FREE, Easy Ways You Should Use LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook To Promote A Radio Show, Business, Cause or Organization

My friend, Bobby Nelson, needs to promote his radio show but he has no promotional budget whatsoever. Bobby’s show is liberal talk radio’s best-kept secret and he has no money to remedy that.

As a frequent guest and regular listener, I can tell you that Bobby Nelson is an exemplar of what radio talk can and should be. Other talk shows should emulate his. Bobby, a former Huntington mayor, WV legislator, Congressional staffer and current Marshall University instructor, is thoughtful, prepared, connected, informed and professional. His “Supertalk 94.1 FM and 930 AM” simulcast is a model of information-rich, thoughtful talk radio at it’s best but Bobby has no budget to make people aware of the show.

Perhaps you have a cause or a business or an organization that deserves to be better known. If you do, read my advice to Bobby and see if you can’t use some of these free, easy social media tips to promote your well-kept secret.

The good news is that Bobby can use his current listener base to reach new listeners and callers. How? First, Bobby needs to get all his current listeners to “friend” him on Facebook and “follow” him on Twitter because friends of the show will both actively and passively promote his show. People will see that their friends are following Bobby or that they are Bobby’s Facebook friends and they will follow and friend him, too. That’s passive promotion. It’s free. It happens while you sleep or anytime people are rummaging through Twitter and Facebook looking for their friends’ friends and followers.

LinkedIn shows how you’re connected to other people and alerts you to new connections and other activity in which your LinkedIn connections are engaged. When Bobby Nelson becomes LinkedIn to someone, that person’s connections will see that on their LinkedIn home page.

I love LinkedIn. In a separate post I'll say more about LinkedIn.

Then there’s active promotion. If Bobby tweets today’s topic and guest, Bobby’s friends will re-tweet that tweet to their followers and so on.

Obviously, Bobby needs to start mentioning his Twitter account - @tristatetalk – and his Facebook page – Bobby Nelson – about 4 times each hour and asking his current “install base” of listeners to “friend” him and “follow” him.

I’m shocked at how many businesses have a Facebook page but don’t use the “invitation” function to send out emails containing links to the detailed invitation info.

A few days ago I mentioned an old, prominent Charleston business that is totally wasting its Facebook page and missing a great opportunity to replace some of their expensive direct mail, newspaper and other paid ads with FREE Facebook “invitations”.

An invitation could be used, for instance, to announce a sale or a trunk show. This particular business spends a lot of money on paid advertising but they could reduce their ad spending if they would do two simple things: First, they need to aggressively tell everybody who comes in their store to join their Facebook page where they will get info about sales and trunk shows. They need a computer and an internet connection on the sales floor so sales clerks can show people what’s on the Facebook page and even let them log in to Facebook and sign up on the spot. Then they need to start using the “invitation” function to announce trunk shows and sales. They have a Facebook page but they don’t know how to use it.

A word of caution: never, ever “spam” people with Facebook invitations, tweets or any other form of social media outreach. (See my previous post, Tweet Unto Others As You Would Have Them Tweet Unto You). If you abuse the trust people have placed in you by absolutely annoying the heck out of them with 20 tweets a day and the overuse of Facebook invitations, they will un-friend and un-follow you.

How often is too often? Well, let me turn the question around on you: how often would you want to be tweeted?

One day I got 32 tweets in one hour from the same lovely person. That’s w-a-a-a-y too much – even from someone you like. I sent her an email in which I simply told her how many tweets I had received from her in the past hour.

A headhunter once tweeted me about 13 times in just a few minutes. When I emailed her to say she was tweeting too much she asked me if I am a “social media expert”. I told her, no, I don’t claim to be a social media expert but I do claim to be an expert on being human an expert on what annoys humans and that being tweeted 13 times in a few minutes’ time is annoying. She named some famous “experts” - people whose names you’d recognize - and assured me that they told her to tweet 13 times in a just a few minutes.

