Sheila's Guide To The Good Stuff

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

If you have a fairly recent point-and-shoot camera, then you have a Macro setting for closeup shots.

How often do you use it?

Macro gives you another way to take what might be a ho-hum, expected photo and turn it into something more interesting.

The picture you see here was taken with my little Canon PowerShot Digital Elph;  it’s one of the handmade green icing trees, dusted with sugar “snow,” that surround the holiday village made of gingerbread in the lobby of the Four Seasons hotel (this one in Austin.)

Rev-up recommendation for you:

**  Play a bit with close-up photography in 2012.

—->>  Find the Macro setting on your camera (often a flower symbol.)  Look for interesting little details around town to photograph – perhaps that includes a mouthwatering close-up of a chocolate milkshake from the real corner drugstore that you still have downtown.

—->>  Put the milkshake photo into a round-up blog post that calls attention to fun, quick, family-friendly downtown places to eat. Link to each of those businesses in your post.

—->>  Link to your blog post in a Facebook Page update. Tag the place where you took the milkshake photo, and the other eateries, too.

—->>  Tweet the link to your post 2-3 times on Twitter, over a few days, at different times. Include the Twitter handles of those downtown businesses.

—->>  Pop the chocolate milkshake photo into your email newsletter.

—->>  Shoot a short video of a drugstore employee showing how he/she makes the perfect chocolate milkshake, then put that on YouTube, with a link back to your eateries blog post in the video description.

Can you think of any other way to use Macro photos to entrance visitors with an unexpected close-up view?

For more ideas on using one piece of content multiple times, look in the Solutions section of our Tourism Currents Store for a two-page download titled Create Once, Use Many Times – How to Think Like an Online Publisher.  It includes lots of different ways to use photos.

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This is Woodrow Wilson’s restored Pierce-Arrow limousine, at his Presidential Library in Staunton, Virginia.  Nice museum, with a small new World War I exhibit, and Staunton is a charming town in the Shenandoah Valley. (The cat’s pajamas is 1920′s slang for “pretty awesome.”)

I took the photo with my Android phone (a Motorola) and have to say that I’ve been more than pleased with its camera. Shutter lag is significant, but picture quality is good enough that lately I’ve forgotten about using my regular Canon digital point-and-shoot camera. Plus, with the phone, I can send things up to Facebook (as this one was sent) and Twitter while standing right there.

A good smartphone camera is really changing how I create content when I travel.

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When someone asks me about social media in the hospitality industry, I usually mention the Roger Smith Hotel in New York, AJ Bombers restaurant in Milwaukee and the blog written by Hawaii-based Outrigger Hotels.

Then I wish that I knew more examples.

That problem was just partially solved by this excellent presentation on Slideshare by Lara Dickson, a designer and social media marketing expert based in Vermont. It’s also included in her own blog post, Social for Hospitality 101.

It covers all that any hotel or restaurant needs to know about getting started using social media tools for marketing, and it’s full of ideas and examples.

Thanks a bunch, Lara!

Direct link to the presentation Adding Social Media to Your Hospitality Marketing Toolkit.

One of the takeaway points at my SoMeT blogging/content presentation was to spend more time focusing on the small details of your destination. Look at the world through a mental soda straw to shed light on the unique and interesting, rather than only writing list posts (“Top 10 Beaches” blah blah) or broad overviews.

This photo is to illustrate the concept.

It was taken with a Canon PowerShot point-and-shoot camera, but using the Macro (close-up) mode, which can do some really fun stuff for you.

It is part of the patterned door of an antique pie safe at Clyde’s Willow Creek Farm, a unique restaurant and tavern in Broadlands, Virginia which is part of the Washington, DC area’s wine country (and a big thank you, preservationists for keeping our history alive in such places.)

See the poked-up holes?

Those are made by sticking a nail through the thin metal to make decorative patterns that also provide ventilation for the pies stored on shelves within.

Can you now imagine someone laboriously doing that by hand a long time ago….poke-poke-poke, but always with design in mind, like the paisley swirl detail seen in the photo?  It brings joy to an everyday piece of furniture while also serving a purpose.

Takeaway from this:   Soda straw. Get super-close. Use your camera’s Macro setting. Find those little miniature landscapes that tell a story.

