Sheila's Guide To The Good Stuff

One of the presentations at SoMeT 2010 (Social Media Tourism Symposium) was from MMG Worldwide and covered a variety of ways that tourism organizations can engage visitors through their mobile devices.

As a travel enthusiast who is beginning to really rely on her own smartphone, I particularly liked the idea of providing location-specific ringtone and wallpaper downloads.

This got me thinking about what I’d like to see, since I have conferences and speaking gigs coming up this fall in:

**  Hutchinson, Kansas – 140 Conference Small Town – some great shots from the Cosmosphere space museum, or Third Thursday in downtown Hutch or the Underground Salt Museum, plus maybe John Mellencamp’s “Small Town” or something from these five songs for Kansas.

**  Tulsa, Oklahoma – AWC National Conference (Association for Women in Communications) – there’s terrific Art Deco architecture in downtown Tulsa, perhaps played to the tune of “Tulsa Time” (did you know that there’s an Eric Clapton version of the song?)

**  Los Angeles, California – BlogWorld and New Media Expo’s Tourism track, yay! – wow, where to start for the wallpaper; the swoopy silver Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Hollywood sign, Grauman’s Chinese Theater, the Capitol Records building that looks like a stack of vinyl records (yes, I remember those.) Good ringtone music is tougher – not sure the Doors’ “LA Woman” works, 10,000 Maniacs’ “City of Angels” is better with the lyrics, not many remember Sinatra’s “LA is My Lady.”  I’m kinda stuck on this one; will hum “California Dreamin’” until someone helps me out down in the comments.

**  Tunica, Mississippi and the Delta - SoMeT 2011 – I’ll land up the road in Memphis and then drive south down historic Highway 61 to Tunica. This area lends itself to poignant closeups rather than panoramic shots (unless it’s an aerial photo of the river) but you could include the Crossroads in nearby Clarksdale, where one legend says that bluesman Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil in exchange for guitar skills. The whole region is stuffed with music, but I’d go for John Hiatt’s “Memphis in the Meantime,” Paul Simon’s “Graceland” or Chuck Berry’s “Memphis,” then anything by James Cotton, or “Traveling Riverside Blues” or ”Got My Mojo Workin’.”

Travelers like to really experience the essence of places when they visit, so why not use visuals and audio on that phone that they’re never without these days, to make them feel at home in your town?

Bonus idea, although not specifically mobile: put a few destination-related badges or widget downloads on your website, for your supporters to grab and put on their blogs.

What other digital trinkets can you think of that your visitors might enjoy?

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Can’t miss what you’re supposed to do, can you?

(Screenshot of the Nashville CVB landing page on their Visit Music City Facebook Page)

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You know that part of CVB that deals with meetings? CVB stands for Convention and Visitors Bureau, after all.

How can you find and connect with the right people and encourage them to consider your destination or venue for their event, when there are so many social media channels – blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter – and so little time?

Join us for a special Tourism Currents webinar on Wednesday, May 18, 2011 starting at 2 pm Central, and we’ll show you how to book more meetings using focused and intelligent social networking with the event planners you want to reach.

We’re excited to be partnering with DMAI (Destination Marketing Association International) and their empowerMINT one-stop RFP service for meeting planners, to bring you this online session. It’s part of a series of interesting educational events leading up to our Tourism track at this year’s BlogWorld and New Media Expo West 2011 (Los Angeles CA, Nov 3 – 5.)

The webinar includes an hour with me, my Tourism Currents co-founder Becky McCray and our (always entertaining!) insights into social networking to connect with meeting planners, then 30 more minutes of Q&A….90 minutes of solid info.

Sound good?  Let us help YOU fill those meeting spaces!

Here’s the Book More Meetings webinar info and signup page - the event is FREE for empowerMINT members and $47 for others.

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How to best incorporate bloggers and online publishers into standard press trips/fam tours is an ongoing item of discussion in many tourism circles.

I’m seeing more and more interest by bloggers in constructing individual fams directly with CVBs and DMOs, rather than participating in group tours that don’t represent the sort of travel that they – or their readers – prefer.