First of all, I don’t believe Guy Kawasaki told her to tweet me 13 times in a few minutes. Second, if Guy Kawasaki or any other “expert” tells you to annoy people and spam people, trust your gut and feel free to disregard such unempathetic, insensitive advice. If you wouldn’t like being tweeted by the same person 13 times in a few minutes or 32 times in an hour then don’t do it to other people.

Charleston is full of so-called “marketing experts” whose tweets don’t reach me anymore because they either don’t have or didn’t listen to their own little internal voice that tells them when to quit.

My friend, Bobby Nelson, should reserve the Facebook invitation function for very special announcements such as syndication of the show or expanded hours or maybe very special guests or topics.

If Kindred Communications ever starts streaming his show live over the Internet – as they should – Bobby should send out a Facebook invitation announcing that so his many friends outside the Huntington market can start listening on their computers.

But Bobby should Tweet show time, topic, guest and dial position twice each day – once in the morning, once just before airtime at around 3PM, every day his show is on the air – Monday through Friday. Bobby’s regular listeners and other friends of the show will re-tweet his tweet and he’ll get new listeners. And it’s free.

Bobby’s Facebook page should contain basic show information like how to get a podcast. Bobby should provide a link to the podcast site.

If Kindred Communications ever streams the show live via internet, Bobby’s Facebook page should contain a link.

Finally, Bobby needs to accept that Linkedin invitation I sent him. I’ll say more about how Bobby and other readers can use LinkedIn to promote their careers, their causes, their businesses and their organizations in a future post.

I Can Prove That "One Man, One Woman" Is Not "Biblical"

West Virginians who argue for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as “between one man and one woman” on the grounds that this is the “traditional”, Judeo Christian view of marriage and that the USA is a country based on Judeo Christian principles apparently haven’t read their Bibles. While I’ll stipulate that I am aware of no Biblical examples of gay marriage, the idea of marriage being between one man and one woman is of fairly recent Biblical origin. Many of the Bible’s heroes including Abraham, Moses, Gideon, Jacob and David, just to name a few, had more than one wife. Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines.

And even if the Judeo Christian “tradition” about marriage were not fluid, the problem with using religious principles to define marriage is that the USA is not made up exclusively of religious people. And it’s certainly not made up exclusively of Christians and Jews. The founding fathers wisely didn’t adopt the Old Testament as the constitution of the USA – though theonomists and other theocrats wish they had. Instead of adopting a religious book as the constitution of the USA, the founders wrote one. The constitution the founders wrote specifically doesn’t establish any religion. Later, when Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to the Danbury Baptists assuring them that there is a “wall of separation” between church and state, the Baptists were relieved.

Jefferson’s “wall of separation” was like Roger Williams’ “hedge” between the “garden of the church” and the “wilderness of the world.” Williams founded the first Baptist church in the new world.

While early theonomists were killing "the Indians" to clear the way for their "city on a hill" Rogers befriended and was trusted by the "Indians."

For readers who were taught that our nation’s “founders” came here to establish a Christian nation, let me correct you. Our nation’s founders didn’t “come” to America they were born here. I don’t think it’s accidentaI that elementary school plays confound and co-mingle the arrival of the Pilgrims with the establishment of the nation even though those events were 150 years apart and the Pilgrims and Puritans were long dead when post-Christian founders like Jefferson and Franklin and Washington founded the nation. I’m aware that theocratic books like Peter Marshall and David Manuel’s The Light And The Glory and all books by David Barton and George Grant and Gary North and R J Rushdoony have popularized the idea that Jesus wants conservative Christians to make the USA a Christian nation based largely on the Old Testament, but “reconstructionists”, theonomists and people who believe in “dominion” will find no foundation for that sentiment in the founders and would need a constitutional convention to overturn our current constitution in order to make this a “Christian nation”.

I’m embarrassed that, not only do I live in a nation where voters think of Pilgrims and Puritans when someone says the word “founders” but I live in a nation where some voters think it’s OK to charge taxes and impose Christian ideas about sex and marriage on Muslims, Hindus and atheists.

