First Impressions Online Program

Jamie Bright Author

10/01/2024 Added

1 Plays

Description

Jason Tuller speaks on the First Impressions Online program offered by Rural Prosperity Nebraska (https://ruralprosperityne.unl.edu/first-impressions). First Impressions Online is an evaluation of your community’s online presence, focusing on online branding, accessibility, and website design. Recorded 9/13/2023.

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[00:00:00.000]Thank you.
[00:00:29.980]Thank you.
[00:00:59.960]Thank you.
[00:01:29.940]Thank you.
[00:01:59.920]Thank you.
[00:02:29.900]Thank you.
[00:02:41.360]Thank you.
[00:03:11.340]I cannot hear you, Jamie.
[00:03:12.840]Oh, I can hear you now, but you sound like a robot.
[00:03:22.500]How about this one?
[00:03:29.560]Oh, that's much better.
[00:03:31.160]Okay.
[00:03:32.260]Do a little troubleshooting first thing this morning.
[00:03:35.180]Let's go ahead and do introductions,
[00:03:39.320]though I'm still letting people,
[00:03:41.280]in.
[00:03:41.800]I think I know most of you on,
[00:03:46.560]but I'm Jamie.
[00:03:47.620]I am the rural prosperity,
[00:03:50.400]Nebraska educator in the Southern handle based out of the Sydney office.
[00:03:56.420]So I'm working from Kimball this morning and let's go around the room.
[00:04:02.420]Jason, I'll leave you until last,
[00:04:04.740]but how about Mary?
[00:04:06.940]Good morning, everyone.
[00:04:10.680]I'm Mary Emory and university of Nebraska Lincoln,
[00:04:13.980]and just had a chance to visit with Chelsea up there in Alliance.
[00:04:17.680]Mylon, you can go next.
[00:04:25.580]Thank you.
[00:04:26.940]Mylon wall.
[00:04:27.800]I'm with the heartland center for leadership development.
[00:04:30.480]Our office is in Lincoln.
[00:04:32.480]Thanks.
[00:04:35.020]Mylon.
[00:04:35.520]Ben.
[00:04:36.460]Good morning, everyone.
[00:04:39.480]I'm Ben Jewell,
[00:04:40.440]RPN educator based in Southeast Nebraska and the Otoe County extension
[00:04:44.340]office.
[00:04:44.780]Chelsea.
[00:04:47.480]Chelsea Harry and executive director of box beat development corporation
[00:04:54.740]serving Alliance and Nebraska and Hemingford.
[00:04:57.640]Excuse me.
[00:04:58.800]I'm exhausted this morning.
[00:05:02.180]I don't know about everyone else.
[00:05:03.600]Jason and I were at Husker harvest days all day yesterday.
[00:05:06.660]Maggie.
[00:05:09.780]Why don't,
[00:05:10.360]you introduce yourself.
[00:05:11.540]My name is Maggie Smith.
[00:05:16.920]I work with the Albion economic development corporation.
[00:05:19.400]I'll be in Nebraska.
[00:05:20.220]Thank you.
[00:05:22.280]Awesome.
[00:05:23.880]If you.
[00:05:26.300]Hello,
[00:05:27.060]my name is Tasha Jones under the shine County chamber of commerce here in
[00:05:30.040]Sydney.
[00:05:30.300]Thanks Tasha.
[00:05:32.140]Anthony.
[00:05:33.060]Hi everyone.
[00:05:35.340]I'm Anthony Girola with Twin Cities development community development
[00:05:39.060]specialist here.
[00:05:40.340]Jordan.
[00:05:42.740]Oh, Jordan Dietrich.
[00:05:45.920]I'm the executive director at twin city development in Western Nebraska.
[00:05:49.020]Thank you.
[00:05:50.820]Sarah.
[00:05:52.140]Cheryl Hyatt, Nebraska department of economic development,
[00:05:56.580]director of field operations.
[00:05:57.780]I cover the North central and my team covers the rest of the state
[00:06:02.800]business development.
[00:06:03.800]Thanks Cheryl.
[00:06:06.000]Marla.
[00:06:07.060]Marla March,
[00:06:09.340]USDA,
[00:06:10.220]rural development.
[00:06:10.960]I am a business program specialist covering the panhandle and.
[00:06:15.320]Some parts of the other state from North plat West.
[00:06:20.960]So they're still talking about where we're going to do our dividing
[00:06:25.380]lines.
[00:06:25.800]You're constantly shifting Marla.
[00:06:30.060]Yes,
[00:06:30.960]they are.
[00:06:31.380]Sally.
[00:06:34.260]Hi,
[00:06:38.280]I'm Sally sad.
[00:06:40.100]I'm the director of business services in Phelps County.
[00:06:43.560]Thank you,
[00:06:46.060]Sally.
[00:06:46.460]Stacy,
[00:06:48.480]if you could introduce yourself.
[00:06:50.760]I am Stacy Pafford.
[00:06:53.880]I'm the director of administrative services at Phelps County development
[00:06:57.220]corporation.
[00:06:57.880]Thanks Stacy.
[00:06:59.580]And Alicia,
[00:07:00.720]if you're back on.
[00:07:01.660]She might not be.
[00:07:04.820]She said,
[00:07:05.240]I don't have my camera on.
[00:07:07.260]Sorry.
[00:07:09.980]Go ahead,
[00:07:11.100]Alicia.
[00:07:11.440]I'm Alicia Juleps.
[00:07:13.740]I am the entrepreneur.
[00:07:15.580]Okay.
[00:07:17.220]Multitasking.
[00:07:17.980]Not my best today.
[00:07:19.140]Entrepreneurial navigator for Cheyenne County based in Sydney.
[00:07:23.380]Thank you.
[00:07:24.920]And Susie put in the chat.
[00:07:28.100]She is the city of Bassett economic development director interim.
[00:07:32.620]All right.
[00:07:35.120]Did I miss anyone besides Jason?
[00:07:36.860]I think I got everyone.
[00:07:39.860]Jason Tolar, my coworker with RPN will be our guest speaker today,
[00:07:45.740]talking about first impressions.
[00:07:48.620]He's based out of Hebron and covers kind of South central area.
[00:07:54.340]Jason, go ahead and add anything else you want to.