Here’s one perspective about press trips from Matt Kepnes (Nomadic Matt) in a travel blogger’s Facebook discussion about press trip pros/cons (quoted with permission:)

“I stopped taking press trips for this reason. I was and still am offered incredible luxury trips but I just can’t take them. It doesn’t mesh with my message. Would I love a luxury trip? Yeah, but I can’t in any good way write about it.

Plus I find press trips to be super-jammed-packed itineraries with little personal time or space to relax or get to know a city. I instead now just work directly with tourism boards to set stuff up. I get to make my own itinerary, stay in hostels, and travel cheap. They don’t care because I am still writing about the destination for them (which is all they care about) and I’m a pretty cheap date…hostels, a train pass, and some city sightseeing cards and I’m good to go. That’s nothing for them.”

Some organizations may see group tours as a more efficient use of resources and time, but this assumes that bloggers need a lot of hand-holding. Many do not; an independent experience makes a lot more sense for them, and will probably result in more compelling and interesting coverage.

Some may say no to your press trip because the timing is off or it’s just a bad fit, but the chances of acceptance and a positive experience are a lot better if the trip matches the person taking it.

Pretty much always true, right?

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Remember how (as Tourism Currents) we set up and ran the first-ever Tourism track at the 2010 BlogWorld online publishing conference?

How we said that you have to go where the geeks are to connect with tech-savvy travelers, and that an event like BlogWorld can supercharge your destination marketing?

And how psyched we were last year to have co-facilitators with us from the Seattle CVB, the Pensacola (FL) CVB, the Beaumont (TX) CVB and meetings expert Jeff Hurt?

Well, in case you haven’t already heard us cheering about it on Facebook or Twitter, we have two confirmed speakers joining us for this year’s Tourism Track at BlogWorld and New Media Expo West, in Los Angeles CA, November 3-5, 2011 (yes, it’s moved from Las Vegas.)

Shanna Smith Snyder from the Abilene TX CVB (a 2011 Texas Social Media Award winner!) and Doug Anweiler from Authentic Seacoast Resorts in Nova Scotia will join us to help teach you more effective use of social media in your destination and hospitality marketing.

We’re also planning on a speed-dating session between our tourism attendees and some of the 8000+ bloggers and online publishers who go to BlogWorld.

Other co-facilitators will be announced soon!

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It’s the kind of unpretentious downtown diner where the owner pauses at the table of a longtime customer, and they commiserate about how their bum shoulders keep them from playing tennis as much as they’d like.

The kind of place where the coffee in your cup never seems to drop below the midpoint of the mug before the waitress is standing there with a carafe saying, “Wouldja like a refill?”

The kind of place that displays pies behind a long counter, in a rack with mirrored shelves so you can see that yes, the meringue really IS that high.

The kind of place that doesn’t list pecans as one of the options for your homemade waffle, but hey, this is Texas, so all you have to do is ask for them. The waitress will say, “Sure, honey.”

The kind of place that serves ice tea in pebbled plastic glasses the size of a small bucket.

It’s the Paris Coffee Shop in Fort Worth on West Magnolia and it has zero to do with Paris, France (the original owner’s name was Vic Paris.)

That guy talking tennis with customers and making sure you’re happy with your order? That’s Mike Smith, son of Gregory K. Smith who bought the place from Mr. Paris in 1926.

I love restaurants like this, especially for breakfast….unpretentious joints like Lou Mitchell’s in Chicago or the Brookside Restaurant in Luray, VA or Cookie’s Soul Food Kitchen in minuscule Ames, TX.

Here’s what I found frustrating from a tourism perspective, though – I found out about this place from a Frommer’s guidebook. The Fort Worth CVB does have a Paris Coffee Shop listing, but I had to already know what I was looking for to drill down the restaurant listings for it, and I had to know that the location is something called “Near Southside.”

The CVB descriptive listing for Near Southside? It is blank.

