Also, similar to the way Gowalla allows users to create Guides, Foodspotting also lets users to create Guides like Taste the Vintage in Bucks County - created by the Bucks County Conference and Visitors Bureau. This particular guide looks great on both the mobile app and on the website and it details some great wineries throughout the county. As a bonus, you earn a badge once you visit all the wineries within the Guide.

As a tourism office, you’re in the unique position to be the curator for great food in your area. Like Bucks County did, you could created Guides for great wine, great burgers, great ethnic food or anything else food-related for visitors and residents to complete and add to. The more people that jump on the platform and add their favorite foods, the more useful and robust the app will become.

Check out the screenshots below for examples of the Footspotting mobile app (Foodspotting is now available for iPhone/iPod Touch, Windows Mobile and Android devices right now – a Blackberry app is coming soon). Have you used Foodspotting before?

Related posts:

1. Hoosier Tourism Blogs
2. Hoosier Tourism in Social Media
3. Sharing, Retweeting and Mentions on Facebook and Twitter

Welcome to our series of interviews with local (and sometimes national) leaders in the social media and technology industry that will be featured on Social Mediarology. Today’s interview is with Troy Thompson of Travel 2.0, a Denver-based blog and digital consulting company focused on the travel and tourism industry

Troy Thompson – Travel 2.0

Troy has been involved in interactive marketing for the past 13 years. After starting his career at NASCAR in Florida, he was integral in launching their interactive department in the late ’90s. After nearly a decade with NASCAR, Troy moved to Arizona to become the Advertising Manager for the Arizona Office of Tourism. During his time at AOT, Troy headed up the social media division and recently moved to Denver to manage Visit Denver‘s interactive marketing department, including social media, mobile, SEO and more. Earlier this year he decided to break out on his own and dive into tourism technology consulting.

The Travel 2.0 blog started while Troy worked for Arizona Tourism as regular email updates about interactive marketing to the AOT staff and quickly evolved into a blog that could reach people far beyond the Arizona Office of Tourism. Now, thousands of people throughout the world read the Travel 2.0 blog each week and Troy is considered a thought leader in the interactive travel and tourism community.

The consulting arm of Travel 2.0 launched in June, 2010 and focuses on social media strategy/social media audits, mobile strategy including iPhone applications, statistical analysis, training and tourism marketing plan development.

What are some current and upcoming trends in the travel industry as it relates to technology?

The two trends we’re in right now that are still progressing are mobile and location based services (LBS). They certainly go hand in hand, but mobile feels a lot like it did in the late ’90s and early 2000s, when everyone realized the web wasn’t going away so they started to shift more budget and create functional websites. I see this a lot within the mobile space. It’s following a very similar pattern where people are saying “I think this mobile thing is going to stick around, I think the iPhone is going to be a solid platform to build on” and they’re shifting some dollars over to address that need. The challenge is that you don’t want to fall into the same trap we all did when we built our first websites – looking for the cheaper option, just doing the basics and not thinking long term. I think a lot of us built a website in 10 years ago and have had to rebuild the site every couple of years, and I think we’re now getting to the point where people are thinking more long term and more strategically about what the site is and what it needs to be. I’m hopeful that we’ll start to take that same approach with mobile – thinking long term rather than short term. While I think there will be a lot of transition within the mobile space in the next decade or so, building a good base at the beginning will help set you up for success in the long run.

As far as location-based services go, Foursquare seems to be the media darling of LBS.

If 2009 was Twitter’s year, it’s fair to say that 2010 is shaping up to be the year of Foursquare. I think with the recent launch of Facebook Places, LBS’s will just become more important, particularly for the travel industry.

The fact that you’ll be able to have geographic information about your visitor while they’re in your area becomes very powerful. Right now, while the tools aren’t there to completely take advantage of that, those tools will surely come about soon. Taking advantage of a one-on-one communication with someone visiting your local Art Museum will be just as easy as setting up an email campaign or a Google Adwords campaign.

The final trend I’m seeing is tracking. It’s been the big demand of everyone, not just within the travel industry, but everyone who’s been involved in the mobile or social media field. How do we track all of these these things and connect the dots between websites, SEO, mobile marketing, social media marketing, and how do we get the accurate tracking to be able to quantify the ROI that we’re putting into these new spaces. I feel like that’s coming along. It depends on how much information the consumer wants to give out about themselves, but I think that’s an area where we’ll see some more big strides over the next two or three years.

Several years ago, the largest line item in most DMO’s budget was a printed travel guide. Do you see printed publications going away in the near future?

I don’t think printed guides will ever go away entirely. I know there are some agencies out there who have totally dropped it in favor of a all digital guide, which I think is a workable solution, but at this point a printed guide is still important for the people who want them. What we’re seeing now, is a case where 5, 10 or 15 years ago, there was just the printed guide, which was the primary way for people to get information from us, and now there are so many different communication channels out there. With technology itself, particularly social as well as the iPad and the iPhone, people have a lot more freedom of choice about how they want to receive information. From the DMO (Destination Marketing Organization) side, we need to look at it more as a project around information and the content we have, rather than it being just a printed guide project.

