Place Marketing Strategies That Work: Print, AI, and Public Art

Kristin Luna : Really looking at that visitor economy as a more well-rounded chain of events that you need to have all of these things to be somewhere that people want to visit and also somewhere that people want to live. So developing things for tourists while also not neglecting the fact that, you know, you want your residents to be able to enjoy the same types of things. Amanda Ellis : That's the voice of Kristin Luna, a place marketer and journalist who has worked with top-tier media and now co-runs a destination storytelling company called Odin Media and a public art nonprofit, DMA Events.

In today's episode, we're covering the tie-ins between tourism and economic development marketing, the most up-to-date nuts and bolts on place marketing tactics, print, content marketing, AI, and more for a fresh take on place marketing. Welcome or welcome back to Inside America's Best Cities. I'm Amanda Ellis of Livability Media, your partner for telling your community's 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 to relocating talent and business decision makers so they can glean the insights they need.

And with that, let's jump in. Welcome, Kristin, to Inside America's Best Cities. We are super excited to chat with you about some fun stuff. Kristin Luna : Yes, thank you for having me.

Amanda Ellis : I would love it if you could start with kind of an overview. You've got a super interesting background in media and journalism and place marketing and tourism and all the things. So I would love if you could just sort of start with some background on you and some of what you've done. Kristin Luna : Yes, I grew up in rural Tennessee, and then I went to journalism school at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

I moved to New York to work in consumer magazines. I jumped around from Newsweek, Condé Nast, uh, Time Inc. publications, and, uh, over time I just really got interested in tourism because I was already traveling just as a tourist. And so I started using my skills to help tourism boards, DMOs, chambers of commerce tell their stories, but from the lens of a journalist.

Amanda Ellis : Yeah, that's a really interesting journey. It makes sense that it would lead you there, but it's a cool path. And you're back in Tennessee now, right? Kristin Luna : Correct.

I live in my hometown of Tullahoma, which has about 22,000 people, and my husband and I run, uh, a destination storytelling company called Odin Media. And we also run a public art 501(c)(3) called DMA Events, which stands for Do More Art. Amanda Ellis : Very cool. So we're gonna be talking about both of those on the destination marketing topic.

A lot of times I've noticed we tend to treat that as very separate from economic development marketing, talent attraction marketing, which is more where Livability engages. And I wanted to get you to speak to the tie-ins between those and if maybe we should think of them more cohesively than we often see. Kristin Luna : Absolutely should. Tourism marketing, economic development, talent attraction, workforce, all of those live together.

They - none of them are mutually exclusive, and they're all aiming to answer the same question, which is why this place matters. Why are you in a city that tourists are going to care about, that is going to attract new business, that people are going to want to relocate to? And so if we're not thinking about all of those as part of like the greater fabric, I think we're doing something wrong as marketers. I mean, we think about it as tourism is usually the first introduction to a place.

So you go for a weekend somewhere with your family, and then you really start to connect with that destination and think, hey, now this may be somewhere I can see myself in. That kind of experience plants a seed if the visit is memorable, whether it's the people, the food, the public spaces, the housing availability. So it's not a big leap if you're doing tourism right to also be a place that people are going to want to relocate to. Kristin Luna : And it's tough for some marketers, I think, to think of the bigger picture like that, but really all of these should be a part of your overall marketing approach, right?

Amanda Ellis : And I mean, how many people, unless you just got like an amazing job opportunity in a different city, like would really want to move somewhere they've never even been? I think that would make me nervous. Kristin Luna : Exactly. And I live in a town of aviation heritage.

We've got Arnold Air Force Base and we've got George Dickel. We're right down the road from Jack Daniel's. So we're kind of at the intersection of aviation and tourism. But our problem has been the same problems a lot of cities experience, which is how do you retain talent?

We have people who are living in Murfreesboro or Smyrna or maybe even Chattanooga or Huntsville who are commuting up to our town. So one problem that our city really needs to tackle is that overall marketing piece that is explaining to people who may be running, you know, just stopping through town for a weekend to interview the city, if you will, why is this a place that they would want to live? Amanda Ellis : Right. I know before we hit record, we were talking about just like how crazy hotel prices have gotten and hotels versus Airbnbs.

