Sheila's Guide To The Good Stuff

If you have great ideas, stories or case studies to share, there are two speaking proposal deadlines coming up this week….

**  SXSWi (South by Southwest Interactive) digital/tech creatives conference in Austin, Texas in March 2013. It’s only the biggest technology-related annual conference on the planet….20,000 of the most interesting geeks you’ll ever meet.

The unique PanelPicker process peer voting means that you need a really punchy title and great description for your presentation, in addition to – DUH! – knowing what the heck you’re talking about.

Proposal deadline: Friday, July 20, 2012.

**  140 Characters Conference/State of NOW Small Town in Hutchinson, Kansas on November 8, 2012. This event is a series of short presentations (no slides – yay!) on how the social web intersects with small towns and rural areas.

Proposal deadline: Friday, July 20, 2012.

Will I see you there?

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Those who want to start learning about social media and online communications may be more comfortable jumping in with some help from books rather than blog posts, web-based tutorials or even simple video.

If you’re new to all this, having things bounded within book covers is less overwhelming than being told to “go play on Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/Whatever and figure it out.”

After an interesting conversation about this topic with a few tourism geek friends (don’t miss the next SoMeT / Social Media Tourism Symposium if that sounds like your kind of posse) here is a list of books to consider:

Note: the links to the books below are Amazon.com affiliate links – I get a small commission from Amazon if you purchase the book through that link. Here is why disclosing affiliate links is important. If you don’t want to use those links, then please consider ordering from your local independent bookstore or through the excellent site IndieBound.

1) One of the originals – “Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers“ by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, an early but still relevant book on business blogging.

2) “Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust“ by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith.

3)  ”Groundswell, Expanded and Revised Edition: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies” by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff (hat tip to Katie Cook from the Austin CVB for this one.)

4) “The New Rules of Marketing & PR: How to Use Social Media, Online Video, Mobile Applications, Blogs, News Releases, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly” by David Meerman Scott. Good broad-brush overview.

5) For those who don’t mind carrying curse words around, and can’t stand BS – “No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing” by Jason Falls and Erik Deckers.

6) “Social Media Marketing For Dummies” by Shiv Singh and Stephanie Diamond. Does what it says on the package.

7)  ”The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter and More Social” by Jay Baer and Amber Naslund (hat tip again to Austin CVB’s Katie Cook for the recommendation.)

8)  ”Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business (New Rules Social Media Series)” by Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman.

It may seem odd to learn from static books when social media changes so quickly, but a lot of the basic social culture and etiquette has not changed since way back in the days of online forums, such as….

Share honestly, thoughtfully, publicly and quickly. Be helpful. Don’t get the big head. Stand up for yourself when needed. Say “thank you” publicly when someone does something nice, and “I’m sorry” publicly when you mess up. Remember that the entire world is listening, 24/7, and the web is searchable and archivable, forever.

The rest is just details.

Did I leave out any of your favorite social media books that are good for beginners? Tell us down in the comments!

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Building our Tourism Currents social media training business has NOT been easy.

To launch in 2009 in the teeth of a recession was, ah, character-building, but seeing our logo up there as an official sponsor of the TBEX (Travel Blog Exchange) travel blogging conference made our new partner Leslie McLellan and me grin like crazy.

Sure, it’s one of the smaller sponsor logos, but it’s huge for our 3-woman operation….our name in vinyl!

More details to follow, but looks like we’re going to bring our NMX New Media Expo/BlogWorld tourism track to the TBEX event very soon.

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In one of those great moments when an online acquaintance suddenly appears in front of you offline, I was thrilled last week to meet the person who sent me this bit of the Berlin Wall.

It was part of a promotion for Visit Berlin a few years ago; if you sent a Twitter DM (Direct Message) with your address, they’d mail you a little piece of history.

At the TBEX travel blogging conference this month in Colorado, I was chatting with a nice woman in the breakfast line when she realized that I was one of the people she’d sent the Wall item to….she was Kirsten Schmidt with Visit Berlin.