I often ask right wing theocrats if they think Jesus supports theft because that’s what it is to take taxes from everybody then use those taxes to build a society that provides the rights to pursue life liberty and happiness only to a specific subset of Christians.

Here’s what reconstructionists, theonomists and other theocrats would do if they had the courage of their convictions: First they would absolutely strip all homosexuals and atheists of their US citizenship. If they aren’t citizens, they have no rights. Next they would refund all taxes paid by atheists and homosexuals because it would be unchristian to take taxes from people who have no rights.

This, of course, will never happen because the hypocrites who want to deny gays the right to marry or the right to rent an apartment or the right to work at jobs for which they are qualified also want to collect taxes from them and keep them in a sort of second class citizenship where our laws and our courts make some people more equal than others.

I’m not unsympathetic to evangelical Christians. I used to be one so I understand that when politicians want to pass laws that make it OK for gays to marry voting for those politicians feels like condoning homosexuality.

But then I realized that voting for people who want to deny gays the right to marry is condoning theft of tax money.

You don’t have to be gay or condone homosexuality to want all tax-paying, law-abiding citizens to get the freedoms and the happiness their tax money is supposed to assure. You can still think gays are going to hell. You can still think gay sex is gross.

You can still hate gays – though you’ll have some trouble reconciling hatred with Jesus - or imagining a Jesus who hates gays.

And because I used to be an evangelical and even flirted with the “reconstruction” movement, I know that evangelicals have lost sight of what they call “The Great Commission” which is to convert people to Jesus.

No gay was ever converted to Jesus because somebody was unkind to him.

Evangelicals know full well that hating gays and denying them jobs and denying them apartments and denying them the right to marry whom they wish has never and will never convert any gay to Jesus so I can only conclude that when evangelicals insist on being mean to gays it’s not because they love them and want to save them and keep them from going to hell.

The last time I wrote a post in support of gay rights I got hateful comments from so-called Christians and I expect to get such hateful comments again. If those comments are clean and civil I will publish them.

Lots of gay people and gay orgs started following me on Twitter. Just for the record, I have to approve follower requests and I don't approve them just because you agree with my blog.

As "Flo" the Progressive insurance woman says, "there's no discount for agreeing with me."

Here's what I would like to happen this time: I would like for my elected officials to write legislation that makes it illegal for cities, counties and the state of West Virginia to deny jobs or housing or marriage to gay people who pay their taxes and have a right to all the protections that our tax money is supposed to pay for.

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Higginbotham At Large welcomes all comments – especially comments that provide an opposing point of view. Just keep it clean and civil and I’ll be happy to publish your remarks.

Why Are Charleston’s Conservative Radio Talk Show Hosts Against the Tech Park?

Why Are Charleston’s Conservative Radio Talk Show Hosts Against the Tech Park?

Is it because the hi-tech tenants of that proposed park aren’t the kind of businesses that are likely to buy much radio advertising?

If the proponents of a plan to transfer ownership of the old Union Carbide/Dow Chemical site to the state wanted to fill that property with car lots and restaurants would Charleston’s conservative radio talk show hosts still oppose the plan?

I doubt it.

OK, Charleston’s conservative – it’s the only kind we have – radio talk show hosts seem to be a little confused so let me help them understand why they should support a plan to create businesses that won’t buy radio ads and won’t bring them free food while they’re on the air.

Conservatives are supposed to be in favor of economic development and job creation. The proposed tech park is a chance for our government to incubate new employers and attract still others resulting in hundreds or thousands of well-paying hi-tech jobs that will pump millions of dollars into the local economy. That's good.

While it’s true that hi-tech firms aren’t likely to buy many radio ads, the millions of dollars they pay their employees will enable hundreds or thousands of families to spend more money at restaurants and car lots resulting in more radio ad dollars for conservative talk radio.

True economic development involves monetizing something that wasn’t monetized before. To do that you have to either discover something of value and then monetize it or you have to invent / create / build something new and then monetize it.

