Sheila's Guide To The Good Stuff

We are excited to announce that doors are now open for another round of online classes at Tourism Currents.

There are usually three problems with most social media training:

• It is too basic and generic
• It is too advanced and nerdy
• ….or it is well-balanced, but not tailored to a specific industry

Tourism Currents is different. Here are more details about why we get straight to the heart of real tourism results.

My co-founder Becky McCray and I run a unique, high-energy learning community that is hyper-focused on teaching tourism and hospitality industry professionals how to use that big pile of social media tools (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, etc.) to more effectively tell the stories of their destinations and attractions.

We get specific about topics like how to use Twitter for fall foliage reports, how to use Facebook to promote your festival and what’s important for a successful blogger press trip/fam tour.

Compelling stories convince people to visit your town. The social Web is the ideal place to tell those stories (it’s made for the tourism little guy, too) and it connects with others who love and support you….we call them your “online champions network.”

Our courses help you make sense of it all.

They are organized to provide basic social media overview information to those who need it (through a quick Intro Workshop or a three-part All the Basics course) or more advanced how-to specifics to those who are ready for it through the three-part Results Multipliers class (which dives deep into unique destination marketing topics like mobile-friendly tours.)

If you are geared up to really make things happen for the long haul, the Tourism Currents six month Full Course combines the Basic and Multipliers, then throws in the Intro Workshop as a bonus.

Every course is a combination of multi-part lessons, exclusive videos with experts and a wrap-up printable checklist, plus there’s a member forum for detailed discussions.

We hope you’ll join us soon at Tourism Currents!

My Tourism Currents co-founder Becky McCray and I decided last month to make our monthly newsletter fully available for anyone to view on our website, without a login (although we still take signups for you to get it first, via email.)

We’re pretty proud of our work and thought you’d like a quick update on the last two issues:

• April 2010 – LinkedIn for tourism – Most everyone is on it, but many wonder how to really use it….we talked about the LinkedIn social networking site and how it can help you for tourism and destination marketing. Includes some Twitter hashtag tips, travel writer/blogger info and our recent Tech in Twenty interview about Tourism Currents.

• May 2010 – Social media and tech conferences for tourism pros - What is one of the best ways to figure out tech and social media? Go OFFline to attend a tech or social media conference.  We give concrete, detailed suggestions for the most useful events to attend in order to learn plenty of things that can help with destination marketing (to say nothing of some pretty amazing networking and brand-building for your town, region, city or attraction.)  We also included some tips to amp up your LinkedIn profile, as a follow-up to April’s newsletter.

We are reopening our online classes later this month (multi-part lessons, videos, a forum, live Q&A with us – all about social media and tech for tourism.)

I’ll put up a post here the minute we’re open, or you can get on our Early Bird list. Thanks!

The Austin American-Statesman launched the Texas Social Media Awards last year, and I’m humbled to tell you that the 2010 award winners were just announced and I’m one of the awardees.

Thanks very much to the judges on the Statesman staff and to those who supported my nomination.

It is truly an honor to be recognized in such a constantly-changing space and with so many other fine people.

From the paper’s article about the Awards:

“In the year since the awards were first held, social media sites increasingly have become a part of daily life. ‘We’ve gone from people who were early adopters and having fun with the technology to people using it for business and nonprofits in ways I’ve never even thought of before,’ says American-Statesman social media editor Robert Quigley.”

I sincerely hope that my work in the social Web is helpful to the tourism and travel communities.

Take a gander at the list of awardees to appreciate the variety of folks, and allow me to give a special shout-out to a few of them….

1. Michelle Greer – last year’s overall winner and one of this year’s judges. A tireless advocate of using tech for worthy causes and an expert on cloud computing with Rackspace.
2. Jennifer Navarrete – A good friend and occasional business colleague, Jennifer is the driving force behind much of San Antonio’s tech scene, plus she’s a dynamite podcaster at (among other shows) Tech in Twenty.
3. Dara Quackenbush – Dara is a PR professor at Texas State, and I love watching how she brings her students into modern PR, done right. Here’s her class blog where they practice what they learn.
4. Jenn Dearing Davis and Hayes Davis – They tweet and tell us about good deals, on CheapTweet. They appreciate all of us on a budget. They are super-nice. Drawbacks = none.
5. Mando Rayo – He investigates the local taco scene, then blogs about it on Taco Journalism.  He told me that my best local taco joint is Juarez Mexican Bakery, and when Mando tells me where to go, I go. I eat. I’m happy.
6. Hugh MacLeod – He draws quirky cartoons at Gaping Void. He does marketing for a South African winery from his location in Alpine, Texas; hey, it’s the Web so it makes sense to me.

