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
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?
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.
This may be stating the obvious for many, but I’m seeing the same problem so often that there’s obviously a disconnect….
If your tourism organization is participating in social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc., do not forget to put a prominent link to those on your main destination Web site.
Give your eager and enthusiastic customers multiple ways to find you, connect with you and talk about you.
Yes, I know that Web site real estate is a precious thing, and you may have to break some “personal rice bowls” to make this happen (meaning things can get political, your Webmaster may not want to give space/links to other platforms, etc.,) but here’s why you want to do it….
For example, when someone becomes a Fan of your state tourism Facebook page, a note to that effect goes onto that individual’s personal Profile page. This means that all of, say, “Susie Smith’s” Facebook friends can see that she just became a Fan of XYZ state. Some of them may click through to see what you’re all about, because they trust Susie and are interested in her interests.
Result? More eyeballs are seeing what your destination has to offer.
You know what’s really great? The logo links (widgets) for all of those social media sites are clearly displayed on the right-hand side on the front page of the main Ohio tourism Web site.
It makes it a no-brainer for Ohio enthusiasts to click through, connect and communicate with Ohio tourism in at least four different places. That’s how you can seem to be “everywhere.”
Make it easy to connect. Make it easy for your visitors (and your residents) to talk with you and about you.
That’s just good destination marketing, right?
Who else would you recommend for providing multiple ways to connect? I’d love to read about them in the comments below.
(Oh, and one more thing I don’t see often enough – give me easy access to some images from your destination. See that Lake Erie lighthouse up there at the top of the post? Discover Ohio made it easy for me to use, as long as I gave them credit. They have a simple-to-find free images page for media on their Web site. Thank you, Ohio!)
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.
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.)
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)
This year, I proposed two different panels to be considered for inclusion in the conference schedule.
At SXSWi, response from the community-based Panel Picker voting public “….accounts for about 30% of the decision-making process for 2010 SXSW panel programming,” according to the SXSWi Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs.)
So, if you’re interested in my ideas, particularly if you might attend SXSWi, please register for free on the Panel Picker site and take a look at these possible panels (and any others that interest you….)
Can They Buy Your Voice? Blog Disclosure Ethics: We’ll talk about “best practices” for disclosing sponsor help in a blog post and how companies can reach out to bloggers ethically with products and service demos, among other knotty questions. Will include a discussion of press trips.
Drawing the Line Between Free and Paid: Are there some “rules of thumb” to know when it’s smart business to let one’s brain be picked for free, and when it’s smart to announce rate sheet fees? How can you turn the conversation from a free discussion to a paid consultation without being “that guy?” Content DOES have value.
Thanks for your support, and hope to see you in Austin in March 2010.
Many tourism organizations have asked me lately how they can find bloggers (and others active in social media) who might be interested in covering their destinations. I thought it would be helpful to write up a quick reference list.
First, thanks for asking, because blogger outreach is one of the main topics that Becky McCray and I plan to cover when we launch our Tourism Currents social media learning community for tourism professionals in September 2009. If you want to be kept informed about it, there’s an email signup when you click the Tourism Currents link.
Secondly, Becky has already started a new series on her Small Biz Survival blog called Tourism Tuesdays. For example, here is her dynamite post Never Been There, about incorporating local folks into your tourism outreach campaigns. I read Becky’s work because she always finds the nuggets that others might not think about or notice.
Want more? Go to the Twitter Search Engine and type in #tourismtuesday to see general tourism chatter (this is called a hashtag and groups together all tweets with the same hashtag marker.) If you want to see general travel tweets instead, try #travel, #traveltuesday or #TT.
Finally, here’s my quick-and-dirty list of other ways to sift around online to find bloggers and the social media-savvy amongst us:
The Travel page on Alltop.com – it features the latest headlines from tons of hand-picked travel bloggers. Use the Search function on Alltop to find bloggers in just about any area of interest, like food or music or Cleveland.
Google Blog Search – this only returns search results from blogs, so it’s a nice filter rather than using the Big Google haystack to needle-hunt.
Travel Blog List – this Invesp Consulting list of general travel blogs is sorted every which way and is a bit too unwieldy for finding the smaller gems, but it does contain lots of the major travel blogs.
If you’re at all involved in tourism and you don’t represent, you know, freakin’ Paris or New York, you might want to think about how your town, property or destination could benefit from Long Tail coverage by a bunch of blabby bloggers.
Or, keep doing lots of those billboard buys and putting stacks of brochures in the Hampton Inn lobby.
We did it.
