Sheila's Guide To The Good Stuff

Most of you know that I’m really big on getting “the ungeeked” to go to one or two tech-related conferences or events per year.

There is no more effective way to figure out how people are using technology and mobile devices right now to communicate; it’s the best market research you can do and it will put you way ahead of competitors who are still scratching their heads over Twitter (which really burst on the scene at SXSWi 2007, the South by Southwest Interactive tech conference, one of the world’s largest.)

I recently wrote a guest post about this on the BlogWorld and New Media Expo blog – Go Where the Geeks Are: Why Tech Events Matter for Tourism and Travel - in support of the all-day tourism workshop that we’re doing at BlogWorld on October 14.

Meantime, the Panel Picker is now open for SXSWi 2011 in March – one of the unique things about “South by” is that part of the panel selection process is pubic voting and commenting on the proposed panels. You can give your feedback whether you’re attending SXSWi or not; there is a quick and painless registration process to do so.

I’ve proposed a panel with myself and two other speakers – my Tourism Currents business partner Becky McCray and travel/tourism entrepreneur Andy Hayes.

It’s titled Tourism Catches On: Old Industry Meets New Media.

Issues we plan to talk about include:

1. How does story and relationship work with new marketing online?
2. Can destinations work with online review sites or is it all out of their control?
3. What roadblocks hold tourism organizations back and how can they be overcome?
4. How can small staff groups possibly implement all these new tools when all this old work still has to get done?
5. What’s coming next in tourism and destination marketing?

If you have a moment, I’d really appreciate your votes, comments and feedback on our Tourism Catches On panel proposal.

Technology is for everyone – we want more mainstream industries and interest at SXSWi and we hope you do, too.

Welcome to this edition of the Carnival of Cities, where we tour the world in a single blog post.

Thanks very much to the Perceptive Travel blog for hosting the last edition; I’m still sorting out who will host the next one (am a bit behind on the email stack; sorry.)

If you’d like to host on your blog, please contact me at Sheila “at” sheilascarborough “dot” com. Thanks!

Off we go….

Cities in Africa

Cape Town, South Africa Brian Spencer presents Best Sushi in Cape Town posted at Perceptive Travel Blog.

Cities in the Americas

Shediac, New Brunswick, Canada Anne-Sophie Redisch presents PhotoFriday: A Big Thing in Canada posted at Sophie’s World, saying, “Shediac, NB – the world’s lobster capital – where else but Atlantic Canada!”

Garrison, New York, USA Madeleine Begun Kane presents Get Thee To Troilus And Cressida posted at Mad Kane’s Humor Blog.

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA Elizabeth R. Rose presents Santa Fe New Mexico – Top things to do and see posted at Examiner – Houston, saying, “Thanks for the opportunity.”

Anchorage, Alaska, USA Glennia presents The Anchorage Museum: A Great Place for Kids of All Ages posted at The Silent I, saying, “From our recent trip to Alaska.”

Omaha, Nebraska, USA Morgan Schwartz presents Body Scanners at Eppley Give Suburban Mom a Cheap Thrill posted at All Cracked Up by Vicky DeCoster, saying, “In between work, errands, and chauffeur service, Moms in Omaha might not have that many opportunities for excitement in their day. One Mom found the new body scanners at Eppley Airport good for a cheap thrill—and a little awkward self reflection.”

(more…)

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.

How can you make a fun biker event even better? More effective integration of social media platforms.

Don’t bolt them on as an afterthought – tie them together and ensure that they feed off of one another.

I was traveling through Front Royal, Virginia recently before a short drive down to Luray. At the local visitor’s center (while putting up a TwitPic of the nice staffer helping my Dad) I noticed a poster for the Motorcycle Grand Tour of Virginia.

According to the website, bikers can enjoy….

“A motorcyclist’s dream tour of the Commonwealth! The ride includes stops at 82 destinations and tourism attractions all across Virginia. The more places you visit, the more fun you’ll have as you collect points for special prizes….The program kicks-off April 10, 2010, and official Virginia Grand Tour passports must submitted by Nov. 1, 2010.”

