Sheila's Guide To The Good Stuff

What can city people learn from rural folks?

If my own experience is any indication – a TON.

Thanks to a diverse social network that includes interesting people in small towns and rural areas, I’ve learned so much over the last few years about the hopes, dreams, troubles and blissful moments of people who live in what I used to call “out in the middle of nowhere.”

They’re more tech-savvy than you’d think …. I recently found an AgChat Foundation Facebook discussion about the hot new Pinterest social sharing service and how farmers might use it for “agvocacy.”

You know that ongoing discussion about getting broadband internet access out into rural areas? It sure seems similar to efforts in the 1930′s to get electricity and telephone service out to less-populated places, and the same objections are being raised; it’s too expensive, there aren’t enough people to justify it, it’s a “luxury” they don’t really need, etc.  I never really thought about this problem until I got to know some small town geeks.

At last fall’s 140 Characters/State of NOW Small Town communications conference in Hutchinson, Kansas, I was honored to be chosen as one of the speakers, and I talked about this personal awakening.

There were some video problems at first, so all I have for you is the audio recording, but it’s only about 10 minutes and I talk fast.

Here’s the direct link to the audio file if you can’t see the embed box below:  http://blip.tv/140confevents/140conf-smalltown-2011-sheila-scarborough-city-kid-among-the-cattle-5639673 

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Fourth and final post in a series for the get-revved-up week between Christmas and New Year’s.

The right question is not, “How do we get more Twitter followers?” or “How do we get more Like-ers/fans on Facebook?”

The right question is, “What do we want to DO with our followers and fans?”

Counting heads is fun – we’re all guilty of it, including me – but unless those people are helping you achieve stated objective(s) for your organization or business, you’re fooling yourself that anything is accomplished by totting up raw numbers.

Rev-up recommendation for you:

**  As you gather more supporters in 2012, have plans for what you want to do for them, and what they could do for you.

—->>  On your blog – do you want readers to sign up to get your posts by email or RSS?  Take a hard look at whether you have made that signup process as simple as possible, including on a mobile device.

—->>  It’s Facebook Page 101:   make sure that people can sign up for your email newsletter right there on your Page.  On our Tourism Currents Facebook Page, we use a tab and a short signup form via our MailChimp email service.

Are you trying to build your own list, or are you busy building Mark Zuckerberg’s list?  Use Facebook for your own business success!

—->>  On Twitter, periodically let followers know how to sign up for your email updates.  Note: Send them directly to your signup page – don’t dump them onto your homepage and hope they find it.

—->>  What are you doing with your email newsletter list?  What’s your point to cranking it out? WHY should people open up their already-overloaded IN boxes to you?  Ask yourself those tough questions….often.

Back to numbers:  if you suddenly picked up 1000 more fans or followers, what would you DO with them that you couldn’t do already, right now?

My own 2012 plan for the fans and followers of this blog

Since I’m asking you about your plans for your platforms, here are mine for Sheila’s Guide:

1)  Lead the tourism industry away from a somewhat silo’d focus on social media, and toward a more general incorporation of social communications as simply “how we do things.”  It’s like email – nobody has an Email Department, do they?  It’s time for social media to stop being new or special.

2)  Support the growth of my Tourism Currents business with Becky McCray.  We’ve set a performance goal that we’ve agreed to meet by our 3rd anniversary in business (September 2012) or we’re going to radically overhaul what we offer.

3)  Support my work as a professional speaker on tourism and social media.

4)  Support the marketing of my upcoming book, The Elastic Waist Entrepreneur.

Thanks so much for your support, and hope to see many more of you in person in 2012.

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It can be difficult to keep up with current trends in tourism, hospitality, travel and technology….unless, of course, sleep is optional for you.

For the rest of us mere mortals, fast-paced Twitter chats are invaluable.  They are some of THE most useful hours I spend online researching industry happenings and discussions.  You’ll get help from peers and network with fellow professionals around the world (here are 9 tips for following hashtags.)