[00:07:57.980]Oh, that's it.
[00:08:00.860]That's all we got.
[00:08:02.140]No, I have a, I have a 10 county area that I cover in South central Nebraska.
[00:08:07.020]Um, I have 85 communities.
[00:08:09.740]That, that I keep in touch with.
[00:08:12.000]So, but I grew up in Western Nebraska.
[00:08:14.980]So having 85 communities in 10 counties kind of, it still just blows my mind.
[00:08:19.340]So I worked at an Imperial and we had, you know, four towns, four towns in the county.
[00:08:25.560]But anyways, we're here to talk about first impressions and we're doing all the first
[00:08:30.480]impressions, right?
[00:08:31.180]Jamie, you want to touch them all?
[00:08:33.320]If you don't mind, you can focus on web, but just mention the others.
[00:08:37.700]That's fine.
[00:08:39.620]Um, let me share the screen here.
[00:08:47.580]All right.
[00:08:49.580]You've seen the pamphlets?
[00:08:50.540]Yes.
[00:08:53.660]Okay.
[00:08:54.500]All right.
[00:08:55.060]Good.
[00:08:55.200]So we have three first impression programs and I'll probably spend most of my time talking
[00:09:01.160]about the online program.
[00:09:02.440]But we have three programs in extension right now.
[00:09:09.500]The peer-to-peer program, well, maybe I should back up and start with what is first impressions.
[00:09:15.620]So first impressions is just what it sounds like.
[00:09:19.780]When you meet somebody, you get a first impression, you know, maybe they're clean, maybe they're
[00:09:26.740]well-spoken, maybe they don't bathe.
[00:09:31.620]And we get these same first impressions from communities.
[00:09:35.660]Now, sometimes a community has.
[00:09:39.380]An odor, maybe the water has an odor, maybe the water is not drinkable.
[00:09:45.580]Maybe you come into town and, for example, one of the towns that I used to live in, you
[00:09:55.020]drive into town and the first thing you really see, you see industrial area and then you
[00:09:59.480]see a house and goats.
[00:10:01.340]And.
[00:10:03.060]Come in from that side of town.
[00:10:07.080]A lot of times.
[00:10:09.260]And those goats are there because they've been there, their grandfathered in, they outlawed
[00:10:14.760]having goats in town decades ago.
[00:10:17.180]But those goats have been there, not the same goats, but goats in general have been in that
[00:10:22.520]small pasture for decades at this point.
[00:10:26.020]And you just kind of forget that they're there.
[00:10:29.480]So or you forget that that's not normal for a community to have because it's normal for
[00:10:39.140]what you see and you see it every day when you drive into town.
[00:10:42.180]Oh, yeah, the goats are there.
[00:10:43.440]So first impressions programs are a way to have outside eyes come and look at your community
[00:10:50.860]to see what others may not see, to see what, you know, the community members have have
[00:11:00.280]forgotten or just ignore, because that's how it's always been.
[00:11:04.780]We have three programs.
[00:11:06.980]We have the professional program.
[00:11:09.020]Which is a program where we bring in a group of professionals.
[00:11:13.820]They probably spend the night and we have an extensive survey that they go through and
[00:11:18.700]they walk through your community.
[00:11:20.620]They spend money in your community.
[00:11:22.260]They spend the night in the community.
[00:11:24.760]They go around and ask questions and look at everything and they catalog it.
[00:11:29.060]There, you know, we have a thick paper survey.
[00:11:32.940]I think it's 75 pages or so of questions that they answer while they're visiting your
[00:11:38.500]community.
[00:11:38.900]Then, at the end, we compile that information and present it back to the community.
[00:11:45.860]Our market for these are communities that are prioritizing tourism.
[00:11:50.900]So maybe they have, you know, a lot of tourists come for a certain season or a time of the year.
[00:11:57.820]And this does, it does have a cost.
[00:12:01.460]It's $5,000.
[00:12:02.700]And that covers the travel for the specialists, some administrative fees.
[00:12:08.780]As well as it allows us to reimburse the spending.
[00:12:18.140]So they're spending the night, they're eating at a restaurant, maybe they're doing some
[00:12:21.660]tourist activities to get to know your community better.
[00:12:25.400]And those funds go to reimburse those costs.
[00:12:31.500]Our timeline is four to six months.
[00:12:33.520]It takes a long time to schedule to get those professionals out there.
[00:12:38.660]But to make everything work in this case, and to get the get the get the visit scheduled
[00:12:44.460]and get the get the paperwork finished and get the presentation back to the community.
[00:12:50.100]So who initiates these processes?
[00:12:51.780]Well, the city government does.
[00:12:54.880]Sometimes your tourism bureau does that or a chamber of commerce.
[00:12:58.160]So it'd be a community group who would contact the university and and schedule one of these
[00:13:03.800]things to get done.
[00:13:06.080]Our peer to peer program is a little bit different because we don't
[00:13:08.540]have professionals go.
[00:13:10.080]We have groups of people from each town go.
[00:13:14.020]So we would match up towns that are between 90 and 120 miles away from each other that
[00:13:19.380]have a similar population.
[00:13:22.640]And we would train the groups of people.
[00:13:24.820]So we take this group from Hebron and this group from, I don't know, from Imperial.
[00:13:32.500]And that's longer than 120 miles.
[00:13:34.780]But we would train these groups, we would give them the surveys that they would take
[00:13:38.420]with them.
[00:13:39.420]And then this group from Hebron would travel to Imperial, Imperial would travel to Hebron,
[00:13:45.260]maybe the same day, but probably not, and then do the survey review.
[00:13:53.080]This is for communities of 30 to 10,000 residents, much bigger than that.
[00:14:00.200]And it gets a little hard to visit everything and categorize everything for tourists.
[00:14:08.300]And both the professional and peer-to-peer have a little bit of online survey in them.
[00:14:16.360]But we survey in a way that we just tell people to search the way that they would search if they were going on vacation.
[00:14:24.320]So search for the things you want, use the search engines that you normally use.
[00:14:31.040]If you use Hotels.com, use that. And we don't try to get them to do an exhaustive reveal.
[00:14:38.180]So the peer-to-peer ends up costing about $1,500 and that doesn't go to the university.
