From the beginning, business partner Becky McCray and I talked about developing not only our Tourism Currents course, but eventually an online “mall of services and products” tied to social media education for tourism-related organizations. Most would be ours, some might be from affiliates who we trust and recommend.
I think I first heard the term from Glenda Watson Hyatt, who has her own educational offerings on accessibility.
The first step in that direction is now live; in addition to our full six-week online course, you can buy one or more individual lessons in social media for tourism.
It’s learning materials that you want, when you need them. We talked about it (plus some other goodies) in our June 2011 newsletter.
Thanks, as always, for your support.
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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!
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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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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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Toward the end of the podcast recording we talked about Tourism Currents and which destinations, hotels or organizations do a particularly good job with marketing using social media.
Chris mentioned doing some social media CVB training when he was in Maui, and that local hotels, restaurants and resorts all sent representatives to learn. Smart.
We all gave a shout-out as well to Hawaii-based PR pro Nathan Kam, who does a bunch of tourism work on Oahu. He’s professional but also very personable and fun, and he reaches out to people online in a very un-market-y way.
Of course we left out plenty of other great examples, but still, that’s a pretty good list if you want to check them out.
I’m happy to hear about your favorite social media stars down in the comments, and have a listen to the podcast when you have a chance!
Update: Gary sent me the code to embed the podcast right here….
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This map of Europe with the pins represents how Dell is becoming a “socialprise“….an enterprise that is adopting social communications across the entire organization and for all employees.
The pushpins represent Dell social media training sessions and other events across the globe that are making that happen (5,000+ people trained already.) From discussions with senior Dell folks, their plan is to….
“Embed social media and community across the fabric of the company”
This is a huge cultural shift for any corporation, the implications of which are sometimes not really even recognized by the very people that are implementing such a vision. I’ll watch it with great interest.
In the December Tourism Currents newsletter, we had some thoughts about what tourism and hospitality professionals can take away from Dell’s listening/engagement efforts. Here’s what we said:
** New media is not so “new” any more. Yes, it might still be new to many, but it is most definitely a mainstream communications channel and feedback mechanism, like phones and email. To be blunt, if you are a professional communicator in any capacity, some knowledge of social media is now a core competency.
** Social media has value, and deserves resources and attention. You don’t necessarily have to shell out for the sophisticated (and expensive) Radian 6 suite that Dell is using. Regularly monitor a free combination of targeted Google Alerts, keywords on Facebook and Twitter plus the basics like knowing when someone links to you in a blog post, and you’ll probably be just fine. Our online course Lesson One is all about how to listen.
** Train your entire organization. Sure, Dell has a core social media listening team that interacts with their internal customer support and technical people, but they have also held worldwide social media training for over 5,000 employees, with a lot more to come. You can do the same; bust the knowledge silos and give people the information they need to be advocates for your destination. Ensuring a “Wow!” visitor experience is everyone’s job in tourism and hospitality.
** Not paying attention to what your visitors are saying is a major missed opportunity. Competitors are happy to take advantage of their peers who are not listening and engaging. I can’t go into details, but you can bet that Dell is listening to what people are saying in social media about Dell’s competitors. Is the next town, city, state or province over from you connecting with visitors online and you are not?
I learned a lot from looking at a paper map yesterday.
Here is Dell’s video from the event (I have a small blurb in it) with more about what this means. Here’s the direct link on YouTube if the embed box doesn’t work.
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You might be surprised, but over the last few years I’ve noticed that once people get stuffed with Thanksgiving food and early morning shopping, a lot of folks often get online to hang out and visit with friends.
At my Tourism Currents learning community with Becky McCray, we thought we’d have some fun, throw open our own doors and invite people to chat and get smarter about tourism, hospitality and social media.
*** We’re going to have an Open House starting late in the day on Thanksgiving, November 25. That means anyone can view our dynamite course material (yep, all of it) without any pay wall restrictions, but only until Sunday night, November 28. Now is the time to see for yourself how much our lessons, instructional videos and Forum can help your destination marketing.
(Update: Well, clearly I’ve lost control over Becky, because we’re keeping the Open House and sale going through today for Cyber Monday. Drop by!)