I offer my own list of resources below that I use for speaking and Tourism Currents online training.

I’d love to hear more ideas from you down in the comments.

If you follow no other chat….

New chats pop up all the time – some Scotland-based tourism businesses just launched the #ScotlandHour travel chat, for example – but for tried and true value, don’t miss #tourismchat.

It’s usually biweekly, at 2 pm CST on Thursdays. Check the #tourismchat Facebook Page for dates and topics.

Chat co-founder Anne Hornyak summarizes a #tourismchat session here, if you want a sense of how it works.

Other good tourism chats

Keep an eye out for the hashtags for conferences like ESTO, #SoMeT (this hashtag is active year-round,) PRSA Travel, eTourismSummit and the annual state/province Governor’s conferences.

The conference calendar on DMOPro can help you keep up with these.

Get some hybrid vigor

Following non-tourism hashtags ensures that I don’t get stuck in a stale echo chamber listening to the same people over and over. Mixing it up fosters what my Tourism Currents business partner Becky McCray calls “the hybrid vigor of ideas.”

Some of these chats include:

**  Crazy-fast #blogchat on Sunday nights, 8 pm CST.

**  Tech conference hashtags like #BWEchat (year-round for BlogWorld and New Media Expo East and West)  #SXSWi (mostly active January through March for South by Southwest Interactive) and #SOBCon (year-round for the SOBCon business blogging conferences.)

**  Since search engines are so integral to online activities, I keep an eye on hashtags for Search Marketing Expo / #SMX events worldwide, especially #SMXEast and #SMXWest.

**  I’m not a gadget person, but the annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona / #MWC12 for 2012 and the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) / #CES in Las Vegas are worth a look, if only to find links to good event round-up blog posts towards the end.

How to keep track of all this chatter

You can follow and participate in chats with regular web-based Twitter, but I prefer a dashboard to keep things sorted. I use columns in TweetDeck for each hashtag, adding and removing as events come and go.

Others are fans of HootSuite;  since it’s cloud-based you can get around any IT download restrictions in your office, and multi-person team accounts seem to like it.

When the chat is actually in progress, I log into TweetChat to keep up with the conversation flow and add the hashtag to my tweets automatically.

Which chats or tools am I forgetting? Let us know in the comments….

Still a bit unsure of the value?  Here’s 60 seconds with Beth Conway from the St. Joseph, Missouri CVB on how she uses Twitter (direct link to the video on YouTube if you can’t see the embed box below.)

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This is a combined post written with Troy Thompson of Travel2Dot0, my co-presenter at the excellent, wide-ranging eTourism Summit.

We spoke together about blogger outreach at the conference and here are a few of our follow-up thoughts….

Troy, on things to consider before working with a blogger

As part of my eTourism Summit schedule, one fateful session had me teamed with the America’s Blogger, Sheila Scarborough [ note from me - Troy says that this is like America's Team, but that I don't throw interceptions.  ] Never one to pass up an opportunity to express myself, nor is Sheila, we decided to take a couple of themes and thoughts from our presentation and through the magic of the internets, turn them into an article.

Sheila is covering relationships, I am covering evaluation. Two posts for the price of one.

How To: Evaluate and Select Bloggers

It was a popular question during our recent eTourism Summit presentation: How do I evaluate bloggers? Or, more specifically, how can I tell the good bloggers from the freeloaders?

An excellent question and one that everyone in the tourism space will eventually deal with. While the correct answer is based upon your needs and goals (sorry), I do have a few tips on how to evaluate and select the right blogger. Used in conjunction with other sources these tips should provide the foundation for your own blogger evaluation algorithm.

Google Analytics

Yeah, numbers. Start here. The numbers will not tell you a whole lot. Frankly, audience size should not be a top priority…quality over quantity, right?…but asking for Google Analytics will provide two clues about the blogger. 1) Are they willing to share statistics. And 2) do they have statistics. If the answer for either question is no, then you can move this candidate to the bottom of your list.