I’m thrilled to be in such company, and thanks again for your support.

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.)

Although my business partner Becky McCray and I were rather hammered by an ambitious schedule of conferences and workshops across the country during October, the good news is that we’ve gathered tons of useful information and insights for the lessons, videos and newsletter that we offer our online learning community at Tourism Currents.

The next Lesson, “How to Listen Online,” is being posted as we speak and will be fully available to paid members by Friday, November 6.

This month, we’re excited to include some very helpful video interviews with Ann Peavey, who tweets for Seattle Tourism as @SeattleMaven.  I shot the video while in Seattle during the Association for Women in Communications (AWC) conference (salmon taco or awesome coffee, anyone?) and can’t wait to share it with you. Ann is a real pro and a dynamite, fun person; you’ll love seeing how she’s mastered Twitter to show off her city!

The bottom line is this – once we finish editing and uploading all of this terrific content,  we are going to close the doors to further paid Tourism Currents members until the next class cycle in Spring 2010.

We’ll still accept more free newsletter-level members, but anyone who wants access to all of our lessons and videos will have to wait until the next class.

Our reason?

We said at our launch in September that we want to keep class sizes manageable, and we want to move our members through the content as a group so that no one feels left behind or overwhelmed by having to play catch-up.

Those who are already paid members are all set and don’t need to do anything else except to continue learning useful social media tips for their destination marketing.

New sign-ups and those who are already at the free newsletter level have until THIS FRIDAY, November 6, to upgrade to our paid Just the Basics level ($45/month for 6 months) or our Regular level ($75/month for 6 months) so that you can really dive into all of our training materials.

We think that these are exceptionally reasonable prices for this kind of detailed, tourism-specific learning material; in fact, we know you can’t beat it anywhere else, because we’ve snooped around to look.  :)

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

• Convention and Visitor’s Bureaus (CVBs)
• Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs)
• Main Street, historic preservation and heritage trail organizations
• Parks, nature preserves, botanical gardens and other nature/outdoors-related attractions
• 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
• Historic highways and scenic byways
• State and city governments who do marketing and outreach related to tourism

Please do consider joining us to start learning – this stuff moves fast and frankly, your tourism organization can’t afford to dawdle. Don’t wait until Spring 2010 let us help you become social media savvy!

Interested?  Sign up here or go here to read more and see if Tourism Currents is right for you.

Thanks for your support.

Such a deal we have for you….

My business partner Becky McCray and I are very proud of the content we’ve pulled together on our Tourism Currents membership site – tons of resources in our first, introductory lesson focused on social media for tourism professionals.

However, only our paid members can see most of it  –  access to our monthly Newsletter and the option to join our Flickr Group Pool are free with sign-up, but everything else is reserved for paying members.

While we think that our insights are well worth US$45 or US$75 a month (at the two least expensive membership levels) for such detailed, specific content spread over six months of lessons, we understand that budgets are tight and people want to ensure that they’ll get their money’s worth for their investment.

So, we decided to throw open the doors, lift the pay firewall starting right NOW (just after 11:45 CST on Tuesday, September 29) and as long as you register for the free Newsletter-level membership, you’ll have access to ALL of our content, including the stuff you’d normally pay for, until 12 midnight on Friday, October 2.

Here’s how you get in:

Right now, you’ll see the full Introductory lesson, with three huge text lessons, three video interviews, tons of examples specifically for tourism and extras in the Resources section….without paying a cent!

But wait, there’s more. A blender! Ginsu Knives!

Sorry, not really, but as another bonus during the Open House, you can also upgrade to a Regular membership for the Just the Basics price.

Here is what you get at the Regular level, normally $75 per month:

• Access (along with other members) to a monthly one-hour live video Q&A/round table discussion with Becky and me,  concentrating on the lesson topic for the month. You want to “pick our brain?” Here ya go!
• Access to all lessons – a new one each month – including video interviews and takeaways/checklists.
• Access to the Tourism Currents Member Forum.
• Monthly newsletter and access to full newsletter archives.

During the Open House only, you’ll get this for US$45 per month instead of US$75 per month.

Simply register at the paid “Just the Basics” level during the Open House timeframe, and we’ll manually upgrade you to “Regular” level on our site’s back end.  (Almost as nerdy as it sounds.)

This offer is strictly limited, and ends midnight CST on Friday, October 2, 2009. Period. Finito.

We think we have good stuff. We want you to check it out. It’s that simple.

Thanks very much for your interest and support.

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.)