Travel Meets Social With Sheila Scarborough

[ 0 ] May 16, 2012 | genConnect Staff

genConnect recently sat down with Sheila Scarborough, Co-Founder of Tourism Currents, where tourism pros learn to market using social media. Using a medium with endless possibilities can surely be overwhelming, and Sheila is there to help with strategy and execution. Check out her interview with genConnect’s Kelly Hayes below:

SHEILA SCARBOROUGH: We help tourism professionals, convention and visitor’s bureaus, make sense of social media for their destination marketing.KELLY HAYES: And destination marketing has been around for a long time, but things have changed, I would have to assume, dramatically?SHEILA SCARBOROUGH: They really have. The ways to reach visitors, there are so many ways now to reach visitors, and for visitors to find out information about a destination, that a lot of folks are really pretty overwhelmed by it all. And we try to help with both strategy and execution.KELLY HAYES: So in the past, the way which people would frequently find out about a destination is they’d read stories that journalists would print in publications, and that sort of thing. But now, people are getting direct messages from destinations, is that correct?SHEILA SCARBOROUGH: There are a number of destination and tourism organizations that are on Twitter, that are on Facebook, that have YouTube channels, that blog, that do all kinds of things. Because a lot of travelers now are going to just Google it, like we for so many things, but also, especially in a crowd like this at South by Southwest, they’re going to look to their friends on the social web to get recommendations. So they’ll say, hey I just landed in Chicago to their Twitter network, what is there to do here? Where should I stay, where should I eat? What’s in Portland, what’s in Albuquerque, what’s in London? They’re asking their friends on Yelp, they’re asking on Twitter, they’re asking on Facebook, and the destinations have to have a presence there, and be listening, and be able to respond.KELLY HAYES: So the destinations have to be much more sophisticated in how they deal with their publics?SHEILA SCARBOROUGH: On the one level, yes. They need to understand the tools, but the important thing, and what we try to teach people at Tourism Current is, it’s not just all the toys and tools, it’s the application. If you tell a sincere and fun, compelling story about your– Tourism Currents does rule. Thank you, yeah! That’s a friend of mine from Hawaii named Neenz Faleafine. She’s great. Someone like Neenz, or somebody like me, they’re going to ask questions when they’re on the ground, they’re going to want to get answers back, but the fact is, yes we would like to interact with tourism organizations, but they need to come back to us in a social sense. Yeah, you have to have a sophisticated somewhat understanding of the space, but when it comes right down to it, it is a person to person human interaction, tell a good story about your town, and the average tourism professional can do that in their sleep. So we just give them the tools.KELLY HAYES: So it’s using new technologies to make the same kind of personal connection to the people who’ve always made–SHEILA SCARBOROUGH: Absolutely, absolutely. And they’ve already got the hard part, they tell a good story. The tech is just 15% of it.KELLY HAYES: Fantastic. Sheila, thank you so much.SHEILA SCARBOROUGH: Thank you.KELLY HAYES: I hope you enjoy South by Southwest.SHEILA SCARBOROUGH:Thank you. I know I will.

genConnect at Austin’s South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Conference

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Tags: Chevrolet Volt, Chevy Volt ReCharge Lounge, co-founder, genConnect, Kelly Hayes, Shiela Scarborough, Social media, South by Southwest, SXSW, Texas, Tourism Currents

Category: Special Guests, SXSW2011, Videos

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Travel Meets Social With Sheila Scarborough

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