Question #4 – Can you give me some examples of how Synergystation.com has helped people?
Question # 4 – Can you give me some examples of how Synergystation.com has helped people?
One of the main reasons we created www.synergystation.com was to help with the 24 / 7 / 365 chaos as Bakken comes to market. Over time our website will have additional content and features designed to respond proactively to that chaos, but for now, here are a couple examples of how we believe we are helping:
1. We had a business from the west coast who wanted to relocate their company to the Bakken contact us. He had been scouting the area for about a year and it was coming down to decision making time. The owner found us via our Facebook page and emailed us a couple of questions. I think he was trying to find specific information on our site, but at that point our site had been live for about 3 days and it was pretty bare boned. From the email we arranged to meet for a cup of coffee. Over our budget coffee at the WalMart McDonald’s we discussed some of the challenges to the Bakken marketplace he was struggling with. By the end of the conversation, we had connected this out of state business owner to six Montana businesses that could help him make his business venture in Montana/North Dakota run much more smoothly.
2. A couple of young entrepreneurs from Utah were just finishing with a project in southern Utah and were looking for the next thing. A few of their friends had ended up in the Williston Basin with a truck wash business that was turning out to be fairly successful. Before they took their first scouting trip, they wanted to know who they should connect with in the Williston area to make the most of their time. We spent about an hour on the phone connecting them to various companies in the Bakken marketplace to help them with their proposed business idea. Some of their companies were already in our Synergy Station business directory, but some of the contacts we gave them were folks we knew personally in the eastern Montana, western North Dakota area.
3. Our Synergy Station Hiring Hall, www.synergystationhiringhall.com (which is currently in test mode) was bolted on to our main website, www.synergystation.com on Christmas Eve morning by our techie guru. I posted a couple of jobs to the new site which I poached from Monster.com, CareerBuilders.com, and a couple of online recruiters who are actively recruiting for the oil patch. I posted these openings to build a baseline for the new Hiring Hall site so I could see what would attract on the Internet. Now, remember this was Christmas Eve morning. For the next day and a half my husband and I were actively buildings Barbie dollhouses, Barbie furniture, trikes, and various other toys with horrible assembly instructions! On Monday morning, the day after Christmas, I logged on to the site. We had a resume from someone in Australia that was interested in a position in the oil field that required a Masters in Geology. How did he find us ? The site was live, but not really all that visible….or so I thought. I don’t fully understand how, even after my techie guru explained it to me, but the way our main site is built, as well as the Synergy Station Hiring Hall, and the Synergy Station Directory, is to maximize their ability to get found through a Google search (or any other search engine for that matter). She (yes our techie guru is a girl !) has helped us to create a website that helps everyone participating in the Synergy Station Directory or the Synergy Station Hiring Hall to get found by businesses and consumers that are looking for you. I share this story – not because we actually helped someone directly with the job posting in test mode, but to give you some insight into how businesses that are listing in our directory or jobs that are listed on our Hiring Hall are getting found with simple Google searches for key words. What this example showed me is that it didn’t matter that our site fairly new. What mattered was that it’s set up correctly to help connect people. There are some amazing sites out their regarding the Bakken, but they aren’t optimized or set up very well to get found.
4. Examples of directory success. I think the best way for you to see, is to Google the following key words to see what pops up on the first page of your Google search:
“bakken water depot”
“bakken lodging”
“archaeology + bakken”
“cultural resource management + bakken”
“social media marketing billings montana”
Some key words are harder to get to the first page of a Google search than others. Why getting to the 1st page of Google is important? Well, most folks believe that the cream rises to the top (OK, for those that know me, that’s the extent of my farm and ranch knowledge!). 80% of the time when we are looking for something; either to learn about something or begin the buying process we turn to the Internet. Most folks don’t look beyond the first page of a Google search – after all the best options must be on the first page – right ? Well – this isn’t always true, but we don’t have a lot of time to plod through page, after page trying to find whatever we are looking for. We usually stop looking after the first two pages. So getting to the 1st page of a Google search is pretty important if you want businesses or consumers to connect with you.
We are more than just a website that helps you get found online, however. We are also a hotlink on the Billings Chamber of Commerce website for energy businesses. Our Synergy Station Hiring Hall will come out of test mode sometime in May and will be promoted and sold via KTVQ2 in Billings as well as throughout the MTN network (in all but one county in Montana). We are actively networking with a number of other entities focused on this energy wave promotion. We are the search engine sponsor for the Billings, Montana “Chamber on the Go” mobile app that will be actively promoted throughout the Bakken footprint starting in May. 1/3 of our readers find us through our Facebook page.
5. We are actively working on an energy event/community calendar that will reach from the Bakken, to Billings, to Bismarck, and beyond. there are lots of opportunities for business owners to get connected, but no one knows about them. There are lots of opportunities for potential oil field workers to get low cost, to no cost training, but no one knows about them. These are just a couple of quick examples of how we are working to make things better and easier. The #1 hot commodity for employ ability in the Bakken oil field is a CDL (commercial drivers license)….so why when the Miles Community College hosted a very low cost oil field truck driving school in Miles City, MT did they have to cancel the event (not once, but twice) – it’s because people didn’t know about it. That’s why our #1 focus on Synergy Station is communication. We all have a piece of information. Share it with us on Synergy Station and let’s help each other make this economic opportunity happen!
