About Sheila Scarborough, your guide

I’m a freelance writer specializing in travel (for magazines, newspapers, the BootsnAll Family Travel Logue and Perceptive Travel blog,) tourism and social media. When time allows, I also cover NHRA drag racing.

Along with entrepreneur Becky McCray, I’m a co-founder of Tourism Currents, an online learning community where we teach tourism professionals how to use social media in their destination marketing.

I was humbled to be chosen as a 2010 Austin American-Statesman Texas Social Media Award winner, and I’m also a founding member of the Association for Women in Communications (AWC) National Tech Committee (planning tech training for members) and a Board member of Freelance Austin.

Although I do a lot of online writing in addition to print work, until recently I’d never started a blog from the ground up, all by myself – my other blogs all have set templates, and/or are collaborative efforts in some way.

In late 2008 I decided that it was time to build and play around in my very own little bloggy sandbox, and write about things that I don’t cover in depth elsewhere.

This site is the primary content anchor for my training, teaching, speaking and consulting at the intersection of travel, tourism and social media. The blog’s name is a riff on the subhead on my Web site – “I guide you to the good stuff.”

Thanks for visiting.

Contacting Me

** My email is sheila “at” sheilascarborough “dot” com.

Please do not add me to your email distribution list unless you ask first. I believe in double opt-in (and please have the required CAN-SPAM “Unsubscribe” link in your emails, while we’re at it. Thanks.)

I generally don’t do product or service reviews, and my personal participation in press trips/fam tours is fairly limited. I am rarely at a loss for ideas (like most folks, I’m mostly at a loss for time) and I’m a voracious reader so I’m usually able to keep up with the latest news without any help.

The focus of this blog is stories and activity at the intersection of tourism, travel, technology and social media. If your pitch doesn’t relate to that, I’m probably not interested. Thanks for your understanding.

** I’m @SheilaS on Twitter. I also tweet as @FreelanceAustin, and with my business partner Becky McCray as @TourismCurrents.

For the @SheilaS account, I have turned off follower notification emails because they were flooding my email IN box, so unless you do as my Twitter bio asks and “@” me to say hello, I probably don’t know that you’re following me. I don’t know when you unfollow, either. I do my thing on Twitter and let the chips fall where they may.

For me, Twitter is for relationship-building and sharing news/information/insights, so I’d prefer to be pitched via email rather than Twitter.

** I am on Facebook and on LinkedIn, but I prefer to actually know you or at a minimum have at least a vague personal or professional connection before I connect back. Please use the “personal note” or “message” option when you ask to connect, and refresh my memory about our connection.

For public interaction with me on Facebook, there’s the Tourism Currents Facebook Fan page, the BootsnAll Family Travel Logue Fan page or the Freelance Austin Fan page.