DISCOURSE
I think COVID really accelerated the shift of this community engagement mindset . … With travel at a halt for much of this past year , our residents became our audience .
We put a pause on the series for a couple months , and ultimately decided to kind of shift that focus to more of the local audience , and it ’ s just been so much fun to watch how it evolved , and the number of listens continue to increase each month . …
Earlier this year , we had Cecil Rhodes , founder and co-owner of Nash & Proper on an episode . … Toward the end of the interview , Cecil shared how an unexpected post on Visit Sacramento ’ s Instagram helped Nash & Proper keep their doors open and put them in a place where they haven ’ t looked back . … COVID has reminded us that we need to continue to harness ( our ) power to not only be effective storytellers to people outside of our city but share those exciting places and inspiring stories with our locals . They are the ones to regularly frequent a restaurant like Nash & Proper , know the employees at their go-to spots by name , and ( are ) the best and most trusted referral to all of their family and friends that visit Sacramento .
I ’ m curious about Sacramento365 . It ’ s largely contingent on events . So what happened in 2020 in terms of the website ? ( Sacramento365 ) will celebrate 13 years of existence in September , and we ’ ve always been under the Visit Sacramento umbrella . But since the beginning , we ’ ve also been a joint project : Visit Sacramento , the City of Sacramento ’ s Convention & Cultural Services and the ( city ’ s ) Office of Arts and Culture . When the shutdown started last March , we had almost 1,000 events on our sites , and within a week , nearly 40 percent of those events had been canceled or postponed , which was just such a surreal thing to witness . …
One of the biggest things we instantly implemented was starting to allow virtual events , which we had never done before . That not only provided a lot of value to the organizations that utilize our site , but also allowed us to maintain that connection over this past year .
I ’ d be interested to hear more about how you measure the website ’ s success . We are a fully digital resource , so the measurements of our success ( have ) always been a lot of tracking ( of ) analytics . We average 50,000 monthly visitors ; we have a very significant social media presence . In recent years , what we ’ ve seen pre-COVID was that we were getting a lot of increased traffic to our website from outside the Sac region , specifically the San Francisco Bay Area . ( What ’ s ) taken a big hit this past year is , in normal times , we would average over 800 events on our site per day . March to May , October through December , those times of the year could be upward of 1,000 events on our site a day . Obviously , ( with ) advertising stuff we took a hit this last year , but I ’ m hopeful because we are really starting to see an uptick in our advertising , and just the general inquiries for our platforms .
As far as the importance of having a site like this , again , we ’ ve always been that local arm of Visit Sacramento and really cater to the greater Sacramento region . But having that access for residents and visitors to find events gives people the opportunity to explore the city and region beyond what they are familiar with . We feed and manage eight other area calendars , including Capital Public Radio , Go Downtown Sac and Explore Midtown , and so collaborating with these community partners allows venues and event organizers greater access to increase their promotional reach . … For our partners , they have this robust calendar presence that ’ s branded for their sites and is providing value to the businesses in their area , but they don ’ t have that hassle of maintaining it .
You ’ ve touched on how Visit Sacramento over the past year shifted to promoting more locally based things and wanting to engage residents more . Can you tell me about the connection to the Travel in Place campaign ? We ’ ve had a few iterations of our Travel in Place campaign since last summer . The campaign is designed to encourage locals to safely get out and explore Sacramento and take a night or two away out of the house and wake up in a new setting . It started while I was out on maternity leave and was really created to help drive that critical business to our hospitality partners who , in absence of visitors , really needed that local support . … When I returned , we had funding partners in the community , like Golden 1 Credit Union and SMUD , who were interested in collaborating to help give these businesses a boost specifically around the holidays . I was tapped to work with our team to develop the holiday
26 comstocksmag . com | July 2021