[00:14:47.180]That is the cost of the sending that peer group to the other community because you don't want to put that cost on your people that are volunteers.
[00:14:56.180]So we ask that that money gets paid to the volunteers so that they are reimbursed for their time a little bit,
[00:15:03.180]as well as for their the expenses that they incur, whether it be a hotel room,
[00:15:08.060]or gas or food or visiting things. So the physical ones we do, we have, as I mentioned,
[00:15:16.060]we have extensive questionnaires that they go through and then we compile all that information and give it back to the community in a presentation.
[00:15:28.060]So the information comes back to the community and you can take it and you can then try to either try to fix it,
[00:15:37.940]fix an issue that that's been seen, or you can start accentuating the positives and try to really bring those things out in your community and market those to other communities.
[00:15:50.420]The online first impressions program is is a relatively new thing.
[00:15:56.660]I started with extension during covid, and that was one of the things that my new economic developer told me when she started was that when she was trying to search online,
[00:16:07.820]when she was coming to the community, everything was wrong and it was during covid.
[00:16:13.880]So everything was wrong anyways. But. She was trying to go shopping and she would look online,
[00:16:21.460]she would find the hours and she would go to the store and it'd be closed.
[00:16:25.880]And that happened to a lot of places in in Nebraska and throughout the nation is that hours were changing on a daily basis.
[00:16:34.820]Whether you could be open and closed was sometimes.
[00:16:37.700]Up to the local government. And nobody was updating their online thing, so you would go and you would find out that that they're closed.
[00:16:48.340]So she's like, give me something that can do this in this community.
[00:16:54.240]So over the next year or two, I worked on this program to develop the online first impressions.
[00:17:02.520]Now, this is also for communities of 30 to 10000 people.
[00:17:07.580]Even 10,000 people is probably too many for this program.
[00:17:14.240]We've piloted it in a couple of communities, and we found out that York is not quite 10,000
[00:17:24.400]people.
[00:17:25.400]We did it in York, and there's just too many things to talk about.
[00:17:32.300]There's too many hotels to check.
[00:17:36.220]It just became a lot.
[00:17:37.460]A lot of lists, and the information wasn't quite as good as we wanted it to be.
[00:17:45.760]So this is the same who initiates the process, the city government, Chamber of Commerce,
[00:17:50.640]tourism bureaus, economic development people.
[00:17:54.600]Those are the type of people that would give us a call and start one of these programs,
[00:17:58.620]but we're welcome to speak to anybody in the community, to give them ideas, to bring this
[00:18:05.260]to maybe a city council or a tourism board.
[00:18:07.340]If they want to bring something like this to our community, the cost for the online
[00:18:11.640]program is $300 and that covers the travel and the administration fees.
[00:18:19.200]So we'll have the, doing the online first impressions.
[00:18:24.980]We have an extensive survey that we do and we tell people, we don't tell them what browser
[00:18:30.960]to use, but we tell them to try a couple of different ones, we tell them what search engines
[00:18:37.220]to use, or we tell them to use Google, we tell them to use YouTube, or whatever they
[00:18:44.320]prefer for their videos or, and then we've got some social media things that we cover.
[00:18:49.940]And then the travel is actually for the extension educator who will go to that community and
[00:18:56.600]give the presentation about what we find.
[00:18:59.160]So let me, let me try this and see if I can get this on the right screen in the right
[00:19:04.200]place.
[00:19:07.100]I see a first impressions online PowerPoint.
[00:19:11.660]Okay, you see the PowerPoint and not the presentation.
[00:19:16.160]I see it in presentation mode now.
[00:19:19.220]So I got lots and lots of black squares, you'll probably be able to figure out what community
[00:19:24.520]is if you're familiar with it but I'm just trying to, to, to keep a little anonymity
[00:19:30.280]going here.
[00:19:32.280]And this is one that we actually just did on our own.
[00:19:36.980]And test the product.
[00:19:38.820]So we didn't ever talk to this community or give a presentation to them we were just using
[00:19:43.920]it to make sure that the survey, got us the information that we needed.
[00:19:48.160]And, and this information would be similar, but probably less than what you would get
[00:19:58.220]if you did it.
[00:19:59.480]If you did a peer to peer, or a one of the professional visits to your community.
[00:20:06.860]So, we do, we do talk about doing will have one extension educator do the survey on a
[00:20:17.360]computer and we'll get all the results from the computer and we'll have another extension
[00:20:21.660]educator, do the, do the survey with their phone.
[00:20:27.200]Because what information you get from your phone and what information you get from your
[00:20:31.100]computer are very very different.
[00:20:34.420]So and we'll see some of that here.
[00:20:36.740]And then I always put in there that some of the, some of the responses just because
[00:20:42.380]of aesthetics.
[00:20:44.160]Sometimes the websites really hit somebody and say oh this is an awesome website because
[00:20:47.740]it looks cool.
[00:20:49.400]And it just is in the eye of the beholder at that point.
[00:20:54.380]We'll skip some of these.
[00:20:59.080]So steps followed.
[00:21:00.080]We do a Google and a YouTube search on both phone and computer.
[00:21:06.120]We'll do a general search.
[00:21:06.620]We'll do a general assessment.
[00:21:09.080]We talk about-- and I'll just go through these later.
[00:21:15.760]And then in a reflection, we kind of go back and, say,
[00:21:19.500]give our overall views and some of the highlights
[00:21:21.620]of what we find during this presentation.
[00:21:25.900]So the reason why we use Google is
[00:21:28.260]that Google is now the largest search engine by far.
[00:21:34.260]92.6% of searches
[00:21:36.500]are on that.
[00:21:38.220]So we just kind of stick to Google.
[00:21:41.460]Because the other ones, there's no strong second in there.
[00:21:45.460]Bing's at 2.3, Yahoo's at 1.54.
[00:21:50.100]Baidu and Yandex are, I think, both based in China.
[00:21:55.940]But there's nobody at 40% or something.
[00:22:00.660]So yeah, lots of black squares on this one.
[00:22:04.220]But--
[00:22:06.380]So we do screenshots of what we find.
[00:22:10.100]And the reason why we do this is because I can get this screenshot off my computer.
[00:22:15.900]I live in Hebron.
