Sheila's Guide To The Good Stuff

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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I recently went against my own rules about working for free, but the result was winning a contest, connecting with a probable client and confirming in my own head that getting started with any organization’s social media strategy is actually pretty simple.

Here’s the story….

Every year, I always make time to go to SOBCon – a “think tank” event. It’s all about businesses, communities and customers, online and off and the attendees are some incredible people.  Founded by my friends Liz Strauss and Terry Starbucker, the main conference is in Chicago (it’s April 29 – May 1 in 2011) and there’s also a smaller one in Colorado.

The Set-Up

One of the sponsors is Carlsen Resources, Inc (CRI), an executive search firm in global media and telecommunications. In fall 2010 they supported a SOBCon social media strategy contest:

“The prize? A FREE trip to our flagship event, SOBCon 2011 in Chicago!  (registration, 3 night’s hotel, air up to $750)

The contest? Propose, in 500 words or less, a Social Media strategy for Carlsen Resources.

How will the winner be selected? A team at Carlsen Resources will review and determine which proposal best suits their business. The SOBCon social media team will act in an advisory role only.”

Carlsen wants to connect with their market AND do a better job of reaching out to those who spend time on the social Web, particularly younger people. Pretty straightforward, and similar to the goals of many organizations these days who “know they need to do something besides having a website.”

I was reluctant to spend valuable time on this project without a paycheck at the other end – heck, I’m even doing a webinar about avoiding “brain-picking” as a freelancer/entrepreneur – but was intrigued by the deceptively simple premise and the opportunity to have my conference expenses covered. SOBCon is an amazing value, but it’s not cheap.

The Strategic Approach & Framework

Since I normally don’t work in the executive recruiting industry, the contest offered an opportunity to do some higher level thinking; to see if I could take a simple framework that I use with Tourism Currents, and apply it outside of our normal focus on tourism, hospitality and economic development.

The strategy?

It all boils down to four very basic questions:

1) Who is the market for Carlsen?

2) What sort of people are their customers?

3) Where are they right now on the social Web (and where might they go in the near future?)

4)  How can Carlsen best engage with them there?

That’s it. Anyone can ask these questions of any person or organization that wants to establish a presence using social media.

The value I brought was in knowing the organization (I did my homework to learn as much as I could about Carlsen and about their market) AND knowing the cultures of the different social media spaces to determine the best fit, which comes from spending one hell of a lot of time online since I started a family travel blog in early 2006.

The Recommendation

So, what did I recommend?  Drumroll….

A much more wide-ranging and effective company presence on LinkedIn, and that they start a high-level blog about C-suite issues in their market and industries of interest.

Yep, that’s it. That’s what makes sense for their market, and would make the best use of their time and brainpower.

To some people, these may seem to be absurdly simple ideas, but anyone who knows what they’re doing knows that a lot goes into creating an “effective presence” on LinkedIn, and a TON of effort goes into a really solid blog that hits C-suite issues.

At some point, a Facebook Page for the business would be good (I did point out that one of their competitors has a lively Page) and then a Twitter account plus participation in industry-related chats like #TNL, #CareerChat and #LeadershipChat.

BUT….only when it makes sense for reaching their market and only if they have the time and commitment to making the content on all channels absolutely top-notch.

Thanks so much to Carlsen for sponsoring SOBCon and financially supporting my participation in one of my very favorite events.

(Update:  Wow, had to come back and add these Mack Collier thoughts on How to Fix a Broken Social Media Strategy – he reminds his readers that strategy comes first, then the tactics (social media channels) to implement that strategy. He also suggests ways to measure your impact and success/failure. Great post, Mack!)

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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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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 music section.

***  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 (you may need to join the Group to see it.)

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.

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