As part of Uptown Consortium, Inc.’s (UCI) ongoing efforts to engage the Uptown community and support small businesses, UCI recently hosted two virtual events within a 15-day span.
Small Businesses Highlight Marketing Wins, Experts Share Pointers
The first virtual event took place on September 30 and focused on ways to support local small businesses. Five panelists shared ideas for how to market small businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, including tips for leveraging social media, updating a Google business listing and maximizing the local YELP business listing.
Panelists included Meshell Giblin, Managing Partner of Business DNA Group; Diamyn Rembert, Owner of Diamyn's Crystal Bar and member business of PAUSE Cincy; Kelli Cummins Gagen, Owner of Mio’s on Short Vine; Chris Human, General Manager of The 86 Coffee Bar & Concert Venue; and Tyler Minton, Senior Community Manager of YELP Cincinnati.
Gagen started by sharing how Mio’s and the Short Vine business community uniquely pivoted once promotions for UC Bearcats football fans didn’t happen because of the pandemic. Instead, the group brainstormed ideas and decided to raise funds to feed essential workers at hospitals. They raised $8,000 and provided meals for 2,500 essential workers.
“Hearing the stories of the nurses and the essential workers and what they were going through was one of the coolest things we've ever been involved in. I truly believe giving back was one of the best ways people could have gotten through it,” Gagen said, sharing that the idea continued to grow from there, including how the University of Cincinnati’s Sig Ep Fraternity raised another $1,000 dollars. “I saw it happening everywhere. People were working together helping one another everywhere. Short Vine was pretty amazing.”
The 86 Coffee Bar and Concert Venue also shared its community engagement efforts. They delivered free coffee to emergency rooms until it became too much for the team, which was now a skeleton crew, to handle late at night. So they started another program, “Give a Cup.” Customers pay $4 dollars and fill out a card to identify who the cup should go to—a single mother, a student, a single parent—and include an encouraging note on the back. The cups are dispersed to customers at the discretion of workers.
For example, Human shared that a man who is going through a divorce told the team how he was having a tough time.
“There was a card that said ‘for a single parent,’ and we just turned around and said, ‘this one's for you, man;’ we gave him a free coffee, and he flipped it over and started crying at our counter, because on the back it said, ‘You're doing a great job.’ It was just the perfect thing.”
Many of the panel’s attendees submitted questions around marketing and communications, so Giblin shared ways for businesses to build a social media presence and generate original content.
“Think of social media as the new PR,” Giblin said. “It gives you an opportunity to post videos, post images, and those are on there forever. You can spend a little bit of money through advertising to boost those to your audience and customer base, so that’s really how the process starts.”
Another discussion area of high interest focused on YELP reviews and how businesses and organizations can maximize a YELP listing. Minton offered tips for how business owners can claim their business and shared tips for adding photos.
“Those photos and any content on your page acts just like SEO does on your website,” Minton shared. “When people are searching for things on YELP, the algorithm is searching for those search terms within your page. So, if you don't do anything to your YELP page, you're relying on users to upload all of those search terms for you.
Watch the full virtual panel on UCI’s channel on YouTube.
UC Health Shares COVID-19 Updates
UCI’s second virtual event took place on Wednesday, October 14. It was in partnership with UC Health to share informative updates about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and UC Health’s current renovations related to its master plan. CEO Dr. Rick Lofgren presented on how the medical system is responding to the pandemic, tips for flu season and progress in COVID-19 vaccine trials.
As one of the advisors to Ohio Governor Mike DeWine during the pandemic response, Dr. Lofgren brings a unique perspective as the leader of Greater Cincinnati's only academic health system and as an internal medicine physician with a master's degree in Epidemiology. Additionally, Dr. Lofgren holds leadership roles with the Ohio Hospital Association, the Greater Cincinnati Health Collaborative, and the Cincinnati's Chamber's RESTART Program. Locally, Dr. Lofgren serves on several boards, including the Board of UCI.
“At UC Health, as the academic health system for the region, our purpose is actually fairly simple: to advance healing and to reduce suffering,” he said. “You really see our important vision of being the premier academic referral center, taking care of people with the most advance and complex challenges and things that I think we're uniquely positioned to do that really requires that academic backbone.”
Dr. Lofgren explained that UC Health, as the clinical engine to support the academic mission of the university, has a long tradition of having nearly a thousand clinical trials at any one point in time.
“We have spent, in the recent months, pivoting and really focusing and being very active in the involvement of a number of clinical trials as it relates to both the diagnosis and treatment of COVID, as we move forward,” he said.
Dr. Lofgren talked about the response to the virus and how he believes Ohio should be proud of how it responded right from the beginning, sharing that early on, Governor DeWine divided the state into eight emergency preparedness regions.
