Sheila's Guide To The Good Stuff

When you publish to the web, always consider the best possible way to spread your content as widely as possible, and make that content easy for people to share.

It does take more time up front, but increases the chances that more people will see the stuff that is important to you. Yes, even a simple retweet (republishing someone’s tweet in your own Twitter stream) counts as online content, and deserves thoughtful consideration.

Rewire your head to think this way, and your social communications efforts will go further.

How?  Here ‘s an example….

My longtime travel writer friend, Minnesota-based Leif Pettersen, is a talented juggler (he’s also talented at making omelets and quaffing Strongbow hard cider, but let’s not get distracted here.)

So, I see a tweet of his – he’s @LeifPettersen on Twitter – talking about his video from the 2011 International Jugglers’ Association Festival that he just attended. The link he used went back to his own blog post, with the video embedded there, but I decided to do some tweaking before I helped send it down the digital road.

The specific URL matters

I went to get the permalink URL of the actual video uploaded on Leif’s YouTube channel. You can get there from any YouTube video embed box – look at the bottom right of the box and mouse over the YouTube logo. It will say “Watch on YouTube.” Click through to go there.

Pros: I want to tweet the YouTube URL because I and many of my followers use TweetDeck or Hootsuite dashboards for Twitter, and a YouTube URL opens right in the dashboard for viewing rather than forcing another tab to open in a browser. That way, people are more likely to click Play and watch Leif’s video right at that moment.

Cons:  Leif would probably prefer Twitter traffic to be driven to his blog to watch the video. Understandable, but I’m mostly interested in maximum people finding out about him (because he’s a great guy) so my priority is to make the video as easy as possible to watch.

ABC – Always Be Connecting

As long as I’m on Leif’s YouTube channel getting the URL for the juggling video, I confirm that I’m subscribed to his channel myself, I click the “thumbs up” icon to Like his video, and I can also mark it as a Favorite.

Every little bit helps give his content more visibility in search engines, and the Likes and Favorites are also reflected in the Recent Activity section of my Sheila Scarborough YouTube channel, similar to updates that show up in news feeds on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Pros: More love for Leif’s content. Increases chances that he’ll buy me a Strongbow when we visit in person.

Cons: None that I can see.

Who else needs a nudge?

Back over on Twitter, I’m ready to tweet about Leif and the jugglers, but first, I want to capture more attention by including possibly related Twitter handles. Who else can I lead to his Twitter profile and video?

Let’s see, is the International Jugglers’ Association on Twitter as well? You bet; they’re @IntJugglersAssn and I want to ensure they know about Leif’s video if they don’t already. One of the best ways to do that is to include their Twitter name, which they will see I’ve done when they check their Twitter account for mentions. In a perfect world, they’ll retweet Leif’s link as well (and say thanks to him.)

My tweet ultimately looked like this:

“Juggle THIS!  Things fly in this video from @IntJugglersAssn festival  http://youtu.be/zKxPTFgML1I  by @LeifPettersen”

Bonus points – was there a juggling festival hashtag that people might be following? I’d have worked that in, too. There was none that I could find in this case.

More bonus points – Send it out from another account? My business partner Becky McCray and I also tweet as @TourismCurrents. Our customers – tourism organizations – spend a lot of time trying to attract festivals, meetings and special events. Maybe they would be interested in this big juggler bash.

I hunted down the Twitter handle for the city that hosted the 2011 festival – Rochester, Minnesota – and sent out an additional, separate tweet as @TourismCurrents that included the Twitter handle of the Rochester CVB (Convention and Visitors Bureau.)

It looked like this:

“What fun @RahRahRochester CVB must have had hosting this juggling event!  http://youtu.be/zKxPTFgML1I  via @LeifPettersen”

Pros:  Same content, tailored slightly differently, went out from two different Twitter accounts. A few thousand more people have a chance to see Leif’s video, and the Rochester CVB gets a shout-out.

Cons:   Many of the same people follow me both as @SheilaS and @TourismCurrents. I don’t want to overload their streams with too much duplicate or close-to-duplicate content, so I try to put a minimum of 10 minutes or more between similar tweets that go from both accounts.

Why bother with all this?

A few minutes of thought – a little extra research and digging – over the course of the almost four years that I’ve been on Twitter….well, the extra efforts add up in reach and impact.

All you’re doing is pausing to think, “Who else should know about this content, and what is the best way to get their attention?”

It’s the persistent, relentless mindset needed for winning a marathon. If you’re in the communications game for the long haul, you’ve got to play it that way.

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Ask yourself this question:  when is video content better for your objectives than anything else, including photos or text?

Answer  -  the best reason to shoot video is to show something interesting that wouldn’t be as powerful if shown any other way.

Here’s a 36 second example below from my own video archives….a bow-making machine at the Hallmark Visitor Center in Kansas City, Missouri.

Even though it was one of my early efforts with a Flip camera, and even though my voice narration is fighting to be heard over the mechanical noises and the voice of a nearby tour guide (bad audio is the video click-away kiss of death) I still can’t think of anything besides video to really show how bows are made.

