Sheila's Guide To The Good Stuff

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.

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:

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.

Are you kidding me?

NINE images attached to this PR email blast that dumped (twice) into my IN box, with the subject line in ALL CAPS just to ensure I didn’t miss it.

Er, I never write about celebrities. Or Mexico. And I rarely cover resorts.

I would love to say that this is uncommon; that most emails in my IN box are well-targeted, thoughtful pitches or interesting news from PR professionals who have actually established relationships with me before pitching.

Nope. More negative experiences happen all the time, from folks who apparently bought my name and email from some database.

What would I like to see?

Communication from those who reach out to get to know me before asking me for something (and hey, Dale Carnegie guy, putting my business card in for a drawing at your speaking event does NOT mean I want your course announcement emails. Ever heard of double opt-in?)

Sometimes I think that smaller tourism organizations have an advantage when they can’t afford to hire the “big, expert PR firm.” Based on my incoming emails, they aren’t missing much.

Last week I enjoyed spending 30 minutes on Blog Talk Radio with Australian entrepreneur and coach Des Walsh.  He has a regular program called Des Walsh and Friends, with a wide variety of guests all discussing some aspect of technology and business.

The noteworthy advantage of Blog Talk Radio (or any “Internet radio” service) is that not only can you listen live, but the shows are usually archived if you can’t be there at broadcast time, plus they’re also downloadable for later listening on your iPod or other digital audio player.

It gives radio/audio the worldwide reach that it never had before, as I discussed in this post about online radio and destination marketing for the Beaumont (TX) CVB.

Des and I talked about my background in travel, how Becky McCray and I launched Tourism Currents to teach tourism professionals about social media, and why businesses need to ensure a strong Web presence as customer search and interaction preferences shift online.

I loved having a fun chat with someone halfway around the world, and the time zones worked in my favor since it was afternoon my time, but very early morning for Des.  :)

Here is our episode:  talking social media, travel and tourism with Des Walsh.

(This is cross-posted on my BootsnAll Family Travel Logue.)

You won’t find a more powerful advocate for making the Web accessible to everyone than Glenda Watson Hyatt.  She has cerebral palsy but is able to control her left thumb, so that is how she does all of her typing and work on her terrific Do It Myself blog.

All of it.

With her left thumb.

It was particularly mind-blowing when she used a variety of technologies (including an electronic voice named Kate to sync to her slides) to give a presentation last year at the Chicago SOBCon social Web conference about how to make one’s blog accessible to those with disabilities.  (Here is a quick recap of Glenda’s presentation from WordPress blog publishing software expert Lorelle VanFossen.)

Glenda really opened our eyes that day to how the disabled often struggle to access the Web for work or personal enjoyment.  She has a wicked sense of humor, too; we all left her presentation laughing and enlightened (and many of us, myself included, considerably chastened by our own blindness to our disabled readers.)

We learned that the blind and vision-impaired can’t see our photos and graphics because we don’t include simple coding to describe them through the ALT tag (used by screen readers) and the deaf and hard of hearing can’t hear the sounds in our videos or podcasts because we don’t caption them or provide transcripts.

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?

For example, even if your whole lovely historic downtown is ADA-approved (Americans with Disabilities Act that requires buildings to accommodate wheelchairs, etc.) fewer will visit if they can’t get information or trip-planning assistance from your inaccessible Web site.

People use the Web to plan trips, and that includes the disabled.

Lorelle VanFossen points out in a Web accessibility article in the Blog Herald that….

“The Ever-Shifting Internet Population reports that 38% of Americans with disabilities surf the web and almost 20% of them say that their disability makes web browsing challenging. There are a wide range of estimates, but at least one in four visitors to your blog are disabled.

That’s a huge customer base you might be missing and not serving.”

The indefatigable Glenda never stops working to make the Web available to everyone.

To that end, she is launching the 2010 Accessibility 100 book with tips for simple ways to make your site more accessible, and she issued a writing challenge in support of the book launch:

Write 25 words about what accessibility means to you.

So, I did, and here’s my 25 word contribution:

“As the Web becomes more available across the world,  I don’t want my little pieces of it to be inaccessible through my own thoughtless ignorance.”

Take a moment to think about whether your destination marketing Web sites market to all of your possible visitors, including the disabled.

I’ve embedded a short video below that Lorelle shot during Glenda’s talk – you can see her equipment setup and hear some of her suggestions.  If you’d like to hire Glenda to work with you to improve your sites, she can do that, too.

(Here is the direct link to the video on Viddler if you can’t see the embedded viewing box.)

While checking Twitter the other day I saw a tweet from the Beaumont (TX) CVB that they were live on a local AM radio station in town, and they invited their Twitter followers to listen in.

Since I went to high school in Beaumont, I clicked the link in their tweet out of curiosity. I’m not a big talk radio person (don’t have a commute and prefer music while working at home) and like many people today I rarely listen to AM radio.

But this was AM radio for geeks, because AM 1300 KSET also live-streams shows to the Web.

That means that not only can people in Beaumont and a few surrounding southeast Texas towns like Lumberton, Orange, Nederland and Silsbee listen in, but the entire planet can get involved!   The station also keeps an active Facebook page and they’re on Twitter.

THAT gets my attention.

Just a few days before I’d bookmarked a PRSA San Antonio blog post on our Tourism Currents Delicious page – the post was titled Why Radio Will Survive the Media Shake-Out of Our Decade – so I already had radio on the brain.

Appearing on a live-streaming radio show means that you can remind your locals of what you offer (get those folks to visit more in their own backyards – the Beaumont CVB did a great job of plugging their online events calendar on the KSET show) but you can also reach out to your “expats.”