If we were to have a meeting about our guide, I’d start with all the information first, then, on the side, we;d discuss where all the different places are that people could get this information. There’s your printed guide, your website, potentially email, social, then you have the mobile side of things maybe with an iPhone or iPad application. It’s just trying to figure out the best way to get all the information to the appropriate channels so people can find it. The challenge with that since the technology is still so young, is that it takes a lot of time and resources to try and break out of a printed publication cycle and into more of an information dissemination cycle.

The iPad is pretty exciting in terms of its potential for digital visitors guides and the interaction we can have with the visitor through it. I think it’s the best example so far that non-technical people within the industry have seen that opens their eyes to the possibilities.

The challenge for a lot of us in the DMO space is that the printed guide is a huge KPI (key performance indicator) for us, and a huge indicator of our success throughout the year, so it’s difficult for us to make that transition and all of a sudden, you’re sending a report to your board that while you printed 1,000,000 guides last year, you’ve only printed 200,000 this year, but here are the reasons why. Without really accurate tracking/education about website visits, social hits and mobile/iPad applications it’s difficult to show people that the number went down so significantly and not have them raise questions.

For a lot of us, it’s still an issue of reporting back to our board and to make sure it still looks like we’re doing a good job. I think it will be interesting in the next few years. I think the iPad is a fantastic device and if you walk by any apple store in the mall, it’s absolutely packed – it doesn’t matter what time of day you go. The interaction that all age groups and demographics have, it ‘s just fascinating. Apple has done a great job with their interface design and have made it easy for anyone to use, not just someone who’s technically inclined. That’s why so many people are talking about iPhone apps and iPad apps all the time because it’s such a successful platform for communicating with people. I’m really interested to see which DMO comes out with their travel guide as a fully-designed iPad app first.

What are your recommendations on first steps in social media?

My first recommendation for a DMO in social, is to get started with either Twitter or a blog. Twitter is a very easy interface and program to learn and understand once you get started. It also gives you a good look into the social world and how people communicate and how people engage in that world. Whether or not Twitter works for every destination is still to be determined. Some destinations tend ot be more successful with Twitter than others, but I think a lot of that has to do with content.

I still really like the idea of a blog. It’s probably not as sexy as Twtter, Facebook and others now, but I like the communication channel of blogs. I think it works really well for the destination model. There are a lot of things going on in a destination – a lot of things we don’t typically get to talk about on the homepage of the website. The rodeo may not be large enough to go on to the official state tourism website, but that’s a great topic for a blog post.

My third suggestion would have to be YouTube because of the engagement you can get on YouTube. I wouldn’t recommend it first, only because it can be a challenge for DMOs to come up with the video content. That’s always the challenge – you have to have good video content to put up on youtube.

You didn’t mention Facebook at all, does Facebook have a place in DMO marketing?

I’ve been a slow adopter to Facebook. I wrote several posts a few years ago that outlined why I didn’t think Facebook was right for the destination industry and I’m still not 100% convinced that it’s right for us in the industry.

There are obviously a lot of people on Facebook – 500 million people are sure to garner some attention – but I have yet to see anyone feel that their Facebook campaign has been really successful.

I don’t know if it’s simply because ther isn’t enough research around it, but I feel that a lot of DMOs are on Facebook because they’ve seen other DMOs on there.

I also think a lot of the fans of the individual organizations (like fans of Visit Indiana, or Florida, or Atlanta) are just “bumper-sticker fans” of the state. It’s like when you see a car full of bumper stickers. They’re aligning themselves with a particular brand or organization, but that doesn’t make they’re going out and giving money to or financially supporting that organization. I think its similar on Facebook – people want to say I’m from Florida, I’m a fan of Florida, I’m just not necessarily going to do anything with the state. I get the feeling there’s a little bit of that. I struggle with whether or not its a good place for marketers to be.

There’s been a lot of conversation about how some marketing teams are pushing a lot of things to Facebook. Facebook has almost replaced the call to action in TV commercials. Like when people’s commercials would say “find us at AOL keyword: travel” or 4-5 years ago when organizations would say “visit our website at myspace.com/OrganizationName“. I still have a issue with putting a majority of my marketing influence on someone else’s website

I’m a huge proponent of protecting your brand on Facebook. I think there should be a Visit whatever page, a Visit Indiana Page on Facebook. I think you should own it and use some service that lets you update Twitter and Facebook at the same time. There are a lot of good things you can do with Facebook, but I’d definitately diversify my campaigns so not everything‘s focused on Facebook. I’d even spend some time on TripAdvisor or WikiTravel, the sites that tend to get left out of the Big Three conversations (Facebook, Twitter and YouTube). I think the forums on Trip Advisor alone, you could build an entire social campaign around those.

How does blogging fit in to a digital strategy?

I think blogging is a great opportunity to give your destination a personality and to give an actual voice to the people who make up your community. A lot of us have made it a bit difficult for consumers to find the people behind the DMOs and attractions – primarily because of spam and email concerns, more than anything else. Blogs allow consumers to see that there are real people behind the organization, people who are passionate about the destination and they’re they local experts.

