Chamber to hold seminar

The Maryville Chamber of Commerce is working to help local business owners with their multimedia marketing options.

Area entrepreneurs will speak about their successes and offer ideas to help local business owners boost their media potential.

Lily E. White, executive director of the chamber said focusing on the economic numbers of Maryville, they track just how much money is leaving Maryville in one way or another.

“We saw a large amount of money being spent on the internet, which is not a surprise,” she said. “Everybody’s on the internet, every second of every day now. With losing J.C. Penney; with losing some of our retail, we’re getting a lot of smaller retail. We have a lot of smaller boutiques opening and we are incredibly proud of that. We want to keep them. We want them to do well.”

The major point White said she wants to convey to local business owners is that they can have a brick and mortar, but also be selling online.

“Then they’re hitting our population of about 12,000 and the population of alumni that come back for football games or the kids that are looking at college here,” she said.

The seminar will have two different phases. The first will focus on e-commerce, actually building a website to sell in a shopping cart. The second phase, will discuss the social media side and how that can drive people to businesses even if the owner doesn’t have a website yet.

“We have a couple of businesses that are already doing that incredibly well,” she said. “So we’re kind of pulling from their knowledge and from others out of town.”

Jennifer Roup with SJC Marketing in St. Joseph will speak about e-commerce.

The panel will consist of Pam Behrend of Simply Posh located in Maryville, Liz Quick of The Quick Journey and Living Well Essentials in St. Joseph and Heidi Stock from Missouri Star Quilt Company of Hamilton, Mo. The panelists will discuss their own successes and tips on how to focus on the social media side of marketing.

The chamber also will discuss at the event, a new opportunity for Northwest Missouri State University marketing interns to work with local business owners.

“We’re taking two interns this year who will focus on social media and marketing,” White said.

White said a lot of the smaller businesses in town are run by the owner and there isn’t much time to focus on social media and marketing.

“Our interns will take business applications and will create social media profiles for 4 to 6 businesses and kind of work as their marketing department for a while,” White said. “We’re kind of putting the proof in the pudding this year.”

This also gives the students an opportunity to connect with the town as well as gain professional experience.

The seminar is set for 6:30 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 19 in the community room of the Nodaway County Administration Building. Attendees of the seminar will also be entered for a chance to win a website, sponsored by Rapid Elite and developed by Rapid Elite’s Web Designer Jaque Colwell.

The seminar is free and seating is limited. RSVP is requested by Friday, Sept.15 to [email protected] or 660-582-8643.

This Multimedia Seminar is presented in partnership with Nodaway County Economic Development, Northwest Missouri Enterprise Facilitation, the City of Maryville and the Small Business Technology Development Center.