*** Inspired by Liz Strauss’ world-famous Open Mic and Open Comments nights on her Successful Blog, we’re going to have a Black Friday Open Mic (Nov 26 at 7 pm Central Time.) It will happen either on our Tourism Currents Facebook Page or we’ll open up a blog post on the Newsletter section of the Tourism Currents website to talk about your most pressing concerns in tourism and tech/social media. Ever wanted to chat with us and your peers about those nagging questions? Come on DOWN! We’ll try not to get too rowdy. :)
*** Here’s the biggie – save 20% on the cost of our course if you sign up during Open House weekend. That’s a great deal, especially since our prices are going to increase on January 1, 2011. Details and the discount code to follow, during Open Mic.
Update: The code for 20% off is OK1 – apply during checkout, now through Cyber Monday!
*** Share Your Pics - Show us what you’re thankful for by sharing your own tourism and hospitality pics in our Tourism Currents Flickr photo Group. We’re so grateful to all of our tourism and travel friends and supporters, so come spend a little time with us and let’s see how we can help you make sense of tech and social media.
Hope to see you sometime this weekend, even if you can “only stay for a minute.”
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I’ve been an AWC member since 2006 (my journalist Mom is an Member Emeritus, ever since it was an honors journalism sorority in the 1950′s) and it is chock-full of a lot of very networked communicators, many of whom are involved in some aspect of tourism or hospitality.
One benefit of our sponsorship is the chance to provide “collateral” – some swag, a printed handout or something – to be distributed to conference attendees.
Now, I was as clueless about this as I was about how to run a trade show booth on a budget, but after some thought I realized that no one wants yet another brochure or piece of paper with pretty pictures. They want useful information.
So, I rejiggered a simple Word document handout that I’d done for the Texas Travel Summit on social media resources for CVBs to attract conferences, and made it a more general “Tourism Currents favorite resources and tips for social networking.”
Why are videos and images important? Because they are great for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) if fully titled, tagged and described. There is less competition for them than for text in universal search.
None of these are blinding revelations, but if every person who gets one of our handouts learns some tidbit they didn’t already know, then we’ve succeeded in not killing trees simply to get our name out there. If they contact us for more training….well, so much the better!
Tourism Currents logo, URL, Twitter names and email address at top, helpful info, all on one page – BOOM. We’re done.
What sort of ideas do you have for printed collateral that best benefits your event sponsorship? I’d love to hear from you down in the comments.
Update: Well, this is annoying, but the “I’m Going” button keeps running into a digital brick wall. Phooey. Here’s the link to the Eventful page instead.
Did you know that you can make your very own Search Story video like Google’s Parisian Love that played as an ad during the Super Bowl?
They are a lot of fun, and it’s not hard at all. Think of how you might make one to highlight an upcoming event or cool attraction in your town.
Here’s what I learned while making one:
Be already logged into the YouTube account that you’re going to upload it to (I used our Tourism Currents YouTube channel) and be ready with your password again when it’s time to upload.
Try to use more than one of the available search options (Web, blogs, images, maps, etc.) It makes the video much more interesting visually.
Use fewer words in the search box. They’re easier to read at the rapid speed of the Search Story.
Pick those words carefully and know ahead of time what search results will come in (there’s a Preview button for you; I think I wore mine out.) I had one innocuous search term bring back something to do with strippers (don’t need people seeing that in my video, thanks very much.)
Listen to at least a snippet of all of the available “soundtrack” music. Some might be a surprisingly good fit.
Don’t be afraid to go back and edit if you aren’t happy with the final result. We won’t say how many times I re-did the video below, or I’d have to put up an “Anal-Retentive” warning sign on the blog.
Once it is uploaded to your YouTube channel (done automatically and FAST by Google) go back into the Edit function on your channel and make sure the video is titled, tagged and described, which helps with SEO (Search Engine Optimization.)
From the beginning, business partner Becky McCray and I talked about developing not only our Tourism Currents course, but eventually an online “mall of services and products” tied to social media education for tourism-related organizations. Most would be ours, some might be from affiliates who we trust and recommend.