I think that in the next 5-10 years, that’s how DMOs will remain relevant. by highlighting and focusing in on that local knowledge. By saying, “here’s Jeremy. He lives in Indianapolis, he goes to these restaurants and attractions, he knows all about them.” Who better to ask when you’re looking to travel than someone who actually lives in the area and talks about these things for a living? The blog is an excellent way to show personality and to show off some of the charm of the destination. a website homepage tends to do very few things – promoting a big event coming up or specific hotels – but if you have space on your homepage carved out for a blog, it helps bring out the smaller things, more of the niche things that are going on. More of the local info and local knowledge that people really want to find out about. It can be a real differentiator between your destination and another destination.

I think going back to your last question about where to get started with social media, and for a lot of small marketing teams, with one or two people, that’s what makes Twitter such a good place to get started. Twitter is, after all, microblogging. I think that gives you a nice intro into what you’ll see and the impact you might have. That gives you the confidences to see that it’s actually worth your time to spend a couple hours a week writing a good blog post and then posting it on the blog. That’s a great way to intro from Twitter, to Blogs then to YouTube and Facebook.

What are some DMOs that come to mind who are doing a great job with social media and digital strategy?

There are a few of them out there. I love what Portland, Oregon is doing a great job communicating with their actual visitor. Not specifically the technical things they’re doing, but they do a great job actually listening and communicating with the visitor – forming the relationship that is the basis of social media.

I like what Columbus, Ohio does – their team does a great job on their blog and Twitter streams. From a state level, not to stroke your ego too much, but I think Indiana does a great job. You guys do a good job with your social presence and the way you go about it. I like what Oregon is doing as well. As much trouble as Florida has had, I really like the way they’ve tackled the oil spill via social media. They’ve really confronted it head-on an haven’t tried to say “don’t tell people there’s oil on this beach”. They’ve actually posted maps that show people where the oil is and I think that’s important to be open and transparent in the social space.

I think that how organizations respond in a time of crisis shows a lot more about their organizational strength than how they do when things are fine.

The oil spill is a great example of that. The volcano from Iceland earlier this year is another example. When we have natural disasters like that, it’s fascinating to look at the Air France Facebook page, which they weren’t really updating at the time – that gives consumers the message of: “Hey, we’re not updating this – go away!” That was their message to people. You can’t really start communicating with people when you want to, then shut things down when a disaster (natural or a PR disaster) occurs. I think a lot of people have overlooked crisis communications as part of their social media strategy. Hopefully, with the example of Florida and the volcano in Iceland people will start to incorporate crisis communications.

Another example is the recent incident with JetBlue where an employee yelled a plane full of passengers, pulled the emergency slide and ran away – JetBlue received a lot of criticism for their slow response to that.

JetBlue (along with Southwest Air) are the two stars of social media in the airline industry. They respond to everything and it was very strange to see something happen to them and they didn’t immediately acknowledge it. Two hours is the maximum amount of time you have to respond to something that has happened. You no longer have a couple days to craft your message. People expect you to respond immediately.

I think a lot of business are struggling with that. For so long you had a corporate communications department and everything went through there, and now you have different communication channels and the public is okay with the transparency. When something bad happens, most consumers realize that people are working at the company and they just want to know what’s going on. For the JetBlue incident, they could have said: “hey, we know there was an incident, our team in New York is investigating it”. That’s okay to say at this point because it’s part of open communication back and forth with consumers.

Any final thoughts?

It’s a very exciting time to be in the tourism industry in general. We’ve always been very passionate about the tourism industry, but it’s even more exciting now with the technology that’s coming into it an they ability for consumers to communicate with us while they’re actually in the destination. It’s really interesting to see how people are using social tools to connect with like minded travelers while they’re on vacation. They’ll take recommendations from a stranger or a local about what restaurant to eat at. The more adoption we see in social, mobile, geolocation and the like, it really becomes a benefit to our travel, and not a detriment.

Troy Thompson, a self-described technopologist, is a respected blogger, consultant and thought-leader in the Tourism / Travel industry. Owner and consultant at Travel 2.0 Consulting, Troy has been providing unique interactive and marketing solutions to a variety of clients for more than a decade. Be sure to check out Travel 2.0. You can even follow Troy on Twitter (@Travel2dot0).

Related posts:

1. Interview: Scotty Wise of Scotty’s Brewhouse
2. Manage Your Social Media Efforts with Hootsuite
3. Your Social Media Footprint

James Burnes – Mobiltopia

James Burnes has been working in the digital space for more than 13 years at various companies, including publicly-traded newspaper and television companies as well as private firms specializing in digital communications and development.

James recently launched Project Brilliant – a strategy and business incubator focused in digital space. Project Brilliant assists organizations in developing and planning strategies for utilizing internet technology to grow their business. The goal is to work with companies who need help and assistance putting digital plans in place and, in some cases, help launch those initiatives.

Mobiltopia is a venture launched by Project Brilliant that focuses on Mobile technology, websites, and apps for iPhone, Blackberry, Android and other smartphones.

Why Mobile?

For the last two years I’ve been watching very carefully as the digital space has evolved. We’ve seen a major shift to social media and a focus of businesses of all types to[ward] look[ing] at social media as a core marketing strategy. I identified fairly early on in my career that things change too quickly to just be focused on what everybody’s talking about right now, and to always spend a lot of time looking to what’s next; and mobile has been on my radar for the past two years.