Klout

Ah, Klout. Half of you just cursed out loud, while the rest of you are frantically Googling the word Klout. The social ranking system has strong supporters and loud detractors, but it does provide another piece of your blogger evaluation puzzle. Check the score. Again, this is just a basic test. Klout of 5? Red flag. Klout of 54, continue the evaluation investigation.

Writing Style

Take the time to read the writer’s work, and not just the most recent post. The first post, the most popular most, a random post. Understand their perspective, writing style and technique. Does it fit with your brand, goals or campaign? Does the blogger tell a complete story. Do they use images, video and other content to complete the narrative. Is it a good story? Check, check, check…okay, let’s keep moving.

Being Social

Yes, we already looked at the Klout score, but that is not the end of the social investigation. Klout can be fooled. Look on the blog; are social network icons present? Are they active on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.? Do they promote their writing via these channels? Are they actively communicating…and, are readers communicating back? Are there comments on the blog posts? Does the blogger respond? How social are they? You want someone who will carry your message and story beyond a single web page. You are hiring a digital advocate for your brand. The question is, are they an advocate?

Network

Going a step beyond just being social, you need to know who they are social with. A bit selfish on your part, but hey, a comp [complimentary hotel] room is a comp room. Is the blogger talking with other bloggers? Are those bloggers or writers potential connections for another story about your destination? What about building their network. Is the blogger active in Twitter chats or Facebook groups? What about on Disqus? Is there an opportunity to not only benefit from the direct network of this blogger, but their indirect network as well? Yes. Perfect. Comp ‘em that room.

While our five tips are a great start, they are just that, a start. Your goals are likely different from a retail store, internet start-up or another destination and therefore your evaluation criteria should be different as well.

But, as long as you are researching against goals…and not looking for a quick Klout rating…the right blogger is just a tweet away.

Me, on growing a blogger network, or Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty

I can’t claim credit for the “dig your well” idea – it’s the title of a book by Harvey Mackay – but when it comes to building a network of online connections and resources, it is definitely true.

(Head over to Troy’s blog to read my unicorn blogger advice….)

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Create once, use many times.

That’s the key to creating more content in less time, but here is what you must also do….think like a multi-platform, multimedia online publisher.

Here’s an example:

This morning, I was trying to get some itinerary ideas for an upcoming road trip in a state where I don’t have a lot of recent travel experience.

I go to the state tourism website, and there’s gobs of great stuff on there, including a section called Trails that should have given me what I wanted – highlighted places thematically grouped together, and then laid out on a map so I can visualize driving around to them.

Instead, when I drilled down, all I got was what I get way too often from tourism websites:  an alphabetical list of places.

Do you know how discouraging it is to see a list starting with “A” places – Aardvark Restaurant, Al’s Chicken Wings, etc. – and look at the bottom of the website and see that you’re on Page 1 of 10 of these listings?

Forget it.

So, without naming the site in question, I griped a bit from my personal account on Twitter. Theresa Overby from the Baton Rouge, Louisiana CVB (Convention and Visitors Bureau) saw my tweet and began asking me usability questions, in light of an upcoming re-do of their website.

How Did a Twitter Discussion Become Content?

We went back and forth, exchanging good ideas, and then I began to think like a publisher….”Where else online would this info be useful to people?”

In 30-40 minutes, I had posted:

1) On the Tourism Currents Twitter account, of course, where we talk about social media and tourism. I went to Twitter’s search engine, gathered the relevant tweets together in a search string, and captured the conversation. Then I took that link and tweeted it on Tourism Currents‘ stream.

2)  On Facebook. Since Facebook and Twitter people are their own communities and you can’t assume people are in both places, I then took the same link and published it as a status update on the Tourism Currents Facebook Page, making sure that I tagged the Visit Baton Rouge Facebook Page in the update, of course.

3)  In the blog post you’re reading right now, with the addition of a screenshot graphic edited in a super-basic way using the Print Screen function, pasting that into Paint and then cropping it the way I wanted it and saving as a JPEG. Boom. Done.

