Tag Archive for 'Economic Development'

Economic Development 2.0 With SlideShare

Published
by
Ian Smith
on October 26, 2009
in Author-Ian Smith, Investment Attraction, Social Media Marketing and Web 2.0 Strategy
. 1 Comment

E&B DATA’s benchmark study, Web 2.0 And Business Attraction: Canadian Cities Online Marketing Index examined what large Canadian cities were doing in terms of the different social media tools for economic development, precisely to promote their cities for investment attraction.  Best practices of the use of tools such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr were presented.

One tool that was omitted by the cities was SlideShare which is a pretty useful Web 2.0 or economic development 2.0 tool.

SlideShare allows individuals to upload presentations and documents with the intent of sharing the content with others.  You may consider it to be the “YouTube for Powerpoint presentations”.

Conducting search on SlideShare with the keyword, “economic development”, you can discover an informative presentation by The Chesterfield County Department of Economic Development in Virgina, USA.

The presentation can serve as an effective and efficient information package for site selectors and potential investors in the region.  Slides # 34 to #38 are quite powerful when it comes to promoting Chesterfield.

To view the complete presentation, please click here

SlideShare is available at http://www.slideshare.net,

Google Advanced Search For Economic Intelligence?

Published
by
Ian Smith
on September 29, 2009
in Author-Ian Smith, Competitive & Internet Intelligence and Economic Intelligence
. 1 Comment

When was the last time that you used Google Advanced Search for your economic intelligence needs?

The Google Advanced Search feature is an option often ignored by users on a daily basis. Many individuals take the function for granted but it is handy to have.  Competitive intelligence researchers will tell you that using the function will lead to finding information that you would not have expected to be on the web within seconds.

In case you have not dared to use the the advanced feature before, Figure 1 illustrates the search interface of Google Advanced Search.

Figure 1: Google Advanced Search Interface
(Click on the image to enlarge the screen shot)

The main objective of using such an interface is to filter results and hopefully provide relevant information in a specific format for your needs.  Some of the things that you can do with Google Advanced include:

  • Specify the number of results you may see per page
  • View results in different languages
  • Access documents in a variety of formats (ie, MS-Word, MS-Excel, .pdf)
  • Search within a site or domain name (ie, restricting a search to one specific website)

Case Example: Foreign Direct Investment in the United States

You are in a  rush to find a current and detailed report regarding foreign direct investment in the United States and the regular Google search is not doing the trick.  What do you do?

Solution: By turning to the advanced search option, you can submit a query in which Google can attempt to find a document that was publish in the past year.  In addition, you may specify that would like the document to be in .pdf..  (Most reports are stored in .pdf for online readership)

Submitting the query with the two criteria will provide you with the following page of results with the relevant hit highlighted in yellow in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Listing of Results For Query - United-States “Foreign Direct Investment ” filetype :.pdf in the past year
(Click on the image to enlarge the screen shot)

This hit leads to the report in .pdf, “Foreign Direct Investment in The United States” published by the Organization for International Investment in March 2009

For addition details on search operators for Google Advanced Search queries, please click here

Social Media Marketing and Economic Development: A Business Case Study

Published
by
Ian Smith
on September 24, 2009
in Author-Ian Smith, Economic Development, Investment Attraction, Social Media Marketing and Web 2.0 Strategy
. 1 Comment

At the same time E&B DATA released, “Web 2.0 And Business Attraction: Canadian Cities Online Marketing Index”, a second document was placed online.  A case study dealing with social media marketing for  economic development was published.

The business case study presents how social media marketing applications were adopted by Entreprise Chaleur, an economic development agency that represents 15 communities on the northeast coast of New Brunswick.

Location of The Chaleur Region

Source: Entreprise Chaleur

The use of Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, key success factors and a status report of the initiative for foreign direct investment attraction as of September 2009 are the main topics that discussed in the case.

To download the case study, “Entreprise Chaleur - Social Media Marketing Applications For Economic Development”, please click here.

Do you believe that websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube can play a key role in your investment attraction strategy for your cities or region? Tell us by leaving a comment below.

Entreprise Chaleur Adopts Social Media Marketing Strategy With RegionChaleur

Published
by
Ian Smith
on September 10, 2009
in Author-Ian Smith, Economic Development, Social Media Marketing and Web 2.0 Strategy
. 0 Comments

Entreprise Chaleur, an economic development agency located in northeastern New Brunswick is rapidly building its network of stakeholders via its Fan page on Facebook, RegionChaleur.  The goal of the page is to promote the remote region as the best location to invest and live.

Here are a few screen shots of what the page has to offer to its fans and interested individuals.  Please click on the images to enlarge the screen shots.

The Wall with current local news headlines and associated links on the web

Photos illustrating the beauty of the region

This Facebook initiative is just a part of the Entreprise Chaleur integrated social media marketing strategy for economic development.   To complement the fan page, Entreprise Chaleur has a Twitter page and a Flickr account.

In the past few weeks, the initiative has received some attention from the media specifically by Radio-Canada and L’Acadie Nouvelle.

