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.]
New to SmallBizSurvival.com? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Get our updates.
- Cheap placemaking idea: instant murals - September 11, 2020
- Refilling the rural business pipeline - July 7, 2020
- Huge vacant buildings: grants to renovate? - June 9, 2020
- Economic self defense for small towns - June 7, 2020
- The best things you can do for local businesses in light of coronavirus - March 27, 2020
- How to get more parking downtown without adding any spaces - March 7, 2020
- Exact Yeti Blue mic volume and Windows settings to reduce background noise - February 17, 2020
- Getting local businesses to cooperate with you: Shop Hopping Around Brownsville - December 16, 2019
- Survey of Rural Challenges 2019 results - December 5, 2019
- Shop Indie Local adds a new twist to tired Buy Local campaigns - November 11, 2019
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.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.