Sheila's Guide To The Good Stuff

You know I’m getting a bit more into video production for CVBs and tourism organizations, and I want to ensure that you understand how important it is to optimize your video content for SEO (Search Engine Optimization.)

Great videos that are never found are just….nice.

The video below features Greg Jarboe telling you a little bit about how to increase your chances of being found – here’s a helpful article on press release and video SEO on Jarboe’s own site.

Hat tip to State of Search, who interviewed Jarboe at the International Search Summit in London this month.

Here’s the direct link to the video on YouTube, in case you can’t see the embedded box….

One of the best uses of social media is to engage the public directly, with the latest information available, when there is a crisis.

The Visit Florida tourism organization (a pretty well-oiled machine even without a crisis!) is harnessing the power of webcams, photos and live Twitter reports from humans on a new website page; it’s called Florida Live.

Rather than, er, sticking their heads in the sand about tourists avoiding the coast for fear of oil spill problems, they’re trying to gather eyewitness reports (particularly from beach areas) and make them easily searchable and accessible, so that people can see coastal destinations and make their own travel decisions.

In addition to graphics, there is a link to the Deepwater Horizon response team at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, plus links to specific CVB and DMO organizations across all of the regions in the state.

Visitors want to see for themselves. Make it easy for them.

Nice work, Florida.

Update: I noticed this tweet from Robert Reid (US editor for Lonely Planet and author of the excellent Reid on Travel blog.)

“Going to Florida? @visitflorida posting#oilspill updates, ‘real time’ photos; they promised to me they’ll keep doing even IF oil comes. #lp“

Note that even if things go bad, Florida tourism plans to let those real-time reports roll on in.

I’ve been working with my local Convention and Visitor’s Bureau (CVB) in Round Rock, Texas to create some fun videos that give a personality to the city.

As I discussed in my post Look before you leap into HD video, it’s been a bit of a learning curve to “up my game,” but we’re just about there and today I uploaded the first three videos in a series that we’ll be producing for the foreseeable future.

The video below (here’s the direct link) is an interview with our Mayor. It has a few glitches that my perfectionist self wrestled with, but I’m reasonably happy with it and wanted to share it with you.

Our Sports Capital of Texas YouTube Channel awaits your subscriptions and comments – thanks!

Remember that old saying (maybe from your parents) that there’s a reason you have one mouth and two ears?

It certainly applies to online communications.  Try to listen more than you talk….I know, I know, rather strange advice coming from a talker like me, right?

The first thing to do before jumping into the social Web is to listen (one of our Tourism Currents newsletters has a few tips for better Google Alerts.) Pay attention to the chatter that relates to your destination:  the tweets, the Facebook Wall posts, the blog posts, the photo uploads to Flickr, etc.  Be a “lurker” for awhile, as you might at a party with unfamiliar people.

It’s still very important to continue listening even after you’re comfortable using social media tools.  A lot of hassles and embarrassments can be forestalled by paying attention.

Here’s a tweet that I saw from a well-known tech journalist about the Outrigger Reef Hotel in Honolulu:

“No one should *ever* stay at the outrigger reef in honolulu. We’ve been cheated and abused *daily.* outrageous. Full [blog] post to come.”

When I saw that, I figured that Outrigger management (although they’re on Twitter) probably had no idea that this person was angry and was going to get vocal about it.  So, I sent a quick Twitter DM – private direct message – to a friend in Hawaii who works in tourism PR, giving him a heads up that he needed to go warn someone at the hotel just in case they’d missed the brewing storm.

Funny how that works, because here is the next tweet about the issue from the angry journalist:

“just got a nice call from the Outrigger’s GM [General Manager.] Very responsive and nice about all the problems we had. i think he really cares.”

Here’s the takeaway:  part of the listening process is having your connections out there listening, too, and making sure that important information gets to your digital ears quickly.

You need an army of listeners who care about you.  It’s called a network, and you probably already have one.

Just make sure that they have their listening ears turned on and tuned in.

PR practitioners, if you remember this, you’ll be a lot less frustrated….

Unless you have a signed contract with a blogger for advertising or some sort of goods/services exchange, bloggers owe you nothing.

Nada.

Zilch.

Not one tweet. Not one Flickr photo. Not one Facebook mention. Not one blog post.

They do not owe you “buzz” just because you fed them tacos or beer at some event.

