A conversation with Chris Christensen (@chris2x), producer of the Amateur Traveler Podcast, a web-based travel show that helps travelers find the best places to travel. It includes both a weekly audio podcast and a twice monthly video podcast. It also includes blog posts featuring travel news and resources.

Todd and Chris talk about:

Who listens to travel podcasts?

• travel agents, people who love travel use the podcast to become destination experts
• regular travelers, many listening while they are on the road
• “Not sure who they are when they start, but they end up being travel experts.”

What makes a good travel story?

• entertainment
• education / enlightenment
• “All the best stories are travel stories.”
• Things a traveler would want to know about travel to your region.

How to find exotic travel experiences in your community: What is entertaining and interesting in your community – like throwing rocks at one another in a courtship ritual?

Learn to ask good questions:

• What do you take your friends to see and do when they visit?
• What would surprise a visitor from away?
• What do we eat here that is different from what they eat?
• What are you really proud of?
• “What is Poutine?”

How are podcasts produced?

• some people are good storytellers; editing can enhance some podcasts and others may not be of good enough quality to use
• Tools of the Trade: Macbook laptop, Garageband, Skype, Call Recorder (Hot Recorder for PC), Plantronics Headset
• versions of the show produced for iTunes with photos and hyperlinks, as well as simple mp3
• production time: 6-8 hours/week.

Feedback from listeners on their favourite episodes:

• “I’ve never thought of going there, but now I’m intrigued”
• “I’ve been there, and I’m reliving being there by listening to this episode” – Fans want your multimedia stories!

How to Pitch Chris a story?

• host@amateurtraveler.com
• pitch your destination, not a company – there are good reasons why. Listeners are inspired by your stories, not your business card.

Todd chats with Pam Mandel (@nerdseyeview), Seattle-based travel blogger at NerdsEyeView and Sheila Scarborough (@sheilas) blogger from Round Rock, Texas who pens the Family Travelogue about how they became travel bloggers and how travel, tourism, and blogging can be an essential components of marketing travel experiences.

Topics of Conversation:

• How writing and the evolution of the Web created travel blogging opportunities
• What’s the difference between travel writing and travel blogging
• How unique niche experiences provide great story ideas
• How quickly blog posts can impact travel and how blogged stories have a lasting impact
• Finding the right travel blogger to tell your story
• How pitches find their way to travel bloggers through PR agencies
• The relationship between bloggers and tourism businesses
• Why paid posts can compromise a bloggers objectivity
• Tourism businesses and bloggers need to have conversations about expectations and credibility
• Journalistic integrity and ethics is very important to top bloggers: While comping accommodations or travel may be appropriate for freelance journalists and bloggers, revealing such compensation in the story is important.
• Tourism regions or businesses can discover blogging by guest posting on existing travel blogs

Links:

• http://blogsearch.google.com – Google’s Blog Search Engine
• http://www.technorati.com
• Travel.AllTop.com – edited list of top travel bloggers
• Blogher – the Women’s Blogging Network
• Williamsburg, Virginia -Convention and Visitors Bureau
• Molokai, Hawaii – Visitors Bureau (@DavidHTA, @michaelni, @nathankam)

On this version of the Tourism Keys podcast @Todd Lucier chats with @Chris Brogan about blogging tourism.

Ideas Chris Brogan and I discussed:

• Why blogging is good for getting your content more views.
• Bloggers and other content producers have link equity and audiences that can generate views for your social media.
• Blogging with two perspectives in mind: producing content from inside your community on a shared tourism blog in an ongoing focused way, and earning blog content from visiting bloggers who share an outside perspective on your travel region.
• How can the tourism industry engage podcasters, bloggers, video producers and photographers to work with tourism industry?
• How OMGPittsburgh got started as a way to let the city speak for itself.
• What about the economic relationship between bloggers and tourism businesses? How to provide incentive for visiting bloggers to write about your region may be less expensive than you think.
• Other types of economic relationships: be pay per post, gaining exposure for content, ie: creating a multimedia audio or video tour and getting thousands of views.
• Why social media agencies provide valuable resource of Web 2.0 content production. Where to find them?  Local agencies and larger agencies can provide different types of value.
• What metrics matter?
• Chris talks about fishing where the fish are.  Have a gander at this post on crosswalks and designing Web pages to understand how niche content can put your content in front of people that matter.
• Why niche, narrowcasting content can produce higher revenue for your tourism business or region.

