Social Mediarology

Groundswell

My brother gave me a great gift for my birthday this year. He gave me Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Forrester Researchers Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. I first heard about the book back in April at TIA’s TravelCom 2008 conference in Chicago. Charlene Li was one of the speakers and her session was titled: Welcome to 2013: The Changes in Technology and Consumers that Will Affect Your Business.

Her session was one of the most enlightening at the conference and it really lit a fire in me to begin working on more social media initiatives or the “groundswell” as she calls it.

This is a book that is a must-read for anyone thinking about getting into social media, and that should be every single one of you.

Not only does the book do a great job of explaining what the groundswell is, but it also gives you a breakdown of several different “groundswell technologies” – many of which I talk about here on the Tourism Tech Corner – including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, RSS, blogs, wikis and more.

One other benefit of the book is that, as Forrester Research employees, Li and Bernoff include solid numbers in the book that you can bring to your board of directors when you’re intersted in diving into some of these groundswell technologies. It might seem a bit silly to read a book about social media seeing as how it changes so quicky, but Groundswell was published this year, so it’s surprisingly up-to-date. That being said, you can be sure that the groundswell technology penetration percentages have climbed even since the printing of the book. I just read in the book last night that 8% of US online conusmers use RSS, and I just read that Forrester’s newest research puts that number at 11% now.

If you’re not quite ready to put down the money for the book, you can check out a PDF excerpt at the Groundswell website or read (and subscribe to via RSS) the Groundswell Blog. This is a book that won’t disappoint you.

Social Media Landscape - fredcavazza

You might look at this image and feel completely overwhelmed at the idea of social media and how you’re going to implement it for your business. Don’t be! Social media can appear overwhelming, but there are easy ways to break into it without breaking the bank. To be honest, this image only shows a tiny sliver of the social media networks online today, but it gives you a good idea of how important social media is now and will be in the very near future. Don’t be intimidated by thinking you need to be involved everywhere right away, know that you can slowly build your social media presence, one network at a time.

One of the best things about social media networks, especially in this slowing economy, is that the vast majority of social networks are free or offer at least some of their services for free. That being said, don’t be lulled into the false assumption that creating a good social media presence will be easy. It CAN be easy, but you have to devote some time to it.

Hopefully, you’ve created a Flickr account (if you haven’t, head over to Flickr.com, create an account, upload some photos and join the Visit Indiana Photo Group). If you haven’t and you want some more information about Flickr, check out this post (a Flickr primer), this post (getting the most out of Flickr) and this one (about launching into social media) from the Tourism Tech Corner. Flickr is a great place for any DMO to begin their Social Media Footprint (here is a great post from Travel 2.0 that explains how to protect your social media footprint). Create a page, post some photos and spread the word.

The best way to get your foot in the social media door is to see what others have done. Please take a look at what we’ve done on some of the following social networks:

• Flickr: Visit Indiana Photostream, Visit Indiana Group
• Twitter: Visit Indiana Tweets
• Facebook: Visit Indiana Group, Visit Indiana Fan Page
• YouTube: Visit Indiana Videos
• FriendFeed: Visit Indiana Office Stream
• Blogs: Indiana Insider Blog, Tourism Tech Corner Blog

Even if you’re not quite ready to jump head-first into social media, it’s a good idea to go ahead and create accounts at these sites and some others. The last thing you want is someone who is not associated with your DMO to create an account and create an online presence in your name. If you create your accounts but aren’t ready to start creating content, go ahead and set your profile status to invisible or private. No one will be able to see your accounts until you set them live again, but at least you won’t have a blank page sitting out there and no one else will be able to create that account in your name.

Over the next several months, I’ll be creating posts that will give you a primer on each of the social media sites mentioned above and any others that I come across. The best thing for you to do now is get in there and start experiencing these networks. Create a personal account, play around and have some fun. Get a feel for what these sites are and what they can do, then create an account for your business.

I’ve got one more suggestion for a social network that you, personally should join. It’s called SmallerIndiana and it’s an Indiana-based social network. Created as a place for Indiana’s best and brightest to collaborate, SmallerIndiana has members from throughout the state in countless industries. It’s a great place to become involved. With helpful members, most questions you ask will be answered quickly. So, join SmallerIndiana (and the Visit Indiana group) today! And if you’re interested, there are many active discussions in the SmallerIndiana Forums.

As always, I’d love to see your comments and thoughts about social media. Any benefits you’ve seen, any challenges or fears. Also, please feel free to send me a note or say hi on any of the social networks we’re involved with above.

As a follow up to my What Are Blogs post a couple of months ago, I’ll give you a quick tutorial about how to get started blogging and how to keep a blog going.

Getting a blog started is very easy. There are myriad free options available and if you’re interested in more robust options, you can also pay for some blogging services.

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What is RSS? It stands for Really Simple Syndication and Wikipedia can give you more technical details, but what you really need to know is that RSS lets you “subscribe” to frequently changing website (like blogs) and read them at your leisure without having to actually visit the website. This can be very helpful with parts of your website that you update frequently like a blog, Press Release page or an events calendar.

It’s extremely easy to set up an RSS feed on your website, and there are several ways to do so. We use FeedBurner here on the Tourism Tech Corner. FeedBurner is great, not just because they’ve recently been acquired by Google, but because it gives you tons of options about how you want your feed displayed. It is also very simple to put a feed up and will certainly work without having to go through too many of the details. FeedBurner also allows you to set up email alerts for your page in addition to RSS feeds. You’ll notice that on the left hand side of the Social Mediarology, you can click on RSS or on Email. One great feature that FeedBurner offers is the ability to track RSS readers and email subscribers. You can see who has signed up to subscribe to your feed and keep tabs on them.