There is a CVB website link under Restaurants, for Distinctive Dining. It’s a page with a bunch of logos, many of which are to chain places like Ruth’s Chris Steak House and P.F. Chang’s. I mean, I’m sure they’re distinctive in some way, but how unique are they to Fort Worth….like the Paris Coffee Shop?

Tourism organizations must help visitors (including those who are not determined research-junkies like I am) to find those eateries that make your town unique and wonderful.

The world needs more pecan waffles and waitresses who say, “Honey.”

Update:  This post is part of WanderFood Wednesday over on the Wanderlust and Lipstick blog – check out today’s post, Mini No-Meat Burgers (in Tijuana, Mexico.)

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Pretend you are a visitor to town XYZ.

Go stand in some central area – maybe downtown – where your visitors tend to cluster.

Pull out your phone, open up the browser, and type “XYZ restaurants” or “XYZ hotels” into the magic Google search box. Like any tourist, you’re asking, “What’s here for me?”

Look at the results. Which ones of your attractions are up towards the top, and which ones are invisible? Do you think your unique, local places have any idea about claiming their business on Google Places or encouraging reviews, in order to be more find-able? As we point out in some search advice in this Tourism Currents newsletter, input from your locals (not just visitors) matters, too.

Close the browser.

Now, open up the Yelp app (application.) Ask it to tell you which restaurants, shops and hotels are around you, based on the GPS position your phone is transmitting.  It will do so.

Look at the results. How many of the owners of the businesses you see (showing around your location) have any idea about all of the reviews and feedback on Yelp, and that people make decisions about where to eat, where to shop and where to stay based on that information?

Put the phone away. Return to the office. Schedule some workshops with your local partners.

Help teach them to rise above the local search slush pile.

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On the first day of the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) tech conference in Austin, I was part of a video interview project led by Nancy Spears and the genConnect team out of Colorado.

Here are their thoughts on 10 people at SXSW you should include in your social network, which includes a sidebar viewer with all of the videos. I’m rather honored to see that my interview ended up between Rick Murray’s (head of Edelman Chicago) and Jay Rosen’s (renowned journalism professor at NYU.)

In my roughly 3 minute interview (complete with an offstage shout-out by passing Hawaii social media goddess Neenz Faleafine) I described what Becky McCray and I do with social media education at Tourism Currents, how destination marketing today demands more personal interaction with visitors (including online) and how strongly we believe that most tourism pros can already do the really important stuff, which is a lot harder to teach than technology:  creating a compelling portrait of their destination in the eyes of visitors.

The vision and story….you already have it and that’s the hard part, not Facebook, Twitter, blogs et al.

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Although he couldn’t come in person to last year’s TBEX in New York (Travel Blog Exchange conference for travel bloggers – the sold-out 2011 TBEX is in Vancouver) I’ve never forgotten the “remote presentation” created by Brett the Amtrekker.

He’s on a quest to accomplish a big ol’ bucket list of experiences, and since he was on the road in Idaho at the time of the TBEX event, he sent us a video to show us how to do better travel video. Makes sense, right?

Notice the variety of camera angles, the editing down to make it as punchy as possible, that it happily breaks the “Video Must Be Under Two Minutes” diktat, the variation between distant shots and close up, the discussion of viral video mythology….really good information presented in a fun, engaging way.

Here’s what’s cool – he shot the whole thing by himself.

Brett sitting on a tree trunk talking? He set up a tripod for his camera, spoke the lines he’d planned for the video, then with editing software he cut back and forth, closeup and further away.  Everything else, the other clips, were pulled off of his hard drive (or wherever he stores them) and inserted in around his monologue.

Here’s the direct link to the Amtrekker travel video how-to video on YouTube.

Note:  I’ve started this Travel Post Friday series since I’ve now stepped away from my longstanding commitment to the BootsnAll Family Travel Blog. If you like it, there’s more of my travel work on the Perceptive Travel Blog.

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Who is most likely to link to your content?

Those who find it valuable, but especially other online publishers who know you, appreciate your work and want to help give you a boost.

