Sheila's Guide To The Good Stuff

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.

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.

Some food for thought:

One of the most retweeted items from the May 2010 PRSA Travel and Tourism conference in Aspen, Colorado was this tweet from @CoTravelGirl:

“One of the most frequent phrase[s] at #travelprsa: ’Don’t give your social media program to your intern.’”

And yet, one young person who excels in Web communication for a city government tweeted in response:

“unless the youngest person is the best for the job…”

So, you don’t give social media responsibilities to the young person except when you should give them to the young person.

Bottom line: your organization’s best Web communicator may not be the person you expect, but if you want an effective presence in social media, you must be willing to train and use the right individual for the job.

Also ask this harsh question: if your marketing and communications person can’t handle the social Web, what does that mean for your organization, and for that person’s career?

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.

PR practitioners, if you remember this, you’ll be a lot less frustrated….

Unless you have a signed contract with a blogger for advertising or some sort of goods/services exchange, bloggers owe you nothing.

Nada.

Zilch.

Not one tweet. Not one Flickr photo. Not one Facebook mention. Not one blog post.

They do not owe you “buzz” just because you fed them tacos or beer at some event.

You want a tit-for-tat arrangement, go buy advertising or set up a contract that they will tweet X number of times about your brand in exchange for Y sponsorship money (or whatever.)

PR folks are paid to figure out how to build relationships with bloggers.

Bloggers are not paid to figure out PR (um, they’re usually not paid at all for blogging.) They do not blog to build your brand. They blog for themselves and their readers.

I’ve been stewing on this since reading Amber Naslund’s excellent A Dear John Letter to PR Folks. My favorite quote in her post:

“My blog is an intellectual adventure for me, not a channel for you. (emphasis added) I intend to keep it that way.”

Yes, it’s a pain, but if you want what bloggers already have, then you’ll have to do what we did – work for it.

Look, I understand that there are still organizations that haven’t even reached the Cluetrain Manifesto stage – they still do not understand social media and they’re still scared of it.

That’s precisely why Becky McCray and I do social media training through Tourism Currents, with a “teach you to fish” philosophy.

I mean, I freak out about cooking and I’m still scared of math after making a blazing grade of “13″ on my first college pre-calculus test.  We all have our problems.

But this is ridiculous.

If you are a professional tourism person, you are by default a professional communicator. Representing a destination, attraction, hotel, shop or restaurant means that you communicate with the public (and hopefully do it well) in a proactive manner.

Professional communicators don’t let someone else horn in on their conversations. They may not always have positive conversations, they may step on their own tongue occasionally, but it’s their conversation.

That’s why tourism people must understand why something like Seth Godin’s “Brands in Public” is taking them down a fool’s path.

Sure, it looks like the “Brands” idea – having a single page with most Web mentions of your brand aggregated into one spot – would make it easy to “manage” conversations. Here’s the page for the Best Western hotel chain, so you can see what I’m talking about.

Herd all those cats onto one page and give ‘em the spin, for only $400/month to Mr. Godin.

Don’t be a sucker, folks. The Web does not work that way. It’s messy. It’s splattered. It’s people in all their messy, splattered, opinionated selves.  To respond to their gripes, compliments, observations and suggestions, you must engage them at the source of the discussion.

It might be on Yelp or the Chowhound forums. It might be on TripAdvisor. It might be on their personal blog, whether they have positive or negative things to say about you. It would be great if lots of the conversations were on YOUR tourism blog or Facebook Page, wouldn’t it? You know, like the Arkansas tourism blog or Iowa’s Facebook Page.

I guarantee you that the conversations of value are not going to be on some aggregator Squidoo page like “Brands in Public,” and I don’t care if it is a product of Seth Godin, the marketing and philosophical wizard (who does not allow comments on his blog posts, but I digress.)

There is no magic social media bullet. It is your basic communications roll-up-sleeves-and-engage work, with two-way tools like Twitter and Facebook and souped up to a demanding 24/7 cycle.

You can do this. You might have to spend a little money to learn things and move your online communications strategy down the road, but don’t blow $400/month on attempting to herd a pile of Web links on Godin’s site.

You’re smarter than that.

We did it.

Our Tourism Currents online learning community launched on September 9 – Becky McCray and I couldn’t be more excited about it.

We’re offering a newsletter, monthly training lessons, exclusive video interviews with experts in the social media and tourism fields, a member’s Forum plus live hour-long video Q&A sessions.

