Social Mediarology

At its core, Pinterest is a social bookmarking site similar to Delicious or SpringPad, but where Pinterest differs (and where they really shine) is how their bookmarks are organized. Rather than saving a list of text links, Pinterest is 100% image-based. The visual nature of Pinterest creates a clean and easily browsable interface that can be extremely addicting.

So, how does Pinterest describe itself?

Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.

- Pinterest.com

Pinterest Wall - Places I'd Like to Visit

You’re likely to find boards and pins full of decorating ideas and recipes as well as just about anything else you could think of, but Pinterest has a really unique opportunity to be a great place for Tourism entities to set up shop. In fact, I set up an account for Visit Indiana a couple months ago and have received a pretty good response so far. I’ve created boards for Favorite Indiana Destinations, Indiana Artisan Products, Indiana Beer and Wine, Indiana Arts and Crafts and Indiana Experiences. Each time I come across a great picture of somewhere in Indiana or something Indiana-related on Etsy, I pin it and share it with everyone who follows Visit Indiana.

You can browse Pinterest in several different ways. You can view just pins from your friends or you can search for and browns pins in countless topics (travel, decorating, recipes, etc.). One of the coolest features on pinterest is the ability to “repin” other people’s pins. Just like sharing on Facebook or retweeting on Twitter repinning posts the pin on your board so your friends can see it. It’s a great way to catalog pictures or links you want to keep handy.

Regardless of what kind of tourism organization you work for (State, County or City DMO or individual attraction or lodging facility) Pinterest offers you the ability to share great photos of places in your area, locally-made products or hidden destinations for visitors and residents alike.

Note that Pinterest is only available on iPhone/iPod Touch right now.

Are you already using Pinterest? If not, do you think its a good fit for your organization?

This post doesn’t really have anything to do with tourism, but I thought it would be a fun way to close out another week. National Geographic has created a truly amazing feature on their website called The Infinite Photograph.

Description from the Infinite Photograph’s website:

What makes up our world? Dive into this photo-mosaic portrait of the Earth to see it through the eyes of users like you. It’s made up of hundreds of photos of the natural world, each submitted by users to My Shot. (Submit a photo) Move the yellow square over an area you would like to explore, click, and go. Double-click on an image to see more information about it. Keep clicking—and diving deeper into the Infinite Photograph—to get a truly boundless picture of Earth.

Check out the video below for an example. You can visit the site and click through on your own to view the nearly limitless photos available in one large image.

Enjoy the site and have a great weekend!

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

Below is a list of the places where you can find Indiana Tourism involved in Social Media. Join our Facebook Fan page and add some of your photos to our Flickr Group!

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Last week, we hosted the first Indiana Tourism Summit at the Indiana State Museum. It was great to see so many industry members in attendance and we hope you got as much out of the summit as we did.

Our four speakers included Bill Geist, Josh Hallett, Dan Schilling and Rob Hunden. Here’s a brief synopsis of what each one spoke about:

Bill Geist – Zeitgeist:

Bill has been a friend to the tourism industry for many years. From his time at the Madison (WI) CVB to his current role as a CVB/tourism consultant, he is at the forefront of the tourism industry. Bill’s presentation focused on everyone’s favorite topic: Strategic Planning.

While Strategic Planning can be viewed as a dry and tedious, it is still a necessity. Bill spent time talking about best practices for creating a strategic plan and among those was the idea that there’s no such thing as a bad idea. The beginning of a strategic plan is a brainstorming session. Some of the best ideas come from these early sessions.

Josh Hallett – Voce Communications:

Josh has spoken for our industry before, at our Tourism Council meeting in December of 2007, but every time he speaks, he brings something new to the table.

Josh’s speech touched on social media and how to use it effectively in your organization. The goals of the Tourism Tech Corner are similar and Josh is extremely knowledgeable about interactive new media.

Josh actually attended the tour of Lucas Oil Stadium and took some great pictures. Check them out here.

Tourism's Triple Bottom Line

Dan Schilling – Civic Tourism:

Dan brought some great information with him. Heritage (Cultural) tourism is one of the fastest growing segments of tourism, and tourism is the 1st, 2nd or 3rd largest industry in each of the 50 states. It’s Indiana’s 3rd largest industry.

One of the most interesting ideas Dan brought was that of the “Triple Bottom Line”. More than any other industry, Tourism benefits from being located in an economically, socially and environmentally healthy area. Similarly, no other single industry can contribute as much to help an area become more

Rob Hunden – Hunden Strategic Partners:

Rob is a native Hoosier and an IU graduate and has done quite a bit of work in Indiana, even though his office are located in Chicago now. Rob spent time talking about economic development through real estate development. His speech resonates, not only with the Indianapolis’s of the state, but also with small towns and cities.

After the presentations, we all headed over to the Lucas Oil Stadium for a guided tour that brought us through many public areas of the stadium, as well as some private areas. We got to go down on to the turf, through the visitors locker room, up into the press box and through the Quarterback suites.

Dinner followed soon after at The Rathskeller. Good food, good beer and great conversation followed. I hope that everyone had as much fun attending the event as we had!

Very soon, we’ll have each presenter’s presentation posted on our industry site, Tourism.IN.gov, and I’ll come back and link to those.

What were your thoughts of the Tourism Summit? Did you like it? Anything you would change?