[00:22:17.340]I may have never searched this community before,
[00:22:19.680]because we try to get the educators outside of the area.
[00:22:23.440]And when you're in the town, so when I'm in Hebron,
[00:22:29.020]and I search for my chiropractor's phone number, well, Google knows that I searched
[00:22:36.260]for that about once every two weeks, and he puts his phone number right up at the top,
[00:22:40.880]and this is the first one, because Google knows that's what I searched for.
[00:22:45.360]And so over time, your local search results become very,
[00:22:50.500]very narrowed down to you, to your specific needs.
[00:22:56.200]And so if a tourist is driving through town, they're not going to see what you see.
[00:23:01.160]They're going to see a kind of a unique view
[00:23:06.140]of what a new person would see in your community.
[00:23:08.220]So that's what we try to give you in the point of view as -- for this online service.
[00:23:14.100]So as you can see, we kind of get --
[00:23:17.220]Uh-oh, it looks like we lost Jason.
[00:23:24.460]Let me try to get him back.
[00:23:36.020]While we're waiting for him, I saw Marla asked a question in the chat about how we
[00:23:56.120]select the professionals for the professional version, and that's actually a program that's
[00:24:02.620]run by one of the professors at the university.
[00:24:05.900]And I know she's in charge of selecting those professionals, but I am not sure how
[00:24:12.820]she chooses who goes out to those communities.
[00:24:15.540]I think she tries to pick a variety of people, some who focus on hotels, some on restaurants,
[00:24:25.460]some on other tourist attractions, just to get kind of an overview of the community.
[00:24:35.780]Does anyone have questions while we're waiting?
[00:24:49.620]Just out of curiosity, has anybody
[00:25:05.660]ever participated in a project like that?
[00:25:09.060]So it could be new and different.
[00:25:18.380]That's why I asked the question.
[00:25:19.780]I think that would be a fun thing to do.
[00:25:22.980]It'd be fun to be the reviewer.
[00:25:24.420]It's fun even to do the online ones, Marla.
[00:25:26.980]I've enjoyed them.
[00:25:28.100]I discovered a new coffee shop in Gothenburg that I really like.
[00:25:35.540]It's open until about 5:00.
[00:25:38.760]It depends when I'm traveling, if I can hit it or not.
[00:25:45.200]Yeah, we play Gothenburg Friday, so I was like, "How late's it open?"
[00:25:50.140]You have to make it down there sometime.
[00:25:54.060]I'll need coffee to get home.
[00:26:01.920]Jason says he's trying to get back on.
[00:26:05.420]There's also a version of this that Wisconsin has used where they get a youth group to kind
[00:26:13.660]of do the First Impressions project, so they could do it at a neighboring community, or
[00:26:19.620]each group could go to a neighboring community, or sometimes they just like the kids to do
[00:26:24.880]it in their own community, and that's getting them to take pictures of places they think
[00:26:30.700]people would like to visit or where they think the community is welcoming.
[00:26:35.300]Those kind of things and seeing your community through the eyes of young people can sometimes
[00:26:40.100]be really interesting and give you great ideas for change, too.
[00:26:44.680]Jason's back!
[00:26:45.840]There you go.
[00:26:48.200]Except you're muted.
[00:26:53.220]Okay.
[00:26:55.160]I am back.
[00:26:57.920]So I'm not exactly sure what happened, but I think my whole Internet went down.
[00:27:05.180]So what did you guys talk about?
[00:27:07.380]Mary was going on about kids and doing a search.
[00:27:11.340]I was talking about Wisconsin's version.
[00:27:15.300]Okay.
[00:27:16.300]Okay.
[00:27:17.300]Okay.
[00:27:18.300]A first impression.
[00:27:19.300]And I think that -- so Dr. Kristin Malik is the one that does the peer-to-peer and online
[00:27:26.300]or peer-to-peer and professional.
[00:27:28.940]And she did also talk about that in her presentation, that they do have some specific features.
[00:27:35.060]Questions and information that they have students fill out as well.
[00:27:40.340]So they may have college students visit your community to help with those things.
[00:27:46.520]Let me see if we can get back to screen share.
[00:27:51.740]Okay.
[00:27:52.740]So the computer searches, we just give screenshots of what we find.
[00:28:00.780]And then the phone, we give phone screenshots as well.
[00:28:04.940]And it's significantly different.
[00:28:08.820]A lot of times on your phone search, you don't get past the Google.
[00:28:17.880]So Google search will give you websites on a computer, but on a phone, it's giving you
[00:28:23.540]links to Google sites.
[00:28:27.160]And so if you've got a lot of businesses that haven't claimed their Google site, tourists
[00:28:34.260]may not be getting that.
[00:28:34.820]They may not be getting anything on their phone about those businesses because Google
[00:28:38.640]is filling in that phone search with their specific sites.
[00:28:43.420]So it's just something that we talk to communities about to watch out for.
[00:28:48.380]So online presence, then we talk about the little, the websites that we find, the top
[00:28:55.780]ones.
[00:28:56.140]And you can see in here, you know, ones blocked out, that's their city website, comes up
[00:29:04.700]first.
[00:29:05.080]Wikipedia comes up.
[00:29:06.900]Wikipedia, you can become an editor on that and edit your own Wikipedia page to make that
[00:29:14.800]more useful.
[00:29:15.620]Nebraska tourism comes up, highly ranked page.
[00:29:20.480]And then this one blew our minds when we started doing these searches, MapQuest, top search.
[00:29:28.260]I didn't even know MapQuest still existed, but it does.
[00:29:32.200]And it comes up very highly rated.
[00:29:34.580]It's really a really painful website to use, but that comes up pretty quick, both phone and on the computer.
[00:29:46.560]YouTube searches.
[00:29:49.080]So this is one that's actually kind of fun sometimes.
[00:29:53.160]is to search for your community online.
[00:29:55.910]And what happens is that visitors to your community
[00:30:01.450]make videos and post them online
[00:30:03.770]and you cannot control what they say
[00:30:06.630]or what they look like.
[00:30:07.630]York has some of the,
[00:30:11.550]a couple of the top videos in York
[00:30:13.570]are from a guy who has a dash cam
[00:30:17.890]and he drove through town.
[00:30:20.930]Literally no words in the entire video.
