Why Dayton Marketing Community on Squidoo?

In addi­tion to main­tain­ing this site, voice, I also main­tain a site on Squidoo.com called Day­ton Mar­ket­ing Com­mu­nity. The site is designed to serve as a resource for Mar­ket­ing Pro­fes­sion­als in the Day­ton, Ohio area. It has job post­ings that are updated every 1/2 hour, a cal­en­dar of events fea­tur­ing the lat­est hap­pen­ings around town, local busi­ness news from the Day­ton Busi­ness Jour­nal and the Day­ton Daily News, and a vari­ety of links to other employ­ment, net­work­ing, and pro­fes­sional sites. The site is very easy to find. Sim­ply type the words “Day­ton Mar­ket­ing” into Google and there I am — or at least there I should be. Pretty cool eh?

When I tell peo­ple about the site I often get the ques­tion “Why did you put it together?”

Well, there are sev­eral rea­sons behind the cre­ation of Day­ton Mar­ket­ing Com­mu­nity, many of which I will share with you in this post.

First, as some­one who has been forced to look for employ­ment a few times in the last few years, I know how hard it can be to sim­ply find job post­ings. When I was look­ing, I found myself say­ing “I wish there was one site I could go to and find every­thing that is out there.” So, when Squidoo came along, I thought to myself, here is a way to make that hap­pen. Cer­tainly I don’t claim to have every­thing that is posted out there, but I can promise you a great place to start. With links to sites like simplyhired.com, emurse.com, jobster.com, creativehotlist.com as well as the usual sus­pects, the site serves as a good home base for find­ing employment.

Next, as I was inter­view­ing and search­ing I began to bet­ter under­stand the power of net­work­ing. I found myself search­ing high and low for pro­fes­sional events where I could build my net­work, but dis­cov­ered that it was really dif­fi­cult to find much of what was hap­pen­ing around town. Thus the Day­ton Mar­ket­ing Com­mu­nity Cal­en­dar made it pos­si­ble for me to aggre­gate events like local cham­ber func­tions, AMA, Ad Club, PRSA, IABC, and the litany of other groups that meet into one sim­ple place. Now when I plan my week, I look at my appoint­ments, find holes in my cal­en­dar, and fill them with net­work­ing events by sim­ply check­ing the cal­en­dar. Just that easy.

The next ben­e­fit I dis­cov­ered is directly related to the last one. Some­thing else I learned was that the more new peo­ple that attend the events I attend, the more value for me to attend the event. I am going there to meet peo­ple and build my net­work, so by mak­ing it easy to find out what is going on in town, not only is it eas­ier for me to attend, it is eas­ier for oth­ers to do the same. I would not be so bold as to say that my cal­en­dar is the focal point of peo­ple seek­ing out events around town, but it is a start. I have referred sev­eral local pro­fes­sion­als to the site, and occa­sion­ally some­one will con­tact me with a note of thanks — a new connection.

Finally, at least for this post, the site has helped me to become more con­nected with the com­mu­nity in which I live. By know­ing more about what is hap­pen­ing, I am bet­ter equipped to con­tribute pro­fes­sion­ally and per­son­ally to my com­mu­nity. The site has let me know who is hir­ing, who is mak­ing news, what group is involved in what cause and how effec­tively they operate.

Should you be some­one in the field of mar­ket­ing, liv­ing in or around Day­ton, Ohio, I hope you will give the site a look. As always con­struc­tive feed­back is welcomed.

Day­ton Mar­ket­ing Com­mu­nity on Squidoo