Better Marketing Needed for Royston, Notes City Councilman Turman

Royston City Councilman Keith Turman says more needs to be done to market the town’s new Economic Opportunity Zone status.

Last year, the Georgia Department of Community Affairs designated most of downtown Royston as an economic opportunity zone.  That designation allows Royston to offer businesses who locate within that zone special tax incentives and other perks from the state.

But so far this year, only two new businesses have located inside that zone, according to Royston DDA Executive Director Candy Rhoades.

At Tuesday’s city council meeting, Turman said he doesn’t believe enough  marketing is being done to promote the tax incentive zone.

“The people who know about Royston and search us on the Internet, that’s how they find out about us,” he said. “If they see stuff on our Web site that’s kind of stale and we haven’t updated it, it doesn’t look professional and that’s a turn off for anyone who might have been interested in locating here. So,we want to make sure our Web site is updated.”

Turman noted the City’s DDA Web site had not been refreshed or updated for some time.

Mayor David Jordan said they are working on a plan to upgrade the site as a whole and market the zone on social media.

“Actually, we had a discussion today about getting help for the DDA,” Jordan said. “They have volunteers but we need to put some money into it. We also need to see about getting a Twitter account and a linking back our Facebook page to the DDA site.”

After more discussion the city council took no vote, but agreed to look into upgrading the DDA and City Web sites.