[00:30:24.210]It is just him driving along the highway.
[00:30:27.870]It's like 20 minutes long.
[00:30:29.290]So painful to watch.
[00:30:31.250]I'm familiar with York
[00:30:33.430]and I couldn't recognize it
[00:30:34.650]because the camera is on the dotted yellow lines.
[00:30:38.730]So everything is kind of fish eyed out.
[00:30:41.070]It's, oh, it's horrible.
[00:30:43.890]And then the second video
[00:30:46.190]and like the third video
[00:30:47.570]are both realtor videos
[00:30:49.250]from trying,
[00:30:50.910]trying to sell a missile silo
[00:30:52.990]that's right outside of York.
[00:30:54.130]So they don't really have a lot of
[00:30:56.750]videos online
[00:30:59.590]saying that their community is good
[00:31:01.330]or saying that there's fun things.
[00:31:03.630]It's just videos that other people have made
[00:31:06.930]that mention York or about York.
[00:31:10.290]But you can make your own
[00:31:12.890]YouTube channel
[00:31:15.370]or have a contest or something
[00:31:17.590]to get videos that
[00:31:19.050]show the good things
[00:31:20.370]about your community
[00:31:21.210]rather than just having somebody drive through
[00:31:23.230]and make random observations
[00:31:27.370]about your town.
[00:31:28.470]So in this one that I'm showing here,
[00:31:33.090]the videos were positive,
[00:31:34.750]several in-depth videos.
[00:31:37.190]We give some improvement for suggestions.
[00:31:40.890]Shorter videos are the thing right now.
[00:31:43.770]And so if all of your videos
[00:31:46.310]are 15 or 20 minutes long
[00:31:48.050]that talk about your community,
[00:31:49.830]they're probably too long.
[00:31:50.830]Just a couple minutes here and there are good.
[00:31:55.290]We give you some stats about the internet usage.
[00:32:00.590]You know, the growth rate of YouTube channels,
[00:32:03.470]75% increase year over year.
[00:32:06.710]So it's still a giant growing media platform.
[00:32:12.350]So here we do a Facebook search
[00:32:17.630]and a Twitter search.
[00:32:19.290]And we just kind of see.
[00:32:22.390]Sometimes we find positive stuff.
[00:32:25.430]Sometimes there are Facebook pages
[00:32:28.470]that are open to the public
[00:32:29.890]complaining about your community.
[00:32:31.450]And that's all they do is just complain.
[00:32:34.730]So it's a good idea to search those things
[00:32:38.510]and to see what is going on.
[00:32:41.050]Because in the people attraction realm,
[00:32:48.750]now the first place people look
[00:32:52.490]to find your community is online.
[00:32:54.610]They're not getting a first impression
[00:32:56.550]from visiting your community.
[00:32:58.710]They're getting their first impression online first.
[00:33:01.990]And then from there, they decide whether or not
[00:33:05.010]they're going to stop in your community.
[00:33:06.290]So if all they find on Facebook
[00:33:09.890]is that your community is horrible, nasty place,
[00:33:14.490]they're going to move on and look at the next community
[00:33:17.130]to see if they can find one
[00:33:18.210]that doesn't have some of the complaints.
[00:33:20.130]But it's something to keep an eye on.
[00:33:22.610]Twitter highlights, we go on Twitter,
[00:33:25.890]we go on Instagram to just kind of see what we find.
[00:33:31.390]Sometimes it's, you know, certain towns,
[00:33:36.730]all you can find is storm watchers,
[00:33:38.510]tornadoes, hail, things like that.
[00:33:43.390]There's really nothing about the community.
[00:33:45.210]But depending...
[00:33:47.390]Depending on your town name,
[00:33:49.750]you may get different countries involved.
[00:33:53.290]This one, there's a town with the same name in Sweden.
[00:33:57.590]So we got some Swedish results on Twitter.
[00:33:59.870]So that was kind of interesting.
[00:34:02.890]Let me see.
[00:34:05.130]We do look at places of worship.
[00:34:07.950]We look at grocery shopping, availability, hotels, hospitals, employment.
[00:34:11.770]We kind of zoom in on a Google map and see what pops up.
[00:34:17.710]You know, this one's got a museum, Orchlands, McDonald's, and Pizza Hut.
[00:34:22.210]That's all that comes up on your phone.
[00:34:23.770]But then when you come into the map on the computer, a lot more things pop up.
[00:34:30.890]But if you're driving I-80 and all you see is a Pizza Hut at McDonald's,
[00:34:37.030]and that's not what you want to eat at,
[00:34:39.270]you don't realize that maybe there's a sit-down restaurant right here
[00:34:43.550]that didn't come up on your phone.
[00:34:45.830]And that maybe if you zoom in, but this is not a very big town,
[00:34:51.030]so you might not even think to zoom in to find something else.
[00:34:54.870]So working with Google to get those places pinpointed
[00:34:59.710]and kind of working the algorithms of Google,
[00:35:05.150]you have to play their game a little bit.
[00:35:07.670]We actually have people go to Janelle Anderson-Ehrke to go to Grow Nebraska,
[00:35:13.690]and she will help your small businesses for free work on their Google listing.
[00:35:19.770]So that's something that we recommend them to do just to get those things on there
[00:35:27.370]so that people don't drive by.
[00:35:29.350]And then we go into different scenarios.
[00:35:32.550]And this is just kind of to help people get their mind around doing things.
[00:35:37.430]Oh, my mouse is going crazy.
[00:35:41.570]And so we kind of, from the data that we've received, we drop it into these, like a tourist
[00:35:51.910]category.
[00:35:52.470]And I just asked the searchers, hey, if you were going to stay here, how long would you
[00:35:57.570]stay?
[00:35:57.810]How long, what kind of time would you spend there?
[00:36:00.110]A half day, overnight, two to three days.
[00:36:04.030]And so sometimes I say, well, if I was going to do everything, I'd stay a day.
[00:36:11.290]But sometimes they look at it and go, I don't think I'd stay here at all.
[00:36:15.790]There's just nothing to do.
[00:36:17.350]And it may be true, or it may be that the things to do aren't appropriately put on the
[00:36:26.730]web so that it doesn't look like there's anything to do.
