This week, I’ve been focusing on how travel and tourism destinations can get started in social media.

(See “5 Reasons Why Travel & Tourism Destinations Need Social Media” and “5 Photo & Video Sharing Sites Travel Destinations Should Use.”)

I probably jumped the gun a little bit by diving into the photo and video sharing sites before I told you how to actually use social media, but that’s okay. For one thing, social networks are created to be soooo easy for everyone to use that you don’t need me to tell you how to get started. Second, you can start these all in a matter of a couple hours, and then start working to integrate them all together. (We’ll discuss that in a future post.)

Vevay, IN Facebook page

Facebook

What it is: It’s the largest social network in the world with 500 million members. If it was a country, it would be the 3rd largest in the world, behind China and India. Basically, if there is an online place where your guests and customers gather, this is it.
Get started: Start out by setting up your own personal profile, and connect with friends and family. Keep this separate from your business or organization. You don’t want to combine your business with your personal life on here.
Strategy: Once you’re comfortable with Facebook, set up a separate business page (what used to be called a “Fan Page”) for your business or destination, and then upload your business email database — you have been saving your guests’ emails, haven’t you? — to build your network. Ask these people to “Like” your page. Start communicating with your page’s network about things going on at your place through status updates, telling people about new photos and videos, new blog posts, and new specials.
Why? The whole foundation of social media is building relationships with people. You want to evoke a positive emotional response in people when the visit your place, and you want to remind them of that emotional response when they see the latest news or photos. If you remind them of the good feelings they had while they were there, they’ll want to experience them again, and will return again.

Twitter

What it is: It’s a 140 character message that is sent out to your followers (people who have started “following” your messages, because they want to see what you have to say). Twitter is like Facebook’s “Status Updates” but without everything else.
Get started: Go to Twitter.com and sign up for an account, and add your customer list (see Gmail below). Next, download TweetDeck from TweetDeck.com.
Strategy: Communicate the same information you send out on Facebook and your blog by tweeting your headlines and links to events or new posts.
Why? Because not everyone is on Facebook at the same time. Because some people prefer Twitter over Facebook. Because with TweetDeck you can update both Twitter and Facebook at the same time. Because there are a lot of other reasons I will cover in a future post.

Blogging

What it is: Blogging is a way to publish information, like articles and stories, for other people to read and for search engines to find. It’s a way to share photos and videos, without sending people off to Picasa and YouTube (see yesterday’s post, “5 Photo & Video Sharing Sites Travel Destinations Should Use.”)
Get started: Visit Blogger.com or WordPress.com and follow the instructions. You won’t need to upload an address book to find connections.
Strategy: Blog on a regular basis — at least once a week, but preferably more — about what’s going on at your destination or business. Show photos and videos of the fun stuff other people are doing. Talk about any special events or festivals, both before and after they take place. Share testimonials from your guests.
Why? For two reasons: 1) you can rank high in the search engines with a lot of interesting content like this, and 2) it helps your guests feel more connected if they can visit your site and feel like they’re visiting your location. (See the Facebook section above.)

Gmail

What it is: A free email network owned by the folks at Google.
Get started: Set up an account at Gmail.com, and import all of your addresses from your different email profiles, whether it’s Yahoo, Hotmail, your local cable provider, or the address book on your computer. Next, clean it up by eliminating duplicates, deleting out of date entries, and adding missing information.
Strategy: You won’t use this for social networking. You’ll use it for uploading all the addresses of your guests to the other networks. Any new social network you join will let you “see if your friends are on here!” And every social network will plug into Gmail with ease, so this makes it so much easier to build your network in just a couple minutes.
Why? Because you want to have a master list of all your email addresses somewhere other than your computer, in case your computer breaks down.

I was recently in a contest to become the “Inn-Bedded Resorter” at the Balsams Grand Resort Hotel in New Hampshire, and had a chance to be their social media specialist for two months. This was a novel approach, because the Resorter was going to be a guest, do all the guest activities, and then report it via social media. They were starting to use all of these technologies to communicate with their fans and guests, and have seen some great success with these technologies. You ought to give them a try and see what you can do with it.

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Do you use Gmail or some other web-based program, or are you still accessing email strictly on your computer, cursing Outlook, and praying for the sweet, sweet release that death a hard drive crash will bring? Do you have a backup of your address book and necessary emails, should that blessed day ever come?

When I give a social media talk, I tell everyone to use Gmail for basic contact management. It has saved my bacon more than once, and I’ve become such a raving fan that I use it as my only email interface. I even forward my work email and other addresses into Gmail, so I have one window, one set of contacts, and the cleanest, least buggy interface I’ve ever had the joys of using. I can send email from any of my addresses, but the interface is all Gmail.

