LinkedIn and your blog are low-hanging fruit for some free tourism marketing power moves. (Grapes courtesy Ernesto Velazquez on Unsplash)

(Third in a series – the first post is about no budget destination marketing on YouTube and Pinterest, the second is no cost destination marketing on Facebook and Twitter.)

What if there was some sort of crisis, and you suddenly had to do your tourism marketing with no budget, or your budget was severely constrained?

What are the best free power moves to make on each social platform? This post is going to answer that question as it applies to LinkedIn and your blog.

Best no-cost marketing moves to make on LinkedIn

Have you Googled yourself/your name lately? Guess what will almost always come up on Page One of search engine results…

Yep, your personal LinkedIn profile.

If that profile is *ahem* a vast wasteland, with seven connections, the default gray blob for a profile photo (or a 1980’s “glamour shot” photo that doesn’t really look like you) and no interactions with anyone for months, you need to ask yourself if that is the professional presence you want people to see.

Now Google your brand or organization’s name.

I Googled my business brand name a few years ago, and an automatically-generated LinkedIn Page for us appeared on Page One of the search results. We hadn’t even claimed or maintained it! We fixed that the same day, and our Tourism Currents LinkedIn Page continues to do very well for us.

Steps to take to improve how you appear on LinkedIn:

1.) All staff/organization members groom and update their personal LinkedIn profiles.

Take some time to review/update your personal LI profile. When you’re logged into your profile, LinkedIn will use helpful prompts to encourage you to make improvements, like buttons to remind you to “Add section” or “Update your About summary.” Look at your profile Dashboard to see how people are finding you – does your profile have the right keywords?

Anywhere that there is a little gray Edit pen/pencil in the upper right corner, click it and edit that section as needed.

Tell the reader how you can help them and how you can solve their problems, not just how awesome you are.

Here’s a good article on improving your personal LI profile, especially if you’re in sales (and at some level, we’re ALL in sales.)

Build out and nurture your networks on LinkedIn. Get in the habit of sending a follow-up LinkedIn connection request to people you meet at trade shows, expos, and conferences. Always personalize the connection request with a note.

Review your current network – are there people you have not talked to in awhile? Send a friendly, “How are you?” LI message.

2.) Claim, update, USE your brand LinkedIn Page. Ensure staff are connected to correct LI Page.

So many organizations spend an incredible amount of time and effort on their Facebook Page, but ignore that same “storefront” on LinkedIn (where people are ready to do business!)

But before you jump in and start posting, write down your answer to three questions…

• What are your goals for your LinkedIn Page?
• How will you measure whether you are successful or not?
• What is your tentative plan for posts for the first month?

Surprisingly, not enough people ask themselves these questions before they start an account on a social media platform. Your LinkedIn Page needs to be integrated into your overall goals and strategy. It’s not some random asset to bolt onto marketing that you’re already doing.

LinkedIn automatically generates Pages for brands, usually because someone adds that brand to their personal profile as their work experience. You may find, as we did, that you have a Page and didn’t know it.

Search for your tourism brand name on LinkedIn itself, and also do a Google search like, “Visit XYZ LinkedIn” to see if an auto-generated Page pops up.

•  Go here to learn how to claim an unclaimed LinkedIn Page that already exists.
•  Go here to set up a brand new LinkedIn Page from scratch.

Good news about setting up a posting schedule – LinkedIn content is “stickier.” People often interact with our LI posts days or even weeks later. You don’t need to post as often on LinkedIn because it’s not as noisy as Facebook or Twitter.

Aim for 2-3 times per week.

Here are some more ideas on building a successful LinkedIn Page for tourism, plus LinkedIn content ideas for destination marketing.

Don’t forget to ask staff to use their personal profiles to invite connections to follow your brand Page, if those connections would find it relevant. Don’t do a mass invite, obviously.

 3.) Try more no-link photo and video posts (including LinkedIn Live video) and LinkedIn Publishing articles.

Your Page’s status update posts are free little billboards for your destination, attraction, hotel, or business. Use them!

Like all social platforms, LinkedIn has gotten more visual, so make ample use of photos, graphics, video, and even polls.

Wouldn’t you like to meet right here?

Keep in mind: more and more, people prefer to stay on the social platform they’re on, rather than go off somewhere else to read about something. I sense increasing “link post fatigue” on LinkedIn – people are less interested in clicking through links and reading your blog post or shared article or whatever. Link posts are easy, and that’s why everyone does them. I’m guilty of this, too.

Try Page posts like case studies downloads, polls, job openings, industry news, new data/stats presented in a graphic, awards announcements, original research, and plenty of videos and photos to appeal to the markets you want to reach on LinkedIn.

Syndicate your relevant DMO blog posts as LinkedIn Publishing articles, too.

Best no-cost marketing moves to make on your blog

Anyone who knows me, knows that I’m an old-school blogger from way back (started my first one in February 2006.) The power of publishing your own story, your way, on a platform you control, is hard to beat. You own it, you control it. It and your website are your content anchors.

It’s free, but it’s not easy. You invest time and mental energy and creativity, rather than money. Your reward is more traffic to YOUR site, more opportunities for conversions like downloads and direct contact. Some blog posts will bring you traffic for years, if they nail a certain visitor question. You do the work once, keep it updated, then reap the benefits.

Here is what I recommend you do with your blog right now, or if you start one:

1.) Have at least one blog post that answers each of your top 10 visitor questions. Give ‘em what they’re Googling for.

