The Participation Tax and Spokeology Report - Episode 14

Community collaboration sounds great, but it often comes with a hidden cost: everyone has to do more work to participate.

When businesses have to repeatedly submit events, update directory information, or send content to multiple community organizations, you’re charging them a participation tax with their time. A connected community can eliminate much of that busy work while creating more distribution and visibility for everyone.

Build a Community That Works Together

Chambers, Main Streets, tourism organizations, cities, and local businesses are all trying to promote many of the same things.

The problem is they often do it independently.

• Maintain separate calendars
• Build separate directories
• Ask businesses for the same information
• Promote the same events
• Recreate content that already exists somewhere else

Instead of making every organization and business repeat the work, connect the community so information can move between them.

Look at What Happened in Statesville

Statesville, North Carolina has become one of the most connected communities using Locable.

The Chamber, Tourism, Main Street, City, and local businesses use Locable tools to collaborate and distribute local information. Spokology analyzed the impact of that collaboration, focusing specifically on the tourism website.

Over roughly three months, they found that about 61% of search engine traffic to the tourism site went to network-enabled content.

That content primarily included:

• Enriched business directory listings
• Community events
• Blog posts
• Other information supplied through the local network

Instead of Tourism having to create all of that content themselves, the community helps create it.

Turn Collaboration Into SEO Value

Community-generated content doesn't just fill up a website. It gives Google and other discovery tools more useful local information to find.

Spokology estimated the search traffic generated by this network-enabled content had a value of approximately $1,000 to $3,000 per month based on what comparable traffic would cost through paid promotion.

That means collaboration can:

• Increase organic search traffic
• Create more useful local content
• Improve business and event discovery
• Reduce dependence on paid promotion
• Give community websites more long-term value

The content already exists in the community. The opportunity is making sure it can work for everyone.

Stop Paying the Participation Tax

The bigger finding may be the amount of time being saved.

Spokology estimated that the connected approach saved Tourism approximately 139 hours per month compared with manually managing the same content.

But there was another side to that equation.

The community itself saved more than 200 hours that otherwise could have been spent manually submitting information.

That's the participation tax.

Every time you tell a business, “Submit your event here,” you're asking them to do another task.

• Remember that your submission form exists
• Find the information again
• Enter it into another system
• Repeat the process for another organization
• Decide whether the extra effort is even worth it

Most local businesses aren't sitting around looking for more things to do.

When participation requires repetitive work, fewer people participate.

Let Businesses Do the Work Once

The better approach is simple: do the work once and let the network distribute it.

A business should be able to publish an event or other useful information to the public internet and have connected organizations help expand its reach.

Depending on the organization and tools involved, that can mean:

• Publish an event once
• Share content with community partners
• Pull events from existing calendars
• Display information across multiple websites
• Expand distribution without repeated submissions

Some organizations may already have calendars or other systems they need to keep using. That's fine.

The goal isn't to force everyone into the same system. The goal is to connect the information so people don't have to continually recreate it.

Make Participation Easier

If your community calendar says “Submit your event here,” there's probably an opportunity to improve the process.

You absolutely want local businesses and organizations contributing information. But requiring manual submissions every time creates friction for them and work for your staff.

A connected network can help you:

• Reduce repetitive submissions
• Save staff time
• Increase business participation
• Distribute more local information
• Give businesses more exposure
• Keep community websites useful and current

The easier you make participation, the more likely people are to participate.

Next Steps

Look at how information moves through your community today.

When a business creates an event, ask how many times that information has to be entered before it reaches your Chamber, Main Street, tourism organization, city, community calendar, and other local partners.

Then look for opportunities to connect those systems instead of asking businesses and staff to repeat the work.

More distribution shouldn't require more busy work.

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