And that just made me think, I wonder if sort of the emergence of Airbnbs in the last, what, decade or so, I guess, that that's really been more of a thing. It seems like that would be an interesting different type of exposure too for people visiting, because depending on where you're staying, it might be more of a feel of what it'd be like to actually live in a neighborhood versus a hotel in the middle of everything, but where you probably wouldn't actually be living. Kristin Luna : Yeah.

And one thing I've seen in Tennessee specifically is pretty much every county now has a decent vacation rental presence. Whether that's Airbnb, VRBO, or another platform. And it's been really cool for me as a traveler to re-explore my own state through that lens of someone who was living there. And I'm constantly just seeking out on Airbnb places that would be within 2 or 3 hours from me just so my husband and I can get out for the weekend but not go too far.

And it's introduced us to so many cool places that have like, renovated silos or shipping containers or barns or, you know, so many different kinds of living situations. And then you start to think, oh, well, I'm in a house that someone inhabits the rest of the time when tourists aren't staying here. What would it be like to live in their shoes in this destination? Amanda Ellis : Right.

Interesting tie-in that just occurred to me as we were chatting. Talk to me about what do you view as the most important parts or steps of a place marketing strategy? Kristin Luna : I think understanding all the different players or stakeholders that make a destination pop or make it something with a unique identity. You know, tourism brings outside dollars into the community, which is great because it helps create revenue to fix things in a community that the locals aren't having to pay taxes for, right?

Tourism directly supports restaurants, hotels, shopping, attractions, but the impact goes so much further than that. And I think we need to be thinking about the public spaces, you know, the green space, the greenways, if there's the opportunity for rail-to-trail, all these types of opportunities that tick the box of both being attractive to tourists, but also being something that would bring someone to a community longer term. And I think that's where a lot of destinations that are, you know, only have like one thing going for them, like for example, I just say distilling because we're in Tennessee and there are, you know, over I think 50 distilleries now.

But really looking at that visitor economy as a more well-rounded, I don't know, chain of events that you need to have all of these things to be somewhere that people want to visit and also somewhere that people want to live. So developing things for tourists while also not neglecting the fact that, you know, you want your residents to be able to enjoy the same types of things. Amanda Ellis : Right. I love that.

It's actually super timely. We just released a podcast today talking about the outdoor recreation economy and also a very trendy thing to talk about in the last, like, few years, I feel like, but captures a lot of what you were talking about. It's enjoyable for both people living there and people visiting. Everyone wins.

Kristin Luna : Exactly. Amanda Ellis : That's what I thought of when you were - and especially living in a place like Chattanooga or Tennessee in general, really, that that's a big part of kind of what we're touting is those outdoor amenities. I want to get into a few more specific questions on place marketing strategies and where your specific expertise lies. So you've worked with and in and around a lot of print outlets for quite some time now.

Print publishing's also a big part of what we do at Livability, community guides that really capture what we've been talking about, really the quality of life alongside the tourism pieces and different things you would wanna know, especially if you were moving to a place. Where do you think print fits and will continue to fit as we're seeing technology evolve so much? Kristin Luna : I think that print still plays a very valuable role in the overall marketing concept of any place.

Print is tactile, people are always going to want to hold something to, you know, take something to go in the car with them when they're visiting a place. We see visitor's guides, rack cards, maps are all constantly being pulled from the shelves at welcome centers because they're just tourists who are just cycling through there and want to take these marketing material with them when they go. And then we also have to think about the fact that, you know, if you're going more off the grid into these rural communities, the internet or the data on your phone may not be that strong.

So having some sort of print guide to also be a backup in case your digital fails is really important. I think the way we're seeing print produced has changed, like there's more evergreen content. Like what Livability does is you're kind of looking at that 30,000-foot view of a place, as opposed to just what's new and what's just happening right now. But I know locally in the town that I live in, our Chamber of Commerce says hands down the one thing people always ask for is a printed map.

Kristin Luna : Even though we all have a map in our phone, they said every single day they get people passing through, stop through and want a map. So I don't think we should ever neglect print opportunities. I just think we have to be more mindful about how those align with what we're already doing digitally. Right.

Amanda Ellis : I love that answer. I'm such a biased audience member to answer this question at all, but I definitely still appreciate it. I mean, sometimes everything is so screen-first now that it can be - can get a little old. And especially like in a travel context where maybe you're trying to like relax.