We both squealed like schoolgirls!

Online relationships don’t replace offline ones –  they enhance them.

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I’m getting cranky about how some folks misuse the acronym ROI (Return on Investment) particularly with regard to the ROI of social media and bloggers.

ROI is a mathematical formula, with results usually expressed as a percentage.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Here it is in its simplest form:

(Return – Investment)
________________
Investment

You cannot determine ROI until you have data for the Return (results) part of the equation, and you must also accurately track the many things that go into your Investment. There’s money, but there’s also time, number of staff members required, etc.

To measure the ROI of, say, a blogger outreach program, you must have:

1) Predetermined goals for your investment of time, money and effort, and….

2) Predetermined metrics (KPIs or Key Performance Indicators) that you’re going to use to measure whether or not you are reaching those goals.

If you do not have all that, then any tossed-off mention of “ROI” is, well, mostly horse manure (see illustrative image above in case there’s any confusion or misunderstanding.)

This is lazy business thinking, and it’s also often a smoke screen for not setting sensible, clear goals ahead of social media efforts, and then digging through the data without twisting it to make it say what you’d like it to say.

ROI = “Really Outrageously Ignorant”

It’s also a way for some who do not understand the social web to sound like they’re making tough, practical business decisions when in fact they don’t know much about this new online and mobile world of ours, but are loathe to let anyone know of their ignorance.

When someone asks me an unfocused question like, “What’s the ROI of one of your travel blog posts?” I immediately know that they do not know what the hell they’re talking about.

If instead, for example, you tell me that you want the content from a blogger fam tour or press trip to your destination to:

—->>  Achieve a goal of increased interest in your destination, measured by….

—->>  KPI #1 of “X” amount of increased traffic (over a previously measured baseline) to a specific website landing page that you’ve set up with analytics beforehand and told the bloggers the URL, and ….

—->>  KPI #2 of “X” amount of conversions from that landing page traffic; conversions defined as, say, downloads of your tourism brochure or signups for your email newsletter….

THEN we can talk sensibly and accurately about the ROI of my blog posts and other online publishing, and whether bloggers are worth your time and effort.

How are you handling the often-thorny ROI issue? Let’s talk in the comments below!

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After a whirlwind week in Manhattan at the East Coast version of New Media Expo/NMX presented by BlogWorld (NMX is the new name for BlogWorld & New Media Expo) here are a few takeaways that you may find useful:

** From our Tourism Currents and Culinary Media Network panel about press trips and fam (familiarization) tours — destinations are opening up to bringing bloggers, podcasters and other online publishers on press trips, but there are still lots of questions about how to connect with bloggers and what makes us different from print-only writers.

We told the audience to start with their own local tourism organizations, that they may need to educate those people about online content and not to worry if they never thought of themselves as a “travel blogger” – every niche blogger/podcaster can find a destination that’s a good fit….food, birding, microbrewing, parenting, crafting….whatever an online publisher’s expertise, there’s a destination that fits.

The gap that needs to be filled is educating DMOs (destination marketing organizations) about how to work with online publishers – including the local bloggers right under their noses – and educating the online publishers that DMOs and CVBs (Convention and Visitors Bureaus) exist and are a possible content partner.

** From Chris Penn’s solo presentation on social ROI and measurement — be able to define, “What are the most valuable actions that someone could take when they come to my site?” Then, define your desired outcomes and measure via analytics whether people are actually doing those things. If they aren’t, adjust.

I liked Chris’ advice to “create routines around your practices;” a daily recipe for content across all channels, and consider how they all tie together and support each other.

Here’s a direct link to his presentation on SlideShare: Your Digital Marketing ROI

** Speaker advice from me after one egregious session: Not knowing your audience annoys everyone.  Filling the first part of your presentation with slides about “why social media is important and awesome” is a waste when you’re speaking at Blog – doggone – WORLD.

Hey, we GOT it already.

