Your boss just assigned you to go on a business trip. You just found out you got a job transfer. You’re a business owner interested in expanding to a different area. Or maybe, you and your spouse just celebrated the birth of your first child, and you’re looking to relocate to a more family-friendly area.
Where’s the first place you turn to research these new possible destinations?
It’s 2012. Probably the Internet, or more specifically, Google.
The Internet has completely changed the way people do business. And with tools like Facebook, Twitter and especially Google (what did we do before Google?), it is so easy to search for information now.
This information overload of course presents challenges for businesses, but it also presents them with a tremendous opportunity to get their names out there to a much wider audience much more quickly.
It can also give local communities a tremendous opportunity to tell a larger audience (people who maybe never would have heard of certain towns if it weren’t for the Internet) just what it is that they’re about.
People could learn about Winchester, for example, and its historic downtown district; its beautiful library that offers its patrons a lot more than most; its Ale-8-One industry; events like the Daniel Boone Pioneer Festival, Beer Cheese Festival and the new John Michael Montgomery Country Fest; its first responders and law enforcement officials who have such quick response times; and now, its state-of-the-art brand spanking new hospital.
Unfortunately, the community webpage originally created for the Winchester-Clark County community, www.winchesterky.com, is out of date, and a lot of its links no longer work.
Several separate local entities, like the Winchester-Clark County Chamber of Commerce and the Winchester-Clark County Tourism Commission, have their own websites, but there is no overall community site.
The Internet is how business is done now, and Winchester needs to get its act together.
Both governing bodies, the Clark County Fiscal Court and the Winchester Board of Commissioners, have discussed the need for an updated and united community website where residents and businesses could find everything they need to know about the community at one stop.
Things like who the local leaders are, a history of the community, current demographics, an up-to-date calendar, a list of local job openings and how to apply, how to pay bills or parking tickets online, and how to contact all the local public offices.
In December, city commissioners heard a proposal from Kansas-based CivicPlus, a firm that specializes solely in creating and maintaining community websites, including the cities of Henderson and Danville in Kentucky.
Last week, they heard a presentation from the Bluegrass Area Development District, which oversees 15-20 community sites, including those in Bourbon, Lincoln and Boyle counties.
It also currently has a site up and running for the Clark County Fiscal Court, www.clarkcoky.com/index.html.
In March, city commissioners deferred action on an order to authorize a website re-design and implementation by CivicPlus because they were concerned about the cost.
And at last week’s city commission meeting, Mayor Ed Burtner offered other reasons against taking immediate action, including bringing all local agencies to the table.
Although other public entities have expressed interest in developing a new community-wide webpage, the city is the only body actively moving toward that goal.
Other interested agencies should not only contribute information to the content of the website, but they should also contribute money.
At the last joint city-county public meeting, several residents expressed concern that the current website is out of date, and city and county commissioners both agreed that something needs to be done.
An efficient, informative and attractive website would portray the community in a positive light on the largest and widest-reaching platform possible, and it needs to happen, well, yesterday.
