How Communities Get Noticed in an AI-Driven World

And the problem is that your audience needs to see the information at least 7 times. And so if you are narrowly focusing your strategy on only one channel, you're really limiting the exposure and the opportunity for them to see those repeat messages, to even remember who you are. Because we're so inundated. That's the voice of Bethany Quinn, president of Golden Shovel Agency, here for us to chat about all things EDO marketing.

We've got fresh takes helpful for your website and digital media strategy, plus what to know as AI continues to influence how people are finding out about your community, plus way more to shape your marketing strategy. Welcome or welcome back to Inside America's Best Cities. As always, I'm Amanda Ellis of Livability Media. We are your partner for telling cool community stories, attracting talent, and getting your place in front of the right people.

At Livability, we highlight the nation's most vibrant small and mid-sized cities so relocating talent and business decision makers glean the insights they need. And with that, Let's jump in. Welcome, Bethany, to Inside America's Best Cities. Super excited to have you talk about some fun stuff.

I know I was able to be on your podcast what's been, gosh, probably a year or two ago now. So great to have some reciprocal expert sharing. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited for our conversation.

It's been a while. And before we jump in, I'll, I'll, um, link that episode In the show notes. And your podcast is, tell us. Golden Shovel Agency has the Shovel Talk podcast where we interview people in the economic development space to share their expertise.

And obviously you have a ton in place marketing, so our conversation I know was really valuable for our audience. Perfect. We'll definitely add that to the notes for you to find some more great economic development listening to add to your, um, to your playlist. But with that, Bethany, I know we've got a lot of fun stuff in the marketing realm, websites, video, bigger picture, all the things.

But can you start off by just telling us a little bit about Golden Shovel? I'm sure many of our listeners are familiar, but just a little bit about you all and what you help groups in our space do. So Golden Shovel Agency is a full-service economic development strategy and communications firm. We have been in the economic development space for 17 years.

That's all that we do. And one of the things that makes Golden Shovel so unique is that we view ourselves not just as a service provider, but as a thought leader, someone who's going to gather and share best practices and industry trends with the overall community. So if you go to goldenshovelagency.com and you go to our resource learning library, You can get access to free original research and white papers and webinar content, a lot of best practices, because we believe that our job is to help economic developers create thriving communities.

And we do that through, of course, the research, through strategy development, and through communication channels, uh, like website, video, PR, social media ads, things of that nature. Love that. And I know you've been part of the team for a while, and I think have moved up over time into your role leading the team. I'd love to hear a little bit about how have you seen the field change?

And I know that Golden Shovel has also grown from what I gather from being more focused specifically on websites and really grown that to be bigger picture. Um, so maybe those journeys tie together, but would love to hear about both. Yeah, absolutely. So Golden Shovel originally was founded as a, a tech company, and we still are.

We have an in-house development team who's always looking at what's happening in the industry and how can we use technology to support our clients and their missions. And so we developed the Economic Gateway Platform, which is the only custom CMS that was built specifically for economic development. Because again, we don't do anything else. And with our shared development approach, it means that if you are someone in a rural community of 15,000, and maybe it's just you and an intern in your economic development office, if someone, the state of Connecticut, asks for something to be developed because they're seeing something on a global scale, on a statewide scale, you get access to those same tools, those same communication tools.

So that's really been an interesting thing about our organization is that we're able to give people access to the latest and greatest ways of communicating and displaying data and sharing information that they didn't even know they needed, right? So we're able to provide that much faster than people realize. And one of the things that we noticed is when we would come in and work with a community, very often we were the only third-party outside provider that they were working with.

And so, they kept coming to us for not just a solution for like a website, but how do we market a site that we spent all this time and money developing, right? So, we developed an entire video production team, and we actually pioneered virtual reality for economic development. We were the first company to do 360 FAM tours and 360 site tours. And then communities came to us and said, well, this is great, but we need a strategy for how to use our website and how to use these great videos that you produced.

So we hired strategists and we developed a strategy team. And then once we had that in place, then obviously we were looking at, okay, we need to get more eyeballs on, right? And so then we got into digital ads and more social media and content promotion, things of that nature. So Golden Shovel has evolved over time based on the needs of our our clients because we intend to be a full-service provider so that you don't have to go to a lot of different companies for your needs, but you have that trusted resource.

