A presentation given by Vicky Soderberg with Cygnet Strategies and Sarah Page at the Social Media Tourism Symposium in El Paso, Tx on November 8, 2012.
22. Successes:
• Caught our vibe!
• ½ spent $20 or
more
• ½ stayed in town &
explored more the
next day (during
free time) instead
of going to Dallas or
Fort Worth
23. Future changes:
• Scavenger hunt
• Build upon
competitiveness
• Prizes
• Way for people to
see other photos
• App training
• Enough time
26. Texas A&M Social Media Scavenger Hunt Video URL
http://youtu.be/XOR_B1CJFF8
27.
28.
29. So #TAMUhunt ended with a
visit with none other than
President Loftin! I got a bowtie!
We chatted about NASA and
Aggie women’s basketball.
-- Nicole, PhD student
30. Lessons Learned:
1. Not all students had Aggie apparel.
2. Students had fun & made new friends. They also
wanted harder clues!
3. Students found social media shortcuts. There was a
need for modification. Hashtags help.
Play along with us for a minute. You're about to be a part of a grand social experiment. One that you can also put to use at your next event.
Instagram has added web-based profile pages.
1. Get out your smart phones and take a photo using Instagram. It can be of anything or anyone.
2. Add this tag: #VivaSoMeT
3. Upload your photo. No need to tweet it, but you can if you want. We’ll make the rest of ‘em wonder what we’re up to in here!
4. Hang around to the end of our presentation to see what you've created!
Instagram, Twitter, & Foursquare are fun to use, buy they can also be effective tools for promoting your destinations and events. As DMOs our goal is to get people to explore our destinations and have fun doing it so they come back and do it again. The more they explore, the more money they will spend. Interactive games and mobile applications are one way to get visitors to places they may not discover on their own. But do they work?
Location-based games and interactive tours.So what are interactive or location-based games? There are several location-based game apps and virtual and interactive tours of museums, historic sites and entire destinations. But most of these options don’t require you to actually be in the location. What we want to talk to you about are the ones that actually get people moving around in your destination. Experiencing it.
Enhancing the visitor experience.We wanted to know, is there a way to take the enthusiasm, passion and yes, even competitive obsession with apps and gaming and use it in destinations to create a more multi-dimensional experience? Could you use smartphone and tablet technology to get people out and exploring new aspects of your destination? Can we get them to stay longer and spend more money in our communities?
Our experience and research confirms that you can use technology to get people moving throughout your destination, experiencing your attractions, eating in your restaurants, seeing your public art and even talking to local residents. In a nutshell, having fun and spending money with your partners and other local businesses. Plus, because they’re having fun, they’ll want to come back for more!
Denton – pop 117,000College town – U North Texas (33,000) and TX Women’s U (11,000)CVB wanted to create way for students to learn more about the community. Worked with their ad agency to create an idea for a game but needed a group of guinea pigs. Enter TTIA Tourism College which just happened to be meeting there in June.What they wanted to know: did folks engage? Experience something they wouldn’t have? Appreciate the opportunity? No revenue goals. Partners were told : “People may not spend money, but they will learn about the city…could have been more ambitious with our goals. We were just worried people would go elsewhere in their free time and they would miss who were are.”
They started to build enthusiasm by sending out this email a few weeks before the event started. No real details, but whetting everyone’s appetite for fun.
This is the instruction card handed out to participants at the end of the afternoon sessions. It told us what to do, where to go and when. It also helped people get the app installed so they were ready to start.
When we arrived at the courthouse, each team was given one of these cards with specific locations and types of photos we were to take. We were also given a few bonus locations to visit.
This was the starting point. Everyone started with logging in to Instagram under their team name and then they took off with 2 hours to hit 5 bars.
My team ordered a round of drinks at the first place and got to know one another while taking what we deemed were amazingly creative photos. Then we realized it was 8:15 and we still had 4 bars plus the bonus 2 to hit in an hour.
The rest of the time we felt guilty about not spending money (being good tourism folks) & actually ended up splitting up at the end to get everything finished. But we did find time to stop in at Denton Square Donuts. We needed some fat and sugar to balance out the alcohol, right? By the way, this random stop netted the owners about $50 in sales on an otherwise slow Tuesday night.
We interacted with locals and worked hard to take photos that proved we were actually in the designated locations. We took this competition thing seriously.
