Small towns get attention at the Governor's Conference in North Dakota

North Dakota has a large rural population spread over a large geographic area. The entire state is undergoing an economic boom time, started by a wave of oil production. While the big cities have been the primary beneficiaries of the economic good times, smaller towns have a mixed outlook: some are doing very well, some are not.

North Dakota Governor John Hoeven headed up the Governor's Rural Community Summit in Minot to talk about small town issues. It was front page news on the Minot Daily News, and they gave terrific coverage to the event.

I was there to talk about marketing your small community as a destination. With an enthusiastic crowd that filled the room, we discussed some of the latest listening tools in social media, ways to find and work with online champions, and how to evaluate competing sites.

In order to be a destination as a small community, you have to engage your potential visitors more deeply. We talked about the continuum of engagement from commodities, to assets, to experiences, to finally renewal. At the highest level of engagement, your visitors know that their participation is part of a renewal of something valuable.

And no town is too small. To get all the people to see their town with new eyes, we worked through the 8 Elements of Rural Culture created by the Kansas Sampler Foundation.

The Get Social gals: @internkayla,
@legendaryND and Brianna

Together, we all discussed ways their towns could increase engagement, make more of their existing assets, and work to improve their online coverage.

The Department of Commerce also hosted a Get Social area. A group of staff people set up laptops in an informal area and just answered questions about social media and online tools. I helped out, and shared a lot of ways people could move ahead a few steps. Over and over, I shared my favorite advice about Twitter: follow smart people. If you follow smart people, Twitter will be a learning experience for you.

When travel bloggers invade: wired fam tours

If you are part of the tourism industry, you probably know that a "fam" tour is a familiarization tour for the press or travel trade. So when you bring travel bloggers or other online content creators to your town, that you are going to have to do things a little differently.

This is what Sheila Scarborough and I talked about at the Texas Association of Convention and Visitors Bureaus conference in Lubbock, Texas, in "Hosting Wired Fam Tours."

How are bloggers different? First, they aren't all bloggers. To promote your destination you also want photographers, video creators, audio podcasters, as well as people who use Twitter and location based services to get the word out.

Second, they need wifi, and make it free wifi. Don't let that local hotel charge them for wifi! And give them plenty of free time. If you'll let them, they will create and publish content instantly, or at least daily.

Third, they operate on a completely "now" schedule. They won't send a camera crew back later to pick up good shots. They need advance notice and time to set up before those cool visuals happen. See, they have a Flip camera in their pocket, and they aren't afraid to use it.

Those are just a few of the tips we shared on working with wired coverage and fam tours. The CVB crowd was very enthusiastic, and we had a packed house for our session.

We also did a lot of hands-on sharing with participants throughout the event. Sheila set up our booth in the trade show, complete with a pile of geek gear: cameras, web cams, microphones, etc. It seemed like everyone there was excited about social media tools, and they were eager to get their hands on them.

Finding business lessons in a photo workshop

My hometown of Alva, Oklahoma, just hosted Picture My Weekend, a photography workshop. Inside all the photography advice, I managed to find some small town business ideas.

Because the people in my photography basics workshop were all well beyond the basics, I changed my presentation completely. We did more of a round table discussion, with everyone contributing some and learning some. Then we went outside to apply what we had learned immediately.

Mike Klemme's session about how to go pro as a photographer turned out to have many lessons for all kinds small businesses. Photography, like many other professions, is being squeezed by a glut of low priced alternatives and enthusiastic and well-equipped amateurs. Klemme's response is to find a niche, fill the niche, and kill the niche. Great advice for any small business struggling with a flood of competition.

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Get Social Oklahoma City

Oklahoma City is my closest metro area. Get Social brought together local and regional experts on social media for a half day "unconference."

Given the chance, I shared what rural and small town entrepreneurs already know about building community, marketing a business, and surviving a tough economy. As we went around the room, we found that everyone there really did have a small town connection. It's more common than people think.

Dealing with critics came up during the opening keynote discussion. One of the best bits of advice was "The dog keeps barking, and the train keeps moving on." You'll find that and the rest of the lessons learned in The Best Advice for Dealing with Critics.

Organizer Jessica Miller-Merrell plans more of these events across the region, so if you get a chance to participate, do so.

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A business is born and branded

Since Sheila Scarborough and I cooked up the idea for our joint project, Tourism Currents, at the Successful Outstanding Bloggers Conference in 2009, it was natural that we return to tell the story in 2010.

That is exactly what we did. Sheila and I shared the secret to our success, and a few other things we learned over the past year. Gretchen Harding, with Intuit, captured a summary at 5 Secrets from a Profitable Start-Up Business.
The one point that most resonated with the audience:

The narrower your target, the wider the opportunity.

We can tell it resonated the most because it's the one they tweeted and re-tweeted the most. 
And it's true. As you narrow your target, you find more and more opportunity within it.
Photo (CC) by Adrants.

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