Your blog is your content anchor, and your “Top 10 FAQ” blog posts are your blog’s anchor.

What do people always ask at the Visitors Center and on the phone? Each of those questions is a blog post, because if they’re asking in person, they’re Googling it, too.

What are the top search queries in your Google Analytics Search Console, and what do people ask for in the Search box right on your site? Those can be answered with blog posts.

One of the queries is definitely going to be something along the lines of “What are the top things to see or do in this town?” so make sure you have a post that answers that, and then build out some related itineraries – top things to see if you have a half day, a full day, a weekend, etc.

2.) Make video and audio versions of most popular posts.

People like to absorb information in different ways. Some like to skim text, some like to see it in a video, some like to listen to audio.

Take your top 5-10 blog posts and repurpose them in a different media format, then share this “new” content around on social media. Park the video version on your YouTube channel, with a link back to the text blog post in the video description.

We’ve started using Lumen5 AI (Artificial Intelligence) to make short videos out of our top blog posts, and the Podbean app on our phones to make a simple audio version.

Here is the audio version of our post about tourism blogging best practices – it is literally me reading the post in my clothes closet, because the clothes dampen sound and make a free little mini-studio. Don’t overthink things, and use the tools at hand.

3.) Make it super-easy to sign up to get your posts via email.

In addition to having control over your website and blog, you also have almost complete control over your email list. No algorithm keeps you from communicating with your list whenever you want to. Increasing your open rate and click rate is up to you, and no one is saying it is easy, but at least it is under your control.

So, once you get someone reading things on your blog, you want them to keep reading, and that means you want them to subscribe to get your posts by email whenever they are published.

It is stating the obvious, but do not make it hard for people to figure out how to sign up, and don’t ask for a bunch of irrelevant personal information, either.

Those are my ideas for tourism marketing with no budget using LinkedIn and your blog. What did I miss? Let me know down in the comments…

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No cost destination marketing tips, coming your way. Save that ad money.                               (courtesy Gunjan2021 on Pixabay)

(Second in a series – the first post is about no budget destination marketing on YouTube and Pinterest and the third one is tourism marketing with no budget on LinkedIn and your blog.)

Sometimes your budget is cut and there’s just no money for ads, or not as much as there used to be.

Sometimes you have a budget, but if you’re like me, it is galling to spend money unless you HAVE to, so you’re looking for ways to get more organic, unpaid reach on social media.

Where could you make some no cost destination marketing improvements that would result in more visitors, guests, or customers finding you?

Let’s talk about two social platforms that many brands have been on for years, but which may have lost some of their initial effectiveness: Twitter and Facebook.

Best no-cost marketing moves to make on Twitter

I’ve watched a lot of changes on Twitter since I joined in September 2007 as @SheilaS.

The things that I enjoy the most – community and unexpected connections – are still possible, but it is definitely harder to make yourself heard above the noise. Using Twitter as merely another channel to broadcast and crank out prescheduled tweets all day is not going to work for you any more. Most tweets die a quick death in the flood going past.

It is still the place to be, though, for breaking news and making media connections.

Twitter is also heavily used for customer and visitor services – answering tweeted questions, fixing problems, making suggestions, introducing people to other people, etc.

It costs you nothing to do these three things right away to get more out of Twitter:

1.)  Participate in some relevant Twitter chats.

My favorite suggestion for getting the maximum value out of Twitter in a short time is by participating in the Twitter chats where your potential visitors, guests, and customers spend time.

A Twitter chat is a set time frame (normally one hour, sometimes less) when people gather on Twitter for a live discussion around a particular topic. They can be regularly scheduled, or one-off events.

Each tweet includes the chat hashtag, so if you do a search on that hashtag, all related tweets can be grouped together and you can follow the conversation.

Here is our list of travel and tourism Twitter chats over on Tourism Currents.

Twitter chats introduce you to new people, who often become new followers and new connections. Most importantly, they give you a chance to show your expertise and helpfulness as a destination, attraction, hotel, or tourism partner business.

2.)  Actively engage with followers and others on Twitter, especially when they tag you or use your brand hashtag.

Many of you are saying right now, “No kidding, this advice is way too basic.”

Let me assure you, I am actually MORE surprised when a destination responds promptly to me on Twitter than I am when I’m ignored, which is usually.

Yes, even though you’d think brands would be a lot better at social media engagement by now.

An example of how it SHOULD be done, with Oklahoma City and their tourism partner Pie Junkie.

When visitors need assistance, do you tweet back with relevant links to your website pages or blog posts?

If they ask for a local coffee shop recommendation in a certain neighborhood, do you tag the Twitter accounts of good coffee places in your reply tweet?

Match your excellent offline visitor experience with a friendly, helpful online experience. The result is a more engaged, loyal visitor.

Take Twitter interactions seriously, and your Twitter account will be a lot more effective. It’s that simple.

Another way to improve engagement is to tweet during the hours when your account’s followers are most likely to be active on Twitter. Talk to people when they are there to listen.

In addition to Twitter’s own free analytics data, I use a free Followerwonk account to analyze my account followers, particularly to see their locations and the hours when they are most active on Twitter.

Remember to schedule posts for different time zones, too, especially if you have an international audience. If you don’t want to be up in the middle of the night, pre-schedule those tweets.

I use TweetDeck for all things Twitter, including pre-scheduling. It is free.

