LinkedIn Groups could be a lot more valuable to their members if there weren’t so many jerks – or genuinely clueless people – showing up who only drop links to their own blog posts, or promote their own webinars.

Call me crazy, but….

There should be discussions in the Discussions.

What is the answer to this problem?

Clear rules and self-policing, before your Group members leave in disgust.

Make Rules Crystal-Clear

I recently gained Manager access to a Group for a professional organization – the Association for Women in Communications – and these are the Rules (or guidelines or whatever you wish to call them) that I’ve created and posted.  I also sent out a Group Announcement email with them, as well.

They’re in plain English; feel free to tailor them to your own Group as needed.

“This is a professional development and discussion group for the AWC (Association for Women in Communications.) You do not have to be an AWC member, or a woman, to participate.

The rules are: be nice. Bring value to the discussions. Be helpful. Encourage one another. Highlight trends. Share case studies and resources.

If all you do is show up and drop links to your own webinars, blog posts or job info, expect to have your items flagged “Promotion” or “Jobs.” ANY Group member can flag items, and should feel free to do so. Self-policing is the most effective way to keep spammers at bay.

Keep self-promoting, and you’ll get a private warning from the Group Manager (currently the AWC HQ staff in Alexandria, VA and Sheila Scarborough, member of the AWC National Board of Directors.)

Keep doing it after a warning, and we’ll block you from the Group.

Obviously, if you roll in here with abusive, sexist, racist or otherwise obnoxious language, you’ll get blocked as well.

We’re professional communicators from around the world. Let’s make this Group worthy of our abilities. Questions? Email members@womcom.org or Sheila at sheila@sheilascarborough.com   Thanks.”

Hat tip to Liz Strauss for the “be nice” rule – it’s worked well for years on her Successful Blog.

Anyone can “Flag as Promotion” or “Flag as Job”

In most Groups, anyone – not just the Group Manager – can flag a post as “Promotion,” “Job” (either looking for one or announcing one) or “Inappropriate.”

Make sure you enlist the support of all Group members in moving the above items out of Discussions and to the sections where they belong.

Promotion is fine….in the Promotions section.

Job-hunting is fine….in the Jobs section.

Reaction to the Guidelines

Within 30 minutes of posting clear rules and emailing all Group members about them, this arrived:

“THANK YOU!  I  quickly stopped reading the group and stopped notifications because of all the spam. I did not leave because I hoped it would be redeeming itself in the future.  THANK YOU for putting up guidelines.”

Also, this question:

“What about posting notices of purely social networking events? I’m the president of [redacted professional org, not AWC] and from March to October, we hold “Dutch treat” casual get-togethers for people in the Chicago area. No speakers, no recruitment, no business pitches, just an excuse to go out for drinks and appetizers with others in the profession.”

My response was that such announcements still need to go into Promotions, particularly for a non-AWC organization in a city where we don’t have a chapter (yet.) I told the sender that my number one priority right now is fostering discussions, not announcements, however “nice to know” they might be.

Sometimes, you’ve gotta be the hardass. It’s usually worth it.

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A good pitch is timely, short, punchy and answers the question WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?) for the recipient.

If this sounds familiar, it should. A good pitch to bloggers is very much like a good pitch to any media person.

At BlogWorld and New Media Expo West in Los Angeles, I talked to Jared Degnan from Brandware Public Relations about pitching bloggers….the video is about a minute long, and here’s the direct link to it on YouTube in case you can’t see the embed box below.

Did I get it right, or was I too simplistic?  Leave a reply down in the comments….thanks!

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People may think I’m nuts, but Google+ is going to be the lever that begins prying Google away from total domination of much of our online lives.

What follows is, of course, conjecture, but one thing I’ve learned over the years is that I don’t trust my instincts often enough, so here goes….

They’ve Shot Themselves Over Search, Of All Things

By using Google+ to manipulate their own search results, Google abandons the very core of their business culture – serving up unfiltered, “best” results as they attempt to organize the world’s information.

