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The work of economic development is often less about grand announcements than about steady acts of explanation.
A council request, a grant application, an investor question or a website refresh all ask for the same thing in different forms: a clear, convincing account of what a community is, where its strengths lie and why it merits attention.
This is now standard work. Recent survey findings from Localintel’s annual survey of economic developers suggest that creating and sharing data-informed content is central to the role, with 95% saying it matters to their success and 55% doing it weekly or daily. The volume is one thing. The pace is another. When communication is this constant, the real challenge is not simply access to information. It is turning information into something useful, presentable and timely.
That is why publishing stories about a community’s strengths deserves to be taken more seriously. Not as a nice extra for the website. Not as a box totick for marketing. But as part of the practical machinery of modern economic development.
Beyond promotion
A good story does something that raw data cannot. It gives shape to the argument.
A labor force statistic on its own may be useful. So may a chart on commute patterns, a median income figure or a breakdown of industry concentration. But most audiences – investors, partners, elected officials, even local businesses – do not experience these things as isolated indicators.They are trying to answer a broader question: what kind of place is this, and why does it matter?
That is where a story earns its keep. It interprets. It connects. It turns a set of numbers into a picture of local capability, momentum or resilience. It allows a community to explain itself with greater clarity and, just as importantly, with more confidence.
A well-made story also travels. In practice, that might mean a first home on the organization’s website, under news or insights section, before being folded into a newsletter, a LinkedIn update, a board paper or an investor follow-up. Some stories may also deserve a wider audience through partner networks, trade associations or publications already read by the businesses you hope to reach.
From there, the same underlying material can be reshaped for other needs: a speaking note, a council slide, an investor follow-up, or part of a grant application. In a profession where the same facts are often needed under different deadlines and for different audiences, that kind of reuse is not a luxury. It is a practical advantage.
And there is a quieter benefit too. Public-facing stories give a place a more legible presence online. They make a community easier to find, easier to understand and easier to evaluate. For anyone trying to attract outside attention – whether from investors, businesses, site selectors or partners – that matters.
"As I often say, economic developers do not need more data points sitting in folders; they need credible stories they can actually put to work." Dave Parsell, CEO at Localintel
What separates a useful story from a forgettable one
Of course, not all stories deserve to be published. The useful ones tend to share a few traits. They begin with a single idea rather than trying toprove everything at once. They are written in language that can be read by non-specialists without becoming thin or vague.
They are supported by data that is current, defensible and easy to standbehind. And they are usually accompanied by a visual – a chart, a map, a dashboard – that gives the reader a way into the argument.
The best examples also understand that an article is rarely just an article. It is a source document. That means it should contain elements that can be borrowed later: a concise summary, a few robust talking points, a line worth quoting, a chart worth reusing. Good economic development content shouldnot only read well. It should work hard.
Why so little of it gets published
Most economic developers do not need convincing that better stories would help. The difficulty is more ordinary than that.
Producing strong, data-backed content the traditional way is laborious. Someone has to source the numbers, confirm them, interpret them, decide what is worth saying, build the visual, write the copy, review it and adapt it for the channel in question. If the team is small, or already over stretched, that process becomes hard to repeat with any consistency.
The result is predictable: important stories get postponed, useful updates never quite make it onto the website and plenty of publishable material remains trapped in internal knowledge rather than being turned into public proof. Localintel’s annual survey of economic developers describe that same bottleneck directly: the issue is often not just whether teams have data, but whether they can turn it into a finished, professional deliverable quickly enough.
Norfolk County’s quiet lesson
This is what makes Norfolk County interesting.
Norfolk was not starting from zero. The county already had a strong digital presence and was using Localintel’s embedded data visualization widgets to support its public-facing “why here” story. But, as with many organizations, the more persistent problem lay behind the scenes: how to turn local data into usable content for newsletters, briefings, reports and stakeholder requests without having to assemble each piece from scratch.
The shift came when the team began using Localintel’s new AI-powered content platform. The platform is, in essence, a location intelligence content library built for economic developers. It brings together stories, reports, profiles, charts, maps and widgets built from trusted location data, allowing teams to start from a structured draft rather than a blank page. As John Regan, Economic Development Director, put it in Localintel’s case study "Norfolk County’s First Week with Localintel’s New Content Platform", the platform gives the team “credible content our community understands” and, just as importantly, removes much of the usual friction.
“There’s no digging, there’s no guessing… it’s real time” John Regan, Director of Economic Development
In Norfolk’s case, the value appeared quickly. Within the first week, Blaire Sylvester, the County's Business Development Coordinator, used a story and chart from the platform to create a data-driven news post for their website. John Regan, meanwhile, used platform content to respond to an inquiry in minutes with only minor edits. As he described it, “Essentially I copy and pasted, did very minor edits to it… and sent it off.” That is a small change in process, but a significant one in practice. It means the starting point is no longer a search exercise. It is a usable draft.
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A more plausible ambition
There is a larger lesson here for economic development teams.
Publishing more stories about a place is not difficult in theory. It is difficult in the way most worthwhile things are difficult: not because the case for doing them is weak, but because the workflow around them is often too demanding. What Norfolk suggests is that the equation changes when credible narrative, visuals and supporting material are already within reach.
That does not mean every community needs to become a publisher overnight. But it does suggest that publishing one strong story each month – something grounded in data, written clearly and designed for reuse – is a more realistic ambition than many teams assume.
And in a field where attention is hard won and confidence matters, that may be one of the more sensible places to begin.