By 9:30 all the teams were rushing back to the courthouse. We stood around comparing stories – we’d had fun and explored places we probably never would have found but there were grumblings about Instagram crashing repeatedly and some teams could only get a few of their photos to load. People were discussing how the winners would be decided since it hadn’t been made clear and this was a VERY competitive group. The organizers appeared, announced the winners and then we were on our own. Hmmmmmm, a bit of a letdown. So, what did we learn?
About 100 played. SUCCESS – “they caught our vibe – our sense of place – THEY GOT IT!”CHANGES THEY’D MAKE – Make the structure tighter, give people a specific task, make it more of a scavenger hunt
About 100 played. SUCCESS – “they caught our vibe – our sense of place – THEY GOT IT!”CHANGES THEY’D MAKE – Make the structure tighter, give people a specific task, make it more of a scavenger hunt
Be sure you have everything finalized before you communicate anything. Test and triple-test with family and friends. Be sure the technology works.Once you give people info, you need to stick with it. The directions changed from “take photos of words and other things that relate to their tag “Original. Independent” to specific photos at each place with different hashtags. Plus had to log out of personal accounts and all log in as one person (team) which ultimately crashed Instagram
Our next case study is from Texas A&M University, in College Station, TX. This is most definitely a college town. The city’s population is around 95,000 and the university enrollment this Fall is just over 53,000. Texas A&M was actually approached by Collegiate Licensing to do a social media event to promote 4sq corporate sponsors. Adidas and the campus bookstore provided Aggie gear/other prizes.So they came up with a social media scavenger hunt that was held in late January of 2011.The 3 primary goals were:1. Business Development – To partner with Collegiate Licensing Company to promote corporate sponsors of their Foursquare program. The primary partners included the MSC Bookstore and adidas, the official brand for Aggie apparel.2. Social Media – To Integrate all Social Media platforms & grow their Twitter/Foursquare following. Used Facebook & You Tube channels to promote the hunt. Twitter was used to distribute the clues. And to win, students checked-in to the venues on Foursquare.3. Students – A&M wanted to leverage its social media influence to encourage students to explore the campus, to reward them for doing so, and to help students make connections and friends while having fun..
The University used YouTube and Facebook to promote the scavenger hunt. Here’s the video they used.
They created a special Facebook tab for the scavenger hunt to generate interest and excitement, as well as a source of further information like contest rules.
During the event, the University released 4 clues a day on Twitter. They used a Hashtag that built upon their twitter name - #TAMUhunt. There were 223 participant tweets.Texas A&M has rich traditions. One tradition is to put a penny at the feet of Lawrence Sullivan Ross – or “Sully” – for good luck on an upcoming exam. So here’s a shot of a tweeted clue that led students to the statue of Sully. They checked in on foursquare and won prizes.
The final clue led participants to the home of University President Loftin. He was a fan of the bow tie and wore them everywhere and with everything. At the final check in students got to meet President Loftin, and he gave each of them one of his signature bowties.Results:- The University felt it increase their “cachet of cool” with current and prospective students. They used tools the students were using, and they had a great time doing it. Many students said that they would play again whether there were prizes or not. It was that much fun.- Foursquare checkins were increased at the campus locations, and the bookstore saw a big spike in customer traffic.- They saw in 10% increase in Twitter followers.
Lessons Learned:Business development – This was a great opportunity for Addidas!Students – Prospective student thought Texas A&M was cool.Social media – students watched what venues were trending on Foursquare. Had to teach some students how to check in via text (no smartphone), the hashtag made it easy to follow along so that no clues were missed.Next steps:Texas A&M is looking at ways to replicate this event with different audiences like prospective students during campus visits and other campus visitorsSome departments are exploring ways to use Foursquare to offer campus specialsThe University’s digital librarians are helping out with research to make the clues more interesting.
Of course, it could. We suggest expanding it beyond campus. Get those students into your downtown so they know what else there is for them to see and do – before they lock themselves in the library. Have options on parents weekend or for homecoming or graduation. How about partnering during orientation as a parent activity? Alumni reunions? On-campus conferences?
