Sheila's Guide To The Good Stuff

One person’s story matters when it is multiplied (courtesy Richard Parmiter at Flickr CC)

Here is a social media ROI (Return on Investment) case study with a sample group of one: me.

This is what the dashboards, analytics and all that jazz have such a hard time showing you, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.

A few years ago, I heard about a guy named John O’Nolan while following a Twitter hashtag from a travel blogging conference in Europe where he was one of the speakers (I think it was Travel Bloggers Unite.)  John sounded smart and interesting. I met him in person – no more than a hello and a quick handshake – at the TBEX: Travel Blog Exchange travel blogging conference in 2012. He was also part of the now-defunct Travelllll.com site, which I read and liked.

On April 29, I got an email from him (he sent a one-time announcement to the leftover email list from Travelllll.com) about his latest project, a Kickstarter campaign to fund a new blogging platform called Ghost.

I thought, “That’s nice, but I’m fine with WordPress. I wish him well.”

The next day, I happened to see a tweet by Darren Rowse of ProBlogger that the Ghost Kickstarter campaign had raised all their funding within 12 hours. Wow!

Since I never “sensed a disturbance in the Force” demanding new ways to blog, I decided that maybe I’d missed something, so I took a few minutes to watch the video about Ghost that was embedded in Darren’s post, and from that video learned that a Senior Developer from one of my very favorite businesses (Hannah Wolfe from MOO.COM) is heavily involved in creating Ghost.

Now, not only is John worth supporting, but also ….

1)  I absolutely adore everything about MOO – how their website works, the way they make my Tourism Currents business cards, the funny Buzzword Bingo cards that they ship with some of their print products – everything! Anyone associated with that fabulousness is my kind of person, and,

2)  The world needs more geeky women, so I’m happy to see Hannah in the thick of developing Ghost.

That was it for me. I headed over to the Ghost Kickstarter page, pulled out my credit card and pledged to the cause (it’s the first time I’ve ever given money on Kickstarter.)

Let’s review the math….

I connect with John on Twitter, I read the travel industry blog he’s associated with, I open and read an email from him because his name was on it so I trusted it, I see additional compelling info about his project via a tweet from a blogger that I also trust, I read the blogger’s post and watch a video within that post and I learn of a connection with a company I already admire thanks to their great products and customer service.

All of that (“touch points” in marketing-speak) was what it took for me to go slap down some money for building a blogging platform, not because I dislike my current platform, but because I like and trust the people involved and want to help them succeed.

Yes, that is only one example of a positive ROI from social communications. Yes, if I hadn’t drawn the thread for you, it would be hard to prove that some hashtagged tweets from a conference a few years ago led to a conversion and real money …. but it did.

Multiply that times thousands/millions, and allow time for things to develop – I mean allow months and years, because this is a long game – and there’s your positive return on the investment of human relationships and trust started and nurtured through social media.

Sometimes it’s quick and “easy,” but most of the time it’s tangled and slow, because we’re talking about people and trust and time.

Start asking customers how they found you and why they bought from you; it’s such a basic thing to do, but sometimes it’s the only way to capture the proof that what you’re doing with social media does matter, and it does bring results.

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Reporters at the 1913 World Series (courtesy Library of Congress at Flickr Commons)

Sure, those who want to get their destination, hotel or business in front of travel bloggers can email-bomb whichever ones have high Klout/social influence scores, or they can buy a list of blogger names from some company and email-bomb them that way …. or instead, how about a return to the good old-fashioned PR work of building relationships by showing that you care about what your “target audience” (I HATE that phrase) cares about?

It’s like any market you’re trying to reach: go hang out where they hang out, and support their causes and interests. That’s how you’ll learn who the “players” are in a community, not by sifting through Klout scores.

Once you find likely prospects, get to know them on their blog and other social media channels. Leave comments on their blog posts. Talk to them on Twitter. Like their Facebook Page updates and Flickr photos. Enough with the email, already!