I don't know. It's nice to be able to have that to learn more about a place. And I know I'm always picking up those little things when I'm visiting places. Kristin Luna : Right.

Plus you have like the Tennessee Vacation Guide, which is like a full magazine and you've got these beautiful glossy photos. That can really give you a feel for the places you might want to visit versus looking at them on a tiny little phone screen. There's just a different experience and like immersing yourself in that destination, I think, on print versus digital. Amanda Ellis : Right.

We will definitely link to the magazine in the show notes because we had a very special cover person this year. Kristin Luna : Yes. And I got to write that cover story, which was very fun. So.

Amanda Ellis : And that was Dolly for everyone. Kristin Luna : That was Dolly Parton. Her - the Year of Dolly, I think we're calling it. She turned 80, and it's just coming up, all things Dolly in Tennessee with - she's got her new hotel and her new museum opening in Nashville.

So, and the show. Yeah, and the show. Oh man, the Broadway show is going to be phenomenal. I saw it at Belmont in its preview run, and it just like - I cried, I laughed, I just was very proud to be a Tennessean after watching that.

Amanda Ellis : So good. Yeah, I'm a Belmont alum. So I've been keeping - I haven't seen it, but keeping tabs on all of that. So everyone loves Dolly.

The like one thing we can all agree on. Kristin Luna : Exactly. One thing Tennesseans will tell you is that Dolly is our queen and we will not take any other answer. Right.

Amanda Ellis : So thinking more through the digital channels, though, which obviously are also really important, how is that continuing to shift? And especially as AI is more what we're all talking about right now, you know, GEO, how to get the messaging you want to show up in those AI summaries and through those tools, I think is a, is a big buzz right now. So maybe that's part of this answer, maybe it isn't, but what forms of media do you feel like are becoming more important versus less important?

Kristin Luna : I think we've reverted back to long-form content being important if you're doing it mindfully, like if you're doing storytelling that's authentic and information-based. That AI can pull from. Because even those who want to say, you know, AI is not the future, or they don't want to have anything to do with AI, like, it's already here. We can't ignore the impact it's having on tourism.

I personally find it helpful in a lot of things that I do in my day-to-day job, but also for traveling. Now, that said, if you are a smaller destination who hasn't done your due diligence of you know, building out your website or building out visitor information, you're going to be left behind because what Google and all of these other search engines are doing is pulling snippets from content that already exists. So if you're a place where there's not a lot of content about - written about you or published about you online, you really need to prioritize doing that on your own website or on third-party platforms because otherwise AI is going to have nothing to pull from that will be accurate information a visitor could use, or a person relocating to your community could use to plan that next step.

Amanda Ellis : Yeah, and just the long-term thinking of how it picks up its information. I know it was in a presentation the other week sort of talking about playing the long game with that stuff, about sort of when it updates its knowledge and making sure that you have what it needs to be able to tell that story. Kristin Luna : I love doing a community exercise where it's ask AI to describe your community. And based on the answers, that'll give you a good feel for if there's enough accurate information out there, or if you really need to be doing a better job about distributing that.

Again, I'll bring my own home community up. I, when this started becoming a trend, I searched on ChatGPT to I say, tell me a little bit about Tullahoma. And first of all, it gives all those generic responses. It's the kind of place where the people all gather on the downtown square and the riverside shops.

And it just used all these cliché tropes. But the thing was, we don't have a downtown square and we're not a riverfront community. Kristin Luna : So right there it had two inaccuracies in the opener. Yeah.

Someone who's maybe looking to move here or who is visiting and is using that to guide their travels, is going to be very disappointed when they learn that AI steered them wrong. So, but that helps me as a marketer who maybe will be helping the city of Tullahoma in the future say, this is how we need to sell our community better. We need to be putting in those key terms about being an aerospace community that has fiber optic internet speed, that has affordable housing, that has different types of housing.

That has access to state parks and to lakes, all those things that both a visitor and someone relocating are going to be looking for in a future home or a future place where they want to spend their money. Amanda Ellis : Yeah. Any other comments or thoughts you would have about the future of place branding? Kristin Luna : I think that place branding is becoming more trust-driven than ever because of AI and because of the volume and oversaturation of information out there.