How do you get their attention and interest?

By building personal and professional working relationships, on- and off-line.

Sorry, no magic pixie dust here. Blogger outreach and social networking take time and effort.

Hey, You! Gimme A Link

I thought about all this when I saw a posting on the Travel Blog Exchange (TBEX) site.

The “Country Vacations & Resorts” vacation rental site (hell no, they aren’t getting a link from me here) was making a bid for linkbuilding by getting bloggers to run their prewritten content as guest posts:

“Guest site [to run a Country Vacations-provided post] must be at least a PR2 [PageRank 2 on Google.] Posts are unique and only for one publication per post. Have several 400-500 word articles that will need “homes”, 1 link (required), 1 image (I provide), would be great but not required. Happy to consider exchange posts with my blog….”

They want links from sites that rank at their PR or higher (my stats show they’re currently PR2 – as a comparison, this blog is PR4) and they want one deep link back to their blog from a wide variety of other blogs.

If I saw this guest post, I would no doubt find very carefully placed links back to specific Country Vacations content, with anchor text chosen to support their SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for certain keywords.

Links: Coin Of The Realm For Search

There’s nothing illegal here. None of it smacks of black hat SEO; it’s all pretty much in line with Google guidance on quality links and linkbuilding although I wouldn’t exactly call it the “natural” linkbuilding that Google says it prefers.

Here’s why all of this matters….the number, type and quality of inbound links to your content has a direct impact on where you rank in search engines. Links from Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and many other social sites are “no follow” – they don’t count in Google’s algorithm (although they’re fine for humans, who DO still matter.) So, all that retweeting of a link to your blog post is not as powerful, SEO-wise, as a direct link to the post from a quality site (there are some rumblings, however, that social signals are starting to count in search for both Google and Bing.)

From what I’ve seen, everyone opining about how to get links ends up saying some version of, “Suck up to people really hard and then ask them for a link.” Let me tell you, that works a lot better with people who already know, respect and like you. Otherwise, remove your lips from their bottom, pronto.

The issue here is the randomness of the request in the example above;  it was tossed out in a travel blogger’s forum, for all comers. Hey – Newsflash! Those who are that desperate for content are not the bloggers you want.

Online publishers (well, the good ones) are rather picky about what they post. Why would anyone take some random company’s content, slap it on their precious digital baby, bore/disgust their readers and tacitly endorse a company that didn’t take the time to build a relationship?

What To Do (Instead Of Random Crap) To Build Links

**  Publish interesting, quality stuff that helps and informs your readers. Period.  It’s the hardest thing to do consistently, and the most critical.  After you publish, make sure people can find out about it. Yep, it’s a marketing game. Crafting the content is only the start.

**  Network your tail off on the social Web to get in front of those who might link to your work. Connect with people on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Follow hashtags where bloggers congregate, like #blogchat every Sunday night, 8 pm CST with Mack Collier.

**  Network your tail off IRL (In Real Life.) Go where the geeks are. Attend conferences like BlogWorld and New Media Expo, South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) or niche-specific ones like BlogHer Food (for food bloggers.)  Get that blog URL on the business cards you hand out, too, and follow up after the conference.

**  Once you have a good relationship – however long it takes to build it – then make your pitch. For example, are you a California destination? Ask relevant people in your blogger network if they might be interested in a guest post from you about certain highlights of your town; even a general Q&A with you would be fine. Try to craft your guest post your way, but remember, it’s their blog.

**  Give to get. Do plenty of linking out yourself, to quality content; it is noticed and appreciated by the link recipient. I remember the days when I was a newish blogger and got a big ol’ fat link to one of my posts from a big-deal website. It happened because the author and I connected online and became friends, so she was looking out for me and helping me grow.  Thanks, Liz Strauss, for not turning up your nose at my PageRank back then.

Building links is part of blogging – that’s one reason I still run the Carnival of Cities blog carnival after all these years. It’s my way of highlighting blogs and giving back, through links and attention.

How do you inspire people to link to your content? Please let us know down in the comments….

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