Sheila's Guide To The Good Stuff

Hello, Jordan!

I’m thrilled to be able to tell you that I’ll be traveling soon to the Hashemite Kingdom, thanks to an invitation from the Jordanian Tourism Board.

There will be general travel and family travel posts over on the Perceptive Travel blog, a guest post on prices for the World’s Cheapest Destinations blog, and I’ll explore and discuss Jordanian tourism’s social media marketing efforts here and in the Tourism Currents Facebook Page, on Twitter and at least one of our newsletters.

Most of you know that I’m not a huge fan of press trips and fam tours for my own travel, because I do have angst-y issues with whether one can maintain objectivity when all the goodies are provided.

With this invitation, I thought long and hard about it, and I’m going anyway.

Here’s why:

1) Chances are slim that I’d get there on my own anytime soon,  and HELLO, are you kidding?  The magnificent ruins at Petra, of course, but also urban buzz in Amman (I had no idea that there is a 6000 seat Roman amphitheater smack in the middle of town,) desert beauty in places like Wadi Rum contrasted with a lush pine forest and nature reserve, a resort atmosphere (heavy on the mud) at the Dead Sea, mosaics in Madaba….what an amazing opportunity.

2) The Middle East is a favorite region (I lived in Bahrain as a preteen, and even had my 12th birthday in Shiraz, Iran) but it is misunderstood by many. I’d like to help clear that up, and….

3)  As with the Hawaii blogger press trip, I know that the Jordanian and Middle Eastern tourism industries are suffering from safety perceptions given the current situation in Egypt. They’re losing visitors. I’d love to dispel those concerns by visiting myself and telling you what I find.

More info when I have it.  Passport is ready!

Disclosure: The Jordanian Tourism Board is providing my airfare, accommodation and entry fees. They have not told me what to write about, and the itinerary is still in flux. I am not traveling as part of a group.

So simple, so straightforward, but I don’t see it often enough.

Integrate your on- and off-line destination marketing efforts. Make sure that people can find you, wherever you have a presence.

This card is the brainchild of Sarah Page, a Texas Social Media Award 2011 nominee and the LCRA (Lower Colorado River Authority) economic development expert.

The only change I’d make would be to add a QR code so that anyone with a smartphone could boot up links to any of the sites above.

But, I know Sarah is already thinking about that….in between True Blue Texas blog posts.

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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.

Here’s the scoop on our Black Friday tourism learning event….fun stuff we’ve planned just for you….

***  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.  :)

(Update:  want to see how it went? People dropped in from all over the globe! Here is the link to our Black Friday tourism open mic chat.)

***  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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Although it’s not on the official schedule for this week’s first-ever Symposium on the Use of Social Media in the Tourism Industry where I’ll be speaking on travel blogging (follow the #SoMeT hashtag on Twitter or the SoMeT Twub for related tweets) I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that hallway and evening social discussions will include this topic….

Brain drain.

Those who understand, appreciate and embrace communicating with visitors on the social Web are getting really tired of working for and with those who do not.

I hear the same plaintive words when I speak about social media at conferences….and not always from young people, either….

“Would you please tell all that to my boss?” “How can I succeed at this when Facebook is blocked at my office?” “My boss only wants copy from our website on our Facebook Page, not conversations with anyone on our Wall.” “My co-workers say that Twitter is dumb and no one who visits us is on it.” “I wish I could work with people like me.”

Three things are going to happen in the near future:

1)  As soon as the economy improves, the best and brightest social media communicators, at all levels, are going to leave their tourism organization as fast as they can, to work somewhere that appreciates and supports their skill set.

2)  Organizations that grasp the opportunities presented by social media will poach the best and brightest from “Slowville CVB” as soon as finances permit, and the poachees will gladly go somewhere that appreciates and supports their skill set.

3)  Organizations not currently onboard will get it. They’ll realize that social media is not “something the intern does,” but rather now a core communications and marketing capability. They will appreciate, integrate and fund it accordingly.

That Number 3 option?  Often, it won’t happen. Those are some of the same folks who blew off the impact of the Web and mobile phones.

The first-ever SoMeT conference in Loudoun County, Virginia this week – you can still drop everything, look at the speakers and register here - will be attended by people who very much “get it,” and are on the front lines with visitors every day both online and off.  I give full credit to the organizations that are paying the way of their hard-working employees, or that would pay for them to go, if they could afford it.

There are, however, other tourism professionals who are taking personal leave and paying out of pocket to attend – not because of funding restrictions, but because thanks to a recalcitrant boss, there’s no other way to get there.

It’s lonely at the “tip of the spear,” but those who are there right now need not despair.

People will either catch up with you and laud your sense of vision, or you will end up someplace that is happy to have you precisely because of who you are and how you connect online with your visitors and supporters.

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I’ll cut to the chase, because BlogWorld conference pass prices go up after September 16.

Why tourism and travel professionals need to go to BlogWorld and New Media Expo at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Oct 14-16:

1)  Because to really grasp what social media and tech can do for your marketing and communications, you need to go where the geeks are.

2)  Because our Tourism Track gives you a full day of training in social media for tourism…how to listen to the conversations that matter online, better video for tourism, blogger press trips/fam tours and more.

3)  Because it will be participatory, hands-on, no fear training with me and my Tourism Currents co-founder Becky McCray, PLUS….

