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.

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Here are some great posts from the past week about social media:

1: Twitter’s Official Tweet Button Has Arrived | Mashable

Social Mediarology thinks: It’s been a long time coming, but Twitter has finally released their own Twitter Tweet button. They’re even working with TweetMeme (the most popular Retweet button out now) to support the button. One caveat – you can’t use your 0wn URL shortener (bit.ly or others), as all Tweets are wrapped in Twitters proprietary t.co shortener, but on the plus side, once a user retweets your content, they have the option of following you and up to one other associated account. Click on the tweet button at the top of this post and you’ll see that you have the option to follow @JeremyAWilliams and @SocMediarology after you’ve tweeted! Below is a video that walks through the Twitter Tweet Button features.

2: Facebook’s Foursquare Competitor is Imminent | CNET

Social Mediarology thinks: Facebook has been hinting at location-based integration for some time now and it looks like it may become a reality soon. The most interesting part of this? The potential that this will be baked in directly with a reworked Facebook Events.

3: Now You Can Follow Twitter Users Without an Account | Mashable

Social Mediarology thinks: In an effort to increase the reach of Twitter to consumers without a Twitter account (see the Twitter X-Factors section of our Subscribers, Fans and Followers post for more information about Twitter’s true reach) Twitter launches Fast Follow. Simply text “follow [username]” (without quotes) to 404040 and you’ll receive their tweets via SMS – even if you’re not a Twitter user. Try it out, text “follow SocMediarology” to 40404 to get our updates!

4: 3 Ways Facebook’s Pending Page Changes Affects Marketers | Hubspot

Social Mediarology thinks: Starting on Monday, August 23, Facebook will make some permanent changes to Facebook Pages. Among those changes are the elimination of boxes and the narrowing of custom tabs. If your organization has a Facebook Page, be sure to see if these changes will affect you.

Bonus! Here’s a fifth story you should check out from this week:

5: Foursquare Sorts Tips by Popularity | Foursquare Indy

Social Mediarology thinks: This is a welcome improvement to Foursquare. With 2.6 million users, some useless tips had been cluttering up more helpful ones as Foursquare used to sort their tips chronologically with the newest tip first. This will help clear out the clutter and will make the valid Foursquare tips even more important.

Local email marketing provider, ExactTarget, has released some fantastic research in the past month, all as part of a series they call Subscribers, Fans and Followers. So far, they’ve released four reports, which I’ll detail below. If you’re interested in getting PDFs of all of the research, check out their Subscribers, Fans and Followers page. While ExactTarget started out as an email marketing company, they’ve expanded to become much more than that. They recently purchased CoTweet, a California-based Corporate Twitter Management software company, so they’re definitely headed in the direction of a communications management company. This research fits really well with the direction ExactTarget seems to be heading and I think its great that they’re handing out this research.

Report No. 1: Digital Morning

The first report in the Subscribers, Fans and Followers series focuses on general user behavior. What’s the first thing online customers check in the morning? How engaged are online consumers with email, Facebook and Twitter? Digital Morning gives a great overview of those and other questions. Here are some highlights from the report:

• 58% of US online consumers check email as their first online activity of the day.
• 93% of US online consumers are SUBSCRIBERS (receive at least one permission-based email a day).
• 38% of US online consumers are FANS (have a Facebook account and are a fan of at least one company or brand).
  • 69% of US daily Facebook users are FANS.
• 5% of US online consumers are FOLLWERS (have a twitter account and follow at least one company or brand).
  • 69% of US daily Twitter users are FOLLOWERS.

Even with the huge rise of social media, permission-based email is still extremely important for marketing. But even with a smaller percentage of US online consumers using Facebook and Twitter, those consumers should not be ignored. Use your target demographics to dictate whether getting involved in Facebook or Twitter would be beneficial for your organization.

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Here are some great posts from the past week about social media:

1: Beyond Foursquare: What Search Engines Could Do With Location Data | New York Times

Social Mediarology thinks: This is great news for consumers everywhere. With proper integration, Google Maps may, by default, look a lot like FourWhere.com (Read our post about FourWhere here), and search results could have some great location-based tips baked right in (Check out our post about Bing Maps’ Foursquare layer here).

2: Status Update: Facebook Logs 500 Million Users | USAToday

Social Mediarology thinks: With half a billion users, Facebook shouldn’t be ignored. The good news is that more and more organizations are joining Facebook every day in an effort to leverage the platform.

3: Is Email More Important Than Social Networks? | KyleLacy.com

Social Mediarology thinks: Kyle hits some great points in his post. In the end, the channel you use to communicate with your customers should depend on what your customers want.

4: 5 Mobile Commerce Trends for 2010 | Mashable

Social Mediarology thinks: With smartphone sales rising 49% in the first quarter of 2010, mobile technologies are here to stay. Here are some trends to keep an eye out for through 2010.

