By MICHAEL W. FREEMAN
THE REPORTER EDITOR


Published: Friday, June 18, 2010 at 3:33 p.m.
Last Modified: Friday, June 18, 2010 at 3:33 p.m.


HAINES CITY – It’s been estimated that one of the greatest sources of business advertising these days is something that didn’t exist not so long ago: the search engine.


“The Chambers of Commerce are trusted sources of information, and rank very high on the search engines,” said Richard Scully, founder of Chamber Nation/EcTownUsa. “Typically when you’re looking to the Internet, you’re looking for national exposure. There’s a lot of online traffic for people looking for information in your community.”

The Internet has definitely changed the way Chambers of Commerce and local businesses try to reach out and find new customers, giving them a potentially worldwide audience.

“Advertising today is a two way road,” Scully said. “ ‘Find me’ is one model. ‘Follow me’ is another.”

Chamber Nation, based in Quincy, Calif., is a network of Chambers of Commerce around the county that provides its members with an online system to promote their businesses. The idea is for a national network and collaboration that helps promote Chamber membership.

The Haines City/Northeast Polk County Chamber of Commerce recently joined Chamber Nation, and used its June monthly meeting – held June 17 at the United Methodist Church – to introduce members to the site. Scully participated by phone from California, explaining to the local Chamber members how his web site works and can potentially help them.

“I think it will really, really benefit you and your business,” Linda Franz, chairwoman of the Chamber’s board of directors, told the Chamber members during the luncheon meeting. “It’s going to be very, very good.”

Jane Patton, the president of the Chamber, added, “We all want you to use this.”

Scully noted that the service aims to build on the reputation that Chambers of Commerce have around the nation as a good source for information about what’s available in the community: restaurants, lodging, job opportunities, real estate and more.

“We work with Chambers all over the country,” he said. “The Chamber is trusted. It’s positioned perfectly to bring traffic to your business. We have a Traffic Catcher system with a display page designed to move more traffic to an existing website.”

The site gives Chamber members plenty of options, including setting up pages on social networking sites like Facebook and allowing people to get information about them by using a cell phones.

“It’s expected that 20 percent of searches will come through mobile devices,” Scully said.

“There is also a Buy Local program that I know the Chamber is looking at doing.”

Best of all, he said, is that the web site is designed to be simple and user friendly.

“This is easy,” he said. “A lot of people have trouble with the Internet. Most people will admit that the problem today isn’t finding what you want on the Internet. You can find anything you want by going on Google and searching for something. The problem is going deep into Haines City.”

To help visitors to his site do that, Chamber Nation has listings for community news and events, and Chamber updates.

“We make it very easy to use, and the traffic counts are out of this world,” he said.

“These pages are really designed for search engines.”

To learn more about the site, log on to www.ChamberNation.com.

“The Chamber has paid for all these services for its members,” Scully said, “so you should take advantage of this.”

What do you think? Contact Michael Freeman about this article at Reportermailbox@gmail.com.