In this chat with Kelly Fletcher and Mary Beth West, Blount Partnership President / CEO Bryan Daniels, CEcD, discusses:

• The old versus new model of marketing rural communities successfully
• Ways in which Blount County, TN has differentiated itself as a top quality-of-life community 
• Blount County's true partnership-driven approach, with collaboration and cooperation among municipalities, elected officials and business community leaders
• How Blount County is taking a role at the international level to help drive thought-leadership and best-practices (with Bryan Daniels serving on the board of the International Economic Development Council, which will bring its conference to Nashville, TN, later this year)
  • https://www.iedconline.org/index.php?src=directory&view=staff&srctype=detail&refno=804&category=Board%20of%20Directors 
• How local, high-quality workforce development remains the most critical driver of attracting and retaining employers to a local community
• Ways in which today's social-responsibility discourse is informing the site-selection process... with some corporations including as part of their due-diligence a request for the voting record of local electorates as a criteria point for moving a headquarters or base of operations to a new community
• Rationale for rural communities to take a proactive stance versus a reactive stance in their econ-dev approach: 
  • Proactive: Driving site-selection visibility and relationship-building from the front, with a rural community sending its own delegations overseas 
  • Reactive: Relying entirely on one's state department of economic development to send site-selection leads to the local level

Learn more about moving your business to Blount County, Tennessee -- The Peaceful Side of the Smokies:

Blount Partnership: https://www.blountpartnership.com/
Connect with Bryan Daniels: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryan-daniels-b597283/ 
Follow the Blount Chamber on Twitter: https://twitter.com/blountchamber 

Smokies Vacation: https://www.smokymountains.org/
Peaceful Side of the Smokies / Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peacefulsmokies/?hl=en 

Site-Selection / Pellissippi Place: https://blountindustry.com/our-region/sites-and-buildings/pellissippi-place/

Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on:

Website:  https://www.fletchermarketingpr.com/

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Fletchermarketingpr

On Twitter:  @fletcherpr

On Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/fletcher.pr/

Follow Kelly on Twitter: @KDFletcher
Follow Mary Beth on Twitter: @marybethwest