This applies whether you are interested in reaching general service-type travel blogs like The Vacation Gals, niche ones like Writing Horseback for equestrian vacations and My Itchy Travel Feet for Baby Boomers or more narrative travel work like Nerd’s Eye View.

Here are four ways to learn the travel blogger landscape in a natural, human way that might be more effective than email cold-calling:

Find Travel Bloggers on Twitter

Follow and participate in popular travel hashtags on Twitter where travel bloggers congregate and converse. Some are conference hashtags and some are year-round travel discussions:

—>>  #TBEX  –   TBEX stands for Travel Blog Exchange, which is a travel community website, a hashtag for travel info and a conference hashtag. No set times, always busy, becomes very active right before, during and after TBEX conferences. @TBEXevents community managers monitor the #TBEX hashtag;  if you want to participate, it’s pretty wide open, but keep tweets non-spammy and travel-related.

—>>  #TTOT  –  Travel Talk on Twitter, a chat that occurs twice each Tuesday, 9:30 AM and 9:30 PM Greenwich Mean Time - here’s the #TTOT Facebook Page

—>>  #TNI  –  Traveler’s Night In, Thursdays, 3:30 – 5:00 PM ET. Here’s the chat info page on ZipSetGo, and they also offer #TNI chat guest hosting/sponsorships.

—>>  #travelmassive  –  An event hashtag for one of the worldwide Travel Massive travel enthusiast meetups.

—>>  TBU (various)  –  The Travel Bloggers Unite events have all been in Europe so far, but there is talk of expansion. Each conference has a hashtag; for example TBU at World Travel Market in London was #TBUWTM. Follow @tbloggersunite

—>>  (Bonus!)  #FriFotos  –  Not purely for travel, but very popular with travelers nonetheless, the #FriFotos photo theme changes every week and it’s a good way to find excellent photographers who are also bloggers. Host @EpsteinTravels announces the theme every Tuesday for that Friday.

Find Travel Bloggers Offline at Events

Go to travel blogging conferences. Yes, bloggers gather offline. A lot. You should gather with them!

—>>  TBEX. This has become the 800 lb gorilla of travel blogging events, especially after it was bought by New Media Expo/BlogWorld. The 2012 North American event in Colorado had around 700 registrants (my Tourism Currents training business was a sponsor,) the 2013 TBEX North America conference is in Toronto in early June and TBEX Europe 2013 is in Dublin in October.

—>>  Travel Bloggers Unite.  Usually in Europe, smaller than TBEX (but they like it that way.)

—>>  Travel Massive. Informal meetups worldwide.

—>>  Travel Blog Camp. Run by Darren Cronian of the UK-based consumer blog Travel Rants, this evening gathering in a pub during World Travel Market in London is always good for acerbic British humor combined with no-holds-barred discussion and debate. Very lively #tbcamp hashtag during the event; must be the pints. In 2012 it was respected MidEast travel writer Matthew Teller giving the assembled a piece of his mind on blogger quality standards. The thin-skinned are easily bruised, but the feedback is refreshingly honest.

Get to Know Travel Bloggers Through Their Causes

Check out the bloggers participating in Passports with Purpose, the annual travel blogging community fundraiser in late November/early December.

A small group of Seattle-based travel bloggers started out to raise US$2,500 for Heifer International in 2008; when they blew past that and raised US$7,400 instead, they knew they were onto something.

Each year, #PwP works with a different charity to raise money for a specific, very concrete cause. A school in Cambodia. Libraries in Zambia. A village in India. Wells in Haiti. Participating travel bloggers each host a donated travel-related prize on their blog, and people bid in US$10 increments for a chance at each one.

There is all sorts of discussion and buzz around the “catalog” of prizes and the bloggers involved, including social media attention and print media coverage.