About a year and a half ago, the focus on mobile really started coming to my attention, because I realized it was where social media had to go to be effective. Within the past six months I’ve watched the sale of smartphones grow at a rate that show that we will soon live in a world of screens. There was a definite need within the marketplace for there to be a company focused on specializing in mobile devices.

What are some specific trends within mobile?

Most importantly, the number of smartphones in the marketplace is growing by leaps and bounds. There is no doubt that mobile will continue to push the limits of how consumers utilize and access the internet and information from the internet versus how consumers access the internet from a desktop or even laptop computer. I see mobile as the natural progression of where the technology is taking us.

In 2009, smartphones accounted for about 18% of all cell phones, and should grow to 33% by the end of 2010 and should be over 50% by the end of 2011. Also, the number of consumers who are now paying for data plans have skyrocketed. This has gone from the businessperson to teenagers and moms. We’ve seen a shift in consumer behavior that now a whole different audience is using these devices, not just business professionals, which means that business of all types need to decide how they’re going to interact with consumers who have these powerful computers in their pockets.

What has brought about this tremendous rise in popularity of mobile devices in the past two years?

First, is affordability. Secondly, the iPhone’s attraction to a mass audience versus other smartphones, like the Windows Mobile phones and Blackberrys, were very focused on the business market. Third, there are simply more smart devices available today. Fourth, mobile carriers are seeing a lot of profitability through these devices and they want to continue to market those.

The profitability for the wireless networks comes as a combination of the data plans they sell, the revenue they generate by people buying apps – everyone who has an iPhone is generating money for Apple which inherently generates money for AT&T. Some of the profits come from increased growth in terms of new subscriber base, it can almost be directly tied to them having the exclusive rights to the iPhone.

In some capacity, even texting is a revenue generator for these mobile carriers and will continue to be for some time. They’re going to start seeing the pricing structure for texts diminish as they as more and more carriers have to compete for business by offering low- or no-costs texting plans versus what they offer today. So, they’re looking at smartphones being the next generation of revenue tools as texting revenue diminishes.

What are some obstacles for consumers or businesses that want to be involved in mobile?

On the consumer side, as you get less sophisticated users of technology, they’ll be less convinced they need to spend the money on the data plans. What I find today is there are consumers who say “I don’t need a smartphone”. It’s not that that’s an incorrect statement, but they don’t recognize the benefits of having this data in their hands until they’ve tried it. It’s a parallel to the challenge [mobile providers] had for some time with a lot of people saying “I don’t need a cell phone”. We’ve gotten to a point today where [the vast majority of] consumers have a cell phone for a reason – because they have the perception that they need it. Even though they don’t really need it, they’ve chosen to have it.

From a business perspective, businesses are failing to…operate mobile-optimized websites that adequately sense the screen size and information functions that consumers seek when consumers use a mobile device to visit their website. Nine out of ten websites today do not have a mobile-optimized version and there are  huge abandon rates from consumers, nearly 50%, that takes place the moment they realize the site they’re going to on their mobile device doesn’t look good on their phone. So there’s a missed opportunity for businesses who don’t reach this growing audience who access their website through mobile devices.

Will true-web rendering mobile devices like the iPhone change the need for organizations to create mobile-versions of their website?

I have no doubt in my mind that businesses for many years to come are going to need a mobile optimized version of their site. The…size of the screen and the ease of use that consumers expect when they’re on their mobile device are very different than when they’re at a computer. The way you browse a website when you’re using a phone is significantly different that the way you browse a website when you’re on a computer. That’s not going to change by virtue of the devices’ screen size.

How can the tourism industry in Indiana benefit from mobile websites and applications? Where’s the real benefit for Tourism?

I think tourism is one of the prime candidates for mobile focus. You’re reaching an audience that’s typically away from their office and home. Their only [traditional options] are either the brochures or ads they have on-hand when they’re driving around looking for things to do. Plus, the mobile phone is becoming their primary tool to find where to go and what to do when they’re in locations. This is particularly valuable for consumers who are out of market who don’t normally come to your location. They have specific needs as it relates to [attraction] hours, coupons, benefits, deals, ratings, etc. and these mobile devices are becoming a primary tool for discovering where to spend their time and their money.

I believe strongly that tourism, as an industry, must be one of the first industries in Indiana, and nationally, to activate these mobile devices because their consumer base is absolutely in a mobile situation. They’re out and about looking for things to do. There is a huge opportunity to drive revenue when you’re site is accessible through mobile devices. There’s no doubt that as younger generations travel they use these tools as primary decision-making devices. And as a tech-savvy consumer myself, traveling a week or more a month to locations throughout the country, my devices figure out where I should eat, where to stay, were to sleep, what to do; it all comes from my mobile phone because that’s the thing I have in my pocket no matter where I am to help me figure out where I’m going next. And that’s only going to increase as consumers of all ages, demographics, technical skills, etc. begin to have these phones as their device. In some capacity, some consumers consider their phone to be their primary computing device. I think that’s a pretty substantial statement for people to say. We’re going to continue to see more of that as the technology continues to increase and the cost continues to drop. The cost is what’s dropping faster than anything else right now.

