SocorroLive gets re-purposed

SocorroLive.com, a website created by the local company Integrated Technology to stream broadcasts of Warriors games on the internet, is expanding its scope.

In addition to providing game coverage, the site is now intended to become a billboard on the information superhighway, informing potential tourists of the area’s many attractions.

Funding to develop the site, and its affiliated Facebook and YouTube channel, is being provided by the New Mexico Tourism Department, through a Cooperative Marketing grant awarded to a five member consortium of local non-profit entities. The new marketing campaign was formally introduced to the Socorro City Council on Jan. 17 by Robyn Harrison, president of the Socorro County Tourism Council.

Referring to “the spate of bad weather a year ago,” Harrison started by describing the site as a way for the public to have access to instant information in emergency situations. She suggested that city employees could make use of SocorroLive to keep the public informed in the event of power outages and problems with city utilities and roads.

Harrison called SocorroLive a “blog with current events,” and said it was a “spin-off” of the Socorro Tourism Council.

“We’re hoping to grow this, and have everybody send it out to relatives and friends that might come to Socorro,” Harrison said.

Mayor Ravi Bhasker said he thought the idea was a good one, but had questions about how the content is being generated and who is ultimately responsible.

The city is the fiscal agent for the $40,000 Cooperative Marketing Award, granted jointly to the city of Socorro, the Socorro County Chamber of Commerce, Friends of the Bosque, Socorro Community Theater and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. A portion of the grant is dedicated to supporting the SocorroLive project. Other portions of the funds will go to billboards, brochures, magazine advertisements and redesigning the Chamber of Commerce website.

“This is funded by the state tourism grant — how do you separate the two? What I’m getting at is that the tourism stuff should be coordinated through Jennifer, and not the Chamber of Commerce,” Bhasker said, referring to the city’s tourism director, Jennifer Gonzales.

Harrison said that in essence, the SocorroLive content is intended to be user-generated by anyone with an event to promote, or something to say about local attractions and destinations. The idea is to use “word of mouth” to market the area, relying on people to share their offerings — and their experiences — through social networking.

“We’re hoping everybody will contribute,” Harrison said. “It’s the only way to keep this thing running.”

This raised some concerns for the mayor, who responded that there needs to be some coordination with the city.

“We want to make sure there’s some veracity to what they’re putting on there,” Bhasker said. “If the city’s going to have its name on it, we want some sort of verification. If it’s going to be used as a town crier, we want to make sure of what’s posted and who’s posting it.”

Bhasker said misinformation could be a problem; he gave a recent highway closing as an example, saying it took the city multiple phone calls over several hours to determine the actual situation. He said he wouldn’t like to see information go up on SocorroLive saying, for example, that the highway had been re-opened when it was actually still closed, as it could cause unnecessary confusion.

While Harrison was addressing the meeting, Councilor Mike Olguin Jr. used his smartphone to “like” the SocorroLive Facebook page and to tweet a message about it using his Twitter account.

The $40,000 Grant

The Cooperative Marketing award is a 33/66 percent matching grant, requiring the consortium members to commit twice the award amount to the combined marketing effort. Four of the five collaborating members have committed to contributing $83,000 in matching funds, with $68,500 of that coming from the city.

The New Mexico Tech Performing Arts Series is listed as a partner. Neither the Socorro County Tourism Council nor Integrated Technologies are listed as members or partners in the grant.

The projected expenditures listed in the grant application include $28,500 for print media advertising such as magazine ads, brochures, billboards and the Chamber of Commerce calendar.

In an earlier interview, City Tourism Director Jennifer Gonzales said the grant application was written before she took over the city’s tourism department, but she believed the remaining $11,500 of the $40,000 award, earmarked for website development and social networking, was dedicated to the SocorroLive project. However, Chamber Director Terry Tadano said only $5,000 of that is for SocorroLive, to be paid to Robyn Harrison for social marketing start-up and training.

Tadano said $1,500 from the grant will go to website developer Ruanna Walrum for maintaining the city’s website. The other $5,000 is slated to go to the company that maintains the Chamber of Commerce website, for webpage advertisements, social media and Facebook.

“As a single entity, the most you could apply for was $3,000,” Tadano said. “As a consortium, the limit was $40,000, so it made sense for us all to go in together.”

According the terms of the grant, the $5,000 to be paid to the SocorroLive project from the state tourism department award will have to be matched with $10,000 from members of the consortium, but Tadano said the matching funds don’t have to be applied to items on the list dollar-for-dollar, as long as the consortium can show that the total match has been reached.

 

-- Email the author at sbarteau@dchieftain.com.