If one of the restaurants that bring Charleston’s conservative talk radio hosts free food sells a meal, no new wealth was pumped into the Charleston economy and no new jobs were created here. The restaurant that sold the meal simply benefited at the expense of restaurants that didn’t sell that meal. The patron who bought that meal had to eat somewhere. The preparation and sale of a meal isn't economic development, it's simply a question of where the food is prepared and sold. Whether that consumer eats at restaurant A, restaurant B or simply stays home and fixes himself a sandwich, no new dollars come into the economy as a result of the consumer's choice.

"But" some may say, "if everybody stays home and fixes a sandwich, isn't that bad for the local economy?"

It's more money for Kroger, less for The Tidewater Grill or Aubrey's.

Note: Higginbotham At Large likes both Aubrey's and The Tidewater Grill so there's no need for people who own, manage or sell ads to those fine establishments to get mad. My point is simple: some kinds of business don't bring new money into the local economy.

Other kinds do.

The hi-tech jobs that a “commercialization” / pilot plant” park can bring to Charleston will result in new inventions and patents and in hi-tech jobs that will go somewhere else if we don’t capture them here. In other words, something new (inventions, patents, new products, new processes) will be created and monetized. That’s true economic development that benefits everybody in the Charleston area.

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Higginbotham At Large welcomes comments – especially comments to the contrary. Just keep it clean and civil.

How AARP Lost Me

How AARP Lost Me – Even Before They Failed To Embrace Real Healthcare Reform

Since Shereen Remez’s LinkedIn profile says she is “Executive Vice President for Member Value” and that she “oversees all acquisition and retention of 40 million AARP members” perhaps she’ll be interested in knowing why I didn’t renew my AARP membership.

No, it wasn’t AARP’s failure to support my “the public option”. AARP lost me before that. They lost me at the local level. They lost me when I attended my first AARP meeting.

First, the AARP in the city where I lived at the time was meeting at a senior center. 50-somethings in their early years of AARP eligibility don’t see themselves as old enough to belong to AARP much less an AARP meeting in a senior center.

Second, I was by far the youngest person in the room. Most of the attendees were in their 70s and kept starting sentences with “you might know my son” or “did you go to school with my daughter?” They were friendly with me but they and I knew what AARP headquarters apparently doesn’t: that 50-somethings are a different demographic and a different psychographic and that we don’t belong in the same chapter with retired 70-somethings who see us as kids.

Third, the meeting was held in the middle of the day. I asked if maybe they could attract more AARP members of my age group if they held the meetings after office hours since AARP-eligible folks in their 50s are either working or looking for work during the daytime. These 70-somethings who meet at a senior center and tell me I remind them of their kids explained to me that they hold their meetings in the daytime because their members can’t see to drive at night.

In summary, everything about my first and only visit to a local AARP meeting told me that, at the local level, 50-somethings like me are out of place and that no thought whatsoever is being given to reaching out to my generation of AARP-eligible people.

I suggested to the state director that AARP should aggressively form new chapters that meet in the evening, that eschew and avoid the senior center and that are comprised exclusively of 50-somethings. The state director acknowledged that I was right but nothing has been done to implement my ideas or address the need to activate and reach out to AARP’s 50-something eligibles.

Now I’m back in my home state and I’m looking at a publication whose target audience is “seniors”. Of the 5 AARP chapters advertised, two meet at senior centers, another meets at a hospital (that’s another place 50-somethings don’t want to be), one meets at a “community center” which doubles as the – you guessed it – senior center and still another meets at a Baptist church.

All but one meets in the middle of the day when 50-somethings are either working or looking for work.

Doesn’t AARP headquarters or their state-level staff understand that 50-something AARP eligibles are not the same demographic as their retired, no-driving-after-sundown membership?

Don’t they understand that we are a different psychographic?

