Nova Scotia Tourism - Blogs and Forums Week 6

To Blog or Not To Blog - Will anyone read it?

Nova Scotia Tourism has done a great job at putting to use the most popular social media groups but in addition to their links for facebook, twitter, Flickr, and YouTube, they also have a page for blogs. These are platforms for people to write creatively/freely about their Nova Scotia experiences and favourite things.

A few of the suggested blogs to follow from the link on the Nova Scotia Tourism website are all from http://www.novascotiablogs.com/ :

Nova Scotia, my Oyster - By Cynthia Bragg
“I've got one of the best jobs! I get to explore Nova Scotia and share it with the world. Tough gig if you can get it, right?” ~C.B.


 
The same person who maintains the NS tourism twitter page and facebook group has also a blog on http://www.novascotiablogs.com/ which she uses as a platform to chat about different tourism attractions in the province including pictures. It is marketing, but she uses enough personal anecdotes and creates a feeling of familiarity that engages the reader to keep reading.


The Bay of Fundy - Terri McCulloh
"Life's too short not to live by the sea. Join me on my adventure ~ living, tasting, and exploring the highest tides on the planet!" ~T.M.

If there is something happening by the bay in this province you can bet that Terri has it on her blog. She posts two to six times a month depending on what is happening and keeps her blog up to date. Terri has done an awesome job at promoting the Bay of Fundy with its natural attraction having the highest tides in the world and can also be found on twitter.

The Right Coast Nova Scotia- Maria McGowan
When not blogging about my discoveries, I am working, raising a family and doing a crossword puzzle (in pencil, not pen)."

Maria does a great job at re-discovering Nova Scotia's coastline with the perspective of someone who moved away and has come back and is now learning to enjoy the province as a wife and mother and documents her discoveries in her blog which tend to be little out of the way things that you wouldn't normally see written about.

Tom Wilson's Blog- Tom Wilson
“’We make a living by what we get - we make a life by what we give.’ - Sir Winston Churchill”

This link was actually a dissapointment, and his quote seems almost ironic because it doesn't seem like he's giving too much on this blog. Forgive me, at first it looked like a really interesting blog to follow- especially for any hikers or cyclist enthusiasts however there have only been three posts, and the last one was in September of 2009.  With healthy and eco-friendly living being the new trend in tourism; bike tours of Nova Scotia are more popular. Tom needs to get back on the wagon here, in my opinion, if he wants to keep any kind of following and could potentially do a lot for the Outdoor Adventure sector of tourism in the province if he used this correctly.  Just because it is winter doesn't mean you can't get people excited about what is upcoming.

When Social Media turns on you...

That actually is a great example of the issue with blogs can sometimes be the upkeep. People love hearing a story, but if you only write the first three chapters of the novel and don't continue, people are going to lose interest in the book.  If you follow bloggers, it's almost like those who follow columnists in the papers or magazines, only these people often don't have censorship or editors and can say things either incredibly outrageous, or interesting and people come to depend on their posts. The more controversial, the more addictive they become.

When you use social media you are creating a relationship - which has great benefits but it also has a responsibility attached to maintain those good relationships and to continut posting information.  There is nothing worse than initiating a conversation and then not following through because it leaves people with bad impressions, which is never good for business.

"People may not remember exactly what you did, or what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel." —Unknown

So I hope that the overall impression that people are getting from Nova Scotia Tourism is making them feel welcome to come explore a little more on Canada's Eastern Shore

Your Travel-lovin' chica,

ox This is my Nova Scotia xo

Nova Scotia Tourism : Use of Flickr as a Marketing Tool

The past weeks I've reviewed how Nova Scotia Tourism is using various forms of social media to market our beautiful province and in all respects I am pretty impressed at how much they are doing because it was more than I thought there would be originally.

This week I wanted to talk about the use of Flickr as a marketing tool in the tourism industry. Often people don't always have time to read reviews, to listen to advertising, or even to research on a place, but there is just something about breathtaking landscapes, seascapes, and people that can stay in your mind and remind you of places you have been, are, and want to go.

The Group for Nova Scotia Tourism on Flickr seems to be pretty extensive. They have 159 members that belong to the group. In order to upload a photo to the group you must be a member. They have a total of 1,578 uploaded "items" or photographs that represent Nova Scotia and its Tourism products.

The thing I love about Flickr is that it is usually comprised of people that not only like to take pictures but that have a knack for taking really nice photos. These are grade A photo-lovers who are documenting in visual form all the wonderful things that Nova Scotia has to offer.

