Sheila's Guide To The Good Stuff

And now there are four….

In addition to the speakers that I announced in my first post about the BlogWorld and New Media Expo West 2011 Tourism track – the Abilene (TX) CVB and Authentic Seacoast Resorts in Nova Scotia – I’m now very excited to confirm that Caroline Bean from Visit Philadelphia and Brian Matson from Fargo (ND) – Moorhead (MN) CVB will be joining Tourism Currents at this year’s BlogWorld conference in Los Angeles, November 3-5.

I’ve known Caroline for years in my travel blogging hat, and met Brian for the first time in person at last year’s Symposium on Social Media in Tourism (SoMeT.)

Track topics and details coming soon, on this BlogWorld and tourism info page….

Nowhere else can you get social media education specific to tourism and hospitality PLUS the opportunity to connect with 8000+ bloggers and podcasters (we’re planning a blogger/CVB speed dating session, too.)

See you there!

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Can’t miss what you’re supposed to do, can you?

(Screenshot of the Nashville CVB landing page on their Visit Music City Facebook Page)

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How to best incorporate bloggers and online publishers into standard press trips/fam tours is an ongoing item of discussion in many tourism circles.

I’m seeing more and more interest by bloggers in constructing individual fams directly with CVBs and DMOs, rather than participating in group tours that don’t represent the sort of travel that they – or their readers – prefer.

Here’s one perspective about press trips from Matt Kepnes (Nomadic Matt) in a travel blogger’s Facebook discussion about press trip pros/cons (quoted with permission:)

“I stopped taking press trips for this reason. I was and still am offered incredible luxury trips but I just can’t take them. It doesn’t mesh with my message. Would I love a luxury trip? Yeah, but I can’t in any good way write about it.

Plus I find press trips to be super-jammed-packed itineraries with little personal time or space to relax or get to know a city. I instead now just work directly with tourism boards to set stuff up. I get to make my own itinerary, stay in hostels, and travel cheap. They don’t care because I am still writing about the destination for them (which is all they care about) and I’m a pretty cheap date…hostels, a train pass, and some city sightseeing cards and I’m good to go. That’s nothing for them.”

Some organizations may see group tours as a more efficient use of resources and time, but this assumes that bloggers need a lot of hand-holding. Many do not; an independent experience makes a lot more sense for them, and will probably result in more compelling and interesting coverage.

Some may say no to your press trip because the timing is off or it’s just a bad fit, but the chances of acceptance and a positive experience are a lot better if the trip matches the person taking it.

Pretty much always true, right?

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Remember how (as Tourism Currents) we set up and ran the first-ever Tourism track at the 2010 BlogWorld online publishing conference?

How we said that you have to go where the geeks are to connect with tech-savvy travelers, and that an event like BlogWorld can supercharge your destination marketing?

And how psyched we were last year to have co-facilitators with us from the Seattle CVB, the Pensacola (FL) CVB, the Beaumont (TX) CVB and meetings expert Jeff Hurt?

Well, in case you haven’t already heard us cheering about it on Facebook or Twitter, we have two confirmed speakers joining us for this year’s Tourism Track at BlogWorld and New Media Expo West, in Los Angeles CA, November 3-5, 2011 (yes, it’s moved from Las Vegas.)

Shanna Smith Snyder from the Abilene TX CVB (a 2011 Texas Social Media Award winner!) and Doug Anweiler from Authentic Seacoast Resorts in Nova Scotia will join us to help teach you more effective use of social media in your destination and hospitality marketing.

We’re also planning on a speed-dating session between our tourism attendees and some of the 8000+ bloggers and online publishers who go to BlogWorld.

Other co-facilitators will be announced soon!

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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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For a fun update on the week’s news in travel, you might enjoy the “This Week in Travel” podcast.

I was on this past week as a guest for Episode #73 The Travel Blog Game, and hosts Chris Christensen, Gary Arndt and Jen Leo plus my fellow guest Jessica Spiegel were all a rollicking good group. We covered a lot of territory in our news discussions.

Toward the end of the podcast recording we talked about Tourism Currents and which destinations, hotels or organizations do a particularly good job with marketing using social media.

Here was our quick list off the top of our heads:

**  Gary  –  Spain, especially Valencia

**  Jessica  –  Portland, Oregon (she mentioned their Twisitor Center for Twitter updates and news about the city)

**  Jen  –  Downtown Los Angeles on Facebook (nice business district initiative) and the MGM Grand Twitter account for Las Vegas special deals

**  Chris  –  Chicago and Maui (we also discussed the Visit Lanai New Media Artist in Residence program, which Gary will be doing later this month.)

**  Me  –  Well….I got a bit carried away past one or two….so I mentioned Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Oregon’s Coos Bay, @SeattleMaven on Twitter and my “usual suspects” in Texas of Austin, San Antonio, Beaumont and Abilene.

Chris mentioned doing some social media CVB training when he was in Maui, and that local hotels, restaurants and resorts all sent representatives to learn. Smart.

We all gave a shout-out as well to Hawaii-based PR pro Nathan Kam, who does a bunch of tourism work on Oahu.  He’s professional but also very personable and fun, and he reaches out to people online in a very un-market-y way.

Of course we left out plenty of other great examples, but still, that’s a pretty good list if you want to check them out.

I’m happy to hear about your favorite social media stars down in the comments, and have a listen to the podcast when you have a chance!

Update: Gary sent me the code to embed the podcast right here….

Subscribe on iTunes | Become a Fan on Facebook | Download the iPhone app | Download

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You may have noticed that Facebook Pages have a different layout – they look more like personal profiles and you can do some new things while acting administratively as a Page.

