• Survey of Rural Challenges
  • Small Town Speaker Becky McCray
  • Shop Local video
  • SaveYour.Town

Small Biz Survival

The small town and rural business resource

A row of small town shops
  • Front Page
  • Latest stories
  • About
  • Guided Tour
  • Subscribe
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
  • RSS

Training for tourism in social media

By Becky McCray

If you are interested in training for social media marketing in tourism, look at the courses Sheila Scarborough and I developed at Tourism Currents. Enrollment for the new courses starts today. (yay!)

Sheila Scarborough Liz Strauss and Becky McCray SOBCon09
Sheila Scarborough, Liz Strauss,
and Becky McCray

Sheila and I met on Liz Strauss’s Successful Blog, on her open mic nights a couple of years ago. Fast forward to Liz’s SOBCon 2009, and I arrived with a notebook full of possible business ideas, including a travel/tourism/social media education project with Sheila. And it makes sense, with Sheila’s background as a travel writer, and my background with small towns and tourism, and both of us experienced in social media tools. We had both been on a tourism “fam” (familiarization) tour of Hutchinson, Kansas, with a group of bloggers.

We started talking to every tourism professional we could meet. We networked locally. We networked online. We participated in every tourism conference being discussed on Twitter. We attended local events. We did everything else we could think of to connect with people working in tourism.

All that insight lead to making courses that reflect the actual work that tourism professionals do. Every tourism person deals with special events all year long. We dedicated an entire lesson to promoting your special events, before, during, and even after the big day. We carry that same approach into making more of your tours, finding your online champions, listening online, building your home base and outposts. Instead of “how to use Twitter,” we show you how to reach a network of people who want to promote your destination, and how Twitter is one part of that. The focus is not on the tools, but on the application.

One of the biggest roadblocks we hear about over and over is no time. Tourism professionals already have too much to do, and there is no time or staff to throw at pioneering this new field. We get that. We’re busy, too. We knew that if tourism professionals were going to make a difference in social media, we’d have to show them ways to multiply their results. That was the inspiration for our Results Multipliers course. The centerpiece of that course is Finding Your Online Champions. By finding and working with your online champions, you stop having to do all the work yourself. You mobilize a small army of supporters who go out and promote your destination for you.

Enrollment is open through June 30, 2010. If you’re interested, please stop by Tourism Currents to get all the details.

New to SmallBizSurvival.com? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Get our updates.

  • About the Author
  • Latest by this Author
Becky McCray

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.

www.beckymccray.com
  • Will trendy axe throwing and escape room businesses last? More experience-based retail: the Hat Bar
  • Create customer experiences online like Open the Shop With Me videos, and in person, like Silent Book Club
  • How to let customers know when changing your business hours

June 15, 2010 Filed Under: announcement, tourism

Wondering what is and is not allowed in the comments?
Or how to get a nifty photo beside your name?
Check our commenting policy.
Use your real name, not a business name.


Don't see the comment form?
Comments are automatically closed on older posts, but you can send me your comment via this contact form and I'll add it manually for you. Thanks!

Comments

  1. Andy Hayes | Travel Online Partners says

    June 15, 2010 at 2:14 pm

    Congrats on the relaunch :-) I’m so glad Liz introduced the two of you, and I’m so glad the internet introduced all of us!

    Loading...

Howdy!

Glad you dropped in to the rural and small town business blog, established in 2006.

We want you to feel at home, so please take our guided tour.

Meet our authors on the About page.

Have something to say? You can give us a holler on the contact form.

If you would like permission to re-use an article you've read here, please make a Reprint Request.

Want to search our past articles? Catch up with the latest stories? Browse through the categories? All the good stuff is on the Front Page.

Partners

We partner with campaigns and organizations that we think best benefit rural small businesses. Logo with "Shop Indie Local"Move Your Money, bank local, invest localMulticolor logo with text that says "Global Entrepreneurship Week"Save Your Town logotype

Best of Small Biz Survival

A few people shopping in an attractive retail store in refurbished downtown building.

TREND 2025: Retail’s Big Split: what small town retailers can do now

99% of the best things you can do for your town don’t require anyone’s permission

Three kids in a canoe

Get started as an outdoor outfitter without breaking the bank

A shopkeeper and a customer share a laugh in a small store packed full of interesting home wares.

How to get customers in the door of small town and rural retail stores

Rural Tourism Trend: electric vehicle chargers can drive visitors

Wide view of a prairie landscape with a walk-through gate in a fence

Tourism: Make the most of scant remains and “not much to see” sites with a look-through sign

More of the best of Small Biz Survival

Copyright © 2025 Becky McCray
Front Page · Log in
%d