An often overlooked tool is Twitter Lists. They can be private or public. Use them to zero in on the people whose tweets you don’t want to miss – you can follow just the tweets from a certain List and really cut down on the clutter.

They’re also great for keeping track of partners on Twitter, like these Lists set up by the Appalachia Sustainable Tourism Collaboration, LLC.

Once someone mentions your destination, or follows/interacts with you on Twitter, have a process for further engagement. This could include adding them to a private Twitter List of prospects or particularly enthusiastic informal ambassadors, or offering special deals only to your followers.

3.)  Hashtags. Just a few of the right ones.

Hashtags let you group topical tweets all in one searchable place. Sometimes certain hashtags trend on Twitter and get a lot of attention, which might be an opportunity for you IF you have relevant thoughts to add.

Easiest way to start using a hashtag that might put you in front of the right prospective visitors? Participate in the “hashtag of the day:”

• #MusicMonday or #MountainMonday
• #TravelTuesday
• #WineWednesday or #WaterfallWednesday
• #TBT (the very popular Throwback Thursday)
• #FridayFunday or #FoodieFriday
• #SaturdayNight or #SaturdayShopping
• #SS or #SelfieSunday or #SelfCareSunday

You don’t want a wad of hashtags on a tweet, like you tend to see on Instagram. One to three of them is usually enough.

Best no-cost marketing moves to make on Facebook

No question, it is very tough for many brand Pages to get attention and engagement on Facebook any more, without paying money for Sponsored posts or ads. That said, it is the one social platform where most people across all interests and demographics have accounts, so you need to be there and be active.

It costs you nothing to do these three things right away to get more out of your Facebook Page:

1.)  Commit to a weekly video post.

As of this writing, the one sort of content that can jump you to the top of follower News Feeds is video, especially Facebook Live video.

If you can, try to plan for one video Page post per week. This is assuming you’re already posting once a day most days of the week, or at least three to five times per week. Much less than that is not enough to get people’s attention.

Start with the top 10 questions people ask about your destination, attraction, hotel, or business, and answer them via video. That’s 10 weeks of video content right there.

Make sure you repurpose those videos on your YouTube channel, and embed them in your blog posts that answer each of those questions. This can bring you evergreen traffic for years. To grab a Facebook video for repurposing, go to Facebook Page Videos —-> Video Library —-> then click on the video you want. Look up to the “three dots” dropdown options, and select Download video.

If you’re comfortable going live, make sure you tell people about it ahead of time; a Facebook Event is an easy way to do that.

2.)  Consider whether a Facebook Group might help your engagement.

A private Facebook Group for your tourism, Main Street, or Chamber partners, or for visitors and local enthusiasts, can give you a “walled garden” to have some great discussions. Group members often get push notifications about Group activity.

It is a place to openly share ideas, get feedback (try polls,) do some visitor research, explain best practices, ask questions, and get answers. It can be invaluable in crisis management situations as well.

They are NOT “set it up, then it will run itself and be awesome.” Building and maintaining a lively private Facebook Group takes a bit of work, both in the short term to get it going, and in the long term to maintain interest and usefulness.

Until you get a critical mass of enthusiastic, talkative participants who will help carry the Group and bring value, you will need to seed questions and start/nurture conversations yourself as the Group Admin. This takes planning, like any content.

3.)  Use every (free) trick in the book for more visibility and engagement.

The key to success is posting content that your followers will like, comment on, and share (telling Facebook’s algorithm to show it in even more people’s News Feeds) and posting it at the right time.

**  How do you know what sorts of posts followers like? Know your audience through your Page Insights.

Review your posts to see which ones got the most engagement and reach, then try to do more posts like those (as long as they fit your audience and marketing goals.) To find that information, go to your Page’s Insights  —>  Posts on the left sidebar  —>  All Posts Published. Look at each post’s reach and engagement.

For some general guidance and inspiration, BuzzSumo analyzed billions of Facebook posts and found that the most popular/viral types of Facebook content were:

• Practical Hacks
• Inspirational content
• Food and recipes
• Cute animals
• Music videos
• Quizzes
• Travel and Adventure

Obviously, make sure your posts fit your audience and marketing goals. Do not post “cute animals” stuff unless it makes sense for YOU. As a destination, for example, you could get away with doing that in a post featuring your local dog parks, to show visitors where they can go to walk their pups.

**  How do you know the right time to post? Know your audience through your Page Insights.

Make sure you post during the times when your Page followers are most likely to be active on Facebook. It varies for each day of the week, and for each Page. To find that information, go to your Page’s Insights  —>  Posts on the left sidebar  —>  When Your Fans Are Online.

Mouse across each day to see how the peak times change.

That said, occasionally post away from peak times, when things are less noisy online. Don’t forget weekends; late morning on Saturday and Sunday are great for a couple of Pages that I manage, but it all depends on YOUR data.

Also encourage your followers to use their Follow Settings to change your Page to one of their Favorites (formerly “See First”) rather than Default, so that your posts appear at the top of their News Feed. This feature is free. Here’s where to find it…

Step One:

Start at the three dots on a Page, look for Follow Settings.

Step Two:

Change the selection from Default (you’ll see posts when the Facebook algorithm thinks you want to see posts) to Favorites (you’ll see this Page’s posts at the top of your News Feed.)

Final reminder: you and your staff (if you are comfortable doing so) can invite people in your personal Facebook networks to follow your Page. It is free. Use this feature with discretion and don’t be a spammer. Only invite people who might actually be interested in your Page activity.

