In effort to improve communication with the public and its marketing activities via social media and its website, the Oxford Downtown Development Authority (DDA) is bringing in someone to tackle the task.

Last week, the DDA board voted 7-0 to hire Assistant Village Manager Drew Benson for a period of 10 weeks for a total of $1,360. He will work eight hours a week for the DDA at the same pay rate he currently receives from the village.

“I do want to pay him,” said DDA Executive Director Glenn Pape. “I don’t believe in unpaid internships.”

Benson is already paid $17 per hour to work 24 hours a week as the assistant manager.

The recommendation to hire Benson came from Pape.

He explained to the board that the DDA is lacking in terms “of who we should be communicating to, what we should be communicating and how often.”

The DDA’s current social media plan calls for posting on Thursdays and obtaining 2,000 followers. “We’ve accomplished that, but we need a more coherent social media plan,” Pape said. “We need a more coherent idea of what our website should look like and what type of content we should be pushing out to members of the community, what we should be pushing out to potential investors, and what we should be pushing out to any and all sorts of people who are looking for information about Oxford. We’d like to create a framework for carrying out all of this.”

Benson would be tasked with helping to create a strategic marketing and communications plan for the DDA as well as developing content and layout for the website and social media.

Benson will help determine the type of content that should be posted via social media and the type that should be available on the DDA website.

“Things that require engagement we put through social media. Things that are just going to be an informational push would go through our website,” Pape explained.

Benson is tasked to go beyond Facebook and help create a “complete social media platform,” according to Pape, that encompasses the use of other popular forms, such as Instagram and Twitter.

“Part of this is looking at the social media platforms that are used by our target demographics,” Pape told the board.

In other words, different age groups use different forms of social media.

“If you’re having an event” that is “traditionally” attended by “an older crowd” and the DDA would “like to get more young people to show up,” Benson said it needs to know “what is (the) medium that statistically, or otherwise, connects with that target demographic,” so “you can send it out that way.”

Benson, a graduate of Western Michigan University who is currently working to attain his master’s degree in public administration from Oakland University, has a background in communications using the internet.

“I used to be a professional sports information director down in South Carolina and I also worked at Oakland University handling social media websites,” he said.

He spent a year-and-a-half with the City of Rochester. “I was part of the team that redesigned their website,” Benson said. “We completely refreshed the whole website.”

DDA Board Member Sue Bossardet, who also serves as president of the village council, favored hiring Benson.

“I think this is a good idea,” she said.

Bossardet was critical of both the DDA and village’s current use of the internet.

“We are sadly lacking in social media outreach to the community,” she said. “I think everybody understands that our website is below par and actually, I think our Facebook page is, too.”

She believes “there’s not enough information getting out there” and the DDA is “sadly in need” of an “update” in terms of its ability and efforts to “reach out to people, businesses, property owners.”