After graduating from Frisco High School, Eric Bonar joined the United States Marine Corps and served as a hydraulics mechanic at M.C.A.S. New River, North Carolina. The Marine Corps taught him the importance of teamwork while strengthening his sense of commitment, respect and integrity.

After his time in the Marine Corps, he moved back to Frisco and worked as an Advertising Sales Representative for Frisco Style Magazine, his Mother’s magazine. In his spare time, he worked at his Stepfather’s motorcycle consignment shop as a mechanic/sales associate.

He began waiting tables, and in 1999 moved to Austin to start taking classes at Austin Community College. In 2003, he moved to San Marcos after being accepted to Texas State University-San Marcos.

He was offered a position as the marketing intern at Prime Outlets-San Marcos in early 2005, and was asked to stay on as a part-time Office Assistant after his internship ended. He then was invited to participate in the company’s first Manager-in-Training program. The program gave him operations and marketing management experience in outlet mall locations across the country.

After nine months in the program, he returned to San Marcos to finish his degree. In December of 2007 he graduated from Texas State University-San Marcos, earning a Bachelors degree in Business Administration with a major in Management.

He was hired by the San Marcos Area Chamber of Commerce in March of 2008 as the Front Desk Manager, and in less than two months he was promoted to Communications Manager. Since this was a newly created position, Eric dedicated himself to improving the Chamber’s communications mediums by first building a strong foundation.

One of his first accomplishments was the increased readership of the Chamber’s weekly e-newsletters by changing the it from a PDF that was attached to an email, to the use of an online email marketing service called Constant Contact. This gave him the ability to link stories in the e-newsletter to the Chamber’s website, which also helped to increase the Chamber’s online presence. This also helped to increase traffic to the Chamber’s website.

In 2011 and 2012, he was given the Constant Contact All Star Award for his ability to keep consistently high open and click-through rates, and utilizing several of the other tools that are available through the service.

He also reformatted the monthly newsletter from a 10-page single-fold mailer, into a 16-page booklet (examples to come). Eric handled the advertising sales, gathering/writing articles, layout and a majority of the photography, as well as printing of the newsletter and address labels and managed a team of volunteers who applied the labels and sorted the newsletters for mailing. While implementing these changes, he also took it upon himself to learn how to use Adobe CS4, focusing on Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Fireworks and Dreamweaver, and is now using Adobe Creative Suite.

During this time, Eric worked closely with the Texas State University-San Marcos School of Journalism and Mass Communications, creating internship opportunities for their graduate and undergraduate students. He managed and taught nine different interns in the three years he had the program running. Most have gone on to work in various marketing and communications positions.

Eric was the project manager for the redesign and update of the Chamber’s website and migration of the membership database system to an online database that interfaced with the new website. He first took over as the liaison for the IT committee and was given a draft of an RFP that he updated. After sending the RFP to numerous prospects, he received, organized and reviewed the proposals. Once he decided on the top four candidates, he, the Chamber President and the Chamber Executive V.P. interviewed those candidates, deliberated and awarded the contract to Texas Best Chambers.

Even though the website was released only one month before the Texas Chamber of Commerce Executives Annual Conference, the San Marcos Area Chamber of Commerce was awarded third place in the Websites division for their creation of the Chamber’s new website.

Because of his ability to understand and translate technical material, he took the initiative to customize the website manual in order to make it easier for his coworkers to read and understand. Eric continued to communicate the staff’s specific and technical needs to the website developer in order for them to refine and customize the Chamber’s website.

Eric’s comprehension of, and comfort with technology gives him the ability to learn and use programs and systems within a short amount of time. As the de facto IT manager, Eric’s forward-thinking and knowledge of innovative technology solutions gave him the ability to evaluate the Chamber’s technological needs. Eric took the initiative, and after collaborating with his coworkers, and analyzing everyone’s needs, he was able to present various options that would help the Chamber staff work more efficiently and effectively. This was the key reason for the Chamber’s decision to move forward with transitioning their business operations to the cloud.

He managed the move of the Chamber’s shared files from a local terminal server to Dropbox, and helped in transitioning the Chamber staff to the use of Google applications. This transition increased the staff’s ability to be more effective in collaborating on documents, and gave them the capability to access important documents and information while away from the office.

Although these changes are important, Eric had to remain focused on the Chamber’s outbound and inbound marketing and communications. Maintaining and updating the Chamber’s five Facebook Pages, LinkedIn Group, Google profile, YouTube Channel and Twitter profile, as well as a few other social media profiles, has proved challenging. Because of his organizational skills and dedication, he has been able to remain effective in his promotions.

Eric worked closely with the Chamber’s Executive V.P. to help promote events to Chamber members and the community. He collaborated with committee members and Chamber staff to develop promotional strategies, gather information and create and distribute promotional materials. Eric served as the photographer and videographer for all of the Chamber’s events, even when a professional photographer or videographer was hired.

He secured training grants from Workforce Solutions Rural Capital Area, and managed the organization of business training workshops for Chamber members. He also managed the planning and execution of the training workshops, which included reconciling payments, completing reports and submitting the invoices required for reimbursement. During this time, Eric partnered with the Texas State Small Business Development Center to bring more of their training workshops to the San Marcos area.

Not only has Eric secured speakers from LinkedIn, Constant Contact, Dale Carnegie and other businesses to speak at workshops and webinars, he himself taught a workshop titled “How to Create a Facebook Page for Your Business” to one of the Chamber’s Leads Groups. They have since asked him to teach a monthly Facebook for Businesses training workshop to the group.

In May, 2012, he moderated a Luncheon titled, “Social Media Marketing, What’s Right for my Business” that helped to explain what social media marketing is, why it can be beneficial and tools that are available to help businesses with their social media marketing. The panel included Julie Niehoff, Sr. Regional Development Director, Constant Contact, @julieniehoff, Steve Huskey, Client Relations Consultant, High 5 Promotions, and Lindsay Endicott, former Marketing/Seminar Coordinator, Dale Carnegie Training Austin, who are email marketing, social media marketing and networking experts.

Eric’s passion for helping others has brought him to volunteer to run the audio/visual for his Church’s worship service; Faith Vision at Bracken UMC. He also helps with their PR by taking pictures during special events, writing press releases, creating advertisements and promotional materials and helping to update their Facebook Page.

He is also very involved with his step son’s Cub Scout Troop by serving on their committee as the Public Relations representative. He helps by creating promotional materials, taking pictures during events, updating their website and advising them on promotional opportunities.

In February, 2012, Eric received his Certificate of Achievement for completing the Dale Carnegie Course, “Effective Communications & Human Relations/Skills for Success“.

Eric received his certification as an Authorized Local Expert from Constant Contact. He was authorized by them to present the workshops, “The Power of Email Marketing – Leveraging Social Media”, “3 Keys to Email Marketing” and “Social Media Marketing Made Simple”.