Sheila's Guide To The Good Stuff

The Austin American-Statesman launched the Texas Social Media Awards last year, and I’m humbled to tell you that the 2010 award winners were just announced and I’m one of the awardees.

Thanks very much to the judges on the Statesman staff and to those who supported my nomination.

It is truly an honor to be recognized in such a constantly-changing space and with so many other fine people.

From the paper’s article about the Awards:

“In the year since the awards were first held, social media sites increasingly have become a part of daily life. ‘We’ve gone from people who were early adopters and having fun with the technology to people using it for business and nonprofits in ways I’ve never even thought of before,’ says American-Statesman social media editor Robert Quigley.”

I sincerely hope that my work in the social Web is helpful to the tourism and travel communities.

Take a gander at the list of awardees to appreciate the variety of folks, and allow me to give a special shout-out to a few of them….

1. Michelle Greer – last year’s overall winner and one of this year’s judges. A tireless advocate of using tech for worthy causes and an expert on cloud computing with Rackspace.
2. Jennifer Navarrete – A good friend and occasional business colleague, Jennifer is the driving force behind much of San Antonio’s tech scene, plus she’s a dynamite podcaster at (among other shows) Tech in Twenty.
3. Dara Quackenbush – Dara is a PR professor at Texas State, and I love watching how she brings her students into modern PR, done right. Here’s her class blog where they practice what they learn.
4. Jenn Dearing Davis and Hayes Davis – They tweet and tell us about good deals, on CheapTweet. They appreciate all of us on a budget. They are super-nice. Drawbacks = none.
5. Mando Rayo – He investigates the local taco scene, then blogs about it on Taco Journalism.  He told me that my best local taco joint is Juarez Mexican Bakery, and when Mando tells me where to go, I go. I eat. I’m happy.
6. Hugh MacLeod – He draws quirky cartoons at Gaping Void. He does marketing for a South African winery from his location in Alpine, Texas; hey, it’s the Web so it makes sense to me.

I’m thrilled to be in such company, and thanks again for your support.

A follow-up to my earlier post about not getting an HD video camera till you know what you’re getting into….

I have been practically welded to my tripod (a three-legged Sunpak 6060) for the last few weeks as I’ve shot video (and still photos to incorporate into those videos) for a client CVB.

There is no question that it has enhanced my good shots and totally saved several otherwise crummy ones.

Before you shoot another frame of any visual digital medium, go get a tripod.  Your viewers will thank you.

One of the great benefits of hanging around with tech-savvy people at events like Social Media Breakfasts, tweetups, SOBCon, etc. is that I’ve picked up some very helpful tools for communications and information sharing.

These are in the “toolbag” of just about everyone who is active on the social Web….

1)  Skype (with headset) – Skype is the telephone of the Internet. This basic “let’s talk” tool costs nothing to download and install on your computer, and you can use it for free one-to-one conversations or group conference calls around the world.  I’ve used it for almost two years with a monthly business mastermind group, plus one-off calls like a recent one with my fellow Perceptive Travel Blog writers (scattered across Tennessee, New York, Texas and New Zealand.)  You can use Skype with your computer’s built-in microphone, but there are feedback/audio problems. Buy a $20-30 headset at an electronics store before that first call (I use a comfy one from Logitech that plugs in via USB port.)

2)  Google Docs – Again, free. All you need is a Google account (which also gives you the well-regarded Gmail email, another geek staple.)  Google Docs allows you to share and edit a document, simultaneously if you’d like, across multiple users. No more emailing that .doc or PDF back and forth!  You can also create presentations, forms and spreadsheets. Did I say:  free?  You can also password protect your creations.  How do Becky and I run Tourism Currents? We use Skype video meetings and Google Docs.

3)  Webcam – You may have a webcam (Web camera) already installed at the top of your screen or monitor, or you can buy an external one that you plug in (I use this one from Logitech.)  With a webcam you can livestream to the Web using UStream (geeks are always livestreaming stuff) and you can also do Skype video calls.

4)  SlideShare – After a presentation to a techy audience, I almost guarantee that someone will say, “Will this be up on SlideShare?”  Don’t look at them blankly; have an account set up and upload your presentation slides.  No more emailing huge Power Point slide files.  SlideShare costs nothing; here are my uploaded presentations.  Here’s what you get on SlideShare when you search for presentations on tourism and social media.  Nice, huh?

Did I miss any obvious ones?  Please chime in with your suggestions in the comments.

It’s been a painful few weeks for me as a relatively new online video enthusiast.

My trusty Flip Ultra pocket video camera made it pretty simple to learn how to create basic little movies for my family travel blog, the Perceptive Travel Blog and to shoot interviews for Tourism Currents.