For some of the stories that you want to tell, video is more effective than any other medium. How can YOU use it?

Direct link to the video below on YouTube.

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In 60 seconds, Beth Conway from the St. Joseph, Missouri CVB – @StJoMo on Twitter – explains why Twitter is NOT about what she had for lunch….

(Here’s the direct link to Beth’s video on YouTube, and here’s the Tourism Currents YouTube channel.)

Thanks Signalfire for featuring the video in their blog post about why social media works for CVBs and DMOs….this demonstrates why you should allow your CVB videos to be embedded on other people’s sites; it helps spread them to a wider audience.

When you make a video, always include a URL in the title or credits, so that those who see the video out on the web can find the rest of your work if they’re interested.

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On the first day of the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) tech conference in Austin, I was part of a video interview project led by Nancy Spears and the genConnect team out of Colorado.

Here are their thoughts on 10 people at SXSW you should include in your social network, which includes a sidebar viewer with all of the videos. I’m rather honored to see that my interview ended up between Rick Murray’s (head of Edelman Chicago) and Jay Rosen’s (renowned journalism professor at NYU.)

In my roughly 3 minute interview (complete with an offstage shout-out by passing Hawaii social media goddess Neenz Faleafine) I described what Becky McCray and I do with social media education at Tourism Currents, how destination marketing today demands more personal interaction with visitors (including online) and how strongly we believe that most tourism pros can already do the really important stuff, which is a lot harder to teach than technology:  creating a compelling portrait of their destination in the eyes of visitors.

The vision and story….you already have it and that’s the hard part, not Facebook, Twitter, blogs et al.

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Although he couldn’t come in person to last year’s TBEX in New York (Travel Blog Exchange conference for travel bloggers – the sold-out 2011 TBEX is in Vancouver) I’ve never forgotten the “remote presentation” created by Brett the Amtrekker.

He’s on a quest to accomplish a big ol’ bucket list of experiences, and since he was on the road in Idaho at the time of the TBEX event, he sent us a video to show us how to do better travel video. Makes sense, right?

Notice the variety of camera angles, the editing down to make it as punchy as possible, that it happily breaks the “Video Must Be Under Two Minutes” diktat, the variation between distant shots and close up, the discussion of viral video mythology….really good information presented in a fun, engaging way.

Here’s what’s cool – he shot the whole thing by himself.

Brett sitting on a tree trunk talking? He set up a tripod for his camera, spoke the lines he’d planned for the video, then with editing software he cut back and forth, closeup and further away.  Everything else, the other clips, were pulled off of his hard drive (or wherever he stores them) and inserted in around his monologue.

Here’s the direct link to the Amtrekker travel video how-to video on YouTube.

Note:  I’ve started this Travel Post Friday series since I’ve now stepped away from my longstanding commitment to the BootsnAll Family Travel Blog. If you like it, there’s more of my travel work on the Perceptive Travel Blog.

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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.

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I was working with a tourism-related client recently about incorporating more video into their website and destination marketing.

That inspired me to dig around in the Insights (analytics) section of the YouTube channel for another small CVB (Convention and Visitor’s Bureau) that I’ve worked with in the past, to see what sort of information I could glean.

Here’s what I found – perhaps it will help you with your own tourism videos.

**  Views average 35 – 40 a day. We started seeing solid jumps in viewership as soon as we began posting consistently. Ranking on page one in Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) for desired keywords in YouTube Search took about 2 months, because we needed 3 -4 videos to really crank it and we released them slowly.

**  Viewership is 64% male, largest viewership is people aged 45 – 54.  There are a mix of people, but the top viewers are not younger people, contrary to video-watcher stereotypes.

**  Most people find this CVB’s videos with YouTube’s search engine, or they click around on the channel page, or they come over to our stuff from related videos.  The VAST majority, though, across all videos, find them with YouTube Search.  I was surprised by how low plain ol’ Google search ranked as a way that people find our stuff, even with the importance of video to universal search.

**  We do see people click and watch videos from the CVB homepage (where they rotate) but not a whole lot.  On a few videos, they watched it more times on the homepage than on the CVB Facebook Page (where they are also posted) which rather surprises me, but then again a Facebook video may get buried quickly whereas it rotates up to the homepage more than once.

**  The most popular video so far is an interview tied to a niche sport that held a training camp in town. The fan base is small but very enthusiastic, plus the featured team won a big tournament after the camp, which increased interest.

More data on this popular video:

—>  Most of its views, like the others, come from YouTube Search. I’d researched specific keywords for that sport and added more as I saw them being used in search strings, which paid off in making the video easier for people to find.

—>  25% of the viewers of that video watched it on a mobile device.

—>  It was embedded elsewhere but most views other than on the YouTube channel came from when we put it on the CVB Facebook Page (it helped that we tagged people in it plus the sport’s governing body.)  The second largest number of off-channel views came from embedding it in a guest post that I wrote for a sports information and networking site.  The third largest number of off-channel views came from people watching it in a post in a Ning group related to the sport.

Takeaways for you?

