justasmalltowngirl, Author at Small Business Marketing | Tourism Marketing

How History Works for Your Marketing

May 13, 2013 by justasmalltowngirl Leave a Comment

How does history work for your marketing success? Why would someone care about your history? Inquiring minds want to know, that’s the bottom line. Whether you’re a small business, a tourist attraction, or a destination, people crave the details of the how, why and when. Your customers and visitors care about your history. How well you share those interesting slices of history that can add another, deeper level to your marketing efforts.

How to Market Your History

Here are a few things to think about when considering using your history in your marketing:

Is your business one that has been in your family for generations?
Did you start it after deciding it was your passion, and if so, how did this happen?
Who settled your area?
What interesting characters from the past can you bring to light to help highlight a living history?
What products do you carry that have a great local history?
Have you realized that your products and your marketing can help promote your community?

Writers of all sorts – bloggers, travel writers, print media – never stop looking for new stories. What part of your history can garner their interest?

The local angle is like gold in the marketing world. If you have a strong local history, historical figure, a business with a great local story, you need to highlight it and start having if work for you.

Be visionary here – look at what your history encompasses, look deep to see how it can be a marketing benefit to you in the future.

Share your history via your social media channels. Use hashtags to call out specifics in Twitter and Instagram to extend your marketing reach. There are people out there that cherish history and will go to the ends of the earth to experience and enjoy local areas, events and products that have a history. Bring your history to the world through social media and invite the world to visit your history.

An Example of a Community Marketing their History

When history is marketed in a community, it enhances the community’s sense of pride. It rallies everyone living in the area around that aspect of their history. A great example of this is the Ramona Pageant in the San Jacinto Valley in Southern California – www.RamonaBowl.com . The Ramona Pageant is the official outdoor play for the state of California and the longest running outdoor play in the United States. The pageant celebrated its 90^th year this year. (Disclaimer – I am contracted with the San Jacinto Valley to build a multicultural tourism program for them so while I had attended the play several times in the past, this year when I went I looked at it through entirely different eyes.)

The residents of the San Jacinto Valley take great pride in this play. It’s tough to find anyone who hasn’t been part of the 3 weekend event at some point in their lives. It’s a true community effort celebrating the history of the community, a great sense of community pride, and a great revenue source for not only the valley but the local businesses too. The economic trickle down is immense.

How are You going to Succeed Marketing Your History?

So, what are you marketing that reflects your history? Spend a little bit of time thinking about it and I bet you’ll come up with some interesting facts and ideas to enhance your marketing. Have a good story about using history in marketing? Hope you’ll share it to help others with ideas!

Want to know a little bit more about Just A Small Town Girl? You’ll find it here: http://www.justasmalltowngirl.us/blog/why-leslie/

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: history, local, Marketing

Social Media Do Over

April 22, 2013 by justasmalltowngirl Leave a Comment

How many of us wish we could have a social media do over?

Remember when we first started out, oh so long ago? At the time, it seemed like we were artists, painting each piece of the social media puzzle individually, hoping that some sort of cohesive marketing design would appear. How many times have you looked back and said “If I had it to do over again, I would have done it differently?”

Social Media “Coulda Woulda”

For those who were traditional marketers that embraced social media early on, there wasn’t time for the “coulda woulda” mentality. We were all in the same boat – trying to keep our heads above water and stay one step ahead of the social media curve. We didn’t have a choice, we needed to incorporate social media with the traditional marketing we already had in place.

As luck would have it, I get to have a social media do over. The city of San Jacinto, CA has contracted with me to build a tourism marketing program from scratch. We will be starting from nothing and building something brand new. The tourism community is very excited, as am I.

Flip your social media mentality

What would you do if you had the chance to start over with a clean canvas, if you could have a social media do over? I posed this question to a tourism group on Facebook and William Bakker of Think! Social Media provided a great insight. He wrote:

“Put social at the core. Instead of building marketing programs and digital channels and use social to support them, start with social and build digital and other channels to support social.”

Perfect advice! Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and bloggers will be the first line of marketing in this particular tourism marketing program as opposed to brochures, direct mail and other traditional marketing tactics. Now don’t get me wrong, I do think we need to have a balanced marketing effort, and will still use some traditional methods, but social will be the focus and we’ll build out from there.

If you had an opportunity for a social media do over, what would you do? What have you done?

