Experience Scottsdale Through Social Media

The Scottsdale Convention & Visitor Bureau (CVB) is a 501(c)(6) nonprofit, private company that has contracts with the City of Scottsdale and the Town of Paradise Valley to conduct destination marketing efforts on behalf of these municipalities.

Their vision is to position Scottsdale as a world-class vacation, meetings, and group travel destination by communicating an image that sells the uniqueness of the Scottsdale experience. The Scottsdale CVB has a membership of about 70 hotels and resorts as well as restaurants, day spas, golf courses, and other attractions.

They offer these partners Twitter classes and ongoing assistance to educate about social media and encourage participation. In August 2008, Josh Kenzer was hired as the bureau’s online marketing manager to increase the CVB’s online presence.

He began blogging and would curate at least one post a day, and then they began using social media to promote the content. To assemble blog copy, they asked members to send submissions to a specific email address, then gathered the information to promote.

Josh noted that blogging (as opposed to posting content on a website) is a great way to release time-sensitive content productively. While a website is like a magazine, he pointed out, a blog is like a newspaper in that it’s updated daily. It keeps content current and also helps with SEO.

On Twitter and Facebook, the Scottsdale fanbase includes over 8,000 followers and 5,400 fans. To build the fanbase, they used Facebook ads to target travelers in key cities like Chicago and New York, with some ads directing people to the fan page and others directly to the website.

Specific events are most suitable for tweeting. For example, in January, the BCS championship football game was held in Arizona, drawing many visitors and generating hype for the destination. By tweeting about the various events associated with the game, they increased engagement and draw to the area. They also did a ticket giveaway. Cities can definitely use major events to stir up excitement and introduce new people to a city’s draws.

While certain specifics, as noted above, are great for Twitter, Josh pointed out that Facebook seems to have more consistent interaction and is the more suitable platform for engagement. Most Twitter followers are local, whereas Facebook has a much more mixed audience. His advice for other CVBs looking to get started with social media includes:

• Get on and start using it personally first. Get the hang of it, then start for your business.
• On Facebook, there’s stuff going on all the time. Don’t just post specials and rates. Keep the content varied.
• Make it fun and exciting. Post photos, etc.

Has destination marketing through social media influenced your decisions to visit certain places?