Have a plan going in that makes sense for your market, produce consistently and as often as possible, optimize your video for SEO, don’t discount the value of niche groups for spreading the word, make sure it looks good on a mobile device and allow the video to be embedded in places other than your YouTube channel.

Have you seen any interesting data from tourism video that you’ve done? Let me know in the comments – thanks!

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What should tourism and hospitality folks be paying particular attention to these days on the social Web? Where is the market moving and what are the trends?

After our “Social Media 12 months from now” panel at Innotech Austin (thanks again to moderator Bryan Person and co-conspirators Aaron Strout and Kyle Flaherty)  I was asked by PR expert Dana Marruffo, “Well, what IS the answer to where social media might be going 12 months from now?”

These are big questions, but I’m going to give you my cocktail party answer. You know….what I’d say if I had to summarize, speak loudly over afterparty music and try to be Jack-Daniels-coherent.

Here’s most of what I shouted to Dana over a bourbon:

***  Mobile technology is a big deal, including mobile-based tech that crosses dimensions like QR codes and video tags on paper (or maybe even on historical markers) that become Web pages and videos when scanned by a smartphone. The world is moving towards everyone having a computer and the Internet in her/his pocket or purse; some of your communications must already be geared to that reality.

Your next move for 2011:  get your website mobile-friendly.  To drive this home, get your smartphone or someone else’s and try to navigate through several of your site’s pages using the mobile browser. Now imagine your visitors trying to do that, around all the ads and photos and Flash goop and whatnot. See? Fix that before you fiddle around with apps.

***  LBS (Location Based Services) with check-ins like Foursquare, Yelp, Gowalla and Facebook Places/Deals. We just talked about Deals in our Tourism Currents November newsletter. Deals is a game-changer because it combines mobile devices,  the now-mainstream Facebook and tangible rewards for the admittedly rather odd practice of checking in.

Your next move for 2011:  Look for one or two of your main attractions, hotels, museums, etc. on Foursquare, Yelp, Gowalla and Places.  Ensure that the venue information is correct, and see if people are checking in, leaving tips/comments or taking photos (it’s just another way of listening to your visitors.)  If there’s activity, see if you can integrate it into your other sites; Matterhorn Marketing shows you how to embed people’s Foursquare Tips and To-Do’s onto your own website or blog.

***  Video.  I talk rather a lot about video for tourism (here’s the Video category on this blog) because I think it’s important.   Imagery and videos can generally show off your destination better than text, and when properly titled, tagged and described they are very powerful for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) because there is less competition for them right now than there is for text.

Your next move for 2011:  Get a small pocket video camera like the Flip or the Kodak Zi8. Hold off shooting in HD (high-definition) for now until you 1) have a tripod and 2) have a Mac or super-high-powered PC for editing.  Play and experiment. Go someplace cool in your town and show why it’s cool, or grab an interview with a lively person who can explain it. Put that video on your Facebook Page and YouTube channel. Title, tag and describe it thoroughly. Start small and build, even with some fun Google Search Story videos.  You’ll be glad you got in early.

For more tips and thoughts from our Innotech panel, here is Elmer Boutin’s nice recap titled “Smart People in Austin Talk Social Media.”

What are your thoughts about how digital communications are evolving for tourism and destination marketing?  Did I miss anything? Your thoughts are welcome down in the comments.

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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.

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After I spoke at the TFEA (Texas Festivals and Events Association) annual conference this summer about using social media for special events, I wandered through their marketing award competition display area to get a sense of how members publicize their events.

I paid particular note of the category for using social media to promote a festival or special event with a budget of $75,000 or less.

Since tools and services like Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc. are free, they are often used quite imaginatively by those on a small, strict budget.

Here’s a shout-out to the submissions in this category at the 2010 TFEA conference:

***  Pearland Parks and Recreation Facebook Page – lots of events info.

***  TPWD (Texas Parks and Wildlife Department) “Life’s Better Outside” Experience video on YouTube – Really nice one-minute video evoking the outdoors in Texas and the fun you can have experiencing it.

***  Nacogdoches Facebook Page – (I think I got the right Page; my notes are goofy on this one.)

***  Buzzard Bar Cooking Team Facebook Page – This is a fun gang of enthusiastic cooks who participate in chili and gumbo cookoffs and other culinary events all over the state.  Nice use of photos on their Page.

Congratulations to the winner in the under $75,000 budget category:  Texas Parks and Wildlife Department “Life’s Better Outside.”

The winners for social media marketing by events with mid-sized and large budgets?

Mid-sized event/festival ($75,000 – $250,000) social media winner was the Texas Arts and Crafts Fair, and the large-sized event/festival social media winner (over $750,000) was the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.

If you’d like to see some of the things I covered in my all-day technology session at TFEA, we have them at Tourism Currents….Social Media for Festivals and Special Events: A Resource List.

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

In another 2010 TFEA workshop session, I profiled three events that I think really nail social media, and here they are….

• the Western Minnesota Steam Threshers Reunion every Labor Day weekend in Rollag, Minnesota,
• the Kansas State Fair and
• the Brady, Texas Goat BBQ Cook-Off.

Finally, here’s the TPWD video mentioned above that won in its category – I really liked it.

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