So establishing voices who are speaking about your destination or figures of authority are really important because it's just hard to weed through all of the information and misinformation out there. So I think there's been a shift back to, you know, when blogging first started in the like early aughts and bloggers were the voices of authority. It's almost like we've reverted back to to that, but not just bloggers in a community that can be your realtors, I feel like are usually the best voices for a community because they're the ones who have the most vested interest in people moving to town.

So they're really showing off the best of what their place has to offer. So I think looking outside of like your traditional - I mean, obviously, I'm a blogger and a content creator in addition to everything else I do. So I'm always going to say that bloggers and content creators have value. But I think an ambassador for a city doesn't just have to be someone who is in the media space.

Kristin Luna : It can be a realtor, it can be your local diamond jeweler, it can be your - in our town, we have a dealership called Stan McNabb. And if you've ever driven in Tennessee, you've seen their billboards and people come from across the state to buy cars there. They are a great source of marketing for our community. And so I think looking more at those retail driven tourism opportunities that are bringing people into town and really, um, making sure that the people who are kind of the first point of contact with the visitor or a potential, um, a future resident is really important.

Amanda Ellis : It's like your real-life influencers in a sense. Exactly. What about - I know there's a lot of consultants in this space, like We're one, you're one, for places, what do you feel like they should really be looking for in any outside help or consultants that they decide to engage in their marketing? Kristin Luna : I think someone who sees the full picture, uh, someone who's not just a one-stop shop or just focused on one thing, because as we've been talking about, anything in place marketing should encompass a lot of different topics and different sectors, if you will.

Public art, events, downtown design, local businesses, recruitment. I feel like place marketers are doing more than just marketing. They're also out there recruiting, right? Or they're out there being the influencer for your community.

So working with someone who has a variety of skills and also is an authority figure on different subjects, like not just a one, you know, not just like a one-trick pony, I guess you would say, but who can look at the broader picture of your place and help be the glue that brings all the different voices together, whether that's the shop owners, the - if there's a downtown association, the Main Street group, the city government, there really needs to be someone who can create cohesion there.

Yeah. Amanda Ellis : That's such a good answer because so much of this type of work can get so like spread out between different entities and maybe you're doing the same stuff if you're not talking to each other, maybe it's just not organized as effectively as it could be. Kristin Luna : So that's a great way to put it. It's not organized effectively.

And there's also turf wars in a lot of towns. And I think the benefit on working with someone who's not in your community is they are more of a neutral voice. And we've seen that a lot in our mural work. I mean, most of our place-based projects have to do with public art specifically.

And when we go into a community that we don't live in, we'll start to talk to local business owners, local artists, city officials, and we'll learn things like, oh, they've had all these grant opportunities in the past that they've just let lapse because the right foot doesn't talk to the left foot. And historic zoning commission doesn't like the downtown group or the Main Street director or the chamber. Kristin Luna : So having someone who's more of the, like, I don't know, the babysitter, the preschool teacher who's going to make everyone get along is really helpful in a bigger project.

Right. Amanda Ellis : Or you're like, we can't look bad in front of this person who's not even from here. Kristin Luna : Exactly. It's like they're on their best behavior, but it's also like coming in as being you or me who doesn't know all of these inside relationships, I think is helpful because we can be like an objective voice in the process.

We're not from that place. We didn't grow up with the mayor's parents. There's not like a built-in bias. And so I think that's when it's really helpful to bring in a third party.

Amanda Ellis : Yeah. And that's a great segue because you mentioned the mural example, and I did want to talk a little bit more about the art-focused entity that you run and get you to share a little on why public art's important, how it contributes to branding. I think this is also something we've seen a lot more places engaging in in the last several years and the impact. Kristin Luna : So our journey to becoming a public art nonprofit started with just being consumers of public art.

You know, I've traveled to over 140 countries and I travel a lot in the US. I love a good mid-tier city or a small college town. And when my husband Scott and I were just on our own personal travels, everywhere we went, we wanted to find who were the local tastemakers doing the art. So that just became kind of a fun journey for us starting, I don't know, around maybe 2007, 2008.

All of our travels began to be fueled by that creative community in the towns we were visiting. And so naturally, we just got more and more interested about what these towns were doing and how they were doing it successfully. And as a journalist, I started covering this kind of work. Kristin Luna : I did a cover story for Parade back when it was still in print, where I talked to artists in all 50 states, and it was like the best mural in every state.