This summer tens of thousands of tourists will be all around our state and the only decision platform to help them decide where to go and what to do will be their phone. That’s millions of dollars available to be captured by the businesses who are best marketing to them, promoting to it and being accessible through heir own mobile site, mobile app or having a presence on other mobile apps that are driving tourism behavior.

Will the iPad change the direction of mobile or will it end up being more of less portable computing device like a laptop?

As a category as a whole, tablet computers – including the iPad – are going to have a significant role in the marketplace as a whole, but in the tourism industry, I don’t forecast a big impact over the next 18 months. Where that device is targeted is a category of consumers who will use it as their general web browsing and media browsing device within the home and workplace – mostly home – not necessarily one they’re taking with them to go discover what’s around them. The iPad and tablet devices as a whole are not going to replace mobile devices as a primary computing device.

Where there are opportunities for that device to be utilized by tourism businesses may come from point-of-purchase opportunism within tourism attractions. It may serve as a very powerful tool in conduction surveys, for museum docents to be able to use rich-media to augment tours. There’s a great opportunity for those platforms to create interactive experiences as part of an on-site experience.

I just don’t know yet if the adaptation will create a new demand or a way to market to consumers. And, if I were, as a whole, trying to find ways that mobile was being incorporated into Indiana tourism locations, I think the biggest thing to be thinking about is: Does my community have assets that are created for mobile users? For example, does the Hendricks County CVB have an app for discovering things within the county? Also, does my subset within the tourism industry have an app? Another example, if I’m a chocolate factory, do all the chocolate factories have an “Indiana Chocolate Factory” app?  The key is that not everyone needs an app for their business, but they might get involved in an app for their niche, or category [county, or region] where they can share the cost and collaborate.

Many CVBs in Indiana have small budgets and few staff members. Where is the best place for those organizations to get started in mobile?

I think it depends on how they’re going to market it and promote it. If they’re seeing good branding and marketability of their current website to consumers, and they feel that consumers…are easily finding their website to find things to do, I would start with a mobile site because the cost factor is probably lower. Technology and opportunities around mobile continue to be more accessible and more affordable, so they shouldn’t dismiss an app if they can make sure their members and locations around the community are marketing it. Apps as well as mobile sites are only as effective as the audience they reach so it’s critical that when organization are budgeting towards doing things in the mobile space that they’re also planning to promote and [are] marketing themselves effectively through the channels they have.

Smart mobile initiatives leverage what already exists. If they have a website then the site should automatically detect if the person is browsing from a mobile phone and switch over to the mobile site. Mobile sites should be automatic [don’t create a mobile.site.com] and should detect which phone they’re coming from and prepare a version that works for that [phone]. That’s one thing [Mobiltopia] is doing. We’re creating mobile-optimized sites that take your current website and convert it to a mobile-optimized version as well as create custom apps. We’re actually working right now on a very exciting tourism app that focuses on organizations that are a part of a tour at a lower cost than has previously been made available in this market.

Any last thoughts or comments?

Mobile is a very new, emerging space and there are a lot of questions. Companies and organizations should not be afraid to ask those questions and become more educated. If they have question and just want to learn more about mobile or want have an exploratory conversation about “is mobile right for me or not”, the folks on my team are very happy to have that conversation and if they call our office at 317.426.0865 or email us at getstarted@mobiltopia.com we’re very happy to schedule time to talk about mobile. Yes, we’re in the business of selling mobile stuff, but we’re not in the business of selling people things they don’t need, so I’m happy to give people advice and recommend to them where they should spend their dollars. It may make sense to pursue mobile now and it may make sense to wait and we’re happy to provide that insight.

No related posts.

Sharing on Twitter: Retweeting

On Twitter, there are a few different ways to share, or Retweet, information. The first way to do it is through what I’ll call the “classic retweet.” Seen below, the “classic retweet” simply consists of copying and pasting the message that someone else posted, and adding an “RT @username” to the beginning of the message to let people know you’re sharing someone else’s message. In this case, both @VisitIndy posted the message and @TCMIndy retweeted it before we did:

This “classic retweet” has been around nearly as long as Twitter has and was a practice that grew organically from Twitter’s users. Recently, Twitter implemented an official Retweet function, seen in the image below:

You can see the underlined Retweet link in the image above. If you wanted to retweet the message that @ThisIsIndiana posted, simply click on the Retweet icon and you’ll share that message with your followers.

You can see the Retweet icon () next to the status update. In this case, @VisitBtown clicked on the Retweet link to share @IIB‘s message with their followers.

However you choose to share information on Twitter, retweeting is a useful way to share important updates with your followers. You can use these retweeting techniques to spread the word about different events going on in your area, sales going on at local establishments or state-wide promotions to help inform your followers about what they can see and do in Indiana.

Sharing on Facebook: Shares and Mentions

Sharing information on Facebook isn’t always as easy as clicking a Retweet button and being done, but in some cases, it can be!

If you like Visit Indiana on Facebook (see Quick Update below), you can easily share any of our photos, blog posts, links and anything else that has the share link as seen below:

When you click on the share link, you’ll be presented with an overlay window like the one seen below. You can then insert your own message and when you click the Share button, the message and link/image/post you shared will show up on your wall.