And because our team has long tenure as well, very often economic development directors will change over time, and we are that continuity. And because we provide so many services to clients, somebody can come in from out of state or a board member can take over. And we can guide them, uh, to continue with the organization's mission. And that's been very rewarding.

Right. That makes sense. And yeah, just responding to, wait, can you do this now? Can you do this now?

Right. You're like, yes, exactly. Yes. And yes.

Yes. And we have a great team, so we're able to be responsive. You talked a little bit about video and the VR component for economic development and the, the team that you've built out. Can you talk a little bit more about video work in our space?

You know, why that is so important? I feel like it's a bit underutilized and overlooked sometimes compared to other areas of marketing. So I'd love to have you speak a little bit more to that. Yeah, absolutely.

And video is so key to marketing your community. Uh, obviously that's your expertise, right? Is that, that place marketing and, and also to marketing the advantages you have to local businesses. It's one of those things where just as humans, we're very visual learners.

So we can read about something, it can spark imagination and curiosity, but if we can't see it, we're not always going to believe it. And video helps to create that picture, and VR, in a sense, takes it even further because it tricks your senses into feeling like you're physically there. So you're creating these immersive opportunities to walk down Main Street and pop into local shops. In restaurants or participate in an event, or if you're a business and you wanna make sure the workforce are being trained properly, the ability to actually put on those goggles and try out the training and pieces of equipment to know that, okay, I, they have these programs in place that I need.

It can be really engaging on a different level. Plus we know that they're gonna perform better. If you're gonna run an ad and you're spending money, you want to get the best possible ROI, right? And video is going to get the most views and the most clicks.

Any tips if there's a community that's thinking, I'd really like to do more with this, but I'm not really sure where to start on kind of some easy ways to start engaging there? So obviously we have a full video production team and I would love if every single listener had the budget and wanted to hire Golden Shovel to create video. But I know that's not always the case, right? So that's, that's the ideal world, but you know what, if nothing else, Then pull out your iPhone and get some short video clips that can be repurposed on social media.

The big mistake people make when they're filming themselves is trying to make a long video. Just sit down or stand in one place and give like 15 seconds of an experience. And that can still be really powerful on social media and ads. If you want a longer form video though, you do need to budget for that.

It's really, really important. And you can tell the difference. So just kind of know where to spend your money. Short clips, you can do it yourself.

Long form, hire the professionals. Right, right. You talked a little bit, um, already kind of touched on the site selection side of economic development marketing, which of course is one part of it, right? Marketing to those folks, corporate decision makers, companies, all of that good stuff.

And then you also have talent attraction marketing, which is now also a really important part of thinking about all this. Right. How do you feel like the kind of techniques and thought processes with both of those audiences, how do they dovetail and how are they different? That's a great question.

So, it depends on what point in someone's journey you're reaching them. So, for example, if you're trying to recruit talent who is maybe an adult who's tired of living paycheck to paycheck. They know that they want a better quality of life for them and their family. They may be looking to upskill themselves so they can take the next jump in their career, right?

So their spot in the journey may be, what type of educational programs can I get into that are fast, that are cheap or free, where I have a job offer waiting for me when I'm done? That's a similar point in time that a business needs to look at too, because if they need to hire professionals or skilled tradespeople in a specific industry, they need that same information, right? They need to know that there are workforce training programs that can get talent in and out quickly, and that there are pathways for them to hire those people as soon as they're done being trained.

But other than that, you have to think about the fact that the audiences are caring about very distinctly different things. If I want to move my family to a new community, I'm looking for, can I buy a house here? Okay, that's super important. Is it affordable enough that my income is going to allow me to purchase so I'm not uprooting my family to move into a situation that doesn't feel very permanent?

Right? Right. And if I can afford to live there, am I going to want to live there? Are there going to be good schools for my kids?

Am I going to have a park to take them to? Is there recreation based on my family's interests? And for a company, those things are important for them for executive decision-making. But first they have to answer, is there a place that my business can go?

Right? It's not an affordable home, but I need to have a shovel-ready site with infrastructure where I can get permits quickly. That is such a key thing right now. If you are heavily bureaucratic and it might take 2 years to get a permit, You're not going to be on the shortlist, right?

So pre-permitting those sites can be really important. And are there the utilities in place to allow for the business to operate and expand? We're seeing that more and more as a key decision point, especially as some communities struggle with things like available water and the energy demands that are now in competition, right, as manufacturing, data centers, and housing all vie for the same natural resources. As an economic developer, just like as a commercial real estate broker or as an investor and developer, you have to evaluate what is the highest and best use for this particular property in this portion of my community.

