BuckeyeLine

A New Year of Opportunities!

Happy New Year from the Ohio Tourism Division! It seems that late December and early January weather is working hard to ensure the success of our skiing, sledding and other winter outdoor adventure sectors so far, while chilly temperatures also make indoor water parks and other indoor attractions very tempting. I always look forward to the start of a new calendar year, as it truly is a fresh opportunity for us to reach new heights. Our team has returned from the holidays after reconnecting with friends and loved ones, and is full of energy and positive attitudes as we begin the new year!

Before we get too far ahead into 2010, I do want to briefly touch on the Division’s successes in 2009. Despite the recession’s toll on the economy, state budget and our Industry, your Ohio Tourism Division delivered a year of growth in key measures of its marketing successes. While we are still awaiting and compiling some data from the fourth quarter and year-end, I can safely tell you that our advertising efforts reached new heights in campaign efficiency and effectiveness, our media relations efforts yielded strong results and our online presence and utilization grew significantly.

In terms of partnerships, 2009 saw record levels of Industry engagement and leverage in terms of both cooperative marketing commitments and Division program utilization. While budget realities did dictate cuts to certain program elements, we successfully preserved and invested in those items with the highest proven returns, and even managed to roll out several new programs to benefit Ohio’s Tourism Industry.

This month there is an incredible amount of activity in our offices including:
• Rollout of key user enhancements to DiscoverOhio.com;
• New key Industry user enhancements and options in the Buckeye Database submissions;
• The New York Media Mission to reach key national travel and lifestyle media outlets;
• Continued spring/summer co-op promotion development;
• Development of our new mobile marketing initiative (co-op details to come by spring);
• Increased social media marketing.

In terms of our future public/private funding model development, the Ohio Tourism Roundtable continues its collaborative process with the Strickland Administration and Ohio Department of Development leadership. The Roundtable is close to an official Industry recommendation of a model that seeks to establish a dedicated funding source at a level that can sustain a “best-in-class” state tourism effort in a public/private model that will yield a significant return on investment to all stakeholders. More information will be available from the Roundtable in the coming weeks as the model is refined by the Industry. Hundreds of hours have been invested thus far by your Industry leadership and they are to be commended for their hard work on such a large project under a short timeframe. Please continue to attend their meetings and engage in their communications to stay current with their progress on your behalf.

Bottom Line: There may be snow on the ground, and the year may be very young, but peak travel season is not far off; our deadlines to ensure continued successful statewide tourism marketing efforts are on the horizon, and we have a lot of work to do together as an Industry to make sure that 2010 will be remembered as the beginning of the greatest decade for Ohio’s Tourism Industry!

Safe Travels,

Amir

Deadlines for Co-Op Advertising Approaching

The Division has once again invested in a robust co-op advertising plan encompassing print, radio and online media. We know that we are most successful when we’re working together in partnership. Deadlines for several co-op opportunities are coming up later this month, including Country Living (Jan. 18), Reader’s Digest (Jan. 22), O, The Oprah Magazine (Jan. 26) and AAA Publications (Jan. 7 and Feb. 4 for various regional titles.)

For more information on these and other co-op opportunities, please visit http://industry.discoverohio.com/media/537/355.pdf or contact Joe Vargo at joe.vargo@development.ohio.gov or (614) 644-0786.

2010 Travel Publications Coming Mid-February!

The 2009 Ohio Travel Planner (400,000 qty.) and the 2009-10 Fall/Winter Ohio Calendar of Events (50,000 qty.) have all been distributed through bulk and consumer request networks. The Division is now referring anyone who requests a publication to the online versions available on DiscoverOhio.com or by clicking here. The 2010 Ohio Travel Planner and 2010 Spring/Summer Ohio Calendar will be available in mid-February 2010.

New OHS Partnerships, Leadership for 2010

It has been a challenging year for many of us in the tourism Industry, however, one of the biggest challenge/success stories of 2009 has to be the Ohio Historical Society. Faced with serious funding cutbacks, the society has successfully forged new relationships with local groups to manage the daily operations of 45 of the society’s 58 historic sites and museums. Not only has working with local community organizations kept these historic sites intact and open for visitors, but in many cases, local management has resulted in increased hours of operation for visitors. Please help us spread the word that these amazing sites are open for business and will continue to preserve our history and educate and delight visitors. For additional information about specific OHS historic sites or museums, please visit www.ohiohistory.org/places.

In addition to new business models and partnerships heading into 2010 (and its 125th anniversary), the Ohio Historical Society also has found the individual they feel is best suited to lead the organization through these challenging times and beyond. Please join us in welcoming Burt Logan, new executive director and CEO of the Ohio Historical Society. Logan comes to OHS after serving 14 years as president of the USS Constitution Museum in Boston. During his tenure at the USS Constitution Museum, he structured the museum’s $3-million budget to come from earned income and development efforts; he raised $15 million for capital and special projects; and he increased the museum’s net worth from $2.1 to $8.3 million. For these accomplishments, he garnered the National Award for Museum Service from the American Association of Museums Accreditation Commission.

Industry Preparing for NY Media Mission

There was much interest from the Ohio Travel Industry this year regarding the New York, NY, Media Mission. While every area of our great state has a story to tell, we were able to narrow the number of participants for this year’s mission to six including: Positively Cleveland, Experience Columbus, the Cincinnati Regional Tourism Network, Licking Co. CVB, Warren Co. CVB and the Ohio Grape Industries Committee.

This group will head to New York for desk-side meetings with national tourism publications, bloggers, travel Web site representatives, etc. on Jan. 26. As always on our media missions, we will endeavor to showcase all of Ohio with your assistance. If you have any major anniversaries/events, timely special packages, exhibits or attraction openings of national significance in 2010 or 2011, please forward your information to Tammy Brown (tamara.brown@development.ohio.gov) no later than Wednesday, Jan. 13 for consideration in the media mission press kits.