You don’t want “a bunch of followers,” you want “a bunch of followers who care about what you offer.”

And you don’t want to spend money for any of it, either.

(If you like this post, please consider subscribing to the blog via RSS feed or by email – the email signup box is on the right sidebar near the Search box. Thanks!) 

How can your digital destination marketing make an impact when you don’t have any money? The answer is to go to work on some key platforms that most others ignore. Photo via Damir Spanic on Unsplash.

(First post in a series. Second post is no budget marketing on Facebook and Twitter, and the third one is tourism marketing with no budget on LinkedIn and your blog.)

Sometimes, your digital destination marketing budget gets whacked, maybe even all the way down to zero.

No money for ads, no money for agency work, no money for nothin’.

Sure, social media itself is free, which is helpful, but it’s also why the competition there is so fierce. Everyone’s using the same platforms, and paying for ads is often the only way to get any traction with your online content. But let’s say there is no more ad money…

Where could you make some no budget destination marketing improvements that would result in more visitors, guests, or customers finding you?

Here are two places to start:

Your YouTube Channel – Improve SEO and Post More Often

Why people neglect the Number Two search engine in the world (which is owned by Google) is a mystery to me, but they do neglect it.

That is an opportunity for YOU. Make your YouTube channel work harder for you, and you’ll be way ahead of many other destinations, attractions, hotels, and tourism partner small businesses.

The key is SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to make your videos easier to find, both on regular Google – where there is less competition to rank with video than with text – and easier to find in searches on YouTube itself.

It costs you nothing to do these three things right away:

1.)  Make sure your YouTube channel itself is search engine optimized.

Make sure the channel itself is a complete picture of you and what you offer.

2.)  Do an SEO groom on each video you’ve already posted.

That means make sure it has a descriptive title with relevant keywords related to the video’s content, a full video description, and applicable tags.

Bonus: if you have a blog post or website page related to the video topic, put a link to it in the video description. It’s a nofollow link, but humans can click and follow it. Voilà – traffic to you.

Also make sure that each video has a compelling thumbnail image; it’s like a book cover in that it may be the only thing that convinces people to click and watch.

3.)  Post more videos!

You probably have at least a few that are already done that you’ve forgotten about.

Are there videos you’ve made for your blog or website that aren’t already on your YouTube channel? Are there videos floating around on your phone or staff phones or on staff computers that you’ve forgotten you shot? Do a search for .mp4 files, or .mov files on Apple devices.

Are there videos you’ve uploaded to your Facebook Page, including Facebook Live recordings? Go to Page Videos —-> Video Library —-> then click on the video you want. Look up to the “three dots” dropdown options, and select Download video.

One last thing BEFORE you upload those videos you found to your YouTube channel… make sure you change the file name to include keywords about what’s in the video. That helps your SEO, too. Uploading a video with the raw “20191006132536_MVI_0075.mp4” file name is not helping you as much as it should.

Your Pinterest Account – Improve SEO and Post More Often

Pinterest is not really a social network. It is a travel inspiration search engine for many of your prospective visitors, and boy, can it drive traffic to your website.

I’ll never understand the obsession with Instagram hits, which are a “flash in the pan” compared to the long-term work and evergreen traffic that Pinterest can help with in support of your marketing goals.

You may be surprised to learn who has already pinned items from your website.

Google this URL to see – https://www.pinterest.com/source/yourwebsite/, so, in the case of this blog, https://www.pinterest.com/source/sheilasguide.com/

It costs you nothing to do these two things right away:

1.)  Yep, you guessed it – do an SEO groom.

That means review your business account information, your Board names, and your Pin titles and descriptions.

If I’m looking for the biggest, smallest, tallest, and/or crookedest things in Iowa while planning a fun road trip, the Travel Iowa Pinterest pin about biggest, smallest, tallest, and crookedest should do the trick, but it has to have the right keywords when I search on Pinterest.

Think through the names for your Boards in particular, to help you organize where Pins will go.

If you’re stuck, begin with Boards that answer each of your top 5-10 visitor, guest, or customer FAQs, similar to our recommendation at Tourism Currents for how to kick-start a tourism blog.

Once you get categories or “topic buckets” set up, it’s easier to figure out what sort of Pins you need to support those topics/Boards.

2.)  Post more often on Pinterest.

Build out your Boards and Pins according to your marketing goals.

The standard advice is that vertical photos and photos with text overlay (use Canva) do best, because it is true.

Here are Pinterest’s best practices tips on the platform, and here are more good tips for Pinterest SEO.

Keep checking your website’s Google Analytics under Acquisition —-> Social —-> Network Referrals to track how much more traffic is coming to you now that you’ve powered up your YouTube channel and Pinterest account.

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Facebook Page trolls are like a wheelbarrow full of manure on your Page (courtesy Efraimstochter on Pixabay)

Have you ever gotten rude Facebook comments, and wondered how to handle Facebook Page trolls… or obnoxious people online, in general? I gave this topic some thought after seeing a classic case of poor digital behavior in the comments on the Experience Grand Rapids, Michigan tourism Facebook Page.

The Facebook logo at the upper right of the embedded image below links to the specific Page post – here is another link to the specific Page post I’ll be talking about – which features an ExperienceGR “Insider Experience” blog post written by local contributor Rick Jensen that highlights Grand Rapids LGBTQ+ tourism partner businesses –

https://www.facebook.com/ExperienceGR/posts/2395349630518422

Negative comments below the post include:

“Thank you. Now I know what businesses not to go to when in Grand Rapids.”

