TomTravel2

Thanks to Virtuoso I will be live blogging on Twitter and likely posting this blog right after the training. What follows are my notes:

“United breaks guitars” video played and a discussion thereof. Social Media is a reality. Deal with it or pay. David Kolner speaking. Manger of Tech Group for Virtuoso. Popular Technologist.

Stay Small owner Elite Traveler International and elitetravelgal blog @elitetravelgal on Twitter as if you didn’t know already.

Michelle Duffy Wandermom blogger member of Virtuoso technology team as program manager author of “traveling with kids” @wandermom

David: What am I going to do on monday morning with all this?

How do you manage to fit all this techno babble into your everyday work life?

Why get started? Branding. Compare who we are to who we want to be. Tech is another fundamental shift. Like email changed our work lives. Consumers are changing from experience consumers to shares of experiences now with many via blogs, twitter and facebook.

Remember postcards? Compare that to a blog with details and pictures from a trip.

I’m too busy! The most common reason not to start with all the social media and tech.

It’s not for me! Many don’t see themselves as the “type” to be online.

It’s overwhelming! That is partly true it can be a time suck.

It’s Scary and unsafe! Scary yes, and one should be careful not to put oneself at risk.

Its all moving too fast! It is moving too fast but if your not on the bus you will have to get on a moving bus when you change your mind.

From write ups weeks after @EliteTravelGal has shifted to live blogging of trips etc. building brand personalizing #tmtechno

Michelle mentioned online community of support on Twitter when her book came out from other travel writers and tweeps.

Discussing how Stacy live blogs on her blackberry with uber twitter and twitpics. Easy to find all these resources on Twitter or Google.

How the heck does a busy travel advisor find the time for all this blogging and tweeting ect? Michelle tries to focus and find ballance. Set aside that time for online brand building.

Getting back to Virtuoso basic value statements: Trust, relationships, etc.

Online is not one way it is communicating like a phone call, but not one to one one to many.

Travel mart is about conversations. This is another type. Half of conversations is listening.

Online conversations are not a cake walk. It is your company brand! You are your online company brand.

Dave Kolner googled all of the people signed up for the training. 76% on line. 14% compete with famous name. 90% are indexed . 8% have extended presence.

What is your online brand? How do you blend online and offline conversations together? Stacy: branded as elite travel gal on blog then twitter to make it easy to follow her. good keywords and easier to find and remember than a name. facebook as her name but linking to her blog her company web site and her twitter id. Michelle: has personal life and her techie life. sees it as a business she is building as a family travel writer. Choose carefully how you brand yourself. Use keywords or company name for best effect. Don’t do what I did and make one up on the fly (even though I could have done worse than tomtravel2).

Ideas for beginners: Stacy educate yourself read “whuffie factor” search on Twitter for social media. Mikiah tools like xobni tweetdeck (or seesmic my fav) Michelle: wanderlisting search top travel on twitter google to see conversations

Stacy: wefollow allows you on directory and can search for others.

Advanced": Stacy: follow breaking news on cnn or anncurry faster than TV. Online contests get brand out. Find authors clients by looking them up and following them. Michelle monitor your return on social media set KPIs how is it helping your business. Website use analytics to see source of inbound traffic. Twitter? Google?

I have arrived in Las Vegas for 5 days of travel business fun and madness. I checked into Bellagio and picked up my registration materials for Travel Mart. Today should be more fun than madness. At 3:00 I attend a training “One to One and Beyond: Harnessing the Power of Social Media.” When I saw the offerings for Travel Mart this little meeting was the first thing that jumped off the screen at me. At the time I was mostly curious what this would be about. I was early in my intensive effort to learn Twitter and how to make it work for me. I was really beginning to see progress by that time. Virtuoso on the other hand was hardly visible on Twitter. I signed up mainly to see what they would come up with in a few months starting from scratch.

