Tourism Bureaus and Bloggers
Michael Slawin arrived at my lunch with Chris Miller and Matthew Homann to deliver me some gooey butter cake. This, it turns out, is a St. Louis treat. It’s what whoopie pies are to Maine. It’s what poutine is to Quebec and the eastern part of Canada. Essentially, besides probably being 12,500 calories, it is a regional delight that reminds people of being from somewhere. The gooey butter cake came from Park Avenue Coffee, by the way.
After lunch, en route to the airport, Matt Homann gave me a great tour of St. Louis. We went through various neighborhoods, and I learned a lot about the history of the area, a few really interesting spaces, and some of the interesting news about neighborhood redevelopment.
It got me thinking: why aren’t tourism agencies looking to build relationships with visiting bloggers?
One group that is trying this out is Visit Pittsburgh. My friend and PodCamp organizer, Justin Kownacki, connected me into a program with Visit Pittsburgh that ties to the upcoming PodCamp Pittsburgh, happening on October 18th-19th 2008. They have a tour set up for me, and are doing a lot to show me the better side of Pittsburgh, a place I’ve visited three or four times now and find exciting and dynamic and full of great rebirth stories.
I’m not sure how it works. Maybe you have some ideas. Would this be the kind of thing that would attach to conferences being held in the area? That’d be a great way to find out who was visiting that might represent the new media. Or is there some other simpler mechanism to put people together on these kinds of opportunities?
It’s on my mind.
And Michael? Thanks for the gooey butter cakes. Those were a delicious taste of St. Louis.
Airlines Need to Get Sneaky
Lately, I fly a lot. I feel like I’m flying Jeff Pulver levels of a lot. And this has me thinking. Airlines: most of everything you do inside the plane needs reconsidering. Here’s my advice.
- Amtrak has somehow managed to figure out how to give me power for my laptop. Please, can you try? Add the expense on as a surcharge. (You’ll hear that last part a lot in this post).
- Don’t charge me for soda pop or cheese snacks. Just add $6 to my ticket, to everyone’s ticket, and give it to me. That’ll cut down in money fumbling time.
- This in-flight ad bull has to stop. I’m captive, but if you float down a television, do not pummel me with stupid ads, *or* if you’re going to do ads, do them about destinations, so that we learn something useful while accidentally receiving marketing.
- Please adjust flight attendant training for smart phones. If I turn off the phone part of my phone, I can still use the apps without risking the plane’s safety. Don’t have your attendants poking at me to shut it off just because it can also be a phone.
- Is there any way we can fix that “get off the plane” part of my trip? The amount of time between that bell ding and actually walking by the pilots to thank them for a non-bumpy landing seems to last forever. Isn’t there any kind of Disney people-in-line engineering that would fix this process? Tazers for slow people? At this point, I’d pay an extra 10 bucks for you to restrain people so I can just leave efficiently.
- Take the lead of airlines like Southwest and others (most recently, the flight attendant from Mesa Air) and really have fun with those pre-flight announcements. This guy had us all laughing and cheering all the way through his “in the event of an emergency, the floor lighting will be illuminated” speech. Laughing like you’d pay money laughing, I’m saying. Can you just try to liven that part up? We’d listen more intently.
- If the flight is a red-eye (like half my flights from the west coast to the east), could you not come on every few seconds to update us on things like our altitude, on our beverage choices, on your offers of rewards cards and the like? We pretty much know the beverage choices. I mean, you’re not making smoothies, are you? Shush and let us poor bastards sleep.
Okay, I’ve griped enough. Now it’s your turn. What else would you want to tell an airline about the travel process?
And what does this have to do with social media? Simple: I have a voice. I have a community. I have reach. ALL companies have to think about that. We are not silent. We are not complacent. We intend to influence.
The world is two-way.
Agree?
Speaking of sneaky: Las Vegas Sale: Air + 2 nights from $245 - Expires 10/20/08
(Finding great deals is sneaky).
Photo credit, Aaron Escobar
Find Chris
Over the next several days, I’m going to be all over the place. I’ll be going out to Las Vegas to attend BlogWorld Expo, until Monday morning, and then off to Santa Barbara for a client visit. From there, I’ll be heading up to Los Angeles late Tuesday night for ITEC Los Angeles, with James Gaskin. I do Wednesday, and give it over to Sean Percival for Thursday. On Thursday, I have a client visit, and then I’ll be at Streaming Media West for the first part of Thursday. It’s a lot to absorb.
18 Thursday - Blog World Expo, Las Vegas
19 Friday - Blog World Expo, Las Vegas
20 Saturday - Blog World Expo, Las Vegas
21 Sunday - Blog World Expo, Las Vegas
22 Monday AM - Las Vegas
22 Monday PM - Santa Barbara, CA
23 Tuesday - Santa Barbara, CA
23 Tuesday PM - Los Angeles, CA
24 Wednesday - Los Angeles, CA
24 Wednesday PM - San Jose, CA
25 Thursday - San Jose, CA
26 Friday AM - San Jose CA
(Then, don’t bug me). : )
**Updated the dates, because I’m a goof and @GirlPie fixed them for me.**
Business Conversations
I’d like to meet with businesses looking to understand their next moves in social media, both for internal enterprise uses as well as external new media marketing uses. If you’re wondering about your 2009 budget and plan, and you want to start a conversation about the kinds of things you could be doing in this space, I’d love to have that conversation. Drop an email to blog at chrisbrogan dot com with some suggested times and dates for a meeting.
Social Media Types
I’m starting to look for people who want to pursue social media consulting, and who could fulfill opportunities such as building content marketing strategies, training people in the use of various tools, building case study material, researching, and delivering information to prospective clients. I’d also want to talk to a few speakers and social media evangelists, but who I want more are people who can execute, and who have some ability to both do and speak, not just speak.
Friends and Friends I’ve Yet to Meet
I *really* am excited to talk with you. I love meeting folks I know mostly from the web. Please, let’s get together. I don’t really like doing meals with groups of people at events. I’d rather say hi to you in the halls at the event, or we can get a cup of coffee, or a beer, or coffee-flavored beers. Don’t be shy to reach out to meet me. I’m a feller just like you. I have someone else put my pants on one leg at a time.
So, you have my contact info. You have my Twitter account. You have a sense of where to stalk me. Let’s connect.
Work for you?
Tripwolf Launches a Nifty Travel Site
TripWolf is a social site for travel, loaded with all kinds of goodies, like map mashups, people-recommended sights to see, friends and “trip gurus” to add for specific places, journal/blogs for your travel experiences, and the ability to meet up with other folks as part of your travel experience. I did a reasonably fast pass through the site and found it loaded with all kinds of information and facets that would make your holiday travel plans a little easier.
The other things I noticed that seem cool are Facebook integration, user-added info (kind of wiki style), geo-locative data (codes everything nicely), pictures (and you can upload yours, of course), and maps. Great maps that you can print, actually.
It’s backed by a larger European travel company, but it has a very standalone startup feel to it (the site, at least).
All in all, a decent launch for travel season. What do you think about it?
(I got word of this via a nice email from Jennifer from Tripwolf).