Learn more about Chris Brogan at http://www.chrisbrogan.com.

• Podcamp Toronto: February 23-24, 2009 http://podcamptoronto.pbwiki.com/
• Podcamp Halifax: January 25, 2009 http://podcamphalifax.ca/
• Try out Twitter  at http://www.twitter.com to find people engaged in social media including @Todd Lucier and @Chris Brogan.

Are you a Bridge Person?
The digital divide describes two types of people or communities.
Those who use high speed Internet and regularly post content online and those who lack one of the three pillars of an intelligent community:

• High Speed Internet access
• software and applications that take advantage of the bandwidth
• knowledge / training of how to make use of the applications

On this version of the Tourism Keys Internet Marketing Podcast Todd talks about two key trends noticed at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco in early November 2008 – explosive growth in online user generated video and the rise of social web.

It’s time to bring in bridge people to help tourism businesses and regions get the coverage they need with storytelling expertise of bloggers, podcasters, photographers, and videographers.

Are you a blogger? Podcaster? Photographer, Videographer?  Call your nearest destination marketing organization and let them know about the skills and services you can provide.

Are you in the tourism biz?  Build a bridge, or go searching for these people.

There is a new podcast on the Web today – TourismCafe.ca

We’re dedicating this version of the Tourism Keys podcast to this new project which aims to strengthen tourism industry understanding of the benefits of experiential tourism.

Todd Lucier, Nancy Arsenault and Celes Davar invite you into the café for a chat about tourism. They represent tourism development from a Canadian perspective and introduce you to their background as operators, share interesting tourism development projects they’re involved in and introduce the Canadian Tourism Commission’s Explorer Quotient. It’s 15 minutes to introduce you to Tourism Café. We’re sure you’ll want to bookmark the site so you can to catch future episodes of the Tourism Cafe, as well as insights on tourism by reading their experiential tourism blog posts.

Check it out!

This podcast features portions of a skype conference call with Seth Godin talking about the importance of tribes and leadership.

This week I read and listened to Seth Godin’s new book, Tribes. When I think of a tribe on the Internet I’m thinking of dozens or hundreds of people who are connected by things that they agree are important and ideas that tribe members share. Numerous technologies provide opportunities to become part of a tribe, and each tribe that I’m a member of offers benefits.

My Tribes

The Internet has become less about Websites and more about people, people who have an active web presence. On the Internet, tribe members are active participants, more than just consumers of information, they are participants in a democratic revolution where they have realized that they too have a voice.

• On Twitter I follow a tribe of people who keep me in the loop regarding the latest news on topics that matter to me, and other Tribe members follow me, and connect to the ideas I share.
• On Facebook, friends and fans of Northern Edge Algonquin share photos and stories about their experiences at our nature retreat.
• I read a number of blogs and comment when I feel the urge, participating in the conversation, sharing ideas that matter to me. (As a reader of this blog, I hope you take me up on the open invitation to comment from time to time on my posts).

Tribe members are located all over the world and are connected by technologies that would seem magical only a few short years ago. Whether sitting at a keyboard, or travelling with my phone, I’m connected at will. This is an important distinction. I can follow whoever I want, and unfollow them, whenever I want. I can seek their counsel on a variety of topics – if and when I choose. The Internet is alive with ongoing conversation that pulses and grows unceasingly. The members of my tribe are selected by me, to help me filter the world and help me make sense of things. I am glad I have found my tribes.

As a member of this tribe, you are choosing to put your trust in the ideas shared here. Thank you for trusting me and the ideas represented in my podcast and blog.

