Heading into the 2011 BlogWord and New Media Expo, I was amped about attending the many, many interesting sessions involving destination marketing, writing and online content creation inspiration. This year’s Expo in Los Angeles promised more than ever before on SEO, blogging for a living, and finding real measure in an audience.
The best Blogworld takeaways from a tourism perspective
One of my most anticipated sessions of the Expo was Social Photography: A Picture is Worth a 140 Characters, with LA Convention and Visitor Bureau‘s Director of Marketing, Bill Karz and VisitPhilly’s Director of Social Media (YES! they recognize the importance of social content and sharing for a destination,) Caroline Bean. Their combined session topics showcased their destination’s efforts to engage their local audiences, while curating inspirational and useful content for their readers – both locals and visitors.
Discover Los Angeles Blogworld Photowalk. Photo: Darren Rowse
LACVB showed travel and tourism session attendees how they partnered with local entertainment promoters and publications to showcase local amateur photographers’ and videographers’ perspective on L.A. as seen through their own eyes. This On Location event challenged amateur filmmakers to showcase the many attributes of Los Angeles in four minutes or less. After reviewing numerous submissions, 22 finalists premiered their films on May 21, 2011 at Sunset Gower Studios. The red carpet party unveiling the results was straight out of Hollywood, of course, but the content collected from the resulting films is gold for LACVB.
Additionally, LACVB (aka L.A. Inc) hosts an occasional phototour that lets photographers of all skill levels shoot many fantastic venues and scenic outlooks around the city on a double decker bus. Non-exclusive rights to the photos taken on the tours give the LACVB fresh, beautiful, and interesting content for their image library, and the photogs get to use their work as they see fit, too. BlogWorld keynote favorite, Darren Rowse (ProBlogger.com) is an avid photographer and attended a special BlogWorld edition of the Phototour. His submission wound up the Discover LA’s Photo of the Day for November 3.
That same session featured VisitPhilly’s partnership with the smart app, Foodspotting. Noted as one of its first location partnerships, Foodspotting and VisitPhilly have developed no less than 22 Foodspotting Guides highlighting local culinary hot spots. These crowd-sourced photos and commentary provide instant ‘let’s go eat this now’ motivation for anyone who uses the app to find what’s verified as great in Philadelphia. More than for finding good restaurants and bars around the user, VisitPhilly even promotes its local Restaurant Week and Farmers Markets with the app. Brilliant!
Shoestring Video, Monetization, Pitching
Another motivational session in the tourism track was Brian Matson’s presentation on how to create great video on a small budget. As Marketing Director for the Fargo-Moorhead CVB, Brian has created over 100 home-grown videos for their YouTube Channel – all with low budget equipment, member venues and a little known how with easy video editing tools. Even with very few (any?) staff members to manage their video outreach, Brian makes FMCVB appear to have a whole A/V department. His work looks professional and proves that with just little elbow grease, locations of any size can offer a great video experience to potential visitors. We all know people love video. Brian gets this.
Other sessions of interest included monetization of travel blogs and pitching tips for travel bloggers. As an avid reader of the really good destination blogs out there (not travel per se, but tourism focused – and too few, unfortunately) it was interesting to discover all that goes into getting on board with destinations and travel promoters to turn out good information for online magazines like the Matador Network and TripAdvisor.
I’m ready to put what I’ve learned to work for my own blogging efforts. Attending Blogworld for the second time was absolutely worth the time, money and miles. Looking forward to next year’s Blogworld already!
