The ubiquitous visitor maps found at any rest stop, visitor center and attractions kiosk is always the go-to quick guide for people to get a general idea of what’s around them as they find their way around your city. Traditionally a paper brochure-type fold out, they can range anywhere from the beautiful with eye candy, the vague and ugly, to busy, jam packed and cluttered with supporting ads. This medium will likely never go away, but many travelers these days want a little more tech-savvy way to map out their itinerary.
Everyone is going mobile
Nearly everyone these days carries a mobile phone. I rely on it almost exclusively for maps, gps, web, email, twitter, even to keep track of where I parked my car at a huge festival. I’m waiting for the day when I can be a tourist and plan/execute everything I want to do using digital media only.
Social Media is here – with or without you
There is a whole passel of online and interactive tools destinations, attractions and restaurants can use to help visitors find their way around the area and through the front doors of their establishments. Even if you have no budget – many of these great platforms are FREE. Below is an example of low cost, must-have social media marketing tools for helping visitors and patrons plan their activities and stops in your area:
VIDEO Get out the digital camera, pal up with a gregarious announcer and start shooting some attractions, hot spots, restaurants, etc. Edit these short clips (1-3 mins) and post them on your YouTube Channel. YouTube Channel? Yes, you can create your own channel on YouTube where you can post all of your videos. Check out VermontTourism.com‘s.
TWITTER is the most obvious outlet for creating instant interest and providing links and assistance for newbies to your area. Many destinations are already on Twitter, although some are not as active and useful as others. Most CVB and area Visitor Centers’s websites should have a Twitter link to follow. Twitter destination rockstars (in my view) include @SeattleMaven and @PensacolaCVB. Read through some of their tweets to see how they move great links, messages, and info around for their followers and member businesses.
FACEBOOK offers the ability to create fan pages for destinations to post news, upcoming events, and announcements. Facebook is a great way to engage your fans and drum up excitement for what’s going on in your area. Good examples of tourism dependent business using Facebook include Seattle’s CVB and Stowe Mountain Resort.
FLICKR Flickr is a great place to post photos – and for people in your local area, local businesses, and tourists, to post THEIR photos. Create a Flickr Group and link to it from your other online presences. Groups can either be public, public (invite only) or completely private. Every group has a pool for photos and/or video and a discussion board for talking. See how VisitIndiana is utilizing Flickr >>
YOUR WEBSITE Your website is the basecamp for all of the above social mediums. Write about them often in your e-newletters. Include links to them in your email signatures, write about and plug them often in your blog posts. Yes, you should have a blog, too! The goal is to ultimately drive traffic to your website AND the area in general, and of course for all your online efforts to be truly USEFUL to your visitors. Your website is also the place to house good maps, both interactive and printable. Make them searchable by topic of interest if you have more than a few. Also provide quick links to your area on Google Maps, by creating a map with points of interest already tacked. This is ideal for mobile users.
I recently came across (via Twitter of course!) this great example of a really beautiful website with useful maps for bike trail enthusiasts in Oregon: RideOregonRide.com.
