Photo by Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times

Stuart Mease, who works for the city of Roanoke, uses resources such as MySpace and YouTube to try to attract young professionals to the Roanoke and New River valleys.

Roanoke's city government is taking on a new approach to boosting the region's young adult population by trying to "friend" them.

The online offensive includes opening accounts on MySpace and Facebook, and posting videos on YouTube, with Stuart Mease, the driving force behind Roanoke's quest for attracting young professionals, leading the charge.

Last year, the city hired Mease, 31, as a special projects coordinator to help reverse a near decade-long slide in the valley's population of 18- to 34-year-olds.

A city employee in economic development, Mease has taken aim at beefing up Roanoke's online presence and better connecting its business community with the surrounding colleges and universities.

"No one has a blueprint or golden nugget about how to attract and retain young adults. There are a lot of intangibles," Mease said.

By tapping the communication lines of a younger generation, Mease hopes to make the Roanoke Valley more marketable to an age group that is at once well-educated and highly mobile, and curb the drain of young professionals to larger metro areas.

In doing so, the city government joins a long line of politicians and marketing groups already using online channels to reach today's wired youths. The plan is also aimed at overturning preconceptions about Roanoke, a city that ranked in the top five for retirees by Kiplinger's Personal Finance this year.

Will it work?

Chris Leinberger, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institute of Metropolitan Policy in Washington, D.C., seems to think so, although he says it is a unique approach and doesn't know of any other cities doing the same.

"The thing we are seeing is that many young people in their 20s are picking a place first and figuring out how to build a career there later," he said. Boosting the city's image online could help put Roanoke on the radar for some young career starters, he added.

Last year, Mease launched the city's first online database for job seekers in the Roanoke Valley. It now has close to 2,300 registered users. He also regularly maintains a blog highlighting news and social events for young professionals.

The MySpace page, "RoanokeWantsU," was also created last year and currently has 251 friends, including links to the pages of Gov. Tim Kaine, Hollins University and the Salem Avalanche.

Another page on Facebook and run by Mease acts like a job message board or "eFair," linking college students to career opportunities in the Roanoke and New River valleys. Mease said he set up the page in April after a real-life job fair planned at Virginia Tech was canceled after the shootings. Facebook, a networking site geared toward college students, has more than 11,300 users with Roanoke as their current location.

Mease is the only city employee to carry the title of special projects coordinator, according to Roanoke officials in the human resources department. His position pays about $64,000 a year.

The program runs as a part of the economic development department, and funds most of its events through corporate sponsorships and user-generated fees, such as booth rentals at job fairs, he said.

For years, city leaders have grappled with the loss of young professionals. From 2000 to 2005, the Roanoke Valley saw a decrease of about 11 percent in its 24-to-34 age group and another 20 percent among people ages 35 to 39. At the same time, the Roanoke Valley population has skewed older, seeing an increase of 33 percent in its 55-59 population during that period, and similar gains in its 65 and over population.

Even so, Mease, a Virginia Tech marketing graduate and former Tech employee, believes the region has plenty to offer the 18-to-34 demographic, including a vibrant downtown and low cost of living.

Many young adults, he says, are turned off by what they perceive as a lack of job options or chances to mingle with people their own age.

"That's the perception. The reality is there are things to do here, but there is a lack of communication," he said, adding that many young people tend to forgo traditional media -- newspapers, radio and print -- to get their information online.

Mease, who lives in Christiansburg, said he first became involved with the idea of retaining young adults while at Virginia Tech in 2002. "I got tired of seeing my own friends leave," Mease said. He started a young professionals group with 10 to 12 members. It was to help foster interaction among what he described as an "isolated and fragmented" age group in the New River Valley.

In 2005, Mease launched his blog, ConnectingPeople, as a place to post news and events. Even now, Mease uses Google alerts to keep tabs on how other cities are tackling the drain of young adults from their work force. About 90 percent of cities nationwide are experiencing similar losses to a handful of metropolitan areas, Mease said.

Successful marketing online requires that the image sold on the Internet must match the reality of what's there, said Carol Coletta, president of CEOs for Cities, a Chicago-based network for urban leaders.

"You have to make sure Roanoke does indeed deliver what the demographic needs," she said. "You have to recognize the power of their networks."

She added that if the user somehow feels misled, that message is likely to spread with the click of the button.

At same time, smaller cities are often at a disadvantage because they don't have the diversity and job pools of larger areas.

But using social networks to amplify what's already there is a smart move. Coletta calls it "punching above your weight."

"If the people in the city are saying the best things about Roanoke, then that's the best marketing you can have," Coletta said.

Brandon Turner, 24, a graduate student at Lynchburg College, is one career hunter who is eager to move to the Roanoke Valley. He communicates with Mease regularly and has landed several interviews in the area, thanks to the city's online database. But he also questions why Roanoke isn't placing more emphasis on increasing its job options, especially for those trying to launch their careers.

The bells and whistles of a location are all right, he said, but many of his friends are flocking to Raleigh and Charlotte, both in North Carolina, mostly for employment. About moving to a new city, Turner said: "I'm all about quality of life, but if you don't have a job, it's not going to happen."