The Ohio Ambassador Program is getting a facelift and a new home as the initiative expands to better tell Ohio's story.
Initiated about a year and a half ago by the Ohio Department of Development, the Ambassador Program signed some 1,600 volunteer ambassadors to carry the message about what it's like to live and work in Ohio.
Now, the effort is moving under the auspices of the
Ohio Business Development Coalition to take advantage of new communication channels.
"We are going to be implementing social media into the Ambassador Program, which I think is going to make a huge difference in terms of engaging people and in the potential impact of the program," says Ed Burghard, OBDC's executive director.
OBDC is a nonprofit organization funded with public and private sources that designs and implements marketing efforts for the State of Ohio. Burghard says the Ambassador Program is an important way to highlight what OBDC likes to call "the state of perfect balance" -- an environment in which residents have time to pursue both professional and personal aspirations. He believes that by creating a dialog across social media channels, that message will build over time and extend to wider audiences.
"We want to create a community where the folks who want to tell the story can come and be given the tools to make it easy to tell that story," he says. Ambassadors will be kept up to date on relevant developments within the state, information they can pass along to others, and easy-to-execute assignments, Burghard says.
"We have no expectations that somebody is going to decide to drop $20 million to build a facility in our state because they read somebody's Tweet," he says.
But, as more people search online for information about states and communities, "you would hope some of the (information) we are most interested in having people read would come to the forefront."
Source: Ed Burghard, Ohio Business Development Coalition
Writer: Gene Monteith