Recently Facebook announced that it would be releasing Timeline for brands, which you can update right now, or you can wait until March 30th when Facebook will automatically make the change. The biggest thing that you will want to have prepared before updating is a banner to fit the Timeline header section which Think! can assist you with. Another thing you will want to think about is your tab applications, while the content will still fit the large area nicely you will want to update the thumbnails to fit the larger preview boxes along the top.

I would suggest reading the blog post Mashable recently did on all of the changes that we can expect when Facebook rolls over to the new Timeline for brands.

If you have any questions about the new Facebook Timeline feel free to email Phil@thinksocialmedia.com and I will try and answer your questions as best as I can.

This is the eleventh post in a series of ideas that Rodney shared at SoMeT.

Lots of people spend hours sitting in airports with nothing to do.  As destination marketers, I think we can go a lot further to entertain bored travelers.  With a little brain-power we can achieve our objectives and give people a better experience in our destination.

I’d love to see a destination design a spin-the wheel and put it in the arrivals section of the airport.  The best place would be near baggage claim to catch people while they’re waiting for their bags to be unloaded.

You could work with the tourism businesses in your industry to source discounts on product.  Ask businesses to donate discounts on product.  For example a hotel could offer 10% off a second night’s stay, a restaurant could offer free desert or an attraction may offer kids free.

A spin-the-wheel is an excellent way to engage with your industry and showcase their product.  Prizes could be designed to encourage people to stay longer, spend more, or come back another time.  You could also collect emails for your newsletter; let people spin the wheel if they provide an email.

The operator could be well versed on the destination’s offerings and provide a friendly welcome to the destination.

The concept works. Canada’s Scotiabank recently did this in Calgary Airport.  I’m now the proud owner of a Scotia credit card and all it cost them was some time and 15% off a coffee.

How do you entertain your travelers?

This is the tenth post in a series of ideas that Rodney shared at SoMeT.

There are many opportunities for a DMO to connect with travelers.  We used to wait for people to walk into visitor’s information centers but now they can find most information on the internet.  I think its time DMOs start getting creative about how they engage with visitors to provide information, survey them and collect data.

One fantastic way to engage with the business market could be through airport shoeshines.  Business travelers are likely to be wearing fancy shoes that need a polish before a big meeting.  The shoeshine place has a captive audience for 5-10 minutes.

The easiest way to reach them would be to provide print material or an iPad with information on the destination.  You could turn your friendly local shoeshine guy into an ambassador for the destination to provide people with great tips and advice.

Shoeshines cost around $5-10.  If your DMO has a budget for data collection, why not buy people free shoe shines in return for an email address?  You could do the same thing for surveys – people don’t have much else to do while they’re sitting around getting their shoes buffed.

Are you engaging travelers in clever ways?

Pinterest is a fast growing “photo” sharing social network that integrates nicely with Facebook and Twitter. Pinterest let’s users post pictures and categorize the pictures into “niches” and share them out. These photo’s can be re-shared (re-pinned) within Pinterest and even broadcast to Facebook, which is a great way to

Pinterest Consumers are fast flocking to it due to it’s simplicity and viral reach. So how are you using Pinterest to showcase your product?

Here are a couple great examples of DMO’s using Pinterest:

Tourism Costa Rica and  Visit India also have great pages set up, so don’t let this amazing free tool go unused.

Anne Hornyak has a great post with some stats and examples as well for Pinterest: http://ht.ly/9emZv

This is the ninth post in a series of ideas that Rodney shared at SoMeT.

Many DMOs use contests to drive web traffic and collect consumer data, run surveys or grow Facebook Fan Pages.  There’s a huge number of contests on the web these days and it’s getting harder to get noticed.

Good online contests will have sharing in mind.  There are many mechanisms like Facebook’s Open Graph and Twitter’s API that let you design contests that self-promote.

If you design your contest cleverly, you can make it remarkable enough that it promotes itself. The prize itself can be one of the most effective talking points.

When you’re dreaming up prizes and competitions, get to know the niche that you’re targeting. Offer something that appeals within a community that means something special to that group of people.  Kootenay Rockies Tourism Association in Eastern British Columbia does this with their bi-annual Ultimate Ski Bum competition.  The region has some of the best skiing in the world. They work together with the industry in their region to offer a prize that skiers will talk about: One lucky person wins 8 season passes, 3 months of hotel accommodation, a rental car and 12 days of heli and cat skiing.