Everytime someone types in the search tool for images of Nova Scotia this pool is accessed and the images creat curiosity, interest, and eventually action. Affecting the behaviour of people is the whole reason for marketing and what better way to do it than to get someone to say "Where is that? How can i see that? I want that experience!"

Just to highlight a few of my favourites:

Natural attractions that include: wildlife

Shots of landmarks like Cape Split:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/denkyem/4376792635/in/pool-novascotiatourism

Beautiful Seascapes

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wmbutt/4356177669/in/pool-novascotiatourism

Lighthouses

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dustinhall/3921006689/in/pool-novascotiatourism/

Public Gardens

http://www.flickr.com/photos/deanbouchard/4294212436/in/pool-novascotiatourism

And with each image it creates a story about what Nova Scotia means to each person that has taken the time to upload an image. Over and over you are presented with beauty, peace, country meets urban, tranquility and colour.  We have so much to offer as a province, and even as a resident I thoroughly enjoyed the pool of images on Flickr for Nova Scotia Tourism.

This is My Nova Scotia, and I love'er to death. Xoxo

-Travel Lovin' Chica

Week 3 -Social Media Marketing - NS Tourism on Youtube (in lieu of TripAdvisor)

If a picture can convey a 1000 words, what could be said of a video?  Especially a poignant one, with just the right music, editing, filming technique.  You could create a mood, an experience, and entice someone to a place they have never even heard of.  

The power of film and video has been used by the movie industry for years, but tourism is now also catching on to using these things to tug on the emotions of potential visitors and not just on Television advertising, but campaigns in which they request the participation, interaction, and vlogging (video blogging) as a way to interact socially with travelers. One of my favourite contests was the one held just last year by Nova Scotia Tourism. Their "Why I love Nova Scotia" was a great hit.


Taking on the whole concept of the fact that the new young adult consumer would rather hear what everyday people have to say about a place rather than the "experts" I thought this would be the best similar comparison to TripAdvisor as possible.  

The video responses were wonderful, and I must say, I've never been so proud of my home province as I am this year. Travelling gives you perspective that you couldn't have and an appreciation for home like nothing else can.  If you have nothing to compare it to, you might think Nova Scotia was boring, or small-town mentality. But when you've seen other places and what goes on that nobody really talks about... you realize. That it's not boring - it's safe.  It's not small-town - people are down to earth and friendly. People help each other and it's a shock, not an expectation to be robbed.

The idea of companies using social media like youtube is becoming bigger and  bigger. Since campaigns like "The Best Job In The World" put out by Queensland Tourism, Australia  (http://www.islandreefjob.com/) the industry is recognizing that a) people love contests b) people love to make videos of themselves and c) these everyday people can actually market a tourism product better than a 15 second bit in between Oprah and Dr. Phil.  Tourism is about creating an experience, and if they can capture that experience on film, it is preserved forever.  It makes people say "If they can do it, I can too" and is in my opinion one of the best tools out there and should be used more often.

Nova Scotia Tourism has their own youtube channel : http://www.youtube.com/user/NovaScotiaTourism#p/u/55/b6RaXoKRqLw which has just under 70 videos that highlight in various ways the key elements of Nova Scotia tourism : The people, the food, the coast, the music, the fun things to do and varies from home-made shaky-hand-cam's to professional done documentary style promotion.
 

Overall NS Tourism is doing more than I expected when I clicked on the youtube channel link and I was very pleased to see our very own Rose Eddy's contribution for The "I love Nova Scotia" Contest amoung the list.

Tourism Nova Scotia on Twitter : @cynatnovascotia

The official tweeter for Tourism Nova Scotia is @cynatnovasotia. I have really enjoyed following her timeline on twitter for several different reasons.

She has a good mix of personal messages and marketing strategies. I have had people that I had to unfollow because all they were doing was really advertising. They weren't connecting with people, they were just pushing a product in the old way through a new venue and came accross very fake and loud - usually typing their messages in all capital letters. However Cynthia Bragg, the author behind the screen name, has a good combination of personal messages to people with questions, retweets of other nova scotia operators in tourism, and personal messages about upcoming events to do with tourism NS.


She has an active account without being completely annoying. Her activity can range from 1-10 tweets a day and almost always includes a link to some picture, video, website and can peak a lot of interest even if it is only 140 characters in length.

Her most recent, and in my opinion, most effective marketing strategy using twitter would be the week preceding the icewine festival. To get people talking about the festival she was offering to put the names of all followers who retweeted her messages about the festival or NS icewine into draws for prizes. She did this over several days which was genious. It caught people's attention and then had them going back to her timeline specifically over and over again looking for the next draw/contest.

