Recently OncouRSS was asked by the town of Missoula, Montana to cover the US National Team trials for freestyle kayaking.  Their goal was to bring the world to their town and to this event… in hopes of attracting more paddlers, visitors and competitors in the years to come.  We did so with a laptop, a wifi access and 3 web cams.  The end result was 174,000 viewers over 4 days of competition.  The coverage allowed our client to engage moms, dads, brothers, sisters, friends, uncles … you name it… to their region and event.  Facilitating the show was Ustream.com … this quiet company has made HUGE inroads into offering free online streaming services and has subsequently created an amazing resource for those hoping to share ‘experience’.

Ustream.com is FREE.  Sign up and you get an account.  Plug in your webcam and click a big-ole Broadcast button and you’re live.  The number of viewers you can have is … wait for it… unlimited!  You can pay for the Broadcaster Pro software which allows you to switch between cameras etc., but that’s a luxury.  We chose to do so as it also added a way for us to do some character generation… post up scores, competitor names etc.  But for a festival or wedding, one camera is good enough and the sky’s the limit.  We were also able to record each heat on their server, on their dime!

The applications are impressive.  If you’re a festival manager, use this tool to show folks what they missed.  If your a musician, put on a regularly scheduled show.

Check out our broadcast  which is now recorded at www.worldkayakblogs.com/throwdown/wktv.

In the age where companies are vying to have their blog/social networking voices heard, a new trend is emerging for those with obvious markets … turning the voices of your customers into attention and sales.  To do that, many organizations are developing their own social networking platforms.  From freeware Ning social networks to WordPress MU blogspheres, these companies are providing a place for their markets to converse… they’re hosting a community!  In doing this, the benefits are obvious; Primarily that you have the FULL attention of your audience by gathering them in one spot on the web around a subject they all have in common and that you are providing a service… typically a free service!

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An exciting new local recreation and tourism event group  in the Ottawa Valley area has taken an excitingly direct approach to social networking… they simply do it all!  From Facebook pages and events, to fully blog-enabled web sites, to Google Calendars, Analytics and more, the organizers of the Mississippi Mills Bicycle Month program have done as much as they can to get word of mouth and conversation going about their event.

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This Friday we’ll be wearing our Sunday best and presenting Low-budget, High Profile web site options for festival and event organizers across Ontario.  Their show motif is : “Revitalize, rejuvenate and re-energize your festival or event through our dynamic presentations & in-depth workshops. Network with top industry professionals and learn what it takes to produce the best festivals and special events across Ontario. Take advantage of the opportunity to explore a showcase of the latest services, products and entertainment options available to event planners like you!” You can’t beat that!

With a combined 40+ years in managing and marketing festivals, Shelley and James are on site lending some insite as to how finance-conscious event managers can deliver a big bang for few dollars.  The topics will review all the free social networking options out there as well as some cutting edge ‘open source’ and on-line web options available out there.  If your around, join us!

Event is being held March 3rd to 6th, at the Crown Plaza in Ottawa, Ontario.

When your in the game of growing a sport via community activity increase on a global scale, your challenges are many.  Imagine 160+ events across the US, Canada, Europe and Asia!  Imagine trying to manage them and market them all without burning out!  The Outdoor Ambassador network for World Kayak created by OncouRSS for the implementation of events globally did just that.  (more…)

Tourism is still one of the most applicable industries to the web.  Why?  Because the web is the perfect tool for those looking to research, inquire and book travel.  It therefore stands to reason that any and ALL tourism oriented operations needs to be on the web.  And, indeed, most are.  So, the question is now, how do you stand out from your competitors?  Since this is one of our most popular questions, I thought I’d post a few of my favorite practices and marketing hints …

Design: It has been a bee in my bonnet for a good many years.  It doesn’t matter what your content is like, where you rank on the search engines or how much better your products are, if your design is bad, it’s all bad.  I always compare it to the color brochure vs the photocopied brochure… who would you trust your business to, the one with the nice glossy colored brochure or the sloppy photocopied one.  Also, if you’ve spent so much time on your brand and identity, why throw it away with poor design.  Get design done right!

Find your geographical focus: One of the biggest mistakes tourism marketers make is losing their target market focus.  Ensure your site, your key words (in your content) and your promotional efforts reflect the proper geographical area.  Start with the direct markets, that’s your low-hanging fruit.  Then, once you have that pegged, head out into bigger circles with some of the efforts I’ve listed here.  But it is key to not go too big right off.  Don’t be afraid to cast the big net, but don’t forget your local markets.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Search engines are where folks find information on tourism.  There are sites where visitors go to book flights, but to book the specific visits they will make when in your area, you need to make sure you appear somewhere in the search results.  Blog-style tools work well with SEO as they tend to focus on key content, affirming and re-affirming certain key words naturally.  They also allow for RSS and an increase in cross-web content push as your posts will automatically get picked up by many  of the blog directories out there.  Below you will find other means to achieve attention in the search engines… but keep your content relevant and people will find you.

