The mission of the Frederick County Chamber of Commerce is to create value for our members through leadership, education, advocacy and networking, and to move the business community forward by promoting shared interests.
For us, that looks like providing opportunities for leaders to grow through Leadership Frederick and other programs, offering business educational opportunities, advocating for our members in local and national arenas, and doing what we can to support our members as the strive to reach their own business goals.
That includes helping to support your marketing and business growth goals.
Though we are unable to significantly participate in your business’s marketing campaigns, we aim to support our members and their marketing efforts, particularly their digital marketing efforts, in some specific and easily accessible ways. Here’s how you can take advantage of that benefit.
How The Chamber Can Help You Reach More People
Get the real scoop on how we support our members.
The best way to do this is to download and read our newly launched, interactive member guide.
It is packed full of all the info you will need to take full advantage of your Chamber membership and answers many of the questions our new (and seasoned!) members often come to us with.
It’s a great tool to help you understand how we can support your business in easy, actionable ways.
Download it here: Chamber Member Guide
Read our Insights blog.
Obviously you’ve figured this one out already, but the goal of our blog is to provide a wealth of information for everything business. We discuss past and upcoming events, give advocacy and policy updates, share thought leadership articles, and work smarter pieces as well.
Not sure where to look for marketing related articles?
Here are a couple that might help: What Our Members Need to Know About Using Facebook and Instagram for Business and The One Question You Need to Ask Yourself Right Now if You’re Not Using Instagram for Business
Connect with us on social media.
While we don’t allow direct submissions for our social media pages, we do actively support our members by sharing their posts and pages. We do Follow Friday posts where we feature members in order to encourage our readers to follow them on social media. We are also always willing to re-share member social media content that is submitted to us as it fits into our posting mission and schedule.
Be sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter if you use those platforms for your business.
Share the right kind of news with us.
We get a lot of submissions and can’t possibly share everyone’s content, but we do try to fit it into our posting schedule and be as equitable as possible to our members.
We never create original posts about our member events or news on our social channels, but we do share things that are submitted via our news submission portal and we re-share (or retweet) posts created by our members on their own pages frequently (you can share links to your posts via any of our social channels by direct messaging us or tagging us in a post you’d like us to see – don’t send us emails about your events or news, those tend to get lost in the shuffle).
Our primary goal is always to add value into the social space, so we explicitly look for opportunities to do so whether we are sharing our own news and updates or that of our members.
So what news is the right kind of news? The kind members of the public can truly benefit from or celebrate with you.
Awards, recognition, special events, and awesome discounts/promotions are the type of things we find to be most beneficial and engaging for our audience.
We don’t share news of new hires, or general business elevator pitches about our members. We’re excited about these things for you, we just know that our audience isn’t going to respond well to them on our pages so we don’t post about them there.
Think about contributing to our blog and/or newsletter.
It’s a great way to promote yourself and get what you do in front of our fans and followers.
Generally, we accept well written, informative articles for our Insights blog (they can’t just tell people how great you are) in specific topic areas.
If you need help working through your topic, email Amanda Rodriguez (arodriguez@frederickchamber.org) for some ideas. You can also reach out to Jen Gerlock (jgerlock@frederickchamber.org) to discuss pricing and posting requirements for our advertorials.
Respond to our calls for feedback.
If one of your primary marketing goals is brand awareness, getting featured is a great way to make that happen.
We do numerous member features each year. Sometimes we put out calls in our newsletter, often we post on our Facebook page or Instagram channel asking for member feedback.
Respond to these when you have something insightful to share and you could be featured in an upcoming post! It’s an easy way to get your business in front of more people, and it doesn’t require anything from you but your honest opinion!
Host an Event
Our events are largely impacted by the current public health crisis, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t actively planning them for when it’s safe to host them again!
We are currently looking for members interested in hosting Chamber networking events in the spring and summer and would love to have you involved.
These events are a great way to get people into your space and our hosting members always report the wonderful impact bringing local business professionals into their space has had on them.
Reach out to kwalsh@frederickchamber.org for more info on hosting a Chamber event in 2022.
Buy an Ad
If you really want to get placement in our newsletter and social channels in a way that you can predict and control, purchasing an advertorial in a newsletter, a social ad or an ad spot on our blog is a great way to do so.
These ads give you the opportunity to get in front of our members and the over 5,000 individuals who currently subscribe to our weekly newsletter and, at the prices we offer, you can’t beat this option for a targeted advertising opportunity!
Reach out to jgerlock@frederickchamber.org for more info on advertorial opportunities.
Frederick Chamber Insights is a news outlet of the Frederick County Chamber of Commerce. For more information about membership, programs and initiatives, please visit our website.