The best part? I was one of the first winners! I won a gift certificate for two to The Five Fisherman for dessert and icewine. The prizes were of quality and I think that was key to the success of it. Some examples of her posts are :

Drawing at 3:00 RT to win tickets to dessert and wine @ Sainte-Famille Wines in Falmouth http://bit.ly/aqmq9A (Feb 13-14) #nsicewine
3:41 PM Feb 3rd from TweetDeck

Another SWEET ice wine giveaway tomorrow ......#nsicewine or #nicewine!
3:34 PM Feb 1st from TweetDeck

I said BRRRRR! RT 4 chance to win 2 tix to "Freeze Your Ice Off “- Feb 6 @ the Library Pub- Wolfville #nsicewine http://bit.ly/ayL40j
11:43 AM Feb 1st from TweetDeck

Translation: RT means a request for people to "retweet" to their followers the message mentioned.

I never thought I would even enjoy twitter but now it's almost more addictive than facebook because the possibilities of people to follow is endless. If you're smart you can add people in your industry, learn from them or maybe even attract their attention.

If there was one more thing that I could suggest to cynatnovascotia would be that she doesn't write out Nova Scotia enough in her actual messages to draw more attention to people searching on the sidebar. There is a lot of NS action which is great for people from here who know what it means, but if she's trying to attract visitors she should try to include it in almost every message she writes.

Twitter... what's the attraction?

I will admit that until recent months I had been skeptical of why so many people were addicted to or talking so much about twitter. I had heard it on TV, seen links from web pages but had never been tempted enough to check it out or know really what it was all about.

I had throughly enjoyed other social media sites, but couldn't figure out the allure of just posting short 140 character messages when on facebook you could have pictures, long messages, instant messages etc.

It wasn't until October of 2009 that I was checking out a new band that I really liked and saw that their lead vocalist had a twitter account and posted regular quotes, info about their band etc. I decided to sign up and try it out.

Very soon I realized the attraction to such a program. Unlike facebook where essentially you feel safe only adding people you know, on twitter you can follow anyone you like (unless their tweets are protected). This suddenly gives "light-stalking" a whole new venue. You can follow your favourite author, singer, actor, friend, or even total random strangers.

You can search to see what people around the world are saying about just about anything and having that sense of global community is alluring to social butterflies everywhere!

But even more so for marketers. Here is a venue where you can locate people talking about your product, service, or destination and answer their questions. You can solve their travel dilemnas with your local expertise and attract people on a very personal level to Nova Scotia.

Business Evaluation Using Social Media - Week 1: Facebook

How is www.novascotia.com using social media to promote themselves? Week 1: Facebook

So this week's objective was to see what NovaScotia.com is doing to promote our province and industry partners through facebook.

At first glance I am happy to say that their facebook group has 1,911 fans, 24 linked pages to related sites, 17 photo albums, and at least one post every 1-3 days. They are keeping the site updated and relevant and it is good to see.

So evaluating their participation in social media:

Are they accesible? Yes. Having been frustrated with a lot of other facebook groups that I belong to or fan pages that don't keep their information current and easily accessible it is great to see that the first thing under the profile photo is all their contact information.

Their website, phone numbers, and email contacts are easily found. They have taken the time to properly fill out the information fields, post relevant photo albums, and post videos.

Are they active? Yes, they are posting several times a week with experiences, festivals, events, and attractions that could be of interest to potential visitors and residents alike.

Are they effective? Yes. Not only do they mention what is going on they make sure to link in their post to the website, video, or photo promoting that particular point of interest and do a great job of posting interesting and brief titles that catch your attention.

Are they equally representative? As best they can be, yes. Unfortunately there are some communities that have been further developed in the area of events and promoting activities and simply have more going on but I have seen this facebook page promoting everything from bird-watching in the valley to the lego exhibit in halifax and does a good job of trying to attract a variety of visitors.


Where could they improve? The only area where I could see some improvement would be creating more active discussions and possibly adding more visitor experience videos. The most recent discussion on their board was in May of 2009 and part of attracting people to Nova Scotia is getting them to talk about it. There are only three loaded videos on the page and could be enhanced by letting people post videos of their personal experiences in Nova Scotia.


This is my Nova Scotia ~ and I love it!

Tourism. Why is social media so important to our industry?