“There you go again separating us and giving special consideration to someone or some business because of who they sleep with! Stop it!!”

“GRAND RAPIDS IS CONDONING THIS SEXUALLY PERVERTED LIFESTYLE! DISGUSTING IDIOTS WHO SHOULD BE GETTING THESE MENTALLY SICK PEOPLE THE PSYCHIATRIC HELP THEY DESPERATELY NEED!”

“NO THANKS …I’m straight and I’m proud of it.”

And naturally, many were offended by the above sorts of comments, and responded with…

“Love posts like this, let’s me know who I need to support because they support me. And what idiots I need to block on Facebook so I never have deal with all their hate.”

“I’m sorry you’re so insecure that you feel like your heterosexuality is threatened just by the idea of supporting gay people. LMFAO.”

All that engagement drove up the post’s visibility in Facebook News Feeds, of course (over 1,000 reactions, 270 comments, 133 shares at last count) but Page Admins who deal with posts blowing up like this know that it is exhausting to monitor them properly 24/7.

Bad handling of Facebook trolls can damage your organization or brand’s reputation, and make a difficult communications issue even worse.

What You Can Learn From Experience Grand Rapids And Facebook Trolls

Here are a few suggestions:

1.)  Remember that this is YOUR Facebook Page. Yes, Mark Zuckerberg owns it, but that’s your brand name on the Page. Consider it your house.

Do you let people come into your house and poop on the rug, throw things, and insult guests? No.

Treat rude people on your Page as you would treat a rude visitor in your home. Confront them directly, tell them that their behavior is inappropriate and why, and warn them that continued abusive commentary won’t be tolerated.

Make sure your Page already has simple, clear ground rules established and posted so that you can easily refer to them when you say, “These are our rules.”

Here are social media General House Rules from Visit Baltimore, Maryland. Scroll down to see social media rules.

On Visit Morgan County, Indiana’s Facebook Page:

“We welcome your posts to our page about your visit to or your memories of Morgan County, however all posts must be civil and appropriate. We reserve the right to remove posts which are offensive, defamatory or profane.”

My destination marketing friend Laura summarizes her approach on the Visit Kenosha, Wisconsin Facebook Page:

“Profanity/Hate = Deleted, Stupidity/Irrelevant Content = Hidden, Multiple Offenses = Blocked”

Some organizations have gotten legal advice that as government entities, they cannot legally block people from their Page, or delete their comments. For most Pages, though, hiding comments is OK.

2.)  Do not ignore it when a post draws negative commentary. Do not indulge in magical thinking and hope it will all go away. If it’s on a weekend, do not think you can wait until 9 a.m. on Monday to deal with the situation.

Social media is public communications, and people are watching to see how you respond, even if they never comment themselves.

This is how Grand Rapids destination marketing staff came in and did an excellent job laying down ground rules on the specific post above:

“Please understand when commenting: Experience Grand Rapids reserves the right to hide or delete comments including visuals on our content per our community policy. While this is an open forum, it’s also a family friendly one, so please keep your comments clean. We understand there will be open discussion but we ask to keep it civil. We promote a multitude of businesses owned and operated by people of all types of backgrounds within the Grand Rapids – Kent County area. Thank you.”

Note: there is a Profanity Filter under the Page Settings that only Page Admins can see. You may want to bump it up from Medium to Strong.

3.)  You don’t have to handle the whole thing as an Admin; your Facebook Page’s followers and community can be your allies. Often they will defend you before you even have a chance to gear up to respond.

You’ll need to monitor their enthusiastic defense (they’re not allowed to be super-rude, either, even in defending you) but their support has a lot of credibility.

Give them room to run.

4.)  If things get too lively, consider getting some help from your tourism allies and colleagues. We have your back as fellow Page Admins and we know how this works.

Most of us are in various private Facebook Groups with other marketing pros; let fellow Group members know when you could use a little positive commentary on a post. Smart marketers know how to roll in on a hot post without making it worse, and often, their supportive comments can “drown out” the obnoxious comments.

The key is to avoid engaging with the hater comments and the back-and-forth, “You’re a jerk. No, YOU’RE a jerk.”

Instead, leave a specific, positive comment about the post content itself. You’ll see that under the Grand Rapids post – a number of comments that draw out the various businesses that were highlighted in the linked blog post, without getting tangled up in any of the hair-on-fire comments.

For example, here’s the comment that I left:

“I like the Outside Coffee Co‘s outdoor domes mentioned in the article. Great way to combine fresh air & coffee, even when it’s chilly. I’m a warmth-loving Texas-based traveler, but I’d definitely go there!”

Another one:

“Rainbow Road looks awesome! I love public art.”

Similarly:

“Thanks for the great roundup! I’d love to check out Woosah and grab a drink at The Apartment Lounge after.”

There’s no trick here; it’s just that pros know how Facebook works.

Obnoxious comments on a post can be made less visible/”drowned out” because the default for Comment Ranking under Page Settings is Most Relevant. That means that comments with the most Likes or replies show up first below your posts, as will comments from other verified Pages and profiles.

Unless a reader knows how to bring up Newest or All Comments, they may never even see a lot of the commentary that you’re sweating as a Page Admin. There’s a dropdown at the top of Comments, but the average person never notices or toggles it.

Focus on boosting the content, not engaging with trolls or the people who pop off in comments but aren’t truly thoughtful, caring members of your community.