County Economic Impact Reports Still Available

There is still time for county visitors bureaus and chambers of commerce to purchase their respective county reports at a greatly-reduced rate from commissioning your own study. Reports are scheduled to be delivered in early May 2010. For additional information and a price quote, please contact Eric Herzog at eric.herzog@development.ohio.gov or (614) 466-0338.

Industry Member to Receive Gov.’s Award for Arts

Congratulations are in order for Donna Sue Groves, one of the original founders of the Adams County Quilt Barn Project. On April 21, 2010, Donna Sue will be awarded the Governor's Award for the Arts for her role in creating the project and for her leadership in the community, which is part of the Tourism Industry’s Appalachian region. The Tourism Division thanks you, Donna Sue, for your continued support of Ohio’s Appalachian region and the Ohio Tourism Industry!

Best Practices: How to Analyze Brand Exposure in Social Media, ragan.com

Analyzing your brand exposure in social media can be complicated. Blogs, Twitter and forums are just a few of the seemingly endless places online where a brand can be measured. Which ones matter? Which can be pushed off to the side? The key to success is to determine what you need to measure. You can't measure everything, so you've got to pick the best metrics (user comments, page views, etc.) for your goals. It can be a lot of work to decide which metrics to gather, but once you do, collecting the data becomes the easy part. Below are four steps and a few tips that will simplify the process and help you focus on what matters most:

List your goals. Make a list of general and specific goals that you have for your company or department. Start with general goals and work your way to specific ones. Try to be as precise as possible; it will be easier to pick metrics for more specific goals. For instance:
• Gain more exposure
• Get more Web site engagement
• Understand your consumer better

List your media and choose which to measure. Make a list of all the possible media (blogs, podcasts, forums, etc.) that could mention your attraction, destination, event, etc. It helps to make as big and wide a list as possible because it forces you to think of possibilities you might otherwise have overlooked. Search all the media on your list for mentions. Do this manually by going to YouTube, Google Blogs, Facebook, Twitter and others and using their advanced search page. To save time, you can do brand/name searches on sites such as www.socialmention.com, which will search your name in almost every media type. The risk is that sometimes these sites don't have accurate search functions, causing them to miss mentions that you might only find by doing manual searches through the sites themselves.

Now that you have a list of media and mentions, you can decide where to invest your measurement resources. In general, you want to measure the media with the most mentions. So, if you only have one YouTube video mentioning your brand in the past two years, you can safely decide not to track YouTube.

List metrics and choose the ones that best measure your goals. Once you've decided which media to track, make a list of the metrics for each medium. Cross-reference that list against your list of goals and decide the right metrics to use to measure each of them. The key to tracking your brand is aligning your goals with your metrics and making sure that what you are tracking is measurable.

Record results. Start tracking your metrics. Make sure that you are recording the results weekly or monthly. Put them into simple Excel charts that are easy to understand and report. Once you start making a few charts over a number of weeks or months, then you can start picking out trends and reporting on why things are the way they are. Don't be intimidated by the thought of all this work. Once the primary setup is finished, maintaining the research is easier. Being able to show with confidence how your brand is perceived makes the task of analyzing your brand’s social media exposure worth the trouble.

Tech Corner: Turning Social Media into a Business

So far, social media has been a big success with businesses around the world. No matter the industry or the target audience, business owners are seeing the value of developing an online presence and cultivating “relationships” with the countless number of potential visitors rattling around cyberspace. Two companies you should be aware of are working hard to turn those virtual “fans” into paying customers who show up at the cash register.

Foursquare (http://www.foursquare.com) defines itself as “50 percent friend-finder, 30 percent social cityguide, 20 percent nightlife game.” Basically, it’s a social networking site with a downloadable application for iPhones and Android phones and is accessible via a mobile Web site. Once registered, users can “check-in” at local businesses to earn points. The GPS-enabled system lets them alert friends to their whereabouts, share tips on things to see and do in the area, etc.

Probably of most interest to business owners is Foursquare’s ability to alert its iPhone and mobile app users of nearby special offers. Because Foursquare is able to provide details on how many times a customer has been to a venue, how often and so on, businesses can work with Foursquare to set up specials rewarding those loyal customers.

The biggest drawback to Foursquare currently is location. The only Ohio cities included are Cleveland and Columbus, but they insist they are working hard and growing quickly. Check out http://www.foursquare.com/businesses for more details on their business opportunities, and keep an eye out for them in your area.

Another company with a similar offering is Gowalla (http://gowalla.com). This “location-aware” social network also includes apps for the iPhone and Android and a mobile Web site. The major difference between the two is that Gowalla is completely GPS-based, meaning that it “works” anywhere your GPS-enabled phone works. The downside is that Gowalla doesn’t yet offer any sort of “specials” program like that offered by Foursquare.

Gowalla is really more about encouraging the user to get out and see/do/experience things than about collecting points. While users do earn “stamps” for visiting certain locations, for now the reward is just the thrill of having been there, which isn’t such a bad thing.

In our research, the experts seem to agree that one of the two applications will likely be the next evolution of social media for businesses. Both pose some exciting potential for getting folks off the computer and into your establishment. We suggest you familiarize yourself with these applications and begin thinking of ways you might be able to capitalize on this emerging technology.

Where in the World

Jan. 6: Amir in Akron at Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens
Jan. 19: Amir with the Ohio Tourism Academy Leadership group in Columbus
Jan. 26-28: Tammy Brown leading media mission in New York, NY