I had the pleasure last night of dining with my friend CC Chapman, co-author of Content Rules. He's in town to talk about content marketing at our local AMA luncheon today.
If you haven't yet picked up the book, do yourself a favor and do so today. Here, I'll make it easy -- you can buy Content Rules right here.
But this post isn't about all the great ideas that CC and Ann share in the book, instead, it's about why brands, especially tourism or destination brands should be reaching out to content creators like CC.
CC arrived yesterday afternoon and it was a really nice day here in New Orleans. So he did like anyone who's never been to a new city would do on a nice day... he walked all over the French Quarter and a bit of the downtown. Only CC's not like every tourist or businessman in town... he's a content guy. So his walks include his camera.
As he said last night over dinner -- "I'm not sure which is going to have more fun, my camera or my belly."
So along his travels he takes a host of really cool pictures of New Orleans and tags them all with keyword rich words that the New Orleans CVB should love. The entire set is titled "New Orleans Weekend" and a vast number of shots have a title "Walking the streets of New Orleans." On top of all of that... the shots are really well done as CC is an accomplished photographer. The only thing that would make it better for someone like the New Orleans CVB would be if the photographs were offered restriction free, but they are offered under a licese that would at least allow the tweeting of the set or individual photos in a CVB Twitter stream.
And that's the point of reaching out to content creators -- regardless of how big or small their following is and inviting them to join you in your city. Social Media craves content, lots of it. But for many tourism marketers (hotel/restaurant/destination) budgets are tight and manpower limited. So why not harness the natural tendencies of folks like CC? Whether you simply pay attention when they're in town and then share the content they create or invite them to town on your dime with a hope that they'll create, you've got a really simple, cheap tool to help create awesome content that you can share with fans, followers and Google.
Think you might leverage this for your tourism destination, hotel or restaurant? If so, how would you approach it? See any downsides? Let me know... comment away, please.
UPDATE: Just back from CC's AMA NOLA talk -- he told a story about how he asked for restaurant rec'ds via Twitter, and only one restaurant in the whole city tweeted him back. Guess where he's having dinner tomorrow evening? And he mentioned the restaurant (GW Fins) by name in front of the entire crowd. He also asked if it was any good, to which the crowd assured him it was. Yes, just one more reason to engage creators like CC -- you might just get a free PR shout out to 70 locals and an additional shouout in any post trip blog post he writes (which he also indicated he'd be writing and including Fins).
Disclosure: GW Fins is a client of my social media markting firm - Converse Digital. But CC didn't know that until AFTER he booked his reservation and was actually surprised when I told him.
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