What do you think about handling Facebook Page trolls? Let me know down in the comments.

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Inside the Restoration Museum on Shenandoah Street in Harpers Ferry WV (photo by Sheila Scarborough)

Fair warning – it is difficult to take a “quick” trip to the historic town of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, because there is a lot to see and do.

Lewis and Clark came through here, John Brown’s unsuccessful attempt to arm slaves to revolt happened here, a now-closed historically black college hosted a key Niagara Movement meeting, and both the Appalachian Trail and the C&O Canal towpath converge here.

I’d like to mention one place that impressed me – the Restoration Museum (also called “Reading an old building”) on Shenandoah Street in the Lower Town section of Harpers Ferry. It’s the bottom part of a building that is set up as an archaeological exhibit, and does a wonderful job of explaining how archaeologists think about walls, doors, floors, and ceilings, and the stories they tell.

What struck me about the interesting information and analysis on placards all around the room is how much of a role that dumb luck plays in figuring out the history of a building.

Placards and interior of the Restoration Museum in Lower Town Harpers Ferry WV (photo by Sheila Scarborough)

Archaeologists pour through blueprints, drawings, and documents to confirm their hunches, but then some weird door or something shows up in the dig and they have to figure out why it is there.

Sometimes their best educated guess is finally confirmed (or upended) because someone finds an historic photo from the right time-frame in a box somewhere, or there’s an anecdote in a newspaper or personal journal, and it helps pull the whole story together.

I have a hard time with spatial imagination and “seeing” things in 3D – being able to envision the layers of a place and how they’d look if moved around. This is why I hardly ever redecorate beyond whatever I do when I move into a house or apartment. I just can’t see it any differently than how I already have it set up.

The Restoration Museum held my attention for quite awhile, and made me vow to pay more attention to the next International Archaeology Day and see if there is a dig or event anywhere near me to learn more.

Here is a helpful blog post – 5 Things To Do On Your Harpers Ferry National Historical Park Day Trip – in case you’re able to take your own trip to this fascinating area.

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More content in less time on one slide via Sheila Scarborough

We are all trying to figure out how to get things done as efficiently as possible.

The important thing to remember about publishing online and on social media is that it is a never-ending, greedy maw of demand … if you want to stay competitive and visible. That is the reality.

However, that is no reason to post garbage content simply to keep up, or to run yourself ragged trying to be everywhere, all at once, all the time.

I talked with some old friends at Freelance Austin recently about how to create more content in less time – here is what I recommended, plus my presentation slides are at the bottom of this post.

Four ways to be more efficient with your content….

1) Share One Story in Many Different Places

The first time I really learned how to do this was a visit a few years back to Health Camp in Waco, Texas, which is neither healthy nor a camp (it’s a burger joint with great shakes.)

I took photos of the vintage exterior, my artfully arranged peanut butter shake and corn dog, and a few other items.

Those became a blog post, a Facebook Page post, a tweet, a post on the now-defunct site Foodspotting, a Pinterest pin, a Flickr photo (I’d use Instagram today,) and I could have used Animoto to turn all of my photos into a video.

Sharing content on different social platforms isn’t a new idea, of course, but what I DIDN’T do was share the exact same thing across multiple platforms all at the same time.

Craft the content to fit the platform.

It’s important to include hashtags in tweets and Instagram posts, but nobody cares about them on Facebook. Pinterest requires some thought about keywords, because it’s more of a search engine than a social network. A video file should be uploaded directly to Facebook and Twitter, but it should also sit on YouTube with a solid title and description, for SEO purposes.

Mix up what you share from a single place.

When I visited Pittsburgh’s Mattress Factory Museum of contemporary art recently, I shared one photo from there on Instagram, a different one on Facebook, and a third one on the Tourism Currents LinkedIn Page with a caption tied to experiential travel.

That’s a lot of mileage out of one visit, and I haven’t even written the blog post about it yet.

A small business or organization could also share content as a post on their Google My Business listing.

2) Take One Idea/Story & Present it With Different Media

Think of a story you want to tell or a point you want to get across to your audience, then consider different media formats you could try.

Think about how you could present it as text.

As a photo.

As a photo with some sort of text overlay – try Canva.

As a video.

As audio.

As an Instagram or Facebook Story.

As a presentation on SlideShare.

We’ve started taking each of our high-performing, best-converting Tourism Currents blog posts and making a video out of them with Lumen5‘s Artificial Intelligence, and an audio version on Podbean.

Here is our blog post about content repurposing, because the process of doing this project is also content!

3) Use Your Archives: Re-Share Previous Work

Even though I’ve been blogging since early 2006, it took me way too long to appreciate my blog post archives.

Maybe you, too, have forgotten all of the great stories you have in there, but re-sharing work you’ve already done is one of the easiest ways to fill the content publishing calendar. I assure you, a lot of people missed it the first time.

Screenshot of just a few of my posts on the Perceptive Travel Blog. We launched in March 2007, so there’s a lot in there.

Posts need to be checked and updated before you re-share, of course, but that is a lot easier than coming up with all-new material.

Lean on your archives for evergreen and seasonal posts, and be prepared for “news-jacking” opportunities when there is renewed interest in a topic. For example, when Game of Thrones started up again, our posts about GoT filming destinations starting showing up in the increased volume of search results, resulting in more traffic to Perceptive Travel without any extra work.

Use your archived posts for internal linking (good for your SEO,) to re-share in email newsletters, and to answer questions and provide information on social media.