Those of you who don’t have a college or university should really think about asking for one for Christmas, it opens up a whole new group of repeat visitors - PARENTS & ALUMNI
Anyone ever seen the Amazing Race? This is a similar type of activity. There are all kinds of names, Urban Dare, Great Urban Race, Challenge Nation and they’re held in cities around the country.
4-hr scavenger hunt for 2 member teams who can only walk, run or take public transportation
Check-in on Foursquare, complete a challenge, and tweet your answers to win!
But at the end of the day, the race is really all about connecting people socially through digital means that are already being used by the average person, not just social media mavens
Hosting one of these more commercial events engages local residents and brings in visitors with little effort by the DMO. However, it’s a frenetic race around the city and doesn’t necessarily take people to the places you want them to explore and discover or to places where they can return to spend more time and money. If you do it yourself or work with a consultant, you have more options for creating partnerships with local businesses and providing prizes, plus you can create an on-going activity and various events for groups.
We found this on an educational website and there are a few dozen – Tokyo, Berlin, Chicago, NYC, Paris – it’s an alternative for those who don’t have technology. How could thisbe structured to bring them back to the VisitorCenter (where they could spend $$ on merchandise)?And if you already have a check list or scavenger hunt like this in place, how could you make it more “social”?
Does your community have a lot of outdoor recreation? Maybe a popular state or municipal park nearby? Are there ways you can partner with resource management agencies to cross-promote and get visitors engaging in a more well-rounded experience?
Is Geo-caching hot in your area? Geocaching is already pretty popular outdoor scavenger hunt. Many state and national parks provide caches for people to find. Why not tie the physical with the digital in a major event?
So let’s talk about things to consider and ways to implement
Consider whether your goal is familiarity with your destination or creating opportunities for spending in local businesses. This may vary depending upon whether your audience is mainly locals or visitors.In this event, participants looked for specific objects, took photos and checked-in on Foursquare while tweeting their progress. They collected takeout menus, tombstone rubbings, took pictures with police officers.Depending upon the group you’re working with, you’ll want to include tasks that rely on walking or public transportation anduselocal knowledge, creativity, local businesses, public art, letters/shapes and just about anything else you can think of.
Consider using existing itineraries as the foundation for places in the hunt. This is a themed itinerary from Rapid City, SD that my family actually used on our vacation last summer. Most destinations already have something like this in place, whether its printed or online. Adding a Foursquare checkin requirement, or taking a specific photo wouldn’t be that hard to add it. This could be a great way to engage the Millennials and Generation Z (Boomlets) who engage in digital experiences like 2nd nature.
For those who have attractions already in a database, you could follow the lead of our very own SoMeT Geek, Stephanie Molina from the Beaumont TX CVB. Their website allows you to select the attractions you want to visit and build your own itinerary. They already include the ways you can follow these attractions on social media sites.So you have basic information about the places you might want to include and routes you might want people to take. You could incorporate activities into each listing or use them to build your event or activity. A bonus is that if you’re working with a consultant, the cost will be less because most of the basic research is already completed.
Creating some of these activities and events could be great opportunities to showcase your public art. One of the tasks in this community should be for the group to photograph themselves recreating the sculpture. It gets people to really look at the art in new ways (and the photos could be spectacular)
Of course you always want your legal folks to look over your rules. A few things to consider when you’re using photos taken by others is to confirm that the copyright to the photo is held by the participant, however, you want to get permission to use photos/videos and their tweets and comments as well, at your discretion.The other advice from communities who have tried this is to retain the right to disqualify and remove obscene or incriminating content – but we know you never have anyone post inappropriate comments or photos, right?
Music festivalsBachelorette PartyTournament groupsFamily reunionCorporate eventsConferencesNon-profit fundraisersPub CrawlPampered Shopping dayLocal residentsHomecomingYou could even build upon themes and have several so visitors return to view your community through a different lens. History/heritage Arts/culture Family-based
We have confidence in you.And whether you do it on your own or you have someone help you, it can be done and you’ll probably get a big fat raise for bringing so much creativity and innovation to the table. So call us, email us, tweet us for more information.
We’re happy to answer any questions you have right now and while we do that, we’ll show you what happened with the photos you took. Full disclosure, all we did was set up the event and then you took the pictures, hashtagged them and posted them via Instagram. That’s it!This site – Eventstagr.am – is a recent find. And one that would be really cool and easy to do at your next festival, event, or concert. Check it out.