Media to Attract Local Industry?

In addition to those previously blogged, some other projects are also mentioned in Sunday’s VDT article about the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority. Malynda Fulton’s writeup of the February Industrial Authority meeting mentions a couple more projects, Project Butter, and Project Loaves, both about baking, that don’t appear in either the January or April articles. This leads to the question: what are the current projects, and what is their status?

Apparently the media campaign discussed in the January article didn’t happen, since it’s not mentioned in either of the later articles.

The February writeup does brag about the Industrial Authority’s “newly-designed Web site”. Well, it’s fancy, all right. Unfortunately, unless you’re using a tall screen (not a laptop) using it requires constant scrolling up and down. The hexagonal navigation is snazzy looking, but the top third of a laptop screen is taken up by In practice, the pictures at the top take up a third of a laptop screen, then there’s the navigation buttons, and the items navigated too are below the fold until you scroll down. Oh, wait: there’s duplicate text-menu navigation on the left halfway down, but whenever you use it it jumps you back up to the top. Simpler would be better. Which is too bad, because there’s a lot of very useful information in there.

Prominently missing, however, is a list of projects such as those mentioned in the newspaper writeups, with current status and plans.

Maybe instead of a traditional media campaign, at lower cost the IA could simplify its web site and use social media to get it more recognition.