Social Mediarology

So, is social media just a fad?

There are plenty of people who still dismiss social media as useless. In fact, there are studies that show that 40% of all ‘tweets’ are pointless babble. Even though that may be true, that doesn’t diminish the power and usefulness of social media in marketing and PR today. There will always be people who don’t understand new technologies and how they can be useful, and social media is no exception. The video below has been circulating online in the past couple of weeks and it does a fantastic job of highlighting how much a part of our lives social media has become. No longer can you ignore social media, in fact, in a recent survey of Indiana Tourism entities, nearly 30% of respondents use Twitter on to promote their destination and more than 90% use Facebook.

My favorite quote in the entire presentation is:

Social Media isn’t a fad – it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.

That’s such a true statement. Social Media isn’t just a way to waste time and talk with friends about useless bits of trivia, it’s truly a new way to communicate directly with consumers, with your customers.

Some other encouraging news for the use of social media is that more 80% of US adults use social media on a monthly basis. For more information about the different types of social media use check out these posts on Groundswell):

The video below is the precursor to the other video in this post. While this one doesn’t focus on social media exclusively, there is still some pretty amazing information in here.

If you’ve attended any of the conferences or sessions that Indiana Office of Tourism Development has recently hosted, you’ve probably noticed that we’ve been talking a lot about online and social media marketing.

• 2008 Indiana Tourism Summit: We brought in Josh Hallett, who talked about Flickr and other social media platforms.
• 2009 Hoosier Hospitaliy Conference: IOTD hosted a blogging seminar (featuring Doug Karr, Paula Werne, Jeff Robinson and myself) where the panelists talked about the importance of blogging.
• 2009 June Tourism Council: We hosted a panel (featuring Jen Perry, Bruce Hetrick, Erik Johnson and John Palmer) about Marketing in a Recession that talked about different social media initiatives to get you through in this tough economic climate.
• 2009 Meet The Media: This event occurred just a few weeks ago. We had sessions about Social Media from Erik Deckers and Duncan Alney as well as a Twitter session from James Burnes and an Indiana Insider Bloggers Panel that featured each of our Indiana Insider bloggers.
• 2009 Indiana Tourism Summit: This upcoming summit will be completely web-focused and will feature such topics as web research, online optimization, social media and permission email. (Click here to register for the 2009 Indiana Tourism Summit – PDF form)

We’re choosing to focus on web-based and social media marketing so much because it is such an important part of an effective marketing mix, especially in today’s economy. All of these sessions and conferences provide a great opportunity to hear directly from some of the  smartest minds in online and social media marketing, but what do you do between sessions? Who should you pay attention to? Who should you go to with questions about online marketing?

In addition to the Tourism Tech Corner, we’ve compiled a short list of other great resources for social media and technology questions. Several of them are even located here in Indiana. Here are some of my favorite blogs to follow as well an excerpt from each:

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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.

I found a great article on how to get the most out of Flickr. Enjoy!

Flickr is a popular online photo-sharing community that allows anyone to share and organize their digital photos with friends, family, colleagues, and the rest of the world. While many people use Flickr recreationally, it can also be a powerful tool for organizations, including nonprofits.

There are many ways that Flickr can help nonprofits share photos online and accomplish their goals. For example:

• An international organization sends volunteer doctors to developing countries around the world to perform medical services. The physicians document the impact of their work through photos that they upload to the organization’s private Flickr group. Not only does Flickr help the volunteers exchange photos and information, it also creates an image bank from which the organization can select photos for its Web site and blog.
• An environmental organization that supports organic farmers had literally thousands of amazing photographs documenting the development of organic farming techniques over the last decade. Before using Flickr, no one had organized or categorized the photos, which were scattered on various hard drives in the office and on volunteers’ computers. The organization uploaded the photos to Flickr and were able to enlist the help of volunteers and members to document the techniques.
• A museum was mounting a special collaborative exhibition with institutions located in five cities around the world. As the group prepared the installation, they used Flickr to share photos with one another, allowing them to see what a “textured plaster” wall finish looked like before approving the contracting work; get a visual reference of the exhibition space when selecting picture frames; and see work completed to date. Flickr provided a way for the collaborators to easily upload and share photos publicly and privately.
• An executive director wanted to use photos to make her points during a presentation, but disliked clip art and lacked the budget for stock photography. Using Flickr’s Creative Commons licensing search feature, she was to find appropriate photos that she could use for free with attribution.
• Volunteers and talented photographers for an animal shelter had taken beautiful photos of some the dogs and cats at their facility. The organization wanted to create special cards featuring the pets that they could use as thank-you notes. Uploading the photos into Flickr, they were able to order cards and other items.

Flickr is a fun, creative, and very useful way to share your organization’s photos and images with other people, whether privately or publicly. It offers an amazing online community, and it is also fairly easy to use. Many nonprofits are discovering that Flickr can be an important part of the organizational communications strategy. Below, we’ll show you what Flickr is, and how your nonprofit can best use it to share photos and connect with others.

How Nonprofits Can Get the Most out of Flickr – Beth Kanter – TechSoup.org

While this article specifically mentions the use of Flickr for nonprofit organizations, these same principals can easily be used by any organization, attraction, or hotel. Click here for the full article

Let’s take a look at Flickr.com. Flickr is the world’s largest online photo-sharing website. You can create a free account at Flickr.com and post pictures of your area or attraction. If you need additional benefits you can upgrade to a “pro account” for just $25.00 a year, which gives you unlimited storage and a host of other benefits.

When you upload photos to Flickr you can “tag” them, describing what’s in the photo. For this photo of West Baden Springs Resort, I described it using the following tags:

• west baden springs
• indiana
• resort
• architecture
• restored
• historic
• dome
• atrium
• hotel

Now, anyone can visit Flickr and search for photographs that are tagged “dome” and this photo will show up in the search results. Flickr provides you with a great way to showcase the best of what your organization has to offer and you can further your exposure by creating or joining a Flickr group. You can even pull photographs from your “photo stream” onto your website using some tools that Flickr provides (again, for free).

If we’ve piqued your curiosity in Flickr, you can check out the Indiana Office of Tourism Development’s account or our photo-sharing group – Visit Indiana. If you’ve got some photos of Indiana, we’d love for you to join Flickr, then join the Visit Indiana group and submit some of YOUR photos!

Update: Flickr now offers the opportunity to upload 90-second videos in addition to photos. I’ll be very interested to see how the new Flickr Video works out.