Yes, I do sometimes self-market on my own blog. You’re doing it in a comment on my blog. There’s a difference. I think my readers know the difference, too.

Anyway, it seems to me there is no reason why a tourist region couldn’t do what ‘Seth’ is doing to con/brand large public companies. Someone within the area that has enough savvy to place two sentences together after receiving input from the operators of the region. Easy, peasy roll up pay just $50 bucks a week and group the logos, comments and complaints together.

Let me see, our region (www.queenstown-nz.co.nz – that’s me in the Discover Queenstown slide show on top of the mountain next to the lady in red) has 500 plus operators x $50.00 per week = $100,000 per month. I could just abut live on that!

In fact, I may even give up my day job as an artist, painting landscapes to do that; if the operators would go ahead and subscribe…..yea right!

So after breaking-up in the aisles laughing everyone; why not check out http://www.skyline.co.nz webcams ….and, see if you can see me on the mountain!? : )

Thanks very much for stopping by and commenting. I’m certainly OK with brands getting structure and support, and using the Web in different ways, but I’m still flummoxed that this late in the game, they have so little confidence in their own ability to monitor Internet/social media activity and respond appropriately.

Regrettably, I can’t argue with your assertion that brands will think they need something like Brands in Public, and you bet they’ll pay for it. We both know 400 clams a month is nothing to big brands. My tourism-related clients are probably not going to have that 400 clams to throw around, which will force them to “do for themselves” in social media (in my opinion, the right way to go anyway.)

It’s one of the few times that having a small budget is an advantage, but then, I’m a glass-half-full kinda gal.

The good news is that by coming here to comment, you’ve shown my readers exactly how to interact in social media, and for that I sincerely thank you.

I don’t think I disagree that the web is messy or that you need to be in a lot of places or you need to learn as you go.

I think it’s clear that large brands need structure and support. I didn’t say this was a magic bullet, and in fact encouraged people to build their own if they like.

Part of the magic of the web is that different organizations use it in different ways. Not sure why it bothers some people so much if an organization prefers to also use leveraged tools, dashboards and systems that make it work better for them.