You want a tit-for-tat arrangement, go buy advertising or set up a contract that they will tweet X number of times about your brand in exchange for Y sponsorship money (or whatever.)

PR folks are paid to figure out how to build relationships with bloggers.

Bloggers are not paid to figure out PR (um, they’re usually not paid at all for blogging.) They do not blog to build your brand. They blog for themselves and their readers.

I’ve been stewing on this since reading Amber Naslund’s excellent A Dear John Letter to PR Folks. My favorite quote in her post:

“My blog is an intellectual adventure for me, not a channel for you. (emphasis added) I intend to keep it that way.”

Yes, it’s a pain, but if you want what bloggers already have, then you’ll have to do what we did – work for it.

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

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

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

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

We are used to seeing handicapped parking spots and curb cuts, but how many of us think about the accessibility of the Internet – specifically travel and tourism Web sites – to those with disabilities?

As I discussed in an earlier post (Can you see this? Let’s talk Web accessibility) I’ve become a convert to the importance of making the Web accessible to everyone, including those who cannot hear or see very well.

By the way, if you are young now but plan to live to old age, come to grips with the realization that you won’t be able to see or hear as well as you do now. Web accessibility matters to everyone, eventually.

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?

I’m trying two different tools to make my own content more understandable and easier to use.

Perhaps you can find some useful ideas here for your own site….

1)  BuzzVoice.  Look at the right-hand sidebar on this blog; you’ll see a little phone-looking icon (we call it a widget) created by a company called BuzzVoice.

It uses text-to-speech software to turn my written words into spoken English, so a visually-impaired or dyslexic person can still absorb my content.  Thanks to this post about BuzzVoice by Jason Falls, I’m helping out with the software’s beta-testing.  Your feedback is, of course, most welcome down in the comments for this post.

Is something like this only for the visually-impaired? Nope; another benefit is that people who have long commutes, road trips,  workouts or who simply love audio content can “listen” to my blog posts on iPhones, iPods/MP3 players & other mobile devices (and now on the new iPad.)

To share the Sheila’s Guide talking widget on Facebook, Twitter & other social sites, just click the “Grab This” button at the bottom of the widget (you can embed it like you do a YouTube video.)  You can subscribe to the vocals as an RSS feed or as an iTunes audio feed.

The software doesn’t “translate” perfectly, of course, and it’s an electronic voice rather than my own, but still, it’s a step ahead for allowing multiple ways for readers to enjoy the site.

2)  Video captions.  A service to help you with automated video captioning is now available for all YouTube users, so I’m trying it out on a few of my own videos.

I’ve been schooled by Web accessibility expert Glenda Watson Hyatt on the importance of video captioning for the hearing-impaired (here are some captioning tips on Glenda’s blog) but until this machine transcription service, it was “too hard” and “took too much time.”

To request a machine transcription (the software for it was created by a deaf Google engineer) go to the Edit function of your selected video and look for the tab labeled “Captions.” Click that, and ask for an (English only) machine transcription if it’s not already been done.

You’ll get an .sbv file to download and edit.  I recommend opening it in WordPad for better formatting. You’ll see the words lined up with the time that they were said in the video; you’ll also see that the speech-to-text technology is….er….not terribly accurate.

No matter:  at least you have a time-synched rough draft transcript to work with, right?

Rename the “captions.sbv” file something like “Smithville downtown video transcript.sbv” and go to work – edit the file to make the text match what is actually said in the video.

It is much easier to edit a video when the speaker is clear and speaks slowly; since I tend to speak quickly when I narrate my own videos, I am a pain to edit.

When the .sbv file is ready, upload it back on the same Edit page for the video, and it will automatically be entered into the video.  Watch the captioned video all the way through to make sure everything is correct.  If there is a problem, go back to editing, remove the old file and re-upload your corrected one (it will again be automatically added to your video.)

Here is one of our Tourism Currents videos with captioning: 60 Seconds on Blogger Outreach with Zoetica Media’s Kami Huyse.

Are there SEO (Search Engine Optimization) benefits to adding this caption text to your videos? My very preliminary research indicates that the jury is still out on SEO benefits of YouTube’s captions, but at least now you have a transcript that you might be able to add to the video description or place into your own blog post below the video’s embed box (and that text WILL be indexed by search engine bots.)