By telling Google employees who push back to get on the train or get out, they undo their organization’s credibility from the top down. A cushy work environment in Mountain View is just lipstick on a pig if your business doesn’t deliver on its promises.

I don’t know where it’s going to come from (Microsoft’s Bing search engine is not nimble enough, although I’d be happy to be proven wrong) but there will be a challenger to Google that will come out of nowhere and capture those who want to go back to basics.

FocusOnTheUser.org is one example of how that movement has already begun, with their “Don’t Be Evil” alternative search button tool. Tellingly, it was created by some engineers from Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

Privacy – Google Is All UP In Your Business

The privacy issues with Google are even more significant than Facebook’s.

At least with Facebook, you can just get the heck off of it, or at a minimum take draconian measures with your settings.

Google is everywhere – our email, our videos, our maps, our photos, our search habits and our Android phones – and you cannot opt out of their creepy data mining.

I’ve been told that many people don’t understand the implications of this, and/or don’t care about privacy issues. Fine, but Congress and the FTC do care.  Someone’s going to move on Google; either the consumer public or regulators or both.

Not Another Social Network!

Google+ is essentially another Facebook with some cool bells & whistles (I do like the G+ video Hangouts) but despite apparently roaring user numbers that don’t add up, I sense that in terms of true mass adoption, the regular Joe Bag o’ Donuts guy/gal is not jumping on Google+ like they are getting onto Facebook.

People go where the people are who they want to connect with;  I saw this in microcosm in 2008/2009 when Plurk failed as an alternative to Twitter.  The Geekerati said that Plurk was so much better organized, easier to use, etc. etc. but the fact is, everyone already HAD networks on Twitter and when they didn’t move over en masse to Plurk, people went back to where the people were.

Does anyone out there really want one more blasted digital thing to manage?  Even a lot of techie types are feeling rather overwhelmed, and many others in the mass market are still figuring out Facebook, are puzzled by blogs and find email challenging.

Not Another Social Network! Except Maybe Pinterest

In contrast to the “no THERE there” that is Google+, I’ve been watching the recent explosion over digital bulletin boards on Pinterest. No one wants another thing to manage, unless they really like the thing, and they like this one.

Fans of Pinterest are truly crazy about it. My own line of work, tourism and hospitality, is diving into Pinterest. I can’t remember when I’ve seen such rapid adoption and wild enthusiasm, albeit still mostly among a more tech-savvy crowd than the mass market.

May I remind you of the popularity of scrapbooking?  The hordes of people who’ve jumped onto Facebook worldwide (it just knocked Google’s Orkut off as the number one social network for Brazil) are perfectly capable of figuring out how to transfer their scrapbooking skills and enjoyment to something like Pinterest.

On the other hand, I can’t see any of them lining up to laboriously sort their friends into Circles on Google+.  Actually, it wouldn’t be that laborious, because no one’s really ON Google+!

Tech journalist Omar Gallaga compared Pinterest and Google+ on his Digital Savant blog, saying:

“Despite the growth of Google+, I have yet to hear a single person say she loves it. The people I see posting more often there are marketers, photographers, social media experts and a handful of media people like me sharing the same kinds of links and jokes they also post to Twitter and Facebook. Google+ otherwise feels like a weirdly active ghost town….”

My geek crowd is saying that they love the visual organizing, inspiration and connections on Pinterest, but most see Google+ as a somewhat bothersome “I have to do it because it’s Google” chore.

A privacy-invading chore is not a recipe for mass adoption.

Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely

We’ve been here before with AOL and Yahoo! and other behemoths who are now pygmies. No one stays on top forever.

Google has self-immolated their corporate values by embracing search manipulation and calling it “social.”  Update: Farhad Manjoo on Slate – “Google just broke its search engine.”

They’ve created something that is mostly a marketing obligation for many, a chance to write a quick how-to book for others and a genuine place of enjoyment for specific niches like photographers, who do seem to like G+.

That’s not much of an endorsement for what will be yet another Google failure at building a social network, and will also lead to the beginning of the end because it is not part of the business culture or values that made their company great.