I’ll be hosting a prize on this blog that was generously donated by a CVB, and you can bet they’ll get traffic and attention because I’ll pull out all the stops to make it happen.

Listen to Bloggers Talking to Bloggers

Find some very unique voices in the travel writer interview series on Travel Writing 2.0, the companion website to a modern how-to book on travel writing, written by Tim Leffel (disclosure: Tim is my editor at the Perceptive Travel Blog.)

Just when I think I kinda know everyone in the current travel blogger/travel writer scene, Tim pops up an interview with someone new (who probably hasn’t been inundated with pitches and might be much more inclined to get to know you.)

Another consistently interesting group of bloggers and online travel folks show up on the This Week In Travel podcast; I’m flattered to have been a guest in the past.

Is all of this a lot of work? Yes.

Do strong relationships built for the long haul provide more value? Yes.

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Screenshot of what a CVB or DMO Twitter stream looks like when it is auto-posted from Facebook

This is what a Twitter stream looks like when Facebook updates are automatically shared as tweets (screenshot doctored to spare embarrassment.)

Because of the 140 character limit on Twitter, most Facebook updates are too long, so they are cut off and the reader must go to Facebook (via the dead-giveaway “fb.me” URL) to read the rest of the post. Other tweets are just links going back to Facebook.

Does any of this gibberish look helpful to a visitor who is trying to connect with a destination on Twitter?

There is no indication that this account is interacting in any way with its Twitter followers, or doing anything but staying in one-way broadcast mode via the auto-posting megaphone….and that is totally ineffective in social media.

You wouldn’t run a radio spot on TV.

You wouldn’t submit a brochure as a magazine ad.

Don’t ruin your power to tell your destination’s story to the world by “saving time” with auto-posting. Craft the content to fit the platform.

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Of all the social media tool and channel options that bombard us daily, the most indispensable, cannot-live-without ones for me are my blogs….and Twitter.

An early tweet from BL Ochman that the “suits” don’t get social media. A lot of them still don’t.

My good friend (since 1978!) and tech mentor Dwight Silverman, editor at the Houston Chronicle and author of TechBlog, encouraged me to start blogging, get on Twitter and get a smartphone, all of which have been game-changers for me. Thank you for all of it, Dwight.

The blogs are the linchpin of most of my writing and publishing efforts; they would be the last URL standing for me in case of a social media neutron bomb, because I own them and control them.

Twitter is not something that I can own or control, but my passion for it is almost as strong as my love of hitting that Publish button on a blog post.

There is simply no other social media channel that works as well for business development, research, worldwide networking, professional development and good old friendships. Layer over all that the ability to easily connect with my entire network while on the move, via a mobile device….well, Facebook and the others can’t really touch it.

How social media has changed how we interact with content – a Mike Driehorst tweet

Today marks my 5th year on Twitter (I started the @SheilaS account on September 25, 2007) and while most tweets “age out” and disappear after a week or two, there is one way that you can still find them – hit that gold star and Favorite the tweet.

David Armano tweets updates and insights from 2008 SXSWi (South by Southwest Interactive.) Love the Yahoo! reference, the urging to start a Facebook profile and the lack of budgets for the social media “fad.”

I’m very sporadic about Favoriting, but fortunately I did it a lot in my early Twitter days. This morning I scrolled all the way back through my Favorites, reading them with plenty of chuckles, amazement at some of the more prescient tweets and with an overwhelming feeling of affection toward all of the now-familiar people and friends I’ve followed (and eventually met in person, including my business partner of three years, Becky McCray.)

Originally I’d planned for this post to feature select Favorited tweets from across all five years, but I couldn’t get out of the stack past April 2008.  I love all of these little windows into people’s thoughts or I wouldn’t have Favorited them in the first place.

These are the earliest of my Favorited tweets that I could find. Particularly like the Knol observation from danah boyd (years later we’re looking at a moribund Google+ and Knol is long dead) and the still-accurate comments from Mack Collier about community and Twitter as an RSS replacement.