By far the best prizes offer something that money can’t buy. The Cook Islands ran a very clever campaign in the scuba diving market.  The prize: the winner gets to name their very own dive site in the South Pacific.

What could you offer that money can’t buy?

This is the eighth post in a series of ideas that Rodney shared at SoMeT.

I was in a burrito joint in Los Angeles with Ben last month.  On the counter, there was a jar full of business cards.  You could put your card in to win a monthly prize: a free burrito!

Many destinations maintain an email newsletter to market to travelers and a common objective is to grow the size of the database.  Destinations invest a lot of resources in capturing new leads but there could be a better way.

Why not work with all of the businesses in your industry to create a network to collect email addresses of travelers?  You could offer a small monthly prize – say a free hotel night.

People are often skeptical of marketers when the incentive is too big.  Perceived value needs to equate to input.  A business card is worth a burrito.  If there’s a bigger reward, there’s either a catch or I’m not likely to win.

Have you thought of any clever ways to collect email addresses?

This is the seventh post in a series of ideas that Rodney shared at SoMeT.

How many hotels have we stayed in that send guests to their website once you’ve logged in to wifi. This seems crazy to me. Am I the only one?  I’ve already bought a hotel room… I’m sitting in it!  What else can you possibly sell me from the home page of your website?  Why wouldn’t you use the opportunity to connect with guests on your Facebook Fan Page. You could even give them some great information to make their stay better.

If your hotel doesn’t have time to do a good job of maintaining a Facebook Page, why not try and send traffic to your destination’s Fan Page?

This is the sixth post in a series of ideas that Rodney shared at SoMeT.

One of the best opportunities provided by social communication tools is for destinations to stay in touch with consumers post-trip.  Until recently, this has been quite costly and time consuming.  It’s very hard to have a relationship through a newspaper ad, direct mail or email newsletter.  But now you can keep in touch easily online.

The best way to connect with travelers to start a relationship is when people are in-market.  There are a variety of ways that you can do this but one of the best is when they’re actually online.

Most destinations have an airport, train station, bus station or visitors center that offers WIFI and sees a large proportion of visitors come through the doors.  Getting people to connect on Facebook right there and then is one of the most under-realized opportunities in destination marketing.  If you could get every person who uses WIFI in your airport to connect on your Fan Page, you’d quickly have a big community of the right fans.

You’ll get a lot of locals too but that’s actually a good thing.  Locals are your ambassadors online. They’re often passionate about where they live. They can support travelers. Many of the people in their networks will live elsewhere and can become visitors.  That’s a pretty huge opportunity when you consider that the average Facebook user has 130 friends.

Most airports send people to their web page once they’ve logged on to the Internet or even just set them free on Google.  This is a huge mistake.  If you send them to a Facebook page and offer them a reason to click ‘Like’, you can stay in touch with them forever.  Better yet, why not give free WIFI to fans. Make people click ‘Like’ to access the Internet.  There are 800 million people on Facebook so chances are your air travelers are there. If they’re not, they may prefer to set up a Facebook account than pay.

Calgary Airport is coming close to this by allowing people to ‘connect’ to get two hours of free WIFI.

Imagine if a destination could get all of this traffic to their Fan Page.  I know there are political challenges to this but surely someone out there has a strong enough relationship with the local airport to try?

This is the fifth post in a series of ideas that Rodney shared at SoMeT.

TripAdvisor reviews are really important for hotels and accommodation providers.  The better your reviews, the more exposure you get to the c50 million visitors that TripAdvisor’s gets each month. We’ve worked with hotels that can track a direct correlation between room bookings and their ranking on TripAdvisor.  If there property falls by one place, they see an instant drop in bookings.

I’ve spoken to a hotel in Seattle who is part of a large chain.  They get one million people through their door each year but have less than 200 reviews on TripAdvisor.  Something doesn’t add up.

On Facebook, users can click ‘Like’ on a business’ Fan Page.  It’s most likely that people will stay in touch with a business after they’ve experienced what the business has to offer.  It’s also pretty likely that they’ll love what you have to offer.  It would be really great to see businesses engaging Facebook Fans to write positive reviews on TripAdvisor.  After all, you already know that they ‘Like’ you.