The joys of Gmail

If you’re not using Gmail yet, here are a few reasons why you need to:

• Social network building Any social network you join is going to have a way to import your address book into the network so you can see if your friends are on there. Gmail is the easiest one to bring in. Some networks don’t even import web-mail programs like Hotmail. Others are a little more forgiving and will let you import Apple Mail, Outlook and Outlook Express, and comma-delimited CSV files.
• Offsite storage of your contact list Let’s say that your work computer crashes, and you lose everything. Or you are, um, no longer allowed to. . . access your work computer due to a new arrangement you have with your now-former employer, and you need to let your friends and colleagues in other companies know about your new work situation. Having a copy of your address book in your control will make this a lot easier. You can even sync Gmail with Outlook, so any time you change or add a record, that is reflected in the other. Warning: some solutions will split up multi-email records, and then sync all those brand new records into Gmail. I had that happen twice, after I spent hours cleaning them up.
• Emergency access If you ever need to reach people over the weekend or in the evening, but your computer is at work, you can still do so. This is especially important for people in crisis communication whose organizations are still planted firmly in 1997. If you’re counting on your email server and your email list to be available if you need to do a press release or media alert, you’re totally hosed if that thing ever crashes because of a large-scale disaster. When I was in crisis communication, we had to come up with some plan to work around just that contingency. And if you’re in the middle of an emergency, and you can’t get access to your email server, you need another solution. There are so many workarounds to getting online, as long as you can get there, you can communicate. But if you’re depending on one computer’s data, forget it.
• Enterprise email You can even use Gmail for business. For $50 per user per year, you can get 25 MB of storage per user, plus it syncs with Outlook and Blackberry. (For the record, I can also sync my personal email with my HTC Droid.) You keep your corporate identity and addresses, but you have the security and ease of use of Google’s email, calendar, and Docs.

What about you? Why do you use Gmail (or your favorite web-mail application)? Why should people switch to web-mail from computer mail? Or, why shouldn’t they?

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Are you a pioneer or a settler? Do you blaze trails, follow them while they’re still rough, or wait until there’s a nicely paved road?

Being a settler is easy. You just tread down the same old path everyone else has, making sure it’s safe. But being a pioneer is tough. You’re the first to pass this way, you’re not sure if you’re heading in the right direction, and some days you’d swear you’re going the wrong way. But the rewards are well worth it.

So how do you pioneer your new niche? How do you become a leader in your field, especially when there is no niche, or the people in it are not connected? In this case, it’s actually easier to be the pioneer, rather than to be one of many. By the time the settlers are finally getting involved, there’s a traffic jam on the road the pioneers have paved. But by this time, you’ll be way ahead of the pack.

Becoming a Pioneer

Here are a few tools and techniques you can use to establish yourself as an expert in your chosen field. Before you start, make sure you have identified your niche, know who the players are, and actually have some content on your blog or website.

• Find your flock. Use NearbyTweets.com, Twitterment.com, and Twitter Search to locate them and start following them. Avoid those “get 2,000 followers per day” spam programs, and earn your followers the honest way.
• Talk to strangers. Read and comment on the blogs of other people in your industry. If there aren’t any, find logical allies to your industry. If you manufacture marbles, and you’re the only marble manufacturing blog out there, find marble collectors and marble players. Leave comments on their blogs and respond when they leave comments on yours. Not only do you build up some link juice, you create relationships with potential customers.
• Share knowledge. If you find articles that would be of interest to your audience, share it with them on Twitter and your blog. Write commentary about the articles on the blog, and share those as well. If you can become a source of knowledge, people will look to you for answers.
• Consider video. Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibrary.tv and the author of Crush It, has built a social media footprint like an elephant’s by using video to sell and promote wine. Do video posts of you sitting at your desk, pontificating about industry goings-on. Publish excerpts of you speaking at conferences and events (this is also useful if you’re trying to build a speaking career).
• Build your contact list. As you meet new people, keep your contacts organized in Gmail. If you use Outlook, sync it up with Gmail and keep that list fresh. Gmail is the go-to contact list by every social networking tool out there. Want to find friends on Twitter, LinkedIn, or YouTube? They’ll import your Gmail contact list with no problem.

These are just a very few steps to get yourself started finding your niche. I haven’t even touched on LinkedIn or creating an industry-related social network yourself. But these are enough steps to get you started.

What other tools and steps do you recommend? Leave a comment, and we’ll try to feature it in a future blog post.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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