I use a simple manual system of adding re-share reminders to my Google Calendar, based somewhat on this Buffer blog post about re-sharing on social.

Re-sharing more often works on Twitter, which is very noisy plus you need to hit different time zones. My personal schedule for Twitter re-sharing is:

• Day of publication
• Next day
• Next week
• 1 month later
• 3 months
• 6 months
• 9 months
• 1 year later

Re-shares on Facebook and LinkedIn need to be spread out more, or the algorithms will suppress them in the News Feed. After the initial publication and push, try re-shares three or six months later, then again after a year if it’s still relevant.

I also list key anniversaries on my Google Calendar, like May 23 as the date in 1934 that gangsters Bonnie and Clyde met their end, so that I’ll be reminded on that day to re-share the post I wrote about going to their ambush spot in Gibsland, Louisiana.

4) Re-Purpose Work You’ve Already Done Into New Content

First, scan your photo archives – is there an image there that you forgot about that could be a springboard to a great post?

Same with any video files you have laying around.

Then, think about creatively re-packaging chunks of previous content into new posts. For example, over a couple of years I’d mentioned local breakfast places when I wrote about a destination. I realized that I could take each photo and descriptive paragraph from those blog posts, and make it into a new post, 5 Places to Live Like a Local at Breakfast.

Those are sometimes called round-up posts, and they’re an easy way to make more content in less time.

You may find yourself writing content when you don’t even realize it. A long email in response to a question is a potential blog post. So is a lengthy response to something on Facebook or LinkedIn. When you find yourself writing sentence after sentence, you’re onto something. Copy and paste it into a draft blog post. Here are 5 ways to come up with blog post ideas from, yes, this blog’s archives.

Even this blog post is me re-purposing a presentation slide deck and my outline notes.

Did I miss anything? How do YOU get more content in less time? Share your ideas down in the comments….

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Screenshot from a Tourism Currents webinar – no, they don’t all involve kittens and beer, but we do try to make it fun! (courtesy Stephanie Weeks on Twitter)

Sometimes the best way to figure out how to teach someone to do something is to struggle to do it yourself.

At Tourism Currents, we’ve hammered away for FOREVER about the importance of having some sort of content plan or editorial calendar for your destination marketing, no matter how rudimentary.

Our dirty secret is that we didn’t have much of a system ourselves.

We’d tried and tried to develop some sort of content planning process, and use “proper” templates, but nothing seemed to stick. Frankly, we’ve been blogging and doing social media for so long, we managed to get away with it for quite awhile, but finally, even we got sick of our own low-level flailing.

Since we knew that many tourism and hospitality pros needed a practical system too, we buckled down and came up with a usable process, then developed a hands-on workshop to teach clients how to make a simple content plan for the very next week.

Now, we’re also going to offer it as a webinar.

Join us on Thursday, December 13, 2018 at 1 p.m. Eastern for a one hour, hands-on webinar that we’re calling Build a Social Media Content Calendar for Next Week.

A session recording will be available for those who register, including anyone who can’t attend the live event.

—->>  Update May 2019: yes, now you can buy the content planning webinar on-demand. For US$35 you get the recording, a PDF of the slides, and all of the handouts.

We’ll also provide five different handouts and templates, including a PDF of our slides.

If you want to walk away from a webinar with both a planning process and a draft content plan that you can actually put to use immediately, then this is for you.

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Conversation (courtesy Ray Wewerka on Flickr Creative Commons)

While tidying up my living room, I stumbled across a book that I contributed to back in 2009 … The Age of Conversation 2: Why Don’t They Get It?

It was a compilation of thoughts from 239 authors from 15 nations, edited by Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton, about social media and digital marketing during a time when online communications tools and social networking were growing and changing, yet for many were still not mainstream.

Smartphones in everyone’s purse or pocket hadn’t really hit big yet, either.

I was honored to be included, and almost 10 years later, my thoughts still ring true.

Here is what I wrote in the The Age of Conversation 2 …

*****

My seatmate on the aircraft was curious about my Sun Studio t-shirt from Memphis, Tennessee, so we got into a conversation about travel writing. I mentioned that I write for multiple blogs.

“Blllooogs?” he asked, as though I’d said that I was a fire-eater or quantum physicist.

“What exactly IS a blllooog?”

Wow, I thought, we have some teaching to do with the rest of the planet.

Why doesn’t Joe Six-Pack or Jane Latte understand social media? Because we, the go-go Web 2.0 evangelists, forget to address some basic problems:

1. People are too busy to get it.

They are already overwhelmed with careers, commuting, kids, homes, hobbies, and caring for elderly parents. Many are in front of a monitor at work all day looking at spreadsheets, trying to keep ahead of the email deluge, and preparing PowerPoint presentations for the weekly meeting. Why should they spend any more time on a computer?

2. People are too intimidated by the technology to get it.

Most folks are not dimwits, but for some reason, many act dimwitted about technology. They hate feeling foolish, and poking at the Help button is not going to solve their issues. Geeks often advise, “Oh, just get online and play with it!” Why would they want to “play” with something that scares them?

3. People don’t want to be hammered by our enthusiasm for every social media tool.

Just when newbies are persuaded to consider looking into blogs, we shove everything else at them: Twitter! StumbleUpon! Del.icio.us! LinkedIn! Flickr! (note from 2018: interesting to see how many of these are now defunct or weakened.) Isn’t this fun? No, it is not fun; it is a headache-inducing pile of digital screeching.