***  Ann Peavey from the Seattle, Washington CVB (she’s @SeattleMaven on Twitter)

***  Mike Bersabal from the Pensacola, Florida CVB (he’s @Mike_VstPcola)

***  Jeff Hurt, meetings and conference expert, from Velvet Chainsaw Consulting (he’s @JeffHurt)

***  Stephanie Molina from the Beaumont, Texas CVB (she’s @Beaumartian)

4)  Because at BlogWorld, you’ll be able to get your tourism organization in front of thousands of bloggers, podcasters and video bloggers from around the world.  Denise Wakeman from The Blog Squad calls it THE social marketing event of the season. Wired PR Works calls it one of her must-attend events.

If you want attention from online content creators (travel, food, parenting and every other sort of blogger) you have to know who’s who, speak their language and be where they can find you.

That means be in Las Vegas October 14-16.

If you use code TC20 you can knock 20% off of the price of any pass.

Click here to check it out and register – we would absolutely love to see you there!

Most of you know that I’m really big on getting “the ungeeked” to go to one or two tech-related conferences or events per year.

There is no more effective way to figure out how people are using technology and mobile devices right now to communicate; it’s the best market research you can do and it will put you way ahead of competitors who are still scratching their heads over Twitter (which really burst on the scene at SXSWi 2007, the South by Southwest Interactive tech conference, one of the world’s largest.)

I recently wrote a guest post about this on the BlogWorld and New Media Expo blog – Go Where the Geeks Are: Why Tech Events Matter for Tourism and Travel - in support of the all-day tourism workshop that we’re doing at BlogWorld on October 14.

Meantime, the Panel Picker is now open for SXSWi 2011 in March – one of the unique things about “South by” is that part of the panel selection process is pubic voting and commenting on the proposed panels. You can give your feedback whether you’re attending SXSWi or not; there is a quick and painless registration process to do so.

I’ve proposed a panel with myself and two other speakers – my Tourism Currents business partner Becky McCray and travel/tourism entrepreneur Andy Hayes.

It’s titled Tourism Catches On: Old Industry Meets New Media.

Issues we plan to talk about include:

1. How does story and relationship work with new marketing online?
2. Can destinations work with online review sites or is it all out of their control?
3. What roadblocks hold tourism organizations back and how can they be overcome?
4. How can small staff groups possibly implement all these new tools when all this old work still has to get done?
5. What’s coming next in tourism and destination marketing?

If you have a moment, I’d really appreciate your votes, comments and feedback on our Tourism Catches On panel proposal.

Technology is for everyone – we want more mainstream industries and interest at SXSWi and we hope you do, too.

Not having a website in 2010 is akin to not having a telephone number.

Why would you make it hard for customers to find you?

Why would you cede your online presence to TripAdvisor, UrbanSpoon, Yelp or Merchant Circle? That’s what I find when I Google you and you don’t have a website.

Yelp is your website? Awesome.

That is bad business, and it is unworthy of you.

Here is CouchSurfingOri, a traveler on Twitter, asking for information about a local coffee shop:

And here is what he decides to do when the right folks who could give him an answer don’t happen to see his tweet, or see it but don’t have the information needed:

He goes to the community review site Yelp to find answers from other travelers.

Do your CVB, DMO and Chamber of Commerce members know about Yelp, or are they “too busy” for such things? Naturally, we can’t be everywhere all the time, but we need to be in the important places.

If your visitors are looking for information on sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor, it does your members no favors to ignore that and hope it will go away.

Hmmm, I sense another section being added to our Tourism Currents lessons about online presence….

Over at our Tourism Currents learning site (are y’all reading our monthly free newsletter on social media for tourism?) Becky McCray and I are PUMPED to announce a new initiative….

The two of us will teach a one-day workshop for CVB, DMO and other tourism folks on October 13, 2010 as part of the BlogWorld and New Media Expo tech conference at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.

This is a big deal because we’re always telling clients and Tourism Currents members that to really understand what’s going on with tech and social media, you have to “go where the geeks are” – events like South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi,) BlogHer, SOBCon and BlogWorld – and be immersed in how they communicate.  I’m always chuckling when I listen in on non-geek conferences via Twitter hashtag and hear them exclaiming over tools and methods that they’re hearing about for the first time, but I was exposed to 12-24 months earlier at some nerd fest.

Tech and social media stuff moves fast; you need to keep up in order to make intelligent decisions about whether to incorporate something into your marketing efforts.

We wanted tourism people to check out BlogWorld because it gives them a chance to connect with thousands of bloggers, podcasters and other online content creators (plus there’s a travel blogger track kicking off the day after our workshop in addition to food bloggers, sports bloggers and more.) These are your potential online champions; the people who are fans and supporters of your destination or attraction and who can help spread the word about you online.

Rather than have people come to such a huge event and be rather overwhelmed, we’re working with BlogWorld founder Rick Calvert (a travel enthusiast himself) to design a social media seminar that will introduce tourism folks to our “geek world” and how it can upgrade their communications work.

In addition to our daytime classes on the best ways to connect with online influencers, we’re planning networking meetings, tweetups and possibly “speed dating” sessions to help destination marketers network with the people who can provide them with online coverage.

This is still in the very early stages so I’ll let you know when we get more details worked out, but put October 13, 2010 on your calendars!

My business partner Becky McCray and I spent a few minutes during the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) tech conference getting social with Jennifer Navarrete and Luis Sandoval, Jr. of the Tech in Twenty show.

We had a great time talking about how social media can help tourism organizations tell the stories of their destinations.

Please excuse my apparent cud-chewing; I was popping throat lozenges to avoid coughing during the taping.  Although I don’t get sick very often, the annual March SXSWi nerd whirlwind always seems to do me in.  :)

The direct link to the show is here if you can’t see the box below.  Thanks very much to Tech in Twenty for having us stop by, and to the ever-charming Albert Maruggi for being the videographer for this episode.