“But, in addition, he asked that the state be divided into three zones around the three C's of Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati so that we had consistency and constant communication between the three zones,” Dr. Lofgren said. “We really needed to make sure that what people were doing and hearing in Cleveland was consistent with what was happening in Cincinnati.”
Dr. Lofgren serves as the Zone Lead for Zone 3, the Cincinnati market, sharing that early on in the pandemic, all of the leaders from the zones were on daily calls with the Department of Health and coordinating activity.
“At first, it was scrambling to make sure we had enough PPE and enough supplies for a potential surge, such as ICUs and ventilators, but also we shared best practices and the like,” he said. “And even today, we have, twice a week, all three of us get on a call, along with the leaders from the Ohio Hospital Association and the governor's office, to talk about the issues of the day.”
Dr. Lofgren shared that they were “flying blind” in understanding the virus when it was first introduced in our community.
“We didn't have a lot of testing, so we definitely were flying the plane without instruments, and we have learned a lot since then, and we're going to learn a lot more as our knowledge expands,” he said. “We've learned a lot about how to diagnose it, how to treat it, and obviously, the big push here is how we're going to prevent and ultimately eradicate the virus by having appropriate vaccines in our community.”
Dr. Lofgren discussed that they have been collecting plasma at UC Health as part of a national study, coordinated through the Mayo Clinic, about the effectiveness of convalescent antibodies from people who recovered from the infection who have developed antibodies and giving them to individuals who have acquired the infection.
“This is a promising therapy,” he said. “We realized, early on, we gave it to people late in the course of disease, we now think that maybe giving them early in the course of disease may actually be more effective.”
UC has more than 100 potential studies that are very active right now in terms of starting up and enrolling individuals. UC was selected for what Dr. Lofgren believes is one of the most promising vaccine trials here. Leadership of Operation Warp Speed, the government’s infrastructure that has been funding and accelerating the development of effective vaccines, visited UC Health earlier this year.
“They came to visit us in particular, not only because of how we've brought up our vaccine trials, but one of the things that's important when you do a trial is that you have broad representation of individuals from the community,” Dr. Lofgren said. “Will this vaccine be as effective in various ages and different races and communities? There's always a challenge of having the diversity within the trials, and one of the things that we've done here in Cincinnati is that we've led the way in the number of individuals that we've been able to enroll of individuals of color in participation and a recognition of how important that is.”
Dr. Lofgren shared that some of the challenges with the first vaccines include that it requires two doses, so tracking individuals who got the first dose to make sure they get the second dose, and get it appropriately, is an issue. Another challenge is that the vaccine may need to be kept at a super cold level (-70 degrees).
“These super freezers are relatively uncommon; they are confined to research centers. We have them here at the University of Cincinnati, but if we need to keep them super cold, the distribution about how we keep these vaccines that cold will be a challenge,” he said.
And another one of the concerns, Dr. Lofgren explained, is that there's been a lot in the news about the speed of the vaccine, which he believes is a good thing. Still, they want to make sure that in UC’s efforts to get something that's effective, they’re not skipping steps in terms of safety and effectiveness.
“I can tell you that our leaders and our scientific leaders are maintaining and making sure they're diligent to the principles of science so that when they say that something is safe and ready, it'll be safe and ready,” he said. “But overcoming some of the public concerns will be an issue as well.”
Dr. Lofgren shifted the conversation into an important reminder about the flu season.
“I do want to remind people that it's flu season,” he said. “In the United States, there can be over 35 million individuals to get infected. We have almost a half million people get hospitalized, and each year has between 20,000 and 34,000 deaths related to the flu,” he said. “A double-whammy is something that we want to make sure we avoid.”
He then highlighted what's happening at UC Health, in particular on the Clifton campus, and how it impacts the Uptown community.
“One of the things that we understand is our ongoing need to be the source of hope for our community,” he said, sharing information about the launch of UC Health’s mobile stroke unit. “If you suffer from an acute stroke, the longer your brain goes without oxygen because of a clot, the more damage and the permanent damage it will cause. So, the faster you can open a blood vessel, the better the outcome.”
Dr. Lofgren also spent time discussing the revitalization of the Clifton campus, which includes a $220 million commitment to building a new emergency department and some flexible ICUs and expanding operating room capacity. While some of the planning was put on hold during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic and some of the initial dates have been delayed, they are back in full force, moving forward with the project.
Finally, Dr. Lofgren ended the session with a return to the pandemic.
“We can't eradicate the virus. We can't hide from it, but we actually can control it and we do know how to keep it at bay, and at the core of this is that: when you're out, it's mask on,” he said.
To watch the full panel and presentation conversations, along with previous virtual events, visit UCI’s channel on YouTube.