(If you haven’t started shooting video for your organization, stop right now and read tourism marketing expert Todd Lucier’s first post in a 3-part series….How to Invest in Video: Shooting Video. Why? Because your visitors like to watch videos to learn more about your destination, and search engines return videos pretty high in results if they’re titled/tagged/described fully.)

When I began shooting for the Round Rock CVB recently, I used their FlipMino HD camera.  HD = High Definition.  It’s got to be better to go with higher quality stuff, right?

Yes, but….

First, HD video is very unforgiving of the shakes and jiggles, so I’m using my tripod a lot more and I’m very conscious of image stabilization.  HD files also take up a lot of storage room on your computer’s hard drive.  Those issues are no big deal, but I’ve run into challenges with editing.

My Dell Latitude is a few years old and runs Windows XP, thanks to my local PC Doctors service shop who advised against “upgrading” to Vista.  The Latitude has never had any difficulty handling editing using the included Windows Movie Maker software. HD, however, is a different story, as this excellent PC Magazine article will attest – Video Editing for the Masses.

If you’re thinking of shooting HD, be aware of the following issues:

1. The file extension is different and may not be recognized by your video editing software.  My installed version of Movie Maker can’t “see” the new .MP4 files from the Flip HD, and the latest version of Movie Maker (that can work with MP4) won’t work with my XP. Technology awesomeness!
2. Technology crises always happen at 9 pm on a Saturday night when you’re alone – at least, they do with me.  When I saw I had a mess, I put a call out to my video-savvy Twitter followers, who quickly gave me software suggestions.  Hurray for helpful networks.  No, I can’t “call the IT people” because that’s me.  Freelancer awesomeness!
3. Adobe Premiere Elements was recommended by several (thanks, Dwight Silverman at the Houston Chronicle’s TechBlog) but I found it crash-prone (corroborated in several user forums.) I never could even launch the 30 day free trial and finally had to uninstall it.  The real problem became clearer when….
4. ….I then bought (for about $100 at Best Buy) and installed Pinnacle Studio Ultimate HD (thanks for the tip, Omar Gallaga – he’s the Austin American-Statesman Digital Savant.)  Pinnacle didn’t crash and nicely corrected several problems in a few of my video files – harsh sunlight, funky audio – but playbacks kept stuttering and everything just seemed “gummy.” Turns out that when I actually read the Pinnacle system requirements (d’oh!) my laptop has insufficient RAM and the processor is too slow.
5. To handle the two videos (plus lots of B-roll) that I’ve shot in HD, I’ve now installed the Pinnacle software on my family desktop PC, which has a more powerful processor (but the same amount of RAM as the laptop, so cross your fingers for me.)  I’m copying all the HD files on my laptop onto a 500G-capacity Seagate external hard drive, then dumping them from the Seagate onto the desktop so I can try to make everything work properly on a better platform. You can’t transfer such big files by email or sticking them on a thumb drive (without losing your mind) so I went with the big digital shovel.  Tech logistics awesomeness!

Bottom line? If you want to roll with HD, it’s not enough to shoot it. That part is deceptively easy. You need a high-powered, pretty recent computer with capable software to edit it unless you’re always going to be content to upload directly online (i.e., can shoot without error and never want to change it much.)

If you’re like most tourism organizations, your budget probably doesn’t allow you to run out and buy more powerful computers – including Macs, with the excellent iMovie editing software, unless you already have them. The answer, then, is to stick with lower-resolution video until you can get the editing horsepower you need.

The trusty lower-resolution Flip Ultra and I will hit the road tomorrow to shoot the next Round Rock video, and my laptop is breathing a sigh of relief.  Something tells me its days are numbered, though….

Are you kidding me?

NINE images attached to this PR email blast that dumped (twice) into my IN box, with the subject line in ALL CAPS just to ensure I didn’t miss it.

Er, I never write about celebrities. Or Mexico. And I rarely cover resorts.

I would love to say that this is uncommon; that most emails in my IN box are well-targeted, thoughtful pitches or interesting news from PR professionals who have actually established relationships with me before pitching.

Nope. More negative experiences happen all the time, from folks who apparently bought my name and email from some database.

What would I like to see?

Communication from those who reach out to get to know me before asking me for something (and hey, Dale Carnegie guy, putting my business card in for a drawing at your speaking event does NOT mean I want your course announcement emails. Ever heard of double opt-in?)

Sometimes I think that smaller tourism organizations have an advantage when they can’t afford to hire the “big, expert PR firm.” Based on my incoming emails, they aren’t missing much.

Last week I enjoyed spending 30 minutes on Blog Talk Radio with Australian entrepreneur and coach Des Walsh.  He has a regular program called Des Walsh and Friends, with a wide variety of guests all discussing some aspect of technology and business.

The noteworthy advantage of Blog Talk Radio (or any “Internet radio” service) is that not only can you listen live, but the shows are usually archived if you can’t be there at broadcast time, plus they’re also downloadable for later listening on your iPod or other digital audio player.