The Tourism Industry in my opinion can be defined as the welcoming committee for a country. We often are the only people that travellers encounter and we thereby create the impression that other countries will have of us. We as tourism operators will generate, or fail to generate, a rapport with travellers that entices them to visit our province, destination, attraction, or property.

As of late, the industry in Nova Scotia has definitely been striving to provide that "Unforgettable experience" for newcomers to Nova Scotia. One of the best steps that the industry as a whole can do is create that relationship before they even get here.

The old ways of marketing are slowly dying. People are purposefully avoiding commercials, DVR-ing to their heart's content, and reading blogs and review sites more than they are visiting web-pages and reading magazine articles from "experts".

We are in the business of people - Serving, entertaining, housing, transporting, and feeding people. But in order to compete with other destinations and attractions we need to get past the first two levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and tap into their need or sense of belonging.

We in the past have done a very good job of providing shelter, food, safety, and all those physiological and safety needs but people have come to expect that and to up our game we need to reach out to travellers and give them that sense of "I belong in Nova Scotia" which if done correctly will not only generate new visitors, but I believe will get visitors to come back.

So how do we do this? How can Tourism create that sense of belonging and family with people we've never even met? The key here is finding what tools are already available, free, and reach the targeted markets you are looking for.

I know a lot of industry partners are sometimes intimidated by the unknown factors of social media. Sites like twitter, facebook, and flickr can often make many employers cringe because they see it as a hindrance to productivity rather than utilizing the skills and knowledge of the upcoming workforce to use this to their benefit.

If you know that your employees spend 30% of their paid work time on social media sites, they may as well be doing it for you. You might even ask yourself why do they become so addicted to these sites? Why do they need to be on them 4-10 times a day? Because it fulfills their need to feel like they belong to something. It's not just here either that this is the case.

We create that sense of belonging by finding people with similar interests, people with specific questions and curiosities about our locations. We go to the forums where people are discussing vacations. We can answer questions that people put on twitter about Nova Scotia, about where they can find good seafood, or cheaper coastal vacations. We can no longer put out mass-media and hope that someone somewhere is listening and interested. Why do that when you can go directly to the people interested and invest your time and money in a much more selective target market that is most likely to give you a better return on investment.

Why spend thousands on a website without taking into consideration a twitter account that could be a daily reminder to people of what's new and upcoming with your organization? Link your winery account with the thousands of wine fanatics listed on listorious.com. Learn to maximize your employees' ability to navigate these sites and although it has been hard to calculate the dollars generated by these sites in the past more and more data is available on the success of using social media as a marketing, connecting, and tourism tool.

I know the pool is big, deep, and scary but if we want to compete we need to swim to the other side. Take a chance, get your feet wet, and I promise in no time you'll warm up to the idea that social media really is the new best thing in tourism.

This is my Nova Scotia ~ and I love it!

Some Interesting Facts About Social Media

1. By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network
2. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
3. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
4. Years to Reach 50 millions Users: Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
5. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia (note that Facebook is now creeping up – recently announced 300 million users)
6. Yet, some sources say China’s QZone is larger with over 300 million using their services (Facebook’s ban in China plays into this)
7. comScore indicates that Russia has the most engage social media audience with visitors spending 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per visitor per month – Vkontakte.ru is the #1 social network
8. 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
9. 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum
10. % of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80%
11. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
12. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres (combined) have more Twitter followers than the population of Ireland, Norway, or Panama. Note I have adjusted the language here after someone pointed out the way it is phrased in the video was difficult to determine if it was combined.
13. 80% of Twitter usage is outside of Twitter…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
14. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen
15. What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
16. The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
17. Wikipedia has over 13 million articles…some studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English
18. There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
19. 54% = Number of bloggers who post content or tweet daily
20. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
21. If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $156.23 per hour
22. Facebook USERS translated the site from English to Spanish via a Wiki in less than 4 weeks and cost Facebook $0
23. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
24. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
25. People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services than how Google ranks them
26. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
27. Only 14% trust advertisements
28. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
29. 90% of people that can TiVo ads do
30. Hulu has grown from 63 million total streams in April 2008 to 373 million in April 2009
31. 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video…on their phone
32. According to Jeff Bezos 35% of book sales on Amazon are for the Kindle when available
33. 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
34. In the near future we will no longer search for products and services they will find us via social media
35. More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook…daily.
36. Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like David Ogilvy Listening first, selling second
37. Successful companies in social media act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than traditional advertiser


source: http://socialnomics.net/2009/08/11/statistics-show-social-media-is-bigger-than-you-think/