Flickr – Pine Street Digital

Social Media Best Practices on #tourismchat

Our February 23 #tourismchat focused on Social Media Best Practices and covered many platforms. Here are some highlights:

Twitter: What tools do you use? Any time-saving tips?

ELearningU TweetDeck, Hootsuite. Twellow is a great tool to find locals (LOVE Twellowhood)
Joe_ExpCols Google Reader for content, Sprout Social for monitoring. Google Analytics all day every day.
emilyforsha I’m a Tweetdeck girl, but use Hootsuite app for mobile. Love Google Reader to find content.

Facebook: What posts get the best interactions? How frequently do you post?

HeidiTown best interaction when you ask people their opinion. People love to share about themselves!
TourismCurrents Facebook posting. Photos, especially of food, do well. Love to send ’em from phone. Post 1-2/day, incl. weekends.
pagetx Any time I post food photos, my engagement goes through the roof. Fill in the blank works well too.

Flickr: Photostream and/or group? How much time do you spend per month here?…

March 18, 2012

The Best View of Chicago

Chicago is a diverse and exciting city. There are a million spots that are great to photograph but my favorite view is of the skyline from the hill just in front of Adler Planetarium.

Here are some photos I shot last week from this spot:

…

November 25, 2011

September 1 #tourismchat Highights: Multimedia

Photos, videos, podcasts — they’re all assets DMOs can use to further promote their destination. The September 1 #tourismchat focused on creating and using these types of assets. Feel free to read the entire chat transcript (from the amazing Chirpstory site) or for a quick summary, here are my highlights:

How do you obtain photo/video assets? (create in-house, hire photog/videographer, etc)

@jeremy_harvey We do both. Hire prod co for big projects; in-house for vodcast-type vids.
@TomMartin combination… create, cajole, hire out and sometimes reward (as in consumer gen content)
@jennrush03 We have our in-house video production manager and interns. Photos it’s either staff or freelance work from local photographers
@theresaoverby I buy a lot of stock photos from local photographer. Video is some agency, some in-house, but not enough assets..
@katiecook A combo of everything you stated. Also ask photographers to use their images for free (gives them exposure)
@pagetx We curate a group on Flickr. Works like a charm for photos. We also hold an annual photo contest.
@wilkinsh We are using all ways to acquire video and photo. Even recruiting college students.
@DanielleRauch photographer & our staff. We ask partners too

What is the ratio of professional vs. amateur content that your CVB owns/creates?

@katiecook 70/30 professional vs amateur.
@TunicaMS We are working on a plan but it looks like 35% pro and 65% am
@MaddenMedia Not a CVB, but I think a good 50% pro to inspire the other 50% to participate
@pagetx Prolly 90-95% amateur on Flickr. We sometimes use our company’s videos, as well as from other professional entities.
@Beaumartian right now it’s about 60 Prof /40 Amateur at the moment.
@wilkinsh 85% amateur, 15% prof. but that scale will soon change.
@jeremy_harvey We’re about 90% pro vs. 10% in house. We do a lot of video.
@jennrush03 Photos about 85% in house (that’d be the amateur side!) Use professionals mainly for annual visitor map, special needs…
@theresaoverby 80% pro, 20% amateur

Are you using audio in any way? (podcasts, itunes, etc)…

September 19, 2011

Project 365: a year later

It’s hard to believe that an entire year has passed since I started my photography Project 365. Not a day had gone by without me taking a photo, even if it was before I went to bed at 2am. Obviously some of those photos lacked creativity but there are a number of photos that I’m proud of. Here’s a sampling:

The beginning and the end (July 1, 2010 and June 30, 2011):

My series of dog noses (Aug 9, 10, 11):

One of the best sunsets I’ve ever shot (July 16): Sunset 016/365 …

July 27, 20115 Comments

Google Maps: it’s that easy

Creating a custom Google Map is a great way to enhance itineraries, attraction and hotel listings, special events and so much more. Plus Google made it very easy to create and embed these maps.

Go to the “My Maps” tab and create a title and description for your new map. All you have to do now is find, drop or drag placemarks and draw lines. You can customize the icon for the placemark as well as adding live links and images via html.

Flickr is always a great resource for images. Search within the Creative Commons to find images that can be used commercially. You can find the html under the “Share This” tab for each photo.…

August 21, 20101 Comment

Flickr’s New Design

Flickr rolled out a new design a few weeks ago to 800,000 some users and just made it mainstream today. It’s a lot cleaner and seems to display all the important information “above the fold” on the screen.

Here are my favorite aspects of this new design:…

August 4, 20101 Comment

Project 365

http://bit.ly/AH365

As much as I hate to admit it, I’m a stalker. But don’t worry, it’s not really as cool as it sounds. I’ve been stalking CVB Facebook pages for a few months to gather data for competitive benchmarks. It’s really quite interesting to see the differences between these pages. As I was stalking and analyzing, I came across a post about Project 365. If you’re not familiar with this, Project 365 is a photography project where you take one photo every day for an entire year. It seemed like a huge commitment but it was a perfect addition to my July 1 mid-year resolutions.…

July 12, 20101 Comment

Tracking and Reporting

Once you learn how to properly use social media, it’s time to get serious and treat it as part of your marketing plan. Create a strategy, utilize the appropriate social networks for your organization and analyze your efforts. Let’s focus on the analysis portion.

Goals: Why are you using social media?

“Because everyone does it” is no longer a valid reason to delve into the world of social media. Especially without a plan. Not having social media strategies and goals is the fastest way to fail. Sure, some people get lucky in their efforts but flying by the seat of your pants is not a strategy.

As with your traditional marketing, you need to set goals and then analyze your efforts to make sure you’re reaching these goals.…

June 13, 20102 Comments

Creating a Flickr Gallery

Many CVBs use Flickr to share their photos and a few bureaus also host very successful Flickr groups but one function seldom used is a Flickr Gallery.

Galleries are created with photos from other Flickr members so you don’t need to have an extensive photostream for this function.…

May 22, 2010