But more importantly, it was how do these murals contribute to that place? And how do they make it special? And how do they express its identity? So we were just really interested as just natural, curious travelers.

And we were living in Manchester, which is the home home of Bonnaroo, and now 5 interstate exits and a state park. But outside of Bonnaroo, people weren't really stopping other than to fill up their tank for gas when they were driving between Chattanooga and Nashville. So we were working with the local tourism body that was under the city government. And they said, what can we do to create more buzz?

And, you know, we just naturally thought, what do we as millennial travelers care about? And it's art, it's third spaces, it's coffee shops, that kind of thing. Art just happened to be something that is effective almost immediately and doesn't require a whole lot of - you need paint and permission to do public art. You don't need a lot of other things beyond that.

Kristin Luna : You need a little bit of funding, but compared to building a museum or creating infrastructure, it's so much more affordable. So we started a mural trail in Manchester just on our own and incorporated as a 501(c)(3), which opened the door to so many grant opportunities. We get a lot of grants from the Tennessee Arts Commission, National Endowment for the Arts, and now the Tennessee 250, since we're celebrating the country's 250th this year. So becoming a nonprofit was really key for us being able to do more art because it just provided more - not instant funding opportunities because the grant process can take a year to 18 months, But now we figured it out and we're always planning about a year to 2 years out on projects we want to do.

And we've done over 75 large-scale murals in Tennessee since then. Amanda Ellis : That's so cool. And I love how you framed it on the relatively low barrier to entry to do something like that versus a huge building, a landmark, you know, things that, I don't know, more people have to get on board with and that costs a whole lot of money. But everyone likes to look at something pretty or interesting mostly, I think.

I'm sure there's some naysayers somewhere, there always are, but - Kristin Luna : There's always, we, yeah, there's always the snowflake ladies in the community. And I love that term because one town told us that they were trying to hang snowflakes for Christmas. And there were these little ladies in the town who just did not like what they were doing. So they started referring to them as the snowflake ladies because they were trying to trying to stop the art from happening.

So I always think of that and how to include those snowflake ladies in the community and make them feel like they're - that they matter and that we want them to enjoy the art too. That's always not going to happen because everyone's not going to like the same things. But I mean, why we've enjoyed having a public art community is we've been able to bring so many different styles of art into these communities that we work in. So in Tullahoma, where we live, we have over 20 murals now that our nonprofit has installed.

Kristin Luna : And then as a kind of snowball effect, other people have done murals on their buildings, because that's the cool thing too. If you have a building, if you have a surface to paint - it doesn't even have to be a building, it can be a fence, it can be a barn, it can be a rock, it can be just anything that's a paintable surface - you can create a public art program. You just need to connect with artists and You know, we believe in paying artists fairly. So having the financial means to be able to support the project.

But it's not that hard if you think about it. If you own a building and you want a piece of art, I mean, the world is your oyster. Amanda Ellis : So what are your thoughts on how you can maintain that character in the ways that you want to while also having growth? Because nowhere wants to be the place that's not growing, right?

Or that's going the opposite direction. Kristin Luna : I mean, you're asking the right person this because when we started our Manchester program, we were overly communicative about what we were planning to do. But there were some folks on the historic zoning commission who just didn't like the idea of change whatsoever. And so they tried to have us arrested.

And that was - that was not - for what? For painting on private property. And basically it came down to it was not their idea. And as we talked about earlier, turf wars, we were living in the community then, and we're big believers in communication because most projects that fail are due to a lack of communication.

In that case, I think we communicated too much to them because we had been telling them for months what we wanted to do, and they had such a stronghold over the square there that a lot of the business owners were not even able to update their roofs. Because of this historic overlay. Kristin Luna : And so the buildings were rotting into themselves. And so we lived on the square there, and we were fixing up an 1800s house, and we're like, we've got to do something.

And one way to improve buildings that are, you know, starting to be dilapidated or could potentially go that direction is by reinforcing them with paint. So that was kind of the approach we were taking. Now, sometimes, sometimes those type of PR moments can be beneficial because that gave us so much juice in the beginning when we were doing our first mural that people in the community got really invested in this piece. They're like, why are they trying to arrest the two people in town who are trying to improve this place?