A Tribes Project: Join the Tribes Tribe

I want to share with you a small project I have started and invite your participation. Inside the cover of my copy of Seth Godin’s new book, Tribes, I have left a short message inviting the holder of the book to read Tribes within 7 days before passing it on to another (I’m also passing on an mp3 version of the book for those who don’t have time to read the book. Want the mp3 version of Tribes? Seth asked me to share my copy of the audio program, so drop me direct message on twitter at twitter.com/toddlesby and I’ll send a link to a free Tribes.mp3). Great ideas are worth spreading! Each person who receives the book is invited to record their name. I am also inviting readers and listeners to share their ideas on Tribes and Leadership in the comments section of this blog post after reading or listening to the audio version of the book. I’ve made a link for the project that is easy to remember: http://www.tourismkeys.ca/tribes.html

If you have finished with your own copy of Tribes, I invite you to try something similar. Put a note inside the cover, and pass it along. If you wish to see what happens to my original copy of Tribes, leave a short comment on this page and you’ll be updated any time a reader or listener of the book leaves a comment here.

By the way, if you’ve read your own copy of Tribes and want to share your insights, go right ahead, as a member of this tribe, your participation is always welcome.

Fabienne, from UntangleMyWeb in Queensland Australia, and I chat about tourism marketing that engages story tellers with multimedia talents: video, photography, writers, bloggers in telling tourism stories. Discussion of clustering addresses getting past the competitive nature of tourism operators, and encouraging everyone in a region or experience cluster to work together in a cluster (shared website) to create new products and identify new markets to enhance how they market tourism.

Is online booking the most important advancement in web marketing or are collaborative efforts that lead to more sales in your community more important.

Bridge people are critical to the development of successful marketing of tourism.

• paddlingontario.com is highlighted – they target niche markets as a cluster of 20 canoe and sea kayaking adventure companies.
• see how Chris Brogan seeds a community blog in Pittsburgh at a blogger gathering.

Are you having success developing a cluster to market tourism in your region?  Tell us about it!

Todd and Fabie continue their discussion about the digital divide, or how to bridge the gap which exists between the current state of online marketing and the capacity of tourism operators to take advantage of it.

Fabie has been heavily involved in the Australian tourism e-kit – a series of 37 tutorials about Internet Marketing for tourism operators available for free : http://www.atdw.com.au/tourism_e_kit.asp and is seeking advice from Todd on how to get the support from the Aussie government to move to the next logical step: face to face training.

The Canuck and the Aussie tourism geeks also address and propose solutions to the following challenges:

Guiding small tourism operators to create new Internet content for their region

“Get together with a whole bunch of other operators and skilled people such as your local photographers, writers, multimedia students and get your hands on the case to create a whole bunch more content to be available on the Internet”…

Why you shouldn’t give Martha from your local tourism association $253 for an advertisement in their new brochure

“If zero phone calls were generated from the ad, why would you invest those dollars again? – invest them in your own time to become better at understanding how visitors search for you and what they want to read. Your future visitors look for you online and want to read, view images, videos about you and not simply another ad in the paper quoting your rates, showing a 10 year old photo and your opening hours”.

So next time Martha rings, ask her to help you to get better at providing the content a potential customer wants to see online. Tell Martha about how many bookings you got from your TripAdvisor listing!

Tracking the origin of your enquiries and bookings

“Get your pen ready, Todd will tell you exactly which questions to ask a visitor on the phone to track where they heard from you – was it on your Website, or somewhere else?”

What are your thoughts? Have you been getting many phonecalls from Martha? Or do you want a few tips on how to get your message across to the Marthas of the world? Leave your comments so we have some “meat” to lobby for more training programs both in Canada and Australia

Stay tuned for part III of our Travelling Podcast…

Todd chats with Fabienne Rabbiosi of Untangle My Web, from Queensland, Australia about:

• bridging the digital divide
• providing broadband Internet access and access to training
• making training less scary with images
• thinking like your Ideal Guest
• using questions to brainstorm and design Web pages
• feeling sad for Aussie’s – they don’t celebrate a Thanksgiving Holiday!

See also RenovateQueenslander.com

Getting your Guests to the top of the Customer Relationship Management Ladder is easier if you know that you get them there one step at a time.

Podcast Links:

• Understanding Keywords Lesson at Tourism Keys
  
• SEO Lesson
• How (as a fan) I raved about my Halifax Java