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Although our Tourism Currents online learning community is a pretty new startup, we decided this month to sponsor an event for the first time.

Now we’re in the “big leagues,” right?  :)

It’s the Get Smart professional development conference run by the very active Austin, Texas AWC (Association for Women in Communications) chapter.

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.”

Our favorites for finding blogs?  Alltop.com (here’s the Alltop Tourism Industry channel) and Google’s blog search engine.

Our favorite parts of LinkedIn?  The Groups and Answers sections.

Our best tip for Twitter?  Follow one or more of the many regularly scheduled industry-specific hashtagged Twitter chats.

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.

It’s easy to see how social media and mobile devices have changed how meetings and conferences themselves are conducted (for more on that see Jeff Hurt’s Seven Tips to Make Your Conference Millennial-Friendly) but how about the idea of using social media networking to attract more conferences TO your town?

I’m speaking on this very topic at a breakout session for the Texas Travel Summit, and here are some of my thoughts….

First, The Fundamentals

1) This is really a networking issue.

Social media is simply another tool to network and connect with the people who schedule places for meetings.  Be a helpful and informative resource, and get in front of meeting planners where they are, online and off.

2)  You still must ask two basic, old-warhorse questions (social media does NOT change the need to ask them)

——–>>  Who is your market for meetings?

——–>>  What does your town have to attract that market?

3)  Figure out who plans meetings. One good place to start is associations, and there is an association for just about every trade, industry and interest that you can imagine.

Where can you find decision-makers from associations? In the US, start with the ASAE (American Society of Association Executives.) Look for information about associations in your prospective meetings market.

Another place to look is event professionals and meeting planners.

Now, the Social Media Stuff

Here are some ways to connect with these folks, using social media.

1)  Read their professional and industry blogs.

***  Start with the Alltop Event Planning channel or the Trade Shows channel.  Find a few industry blogs, keep up with them, make comments and interact with the authors. Over time, let them know that your destination is the sort of place that they’d love for their meetings.

2)  Connect on LinkedIn.

***  Go beyond filling out your personal profile (although a complete one is important) and also create Company profiles for your CVB and your Convention Center. Here’s the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority Company profile.

***  Find, join and be visible in Groups that relate to your market.

Start looking at Groups like the DMAI (Destination Marketing Association International) empowerMINT Group for CVBs and Meeting Professionals, MPI (Meeting Professionals International,) the Association Resource Group, PCMA (Professional Convention Management Association,) Event Peeps (for Live Event Industry Professionals,) Corporate Event and Meeting Planners and the IAEE (International Association of Exhibitions and Events) Group.  Just pick a few for active participation or you won’t be able to keep up.

***  Pay attention to, and provide assistance when you can, in LinkedIn Answers – a Q&A section of the site – particularly in response to questions and activity in the Conferences and Event Planning section.

3)  Go find the meeting planners and associations on Twitter.

Use the LinkedIn list above and find @ASAECenter, @MPI, @CVBConnect, @PCMAConvene, etc. on Twitter. Interact, say hello, retweet their good stuff.

Here’s where you can really dig in:  hour-long, regularly scheduled hashtagged Twitter chats. Introduce yourself at the start and watch the tweets fly on the topic of the day.

There are two chats you should know about and possibly join when they happen….

• #assnchat for associations is Tuesdays, 1-2 pm CST.
• #eventprofs for event planning professionals is Tuesdays, 8-9 pm CST and Thursdays, 11 am-12 noon CST.

4)  Show meeting planners your town and your conference venues with video and photos.

Videos can go on YouTube, Vimeo and your Facebook Page. Photos can go on Flickr and your Facebook Page.

• Create videos that show conference facilities in detail, inside and out and a bit of the surrounding area. Cover transportation to/from it. If you don’t want to hire pros to do this, use a handheld camera like the Flip or the Kokak Zi8 and do it yourself. Another option is making videos out of photos using Animoto.
• Create videos during a few events as they are in progress at your venues. Show actual people during an actual meeting, and include a few short interviews with people who like your convention center and your town.  Have them sell your offerings!
• Take photos, too. Here is the Flickr page for the Virginia Beach Convention Center, and the Rhode Island Convention Center photos on Facebook.

Summary

It’s not a magic bullet. It is building relationships and networks with humans and it takes time.  Social media is the tool you’re using to network. It’s a means, not an end.