These screenshots of tweets show the diversity of discussion topics, viewpoints, useful links and occasional silliness; it’s no different than being in an online chat room or IM group, but one that is full of hand-picked interesting people (because you pick who to follow.) As the saying goes, if Twitter is boring for you, it’s because you’re following boring people.

Across 3 January days; Google search tip, insights from 08 Presidential campaign, Apple smack talk and @technosailor very accurate assessment of Twitter as communications method.

I was struck by how many of these tweeps I still follow – some of the very first ones, found mostly by following people who I recognized from their writer bylines, or from a conference or on the recommendation of people I trust: “Oh, you HAVE to follow so-and-so; they are so smart/funny/interesting/helpful.”

Podcasts, what is really King, widgets, WTF is your job and @LPT having Dell meetings in Second Life. Yes, I miss Second Life. Don’t knock it till you try it.

There IS the problem of disengaging with a group of such intriguing people….

Stop being interesting, Twitter! Tim Walker tries to resist.

And this is so true….

It’s not called the World Wide Web for nothing; many’s the time I’ve known I’m up too late as the Aussies on Twitter begin to say Good Morning.

Then there’s the random bit of unexpected humor in a tweet stream that totally brightens my day….

The original Wonkette on the 08 elections, sesame-seeded deodorant, Brogan, dissing press releases. Gawd I love Twitter.

Who knew that there would be actual, paying jobs doing this stuff? Well, there are. It’s simple relationship-building and communications by other means. Thanks to the web, a good communicator can be an asset to any company, anywhere in the world, and that person doesn’t have to even be located with the company. It’s what they call working “anywhere, anywhen” in Small Town Rules.

Corvida is smart, smart, smart. Plus, she’s always had amazing hair.

This grouping below ends with a rather plaintive tweet about how Twitter is as “freeing as blogging used to be.” I think back in the early days of social media, some felt that new platforms would by default replace others, but over time we’ve seen that there’s room for a lot of different places to gather on the web. There are plenty of people whose only social media interaction is on mobile photo-sharing sites like Instagram or Foodspotting – does that mean that “Facebook is DEAD?!”  No, of course not.

Music tech advice pre-Spotify, discovery of the power of online work to impact offline opportunities like speaking gigs and excitement over Twitter when it was new and shiny.

So, what’s the ROI for me and my livelihood of five years of tweets?

Let’s see….a successful social media training business, quicker access to the news as it happens and faster, better news analysis, travel to China on a blogger trip that laid important groundwork for me professionally, plus a diverse network all over the planet that has helped me with everything from where the transportation engineers hang out on social media (for a speaking gig that I landed through Twitter) to business connections and friendships out the wazoo.

Also, laughs when I needed them the most, from fabulous people like this who share my love of bourbon and distaste for BS….

Jason Falls back when 666 worried him; as of today he has 58,694 followers.

(Hat tip for my post title to the real internet Wayback Machine.)

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It’s been a few weeks since the inaugural tourism bloggers conference in Malaysia (MITBCA 2012), but now that I’ve stopped running around the globe for a few days, here are some takeaway thoughts:

**  The Minister of Tourism for Malaysia, YB Dato’ Sri Dr Ng Yen Yen, can rattle off statistics about the social media spend by her neighboring countries, and she’s quite comfortable discussing how Facebook, Twitter and blogs can help tourism in Malaysia. Leadership starts at the top, and she made the conference happen (even hand-selected some speakers, I’ve heard. Glad I made the cut!) A CVB, DMO or Tourist Board should not have to drag the boss along to the future of communications; I loved being someplace where it was quite the opposite.

**  The future of CVB and DMO staffs, in many cases, are the students who are currently taking college courses in tourism, recreation and hospitality. At MITBCA, the Minister herself insisted that local tourism students attend, plus as many of her own staff members as she could spare.  Just because students may use social media for personal communication does not mean that they understand how to use the same tools for destination marketing with a worldwide reach.