Filed Under: Marketing, Social Media Tagged With: Marketing, Social Media, tourism

eTourism Summit – Small and Mighty Tourism Conference Rules

December 10, 2012 by justasmalltowngirl Leave a Comment

Right off the bat I have to say, “eTourism Summit is one tourism conference you really should attend!” While we all attend a variety of tourism conferences and educational events throughout the year, eTourism Summit is different. It’s intimate, only 200 can attend. Because of the small number of in attendance, you are immersed in the stellar education offered and you get to really connect with others in tourism.

This year I was able to share my experience marketing the resort destination of Lake Arrowhead, CA. for 2 years with no budget, primarily via Twitter. I shared the session with Melissa Barnes, Marketing Strategy, from Twitter and Ali Daniels, Director of Marketing, Seattle CVB and from all accounts our Twitter session rocked!

A special field trip was arranged for some eTourism Summit attendees!

Jake Steinman, founder of eTourism Summit, offered something very special to some of us the day before eTourism officially started and that was a trip to Facebook headquarters. Approximately 60 people attended. We were in 2 groups that participated in a workshop and had time for lunch on the “campus” too. It was really something getting a glimpse of what it’s like to actually work there. And, by the way, according to an employee there, Mark Zuckerberg feels that Facebook is only “1% percent finished with its journey.” How about that?

The two days of the actual conference had 3 separate tracks (you could choose any track at any time) filled with sessions such as:

Keri Hanson, Digital Marketing Manager, Brand USA and Chris Adams, VP Research, Miles present at eTourism Summit

How Facebook Has Evolved and What it Means to Tourism Marketers

The State of Mobile Marketing from a Tourism Marketer’s Perspective

The Changing Role of Travel Bloggers from Journalists to Paid “Wanderers-in-Residence”

Paid Advertising Programs on Digital Platforms. Options Coop/PPC vs CPM, which is more relevant?

The Super Panel: Experts from all four leading digital media brands – Google, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn – offer their insights and perspectives on how travel companies can best use their platforms.

eTourism Summit offers a great deal of content for attendees – all levels of experience learn here. There is a speed-dating component where those in attendance can connect one on one with presenters as well as each morning you can take part in moderated roundtable discussions during breakfast. The first morning I moderated the “Kissing Up to Bloggers” roundtable and brought those who participated up to speed regarding TBEX and how to work with bloggers on their terms.

With the size of the conference limited (which means you must register early for this event each year) the opportunities for networking as well as the educational component are exceptional and once again let us say ~ This is a conference that you should put into your budget and plan on attending. eTourism Summit is so worth it!

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: eTourism summit, Facebook, tourism, tourism conference, tourism marketing, Twitter

Tourism Events, Social Media, and an Outstanding FITA 2012

October 3, 2012 by justasmalltowngirl Leave a Comment

In tourism, we all want the same thing – more visitors. And to do that we provide a variety of tourism events and great personal experiences. Nowhere was I more aware of that than at FITA 2012 in Mexico City in September. As a first timer to FITA, I was amazed by the size and scope of this particular travel trade show.

It truly was international with countries from all over the world represented. Now I’ve attended my fair share of global tourism tradeshows over the years, but FITA was mammoth and the booths were the best I have ever seen.

Good Grief! We have the same tourism events!!

Each country featured their various destinations as well as highlighting their variety of events. The second day of the show I attended a press conference that is the basis for this post. The conference, by the state of Quintana Roo, showcased their upcoming tourism events. Film festivals, jazz festivals, sporting events…they all play a big part in the annual calendar for the state. If you’re in destination marketing, I bet you’re planning the exact same type of tourism events for your area too. Riviera Maya is having a film festival followed by a jazz festival featuring jazz great Poncho Sanchez. Well guess what? In my small community we do the exact same thing, in the exact same order and this year our jazz festival featured none other than Poncho Sanchez. How many of you are in the planning stages for your next film and jazz festivals?

Our tourism efforts are all fairly similar

Yes, we all seem to be working on the same things with regard to tourism. FITA 2012 really brought to my attention how similar our tourism efforts are globally. But why are some destinations more successful than others with their events? Yes, you can say budget plays a big part in how successful events are, but I don’t think that has to be key anymore.

Promotion, connection, and engagement are what make events successful these days. By using all social media channels, you can build your audience and build the success of your event. Utilizing Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, even Foodspotting you can reach a variety of audiences and grow your attendance.