Updated (10/22): There is one other great feature about using FeedBurner for your RSS rather than a standard domain-provided RSS feed. If, for some reason, your blog ever moves from it’s current place, everyone who is subscribed through the FeedBurner RSS won’t have to re-subscribe. So, if I moved the Tourism Tech Corner blog from WordPress to Blogger, the RSS transition would be seemless. All I would have to do is log into my FeedBurner account and change the blog address. Most of you won’t change your blog address once it’s set up, but this is a good safeguard, just in case! Updated (10/22)

Now that you’ve got RSS feeds set up on your website or blog, your next question is probably, how do I read RSS feeds?

Well, there are a number of great, free RSS readers out there. Typically, whenever you click on an RSS feed link (look for the icon at the top of the post), you’ll be brought to a page where you can decide which reader you want to view the RSS feed through. If you’re interested in a web-based RSS Reader, Google Reader is a great option. It’s free with a Google Account and you can organize your different feeds into folders (tourism feeds in one folder, hotel feeds in another folder, etc.)

If you’re looking for a desktop-based reader, FeedDemon is one of the most popular ones out there for PCs (NetNewsWire is the Mac equivalent). One bonus of a desktop-based RSS reader is that your feeds can be downloaded to your computer and read even if you’re not connected to the internet.

The best thing about RSS Feeds is that they enable you to keep up with websites that talk about things you are interested in without having to visit the sites multiple times a day. Once you’ve subscribed to an RSS Feed, it will automatically update in your reader when the site gets updated.

Do any of you use RSS readers or feeds for your organizations?

If you read this blog for long enough, you’ll find out that I’m impressed with just about everything Google does. Google Alerts are no exception. Cindy left a comment for me on my last post that mentioned Google Alerts, so I thought I’d post about it.

So, what is a Google Alert? Quite simply, you enter a search term and Google sends you an email every time they find a mention on the internet. You can also set up your Alerts to be sent in a daily “digest” so you aren’t inundated by emails. For example, I have three daily Google Alerts sent to me. One is for Indiana Tourism, one for Indiana Travel and one for Tourism Tech Corner. Each day, I receive a digest containing the top articles, blogs and other mentions on the web for each of my search terms.

Here are a couple of examples:

In my What are Blogs? post, I mentioned the Holiday World blog, the Holiblog. Sure enough, within an hour of that post going live, I had a comment from Holiday World, thanking me for mentioning them on the blog. Similarly, in my Get The Most Out Of Flickr post, I referenced and linked to a great article about how nonprofits can get the most out of Flickr. Again, within about an hour, the author of the blog posted a comment thanking me for referencing her work.

It’s very likely that each of them is using Google Alerts to see when and where people are talking about them online. This works very well for attractions, especially if you have a fairly uncommon name like Holiday World (or Indiana Beach for that matter, who has their own blog: View From the Crow’s Nest). This can also work well for CVBs or other Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs).

The key is how you respond when you get that Google Alert in your inbox. If you just read it and delete it, it’s probably not going to be all that helpful for your business. But if you become engaged with the people who are talking about you, you’ll do nothing but help out your business.

Let’s say that I get an alert tomorrow that someone has mentioned Indiana Tourism on their blog. The best thing for me do to is become engaged in the conversation. I’ll head to the blog that talked about us and thank them for the mention. I might also talk about some of the things we’re working on here at Indiana Tourism to further engage others who read the blog.

Similarly, if I run across a blog entry where someone mentions a bad experience they had in Indiana, I have the opportunity to try to make things right. I can offer information about other trips to take in Indiana or find out what their interests are and suggest that they give Indiana another try. DMOs, attractions and hoteliers can even offer freebies as an apology to a dissatisfied customer.

I think that the use of Google Alerts, and how you respond to them, should be considered part of your customer service plan. If I had a bad experience at an attraction or hotel and they personally responded to me with an apology, I’d be much more likely to either visit again or recommend a friend to do the same. At the very least, I’d respect them for a great customer service effort.

What do you think about using Google Alerts as a part of customer service? Do you think that word-of-mouth (both positive and negative) is the most effective form of ‘advertising’? I’d love your comments.

What is a blog?

You’ve no doubt heard about blogs recently and some of you may even have personal blogs that you keep up with. For the uninitiated, blogs are basically websites that can be changed easily and frequently with the most recent content staying at the top of the page. Blogs began in the ‘90s and were officially called “blogs” in 1999. Wow, blogging was born less than 10 years ago!

When they first started, blogs were mainly a place where tech-savvy teens kept an online diary, divulging to the world – or anyone who would read – the intimate details of their lives. However, in the past several years, blogging has become much more mainstream. So much so, that even corporate CEOs (like Craigslist.org‘s Craig Newmark) and enormous companies (Delta Airline‘s – Beneath the Wing Blog) have their own blogs now.

Blogs have evolved into a medium where you can connect with your customers in a much more personal way than standard advertising or even your current website can. Blogs represent the opportunity for two-way communication between you and your customers. You begin by posting about a certain topic and your customers can respond back to you. This kind of open and honest conversation can give your customers a deeper knowledge of your organization and you might even walk away with a good idea or two that has come from your customers.

Below are some examples of travel-related blogs that you should check out:

• HoliBlog – A local example, this is Holiday World‘s blog
• American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA) – they have integrated blogs into their website
• Travel 2.0 – Interactive Trend Report – Joint venture between Oregon and Arizona Tourism
• Marketing on the Smart Web – Owner of Buhlerworks, a Tourism Consulting company
• Destination Development Blog -Roger Brooks’ company blog

My next post will talk more about different blogging platforms as well as how and why YOU should be blogging!