It is turning out to be a year we will want to forget but won’t soon forget. In the world of economic development, one aspect of the profession is business retention and expansion. Small Business Week is that annual event that you are highly mindful of the local economic base that provides diversity of employment, expertise, and variety in any community. We want to engage and celebrate those businesses.
This year, the business retention and expansion activity had to adapt in much the same way as most businesses in our region. Business walks, surveys, and the traditional pushed the creative, and we looked to migrate to online. Perhaps aspects of this year’s strategy will stick after the pandemic because there is the opportunity to reach more business online. And market the region to attract new business and customers for our existing businesses.
We put in a lot of effort to reach out to subject matter experts across small business operations and marketing activities and invited them into our business collaboration efforts similar to our weekly Infinite Possibilities conversation we host every Thursday. We layered in subject-specific conversations throughout the whole week and invited businesses to listen, learn and ask questions of our invited experts.
We marketed business attendance to these sessions for live interaction. We also recorded and posted them on our WC YouTube channel. They can now be viewed anytime and at any pace.
We also worked with our local Community Futures – Wild Rose office, Mi Business Solutions and Business Link, who were doing the same thing with subject matter experts and comarketed all of it. The sessions the WC hosted made it to our YouTube channel. The great thing is now that the sessions reside on our channel; they are available for access into the future to support business.
We would also like to acknowledge and thank all of our guest speakers. They offered up their time in our sessions, sharing their knowledge, experience and insight during these collaborations. Without them volunteering their time in their busy schedules, these sessions couldn’t have happened.
We hope that this 2020 Small Business Week WC effort to celebrate and support our small business will suffice in this unforgettable year. We appreciate our small business and layer into the WC’s brand of infinite possibilities in Wheatland County.
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