Shereen Remez, if you want me and my 50-something, AARP-eligible friends to get active in AARP, give us a chapter we can join that doesn’t meet in a senior center or a hospital or some other place that reminds us of mortality. Call us when there’s a chapter we can join that isn’t run by people who look at us as kids. Call us when there’s a local chapter that doesn’t meet when 50-somethings are working or looking for work.

In fact, call us when AARP brings back the job seeker workshops for people in their late 40s and early 50s.

Tweet Unto Others As You Would Have Them Tweet Unto You (and other marketing advice)

I’m neither a Luddite nor a technophobe nor a late adopter but I was able to predict what a mess Twitter would become because I am old enough to remember the last time technology made it possible for people to never have an unedited, uncensored, unbroadcasted thought. Remember CB radio?

And some of Twitter’s worst offenders are the so-called “social media marketing experts” who, it turns out, were probably irritating CB radio operators in a former life.

From the start, while I admired the technology of Twitter, I knew what happened when you put a microphone in the hands of anybody who wanted to broadcast so I knew what would happen when anybody could tweet to anybody foolish enough to follow those tweets. No, I’m not talking about those harmless but trivial tweets that say something like “I’m at the Town Center mall. Anybody want to meet me for a cup of coffee?” I actually had a cup of coffee with my old schoolmate, Rick Lee, as a result of one of those tweets and it was nice. Rick and I hadn’t talked much since high school so we had a lot to catch up on.

No, I’m talking about the people who want to take the “social” out of “social media”, people who see every new surface as a place to splash a logo and every new technology as a way to extend their marketing careers for a few years by selling themselves as “new media marketers”.

Ever since a friend of mine warned me that he had given my name to a professional society made up of techies and engineers and scientists who want a one hour speech on the topic of “Marketing In The Electronic Era” I’ve been thinking a lot about what I might say to them if, indeed, I get the invitation. I might tell them this: Tweet unto others as you would have them tweet unto you.”

I might tell them what I told a non-profit group recently – that Elvis Presley’s old manager, Colonel Parker, was on to something when he protected Elvis from media overexposure. There’s an old show business axiom that says, “Leave them wanting more.”

I’m not one to block and tell but a few months ago I blocked several of Charleston’s “marketing experts” from tweeting me because they seemed to think if they tweeted a dozen times every day whether they had anything to say or not that they had “marketed” to me.

Here’s a news flash: your Twitter followers don’t want to be marketed to. Shouldn’t the people who portray themselves as “marketing geniuses” or “marketing gurus” actually know something about humans and that humans are likely to block their tweets if those tweets become annoying?

For the record, I have never called myself a marketing guru or a marketing genius. Some men are born to marketing, others achieve marketing while still others - like me - have marketing thrust upon them. I had marketing thrust upon me about 100 years ago when my general manager fired the ad agency and suddenly put me in charge of all things communications. His reasoning was that I did some freelance writing so I, presumably, knew how to write so, thought he, I could write radio ads, TV ads, newspaper ads, billboard ads, brochures, etc., and manage a budget. I'm sure the boss figured that if I screwed up he could hire back the ad agency. I won't pretend that I didn't make mistakes but he never rehired the ad agency so, over the years as I moved to other companies and on to GM jobs I retained the marketing function for myself.

If I get invited to speak to the techies about “Marketing In An Electronic Age” I may tell them it’s much more important for a marketer to know people than to know technology. It’s not cell phones and computers and Apple iPads that make buying decisions, it’s the people who own those devices who make buying decisions. If you don’t know people, if you don’t have empathy for people, you can’t market.

Here’s a good use of Twitter – one that’s welcome to followers who voluntarily signed up to follow exactly such tweets: a restaurant that tweets EXACTLY one time each day to tell followers their special of the day. Now that’s a good use of social media because there’s a kind of relationship and trust between a restaurant and its “regulars”.