[00:36:30.310]But actually, if you walk downtown, we've got five different antique stores, but none
[00:36:36.850]of them have websites.
[00:36:37.830]So that's kind of the feedback that we...
[00:36:41.270]That we're trying to give back to communities.
[00:36:43.270]You know, both on the phone and internet or on the computer said that they would go to
[00:36:49.570]this restaurant from the websites.
[00:36:51.890]Must stop retail.
[00:36:54.770]Phone found nothing that they wanted to stop at.
[00:36:58.110]Computer found this place.
[00:36:59.390]So that's another one of those issues that you just need to be aware of, that sometimes
[00:37:11.250]this place didn't show up on the phone.
[00:37:13.590]So, and then we list what we found.
[00:37:17.490]But we found the restaurants, we found the computer, and you look, and we are just listing
[00:37:23.550]them, the first one, second one, third one, it's not a ranking.
[00:37:26.230]These are what we found in a list order.
[00:37:29.010]So, number one on the phone was number seven on the computer.
[00:37:34.750]You know, kitchen.
[00:37:41.230]McDonald's was six, nine, Subway, Pizza Hut, Champ's Chicken wasn't on here at all.
[00:37:53.210]So, it just kind of depends on how you're looking.
[00:37:59.050]Motels, bed and breakfast.
[00:38:04.950]So, this one showed up, and it's in red because it's not in the town that we looked at.
[00:38:11.210]It's in a neighboring town.
[00:38:13.890]When we looked at York, I think the number three hotel that showed up was in Minnesota.
[00:38:21.670]So, sometimes you can contact Google to try to get that fixed, or just make sure that the websites in the town are making sure that they're doing what Google wants so they get higher in the rankings.
[00:38:41.190]So, Airbnb is something that you search as well.
[00:38:44.250]There are five Airbnb listings in this community, including a Ford Aerostar van in a field that is the number one rated Airbnb in that community.
[00:38:58.190]Go stay in a van.
[00:39:00.650]Yeah.
[00:39:02.490]Some people are different than others.
[00:39:05.590]I would not stay in a van.
[00:39:07.690]Well, pay money to stay in a van.
[00:39:11.170]Retail shopping.
[00:39:15.190]Same thing.
[00:39:18.050]Let me see.
[00:39:18.870]Like one classy kiddos, number nine on the phone, number one on the computer.
[00:39:22.790]Dollar General ranks really high on the computer and the phone.
[00:39:26.710]So right here, the stories gathering place was the one stop on the computer that they said they would stop at.
[00:39:35.650]Did not show up on the phone at all.
[00:39:38.210]So.
[00:39:41.150]Just kind of things to to keep in mind in the community.
[00:39:43.690]Tourist attractions.
[00:39:45.070]We got five on the phone and we got seven on the computer.
[00:39:50.130]Let me see feedback on the community and we kind of list these things of things we may not have found.
[00:39:59.150]So there's no laundromat.
[00:40:02.070]Sometimes there is a laundromat, but there's just no website because locals know where the laundromat is.
[00:40:08.510]So you don't you don't need to.
[00:40:11.130]Have a website. Well.
[00:40:12.030]A lot of times, like when I moved to Hebron here, I needed a laundromat.
[00:40:18.850]And.
[00:40:20.290]When you move to somewhere and you're living in a hotel, you need to have the laundromat available.
[00:40:26.570]And that's something that that new people to the community need.
[00:40:29.990]So they look it up online.
[00:40:31.190]No commercial airline, which is.
[00:40:33.750]We talk about public transportation or trains, jobs.
[00:40:39.150]We look at the jobs.
[00:40:41.110]So three thousand seven hundred and thirty four jobs on the phone.
[00:40:45.430]Well, I yeah, that's a mistake.
[00:40:48.170]You have to narrow it in on the.
[00:40:51.750]On the phone, it's much more difficult to select a community to search for jobs.
[00:40:59.410]We talk about having salaries listed.
[00:41:03.070]And I just throw this in here.
[00:41:05.850]The average starting salary for in 2020 and wages have gone up significantly
[00:41:11.090]since 2020 average starting salary for a new bachelor's degree in the United
[00:41:16.070]States was 55,260.
[00:41:18.550]So that's average. So some are above some are below.
[00:41:23.590]Okay. One of the things we ask is anything open past 11 and as an adult,
[00:41:32.870]I'm like 11. I'm that's bedtime. But as a college kid.
[00:41:41.070]College students or people recently out of college are looking for things
[00:41:45.870]open past that time. They may or may not go to them ever.
[00:41:50.010]But they like to have the option.
[00:41:53.870]So grocery stores, we talk about it because it's it's having a grocery
[00:42:03.230]store is really important for a community.
[00:42:04.850]Websites are sometimes not super great for for grocery stores, but we make sure
[00:42:11.050]they have one.
[00:42:11.710]You know, 10 churches were found.
[00:42:14.790]Some of them didn't have a complete address or a phone number online.
[00:42:19.550]So you couldn't.
[00:42:20.170]Somebody moving into town or wanting to check on service times, they couldn't
[00:42:25.530]call.
[00:42:25.990]And if you don't have a complete address, you can't even drive by to look at
[00:42:31.510]the sign.
[00:42:31.970]There are only four homes in the community between seventy five and one
[00:42:37.370]hundred thousand dollars.
[00:42:41.030]And they did have some apartments.
[00:42:43.010]They had one commercial building for sale.
[00:42:44.850]They did have a school.
[00:42:46.470]We had a community calendar that we found on the chamber website.
[00:42:51.590]They had a lot of parks.
[00:42:54.230]So feedback on the community.
[00:42:57.030]So middle aged family.
[00:42:58.150]So one hundred thousand to one hundred and fifty thousand, we found four
[00:43:03.810]homes available, zero in one hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand.
[00:43:07.170]And we found one on the phone for over two hundred thousand and
[00:43:11.010]only four on the computer.
[00:43:12.090]So this is indicative of many how many housing situations in Nebraska.
[00:43:18.150]So there's just not a lot of houses on the market, which is difficult
[00:43:22.770]for people moving to town.
[00:43:24.070]There's just not a lot of choice.
[00:43:25.730]So volunteers opportunities.