These are people who perhaps grew up in your town but moved away, or maybe they visit regularly (years ago as children, now as snowbirds, to visit relatives for the holidays, etc.) and they already feel an affinity for you.  Our latest Tourism Currents lesson calls them part of your “online champions network” if you can get them talking about you, so reach out and bring them closer to home, through the Web. A “wired” local radio show is one way to do that.

I know that when when I travel and find crummy music options in my hotel room, I tune my laptop into my local Austin classical radio station, FM 89.5 KMFA, which also livestreams to the Web. Ahh, the familiar morning DJs and a taste of home.

Another way to share online is through embeddable widgets like the one below from the radio station (if you click the Play button, you’ll hear the current live-stream from KSET.)   Widgets can be customized any number of ways and are another method of putting your latest information on other people’s sites.  ”Embeddable” means that you find the embed/sharing code where it says Get Widget, copy it, and paste it anywhere that allows HTML code.

Smart radio station, eh?

(Update:  look at this wonderfully-crafted post by Justin McCullough called The Social Web Ties Us Together….it’s about how he as a southeast Texas guy stumbled across this post about Beaumont while he was traveling in Oregon.  It is a dynamite explanation of how information spreads across the Web in ways that we might not expect.  Thanks, Justin!)

Some days, the ideas come pouring out of your head and it’s hard to get them recorded fast enough.

Other days, not so much.

An editorial calendar can really help with “blogger’s block.”  It’s simply a calendar (looking forward through the next few weeks, at least) of which topic you’re going to write about on which day.

Sit down now and project through 2010 what you’ll want to write about and when, in very general terms. You know you’re going to do something related to July 4, 2010 if you’re located in the US, right?  Commonwealth nations will have something about Remembrance Day every year, and so on. Then, break it down by month and then week.

You can have a rolling schedule of “video post on Monday, highlight our latest package deal on Tuesday, photo of the week from our Flickr Group Pool on Wednesday,” etc. if that helps.

For those days when the creativity fountain is dribbling rather than gushing, here are some post ideas to help kick-start your keyboard:

1. Itineraries.  Give visitors eat-sleep-play itinerary ideas for your destination. Go hyper-focused and do specific ones for foodies, history buffs, families, adult couples, birders/nature lovers, sports fans, genealogists, photographers, geocaching fans, etc.  Do seasonally tailored ones for spring, summer, fall, winter.
2. Coming attractions, highlighted by using photos or video.  Yes, of course, talking about upcoming events is a no-brainer, but make it fresh. Use one WOW! photo or a fun, short (2-3 minute) video, with a link deeper into your blog or Web site for more info. Let the graphics sell the event without you pumping out marketing text.
3. “On this day in 1841 (or 1917 or 1969….)” You know what to do with this one, right? Short and sweet.  Make that history come alive.
4. Breakfast with/Lunch with/Dinner with one of your distinctive local eateries. Economic redevelopment bonus: feature one in your historic downtown. Include drool-worthy food photos, videos of the chef at work, photos of locals eating there. Bonus round two: put those same photos on your CVB Facebook Fan Page and tag some of the people in the photos.
5. Promotions and package deals.  Don’t overdo this, but it can’t hurt to remind people to check your site for exclusive deals and packages. A lot of people really have no idea what a CVB/DMO does and don’t think to check your site for offers (which is why I wrote this reminder post on my family travel blog.)
6. Answer a frequent visitor question.  You know the ones that you keep hearing over and over in your Visitor’s Center.  No, not “Do you have a bathroom?”  The other ones.
7. Introduce one of your frequent visitors.  Have them talk about why they love your destination or attraction, and why they keep returning. Bonus: shoot a video of them for your YouTube channel. Double bonus:  upload the video to your Facebook Fan Page and tag them in it. Of course, you’ll link back to their Web site or blog from your blog post, right? Right.
8. Create a custom, targeted Google Map (here’s how to do it plus more background info.)  Make one with fun spots to visit on a weekend in your town.  Consider one with all of your local microbreweries, or your antique shops, quilting places or bars with regular live music.  Create one with your ice cream shops and bakeries; call that one “Sugar Shacks.”     How about your coffee shops and inns with free WiFi;  that one’s called “Blogger’s Heavenly Spots.”
9. Explain how to use Twitter as a “Twisitor Center”, so visitors can ask you questions (sometimes by including a dedicated hashtag in their tweets.)  Need an update on the concept?  See this Twisitor Center site, and also how Abilene, TX or Kissimmee, FL or Portland, OR do it.
10. How does your community support the arts?  Profile a local glassblower, painter, potter, dancer or musician – photo and video opportunities abound.  Is there a special museum exhibit or gallery opening?  A concert with the new work of a local composer?  A book by a local author that has a setting you can talk about? What’s your town’s equivalent to what Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil does for Savannah, GA?

Good tourism-related blogging is helpful information and story-telling that gives a sense of place.  Do what blogging thought leader Liz Strauss recommends: capture the irresistible ideas and tell your story.

While doing a live Tech in Twenty show last night on Blog Talk Radio (our topic was women in social media in 2010 and you can listen or download it here) I noticed that my fellow panelists Colleen Pence and Holly Hoffman both had the same answer when our hosts asked us to tell the audience where they could find us online:

“Just Google me.”

When you’ve worked long and hard and consistently to establish your Web site, blogs, LinkedIn profile, Twitter account, Flickr photostream, Facebook profile, YouTube channel, etc….plus you’re talked about and linked to online….then it is easy to be confident that not only are you “at the top of Page One of Google,” you can FILL that page.

How broad and deep is your destination or attraction’s presence in search engine results, especially with all of the recent changes with Google and Bing?

Does your tourism organization’s material pop up at the top of Google search results, or is there some commercial site or savvy local blogger who trounces you with a better online presence?

How can I help you rise to the top?