Show people what they’ve missed: Nothing sells tourism, or specific tourism destinations/events like showing off that they’re missing if they don’t go to your tourism destination.  With the increase in visitor bandwidth (most are on high speed ), the reduction in image and video size and the new progressive streaming video delivery on the web (youtube.com etc.) there is ample opportunity to give the potential tourist a real taste of what you offer.  What I like to do is post up galleries of photos each season, show external shots for your outdoor destinations, internal shots for those hosting visitors in buildings, show guests having fun and capture the experience.  Video is EASY now.  Capture, plug and post to youtube.com and embed your video EASY using some of todays cheap technology.  OncouRSS web site tools come with video embed capability built in… alongside easy-to-use photo gallery management tools.  If you’re an event coordinator, this rule applies ten-fold!  Show them last year’s event and they’ll be tempted to ‘not want to miss this years upcoming event’.

Testimonials: The blogging mentality makes for great opportunity for testimonials.  I regularly ask my visitors if they have a blog.  If they do, I invite them to post up a testimonial.  Many don’t so I collect a photo or two and a testimonial.  Remember that many of our visitors capture their tourism experiences on camera… many both photo and video.  Get them to post them up on the web galleries or at youtube.com and send you the link.   Worse case, take the photos yourself.  Your publishing tool should allow you to embed the galleries and video… if not, call us, ours does ;-)

Coverage of a whitewater kayaking event series on site provided by OncouRSS to the World Kayak Federation

Cover an event: Lets stick with events.  If there is a significant tourism associated event in your area, cover it!  Even if you are not a stakeholder in that event, you may want that event’s audience.  Post up full description, photos, video … anything.  Visitors not able to go to the event will check the sights and sounds out on your web site.  This will expose you to a pretty appropriate audience.  I’ve seen Bed and Breakfasts cover events each year and gain significant traffic to their web site.  Event organizers sent them business and thanked them for their support by chatting them up.  Folks who go to events will also want to relive the event with their friends back at the office, taking their friends to your site to see photos.

Become a tourism resource: When potential visitors are looking for things to do, the big frustration is that its all over the map.  They end of having to visit tons of individual sites and doing too much homework.  Internet browsers are pretty impatient.  If you were to offer them more than one answer, you’d be making many happy.  List out links to other non-competing tourism providers, list a calendar of events, have a phone directory, a photo gallery of other events, a google map with local tourism establishments pinned… you name it… help your visitors find everything they need on your site.  With today’s RSS feed potential you can bring in news from other web sites that feeds news in automatically as they post new stuff to their sites.  OncouRSS has this tool built in as well.  I’ve gained many a bookmark by doing this.

Find strategic alliances: There are many other non-competitive companies and organizations out there trying to hit your markets.  Much of the time you can find them by searching the web using your key words.  From event organizers to other local tourism attractions, every one who aims their web efforts towards generating tourism business is your friend.  Start with link exchanges, but you can go as far as cooperative advertising, posting banners on each other’s sites, content exchange and much more.  Cast a wide net.

So, finished stacking up your friends’ list yet?  Me neither.  As with many social networking sites, quite often we reach that “Nemo moment”, you know, the spot where we’re all in our own plastic bag floating in the bay after a brilliant escape… “Now what?”.  Well, a quick answer is start using Facebook as your event promotional tool. 

Being the perfect metaphor for a gathering of friends and the development of acquaintance networks, you naturally find those of similar interests, common habits and the same general geographic locations making up vast concentric circles throughout Facebook.  This provides event planners the perfect promitional ground for their events.  In addition, Facebook provides the tools to to set up an Event page, one that automatically generates an invitation to all that event planner’s friends, one that gets posting on the geographical map and under any subject of interest to Facebook users.  Once up, the fun begins. 

Once you have established someone as your “friend” you see all of their posts, profile changes and activity.  When they add photos to their Facebook page, you know about it, when they join a group, you know it and, when they join an event, you typically get an invite too.  A new event posted tends to spread like wildfire through the event planner’s friends, to their friends and outward at rampant pace to individuals across logical regions of interest and geography.

The important element is the start.  There are two basic “feeds” to your event listing one being the natural path news of your event posting will take through Facebook’s event listing system.  The second is your own friends.  The more friends you have the larger your Ground Zero will be.  You can also casually cross post your event to other events, by joining them… your event will automatically be ranked amongst that event’s peers in a link list.  Groups are also great targets for a quick posting.

