Sheila's Guide To The Good Stuff

This is a video tag sort of QR code; you can point your smartphone’s camera to it and with the right app (usually a barcode reader but in this case the Microsoft Tag app) some sort of content will pop up.

Content can be everything from some text describing the item that the code is on, to a URL that will open in your phone’s browser, to the coolest thing – a little video playing on your phone.

I can think of some imaginative ways to incorporate these into your downtown walking tour’s historical markers, for one thing.  My Canadian friend Todd Lucier and I are on the same wavelength about QR codes these days….here’s his recent blog post QR Codes: making interpretive signs come to life.

What ideas do you have? Please share in the comments!

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?

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.

In the continuing effort to convince visitors that the Gulf Coast is worth a trip right now despite horrific oil spill news, the Alabama tourism folks have a new July 4 weekend promotional video featuring chef Lucy Buffett (yes, Jimmy’s sister.)

It has a down-home, “support what you love” feel that I like a lot. Visitors can also consult status reports on the Beach Facts blog.

Here’s the direct link on their YouTube channel if you can’t see the embed box below: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzMO4kQOI5k

There are a lot of different ways to call attention to your destination or attraction using video, so I’d like to start highlighting some of them on this blog to give you ideas and inspiration.

I found the video below on StumbleUpon, a public bookmarking site where people can literally “stumble upon” content (and share a thumbs up/down) by pushing a button on a tool bar.

The Iceland tourism organization is trying to dig out from under the negative travel publicity from their recent volcanic ash cloud, through a campaign called “Inspired by Iceland.”  I assume they’re using part of the money that Iceland-based marketing consultant Hjörtur Smárason talked about in his post Destination Marketing: How Would You Spend 3 Million Dollars on Publicity?

Lovely people doing a silly dance and making their destination look like fun; why not? There’s even a mildly racy hot springs romance moment that the average CVB in the US wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, but which I rather enjoyed.

Here is the direct link to the video on Vimeo if you can’t see the embedded box below.

More on Iceland from my Perceptive Travel editor Tim Leffel (great example of pulling multiple pieces from one trip:)

• Strange Sensations in Iceland in the Perceptive Travel webzine
• Iceland’s Move From Crazy Expensive to Almost Bearable on his Cheapest Destinations blog
• Interesting insights in Iceland: One Island’s Sprint Towards Energy Independence in the excellent Transitions Abroad.

Just released yesterday:  a 31 second video from Florida tourism that encourages visitors to check the Florida Live site for real-time updates on beach conditions (an example of using social media for crisis communications.)

The gist is that there are hundreds of miles of Florida coastline, so visitors should not assume that every inch of it is oil-covered.

Here is the direct link to the “Need to Know” video on YouTube if you can’t see the embed box below.

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….

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!

A follow-up to my earlier post about not getting an HD video camera till you know what you’re getting into….

I have been practically welded to my tripod (a three-legged Sunpak 6060) for the last few weeks as I’ve shot video (and still photos to incorporate into those videos) for a client CVB.

There is no question that it has enhanced my good shots and totally saved several otherwise crummy ones.

Before you shoot another frame of any visual digital medium, go get a tripod.  Your viewers will thank you.

It’s been a painful few weeks for me as a relatively new online video enthusiast.

My trusty Flip Ultra pocket video camera made it pretty simple to learn how to create basic little movies for my family travel blog, the Perceptive Travel Blog and to shoot interviews for Tourism Currents.

(If you haven’t started shooting video for your organization, stop right now and read tourism marketing expert Todd Lucier’s first post in a 3-part series….How to Invest in Video: Shooting Video. Why? Because your visitors like to watch videos to learn more about your destination, and search engines return videos pretty high in results if they’re titled/tagged/described fully.)

When I began shooting for the Round Rock CVB recently, I used their FlipMino HD camera.  HD = High Definition.  It’s got to be better to go with higher quality stuff, right?

Yes, but….

First, HD video is very unforgiving of the shakes and jiggles, so I’m using my tripod a lot more and I’m very conscious of image stabilization.  HD files also take up a lot of storage room on your computer’s hard drive.  Those issues are no big deal, but I’ve run into challenges with editing.

My Dell Latitude is a few years old and runs Windows XP, thanks to my local PC Doctors service shop who advised against “upgrading” to Vista.  The Latitude has never had any difficulty handling editing using the included Windows Movie Maker software. HD, however, is a different story, as this excellent PC Magazine article will attest – Video Editing for the Masses.

If you’re thinking of shooting HD, be aware of the following issues:

1. The file extension is different and may not be recognized by your video editing software.  My installed version of Movie Maker can’t “see” the new .MP4 files from the Flip HD, and the latest version of Movie Maker (that can work with MP4) won’t work with my XP. Technology awesomeness!
2. Technology crises always happen at 9 pm on a Saturday night when you’re alone – at least, they do with me.  When I saw I had a mess, I put a call out to my video-savvy Twitter followers, who quickly gave me software suggestions.  Hurray for helpful networks.  No, I can’t “call the IT people” because that’s me.  Freelancer awesomeness!
3. Adobe Premiere Elements was recommended by several (thanks, Dwight Silverman at the Houston Chronicle‘s TechBlog) but I found it crash-prone (corroborated in several user forums.) I never could even launch the 30 day free trial and finally had to uninstall it.  The real problem became clearer when….
4. ….I then bought (for about $100 at Best Buy) and installed Pinnacle Studio Ultimate HD (thanks for the tip, Omar Gallaga – he’s the Austin American-Statesman Digital Savant.)  Pinnacle didn’t crash and nicely corrected several problems in a few of my video files – harsh sunlight, funky audio – but playbacks kept stuttering and everything just seemed “gummy.” Turns out that when I actually read the Pinnacle system requirements (d’oh!) my laptop has insufficient RAM and the processor is too slow.
5. To handle the two videos (plus lots of B-roll) that I’ve shot in HD, I’ve now installed the Pinnacle software on my family desktop PC, which has a more powerful processor (but the same amount of RAM as the laptop, so cross your fingers for me.)  I’m copying all the HD files on my laptop onto a 500G-capacity Seagate external hard drive, then dumping them from the Seagate onto the desktop so I can try to make everything work properly on a better platform. You can’t transfer such big files by email or sticking them on a thumb drive (without losing your mind) so I went with the big digital shovel.  Tech logistics awesomeness!

Bottom line? If you want to roll with HD, it’s not enough to shoot it. That part is deceptively easy. You need a high-powered, pretty recent computer with capable software to edit it unless you’re always going to be content to upload directly online (i.e., can shoot without error and never want to change it much.)

If you’re like most tourism organizations, your budget probably doesn’t allow you to run out and buy more powerful computers – including Macs, with the excellent iMovie editing software, unless you already have them. The answer, then, is to stick with lower-resolution video until you can get the editing horsepower you need.

The trusty lower-resolution Flip Ultra and I will hit the road tomorrow to shoot the next Round Rock video, and my laptop is breathing a sigh of relief.  Something tells me its days are numbered, though….