page 8 Total Visitors : 559 New: 529 Returning: 30 Rank by Keywords ●Elk river economic development: #1 of 7,280,000 pages ●Elk river economic growth: # 1 of 3,700,000 pages 871 Followers (vs. 854 in Q4 ) 866 Likes ( 861 in Q4) 258 Followers (254 in Q4) Golden Shovel Agency Groundbreaking Economic Development Communications Page 9 Lead Forensics Golden Shovel Agency Groundbreaking Economic Development Communications Page 10 Golden Shovel Agency Groundbreaking Economic Development Communications Page 11 Post Details City of Elk River Economic Developms�" Published by Ceetee Clerk . May 29 at 2:46 PM Thinking about starting a remodeling project? You may qualify for a low interest loan through Elk River's Housing and Redevelopment Authority, Housing Rehabilitation Loan Program. This program assists owner - occupied single-family homeowners with financing to make improvements/repairs ranging from landscaping, siding, fences, garages, wiring, plumbing, basement finishes and so much more. With spring in the air, now is the time to give your property the spruce up it deserves! To learn more and to find out about qualifying improvements visit: httpJ/www.econdev.elMvermn.gov/.. Jhousing-rehabilitation-.. . F0 Performance sss 2 1_4�e&, Cola me 2 Liles 0 Comments 0 Shares 2 !Post Disks 0 Ph6lr) Views NEGATIVE FEEM 0 Hide Pajot 0 Repan effiis Spaf Reported stets