It has been fascinating watching toes being dipped into the Twitter stream by travel agents, travel vendors and now by my travel consortium. I began to notice several individuals from Virtuoso trying to get up to speed. The individuals running the training I am about to attend ended up contacting me for inside baseball on Twitter. I hear I am going to be mentioned during the training which is cool. I still am very curious where they are going with the thing. I am also curious to see who will be attending. Last year I did not attend the early sessions at Travel Mart. I started the first day of meetings (where agents and vendors sit and meet one to one). I was quite surprised to see how many people are here a day early on a Saturday.

So in a few minutes my first taste of Travel Mart 2009 will tease my taste buds. I am looking forward to all of it, every hectic interesting slice of this mixed berry pie. The two things I am looking forward to the most are this class today and the Tweetup on Tuesday afternoon. The classes tomorrow look interesting as well, and I hope to blog about them as well a bit. “Getting up to techno speed: flexing your online muscles” is another one I probably could have taught. The other is a big part of what I am building my business on “Tapping the X-Y potential-the next generation opportunites.” I recently blogged about how only 7% of 20-30 year olds use travel agents. My angle was that they are missing out on the VIP treatment at hotels they are willing to pay up for at fancy nightclubs. Virtuoso VIP treatment usually costs them nothing yet they all book on the internet.

I see people streaming by on the way to the training, and it looks to be time to head that way.Here comes the summary take-aways and my comments:

• Mission Statement- Making Social media useful focus on Twitter and Facebook
• Oprah? Yeah we are watching Oprah explain Facebook. As much as I am not about celebrities on social media, she did have a coherent basic explanation presented with high end video production.
• Kier and Mikiah did their own video for Twitter. Not as slick as O’s but much more informative. Hey there’s Tomtravel2! That was very weird to see me up there with Mathew Upchurch and Ashton Kushter.
• They are running the live feed of #tmsm but there is no wireless in here. Some of the Virtuosos are tweeting on their crackberries and I am stuck writing in my blog for later.
• Policy- Who is going to represent your company or brand? Think before you jump!
• One agency blocked facebook and twitter and reinstated it within 4 hours after employees complained.
• Agency owners managers- coming to grips with how to implement and do we set rules? One id for personal and one for business ie.
• Suppliers-Big Five encourages social media use by all employees. Use facebook for internal communications and sharing pictures etc.
• Fairmont- doing top down and bottom up hotel by hotel. I have been generally impressed with their approach. Not totally there by any means but always moving in the right direction.
• I just got drafted into answering a question by one of the members. Caught me offguard. What can you post more than four times a day that could possibly be of interest. I answered news, answer questions interact with others.
• How do you get followers? Mikiah cited what Tom did by interacting and adding value. This is fun.
• @Wandermom made a great point about putting your website URL in your profile.
• Some of the blackberry contributers: @travelingking1 @cedery @davidtravel @tafaritweets @brownell  @ jjohnson66 @joshua_bush @scottru @bigfivetours @travelnetwork @travelking1  @?brownell? @?junefullersloane?
• strategy- networking, personalization, advertising, fresh light focus on travel,
• Scott Ahlsmith Virtuoso: hit it from all directions social media web site blog etc keep it interesting-genuine

• Tips-fill out complete profile-yes indeed I agree (put a link and picture as well)
• Quality over quantity- in terms of followers/friends
• Start something- anything- I agree on that.
• tools: Xobni (can  add emailers to facebook automatic) posterous (post later tool) tweetdeck (twiiter client) I prefer seesmic but Ok that’s taste issue. Tweetdeck is very good as well.

Comments: Virtuoso should have had wireless access set up for those of us who don’t tweet from a mobile device. Or am I the only dinosaur left who doesn’t? I hated seeing the #tmsm scroll and not being able to tweet! Here I sat writing a blog in Live Writer that I had to schlep the laptop back to the room to post! Oh well, it is a minor complaint. So I have to pay Bellagio for a day! They say there will at least be a tech center room starting tomorrow I can go wireless in. Over all they did a good job getting themselves up to speed. It was cool being called out, but caught me off guard when they wanted me to answer questions. Good thing I was a Speech major way back when. Always ready to improvise.

More to come after VAST!