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Welcome to the Carnival of Cities blog carnival, where we tour the world in a single post, via submissions from a variety of different blogs, all about any aspect of one, single city or fair-sized town.

The previous Carnival edition was hosted on the Perceptive Travel Blog, and you’ll find the next one (February 8, 2012) on Edutech Musings.

If you would like to host a future Carnival edition on your blog, please contact me at Sheila “at” sheilascarborough “dot” com. Thanks!

Off we go….

Cities in the Americas

Seattle, Washington, USA   Mary Jo Manzanares presents Tourist at Home: Visiting the Seattle Aquarium posted at Traveling with MJ, saying, “Fun for adults and kids. . . and the otters are just so darned cute!”

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA   Angela Gaitaniella presents Pittsburgh is “In” posted at The Burgh, Exposed.

San Francisco, California, USA   Byteful Travel presents What’s Hidden Underneath the Golden Gate Bridge? (Exploring historical Fort Point) posted at Byteful Travel, saying, “Even though you’ve probably never heard of it, something very old is hidden underneath the Golden Gate bridge; and one a sunny day in September, I had the opportunity to photograph it.”

Orlando, Florida, USA   Eileen Ludwig presents Artsfest FREE Ticketed Non-Ticketed Florida posted at Freelance Tourist: Travel Tips.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA   hello haha narf presents Still So Much posted at Midnight Cliff.

New Orleans, Louisiana, USA   Tui Snider presents New Orleans? Cafe du Monde: A Taste of History posted at Mental Mosaic: Even Home is a Travel Destination, saying, “Coffee played a big role in New Orleans’ history, and at one point in the 1800′s there were nearly 500 coffeehouses in the French Quarter. Cafe du Monde is the sole survivor from that era, with a menu that is virtually unchanged since it first opened in 1862.”

Niagara Falls, Canada   Andy Hayes presents Top 10 Quirky Things To Do in Niagara Falls posted at eTourism Insight, saying, “Quirky things in what is perhaps the quirkiest place in Canada. ”

New York, New York, USA   Priya Mony presents My Reasons to Love New York: The Winter Edition posted at Let’s Take The Scenic Route, saying, “Great things to do and places to visit in New York even in the coldest months of the year.”

Cities in Europe

Panicale, Umbria, Italy   Ciao Bambino! presents Art Camp for Kids in Umbria, Italy posted at Ciao Bambino, saying, “Arte al Sol art camp is a great way for children to experience Italian Culture. It’s not just painting here. Activities may include glass blowing, cooking or even sheep herding – experiences that your kids won’t soon forget.”

Barcelona, Spain   Amanda Kendle presents Gaudi makes Barcelona beautiful posted at Not A Ballerina: A Travel Blogger’s Life.

London, England   Brooke Allen presents London Pub Crawl posted at Rambling Brooke.

Liverpool, England    Mr. Brightside presents [Come Dine With Us] Gusto! posted at The Wild Swans, saying, “One of the best Italian restaurants in Liverpool!”

Cities in Asia

Delhi, India   Mariellen Ward presents Delights of Delhi posted at BreatheDreamGo.

That concludes this Carnival edition, and thank you for visiting.

Please submit your (ONE, non-spammy) blog post to the next edition of the Carnival of Cities using our carnival submission form.

Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

As a follow-up to my earlier post about Pinterest for tourism and hospitality, I’ve learned how to tell when your content is pinned to someone’s Pinterest Board.

Use this URL:  http://pinterest.com/source/YourSite.com/

So, for example, to look for items that are pinned from this blog, I’d use http://pinterest.com/source/sheilasguide.com/

Here’s how I found that the multi-author travel blog I write for – Perceptive Travel Blog - has had a few things pinned:  http://pinterest.com/source/perceptivetravel.com/

No reason you can’t leave a comment and thank the person for pinning, either.

The photo at the top of this post is an example of doing that …. when you mouse over a Board on the Pinterest website, you’ll see popup options to Like, Repin and Comment.

