During the 2014 International Economic Development Council (IEDC)’s annual conference in Ft. Worth, Texas, the Macon Economic Development Commission (MEDC) was recognized with a GOLD award in the New Media category for its social media campaign, #MadeInMacon.  The IEDC Excellence in Economic Development Awards recognize the world’s best economic development programs and partnerships, marketing materials, and the year’s most influential leaders.  These prestigious awards honor organizations and individuals for their efforts in creating positive change in urban, suburban, and rural communities. "This award validates your excellence in economic development," said John Zakian, Principal, Zakian Consulting and IEDC Awards Advisory Committee Member.

Manufacturing Appreciation Week, developed by the Technical College System of Georgia and the Georgia Department of Economic Development is celebrated the third week in April. The Greater Macon Chamber of Commerce and the MEDC created a social media campaign for the entire month of April called #MadeInMacon to recognize and demonstrate appreciation for local manufacturers by featuring a different manufacturer every day for a month through social media.  These features highlighted small, medium and larger manufacturers, showing the wide variety of items produced in our community. 

The brief posts about each of the companies included a link to their webpage. These posts appeared on MEDC’s and the Chamber’s Facebook pages, Twitter pages and on MEDC’s LinkedIn page. A recap of the entire month’s posts can be found on the MEDC website http://www.maconworks.com/skins/userfiles/files/Made%20In%20Macon%20posts-all.pdf

As a result of this campaign MEDC social media followers increased by as much as 20% and the MEDC website saw a 420% increase in pages viewed as compared to the previous year; 66.9% of those were new visitors. 

“This is an outstanding example of how our economic development team creatively celebrates and promotes local companies,” said MEDC board chairman, Walt Miller.

MEDC’s staff was on hand at the Texas conference to receive this prestigious award.