This is the third in a series of interviews with local leaders in the social media and technology industry that will be featured on Social Mediarology. Today’s interview is with Scotty Wise of Scotty’s Brewhouse, an Indiana-based restaurant with 6 locations throughout the Hoosier State.

Scotty Wise – Scotty’s Brewhouse

We opened out first restaurant in 1996 in Muncie. Not long after that, we tore down the existing building and rebuilt from the ground up. In 1998 I opened a fine dining restaurant, where I lost nearly a million dollars, but I learned more over the next three years at the fine dining restaurant than I’ve learned in the 14 years of Scotty’s existence.  When we closed that restaurant down, we opened our Bloomington location in 2001. West Lafayette opened in 2004 and the northside Indianapolis (96^th Street) location opened in 2007. We opened our downtown Indianapolis location (at Virginia & Pennsylvania Streets) in 2009. Scotty’s Lakehouse opened in 2010 and we’ll be opening our Brewpub, Three Wise Men Brewing Company in Broad Ripple in late 2010. We’ve also got a project we’re planning to launch in 2011 in Fort Wayne.  We’re looking to locate in left field of Parkview Field, home of the Minor League Fort Wayne TinCaps.

When I was looking to expand to Indianapolis, all the banks told me that the 96^th street location wouldn’t work because we were a college town bar and there was too much competition, but it’s the most successful restaurant in our portfolio right now.

How has social media affected your bottom line?

The best way to apply social media to our bottom line is that we’ve eliminated every single piece of outside advertising, no print, no radio, no other types of traditional media, whereas in the past, we would spend about $250,000 each year in football ads, newspaper, and radio during Christmastime to promote gift cards. We eliminated all of that. The original reason we eliminated that was because of the economy. A year and a half ago, when the economy crashed, that was the one part of the budget we could eliminate without having to lay employees off.

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A few days ago I wrote about how to get started on Foursquare, but today, I want to show you how to use Foursquare as an organization. There are many benefits for organizations to get involved in Foursquare and tourism entities of all types – restaurants, hotels, attractions, Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) and more – can benefit the most.

In our increasingly connected and mobile world, visitors to your destination are using printed guides less and less and are relying on the internet, social media and their mobile devices more and more. While Foursquare is still used primarily by early adopters, new users are signing up every day – especially as people begin to realize how they can benefit from using Foursquare.

Claim Your Business:

Check out this post for more information about how to get started with Foursquare, but once you’ve created an account and are signed in, do a quick search for your organization. Once you’ve found it, click on Are you the manager of this business? Once here, you’ll need to copy and paste a link to your business on Yelp, Google Maps or a similar service. If your organization isn’t listed on any of those services, you can also fill out your name, email address and phone number and a Foursquare team member will be in touch to verify that you are, indeed, the manager of that business.

Why do you need to claim your business? If you don’t claim your business, you won’t get access to back-end analytics (click on the image to the left for a closer view) and you won’t be able to create a special offer at your location. Starbucks gives mayors at each individual store $1 off Frappuccinos and Scotty’s Brewhouse (with locations in Indianapolis, Bloomington, Muncie and West Lafayette, Indiana) offers a 10% discount to ANYONE who checks in during lunch (Mon-Fri).

Create Your Special:

Once you’ve claimed your business you can set up specials for people who check-in at your location. Foursquare actually offers quite a range of different ways to set up your offers. You can offer discounts to Mayors only, like Starbucks, or you can offer discounts to anyone who checks in, like Scotty’s. You can also offer a special to customers who visit a certain number of times within a set time period (ex. Free Coffee if you check-in 3 times in 1 month). You also have the choice to offer a special on every X check-in (ex. 5% off your bill on every 5th check-in). The final, and most flexible, option is to offer a special to a customer dependent on whatever you choose (ex. Free burger if you check-in during the NFL season and are wearing a Colts jersey). You can also offer more than one special at a time. This kind of targeting allows you to decide which kind of offer works best for your business.

In fact, Foursquare recently blogged about the successes that some businesses have seen since implementing Foursquare Specials.

Promote your Special:

Now that you have claimed your business and you have a special up for customers, you have to let people know about it! Promote the special through Facebook, Twitter and your blog. Put it in an email letting people know you want them to check-in when they get to your location. You can even fill out this form to request a window cling to put in your storefront. You can also download this pdf that you can print out and hang in your store.

Get creative, think of other ways you can promote your new Foursquare Special and make sure to keep track of your redemption rate. With the analytics available as a manager of a location on Foursquare, you can see who has checked in to your location, when they checked in and how frequently they check-in. Keep a close eye on those metrics to make sure you’re getting the most out of Foursquare.