You know what to do with a Comment box, right?  :)

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Over a six week period (1 December 2011 through 17 January 2012) we gained 137 new Likes/fans for our Tourism Currents Facebook Page. That is a 101% increase over a similar time frame from the previous year.

We did not buy Facebook ads or Sponsored Stories. We did not run a contest. We only did one thing differently …. we started interacting more on our own Home page (News Feed) with other Pages that we’ve Like’d.

That was it.

Sure, our Tourism Currents Page doesn’t have massive numbers of supporters, because we have a deliberate, laser-targeted focus on social communications for the tourism and hospitality industries.  We’d rather have a small number of people from CVBs (Convention and Visitors Bureaus) and Tourist Boards who really care what we say on Facebook, and then maybe check out our online Store, than thousands of random button-clickers who we never see again.

Facebook is like blogging and most other human interaction – if you want attention, you must give it. If you want your updates to be noticed, you need people to Like, Comment and Share them; that means they must remember that your Page exists.

How We Did It

As a Tourism Currents Page Admin, I switch from acting as my personal Sheila Scarborough profile to acting as the Tourism Currents Page. You can switch roles when you’re logged into Facebook; look for a little arrow at the top right of your screen next to “Home”.  The options available to you will drop down. If you are an Admin for many Pages, there is a small gray slider bar at the side of the dropdown box, although sometimes it doesn’t show up.

At least once a day, for about 10-15 minutes, I go to the Home page/News Feed acting as Tourism Currents. I click the Sort —> “Recent Stories First” dropdown arrow option on the upper right side. That puts my Home page status updates in chronological order, without regard to Facebook’s EdgeRank, which by default sorts the News Feed into the “Highlighted Stories First” setting. I want to see fresh, new, unfiltered updates. I also want my interaction to be noticed and not buried with 573 later Likes and Comments.

Then, I skim down and “like” interesting status updates, plus leave a comment on the ones where I have something useful to say.  I know that many other Page Admins are a lot like me; they notice and investigate those who actively respond to their content. Likes and comments help increase the visibility and EdgeRank of individual updates, so not only am I calling attention to Tourism Currents, I’m also helping other people’s content get more attention.

As the screenshot above shows, once I started doing this consistently, we gained 137 new Likes in six weeks.  For a Page with 895 Likes (as of this writing) that’s a nice little jump.

Numbers Aren’t The Point, Though

Excessive focus on getting more fans or supporters is useless bean-counting, unless it’s combined with actively engaging those people and getting them interested in and talking about your destination, attraction, lodging, service or product.

At a minimum, you should have a tab on your Facebook Page for easy signups to your own email newsletter.

You’re not in business to build an empire for Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg …. you want to own your own data.

We use a Facebook app tied to our Tourism Currents MailChimp email account to encourage newsletter signups right on our Page.  To see how it’s done, here’s how to add a MailChimp signup form to Facebook; your email provider probably has a similar procedure.

I disagree with some of the current advice to increase the frequency of your Facebook posting because of the new Timeline format.  Making more noise and spewing even more content for busy people to have to plow through is not a sustainable communications tactic.

To get Likes, be a Like-er yourself, and then have a plan for what the heck you’re going to DO with the community you build.

Most of you probably have the same reaction that I do when someone announces a “new social network”  -  oh, no, not ANOTHER one!

It’s enough to keep juggling the time-suck challenges of all the current ones, right?

So, it takes a lot for me to pay attention to yet another way to stare at some sort of glowing screen, and I have to see the new tool’s application to tourism and hospitality since that’s my business.

That’s why I’m not interested in Google+ right now (other than its implications for search) but I’m quite intrigued by Pinterest, a digital bulletin board or scrapbook that allows people to “pin” interesting photos onto a themed Board.

I first noticed some tourism geeks talking about it around August 2011, then in November 2011 BusinessWeek ran the article, “Why Image-Sharing Network Pinterest is Hot“.

The service is taking off like crazy, especially among those who like visual inspiration: photographers, travelers, decorators and stylists, designers and food enthusiasts.  If you know the story of the Fiskateers and crafting, you know that a lot of activity and discussion can happen in a passionate niche.