For an excellent summary of the changes, see Aliza Sherman’s How Brands Can Make the Most of Facebook’s New Pages (on Mashable,)  plus John Haydon’s Everything You Need To Know About Facebook’s Epic Upgrade to Pages.

Here is what intrigues me about the ability to act as a Page or a brand (representing a CVB, DMO or Tourist Board) and not as a person:  the opportunity for better cross-promotion of your region’s offerings.

Here are a few examples….

**  Heritage trails, wine trails, quilting/craft trails and scenic byways can highlight each of their stops and sights.

**  Chambers of Commerce can interact more effectively as a Chamber with their member businesses.

**  Regional DMOs can interact with the Pages for their towns, agritourism places, trails, attractions, hotels, restaurants, shops, parks and nature reserves.

**  Economic development and downtown development entities can cross-promote their offerings.

Drawbacks?

The usual:  we’ll see ham-handed, intrusive marketing and spammy info broadcasting by people who act like a thing instead of a person.

“Hi, I’m Fred’s Donuts!  Buy me!”

Sherman warned about this on Mashable:

“Posting behind the banner of your brand is fine on your Page, but moving into other spaces as a brand can be invasive and unwelcome.”

What are you thinking about doing with your new powers on Facebook?

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Hello, Jordan!

I’m thrilled to be able to tell you that I’ll be traveling soon to the Hashemite Kingdom, thanks to an invitation from the Jordanian Tourism Board.

There will be general travel and family travel posts over on the Perceptive Travel blog, a guest post on prices for the World’s Cheapest Destinations blog, and I’ll explore and discuss Jordanian tourism’s social media marketing efforts here and in the Tourism Currents Facebook Page, on Twitter and at least one of our newsletters.

Most of you know that I’m not a huge fan of press trips and fam tours for my own travel, because I do have angst-y issues with whether one can maintain objectivity when all the goodies are provided.

With this invitation, I thought long and hard about it, and I’m going anyway.

Here’s why:

1) Chances are slim that I’d get there on my own anytime soon,  and HELLO, are you kidding?  The magnificent ruins at Petra, of course, but also urban buzz in Amman (I had no idea that there is a 6000 seat Roman amphitheater smack in the middle of town,) desert beauty in places like Wadi Rum contrasted with a lush pine forest and nature reserve, a resort atmosphere (heavy on the mud) at the Dead Sea, mosaics in Madaba….what an amazing opportunity.

2) The Middle East is a favorite region (I lived in Bahrain as a preteen, and even had my 12th birthday in Shiraz, Iran) but it is misunderstood by many. I’d like to help clear that up, and….

3)  As with the Hawaii blogger press trip, I know that the Jordanian and Middle Eastern tourism industries are suffering from safety perceptions given the current situation in Egypt. They’re losing visitors. I’d love to dispel those concerns by visiting myself and telling you what I find.

More info when I have it.  Passport is ready!

Disclosure: The Jordanian Tourism Board is providing my airfare, accommodation and entry fees. They have not told me what to write about, and the itinerary is still in flux. I am not traveling as part of a group.

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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Two observations bracketing my day today:

Bloggers as Moochers

This morning on Twitter, I noted (tweeting as @TourismCurrents) a press trip announcement for Southern city B&Bs that wants writers with letters of assignment from print publications with “minimum annual circulation of 100,000.”  I thought it was interesting that there was no mention of an online publication as an alternative, with X number of unique visitors per month, X number of email subscribers or some other metric for reach.

I thought this exclusion was short-sighted, and said so.

The response from @gran_tourismo (Lara Dunston and Terence Carter, currently on a long-term worldwide trip sponsored by HomeAway vacation rentals) was that many hoteliers….

“….say they get burned frequently by bloggers who don’t produce goods….Most bloggers can’t demonstrate reach of a [blog] post.” [as compared to the reach of print coverage.]

So, not a great reputation for bloggers out there in the hospitality world that Lara and Terence have seen so far.

Anecdotal, to be sure, but there it is.

Bloggers as Desirable

This evening – also on Twitter – I notice an initiative by @VisitLanai (the Hawaiian island of Lanai’s Visitor Bureau) for a “New Media Artist-in-Residence” program to bring online publishers across the Pacific to experience the island.  First up is my friend Shannon Hurst Lane of the Traveling Mamas. Follow the #VisitLanai hashtag for more.

Now, not 10 minutes after I tweeted about that, a DM (Direct Message – private message on Twitter) popped up on my dashboard from a friend asking me how to get in on the New Media Artist-in-Residence program. 

Here’s the question – while I certainly have my reservations about press trips and fam tours – the fact is that while they ARE work, they are also pretty darned cool when they’re in a cool place (and yo, Hawaii is pretty fab.)

Given the blogger-as-moocher reputation issues raised by Lara and Terence above, who is going to get invites to top-tier places like Hawaii?

I do know this – the Hawaii tourism people know exactly what they have to offer with their beautiful islands, and they will be picky, picky about who they select for invitations to their new media program.  Online publishers who want to go will have to show that they will (unlike what the hotel people complain about) “deliver the goods” and that their online publishing has reach and impact.

Takeaways

If you’re a CVB, DMO or Tourist Board, you’d better know how to evaluate bloggers and their work online.  There are metrics and they can drill down pretty far – further than a lot of specious print circ numbers – but you need to know what you’re looking at with analytics. Do not just invite a blogger to say you invited a blogger, and think you’re now all social media-y and hip.

If you’re a blogger and you want to go on these trips, you’d better be able to pony up some numbers/analytics info about your online presence, and you’d better be ready to say exactly what you plan to “deliver” to your hosts.  PR guy Peter Shankman addressed this tangentially in this post:  Want to get sponsored? You’d better be sponsorable.

I like days that show me two perspectives on online media within 12 hours!

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