Many corporations and organizations participate in events of all kinds… your company can make great strides in public relations with events promoted on Facebook, Myspace and other networks like this.  Typically it takes time to set up your own friends network, but once done, you are ready to see viral promotion of any and all events you create.

“OK. James, so where do I get involved? Should I set up a Facebook account? VOX? Linked In? Damn, there are so many out there! What about my own web site, how does that fit in?” Can’t tell you how many times I get that series of questions.

Social media only works if you’re… well… social. You need to work your social media presence… no matter what the presence, site etc. you choose to work with. Many work them all. Where many tell you that these networks are replacements for your web site, or Free Web Sites, simply not true… what they are are massive tradeshows. You gotta set up your booth, find those you know, get them to introduce you to those they know, set up events/opportunities to present, invite discussion and shake as many hands as you can… what next? Sell them on your wares… If you can’t do it then and there you need to hand them your virtual business card… “call me, we’ll do business” or “let me show you want I can do for you”. Sometimes, many times, the gift of the gab is not enough… and potential clients will want to kick your car’s tires! Here you… well… bring them to your web site.

There are those who work the room really well, for them the sale and/or contact can be started and transaction completed right then and there… Friend #1 links you into friend #2 who needs a site, voila. But for many, there are simply too many names and faces floating by to keep track of them all… many simply don’t know how to start those virtual conversations. But on a day to day reality, when you’re not logged in to converse, your name gets out there when you do the simplest of moves in these networks and even if you aren’t around to shake every hand, folks still visit your profile pages and subsequently your web site. Many of these networks simply don’t have the facilities to show off your products and/or services effectively. You’re web site does.

More importantly your web site is the one, grounded thing that retains your sales pitch. It’s your board room, use it as such, make sure that any of those network/tradeshow friends visit a site that takes them by the hand and shows them what you can do for them. In an interesting article on social media panel and a chat with some of today’s leaders…

the majority of people here said they rely on traditional news outlets and “pre-Web 2.0″ portals like Yahoo News. – Social-media pros: We’re just getting started – Posted by Martin LaMonica, c|net.com News

Simply put, because there is a certain groundedness (new word!) with these sources. Many validate news, happenings, facts etc. they find on blogs. They go to those traditional, pre-2.0 web sites. It is your web site that grounds you and your company in the public’s eye, it makes you legit and touchable. Not just a face in the crowd, not just a handshake and a wink. It makes you tangible.

All these network sites allow for amazing, viral exposure for you and your company… but without a web site you can liken it to handing out business cards with no contact info on them… there simply is no way for you to argue your case to the masses passing by and you can’t talk to all of them. The web site makes sure that NO ONE falls through the cracks.

What does that mean to you, the blog site owner? It means unlimited display and publishing power and flexibility. It means that you can quickly install any type of web site feature at little or NO cost! It means that there are hundreds of thousands of programmers working just for you, for free!

Whats a Widget?
A widget is a small application written to be ‘added on’ to your blog’s sidebar, or main screen. It can be as simple as a little text box that you can put a paragraph or two in, or as complex as a full ecommerce system complete with product management and merchant account configuration. Programmers develop these widgets in ‘open source’ environments following standards that allow them to be brought onto WordPress, Blogger, Facebook and other such social media tools.  Because they are developed on an open-source platform, widgets sometimes need extra tweaking to work properly or to do the job exactly how you would like it done.  At OnCouRSS, we take care of that for you.  We have programmers on staff with all the tools necessary to modify existing widgets and to write new ones if necessary.  So, no more stressing over finding the right tool to do the job – let us take care of it so that you don’t have to.

Installing Widgets
It takes NO programming to install a widget, but it does require you to have access to your web site’s files. Your web developer can install widgets for you in minutes. OnCouRSS provides a growing number of tested, functioning, useful widgets in a library for ALL of our clients so the installation step is taken care of. All you need to do is activate the plug in/widget and you can use it in your blogspot/web page.  No searching, no worries, and, as WordPress releases new versions of the publishing platform (which they do often), we make sure that the plugins keep working for you.

The World Kayak Federation has asked OnCouRSS to build them a community, a community that engages in conversations from far and wide. In response to that challenge, OnCouRSS has built them a large WordPress MU (multi-user), one that allows any kayaker to set up their own blog or web site, much like Blogger and other mainstream social networks… this time, one all to their own!

The benefits of ‘owning your own space’ is that the focus of tagging and category display can be targeted specifically at your niche, in this case – kayaking… not kayaking mixed with thousands of other subject matters. With WordPress you are automatically getting your content into the blogging traffic as well, ensuring your posts go to the right social media sites.

The MU installation was quick and cost effective for this non-profit organization, allowing them to focus their financial contribution on unique bells and whistles, plugins, offering multiple templates for sites, multi-media options and much more.