CVB/DMO and Hotel Pinterest Boards

What are the possibilities for tourism?

Boards could focus on your unique local foods, architecture, shopping, birding, special events or historic sites. The more specific and visually appealing, the better.

Some examples:

**  Visit Savannah on Pinterest  -  they created an inspiration Board (shown to the right) for St. Patrick’s Day, which is a HUGE annual event in Savannah.

**  Visit Jordan on Pinterest  -  the famous ruins at Petra are certainly magnificent, but how about the curative powers of country’s Dead Sea resorts?

**  Indiana Tourism on Pinterest  -  get hungry looking at their Super 46 Board of sandwiches in honor of the NFL Super Bowl #46 in Indianapolis.  Need ideas for social media integration? Note how the sandwiches campaign also shows up on the Visit Indiana blog (the Pick Your Favorite Super 46 Sandwich(es) post,) on Yelp via each sandwich restaurant’s page, on Twitter via sandwich-related tweets with the #Super46 hashtag and on their Facebook Page by status updates that highlight each sandwich, often with a video that’s also on YouTube.

**  Canton/Stark County, Ohio on Pinterest  -  building up their local Restaurants Board.

**  Wyoming Tourism on Pinterest  -  the Boards you’d expect (incredible vistas and Western stuff) but I really like their HA! Board of pics that make you chuckle.

**  Experience Columbus, Ohio  -  many exciting Boards, but here’s a nice plug for local Columbus-based crafters:  a Columbus on Etsy/Made Here Board.

**  The Hotel Klausnerhof, Hintertux, Austria  -  how about this Advent calendar Board of snowy Tyrol photos?

**  The Four Seasons Hotel in Austin  –  still a pretty new account, but I like the thought behind this 2012 Wedding Trends Board.

**  Guatemala’s Pacific Fins Resort and Marina  –   for Hemingway-esque, The Old Man and the Sea types, a Blue Water Fishing Board.

To look for other examples, try a People search on Pinterest for CVB or Visit or Tourism or Hotel.

Pinterest Can Help With SEO

Just as with photos, video or other visual social communications, spend a little time on the descriptive text of your pinned images;  all of that text can be crawled and indexed by search engines.

Yes, Pinterest counts for SEO (Search Engine Optimization.) Direct link to the SEO for Pinterest video below, by a  bridal consultant.

Also note that each Board has a Facebook “Like” button, which can help spread your curation across your follower’s Facebook networks.

Pinterest is the topic of the January 19, 2012 #tourismchat on Twitter – I’ll update this post afterward with a link to the transcript.

Update:  Here’s the 19 Jan #tourismchat transcript (about Pinterest) via Chirpstory  http://chirpstory.com/li/3920

Update 2:  My friend Troy Thompson has a terrific interview post featuring Joe Vargo, who runs the Columbus, Ohio Pinterest Boards mentioned above.  Get some insights from Joe’s experiences:  5 Questions – Joe Vargo on Pinterest 

The possibilities are pretty endless, aren’t they?

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What can city people learn from rural folks?

If my own experience is any indication – a TON.

Thanks to a diverse social network that includes interesting people in small towns and rural areas, I’ve learned so much over the last few years about the hopes, dreams, troubles and blissful moments of people who live in what I used to call “out in the middle of nowhere.”

They’re more tech-savvy than you’d think …. I recently found an AgChat Foundation Facebook discussion about the hot new Pinterest social sharing service and how farmers might use it for “agvocacy.”

You know that ongoing discussion about getting broadband internet access out into rural areas? It sure seems similar to efforts in the 1930′s to get electricity and telephone service out to less-populated places, and the same objections are being raised; it’s too expensive, there aren’t enough people to justify it, it’s a “luxury” they don’t really need, etc.  I never really thought about this problem until I got to know some small town geeks.

At last fall’s 140 Characters/State of NOW Small Town communications conference in Hutchinson, Kansas, I was honored to be chosen as one of the speakers, and I talked about this personal awakening.