That’s how you get more use out of the content you create, including random Twitter conversations. It’s almost like getting more hours in the day.

That thought process of thinking like an online publisher also happens to be the latest Two Pages of Terrific download available in the Tourism Currents Store, if you want more where that came from (like 9 different ways to use one photo.)

How do you use your content in multiple ways? Let us know in the Comments!

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For those who are not surrounded by like-minded people (whether you’re into chess, growing roses or technology) the world can feel like a lonely place.

“Am I the only one who understands chess problems like Allumwandlung and Maximummer and Zepler doubling?”

“Am I some sort of nutball because I really like deciding between spotted-bloom roses like Cramoisi Picoté and striped ones like Patriot Kordana?”

“No one else in my small town seems to ‘get’ why I care about broadband Internet access, why I blog and what in the world I’m doing on Twitter.”

Fortunately, social web tools like blogs, Twitter, Facebook and the still-relevant forum/BBS make it so much easier than it used to be to find people who share your enthusiasms and interests.  I’m not up to speed on where chess or rose people hang out online, but I can tell you where a bunch of rural and small town technology and social media enthusiasts will be on September 20, 2011.

They’ll be at the 140 Characters Conference Small Town in the gorgeous Fox Theatre in downtown Hutchinson, Kansas.

Uh, where?

Look below:

Right; so if you’re a city kid like me, you’re probably thinking….geesh, look at all that empty space, and those absolutely straight roads going through nothingness, it’s probably flat as a pancake, and I think I recognize the name Wichita for that nearby city….look, did I hear correctly….this is a technology event in the middle of Kansas?

It is, and I give it my City Kid Stamp of Approval.

Not that rural folks need any approval from anyone, and that’s partly the point of this particular event – rural and small town people are geeks and communicators just like urbanites, but it’s a bit harder for them to find one another, learn and socialize when they’re all spread out in less populated areas. This is the first technology-based conference that brings them all together, on their terms but with a global audience, in a cool small town like “Hutch,” with speakers that include farmers, ranchers and small town economic development experts who don’t think a one-stoplight community is a bad idea at all.

After attending the first version of 140 Small Town in 2010, I knew I’d return this year, and I’m honored to be one of many speakers from 17 states on the schedule. My topic is “City Kid Among the Cattle - How Twitter Connects Me to Another World,” wherein I’ll talk about my newfound appreciation, thanks to Twitter, of wide-open spaces, cattle management and farm equipment with mysterious prongy things.

Each speaker only gets one 10-15 minute time slot (better make it snappy!) and no PowerPoint is allowed.  WIN.

Follow the #140conf hashtag on Twitter for info and discussion about all the 140 conferences, including this one, and if you can’t make it in person, Small Town will be livestreamed on UStream.

The best idea, though, is to see it in person: student passes are only $14 and pssst….for non-students/adults, code “friendof140″ gives you a nice, fat discount when you register here.

If you’re a journalist or media person who would like to cover the conference and/or the topic of tech in small towns, here’s the excellent, comprehensive Small Town Media page.

For a quick 90 second overview of the conference, here’s my Tourism Currents business partner Becky McCray (who organizes Small Town along with its original founder Jeff Pulver) on an Oklahoma Horizon TV episode (direct link to video here.)

Hope I meet you in Hutchinson!

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One of the best social networks for professional development is Twitter.

It is not only an extraordinarily fast news grapevine, but with hour-long knowledge tsunamis like #tourismchat you can get a whole lot of helpful information without paying a dime for it or schlepping luggage onto a plane (plus you’ll connect with a lot of smart people.)

Another way to learn from Twitter is to follow conference hashtags.

Using the hashtag in a tweet allows people to follow all tweets about one particular event or topic. Even if you aren’t on Twitter, you can plug in a hashtag on Twitter’s search engine and see what comes up.

Many hashtags start buzzing well before the event (BlogWorld and New Media Expo West in Los Angeles in November – #BWELA – where there’s a tourism track, is already busy.)