Sharing content in this way is extremely easy and can dramatically increase the reach of your content. Once your page has 10,000 fans (I know, that’s a lot of fans!) you’ll be able to see detailed sharing statistics in addition to the information you can currently view with Facebook Insights.

One last feature I’ll talk about is the use of Facebook Mentions. Similar to the way you can mention @VisitIndiana in your tweets on Twitter, you can also now mention people you are friends with or organizations you like through Facebook.

Quick update – Right when I was in the middle of writing this post, Facebook changed the way they refer to organizations’ fans. From now on, you can “Like” pages rather than become “A Fan”. This appears to be merely a semantic difference, but we’ll start referring to our fans as people who “like Visit Indiana”. For consistency’s sake, we’ll also refer to “Fan Pages” as simply “Pages”

In the image below, you can see I mentioned both Tastings Indianapolis and Conrad Indianapolis. This message was posted on our Visit Indiana Page, but since it mentioned Tastings and the Conrad, it also showed up on each of their pages! This is a great way to spread the word from your official page, rather than from your personal profile.

The only caveat here is that in order to mention an organization, you have to personally “like” their page. In other words, if you manage the Madison Indiana Facebook Fan Page, buy you haven’t personally “liked” the Visit Indiana Fan Page yet, you won’t be able to mention us.

It’s really easy to mention another organization or person in your status updates. Simply type the @ symbol then start typing the name of the person or page and a list will pop up for you of all people you’re friends with and all pages that you “like”. You can see in the status update below that it’s very easy to include mentions in your Facebook status updates.

It’s really easy to share information via Twitter and Facebook and these techniques will give you even more flexibility to share the information you want with the people you want.

Related posts:

1. Facebook Groups Vs. Fan Pages
2. What is Twitter?
3. How to Provide “Fans Only” Content and Deals on your Facebook Page

While the Foursquare App isn’t live for everyone just yet, you can visit Maps.Bing.com and click on the Map Apps button (If you can’t see the button, click on Try It Now within the Explore the new Bing Maps button on the left side of the page) and load up their Twitter App to get a feel for how the Foursquare App will work. This kind of integration of location and user generated content is invaluable for tourism. Imagine you’re planning a trip to the Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood; simply point your browser to Bing Maps, load up the Foursquare App and you can plan your trip confident that you’re getting suggestions from the people who frequent the attractions, hotels and restaurants in the area.

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1. Location, Location, Location…

It’s common knowledge that the three basic rules of real estate are location, location, location. You can have the most beautiful house in the world, but if  it’s located in a bad area of town, it won’t be worth nearly as much as it would if it were beachfront property.

Social media, and the web in general, has been slowly moving toward being more location focused for the past few years. Hop over to Google for a second and type in food and you’ll be presented with a map of restaurants in your area. Google is able to tell your general location based on the IP address of your computer. With the recent proliferation of iPhones, Blackberrys and other internet-connected mobile devices, location will only become more and more important in social media.

In addition to Google, big social media sites like Twitter and Facebook are adding location-aware code to their sites that allow you to let your followers know where you’re sending your updates from. To be honest, I think they’re trying to catch up with newcomers Gowalla and Foursquare. Gowalla is similar to Foursquare, but I’ll stick with the latter in this post.

Foursquare started out in March of ’09 as a game of sorts in several US cities. Users would create accounts and “check in” at different locations around town. Users would earn points and badges with each check in and if they had more check ins than anyone else at a particular location, they would become the “Mayor” of that place.

Foursquare offers users a great way to let their friends know where they are right now. One great example of how this information can be used is to take a look at this year’s South By Southwest (SXSW) music, film and technology festival that just wrapped up in Austin, TX. The festival has been going on for decades and in the past, several big-name bands would play secret shows, using an alias. In the past, the only way to even attempt to catch the big-name band was to check out some of the lesser known bands, but you’d never know for sure if you’d find that secret show or not. With the advent of Foursquare, people started posting immediately where they were when a secret show broke out. They were also able to let their friends know if a particular show, film or session was worth dropping in on. This immediate feedback provides users with so many more choices now.

While it began as a game, Foursquare has some amazing business uses, especially for the tourism industry. Foursquare encourages you to leave a tip when you check in at a location. For example, Julie checked in at the Hilbert Circle Theatre in Indianapolis and left a tip for where to park: “Park in Express Park on Market & Penn and follow signs through the garage to go in the back entrance of the theatre.” If you were visiting Indianapolis, isn’t that the kind of inside information you’d love to know about the theater? You’d never find that information on the theater’s website.

One of the best uses I’ve seen for Foursquare in tourism is FourWhere.com. Click the image below for a larger version or visit the site and search around for tips about attractions, restaurants, lodging facilities and more in your area. Most of the Foursquare data is larger cities, but more information is coming to smaller cities and towns as more people start using Foursquare. Just think if you integrated an app like this into your website’s map. Not only will you allow users to find driving directions to your attraction or city, but you’ll be able to give them real, unvarnished tips from people who actually visit those locations. Think of it as a mix of TripAdvisor and Twitter.

