UPDATE: new tour sites now listed!
You can now attract savvy tourists to your area with audio tours and videos.
Record an MP3 audio file for visitors to listen to as they walk or drive through your area. Mention the sights, tell the old stories, direct them to businesses. Post it on your community or business website.
Upload it at AudioSnacks, and try to get it listed at Soundwalk, TourCaster, or Tourist Tracks. (I found those sites listed in an article from SpringWise, included in the E+Action newsletter.) Update: Ali Karbassi stopped by to mention city-surf.ca for Canada. Another reader mentioned the meta-directory of audio tours at Tourdio.
Visitors can download it to their audio player or burn it to a CD so they can listen while they walk or drive. Heck, many cell phones can now accept and play MP3 audio files, giving visitors another option for listening to your audio tour.
You could even post a regular series of podcasts on your website, describing the many wonders of your area.
Which brings us to the inevitable topic of video. Almost any digital camera will now take videos. Blip.tv makes it easy to post and share them. Why not post videos of those wonders? Why not present video on your small business website? Why not show off your products?
[Photo from my Flickr: Alva’s murals, a natural target for an audio tour.]
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Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.
Hey there – Lots of these tours popping up these days. In Canada I’ve started city-surf.ca.
The network of directories is buiding and I think the consumer behavior shift is not far behind!
Ali
Thanks, Ali. That is a great site. Hope you will visit again soon! We would love to hear more about your start up.
There are so many audio tours out there now that I decided to set up a site that would enable people to find the good ones with the minimum of fuss and effort.
http://www.tourdio.com is that site.
It enables you to find hundreds of tours for all corners of the globe with just a few clicks of a mouse.
Thanks for mentioning Tourdio. I think that is a great site. Come back soon, and share more with us about your start up.
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