And that type of long-term planning is so critical because once that piece of property has been developed, it could be 50 years. before there's ever a redevelopment opportunity, and that can significantly influence the character of that community. So the forward planning that we do in economic development is absolutely critical. And if you make those decisions incorrectly, you are limiting future job growth.

You're also limiting the talent that you can attract because people are getting more and more selective with the character of the community they wanna live in. Right. A lot to think about. And like you said, long range, it's not just like right now or next week, but longer range decision-making.

What are your thoughts? So there's so, you know, many different techniques, different pieces of marketing that go into all of this and into a place marketing strategy. What do you think in 2026 are the most important pieces of that? Kind of where does it fit?

Like, Is it, you know, earned media, um, print, your advertising strategy? Again, we talked about video, your website, like, and, and, or all of it. Like, what do you think are the most important parts? So this is a horrible answer, but all of it is so important because the problem is that we have so much - I know, but we have so much access to information right now.

And the problem is that your audience needs to see the information at least 7 times. And so if you're narrowly focusing your strategy on only one channel, you're really limiting the exposure and the opportunity for them to see those repeat messages, to even remember who you are, because we're so inundated, right? If you're a community that is not a main name, not a Houston, not a Miami, not a New York or Chicago, You're going to have to reach people on your website, on social media, on ads, on podcasts, on videos, on print.

You know, you're going to have to be everywhere. Right. We regularly use the diagram in our presentations that's like the owned, earned, paid media breakdown and kind of where they cross over, where they don't, because yeah, it does all play a role and thinking about, you know, the control you can exercise over each of those, how that varies. We also know, like with AI, AEO and GEO kind of coming into the picture, that those tools are looking very holistically at a place brand or a brand in general to kind of form how they're talking about it.

So I think that lends itself even more to what you're saying of telling that consistent story. How - what shifts are you all seeing in terms of place marketing and AI? Yeah. So with AI in particular, I'm actually going to give a great pitch for Livability because with AI, making sure that you are referenced in reputable sources has become so much more important than it used to be.

It's not as simple as like a link building strategy, for example, or even an awareness campaign. We know that 30% plus of people that, you know, the percentage will keep growing, are now conducting their search, so to speak, in an LLM, in an AI platform, right? Instead of going to Google like they used to. And so AI is going to recommend what AI feels is properly sourced because that's the point, right?

So making sure that you are referenced on platforms like Livability as the best place to live is going to be more valuable than it ever was before. In addition, of course, Google, even when it's answering things on organic search, is pulling from those reputable sources, which is really important. I mentioned earlier at Golden Shovel how we produce a lot of white papers. Well, a lot of times the communities that we reference in those white papers are mentioned by AI because all of those things can be read online.

So I don't know if that fully answered your question, but AI is definitely having an impact. And it's, you have to be, I think, way more strategic than you used to be about how to get your community recognition from reputable sources. Right. Kind of next level.

Like you do still want to have all of that on your owned platform still, but kind of taking it even broader to where all of it really matters to that story. Do you think that in terms of the future of place marketing, Do you think a lot of the shifts we're gonna see in the coming years do go back to AI, or are there other, um, things you think we'll be paying increased attention to, or that'll really be changing how we think about that? Yeah, so I think video is gonna become, of course, more and more important.

We, one of our clients on the, the tourism placemaking side is Pasadena, Texas, for example. And if you go to their website, You can see really great engaging video content that's exciting. And we've had a lot of people that live within the Houston metro or work within the Houston metro go to their site and watch those videos and say, I live here. They're like 45 minutes from me.

And I had no idea. I had no idea that they had this to offer or they have this event or they have these restaurants or they have this, you know, dynamic scene or this, You know, the nature center bayou that they have for outdoor recreation. And so I think that because we are inundated with so much content, people are going to have to use more and more video to help them stand out because then people aren't just hearing about it. Again, they're visually experiencing it for themselves, and I think that's more sticky.

Interesting. Yeah, and going back too to what we were talking about with the holistic way in which LLMs tend to kind of look at how you're representing yourself, I think Video's definitely part of what it can pick up too, even if that's like transcripts or, you know, whatever goes into that, that that can definitely be part of it too. Like it doesn't all have to be written content, even though content sometimes is kind of the first thing you think of. Right.