To become a fan of RegionChaleur, please log onto Facebook and click here.  Be sure to click on the “Become A Fan” button.

The Many Faces Of Google For Economic Intelligence: Part 4 - Google Groups Search

Published
by
Ian Smith
on August 4, 2009
in Author-Ian Smith, Competitive & Internet Intelligence, Economic Intelligence and Internet tools
. 0 Comments

In the first couple of posts in the series, The Many Faces Of Google For Economic Intelligence, we examined how relevant applications such as Google Alerts, Google Finance and Google Blog Search are to economic intelligence for economic development projects.

This post will elaborate on the benefits of using Google Groups Search for information gathering online.

Google Groups are platforms in which individuals may have discussions on various topics.  As of July 2009,  Google Groups has searchable archives of more than 700 million Usenet postings from a period of more than 20 years.

Intelegia - Tools For Thought - Google Groups

Please click on the image to enlarge.

Case Study:

You are interested in thoughts of individuals and related information regarding the past levels of foreign direct investment in India.

Solution:

By simple inputting the keywords such as “foreign direct investment” and “India”, you can access discussion posts such as past newspaper articles and analysis reports.

Tracking Capital Investments in Canada on Twitter

Published
by
Ian Smith
on July 29, 2009
in Author-Ian Smith, Economic Intelligence and Web 2.0
. 0 Comments

E&B DATA, Intelegia’s parent company,  has launched a Twitter page for those wish to track capital investments in Canada.  EB_DATA allows government agencies, economic development officers, potential investors and large corporations to keep informed on new construction, expansion and modernization projects worth more than $1 million.

E&B DATA On Twitter

To begin tracking capital investments in Canada, visit www.twitter.com/EB_DATA

We also invite you to join the Facebook Group that compliments the Twitter feed.

E&B DATA has been monitoring capital investment projects as a part of its Investment Observatory since 2000 and updates its database of projects on a daily basis.   For more information on the database, please visit the E&B DATA website.

The Many Faces Of Google For Economic Intelligence: Part 3 - Google Blog Search

Published
by
Ian Smith
on July 24, 2009
in Author-Ian Smith, Competitive & Internet Intelligence and Economic Intelligence
. 0 Comments

Last week, Tools For Thought highlighted the use of Google Finance for economic intelligence and its relevancy to preparing to meet a potential investor for foreign direct investment purposes.  This post will take a look at Google Blog Search.

As the name suggest, Google Blog Search exclusively retrieves relevant posts based on keywords.  Although blog posts may appear in the results from the general search application, it is wise to select the blog search option to avoid the irrelevant hits.

You may wonder in what circumstances would you go to the application for economic intelligence purposes?

Blogs are outlets for individuals to publish their insights on various subjects without depending on a webmasters on a timely basis.  Citizens of towns often start their own blog to voice their concerns on an proposed project that will have definite economic spin offs.

Google Blog Search

Please click on the image to enlarge.

Case Example:

You are interested in reading opinions about the different job creation programs available in Ontario, Canada.

Solution:

Using Google Blog Search, you may find several posts by individuals discussing several issues and expressing their views.  This type of information is often forgotten when collecting economic intelligence for economic development intiatives.

Competitive Intelligence & Economic Development: Reinforcing The Link

Published
by
Ian Smith
on July 1, 2009
in Author-Ian Smith, Competitive & Internet Intelligence and Economic Development
. 0 Comments

The link between the practice of competitive intelligence and economic development is obvious however; it is taken for granted.  From the routine literature scan to the data mining of statistics in databases, these competitive intelligence activities can be considered as “just internet searching” for economic data.  To some, this label maybe unsettling and must asked themselves:

How can competitive intelligence professionals bring their expertise to the field of economic development?

The answer can be derived on three levels:

i) Understanding the issues:

At the root of economic development issues, lies Key Intelligence Topics (KITs) for competitive intelligence professionals.  For example, an issue of foreign direct investment attraction calls for investigating all companies that may have the means to invest in a foreign countries.  In addition, the conditions (locational factors) in  which the companies will take into consideration must be examined.  Responses to the KITs will assists competitive intelligence researchers in finding timely and relevant data in an efficient manner.

ii) Access the right information sources

Rather than depending upon a broad search of the web, competitive intelligence professionals can benefit from a toolkit of sources that is relevant to the mandate.   An economic impact study calls for researchers to collect secondary data from government sources that may not be available online for free.  Knowing the specific sources and how to access them will save time and money.

iii) Apply competitive analysis tools

With relevant data in hand, competitive intelligence professionals can bring further insights in an economic context thanks to such analysis tools as:

  • SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats)
  • Porter’s Five Forces
  • STEEP Analysis (Social, Technological, Economical, Environmental, Political)

(Please view our presentation on competitive analysis tools or inquire about our training sessions)

Given the current global economic conditions, economic development initiatives must be executed with a strategic mindset.  In order to do so, the same competitive intelligence processes used in a corporate environment can be modified to supply data to decision makers to plan for the future to benefit economic stakeholders.