More importantly, actual humans appreciate captions. Here is a video from the California School for the Deaf High School (here’s a direct link to it on their YouTube channel) with students explaining why they’re so excited to have more captioned video content – I dare you to watch it and not realize the power of Web accessibility:

There is a fascinating discussion going on right now regarding roles, authenticity and marketing on the social Web.

It’s being shouted and whispered, and no matter what anyone says (including big mouth me) no one has the “correct” answer yet, if indeed there is a “correct” answer to be had.

Warning – in this post I’m going to use the term “blogger” to mean, “A person who creates original, unique content on the social Web.”   I am well aware that not every digitally-savvy person has an active, vibrant blog (maybe they only rock Twitter or Facebook or YouTube or some other platform) but the term “blogger” seems to have become accepted terminology for someone who knows how to communicate on the Web and builds/sustains some sort of community there.

Okay, here’s the question

At what point does an independent blogger who interacts with brands lose some element of his or her “authenticity?”

To be blunt, at what point is a blogger simply another node helping a company do marketing and outreach?

Again, I do not yet fully know the answer to this question for myself, much less for the rest of the planet (so put down those pitchforks, brothers and sisters.)  What I do know after finishing up this year’s South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) tech conference is that businesses and brands want what bloggers already have, and they want it badly.

They want blogger authenticity; what pioneering political woman Shirley Chisholm called being “Unbought and Unbossed.”

Why?

Because business-as-usual advertising and marketing is seen as inauthentic (or at least, all about rah-rah good news and therefore not the whole truth) so people are turning to the “digital back fence” – word of mouth from their friends online, because it is seen as unbought, unbossed and authentic.  In other words:  the truth.

There’s a PR/marketing term for getting talked about in a positive sense without having to pay for it:  earned media.  It means that your product or service is so good that it earns your business free publicity. People will talk about it of their own volition, which is seen as more authentic than paying them to say good things, i.e. paid media or advertising.

What is the best way to, well, earn this “earned media?”  One of the current answers seems to be to connect with digital influencers and bloggers at events like SXSWi.

From Jay Baer’s excellent post 13 observations from South by Southwest (SXSW) we have this snippet:

“There was also a lot of talk (especially among the big brands) on operationalizing social media, and creating true best practices for how to thrive in a real-time world where every customer is a reporter.”

Um, “operationalize?”

Yes, that basically means to take social media seriously and use it to drive sales and increase business, while measuring your Return on Investment (ROI) from those efforts.

Congrats, blogger, you are now part of a marketing plan; a node to drive sales and increase business for a brand.

Nerds As Nodes

I’m not saying whether this state of affairs is good or bad, only that it is what it is, and we’d better continue to acknowledge and talk about it.

There has been a power shift.

Brands have money, but bloggers hold most of the marbles.  Yes, you, blogger – the one trying to figure out how to pay your electricity bill – you hold most of the marbles in the new balance of power.

Brands want access to what you’ve worked so hard to build at 3 a.m. in your T-shirt and sweatpants:  authentic influence and community.

The question is, how many marbles do you trade with brands in order to pay the bills?  Is there a way to make money legitimately without you or your community feeling that they’ve bought your voice?

You’d better be thinking about these issues.  When you’re comfortable with the answers, go for it, but please do take the time to think, and I mean till your head hurts.

Or, don’t think about it. Fine. Take any and all goods/offers and run all the way to the bank, but don’t be surprised if you wake up one day with a pile of freebies and toys and a reputation (that you can’t shed) as a shill.

Respect what you’ve built online and always, always guard it fiercely.

Ask the brand and ask yourself the uncomfortable questions before unwittingly finding yourself in the Fire Swamp battling Rodents of Unusual Size.

Brands Are Not the Booger Man

Brands and businesses, please know that I understand your position, too.

You have products and services that you’re proud of and you want your business to grow, because it’s a good business, right?

I’m in the same position;  as a trainer and consultant myself, I have no problem telling our Tourism Currents clients that outreach to bloggers can be an integral part of their destination marketing – we call it “finding your online champions.”  I myself have been the target of such outreach efforts by tourism organizations, and they resulted in a few blogger press trips where I did a lot of thinking about my own comfort level as a “node.”   :)

Here’s my takeaway for brands….if a blogger is excessively accommodating, you’ve just been had.