FourWhere, a mashup of Google Maps and Foursquare

You can create a Foursquare business account that allows you to offer users deals and special discounts for checking in at your location. Foursquare has a business page that shows all companies that are running “Mayor discounts”. Simply put, if you’re the “mayor” of one of these business, they’ll give you something special. For example, Pizzology – a gourmet pizza restaurant in Carmel, IN has a deal where the mayor gets a free pizza and the Carrabba’s Italian Grill in Mishawaka, IN  gives their mayor a complimentary dessert with the purchase of an entree. These deals don’t cost a lot of money, but they give incentives to customers to keep coming back! These types of incentives will only become more popular as more people start using Foursquare and other location-based applications.

The potential business uses for Foursquare and other location-based applications is nearly limitless and while they haven’t hit he mainstream yet, I wouldn’t recommend waiting too long before embracing these technologies. Even if Foursquare and Gowalla aren’t around in 5 years, the geolocation principals that they are built upon will be an important part of web marketing in the months and years too come.

Have you started using Foursquare for your business? Do you think this location-based trend has legs?

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Within Indiana’s Tourism Industry, I’ve noticed that most organizations have created Fan Pages, while a handful have decided to instead create Groups or even a Personal Profile for their organization. Hopefully this post will clear the air about the differences between the ways you can reach out to potential and current customers on Facebook.

Whether you decide to use a Fan Page or a Group for your organization depends on your goals for Facebook. One thing you should not do, however, is create a personal profile for your organization. Beyond being against Facebook’s Terms of Service, your organizational goals will be much better met by setting up a Group or a Fan Page.

Facebook Groups

Facebook Groups started out as the only way to interact with organizations and other groups of people. My college class has a Facebook group that is used to update members when reunions are happening or when something big is happening at my Alma Mater. A Facebook Group is a great way to keep a small group of people updated on what’s going on with your organization.

A great example of an effective group in the tourism industry is Travel Michigan’s. They recently shifted their industry communications from the standard email newsletter to a Facebook Group – Travel Michigan Industry News. This has the potential to be a great change for Travel Michigan, as they now can reach industry members in a medium they prefer. Also, by creating a group for the dissemination of Michigan tourism industry news, they’re also providing a place for industry members to have conversations and participate. A standard email newsletter doesn’t allow for this level of interaction.

That being said, the Facebook Group works great for groups like a college alumni class or an industry group, but it might not be the best fit for a true business to consumer (B2C) communication.

Facebook Fan Pages (AKA Public Profiles)

Facebook Pages were created as a way for companies, organizations, politicians, celebrities, non-profits  and others (basically, anything that isn’t an individual person) to have a profile on Facebook. Several years ago, before the advent of the Fan Page, the only way for organizations to interact with their customers on Facebook was through a group. Luckily, Facebook realized they needed to give organizations, celebrities, etc, a more robust and customizable way to interact with their fans. Thus was born the Facebook Fan Page.

At Visit Indiana, we use a Facebook Fan Page (also known as a Public Profile) to connect with our fans. Pages give you all the flexibility of a personal profile and (most importantly) provide you with in-depth statistics on your page and demographic information about your fans.

Pages also allow you to install different applications, like the FBML application I talked about in my last post, Flickr applications and many more.

One more great thing about a Fan Page. Once you have more than 25 fans, point your browser to http://www.facebook.com/usernames and you can create a vanity URL for your Fan Page. The Visit Indiana Fan Page URL used to be: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Visit-Indiana-Indiana-State-Tourism/42785429080; quite the headache to remember. Now that we’ve created a vanity URL for the page, you can find it at http://www.facebook.com/VisitIndiana.

All in all, there is a lot more flexibility available through a Facebook Fan Page than through a Group. In the end, you can decide what’s best for your organization, but here’s a quick comparison chart so you can see, at a glance, the differences between Facebook’s Fan Pages and Groups.

Facebook Groups Vs. Fan Pages

Now that you’ve seen the differences between Facebook’s Groups and Fan Pages, you can make an informed decision about which will best serve the needs of your organization. Let me know which one you’re using and how you came to that decision.

Click here to get started with your organization’s Facebook Fan Page.

Or click here to get started creating a Facebook Group for your organization.

Related posts:

1. How to Provide “Fans Only” Content and Deals on your Facebook Page
2. Plan your first steps into Social Media
3. Your Social Media Footprint

We’re not usually the type to toot our own horns, but we got some fantastic news yesterday that we can’t keep to ourselves. Gammet Interactive, a marketing firm in Michigan that focuses on travel and tourism just released what appears to be the first study to look at the use of social media by each State’s tourism office. On founder Dave Serino’s blog, he explains the methodologies that were used to determine and rank how social each State DMO is.

There we are, Indiana is at #2 out of all 50 states! Huge congratulations go out to Pennsylvania, Florida, Oregon and Nevada for their top five finishes. Each of these states does a fantastic job with social media and we’re absolutely humbled to be included in such great company. If you’re interested in seeing the full report, click here for the PDF.

We’ve worked hard at the Indiana Tourism to provide content that people want through our various social media channels and we’re very excited to be recognized for the job we’re doing. This is a great example of how, even in a time of decreasing budgets, you can still promote your destination in very effective ways for very little money.

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1. Hoosier Tourism in Social Media

Twitter has been a growing trend for the past year, and more and more people and companies have been joining the social network. The Phoenix Suns are one of the latest in a string of companies leveraging Twitter for PR and marketing purposes.