What is the answer?

We need to be better teachers. We must clearly, patiently demonstrate how these tools enable amazing connections with our fellow humans across the globe; connections that give us a life rich in delightful conversations that span topic areas and time zones.

What’s the catch?

Social media, like any worthy endeavor, takes time.

We must be honest – it takes time to learn the technology’s quirks, and then time to maintain those wonderful virtual relationships. If the human connections are worthwhile, then people must rearrange their days to accommodate a more active life online. Something will have to be discarded. For me, it’s television, which I rarely watch anymore unless it’s a sports event.

Social media is a life-changer; we must guide people to the benefits by showing what’s in it for them.

*****

I have to smile at my own joyful enthusiasm for social media back then, which was not yet darkened by many huge privacy issues and the weaponizing of social platforms for political propaganda and misinformation.

It also makes total sense that my primary work today is teaching people how to use social media for tourism marketing, and I still have to overcome resistance and fear of technology. Answering the WIIFM question is a part of almost every workshop I do, and that’s as it should be.

This seems to be the week for finding things in my archives, like this 2012 post about how Google Plus will fail, which did in fact happen.

I’m grateful to be able to look back on almost a decade of digital communications work, and reflect on what we got right, where we went off-track, and to learn from those experiences.

What do you think when you look back? Let me know in the comments.

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Me in the inspirational Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa

Is the grind getting to you?

Has the blogging inspiration muse deserted you?

Are you, like me, trying to figure out how to avoid blogger burnout?

Here’s a summary of my presentation on this topic for the Building Community Midwest Travel Bloggers conference … the first-ever event was held in 2018 in Clear Lake, Iowa, and the 2019 Midwest Travel Network conference is scheduled for June 13-15, 2019 in Medora, North Dakota.

3 Reasons for Blogger Burnout

Based on my own experience wrestling with this problem – I started my first blog in February 2006 and let me tell you, the well has run dry a few times – here are three reasons for feeling as though your bloggy skull is aflame….

1)  You are actually fried. You really have hit a wall.

Just about the time that I started thinking about this presentation, the New York Times ran an article titled “Feeling Burned Out? Here Are 3 Things That Can Help” that gave me some concrete steps to fix things.

They suggest:

a. Stop digging. Take tiny steps to get out of your mess.

This reminded me of my favorite Martha Beck quote, from, of all things, an Oprah.com article about interior decorating:

“Tiny steps allow action to slip through the cracks in your anxiety.”

b. Take time off. Even a half-day can do wonders.

c. Talk to people. Get some help.

2)  You simply need better content planning to feel less frazzled.

Lord knows I’ve pulled a lot of blog posts out of my left ear, but it’s so much less stressful to have a plan.

The content planning process sparks ideas, AND it shows you the gaps between what you’ve already blogged about, and what else needs to be said.

Some tips for not running out of blog post ideas:

a.  Build a proper editorial calendar of planned content, based on your blog’s topic areas, for at least the next couple of weeks. Here’s how to kick-start that DMO blog.

b.  Quit waiting for a magical blogging muse to strike. Make sure that you build inspiration boosters into your daily routine, to feed the [brain] machine (which includes scheduling regular exercise, to help that mind-body connection.)

Plan some time to be around art, gardens, music, architecture….beauty that feeds the mind. If you’re a CVB or DMO blogger, that’s a good excuse to get out and about in your town and region.

3)  You need to make better use of work you’ve already done – especially your archives.

a.  Have a plan for consistently re-sharing evergreen and seasonal blog posts from your blog’s archives. Yes, you’ll have to read through the post to ensure that it’s still accurate, and that the links still work, but that’s easy compared to starting a post from scratch.

I use a simple system in my Google Calendar. New posts are shared across Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter when they are a day or so old, then I set up calendar reminders to re-share (mostly on Twitter, because it’s the noisiest platform and easy for people to miss things) 1 week later, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, and 1 year later.

For a tourism pro, you sometimes need to come up with fresh ways to tell the same story, especially with recurring events. Try to change the type of content: if last year’s post about the event was text, make this year’s mostly video, and next year’s a photo montage.

b.  Let your own visuals inspire you. When I’m stumped for ideas, I scroll through photos in my Dropbox that are backed up from my phone. Often I’ll find a few pics from a trip that I haven’t done anything with yet that could form the nucleus of a blog post.

That’s how I wrote this post about a sunset river cruise in Pittsburgh – I’d taken photos on the cruise but had forgotten I’d taken them! Half the work was already done.

c.  Never waste a well-thought-out paragraph. When you find yourself writing a long response in an email, or in a Facebook comment, or a Twitter thread, that’s a draft blog post right there. Copy, paste, boom.

For more lessons learned, here are my thoughts after 10 years of blogging, and below are my slides from the conference if you want to flip through….

Direct link to the slides on SlideShare – Avoiding Blogging Burnout from Sheila Scarborough

How do you avoid blogger burnout? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

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There were robot puppies, which were quite the people magnet …

Robot puppies at the Sony exhibition SXSW 2018 (photo by Sheila Scarborough)

… and there was a little Sony Xperia Touch projector that turned the painted plywood wall beneath it into a touchscreen.

Since I’m working to get myself back into the habit of shooting more video, out came my phone while Becky did a quick demo (here’s the direct YouTube link if you can’t see the embed box below) …

What could a museum or other tourism- or travel-related organization do with this device?

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