It gives radio/audio the worldwide reach that it never had before, as I discussed in this post about online radio and destination marketing for the Beaumont (TX) CVB.

Des and I talked about my background in travel, how Becky McCray and I launched Tourism Currents to teach tourism professionals about social media, and why businesses need to ensure a strong Web presence as customer search and interaction preferences shift online.

I loved having a fun chat with someone halfway around the world, and the time zones worked in my favor since it was afternoon my time, but very early morning for Des.  :)

Here is our episode:  talking social media, travel and tourism with Des Walsh.

(This is cross-posted on my BootsnAll Family Travel Logue.)

You won’t find a more powerful advocate for making the Web accessible to everyone than Glenda Watson Hyatt.  She has cerebral palsy but is able to control her left thumb, so that is how she does all of her typing and work on her terrific Do It Myself blog.

All of it.

With her left thumb.

It was particularly mind-blowing when she used a variety of technologies (including an electronic voice named Kate to sync to her slides) to give a presentation last year at the Chicago SOBCon social Web conference about how to make one’s blog accessible to those with disabilities.  (Here is a quick recap of Glenda’s presentation from WordPress blog publishing software expert Lorelle VanFossen.)

Glenda really opened our eyes that day to how the disabled often struggle to access the Web for work or personal enjoyment.  She has a wicked sense of humor, too; we all left her presentation laughing and enlightened (and many of us, myself included, considerably chastened by our own blindness to our disabled readers.)

We learned that the blind and vision-impaired can’t see our photos and graphics because we don’t include simple coding to describe them through the ALT tag (used by screen readers) and the deaf and hard of hearing can’t hear the sounds in our videos or podcasts because we don’t caption them or provide transcripts.

The disabled travel, too, and there are millions of them.  Have you thought about whether your tourism-related Web site gives them the information they need to plan a trip?

For example, even if your whole lovely historic downtown is ADA-approved (Americans with Disabilities Act that requires buildings to accommodate wheelchairs, etc.) fewer will visit if they can’t get information or trip-planning assistance from your inaccessible Web site.

People use the Web to plan trips, and that includes the disabled.

Lorelle VanFossen points out in a Web accessibility article in the Blog Herald that….

“The Ever-Shifting Internet Population reports that 38% of Americans with disabilities surf the web and almost 20% of them say that their disability makes web browsing challenging. There are a wide range of estimates, but at least one in four visitors to your blog are disabled.

That’s a huge customer base you might be missing and not serving.”

The indefatigable Glenda never stops working to make the Web available to everyone.

To that end, she is launching the 2010 Accessibility 100 book with tips for simple ways to make your site more accessible, and she issued a writing challenge in support of the book launch:

Write 25 words about what accessibility means to you.

So, I did, and here’s my 25 word contribution:

“As the Web becomes more available across the world,  I don’t want my little pieces of it to be inaccessible through my own thoughtless ignorance.”

Take a moment to think about whether your destination marketing Web sites market to all of your possible visitors, including the disabled.

I’ve embedded a short video below that Lorelle shot during Glenda’s talk – you can see her equipment setup and hear some of her suggestions.  If you’d like to hire Glenda to work with you to improve your sites, she can do that, too.

(Here is the direct link to the video on Viddler if you can’t see the embedded viewing box.)

This past Sunday evening’s #blogchat discussion on Twitter caught my eye – the topic was dealing with and avoiding blogger burnout.

You can get the full transcript of the tweets here (great for giving people a sense of how an hour-long hashtagged topic-specific “talk” on Twitter can work) but here are a few of my favorite ideas from host @MackCollier’s very helpful summary blog post about the chat:

**  Switch things up and try doing a podcast or video post - @mtlb

**  Bring in new bloggers or have others do guest posts - @eric_urbane

**  Try using an editorial calendar for your blog - @jdebberly

**  Keep a notebook with you to jot down post ideas - @lorieahuston

**  Check out your blog’s archives to see if you can find a new take -@amanda_pants

David Armano (@Armano on Twitter) said, “Ok, honestly, try really short posts to avoid burnout. Worked for me recently because it cut to chase.”

I like the suggestion to go super-short and to the point, almost tweet-ish, rather than the “standard” 300-500 word post.  I saw something similar in another tweet recently (can’t remember the source) which said that you need to quit trying to win a big ol’ Pulitzer Prize with every post. Just get a meaty thought up there and move on.

Short is OK.

For an obsessive rambler like me, that’s very helpful advice.

Here’s a handy resource that was tweeted during the chat:  10 things to do when you feel you have nothing to blog about.

When it comes to blogging, pay particular attention to suggestions for organizing your ideas.  I’ve found that when my thoughts are laid out in a list of possible posts or in an editorial calendar, my biggest problem is finding time to write about everything that interests me!