**  The opportunity to connect and develop friendships with fellow bloggers from Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Australia and more was simply priceless.  I’m deeply grateful to have had the opportunity.

**  My Day Two keynote talked about “regular folks” who understood the power of social media early on, and have raised the profile of their town/country by using it in a personable way. Folks like Cody Heitschmidt in Hutchinson, Kansas, Liza Pierce in Maui, Hawaii, Doug Anweiler with the Authentic Seacoast Resorts in Nova Scotia, Canada, and the #ScotlandHour chat on Twitter. One of the highlights of that session was when both Cody and Doug jumped into the #MITBCA2012 hashtag during and after my presentation, and responded to the attendees who were tweeting that I was talking about them.  I did not expect such a quick response (Liza chimed in later from Maui because of the time difference) but it made a HUGE impression on the conference that those two guys were paying attention and were happy to converse with everyone.

**  I’m just me, no big deal, but at this event I was an “international expert.” I mean, I know some stuff, but I did feel a little odd when people lined up to speak to me. Finally I decided to quit feeling awkward about the hoopla, answer every question as best I could, and humbly accept that I’d become something of a guide and mentor to a few lovely people.

**  If I’m going to do more speaking at international events (and I’d love to!) I’d better figure out how to get around jet lag a little better. Of my two keynote presentations, I felt that the first one was weaker than the second because I was in a bit of a fog and a couple of times I caught myself not moving very logically from one point to another. Note to self: do extra rehearsals when you know that jet lag will hit. I literally MUST be able to “do the speech in my sleep.”

Here are some of the wrap-up blog posts by my fellow speakers and attendees; I do recommend that you take a look at a few, because they provide some wonderful additional perspective on this special conference:

—>>  From Indian travel blogger and conference speaker Anuradha Goyal, on the event as a Malaysia Marvel

—>>  From TravelBlog founder, adventurer and event sponsor Ali Watters, on his ….first big conference after “10 years of hiding on islands or mountain tops”

—>>  From a local tour guide: MITBCA coverage and impressions by the owner of Alan’s Malaysia Tours & Travel

—>>  From speaker Shane Dallas, “The Travel Camel,” his delightful Confessions of a Briefly Famous Travel Blogger

—>>  From attendee Jessica Tan, “The JessiCat”, full coverage plus photos of the MITBCA Blog Awards and evening gala event

—>>  Attendee Emila Yusof found the conference an eye-opener

—>>  Speaker Nisha Jha from India thoroughly enjoyed her MITBCA experience

—>>  Thoughts from one of the blogging award winners on MITBCA

—>>  I had fun meeting one of the bloggers who had commented on my original announcement post, Zahari Unczee who wrote about the conference on his ….as I travel blog

—>>  (Addition)  Media Monitors/Asia had a Global Connections post about MITBCA

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Does your organization have a plan in place for content creation and social media monitoring during holidays and weekends?

You know….that time when people travel to your destination, stay in your hotel, look for things to do, places to eat, etc.?

Is someone “answering the social media phone” during those times?

Customer Service

The social web is a place to put content, sure, but it is also becoming a place where you must be ready to provide customer service.

Visitors and guests expect that someone will answer their questions and respond to them even when it’s your “day off.” It’s not much fun for the destination marketer or hotelier but it is what it is; you’ve got to plan for it.

Working one person to death on social media because everyone else waves their hands helplessly and says, “Oh, but I’m not a techie!” is horse manure.

I’d say, cross-train your staff in social media for tourism to build a deeper bench.

Answer The Social Media Phone

Holidays and weekends are a massive opportunity to:

1)  Make solid connections with new visitors.

2)  Reconnect with and welcome those former locals who are returning home for a visit.

3)  Reconnect with and welcome repeat visitors who are not new to your destination/hotel, but ARE new to your Facebook Page, Twitter account or blog.