[00:43:29.290]So you could find them if you search individually, but there was no list
[00:43:35.990]with contact information and for somebody that moves into a community
[00:43:40.990]and they want to get connected and they're proactive, they're looking
[00:43:44.990]for a list and somebody to call.
[00:43:47.010]And if your community doesn't offer that, it's a missed opportunity.
[00:43:51.870]So we check hospitals, senior housing, those type of things.
[00:44:00.270]Okay.
[00:44:02.390]So this is an example of a bad website or social media page that we give.
[00:44:10.970]This is a Facebook post that I found and it's a Father's Day post.
[00:44:16.950]They misspell Father's Day.
[00:44:18.430]They misspell for located in Beatrice.
[00:44:25.610]Beatrice is a very large town.
[00:44:29.990]Well, in my mind, I'm from Western Nebraska.
[00:44:32.910]I still have no idea where this place is or what the name is.
[00:44:38.530]The post is posted by a person.
[00:44:40.950]You click on them and it goes to their personal page.
[00:44:43.830]There's nothing about the business.
[00:44:45.390]There's no phone number.
[00:44:46.890]So it's just a posting of stuff that might be for sale.
[00:44:52.810]I guess you could drive around and look for the Bigfoot.
[00:44:55.830]But yeah, so make sure that Facebook posts have the basics.
[00:45:02.330]Google review gone bad.
[00:45:05.810]So everybody, every business,
[00:45:10.930]has a Google page.
[00:45:12.110]Google has found you and they put that business up there.
[00:45:15.270]And so people can give reviews to that business,
[00:45:19.130]whether or not the business knows that.
[00:45:21.130]They talk about having the floor redone.
[00:45:28.210]There's problems.
[00:45:29.330]There's a drop off.
[00:45:30.910]Flooring completely removed in tough shape.
[00:45:35.630]They're not sure if it's mold.
[00:45:38.090]This is a review, a one-star review,
[00:45:40.910]that if the person has claimed their Google page,
[00:45:44.710]they could go in there and they could respond to that and say,
[00:45:48.430]hey, you know what?
[00:45:51.070]You visited while we were remodeling the floor.
[00:45:53.470]Come in today and the floor is done.
[00:45:56.610]It's clean.
[00:45:57.350]There's no four-inch drop.
[00:45:59.410]We fixed everything that you complained about.
[00:46:01.970]We're sorry that you hit it on the day that we were in construction.
[00:46:06.470]Really quick, really easy way to get that
[00:46:10.890]review, at least have a response on the review.
[00:46:14.270]So we really kind of push people to do those.
[00:46:18.250]We have an awards page for the best websites that we found when we're searching.
[00:46:25.470]We kind of reflect on some things, some inclusiveness.
[00:46:30.670]It's hard to show on a website, but if you're
[00:46:40.870]in a community that's 40 or 50% Hispanic and we've done this search
[00:46:45.810]and we find zero pictures of Hispanic people on the website,
[00:46:50.290]then there's a web problem
[00:46:54.550]that we have found. We ask what intrigued you the most.
[00:46:59.970]Information. Was it accessible?
[00:47:04.450]And then we ask if it negatively or positively changed their view
[00:47:10.850]on the community. Because sometimes websites are great and they're like,
[00:47:14.630]oh yeah, I'm going to visit. Or sometimes they're bad and they're like, I was going to visit, but now I'm not.
[00:47:18.650]Overall coordinated brand message.
[00:47:22.670]So are you seeing each, maybe
[00:47:26.710]the chamber or the town has a logo
[00:47:30.750]or a name. Is that being used consistently throughout the community or is it
[00:47:34.870]just the chamber that uses that and nobody else has picked up on it?
[00:47:40.830]Websites, social media.
[00:47:43.830]So next steps. What can we do on our own?
[00:47:48.390]We just give them some ideas of what can happen next.
[00:47:52.170]And then give them ideas of who to
[00:47:56.850]contact in Q&A.
[00:47:59.790]So there we go. That was a fire hose of information about
[00:48:04.870]first impressions online. But all of that
[00:48:08.890]is translated
[00:48:10.810]to the in-person stuff. But instead of using a computer
[00:48:14.930]or a phone, we use our feet. And we go to those communities and we
[00:48:18.790]answer those very similar questions about what we see physically.
[00:48:22.270]So what kind of questions do you guys have
[00:48:26.390]if you're awake still?
[00:48:30.110]One question Marla had earlier, Jason,
[00:48:34.790]that I wasn't sure about. Do you know how Kristen chooses
[00:48:38.470]who does the professional review?
[00:48:40.790]I do not. Like the people who go to the community?
[00:48:47.790]Yes.
[00:48:49.790]No, I don't know how she does that.
[00:48:51.790]I didn't either.
[00:48:53.790]I know she has some students,
[00:48:55.790]but I also know she has some professors
[00:48:58.790]or other professionals they go to.
[00:49:05.790]Other questions for Jason? Or is this something
[00:49:10.770]your town might be interested in doing?
[00:49:12.770]I know Kendra and Tasha sounded like they might be interested
[00:49:15.770]in it for Sydney.
[00:49:18.770]And this is something that you can get grants for,
[00:49:22.770]either like sometimes the Nebraska Community Foundation,
[00:49:27.770]the local grants, or there is tourist money from the state
[00:49:32.770]that can be used for lease as well.
[00:49:35.770]You have to hit the right season when they've got the grants
[00:49:37.770]open and things, but this is one of those things that can be
[00:49:40.750]used for.
[00:49:49.750]Tasha says, what are the best next steps for a community
[00:49:53.750]to get started?
[00:49:55.750]Should they contact their local educator or you or both?
[00:50:00.750]So the ones that we have done usually start with the contact
[00:50:04.750]with the local educator from Rural Prosperity Nebraska.
[00:50:10.730]So if you have a community that you are interested in,
[00:50:14.730]you can reach out to them.
[00:50:20.730]It would be Jamie for like half the state.
[00:50:22.730]Feels like it sometimes.
[00:50:26.730]But I don't have as many communities as you do.
[00:50:29.730]Yeah.
[00:50:31.730]So, you know, contact Jamie.
[00:50:33.730]Contact me.
[00:50:35.730]Ben is on here as well.
[00:50:37.730]He's in southeast Nebraska.