While checking Twitter the other day I saw a tweet from the Beaumont (TX) CVB that they were live on a local AM radio station in town, and they invited their Twitter followers to listen in.

Since I went to high school in Beaumont, I clicked the link in their tweet out of curiosity. I’m not a big talk radio person (don’t have a commute and prefer music while working at home) and like many people today I rarely listen to AM radio.

But this was AM radio for geeks, because AM 1300 KSET also live-streams shows to the Web.

That means that not only can people in Beaumont and a few surrounding southeast Texas towns like Lumberton, Orange, Nederland and Silsbee listen in, but the entire planet can get involved!   The station also keeps an active Facebook page and they’re on Twitter.

THAT gets my attention.

Just a few days before I’d bookmarked a PRSA San Antonio blog post on our Tourism Currents Delicious page – the post was titled Why Radio Will Survive the Media Shake-Out of Our Decade – so I already had radio on the brain.

Appearing on a live-streaming radio show means that you can remind your locals of what you offer (get those folks to visit more in their own backyards – the Beaumont CVB did a great job of plugging their online events calendar on the KSET show) but you can also reach out to your “expats.”

These are people who perhaps grew up in your town but moved away, or maybe they visit regularly (years ago as children, now as snowbirds, to visit relatives for the holidays, etc.) and they already feel an affinity for you.  Our latest Tourism Currents lesson calls them part of your “online champions network” if you can get them talking about you, so reach out and bring them closer to home, through the Web. A “wired” local radio show is one way to do that.

I know that when when I travel and find crummy music options in my hotel room, I tune my laptop into my local Austin classical radio station, FM 89.5 KMFA, which also livestreams to the Web. Ahh, the familiar morning DJs and a taste of home.

Another way to share online is through embeddable widgets like the one below from the radio station (if you click the Play button, you’ll hear the current live-stream from KSET.)   Widgets can be customized any number of ways and are another method of putting your latest information on other people’s sites.  ”Embeddable” means that you find the embed/sharing code where it says Get Widget, copy it, and paste it anywhere that allows HTML code.

Smart radio station, eh?

(Update:  look at this wonderfully-crafted post by Justin McCullough called The Social Web Ties Us Together….it’s about how he as a southeast Texas guy stumbled across this post about Beaumont while he was traveling in Oregon.  It is a dynamite explanation of how information spreads across the Web in ways that we might not expect.  Thanks, Justin!)

There’s a lot of action going on right now in my Travel 2.0 LinkedIn Group.

One of the members (Mike Huber, working with a commercial Arizona travel company not affiliated with the Arizona Office of Tourism ) asked this question titled Revamping a Website to include Web 2.0 features:

“We are in the process of totally overhauling http://www.arizonatourism.com.  Before we get too far down the road, I’d love some advice on what you think we need to include in the initial overhaul. Are there any travel sites you’d recommend we should emulate or any ‘must have’ features you’d recommend? Here is a preliminary ’spec’ of our new home page http://www.arizonatourism.com/newindex.html…any feedback would be greatly appreciated.”

Here’s how I answered:

“I’d ensure that your social media buttons are on every page of the site, and that they’re reasonably visible. Twitter, Facebook Fan Page at a minimum, a blog would be very smart, and the ever-underrated but awesome Flickr Group Pool [for travel photos from your customers.]

Itineraries based on travel interests are always helpful: families, outdoor adventure, history, culture, foodie, Native American sites for starters.

Make up some custom Google Maps focused on trails (food, history, etc. as above.)

Mobile, mobile, mobile.  You need to be all over mobile-friendly.

Incorporate music somehow – an easy but powerful way to bring atmosphere. By that I mean maybe suggested playlists (make them on amazon and iTunes and link to them from your site) NOT obnoxious music that auto-starts and makes people want to stab their computer.  :) ”

A follow-up question from another Group member asked:

“I am intrigued by adding recommended playlists and would like to add one to [our CVB] http://www.minneapolis.org. Can someone direct me to an example of linking to this from Amazon or iTunes?”

I just love music tailored to a destination, so I told her:

“I’m thinking of something similar to the lists on National Geographic Traveler, though I haven’t done such a list myself in iTunes, only burning my own CD mixtape-type playlists for road trips. (Rats: the words “CD” and “mixtape” both date me!)

***  Wonderful National Geographic Traveler destination-themed playlists.

***  The UK’s Guardian, one of my favorite newspaper travel sections, has 50 songs for 50 states.

***  From Heritage Ohio (they coordinate the Main Street program for the state) a playlist called Back Home to Ohio.”

Take a look at the original discussion thread on LinkedIn for a lot more ideas.

To find LinkedIn Groups that interest you, simply used the Search box in the upper right corner of the site and specify that you’re looking for Groups, not People/Jobs/Companies, etc.