I’m excited to say that I have the distinct pleasure of sitting on a what I’m confident will be a great panel at the 2009 Utah Tourism Conference this Thursday afternoon from 2:00pm-3:30pm and again from 4:00pm-5:30pm. The title of the panel is “Using Social Media Technologies to Promote Tourism: It’s Time to Join the Conversation” and I’m looking forward to discussing this topic with Thomas Cooke from the Salt Lake City agency Welikesmall and Jay Evensen from the Deseret News.
Thomas is incredibly knowledgeable about marketing in the Utah tourism industry and also brings great insight into the social media world, I know this from sitting through several marketing meetings with him and most recently we were both at the San Francisco Inbound Marketing Summit. I admit that I’m not acquainted with Jay, but I have seen that he’s been blogging for the Desert News for a year or so with some very good engagement (commenting).
The topic is wide enough that I think that we are going to try to do some basic introduction to the social media space, what it is, why tourism businesses should be paying attention to what’s going on there and how they should then engage in this space. I imagine that we’ll be able to get into more specifics as well, so please bring your questions, concerns and ideas.
If you aren’t able to make it to the conference, we’ll be streaming the panels via our ustream channel at www.ustream.tv/channel/utc-09. Just a quick disclimer, it may wind up being via the camera on my MacBook Pro unless I find an external video camera that I can grab a live feed from, neither of my video cameras seems to work. Hope to see you at the conference or on the web on Thursday!
PS – I have a draft of an inbound marketing for ski resorts post that’s been sitting around on my WordPress Dashboard for a few days, I’m thinking that i may split it into a multi-part post, stay tuned…
Resort Marketing - Don't Forget, It's All About Fun! 
Eric, looking forward to riffing with you at the Utah Tourism Conference. So many things to talk about. Thanks for taking the lead on the tech side by setting up the Ustream!
Hope you shred the pres, Eric!
There is no doubt that the tools are there but with room for improvements. Beyond that I think some of the questions are, how big of a social maven are your brand advocates, does their reach extend to your target audience, and do they regularly listen and pass on what you have to say?
I’ve seen a lot of companies succeed in incorporating social media at a base level, but then their ambassador isn’t an individual that people respond well to. That, or they simply push mediocre content, and to top it off never engage with other people’s content.
Of course, this is assuming the product is worthwhile to begin with. But in the case of Utah as a destination, well, there is no question it is the goodie goods.
@RobertPayne Thanks for the encouragement as well as your insightful comment.
I think that your point is valid in that not all people are well-suited to participate in social media. However, I do think that it is necessary to make sure that companies are, at the minimum, following conversations happening about them online.
And it’s very true that in the end, it’s all about providing a product that is quality & value because without that it’s all just smoke and mirrors!