Also, when you keep saying “leverage influencers” to an audience of influencers, we want to smack you. We’re humans, not just objects of your crowbar “leveraging” initiatives.

** Expo floor advice from me: Here’s a hipster move that makes you look like a schmuck….the giveaway t-shirts from France-based blogging platform Overblog that said, “I’m on @Overblog, Bitch!”

Really.

Apparently it’s based on the “I’m CEO, bitch!” that was on one of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s early business cards. Yep, I’m always recommending Zuckerberg as the essence of maturity and social savvy.

As a woman, I do wonder why some think it’s cute to say, “bitch.”  Why is it never “bastard?” Or “dickhead?” Or even nonsexist “asshole?”

Eye roll. Moving on….

** I truly enjoyed Jay Baer’s session on 12 things you must do if you are serious about blogging, especially his self-deprecating opening line that “It’s actually scary to speak about blogging at BlogWorld” because the room is full of people who really know the topic.

I’ve embedded his slide deck below, but here are my favorites:

Number One: Be Patient. He said, “It was exactly 3 years before I made my first nickel” directly from his blog (it was from a sponsorship.) Also, “You can’t eat pageviews” so don’t get so obsessed about traffic numbers. You want the RIGHT traffic.

Number Two: Be Specific. He said, “You have to be somebody’s favorite blog” and “Say to yourself, ‘This is the blog for ______.” Know what you are about, and “everything” isn’t the answer very often.

For people who worry about giving away their “secret sauce” on a blog: “Giving someone a list of ingredients doesn’t make him/her a chef.”

Number Ten: Keep Score. Know what you want from your blog, and measure the data/analytics to ensure you’re getting there. If not, change what you’re doing.

He said, “There is no shortage of data points, but only some of them matter….even if you don’t sell directly online, there are behaviors that matter to your business/organization. Measure them.” For a destination marketing example, measure the number of visits to your newsletter landing page and the number of conversions, in addition to how people find that page.

Direct link to Jay’s presentation if you can’t see the slides below: http://www.slideshare.net/jaybaer/12-imperative-must-dos-for-the-serious-blogger

Summary of the Wrap-up

Finally:  I’ve known NMX BlogWorld co-founder Rick Calvert a long time. He’s a stand-up guy who rolls up his sleeves and answers questions in Facebook Groups, blog posts, on Twitter and in person.

He’s also a visionary who is pushing social communications into the future.  Even better, his organization now owns the TBEX travel blogging events worldwide, so I get to be around him even more.

Get to know Rick, and get yourself to an NMX BlogWorld event as soon as you can.

The next NMX?  January 6 – 8, 2013 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

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An interview in the business section of my local paper featured strategist Peter Kim discussing business and social media.

Nothing in it was particularly new or striking unless, frankly, one has not been paying attention to recent seismic shifts in communications, but the final Q and A bothered me….

Q from the reporter: Does Austin have potential to become a social media hub?

A from Mr. Kim: Austin businesses were definitely early pioneers in the social space. Bazaarvoice and Pluck were helping companies connect with online users before the phrase “social media” was in vogue. But far and away, Austin’s most powerful global door opener is SXSW Interactive. Around the world, that’s one of the first things people mention when they find out I’m from Austin. We could easily leverage that recognition and our local talent to become the social media capital of the world.

In my view, no one location should endeavor to be “social media capital of the world.”

That’s like saying you want to be the Email Capital of the World.

The Telephone Capital of the World  (smart words from Liz Strauss on social business, “In any sentence that uses the term ‘social media,’ you should be able take out that term and replace it with ‘telephone,’ and the sentence should still make sense.”)

The Pen Capital of the World….actually that used to be Birmingham in the UK….here’s the Pen Room Museum about it….Squirrel!!

ANYWAY.

Social communication is far more than tools like Twitter, Facebook or blogs;  it is also a culture and a set of expectations.