The full article gives the details, but here’s a quick rundown for you. The director of digital media for the Suns started up a Twitter account and gained a significant following. Once they reached a certain point, they planned a “tweetup”, an in-person event planned through Twitter, that gave Twitter members discounted tickets, access to the players’ warm-ups, a special section in which to watch the game and a post-game get-together where Shaquille O’Neil showed up.

Not only was this a great way for the Suns to interact directly with their fans, but it gave the organization the opportunity to thank some of their most avid fans for supporting the team. All of this leads to positive press through articles and blog posts (like this one) as well as the priceless word-of-mouth advertising the people who attended tell their friends and acquaintances about their experience.

Is there a way you could leverage social media and your most avid fans to show them how much you appreciate them?

If you’ve never heard of Twitter, or are confused about what it is and why anyone would ever use it, check out this short video, Twitter in Plain English:

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Regardless of how you define the word ‘recession’, we’re definitely in a down economy. Local, State and Federal governments are taking in less tax money than expected, many businesses are losing money, budgets are being slashed across the board (especially in marketing and advertising) and many consumers are pinching every penny they can. While this all sounds very ‘doom and gloom’, it doesn’t have to be. There are effective ways to market to your customers, even in a slow economy like the one we’re in now.

I’ve been reading articles just about every day that talk about the opportunities that have arisen because of the slowdown in the economy and here are seven trends I’ve noticed (in no particular order):

• Email Marketing
  • Permission-based email blasts are still a great way to keep your consumers up-t0-date on things going on with your company. Unlike direct mail pieces, your consumers have requested to receive information from you via email. That gives you the opportunity to give your consumers what they want.
• Web Analytics Integration
  • There are several web analytics suites available, but whichever suite you decide to use, you should use one. Google Analytics is a good free option. I’ve found that one of the most useful features of Google Analytics it the ability to find out which search terms people used to find your site. That knowledge can help you better optimize your website’s content or assist in the creation of a Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaign to push more traffic to your site.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  • While there are many companies that specialize in SEO you can do some basic optimization on your own. Focus on keywords that relate to your business. If the copy on your website hasn’t been rewritten in a few years or even a few months, it’s probably time to put up some new copy. This will help the search engines find your site when users search for those keywords.
• Blogging
  • In addition to enabling you to get information out quickly and informally, blogging can also be good for SEO (see above). If you use your organization’s blog strategically, by using key words and focusing on specific topics, you can come to be seen as an authority in your field. Search engines love blogs because content is created frequently and is stored forever. Unlike a website where you change out the content on a page a few times a year, every time you create a new blog post, all the old posts are still there, continuing to be indexed by the search engines.
• Social Media engagement
  • In the same way that blogging is good for SEO, social media can be as well. By getting involved on different social media sites, your name gets out there more and, in addition to delivering information to your consumers in a new way, people will be able to find you in more places using search engines. (Click on the image on the right, you’ll notice that when I searched for “visit indiana” in google, our webpage came up, but so did our twitter page and our Visit Indiana blog. Those are two more opportunities for people to find us.)
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
  • Search engine marketing is a relatively inexpensive way to drive more traffic to your site. If you are working to optimize the content on your website for search engines and engaged in blogging and social media, you’re in a great place. But if you want to supplement that work with paid search listings, SEM is for you. I know that the Columbus Area CVB uses paid search and it’s also a part of our ongoing marketing plan as well. This summer, our office launched Live Indiana for our summer promotion. During the promotion, we targeted consumers we don’t typically target – specifically, motorcycle enthusiasts. Since we did not have a wealth of motorcycle content on our website, we purchased motorcycle related keywords in Google and Yahoo and were able to drive traffic to our Live Indiana motorcycle promotion through SEM.
• Social Media Advertising
  • Social media advertising, especially on sites like Facebook is another way to stretch just a few dollars a very long way. Facebook allows you to advertiser either a group or fan page on Facebook or an outside website. I created a mock-up ad we might have used for the motorcycles portion of Live Indiana this summer. I was able to target about 30,000 adults 18+ in Indiana and the surrounding states who have an interest in motorcycles and motorcycle riding. You can also dig down much deeper to target more specifically. You can also run your campaign based on ad views or on click-throughs. (click on the image for a larger version)
  • Columbus Area CVB launched a campaign in October called Chicks Click Here. The campaign features a website, blog and a Facebook group – Unforgettable Women. Cindy from the CVB will put up a post with more details about the campaign, but for just about $25 a month, they’ve run a pay-per-click campaign on Facebook and have been able to attract women from as far away as San Diego, Boston, Florida and everywhere in between, to join them in the Unforgettable Women group.

Many of us will experience budget cuts in the year to come, but by thinking strategically and investing some time and effort, you can stretch those limited marketing dollars in ways you haven’t stretched them before.

Have you already implemented some of these marketing tactics? If so, what results have you seen? If not, do you think you will look to internet advertising more over the next year?

Some sources:

• MediaPost – Social Media Wins In Marketers’ ’09 Plans
• BusinessWeek – Why Online Ads Are Weathering the Recession
• New York Times – Some Online Ads Thrive in a Miserable Economy

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