Again, I won’t name names but here is a poor use of social media: a certain retail clothing store that used to send out expensive mailers advertising their spring and fall sales now has a Facebook page on which they “announce” these sales. But there’s a problem. You have to actually go to their Facebook page to see this info because, apparently, nobody at the store knows how to create an “event” or an invitation so that Facebook will actually SEND this announcement to page followers who have – let me remind you – signed up to receive such notifications. This is an example of knowing neither humans nor technology. Humans – even humans who like to spend money with you – won’t go to your Facebook page or your website to look for your sales and your marketing.

Oh, and there’s another problem: the retail store’s clerks don’t ask customers to sign up for the Facebook page. And there’s no computer on the retail sales floor where they can show customers what they’re signing up for. Customers have to remember to go home, look at the page and then sign up.

Humans won’t do that. Not many of them, at least. When I first checked the retailer’s Facebook page they had 52 followers or fans. Yesterday I checked it and they have 49 followers.

You can’t save money replacing post cards with social media unless you actually use the social media properly. To do this, you have to know something about the technology but you have to know even more about humans and how humans behave, think and feel.

Now, if I speak to a group of scientists, engineers and techies, I might have to establish my own techy bona fides so I might have to tell them that I worked in the R&D area of a Fortune 400 hi-tech company for years before some of my own R&D brethren realized I wasn’t a marketing guy. Why? Because I was the guy in the room who was always predicting how end users and retailers would react to various proposed courses of action. I used to think being human was the only qualification needed for having empathy for humans but that was before I knew about sociopathy, Asperger’s and engineers.

There goes the speaking gig.

But if there were a speaking gig maybe I should tell them what I learned from recruiting marketing people for clients: that advanced degrees and 20 years of highly-paid marketing jobs at IBM or Ford don’t make someone a marketing guru. Maybe I should tell them that even so-called marketing geniuses who taught marketing in college might not know that an advertising schedule isn’t a marketing strategy.

Or maybe I should tell them that they are going to hear sales pitches from so-called marketing gurus who haven’t read a book on marketing or branding since college. No, I’m not making that up. When I interview people I always ask them to tell me what they read and how that reading has influenced them or informed their work. You’d be appalled at how many so-called marketing people don’t actually read anything about branding or marketing and then get mad at me when I cut the interview short and tell them they’re not what I’m looking for.

In fact, you’d be appalled at how many so-called marketing people can’t read a very simple case study on a fictitious company and identify the obvious marketing challenge that I went to great pains to describe.

But most of all, if I am invited to speak to a roomful of entrepreneurial engineers, maybe I should tell them that most so-called marketing gurus who want to market their widgets for them will want to build them the same website they built for a plumber and a gas station and an accounting firm and that these so-called marketing geniuses won’t know how to come up with a marketing strategy for their own unique business because they won’t first take the time to actually learn what’s uniquely different about that widget business and its prospective clients.

And, of course, I have to suck up to them by quoting HP co-founder, Dave Packard, who correctly said, “Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.” In other words, while engineers shouldn’t have to learn marketing they will have to learn marketing if they start their own company so they can spot the charlatans and the snake oil salesmen.

And, of course, wherever I go I quote Harry Beckwith who said, “Marketing is not a department.”

But if they remember to tweet unto others as they would have others tweet unto them I have served mankind.

Don't Be Stupid, Send This Post (Not Your Resume) To Anonymous Employers

Congratulations. You ran a "blind" employment ad and now you have a short stack of resumes from people who are stupid enough to send resumes to anonymous advertisers. I said "short stack" because not many people responded. That's because most people are smart enough not to send resumes to anonymous advertisers.

But what to do? You can't really hire any of the people who were stupid enough to answer a blind ad because that would make you an employer who's stupid enough to hire people who documented and proved their stupidity by answering a blind ad.

But don't despair. Even though you have a stack of resumes from people who are now documented to be too stupid to hire, I have two ways for you to benefit from those stupid people resumes.

Don't throw away the stupid people resumes. Just push them to one side of your desk and label them "resumes from people who are too stupid to hire."

Now, run a second ad identical to the first one except for one thing: this time identify your company. The resulting stack of resumes will be much higher and the applicants will be better.