There were some video problems at first, so all I have for you is the audio recording, but it’s only about 10 minutes and I talk fast.

Here’s the direct link to the audio file if you can’t see the embed box below:  http://blip.tv/140confevents/140conf-smalltown-2011-sheila-scarborough-city-kid-among-the-cattle-5639673 

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Fourth and final post in a series for the get-revved-up week between Christmas and New Year’s.

The right question is not, “How do we get more Twitter followers?” or “How do we get more Like-ers/fans on Facebook?”

The right question is, “What do we want to DO with our followers and fans?”

Counting heads is fun – we’re all guilty of it, including me – but unless those people are helping you achieve stated objective(s) for your organization or business, you’re fooling yourself that anything is accomplished by totting up raw numbers.

Rev-up recommendation for you:

**  As you gather more supporters in 2012, have plans for what you want to do for them, and what they could do for you.

—->>  On your blog – do you want readers to sign up to get your posts by email or RSS?  Take a hard look at whether you have made that signup process as simple as possible, including on a mobile device.

—->>  It’s Facebook Page 101:   make sure that people can sign up for your email newsletter right there on your Page.  On our Tourism Currents Facebook Page, we use a tab and a short signup form via our MailChimp email service.

Are you trying to build your own list, or are you busy building Mark Zuckerberg’s list?  Use Facebook for your own business success!

—->>  On Twitter, periodically let followers know how to sign up for your email updates.  Note: Send them directly to your signup page – don’t dump them onto your homepage and hope they find it.

—->>  What are you doing with your email newsletter list?  What’s your point to cranking it out? WHY should people open up their already-overloaded IN boxes to you?  Ask yourself those tough questions….often.

Back to numbers:  if you suddenly picked up 1000 more fans or followers, what would you DO with them that you couldn’t do already, right now?

My own 2012 plan for the fans and followers of this blog

Since I’m asking you about your plans for your platforms, here are mine for Sheila’s Guide:

1)  Lead the tourism industry away from a somewhat silo’d focus on social media, and toward a more general incorporation of social communications as simply “how we do things.”  It’s like email – nobody has an Email Department, do they?  It’s time for social media to stop being new or special.

2)  Support the growth of my Tourism Currents business with Becky McCray.  We’ve set a performance goal that we’ve agreed to meet by our 3rd anniversary in business (September 2012) or we’re going to radically overhaul what we offer.

3)  Support my work as a professional speaker on tourism and social media.

4)  Support the marketing of my upcoming book, The Elastic Waist Entrepreneur.

Thanks so much for your support, and hope to see many more of you in person in 2012.

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Third in a blog post series for the get-revved-up week between Christmas and New Year’s.

Many people avidly read every one of marketer Seth Godin’s blog posts.

I think it’s mostly because they’re well-written and helpful, but part of the reason is that his posts are often quite short.

As in, a few sentences.

Most of them do not include a photo or video; they’re just plain ol’ text.

But….his readers know that he’ll be pithy, get to the point and not take up too much of their time.

(I won’t go into the fact that he does not allow comments on his posts, which is not how I prefer to blog.  He has his reasons, and it’s his blog, after all.)

Rev-up recommendation for you:

**  Go short more often in 2012.

—->>  Just a few interesting sentences can be a blog post for you, too. Try it one day in the first week of January 2012.

—->>  Make every other Facebook Page update a one-sentence declaration or question for a few days.

—->>  Twitter is MADE for pithy thoughts. In the early days of the service, we called an exactly 140 character tweet a “twoosh.”

—->>  Make your email newsletter unexpectedly short one month (and say that it is short, in your Subject line.) See what happens with the open/click rate. Does it improve?

—->>  Challenge yourself to shoot a 30-45 second video, or a fun Google Search Story or a short Animoto video out of photos you already have.

Can you think of any other ways to “go short?”

For more ideas on effective content creation, see Lesson Two of our Tourism Currents online course, Building a Home Base. It includes a video of our own blogging lessons learned.

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