Open. Public. Full of comment boxes. Sharing. Visual through images and video. Worldwide. Not particularly interested in hierarchy. Collaborative. Willing to take public feedback even when it is negative. Responsive. Linking. Connecting. Listening. Increasingly mobile. Fast.

It is a way of thinking and a way of communicating, and it is rapidly becoming the norm. If it is not your town’s norm right now, it will be.

Every town. Everywhere.

That – rather than the latest Facebook design change or other twaddle – is what people need to come to grips with and understand and prepare for, and they need to do it sooner rather than later.

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It’s been a few weeks since the inaugural tourism bloggers conference in Malaysia (MITBCA 2012), but now that I’ve stopped running around the globe for a few days, here are some takeaway thoughts:

**  The Minister of Tourism for Malaysia, YB Dato’ Sri Dr Ng Yen Yen, can rattle off statistics about the social media spend by her neighboring countries, and she’s quite comfortable discussing how Facebook, Twitter and blogs can help tourism in Malaysia. Leadership starts at the top, and she made the conference happen (even hand-selected some speakers, I’ve heard. Glad I made the cut!) A CVB, DMO or Tourist Board should not have to drag the boss along to the future of communications; I loved being someplace where it was quite the opposite.

**  The future of CVB and DMO staffs, in many cases, are the students who are currently taking college courses in tourism, recreation and hospitality. At MITBCA, the Minister herself insisted that local tourism students attend, plus as many of her own staff members as she could spare.  Just because students may use social media for personal communication does not mean that they understand how to use the same tools for destination marketing with a worldwide reach.

**  The opportunity to connect and develop friendships with fellow bloggers from Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Australia and more was simply priceless.  I’m deeply grateful to have had the opportunity.

**  My Day Two keynote talked about “regular folks” who understood the power of social media early on, and have raised the profile of their town/country by using it in a personable way. Folks like Cody Heitschmidt in Hutchinson, Kansas, Liza Pierce in Maui, Hawaii, Doug Anweiler with the Authentic Seacoast Resorts in Nova Scotia, Canada, and the #ScotlandHour chat on Twitter. One of the highlights of that session was when both Cody and Doug jumped into the #MITBCA2012 hashtag during and after my presentation, and responded to the attendees who were tweeting that I was talking about them.  I did not expect such a quick response (Liza chimed in later from Maui because of the time difference) but it made a HUGE impression on the conference that those two guys were paying attention and were happy to converse with everyone.

**  I’m just me, no big deal, but at this event I was an “international expert.” I mean, I know some stuff, but I did feel a little odd when people lined up to speak to me. Finally I decided to quit feeling awkward about the hoopla, answer every question as best I could, and humbly accept that I’d become something of a guide and mentor to a few lovely people.

**  If I’m going to do more speaking at international events (and I’d love to!) I’d better figure out how to get around jet lag a little better. Of my two keynote presentations, I felt that the first one was weaker than the second because I was in a bit of a fog and a couple of times I caught myself not moving very logically from one point to another. Note to self: do extra rehearsals when you know that jet lag will hit. I literally MUST be able to “do the speech in my sleep.”

Here are some of the wrap-up blog posts by my fellow speakers and attendees; I do recommend that you take a look at a few, because they provide some wonderful additional perspective on this special conference:

—>>  From Indian travel blogger and conference speaker Anuradha Goyal, on the event as a Malaysia Marvel

—>>  From TravelBlog founder, adventurer and event sponsor Ali Watters, on his ….first big conference after “10 years of hiding on islands or mountain tops”

—>>  From a local tour guide: MITBCA coverage and impressions by the owner of Alan’s Malaysia Tours & Travel

—>>  From speaker Shane Dallas, “The Travel Camel,” his delightful Confessions of a Briefly Famous Travel Blogger

—>>  From attendee Jessica Tan, “The JessiCat”, full coverage plus photos of the MITBCA Blog Awards and evening gala event

—>>  Attendee Emila Yusof found the conference an eye-opener

—>>  Speaker Nisha Jha from India thoroughly enjoyed her MITBCA experience

—>>  Thoughts from one of the blogging award winners on MITBCA

—>>  I had fun meeting one of the bloggers who had commented on my original announcement post, Zahari Unczee who wrote about the conference on his ….as I travel blog

—>>  (Addition)  Media Monitors/Asia had a Global Connections post about MITBCA

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There’s a lot of buzz about the infographic to the left that shows many of the different social media marketing-related tools and services that have sprung up in the last few years.

