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From the beginning, business partner Becky McCray and I talked about developing not only our Tourism Currents course, but eventually an online “mall of services and products” tied to social media education for tourism-related organizations. Most would be ours, some might be from affiliates who we trust and recommend.
I think I first heard the term from Glenda Watson Hyatt, who has her own educational offerings on accessibility.
The first step in that direction is now live; in addition to our full six-week online course, you can buy one or more individual lessons in social media for tourism.
It’s learning materials that you want, when you need them. We talked about it (plus some other goodies) in our June 2011 newsletter.
Thanks, as always, for your support.
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This is a photo of my lap during the South by Southwest (SXSW) Global Tech Summit.
Quick photos and some tweets went up on my Android smartphone, plus special check-ins to each session on Gowalla.
Other tweets and watching the conference hashtag happened on the TweetDeck dashboard on my Dell laptop. Most Facebook business page updates for Tourism Currents or Freelance Austin came from the laptop as well.
Great quotes and insights from speakers were often captured via pen and notebook (yes, it’s true, but they always boot up) to become Facebook or LinkedIn status updates or blog posts days, weeks or months later.
Online publishing is best served by whichever tools work for you, and don’t be surprised when one size does not fit all.
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At a recent gathering for some Chamber of Commerce staff, I heard one of them say that his boss is rather dismissive of any time spent on the Chamber’s Facebook Page, yet if the Chamber is not successful on Facebook, that is seen as a failure.
Rock, meet Hard Place.
I’d love to tell that boss that if Facebook is part of an organization’s communications strategy, then interacting with customers or prospects on Facebook is work. It is not “goofing off.”
Welcome to the modern world – Facebook for business is work. It is part of that Chamber communicator’s job to connect with not only Chamber members, but also people in the community who might become members, including hardworking entrepreneurs who may have never considered the Chamber as an asset for growing their business.
The Chamber should be the hub of business development and economic growth in a community, and one way to interact with the community is through social media channels like Facebook.
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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.
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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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.
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For me, content is either preplanned or is triggered by something that bothers me and I simply HAVE to blast out a post.
I often ask myself, “What is driving me nuts right now, or what makes me happy just thinking about it?” and that becomes fresh content.
Several ways to keep feeding the beast….
1) Use a monthly or weekly editorial calendar, particularly to help you write seasonal, holiday-related or event-specific blog/Facebook posts or tweets.
Why do you think that “get organized” articles come up every January, and “get ready for bikini season” stuff arrives in women’s magazines like clockwork in April or May? Soup recipes in November, fruit tart recipes in July and August….all of it is evergreen content, re-done every year. Same with those “how to get the most out of XYZ Conference” posts you see before events, followed by link-heavy “Here’s what I learned at XYZ Conference” afterward.
2) Have some way to track the random insights that pop into your head; they often become popular posts if you move fast to articulate your unique point of view on a topical issue. Some people use electronic services like Evernote to record them; I use a notepad and pen (which always boot up.)
Also keep some notetaking device near your bed, because it’s amazing how many ideas will occur to you as you’re falling asleep. No, you will not remember them in the morning. Trust me.
3) Which key words and phrases are people using to discover answers in your industry? What are they asking about on LinkedIn Answers, on Quora, on Twitter, in person at conferences, etc? Your answers to those questions are all potential blog posts. Include the keywords in your headline; that’s great SEO because you are using exactly the same “How do I….?” words that people are typing into search engine boxes, and bots like to bring back results that exactly match queries.
That’s what I did for this post – I did a quick analysis of the phrases people use when they do a search about how to blog, then wrote my title.
4) Sometimes the best posts are images or video, with just a little text.
Always have a camera with you, and periodically scroll your archives for photos or videos that were buried and never edited. I wrote a post about a simple integrated marketing communication example based on a photo that I’d forgotten I’d taken till I did an archive review.
There’s one more piece of content in the can for me, my thoughts kill two birds, and the gaping maw is pacified for one more day.
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When your organization is called a “Convention and Visitor’s Bureau” or “Tourist Board,” it’s hard to see why you should reach out to locals as part of your destination marketing strategy.
What’s the point, right?
They don’t stay in hotels, they don’t “count” in the statistics of people coming in to visit your town (a measure of how well you’re doing) so why bother?
Here is why – because in today’s more connected world, it is critical to realize that your locals have online networks with worldwide reach. You never know who they know on Facebook, Twitter or through their blog.
Locals don’t stay in hotels, but their visiting friends and relatives do. Locals recommend your restaurants, shops, museums, parks and music venues to visitors. They talk up the wonders of your town and region….or, well, they badmouth them.
Why does the Austin, Texas CVB have a relatively easy job of selling their city? Partly because tech-connected and very vocal locals NEVER shut up about how great it is there! From the online silence of some of the other cities, you’d think there was no other worthy town in Texas. There’s even a Twitter hashtag appended to tweets about great things in and around the Live Music Capital of the World – #WhyAustin.
The Ripple Effect of spreading buzz and excitement about your town starts with the people who live right down the street.
I had a CVB ask me recently how to start connecting with bloggers. I told them to go to Google Blog Search and type in “YourCity blog” and see what pops up for blogs about/written by locals in that town. When I did it, I found some really trenchant, well-written blogs by locals. No, they aren’t travel or parenting blogs (the current flavor-of-the-month that many PR people are looking for) but I found posts that indicated the authors really care deeply about that town. The CVB should know those guys.
You connect with your local newspapers, TV and radio stations: add to that mix your Web-based content publishers (yes, whether they themselves realize it or not, they are writers and publishers, too.) Look on Twitter for people who list their location as your city. Find them on Facebook. Ask around.
Then, have them into the CVB and get to know them. Tell them what you do, what you want visitors to know and how they can help by becoming your online champions.
Two examples:
1) My own Round Rock (Texas) CVB had some local bloggers and social media-savvy people in for a casual weekday breakfast taco gathering recently and a chat about their “Sports Capital of Texas” branding efforts. They also demo’d the CVB Twitter stream, Facebook Page and YouTube channel and asked for feedback and suggestions.
I attended this gathering (yes, I knew all the geeks there since I’m one of them, and many attend Jelly Coworking Round Rock with me) and it was a lot of fun. Think of it as a free focus group for market research, if “fun” doesn’t interest you.
2) The Beaumont (Texas) CVB has locals in on a regular basis to talk about what the CVB does, how they can help and make sure they see the town through a visitor’s eyes.
They include a whirlwind tour of some major regional attractions, many of which the locals themselves have never gotten around to visiting (I love Becky McCray’s post about this phenomenon - Never Been There.)
Here’s a video telling you more about Beaumont’s tour for locals….direct link to it in case the embed box isn’t working….
Think about how you could do something like this in YOUR town.
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.
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.
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.
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.