Guard your brand’s reputation fiercely, too, because you’ve worked hard and you don’t need to toss it all away on “buzz” and “viral” crapola from a greedy digital snakeoil salesperson.  They can take their marbles and go home, in that situation.

I do not know all the answers, but I know enough to ask questions. Thanks for listening, and I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

True confessions here:  I have hardly made it to any South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) tech conference panels or speakers this year.  Clearly I haven’t spent time blogging either, since there’s been nothing posted here since Nerd Notes Day One.

This is not unusual for those who regularly attend this event;  once you know some people, it makes more sense to spend quality business discussion time with a few of the right individuals than fighting the madness of one panel after another or getting tied to one’s computer. I usually do try to make it to more panels than this, but an annoying cough (often jokingly called “SXSW SARS”) has me dragging.

There have been a few good takeaways for me from the hallways and social events….

1. There are a lot of worthy causes that could use the oomph of the social Web, and some are finding ways to give back and provide that kind of help.  For example, newly-launched Zoetica Media hosted a Brainstorming Brunch at SXSWi to bring together the kinds of communicators who could help Safe Place use the Web more effectively in their efforts to end domestic and sexual violence.
2. Always be able to answer the “So What?” question about your service or product, and be able to explain it clearly in plain language.  I spent an hour in a panel about the “semantic Web” and still have no cotton-picking idea what it is. Props to one of the eight panelists – yes, eight, which is absurd – Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land, for some trenchant observations that, you know, some dullard with only a Master’s degree like me could understand.  Lazy Language Dunce Cap to the panelist who said “paradigm” not once, but twice.
3. Anyone can have their own radio or TV show.  Okay, maybe not in the traditional way over-the-airwaves way but if you have good things to say, a microphone and/or a decent camera, you are on your way to being a broadcaster.  We talked about social media and tourism with the Jennifer Navarrete and Luis Sandoval Tech in Twenty crew at SXSWi – they do audio and video podcasts about the latest tech news.
4. The overall winner of the Texas Social Media Awards was Austin-based location service Gowalla (similar to Foursquare) which is sort of a mobile-based game for checking in to various places like restaurants, stores and bars.  CEO Josh Williams is fired up about Gowalla’s applicability to travel and exploring. So am I.

Wrap-up post to follow; thanks for your patience.

You can’t communicate your destination or your personality to others unless you know it in your bones.  ”Fake it till you make it” works in some situations, but not this one.

Day One of the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) tech conference in Austin always starts with standing in line to check in/get badges/figure out what to do with the swag bag, then go to a few good panels and speakers before hitting the first round of parties.

What did I learn yesterday?

1. Don’t let administrative procedures suck up valuable time. Check in as early as possible at any conference (and at SXSWi you can pre-upload a headshot photo for your badge and pre-organize your schedule on their Web site.)  You aren’t there to do admin. You’re there to learn and connect.  I checked in Thursday night and was done with it.
2. Don’t be a schmuck with the “rock stars.” I saw two people grab ahold of Problogger Darren Rowse in the hallway and ask for video interviews for their own sites.  Darren is the nicest guy and he didn’t say No, but I thought it was rude and intrusive. They’re doing that so they can stick a Problogger interview on their site and look like they’re “plugged in” with the biggies. They clearly did not attend the panel on “How To Not Be A Douchebag at SXSW.”  Sure, shake hands and introduce yourself to your idol, but for heaven’s sake don’t put them to work on your personal douchebaggery projects.
3. The only panel I went to was on Web design, and a fire alarm emptied the building before the speaker Matthew Smith from Squared Eye really got going.  What a disappointment for all of us!  My big takeaway before we had to evacuate:  your site must really reflect YOU.  To me that means your destination and the people who live there, and not enough Web design processes truly go to that depth of knowledge before they put together the first page of the site.  Matthew said that good design ensures that your site “gets stuff done and makes it a pleasure to do so.”
4. No, you are not the only one who doesn’t know anybody.  At one of the evening parties, a woman I met said that “everyone here seems to know everybody.”  No, they probably don’t. They’re faking it.  Look, you’ll really only connect with about 3-5 new people in a giant human mixing bowl like SXSWi.  Glad-handing business card collectors are not the big deal that they think they are. Focus in on that one really interesting person at the party, if the conversation’s good. You do NOT have to “work the room.”

Okay, I’m off for the next set of adventures in geekdom….