Bonus:  social media profiles help your Web find-ability and SEO (Search Engine Optimization.)  Hurray! You’re making people AND Google happy. Even better, it helps your disabled folks find you online because it helps meet Web accessibility standards.

Any town can do this….the possibilities for hosting meetings are pretty endless.

How else do you think that the 140 Conference SmallTown tech conference ended up in Hutchinson, Kansas?

Update: here’s the presentation as it was presented at the TTIA Texas Travel Summit 2010 – the slides about blogs, LinkedIn, Twitter and Videos/Images have embedded links that you can click through.

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Are you responsible in some way for a festival or special event, and would like to get jump-started using social media to promote it?

I always advise including social media as an integral part of your overall marketing plan, not sticking it on as an afterthought, but sometimes you do need to push the train forward a bit even if all the track isn’t laid to the end.

Hey, it worked for the US Transcontinental Railroad….

If your festival or special event is coming up quickly, here are some things you can do to enhance your online presence, and then you’ll have a platform to build on more thoughtfully for next year:

1)  Get a Facebook Page.  Not a Group – a Page. Give more than one person administrative access to it. Your event logo is fine as an avatar. Put it in the Organization-NonProfit category; that’s probably the one that applies best to festivals.  Fill out the Info section thoroughly, with event dates, location and times, simple directions from the main access points, links to your website and any other social media sites you have, and a contact email and phone number.

Put up a few Wall posts, especially some photos and short videos from last year’s event if you have them, and get the word out to your networks that some “Likes” of your Page would be appreciated. Once you get to 25, um, “Likers,” you can switch the Facebook URL to a more personalized one with your name.

Connect with your local CVB, DMO, state tourism office, town government, Chamber of Commerce and the businesses that sponsor your event, at a minimum.

Here is why special events expert Penny Reeh likes Facebook (direct link to the video on YouTube if you can’t see it below)

2)  Get a Twitter account. Make sure it’s something that approximates your event name, but is not too long (that uses up valuable characters and you only get 140 per tweet.)  Make sure that more than one person can tweet from the account, and that you’re set up to tweet from mobile devices.  Don’t worry about amassing a ton of followers right away; many won’t be the right folks anyway (unless you want to lose weight with acai berries.)  You want people who care about and want to connect with your event.

See the Texas Book Festival – @texasbookfest – as an example.

Connect with your local CVB, DMO, state tourism office, town government, Chamber of Commerce and the businesses that sponsor your event, at a minimum.

3)  Create a hashtag for your event.  You don’t have to ask anyone’s permission to do so. A hashtag is a unique identifier for tweets related to your event, plus it can go in the descriptions of Flickr photos, YouTube videos, etc. Pick something short.

Take a look at #TBEX (a travel blogger’s conference) tweets as an example of a very engaged bunch following a hashtag.

Make sure your followers know to use it; if you can get folks to use it, it will be easier to monitor your event as it occurs (I use hashtags all the time to follow conferences from a distance.)

4)  Start thinking visually about coverage.  Not a photo or video expert? Don’t let that stop you. Simply think hard about what sort of compelling visual opportunities may be coming up in your event….backstage excitement? Anything you can catch up close in rehearsal? Fun moments at the cotton candy concession?  Get that digital point-and-shoot camera in your pocket and remember to use it liberally, including the video function that most of them now have.

Photos and videos are popular and evoke emotion and interest. They really amp up your Facebook Page and can also go up to Twitter via services like TwitPic and TwitVid.

If you have a smartphone, learn ahead of time how to shoot a photo and upload it from the phone to Facebook and Twitter. You can’t beat the ease and convenience of such coverage.

5)  Tell your fans and supporters where to find you online.  Put it up on posters, at the event entry and exit points, print it out on flyers and the festival map, announce it on the PA – let visitors know that you’d like to hear from them (before, during and after the fun) on Facebook and Twitter, and that they can post their best photos and video to your Wall.

Did that about cover it for quick-launch?

In addition, Lesson Five from our Tourism Currents online course is all about special events promotion.

I’ll be speaking at the 2010 TFEA (Texas Festivals and Events Association) annual conference this week about social media for special events;  say hello if you see me there, or please leave a comment below if I missed a good tip.