Yeah, with their own funds. No, no taxpayer money was used for that project. And it, you know, we weren't planning to start a nonprofit, but because people kept saying, will you please do more art? We started a nonprofit called Do More Art.

Kristin Luna : So we learned very early on that you're always going to have those people who don't want any change or growth. And we just still really try to be as inclusive as possible. And every community is going to have kind of a different personality, right? We've gone into some towns like Sweetwater, where they have such just, again, a cohesion, like this unified town feeling where everyone is on the same page, the city government, the downtown group, the Main Street, the Historic Zoning Commission, the tourism director, and they all work in conjunction with one another.

So when we did our first mural there, it was so well received that within 3 or 4 years, we'd done 8. And now they put a line item in the budget to create public art. But I mean, again, you can't create those - you have to foster that kind of community mentality, I think, at the city government level sometimes. And that's what Sweetwater's done so well is they just have a really great team in place there.

And not every town is like that. Kristin Luna : I think that it's important to constantly remind maybe the older generation that growth doesn't mean or shouldn't mean that we're trying to erase any history, that we're trying to strip the town of its existing identity, but we're trying to help evolve it. We're trying to make a community culturally relevant for the future generations while preserving what makes that place so cool to begin with. So everyone has to kind of give and take a little bit in that process.

Amanda Ellis : I love that. And just for context, for any listeners that are outside of the state, these are not big places that we're talking about. I mean, Sweetwater, I don't know, what would you say the population of Sweetwater is? Kristin Luna : 6,000 people, I believe.

Amanda Ellis : Yeah. Kristin Luna : And now they've got the, the cheese, the dairy farm, and they've got, you know, the Lost Sea Adventure. They've got vineyards. The downtown itself, the main street brings people off the interstate.

Yeah. Amanda Ellis : And it's so neat that they're embracing that and doing some cool stuff. It's cooler, honestly, a smaller place that's arguably, you know, less resources and different issues. I guess all places have issues, but different ones.

Well, thank you so much. This was great info, I think. And again, you have such an interesting background, I think, that you're bringing to the table with all of this. So we're Really appreciate that.

Um, we are gonna move into a closer fun question that we always do with guests, but before we do that, where can people find you if they wanna follow along, keep tabs on this type of info and your projects? Kristin Luna : For sure. Um, so my name is Kristen Luna. My social media is @lunaticatlarge.

I have a blog called Camels and Chocolate that's all about my travels, public art, food, all the fun things. And then, um, our nonprofit is called DMA Events. So if they search us online or on Facebook, we post all of our projects there. Amanda Ellis : Awesome.

We've talked a lot about Tullahoma where you're based. So the fun question we always ask our guests is wherever they're based, if someone were visiting for the first time, what should they be sure to do? And maybe something a little off the beaten path that wouldn't be the first thing they'd come up with if they were Googling. Kristin Luna : Well, obviously if you're coming to Tullahoma, you have to see the murals.

Again, we have over 20, so that is a great free activity, especially if if you have kids. We have a map on our website that has all of the murals in town so you can easily find them. If you're of age, the distilleries, George Dickel, which is now under the name Cascade Hollow Distilling Company, is so cool. And even if you're not a big whiskey fan, just going out there and taking the tour, it's in this little hollow just outside of town.

And it's one of my favorite places in Middle Tennessee. And then we have Beechcraft Heritage Museum, which has a fly-in every year called Beech Party, and they get visitors from all 50 states and over 30 countries who come in their little like planes to Beechcraft for this event. So that's one thing that people just can't miss. Kristin Luna : And, you know, I talked about we were big on aviation heritage, but you can actually go to a museum and see these planes and learn about the history.

Since obviously you can't just pop into the base. And then we have a lot of lakes. We have Timms Ford Lake, which is the big state park, but we have a smaller one called Normandy Lake that I think a lot of people overlook. It's really great for hiking.

I take my paddleboard out there a lot. It's a little bit quieter than Timms Ford Lake because there aren't all those public marinas. So if you are traveling with your own kayak or paddleboard or fishing boat, that's a great place to go. Amanda Ellis : Awesome.

Well, thank you so much, Kristin. I think this was a great episode and I really appreciate you. 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.

Amanda Ellis : 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.