Note:  it is missing Pinterest and Foodspotting, and possibly others.

Some say that the image demonstrates how “insane” and “ludicrously complex” it is to be a marketer these days.

I say that it’s not much different from the horrified squawking we heard when Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas created the original big, scary social media Conversation Prism infographic in August 2008.

To see the big picture in all this, stick with the forest and not the trees. That infographic is a bunch of trees.

Focus on the Fundamentals

Yes, there are a lot more moving parts in the communications world today beyond print, TV and radio, but that does not change the fundamental questions and actions for destination marketing or ANY sort of marketing, which are….

“Where is my market spending its time, and how are they making decisions about travel [or whatever is your focus]?” and then making sure you are both present where they are, and visible as an option in their decision-making process.

That is not new, but the speed with which you must flex to emerging communications platforms is new; the rapid growth of Pinterest and social mobile photography sharing like Instagram and Foodspotting are cases in point.

Don’t let new toys distract you from keeping your eye on the ball, however.

I hardly spend any time on Google+, for example, (in fact I think Google+ will fail) because my market is not there. Further, Google has a crummy track record with social, and their corporate DNA hasn’t changed since Buzz, Wave, Sidewiki, Knol, etc. all bombed.

What IS Google good at? Search.

I’ve acknowledged that current reality by thoroughly filling out both personal and business profiles on G+ purely for SEO purposes, and occasionally I post something on G+ just for drill. I will not let myself get sidetracked fiddling with something that is useless to my work.

Social Media Complexity & the ROI Bugaboo

Another response I heard about the graphic: “This shows why ROI is hard to prove.” Hmmm, not really.

The standard ROI mathematical formula has not changed; it is still Investment Gains minus Cost of Investment, divided by Cost of Investment.

Whether you use one of the infographic’s tools or all of them, you cannot measure Gains – your investment bringing positive results – or decide whether those results are worth the cost you must pay unless you first establish goals to achieve, and then choose metrics/KPIs to track to see if you’re achieving those goals.

The need to have goals, and metrics to measure progress toward goals, is not changed by some scary-looking pile of social media tools and platforms.

And no;  raw numbers of Facebook Page or Twitter followers do not prove anything except perhaps the ROI of an elementary school education – we can successfully count!  :)

Sorry, But Suck It Up

It is our J-O-B job to stay up to speed in our profession.  To do that for social media, find scouts and mentors who can alert you to potentially important developments, track of-the-moment info via conference and chat Twitter hashtags and go where the geeks are both online and offline to keep up.

If you looked at the infographic above and hardly recognized any of the services, that means you need a better way to stay plugged in to social communications developments, because there aren’t many surprises up there.

Sorry to sound harsh, but there it is.

None of us know everything….it’s the ones who know what they don’t know, and then hustle to intelligently keep filling those knowledge gaps, who will succeed in our complex world.

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Each spring I do a “snapshot in time” webinar for the AWC (Association for Women in Communications – I’m on the AWC National Board of Directors) about technology trends for communicators. It also includes a quick wrap-up of trends I noticed at that year’s South by Southwest Interactive tech conference.

Key items for 2012 include the power of images (social photography like Pinterest, Instagram and Foodspotting,) social business, integrating social media, data/measurement/ROI and three of the Interactive Award winners who are doing interesting things.

Look for the hyperlinks within many of the slides, to take you to some of the items mentioned.

Here is the direct link to my tech trends 2012 slide deck on SlideShare, and I’ve embedded the webinar slides below as well.

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