Some applicants answered both ads. Move all duplications to the stupid people pile. Interview only those applicants who didn't answer the blind ad.

So the stupid people pile is worthless, right? Wrong. Do you have any idea how much scam artists would pay for the names and phone numbers of people who are stupid enough to answer blind ads? I mean, people who are stupid enough to answer blind ads are stupid enough to give their Social Security numbers and PIN numbers and bank account numbers to strangers on the phone or in their email inbox. Those stupid people resumes are worth their weight in gold to scam artists.

Editorial note: The preceding was sarcasm. Higginbotham At Large is not advocating running blind ads so you can collect the names and contact info of stupid people.

But Higginbotham At Large meant to be taken at his word when he said that people who answer blind ads are too stupid to hire and that companies who hire people who answer blind ads are just as stupid as the people they're hiring.

Tell Your Elected Leaders You Want The Proposed South Charleston Tech Park

Higginbotham At Large is not young enough or cool enough to belong to Generation Charleston but I attended their Monday night public forum about the proposed “Tech Park”.

Let me cut to the chase: I agree with Senator Brooks McCabe, Charleston Area Alliance, Matric CEO, Keith Pauley and others that the state of West Virginia should accept The Dow Chemical Company offer of 258 acres of land and facilities and turn it into a commercialization / pilot plant facility where inventors and developers from all over the region can bring their inventions from pure research stage to the ready-for-market stage.

Getting this Tech Park project done is a perfect example of the kind of thing government should be doing for its citizens.

Thanks to Matt Ballard at Charleston Area Alliance, I am able to post a list of elected officials and their contact info below. Make some calls and write some emails and tell your elected leaders that you don’t want this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be squandered. Tell them that many of the brilliant minds who worked at the old Carbide / Dow facility back in its salad days are still here in the Kanawha Valley and many of them are ready to help. Tell them that there are already 300 jobs at the proposed tech park and experts think there could be as many as 2500 jobs with an average salary in 6 figures at this park in just a few years.

	Phone Number	Email Address
Governor
Governor Joe Manchin, III	(304) 558-2000	Governor@WVGov.org
Kanawha County Delegation
Senator Dan Foster	(304) 357-7866	Daniel.foster@camc.org
Senator Brooks McCabe	(304) 357-7990	brooks.mccabe@wvsenate.gov
Senator Corey Palumbo	(304) 357-7854	corey.palumbo@wvsenate.gov
Senator Eric Wells	(304) 340-3287	erik.wells@wvsenate.gov
Delegate:
Delegate Tim Armstead	(304) 340-3240	armstead@mail.wv.net.edu
Delegate Bonnie Brown	(304) 340-3106	bonnie.brown@wvhouse.gov
Delegate Nancy Peoples Guthrie	(304) 340-3156	nancy.gurthie@wvhouse.gov
Delegate Barbara Hatfield	(304) 340-3140	hatfield@mail.wvnet.edu
Delegate Marl Hunt	(304) 340-3392	mhunt@markahunt.com
Delegate Patrick Lane	(304) 340-3275
Delegate Mesha Poore	(304) 340-3248	mesha.poore@wvhouse.gov
Delegate Doug Skaff	(304) 340-3362	doug.skaff@wvhouse.gov
Delegate Sharon Spencer	(304) 340-3218	delspencer@aol.com
Delegate Ron Walters	(304) 340-3194	ronwalte@mail.wvnet.edu
Delegate Danny Wells	(304) 340-3287
Commissioners:
Commissioner - Kent Carper	(304) 357-0101	rachellemorrison@kanawha.us
Commissioner - David Hardy	(304) 720-4248	djhardy@agmtlaw.com
Commissioner - Henry Shores	(304) 357-0101
Mayors:
Charleston Mayor - Mayor Danny Jones	(304) 348-8000	mayorjones@cityofcharleston.org
South Charleston - Mayor Frank Mullens	(304) 744-5301
Senator Robert C. Byrd
Senator Jay Rockefeller	(304) 347-5372
Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito	(304) 925-5964