FITA 2012 did an excellent job with their social media

FITA did a tremendous job via Facebook and Twitter this year. Their posts, 3 and 4 times per day, got me excited before I went – their Facebook presence in particular was stellar. FITA also retweeted the tweets I made from the event almost immediately. I would give them no less than a 10 for the job that their social media team did.

So as we’re all planning tourism events, remember that so many of our events are the same and tweak your thinking as to how you can grow your attendance by being more social, by engaging more people and continually building up your event via social media. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how much money you put towards something, it’s the extra mileage that you receive from those who you excite that can make or break your event.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: FITA, Social Media, Tourism Events

Social Media Listening – Toby Keith Rocks!

September 4, 2012 by justasmalltowngirl Leave a Comment

One of the best parts of social media is listening.

BUT, there are plenty of social media participants who aren’t listening. I had a super experience a couple of weeks ago when someone listened (along with a whole bunch of other people) and it was such a nice surprise.

We had tickets to see Toby Keith at San Manuel Amphitheater in Southern California. Now I knew Toby was filming a video for his new song at the concert. It was broadcast that everyone should make a sign. I made a clever (at least I thought it was clever) sign for my husband to take. The afternoon of the day of the concert I checked out the Twitter stream for Toby Keith and there was an announcement to tweet a photo of your sign. So I did.

About an hour later my phone started going crazy as I was getting congratulatory tweets from fans across the county. Toby’s social media team had seen the photo, they were listening to the social media chatter, and suddenly my seats were upgraded. Now, HOW COOL is that?!? We had a great time, loved our seats and loved connecting with so many other Toby Keith fans across the country who had witnessed what transpired.

Are you listening to what’s happening around you via social media?

I’m sure you know you need to, but are you making listening easy on yourself by using Hootsuite or Tweetdeck or any of the other social media listening tools available? This is something vital that you absolutely must do.

Just think how happy you would make your customers if you responded to what they were saying and doing via social media, just like Toby’s people responded to me. I know how happy and totally surprised I was that his social media team was listening. While I already was a big Toby Keith fan, I will always use every opportunity I can to tell others what an awesome experience we had.

What kind of cool social media listening experiences have you had? Hope you’ll share below!

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Hootsuite, listening, Social Media, Toby Keith, Tweetdeck

Are You Social Media Snappish?

February 21, 2012 by justasmalltowngirl 1 Comment

What draws you to social media? Is it the conversation, the links to articles, is it that most people enjoy each other and are generally happy to be posting? A goal most of us have with social media is to stand out for providing value to our friends and followers. If you’re social media snappish, you certainly stand out…in a bad way.

So just what is “social media snappish?”

Remember Ally McBeal – a popular TV show from the 1990’s? Recently I received the complete set of Ally McBeal DVD’s as a gift and have been enjoying watching one of my all-time favorite shows. In one of the first episodes, Richard Fish says something not-so-nice to Elaine and she replies “snappish.” It just so happened that later that day I was participating on a Twitter chat and someone said something not-so-nice and I immediately thought “snappish!”

Since that day I have watched this individual behave snappishly on a few different chats, the posts this person writes also have that tone. Snappish is a bad character trait to have. This person is not friendly, doesn’t seem to get the meaning of the word social and certainly doesn’t embrace the “happiness” that is generally found via social media. This person isn’t the only one that I’ve noticed recently ~ now that being snappish is in the forefront of my mind. There’s a handful who behave like this. They never seem to be happy; they are always in a snappish state of mind.

If you’re not connecting, social media isn’t for you!

What’s interesting about those that are social media snappish is that they don’t really connect with others.

If you don’t connect with others, if you’re not building relationships, what good is social media? It’s the sharing, the conversations, and the friendships that are built online that make social media such a wonderful tool for all of us.

There really is no room for being social media snappish.

I wonder if this individual realizes that they aren’t connecting. I’ve gone through my friends and followers and have deleted the few snappish people I was linked to. Most of us are looking for value, positive messages, and insightful posts. Someone with the social media snappish character trait is not offering anything of value to those who have chosen to connect with them.

There’s not many of them out there, but they do tend to stand out in a very non-positive way. I wonder if they really think about what they’re posting, I wonder what they think social media is going to do for them and their business when they clearly don’t get what social media is all about.

How do you handle snappishness?

While I notice this snappishness more now since watching Ally McBeal, I also simply ignore those who exhibit this trait and continue on.