You have to do both. We're actually, um, really optimizing our websites too for AI, uh, because it changes how you have to write and present your content online. It's now just as important to write your content for AI as it is for humans because so many people aren't going to the website more. They're just getting the AI's recommendation.

Kind of the next iteration of SEO is how I've heard that phrased. Like, that's still a good baseline, but it's definitely shifting some of the ways you would think about it and best practices to pay attention to. Absolutely. I want to hear a little bit about, so I know your initial bread and butter was very focused on websites, which as we were just saying, do still play a big role.

So I would love to have you share What are like the top 3 questions that EDOs aren't always answering on their websites right now that they should be, that might be costing them a spot on a shortlist not having readily available? Great question. Number 1, share your contact information. If you are hiding behind a contact form, you're failing.

Your name, your title, your phone number, and your email need to be readily available on the homepage of your website. Also on your contact page, but they better be on the homepage because if a site selector has to dig for your information when they're evaluating 100 different sites, they're just going to move on. Right. Um, number 2, and this is a huge pet peeve of mine that every new team member of Golden Shovel hears from me probably 1,000 times, is specificity.

Specificity. I absolutely hate when you sound like Anywhere USA. You need to be clear about who you are, so you need to know what your identity is. It needs to be authentic.

It can be aspirational too, but it has to be grounded in reality, and it has to be clear so that way if anyone goes to your website or reads an article on you, it can't - they can't just pick it up and replace your name for somebody else's, right? So pull in specific examples, pull in the names of specific locations, give data points that are specific to you, so that way you can stand out. And the other thing is you need to make sure that your data is easily accessible. One of the things that we do, for example, is our community profile tools are infographics that are clickable.

So if somebody wants spreadsheets, they can click and they can go to the source spreadsheet data. But if somebody needs a quick overview, they don't have to dig and read through pages and pages of reports. So make your data easily accessible for people that are in a hurry. We also know that AI tools like Data, since we've been talking about that a lot too during this conversation, that that can help you get cited where you want to be cited, especially if you have original data of some sort.

But really any of it just contributes to it viewing you as credible. So kind of get Double, double points on that one. Yeah, exactly. So win-win.

Right. Okay. Contact info, specificity, data. And presented in multiple ways.

Love that. Um, you talked a little bit at the top about the, your platform for websites, the Economic Gateway. What really makes that different than other, you know, things they might use or makes it specific to our field? Yeah.

So again, the shared development platform. So every one of our clients, their website is completely custom built for them. It's completely unique. But again, if there is a feature that's requested by one community to be developed, the way that we look at that is instead of saying, okay, well, you are requesting a specific tool, we're going to give you a bill for that.

We evaluate it and say, is this something that could help the industry overall? And if it is, then we're gonna build it at no cost and we're gonna make it available to everyone. So we're able to help you elevate your knowledge and really up your game right away, uh, by sharing what we're learning across the entire industry on a regular basis. Very cool.

Let's talk about some case studies. Any favorite places right now that you think are doing placemaking, place marketing, or maybe some innovative talent attraction efforts? Really well recently? Yeah.

So I love Broken Arrow, Oklahoma's campaign. They, we actually built this website for them, but Be in BA is what you can go to if you want to see it, Be in BA. And what I love about Broken Arrow's positioning is when we were working with them, they are actually, this is a time with Livability. They've gotten recognition in the past, you know, as being a top 100 place to live.

And because they are not a major metro, people had the misconception that, okay, this is Oklahoma, I'm moving out to Little House on the Prairie, there's not going to be much to do here, right? Little House on the Prairie is so timely, uh, if you've seen the new one, they - Right. No, I know. And Netflix just released a new one, so I don't know if that's going to help our Midwest clients very much.

Um, but You know, if you go to their website right away, it's, you know, it's video banner that's really engaging, shows how dynamic and active the city is, how diverse it is. And, and it's right away, Broken Arrow is a top 100 city. Just that one word, right, is so incredibly powerful to tell people, no, this is not, this is not the prairie. Right.

This is a city that's vibrant where you can have your dreams come true, right? And they've done such a good job of showing the combination of what makes life so good there, which of course is things like shopping and restaurants and festivals and events and live music and pickleball in the park and all of these really things that make it a great place where you want to be combined with, by the way, here's so many career opportunities here and you can make a lot of money and you can get the training.