[00:50:40.710]And he's in the state of Wisconsin.
[00:50:42.710]So we're still missing RPN educators in parts of the state while we're trying to fill those spots.
[00:50:49.710]So if you just go in your local extension office, if you don't know who your RPN educator is, they can direct you to someone.
[00:50:58.710]Or email one of us and we'll let you know.
[00:51:03.710]Jason, I'm going to put your email, both of our emails in the chat.
[00:51:10.690]Any other questions?
[00:51:15.690]Is the red carpet part of any of this?
[00:51:18.690]That's part of our people attraction group, kind of separate from first impressions.
[00:51:26.690]Do your sales pitching.
[00:51:30.690]Many of you, well, some of you have done red carpet service already.
[00:51:35.690]It's a great customer service training that we offer for frontline businesses.
[00:51:40.670]So if you want to participate, you can do that.
[00:51:43.670]But we encourage hotels, restaurants, and gas stations to send their employees to learn how to give good directions and provide a positive impression of the community to visitors instead of saying no, there's nothing to do in town or not directing people well to attractions in the community.
[00:52:04.670]We are about to do another one in Cheyenne County in two weeks, I think.
[00:52:10.650]Yes, September 27.
[00:52:16.650]It's always fun to get people to try to give directions without using landmarks.
[00:52:22.650]Most people don't pay attention to street signs.
[00:52:27.650]Exactly. If they live in the community.
[00:52:30.650]Okay, there's no more questions for Jason, we can go around and do updates.
[00:52:40.630]If anyone has events or information they want to share.
[00:52:44.610]No one?
[00:52:55.610]Jamie, I have something.
[00:52:57.610]Go ahead, Marla.
[00:52:58.610]There is a phase two of the meat and poultry expansion program this afternoon.
[00:53:10.610]There is a webinar on that.
[00:53:12.610]So if anybody would like to have that link, you can either contact me or you can go to Google USDA meats and go to the events tab.
[00:53:27.610]And that will be on there.
[00:53:29.610]I tried to send that out to a lot of people, but I may have missed people.
[00:53:33.610]But just in case you're someone who has someone looking for some funding for meat processing.
[00:53:40.590]And you're looking for some sort of meat processing equipment.
[00:53:43.590]That one I think goes up to $5 million.
[00:53:47.590]I think is the maximum on this one, this round.
[00:53:53.590]Do you want to mention the farm to school meetings. Yeah, yeah thanks I was going to mention that. So, extension with Nebraska Department of Education we are hosting a couple events out in the western part of the state in October, so on October 18 we
[00:54:10.570]will be hosting the farm to school meetings. And then October 19 we will be in Scott's Bluff. So this is kind of part of a larger effort that's funded by the USDA to build a statewide farm to school network.
[00:54:21.570]And so, on the 18th and alliance, we will be kind of focuses kind of good follow up to what Marla was talking about because we're kind of focused on that particular day on getting some local meat products into school cafeteria so Nebraska beef into schools.
[00:54:40.550]And so, on the 18th and alliance, we will be kind of focused on that particular day on getting some local meat products into schools.
[00:55:10.530]And so, on the 18th and alliance, we will be kind of focused on that particular day on getting some local meat products into schools.
[00:55:40.510]And so, on the 18th and alliance, we will be kind of focused on that particular day on getting some local meat products into schools.
[00:56:10.490]Two things. WNCC is doing both a college and career fair for people in the health care field or interested in the health care field on October 5th from four to seven at the harms building.
[00:56:23.310]And then also career connections is in the middle of doing our teen opportunity surveys in the 11 counties of the panhandle, which is 23 school districts.
[00:56:32.350]We've gotten 1500 responses so far. Our group was looking through some of those results this week.
[00:56:40.470]It's really, really interesting data to see what the high school and middle school students are saying in our area as far as if they want to stay rural, what industries they're interested in, those kinds of things.
[00:56:52.370]So we're still working through that. We have probably like six or seven schools that haven't started the survey yet, but we should be getting those results done here soon.
[00:57:00.890]And then we will do a, for anyone interested, we'll do a presentation about all the results for the surveys for Western Nebraska.
[00:57:10.450]Sometime later this month or early October.
[00:57:12.710]Thank you, Jordan.
[00:57:15.550]Jamie, do you have someone lined up for October?
[00:57:19.650]I was thinking about doing something on the vacant property registration act, but I haven't found anyone who wants to speak yet. So if you have other suggestions, I'm open to that.
[00:57:32.050]Do you want to do a career connections? That's what I was just going to ask if Jordan.
[00:57:37.430]Yeah, we could do a career connections.
[00:57:40.430]Something like that and have Craig join us. That could work.
[00:57:44.290]Okay. Sounds good.
[00:57:47.150]So stay tuned for October 11th. We will talk about the results from our survey for career
[00:57:58.110]connections. Yeah, honestly, that would be sweet because that would work out well because we would
[00:58:02.410]probably have our results. So that would work out really well. Did you set the dates for the career
[00:58:10.410]because sorry, I had to slip off. No, the dates haven't been set yet. Okay.
[00:58:14.530]And then Jamie, would Bobby give a presentation, pet it
[00:58:22.710]on the vacant registry? Maybe. Five rule? Ask. I haven't reached out to her yet.
[00:58:32.430]I was talking to, well, I sent an email to three different city administrators and one replied
[00:58:40.390]and said he was new enough, even though their community does the program, he didn't think he
[00:58:45.230]could speak to it. And the other two haven't replied. Okay.
[00:58:48.410]That's a good idea. I know some of the people on here were the ones who sent me names because
[00:58:57.650]their communities do have this program, but most of ours in the panhandle haven't done anything
[00:59:03.130]like that yet. Yeah. We're in the process.
[00:59:10.370]Anything else?
[00:59:14.930]Oscar Harvest Days is still going on if anyone wants to make it over to Wood River. It was my
[00:59:25.230]first time attending yesterday and it was fun, even though I was just at the booth all day.
[00:59:30.350]But my husband walked around and enjoyed himself.
[00:59:33.910]All right.
[00:59:40.350]Well, have a good rest of your day, everyone.
[00:59:41.970]Thank you, Jamie.
[00:59:44.390]Thanks.
[00:59:45.110]Thanks.

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