4)  Chat online with those “expats” who aren’t physically in town but are talking on social media about their memories of you; they would love it if you’d say hello in response.

You can build a whole army of supporters who will go back home and sing your praises, online and off.

Or, you could “not answer the phone.”

Your call.

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In today’s world of free, easy-to-use networking tools with worldwide reach, associations and other fee-based groups (like a member-based DMO) must prove their value over and over to those who pay membership dues.

I was acutely conscious of this when I joined the AWC (Association for Women in Communications) National Board of Directors in the fall of 2011;  I asked the Board to let me see how we could use social media tools to foster a better, more valued sense of AWC community at the national level.

One of the things I really wanted to do was to start an #awcchat on Twitter.

Those of you who know me, know that I’m a big fan of Twitter, where I’ve been @SheilaS  since September 2007.

It’s one of the most powerful professional development tools I’ve ever encountered, particularly because of the regularly scheduled Twitter chats on many different topics. For my own business, #tourismchat is invaluable. The US National Trust for Historic Preservation runs #builtheritage. For farmers, ranchers and rural people, it’s #agchat. For bloggers it’s #blogchat. And so on….

I wanted a place to discuss general communications issues, and I wanted it to involve not only AWC chapters and members, but anyone who wanted to participate. By making it an open chat, it could not only nurture the current AWC community, but might also draw new members and make people more aware of us.

The Board agreed, so I canvassed the people I know who run chats, got some advice and set up an @AWCchat Twitter account as a first step.

[For the rest of this post, please see The Best Hour of Your Week: #awcchat on Twitter on the AWC Austin blog, and thanks for your interest!]

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This is a guest post by Chris Fancher, educator and speaker. He’s also my husband, and I thought his recent experience at a destination was worth sharing, so I pestered asked him to give me a writeup.

Sometimes you just need a little help from a local.

Earlier this month I attended EduCon 2012 held at the Science Leadership Academy (SLA) in Philadelphia. The last time I was in the city for any length of time was in the early 90′s, and I have never been there for more than 4 or 5 hours.  I knew that when I arrived at the airport, I would need to figure out how to get to my hotel and then to the conference venue.

My first thought was that the hotel would have information about getting around town and, at a minimum, would have straightforward directions on their website for traveling from the airport to the hotel. But, I was sadly mistaken – I couldn’t find anything labeled “how to get here” or “directions.”

Another option and a great resource is the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation;  Caroline from the GPTMC tweets at @VisitPhilly.  I did the “Hi, I’m looking forward to coming to your town” tweet and she quickly said Hi back, and said I should ask for anything I needed and she’d be available to help.

The last option I looked at was the EduConcierge from the EduCon web page. Since the conference is being held at a high school, they use students for their concierge staff….and they are amazing.

They had already created directions to the subway from each of the four main conference hotels. They had directions posted for driving into the city, getting in from the airport and even arriving via the Amtrak station.

The student running the @EduConcierge account tweeted that they had upgraded their EduConcierge Central website and those following the account should look it over. I did, loved what I saw and I thanked them in a tweet. They immediately said, “No problem!” and told me they were there for us any time, so I asked about the walk from my hotel to the Science Leadership Academy. They said it was a short walk of 6 blocks and that they walk it all the time. They also suggested that if it is cold or there is bad weather, I could take the Trolley.

The next thing I knew, they had sent a Twitpic of the Trolley line map from the station with arrow annotations explaining that I could walk above ground to the station, or I could go below the street through another route to get to the station.

That simple Twitpic, as they say, was worth a thousand words.

I now had an idea of not only the direction to the conference from my hotel, but I also knew how to get to the Trolley station above or below ground.

Why can’t hotels and CVBs also provide this simple assistance to their guests?

It took only a few minutes to take the picture and annotate it with arrows, but it saved me hours of frustration from trying to figure these things out on my own.

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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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