Others go year-round, like #SoMeT for the Social Media Tourism Symposium, #TBEX for the Travel Blog Exchange conference and #SOBCon, the business blogging conference.

Some Tips for Hashtag Participation

Here are a few tips for enjoying the wonders of conference hashtags….

1 )  Notice someone tweeting really good stuff? Go follow them; send a quick tweet to say hi, and tell them that you appreciate their efforts. This includes supporting the speakers.

2 )  Notice when someone new comes onto the hashtag. At conferences, many people finally decide to join Twitter or get active on their long-dormant account. Support them by following and saying hello.

Many times these newbies are executive types who don’t yet really know what they’re doing, so cut them plenty of slack, including being patient about them not knowing how to change their default egg avatar.

3 )  Don’t promote your product, service or upcoming event on the hashtag. It’s just tacky. People will see your avatar joining the discussion, and they are perfectly capable of reading your Twitter bio to see what you’re about. If they want to talk business, that’s fine, but take it off the hashtag.

4 )  Don’t be a carnival barker. I’ve noticed more and more vendors at trade shows filling the hashtag with hourly “Come by our booth and win an iPad!” sorts of tweets. This is annoying noise and makes them look desperate. Cut it out, booth babes.

5 )  Be sensitive to services that automatically tweet when you do something. For example, no one cares about seeing your Klout score sent from Klout in the middle of a conference. We’re not that into you.

6 )  Don’t just sit there RT-ing (retweeting) what everyone else is saying. As Troy says in his helpful post about how to tweet at a tourism conference: add context, value and insights.

7 )  Be sensitive to how busy people can be at a conference, trying to keep up with things, and don’t expect real-time replies just because you see them live-tweeting….good tip from Sarah Vela of the awesome startup HelpAttack!

8 )  Take it outside, folks – don’t get into arguments on the hashtag. As my friend Connie Reece says, “You can pack a lot of heat into 140 characters.”

I’ve seen a Twitter cruise hashtag devolve into an online dogfight between ship passengers and environmental activists, and a tourism conference this week had someone stomp into the middle of it to yell about the host state’s liquor laws.

When I feel a rant coming on, I move it over to certain circles on Facebook, or here to the blog. There’s more room for discussion, it doesn’t hog the hashtag and most importantly, my blog and my Facebook profile are MY “house.” Conference hashtags are not.

And finally….

9 )  Remember, you aren’t physically there. You’re an observer. Don’t parachute in and run your mouth too much; kinda like IRL….In Real Life. Otherwise, you’ll get reactions like, “Who the hell IS this person, and if they have so much to say, why didn’t they pony up the conference fee and show up in person?”

I know, sort of cranky and piggy, but the thought WILL cross people’s minds.

Did I miss anything? Tell us in the comments down below – thanks!

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When you publish to the web, always consider the best possible way to spread your content as widely as possible, and make that content easy for people to share.

It does take more time up front, but increases the chances that more people will see the stuff that is important to you. Yes, even a simple retweet (republishing someone’s tweet in your own Twitter stream) counts as online content, and deserves thoughtful consideration.

Rewire your head to think this way, and your social communications efforts will go further.

How?  Here ‘s an example….

My longtime travel writer friend, Minnesota-based Leif Pettersen, is a talented juggler (he’s also talented at making omelets and quaffing Strongbow hard cider, but let’s not get distracted here.)

So, I see a tweet of his – he’s @LeifPettersen on Twitter – talking about his video from the 2011 International Jugglers’ Association Festival that he just attended. The link he used went back to his own blog post, with the video embedded there, but I decided to do some tweaking before I helped send it down the digital road.

The specific URL matters

I went to get the permalink URL of the actual video uploaded on Leif’s YouTube channel. You can get there from any YouTube video embed box – look at the bottom right of the box and mouse over the YouTube logo. It will say “Watch on YouTube.” Click through to go there.