These are the organizations and people that we think would find our membership site particularly helpful:

• Convention and Visitor’s Bureaus (CVBs)
• Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs)
• State and city governments who do marketing and outreach related to tourism
• Main Street, historic preservation, heritage trail and historic highway organizations
• Parks, nature preserves, botanical gardens and other nature/outdoors-related attractions, including scenic byways
• Public Relations professionals who do tourism work
• Chambers of Commerce
• Those with niche focus like agritourism, culinary tourism, arts/culture, sports/adventure and educational travel
• Festival and event planners
• Attractions, museums, lodging etc. that depend upon tourist traffic

If you’d like to know more, go here to see if Tourism Currents is right for you.

Thanks for your support!

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a tweet from Berlin Tourism that said they’d mail small pieces of the Berlin Wall to 15 people who sent them a US mailing address via DM (Direct Message – private communication not seen by the Twitter public stream.)

As a student of history, I jumped all over that offer.

Now I have the lovely but sobering little bit of history that you see in the photo in this post.

What a great way for a tourism organization to use Twitter, wouldn’t you say?

It is difficult to believe that it has been 20 years since the Wall fell, but Berlin is commemorating the event in a big way (don’t miss this list from the Guardian of top 10 books about the Berlin Wall.)

I’d love to visit myself some day – there’s been a lot of buzz about the city around the Web lately.

WorldHum mentioned Berlin as a possible expat writer refuge, there’s a new currywurst museum, nice parks, a film festival in the subway, cutting edge fashion,  geeky startups , scenery and architecture (and here’s a detailed transportation update from EuroCheapo.)

But, if I can’t see all that in person, I still have a wonderful souvenir.

Thanks, Berlin Tourism.

After a quick Tourism Currents pre-launch meeting with my business partner Becky McCray….

….and did I mention that she’s a BusinessWeek Top 20 Entrepreneur to follow on Twitter? Well, she is!

….and don’t you know it makes her crazy when I do this kind of “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” off-topic diversion….

Anyway, we arranged a one-night planning session in Dallas, meeting roughly halfway between our homes in Oklahoma and Texas (because you can only do so much organizing even with regular video Skype calls.)  On the drive back to my house, I was so pumped up about the great learning material that we’re developing to combine tourism marketing and social Web tools, I just HAD to talk about it.

I used Utterli and my cell phone to call in an audio post (that I can embed in a blog post, as I’ve done here) from the parking lot of a Taco Bell in Waco, Texas.

Because I know how to live it up!

(If you can’t see the audio player box below, here’s the URL directly to the recording.)

I almost didn’t take the time to write this post.

I mean, it is Saturday. The house needs major vacuum love (hey, four cats, two kids, what can I say….) and there are piles of things to sort, file, toss and put away. Laundry. Mail. Dishes.

Our weed collection on the front lawn is doing great, thanks.  The mower’s ready to go, but whoops, need to make a run to fill the gas can, first.

And so on….

But, you know, none of that is as important as supporting special people who do special things, and one of the most unique and special people I know is Boston-based Chris Brogan.

Yeah, Mom, he’s one of my “Internet friends.”

Sure, we’ve chatted in person at numerous geeky events like SOBCon (for Successful and Outstanding Bloggers, not that other SOB) and South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) but since we’re a half-continent apart, I mostly keep up with Chris through his Twitter stream and his consistently thoughtful and articulate blog. You’ve never met a more giving, friendly guy and he’s a dynamite speaker as well.

He’s also something of a travel/tourism buff; I’ll bet you’d enjoy his blog posts like Tourism Bureaus and Bloggers and Social Media Starter Moves for Tourism.

Chris and co-author Julien Smith have a new book coming out this week (which is a lot more exciting than dealing with my laundry pile, so I’m blogging instead.)

The book is called Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust.

What’s it about?  Breaking through the noise, essentially.  From the book’s inside flap:

“There’s no question that the Internet has changed the way we do business—especially when it comes to marketing. Consumer environments are short on trust and populated by consumers who are cynical, savvy, and informed. Though it’s easier than ever to reach your customers, it’s less likely that they’ll listen. Today, the most valuable online currency isn’t the dollar, but trust itself.

At the same time, social networks and personal connections have far more influence on consumers than your marketing messages ever will—unless your business knows how to harness them. In Trust Agents, two social media veterans show you how to tap into the power of these networks to build your brand’s influence, reputation, and profits.

Trust agents aren’t necessarily marketers or salespeople; they’re the digitally savvy people who use the Web to humanize businesses using transparency, honesty, and genuine relationships. As a result, they wield enough online influence to build up or bring down a business’s reputation. This book will show you how to build profitable relationships with trust agents, or become one yourself.”

I unequivocally recommend his work, and if you have a chance to hear him speak, be sure to get a front-row seat.  Here’s Chris talking to Book Expo America about the ideas behind Trust Agents…. (the direct link to the video is here for my RSS readers and anyone who can’t see the box below)