And we'll help you to relocate. So I really feel like their team has done an incredible job of taking that 360 approach to considering what someone actually is going to care about and what they're going to need if they decide to take that next step, right? Because as marketers, we're sometimes really good at creating awareness, but we're not great at removing friction to action. And Broken Arrow has, has done that.

They've removed that friction to make it easier to actually choose the city. Right, right. All right, so we've got one more on-topic question and then we're gonna move into the fun closer question that I do with everybody. So to wrap up this portion, anything you would share, um, for communities looking at consultants, group like, groups like us, um, that they wanna engage particularly in marketing?

Like what should they be looking for to decide if that partnership is a good fit or is what they need? I would definitely recommend that you hire a group who has significant experience in your space, and that actually ties into some of the things that we've been discussing, such as specificity. If you are working with a third party, whether it's like how Livability creates fantastic content or how Golden Shovel creates websites, who's not in your space, they may inadvertently make you sound like everyone else.

Because they don't know what everyone else sounds like. They don't know what makes you unique in comparison to 100 other communities because you're the only community they're working with, right? Like they may be able to differentiate what makes a restaurant different from each other because they have 10 of those clients, but they don't know how to do that on communities. So you've really got to look for somebody who's active in your space.

And there are a lot of good ones in our economic development space, to your point, of places that really specialize in that niche. Um, and I think especially thinking about different groups I've seen that, you know, have their reasons for wanting to work with someone local, but depending on your goals, it's just a different perspective all around. Well, and we work with a lot of local vendors as well. I don't think that it has to be an all-or-nothing situation.

So for example, a lot of our clients, they will hire us to provide their baseline platform because they want that expertise. So we will come in and we will do their website, we will create their marketing strategy, help them to define their target audiences and how to reach them, but then they'll hire a local vendor to do their photography, to do their video. Right, right. Well, and also, you know, killing multiple birds with one stone, I think, can be really useful with working some - with someone in the space.

Kind of like to your point when you were talking about how your offerings have grown, responding to what they need, like, well, now we did this, now we need this. Um, or even like at Livability, something we talk about a lot is getting, you know, content. We still do a lot of print like that you can use locally, but also you're getting this bigger picture talent exposure, but you're not really putting in extra work to maybe a publication that you've always done. And so I think there can be a lot of opportunity to look for there, especially with working with an expert in our space, um, of being able to trim the amount of time you're having to put into something and get more, you know, Bang for your, bang for your buck, bang for your time, all of that.

Oh, exactly right. So like if you or I were to work with a client, we already are going into that interaction knowing the right questions to ask because we know what the target audience cares about. So there is no wasting time. You can literally hit the ground running.

And I think especially for busy economic developers who often run a skeleton crew, why waste time that you simply don't have by trying to get somebody up to speed? on either yourself or on what your target audiences care about. So true. All right, moving into our fun closer.

So remind us, Bethany, where are you based? Where do you live? I'm in Maryland. What city?

I am in Severna Park, so I am between Annapolis and Baltimore. All right, so if someone were visiting your community, your corner of the world for the first time, what is a bucket list item you would say they should be sure to do? Like maybe a really special special restaurant or something a little bit off the beaten path? So I live in, you know, a suburban community because I have a huge family and it's great.

And the first thing that I would do is we have the B&A Trail. So like a lot of communities that have their rail-to-trails programs, this was, used to be a historic railroad, right? And now it's this wonderful recreation asset. So we would take the B&A Trail to Kinder Farm Park where you would get to see the animals because there's a farm there.

So you could see all the animals, you could play on the playground, you could get back on that trail and you could keep walking and you could go to Squisito's for pizza and you could go to Rita's for Italian ice and it would be a great day. Sounds like a lovely day. And you wouldn't have to get in your car. Right.

Also always a win. Well, thank you so much, Bethany. I think we covered a lot of like important nuts and bolts of marketing, some future aspects. Um, really, really good conversation.

And I really appreciate you taking the time to do that. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Thanks for listening to the Livability Podcast, where we take you inside America's best cities.

At Livability, we highlight the unsung awesomeness of small and mid-sized cities across the country. We also partner with communities to reach their target companies and potential residents through digital content and print magazine programs. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, rate, and review this show wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also learn more about us at livabilitymedia.

com. Have an idea for an upcoming episode? Email me at aellis@livability.com.

Until next time, from Livability, I'm Amanda Ellis, sharing the stories of America's most promising places.