Pros: I want to tweet the YouTube URL because I and many of my followers use TweetDeck or Hootsuite dashboards for Twitter, and a YouTube URL opens right in the dashboard for viewing rather than forcing another tab to open in a browser. That way, people are more likely to click Play and watch Leif’s video right at that moment.

Cons:  Leif would probably prefer Twitter traffic to be driven to his blog to watch the video. Understandable, but I’m mostly interested in maximum people finding out about him (because he’s a great guy) so my priority is to make the video as easy as possible to watch.

ABC – Always Be Connecting

As long as I’m on Leif’s YouTube channel getting the URL for the juggling video, I confirm that I’m subscribed to his channel myself, I click the “thumbs up” icon to Like his video, and I can also mark it as a Favorite.

Every little bit helps give his content more visibility in search engines, and the Likes and Favorites are also reflected in the Recent Activity section of my Sheila Scarborough YouTube channel, similar to updates that show up in news feeds on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Pros: More love for Leif’s content. Increases chances that he’ll buy me a Strongbow when we visit in person.

Cons: None that I can see.

Who else needs a nudge?

Back over on Twitter, I’m ready to tweet about Leif and the jugglers, but first, I want to capture more attention by including possibly related Twitter handles. Who else can I lead to his Twitter profile and video?

Let’s see, is the International Jugglers’ Association on Twitter as well? You bet; they’re @IntJugglersAssn and I want to ensure they know about Leif’s video if they don’t already. One of the best ways to do that is to include their Twitter name, which they will see I’ve done when they check their Twitter account for mentions. In a perfect world, they’ll retweet Leif’s link as well (and say thanks to him.)

My tweet ultimately looked like this:

“Juggle THIS!  Things fly in this video from @IntJugglersAssn festival  http://youtu.be/zKxPTFgML1I  by @LeifPettersen”

Bonus points – was there a juggling festival hashtag that people might be following? I’d have worked that in, too. There was none that I could find in this case.

More bonus points – Send it out from another account? My business partner Becky McCray and I also tweet as @TourismCurrents. Our customers – tourism organizations – spend a lot of time trying to attract festivals, meetings and special events. Maybe they would be interested in this big juggler bash.

I hunted down the Twitter handle for the city that hosted the 2011 festival – Rochester, Minnesota – and sent out an additional, separate tweet as @TourismCurrents that included the Twitter handle of the Rochester CVB (Convention and Visitors Bureau.)

It looked like this:

“What fun @RahRahRochester CVB must have had hosting this juggling event!  http://youtu.be/zKxPTFgML1I  via @LeifPettersen”

Pros:  Same content, tailored slightly differently, went out from two different Twitter accounts. A few thousand more people have a chance to see Leif’s video, and the Rochester CVB gets a shout-out.

Cons:   Many of the same people follow me both as @SheilaS and @TourismCurrents. I don’t want to overload their streams with too much duplicate or close-to-duplicate content, so I try to put a minimum of 10 minutes or more between similar tweets that go from both accounts.

Why bother with all this?

A few minutes of thought – a little extra research and digging – over the course of the almost four years that I’ve been on Twitter….well, the extra efforts add up in reach and impact.

All you’re doing is pausing to think, “Who else should know about this content, and what is the best way to get their attention?”

It’s the persistent, relentless mindset needed for winning a marathon. If you’re in the communications game for the long haul, you’ve got to play it that way.

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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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In 60 seconds, Beth Conway from the St. Joseph, Missouri CVB – @StJoMo on Twitter – explains why Twitter is NOT about what she had for lunch….

(Here’s the direct link to Beth’s video on YouTube, and here’s the Tourism Currents YouTube channel.)

Thanks Signalfire for featuring the video in their blog post about why social media works for CVBs and DMOs….this demonstrates why you should allow your CVB videos to be embedded on other people’s sites; it helps spread them to a wider audience.

When you make a video, always include a URL in the title or credits, so that those who see the video out on the web can find the rest of your work if they’re interested.

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