Effective websites

Steps in Southwold

Take a look at Sarahinsuffolk's Blog for some reminders of what makes an effective website. Sarah's blog is focused on the clients of Suffolk Tourist Guide, Suffolk Hotels Guide and Suffolk Weddings Guide to help them understand what she calls 'the bewildering online world.' However, there are some real generic gems in her postings on what it takes to make websites and social media work effectively.

The Suffolk Guides have over 50,000 unique visitors a month so, as a practitioner and as someone running her own business, Sarah has a pretty shrewd idea about digital marketing and the online world.   

Creating Social Media Content - Using Windows Moviemaker

If you are small attraction (or even a large one) and looking to develop your presence on the web, a YouTube account in your attraction's name, gives you the opportunity to raise your profile. However you are then faced with what to post. You may well have hidden talents as an amateur moviemaker but we have all seen those dreadful films on YouTube with unsteady handheld cameras that do nothing to enhance anyone's reputation, let alone promote the virtues of a visit.

However, Windows Movie Maker, bundled with most Windows releases or available to download  provides even still photographers with the opportunity to animate some of all those photographs taken of the marvels of visiting your museum, heritage site, theme park, attraction or wildlife reserve. All you need is a bit of time, as Windows Movie Maker has the ability to automatically create a movie and match the music to the pictures. As it 'says on the box' on the Windows website:

Import and edit slide shows and videos
Quickly add photos and footage from your PC or camera into Movie Maker. Then fine tune your movie just the way you want it. You can move things around, speed it up or slow it down—it’s up to you.

Edit the soundtrack and add a theme
Enhance your movie with audio and a theme. Movie Maker adds transitions and effects automatically so your movie looks polished and professional.

Share your movie online
Once your movie is ready, share it online on Facebook, YouTube or other social networking and video sharing sites. Send a link to your movie in an email to family and friends so they won’t miss it.

 

You just need to be careful of copyrights for both photographs (and other media of course) and music and YouTube has guidance on this issue. YouTube has some copyright free music you can use. For an example of what can be done with old photographs and music by the Hollywood composer Erich Korngold see the short animation for the Pembroke Dock Sunderland Trust's 'Fleets to Flying Boats' heritage attraction here   

 

Get shooting and animating! And don't forget - post it on Facebook as well

 

Copyright Picture from the cover of  'The Making of Feature Films - A Guide' Ivan Butler - Pelican - 1971

Game changer for the travel Industry? SoLoMo means social local mobile

SoLoMo means social local mobile – and is especially important for the travel industry as mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets become the primary way to access the internet.

 

The research company Euromonitor International  has looked at the implications of this trend that have  resulted in several intersections of two trends, such as social media usage via smartphones and the rise of geo-social networks allowing users to “check in” their current location.

 The mobile dimension has also resulted in a new development for the online world – the emergence of the local aspect. Through GPS technology, the location of users can be detected in order to offer them location-based services (LBS). These use information on the geographic location of mobile device owners to offer them tailored services based on it. This opens new opportunities for local businesses.

The range of location-based services is very wide, including location-based m-commerce, promotional offers, information services, games and loyalty programmes.

SoLoMo can be seen as the third step of the evolution of online travel, which first saw the introduction of travel websites and online reservations, then the popularity of social media and finally, thanks to the possibility to access the internet via mobile devices, the rise of the SoLoMo

See more at the World Travel market site here

Disaster communications in a social networking media world

Disaster Communications in a Changing World
Credits: George D Haddow and Kim S Haddow
Publisher's name, year of publication: Elsevier, 2009-07-11 ISBN: 978-1-85617-554--8
Number of pages:218


The front cover of this book features a picture that perhaps sums up how far we have come in communicating and managing news of disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and accidents and terrorist incidents. It's a screen shot of the Twitter web site. The advent of the internet, blogging, social networking, YouTube etc means "first informers" or witnesses have the ability to leapfrog traditional news channels and those who want to manage news. As the authors say, governments' role as gatekeepers of news is now an anachronism. This book looks at the key elements of disaster communications and how to manage news and information in the context of new media.

Much of the material covers the planning that organisations should have in place anyway - like a Crisis PR plan and providing front line staff with media training. However, it looks in detail at integrating new media and imbedding it into planning and implementation before disaster strikes. It is not just a dry analysis but very much a book to be picked up and used as a reference with lots of practical suggestions such as dealing with interviews and uses case studies to illustrate dos and don'ts. There are descriptions of other resources to consult such as web sites and a short bibliography of other books to read but given its subject most of the references are to other web sites

If the book has a fault, it is its North American bias. However that is a small criticism in the context of the insight that the authors, both experts with practical experience, provide for dealing with communications management whether TV or text messaging. It should be on the bookshelf of anyone likely to have to handle communications in a crisis either in the public or private sectors

Review The Tourism Society Magazine Autumn 2009 by Nick Booker

http://www.tourismsociety.org/