This year’s special emphasis is recognition of the 75th Anniversary of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

I’d been thinking about bikers and tourism because of Joanne Steele’s excellent post on her Rural Tourism Marketing blog – are motorcycles a good match for your rural tourism town?

What I like about Virginia’s tour is that social media channels are included in the communications effort.

What They’re Doing Right

There is an active Motorcycle Grand Tour of Virginia Facebook Page, with people who are excitedly talking about picking up their Tour passport stamps at various stops (there are over 500 registered riders,) telling stories about their experiences and uploading photos of their bikes in different towns.

There is a Tour Twitter stream at @MotorcycleVA, too, plus a Forum within the main website.

3 Suggestions for Improvement

The efforts would be even more integrated if the Facebook logo, link and feed activity widget were included on the website, so that people didn’t have to hunt around themselves on Facebook to find the Page. It’s the most mainstream social media channel right now, and if you want people to interact with your organization there, then cross-pollinate that presence on your other sites.

I’d love to see a much more interactive tour map, with photos and links back to at least the CVBs of each destination town….the current Tour map is a static JPG photo.  Again, Joanne Steele to the rescue with her RippleNW post about how to create a customized Google Map.

Finally, when I checked with my Android smartphone, I found that the main Tour website is not optimized for mobile users, which I’m sure includes a lot of those riders out on the road.

I’m not a biker myself, but I am certainly a fan of backroads and Virginia has some gorgeous ones. I wish the Tour great success!

Here is CouchSurfingOri, a traveler on Twitter, asking for information about a local coffee shop:

And here is what he decides to do when the right folks who could give him an answer don’t happen to see his tweet, or see it but don’t have the information needed:

He goes to the community review site Yelp to find answers from other travelers.

Do your CVB, DMO and Chamber of Commerce members know about Yelp, or are they “too busy” for such things? Naturally, we can’t be everywhere all the time, but we need to be in the important places.

If your visitors are looking for information on sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor, it does your members no favors to ignore that and hope it will go away.

Hmmm, I sense another section being added to our Tourism Currents lessons about online presence….

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!

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.

Just released yesterday:  a 31 second video from Florida tourism that encourages visitors to check the Florida Live site for real-time updates on beach conditions (an example of using social media for crisis communications.)

The gist is that there are hundreds of miles of Florida coastline, so visitors should not assume that every inch of it is oil-covered.

Here is the direct link to the “Need to Know” video on YouTube if you can’t see the embed box below.

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?

Over at our Tourism Currents learning site (are y’all reading our monthly free newsletter on social media for tourism?) Becky McCray and I are PUMPED to announce a new initiative….

The two of us will teach a one-day workshop for CVB, DMO and other tourism folks on October 13, 2010 as part of the BlogWorld and New Media Expo tech conference at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.

This is a big deal because we’re always telling clients and Tourism Currents members that to really understand what’s going on with tech and social media, you have to “go where the geeks are” – events like South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi,) BlogHer, SOBCon and BlogWorld – and be immersed in how they communicate.  I’m always chuckling when I listen in on non-geek conferences via Twitter hashtag and hear them exclaiming over tools and methods that they’re hearing about for the first time, but I was exposed to 12-24 months earlier at some nerd fest.

Tech and social media stuff moves fast; you need to keep up in order to make intelligent decisions about whether to incorporate something into your marketing efforts.

We wanted tourism people to check out BlogWorld because it gives them a chance to connect with thousands of bloggers, podcasters and other online content creators (plus there’s a travel blogger track kicking off the day after our workshop in addition to food bloggers, sports bloggers and more.) These are your potential online champions; the people who are fans and supporters of your destination or attraction and who can help spread the word about you online.

Rather than have people come to such a huge event and be rather overwhelmed, we’re working with BlogWorld founder Rick Calvert (a travel enthusiast himself) to design a social media seminar that will introduce tourism folks to our “geek world” and how it can upgrade their communications work.

In addition to our daytime classes on the best ways to connect with online influencers, we’re planning networking meetings, tweetups and possibly “speed dating” sessions to help destination marketers network with the people who can provide them with online coverage.

This is still in the very early stages so I’ll let you know when we get more details worked out, but put October 13, 2010 on your calendars!