How do you deal with social media snappish people? Were you a fan of Ally McBeal? (The dancing baby was my first screen saver ever…)

Filed Under: Marketing, Social Media Tagged With: Ally McBeal, snappish, Social Media

How to Create a Community within a Community

January 7, 2012 by justasmalltowngirl 2 Comments

When you have very little money to spend on marketing, you’re constantly trying to think up ways to stretch your reach. We had great help getting our Social Media program off the ground initially by asking others (tourists) to help us spread the word about events they were attending – crowdsourcing at its finest. Several months ago I started wondering if the same type of program would work by enlisting those in the community who are using Social Media, or want to use it, to assist in the marketing of our destination. Since 2009 we have been marketing our area primarily via Social Media due to lack of marketing dollars. It has been exciting, exhilarating, and extremely grueling. And as time has gone on, as a department of one, the need for help has been growing and growing. I had an idea of what could be done, but there never seemed time to get all the pieces together. (Bet that sounds familiar doesn’t it?).

The Creation of a Community within a Community

Our small town recognizes the importance of Social Media, but our small businesses have not really embraced it due to lack of knowledge and feelings of intimidation. Since our community is made up of a variety of small businesses, I want to help them use about Social Media and in turn hope that they will assist in promoting the destination to their friends and followers. The end result is to build a strong Social Media Community within our own Community. This could be a win for everyone - a win for our small businesses as they will have a group of others helping to promote each of them and a win for our destination as we’ll get some help promoting the area.

It seemed like the best way to go about this was to host a Social Media Meetup. The first one was held at the end of 2011. Anyone could attend. You did not have to be affiliated with any organization. At the Meetup we had 35 people representing 28 businesses. It was quite a mix of people – from those who use Social Media to those who hope to use it in the future and are looking to get started.

The first Meetup covered the following items:

The purpose of the Meetup group – Education
How we can help each other – Using Social Media to help promote each other
What they would like to see covered at future Meetups
Provided each attendee with a page of posts that could be used throughout the next 30 day period covering events and activities around the area.

For resort area marketing, you have to sell the destination first. After that you can “drill down” to small businesses that make up the community. We all have times when we can’t think of what to post, so by all of us combining what we’re offering, we should be able to post more frequently and extend the reach of not only the destination but our small businesses as well.

Building a Community within a Community

Will this work? I don’t know…I sure hope so. Our second Meetup is on the horizon and we have a full agenda including:

Facebook Timeline overview
Who to Follow on Twitter and Facebook – we will share monthly who has provided great content links for the group to follow
Discussion regarding social media advantages for small business
Monthly Q & A session
Distribution of social media posts to use for the following month

Each Meetup is scheduled to be no longer than 1 ½ hours long. We’ll see how it goes ~ I’ll keep you posted!

The Goal of the Social Media Community within our own Community

It’s simple. To crowdsource our efforts to increase awareness about each of our small businesses as well as the destination. Let’s hope that by the end of the year we have a strong Meetup group that continues to develop and we can each look at our own marketing statistics and see that our Social Media efforts have grown.

Do you have something like this in your community? If so, please share what you’re doing and let us know what is working for you.

Filed Under: Small Business, Social Media Tagged With: Community, Destination Marketing, small businesses, Social Media, Social Media Meetup

How History Works for Your Marketing

How to Market Your History

An Example of a Community Marketing their History

How are You going to Succeed Marketing Your History?

Leslie McLellan is Just a Small Town Girl

Download the Small Town Marketing Handbook

Lets Connect!

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How to Market Your History

An Example of a Community Marketing their History

How are You going to Succeed Marketing Your History?

How many of us wish we could have a social media do over?

Social Media “Coulda Woulda”

Flip your social media mentality

Good Grief! We have the same tourism events!!

Our tourism efforts are all fairly similar

FITA 2012 did an excellent job with their social media

One of the best parts of social media is listening.

Are you listening to what’s happening around you via social media?

What kind of cool social media listening experiences have you had? Hope you’ll share below!

Have you heard of Tourism Currents, where tourism and hospitality professionals learn to market using social media?

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/TourismCurrents

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TourismCurrents

Newsletter: http://www.tourismcurrents.com/newsletter-sign-up

So just what is “social media snappish?”

If you’re not connecting, social media isn’t for you!

How do you handle snappishness?

The Creation of a Community within a Community

Building a Community within a Community

The Goal of the Social Media Community within our own Community

Do you have something like this in your community? If so, please share what you’re doing and let us know what is working for you.

Leslie McLellan is Just a Small Town Girl

Download the Small Town Marketing Handbook

Lets Connect!

Archives