Brett Barash, VP at Digital Edelman, presented some interesting statistics at the recent ONE Travel Conference in Orlando, Florida. It doesn’t come as much of a surprise that 66% of US leisure travelers use the Internet to research upcoming trips. But if this doesn’t convince every business that relies in any way on tourists for revenue that a relevant and compelling presence on the Internet is important to survival, I don’t know what will.

What really caught my attention in his presentation was the life cycle of a travel seeker online. People seeking information about a destination spend an average of three months researching online. The thread woven throughout those three months? Google. Everyday I am more convinced that Google is the center of the online universe. Not your website or blog but Google. It holds the keys to your success because the majority of Internet users use Google for search and whether or not they serve up your links on page one can make or break the likelihood that a user will ever visit your site. Oh, and by the way, YouTube is the number 2 search engine in the world. And YouTube is owned by Google. See where this is headed?

The key to building positive organic search results is content. Lots of fresh, quality content. Not black hat links (we all saw what happened when JC Penney tried that trick). Not one-way promotional messages on Facebook. But genuine content that can be crawled by Google (and Yahoo and Bing) and ranked as having value. In fact, content that provides so much value that others are willing to share it. That’s the liquid gold of the Internet. When others are sharing your content through social networks, Google recognizes that and your rankings will grow.

Your destination, attraction, restaurant or hotel has a story to tell. Figure out all the many ways visually and through text that you can tell those stories. Build an editorial calendar so you stick to consistent content distribution. Outsource your content development if you don’t have the resources in house. The value the content will bring to your organic search will far outweigh the investment in time or money.

Last week I attended the ONE Travel Conference for Shopping, Dining and Cultural Tourism in Orlando. I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect, but the speaker line up looked good and I thought the conference’s focus on shopping, dining and cultural heritage made sense; it certainly hit our agency’s sweet spot in consumer marketing. The women who co-presented the conference Rosemary McCormick, President of Shop America Alliance and Sheila Armstrong, Executive Director of U.S. Cultural & Heritage Tourism Marketing Council are a formidable pair with surprising energy, a powerful network and generous spirit of sharing.

The title of the conference was Creating Coopertition and Connections. This word, coopertition, really summed up the spirit of the meeting. Lots of competitors were in the ballroom, but they recognized that they will all be more successful working together for US tourism than competing.

Here are two key takeaways from the conference:

1. Since 1997 the US has lost one third of its share of the international travel market. Roger Dow, CEO of the US Travel Association (USTA), called the ten years from 9/11 to last year the “Lost Decade,” as more than 1 million jobs were lost in the tourism sector. Now, international travel may have slowed down due to the recession in 2007-2009, but there was still lots of travel happening. It just didn’t happen here because we rolled up the welcome mat. Ouch.

The USTA is working with the Obama administration, the Department of Commerce and many travel associations and organizations around the country to bring international travel back. Part of this work is around loosening the tight net the government imposed on visas post-9/11. A public private partnership has launched a $200 million marketing campaign called Brand USA this year and most of the destination marketing managers I met are intently focused on the international market.

Top Five International Markets for the US?

• Canada
• Japan
• United Kingdom
• Mexico
• Germany

2. The marrying of shopping, dining and cultural heritage at the meeting made intuitive sense to me. Now I have confirmation because those are the top three activities in order, in terms of spend by travelers.

Top Five International Cultural Heritage Visitors to the US?

• United Kingdom
• Germany
• Japan
• France
• Brazil

If what you offer is a wonderful shopping, dining or cultural experience, piggy back on what the industry is doing and focus on these markets. Check out the links above and learn more about what’s being done. These visitors want what you have to sell. The beauty of the Internet is that you don’t need a big budget to reach those travelers. You need a smart online strategy that involves quality, shareable content; targeted media relations and social media dedication.

This agency is about to hit its 17th year (holy cats, where does the time go?!) and over the years we’ve seen all sorts of trends, but during the past couple of years I’ve been seeing something that troubles me deeply. Some of this may be a sign of the times and some of it is generational, but it’s raising a lot of questions for me. The agency business needs people who value a career within the industry. It needs people with longevity who bring strategic insight and experience to its clients. But where are we headed?

Let’s see how much of this rings true to you (perspective will vary according to your age and position

1. Agencies are the best training ground out of college.

2. Agencies are a good stepping stone to that secure in-house job that’s the real prize.

3. I don’t see a career at an agency. Corporations are for careers.

Based on recent conversations with former employees and many people in and out of agencies, it appears the above list is the “new truth” for young professionals. When I ask people in their twenties to be brutally honest they acknowledge that this is indeed what they believe.

Where are they learning this? Are colleges teaching this? Has an uncertain economy resulted in the belief that a big corporation is safer? What a crock!

Let’s look a little more closely at each of these beliefs.

1. Indeed, agencies are the best training ground. Let’s look at why. Agencies believe in growing their people. Agency employees know that they  have to be at the forefront of our industry in order to educate and lead our clients, so they continually invest in getting better, learning more and being on the cutting edge of what’s happening. That isn’t a two-three year experience. It’s what an entire career in an agency is about. Growing, learning, selling and using your expertise.

I have lost count of the number of conversations I have had with former employees who went in house, only to discover that not only does no one understand what they do, they don’t highly value it, yet everyone has an opinion about it. They find themselves silo’d and often concerned about how they will grow their skills.

Do you view agencies as a good post-college choice? What about in-house? Tell me about your post-college expectations?

2. My first job out of college was with a big multi-national corporation. You couldn’t have asked for a more blue-suit, solid, I’ll never worry about my paycheck kind of place. In my first year I was sexually harassed and watched the company scramble to cover it up and get that guy out of the building. Not out of the company, just re-positioned in another state, which didn’t give me a great sense of trust or value. A year later I watched a man who had given 20 years of his life to the company be summarily fired because he didn’t get along with our general manager. Just like that. Done.

I don’t believe that large corporations care more about their employees than agencies. Often, shareholders mean more and employees are viewed as an expendable line item. If you don’t agree, just read the headlines this month. Every December hundreds and thousands of jobs are shed as corporations adjust their new year’s budget. Security indeed.

Now I’m not telling you that agency jobs are any more secure. But I will tell you that agency owners will sweat and cry and do everything they can to keep you. Layoffs, at least in smaller shops with integrity, are not done lightly.

What is it about in-house corporate jobs that make them appear more secure?

3. I am a member of PRSA’s Counselors Academy, a section comprised of senior level PR/Marcomm professionals and it has been a revelation and delight to spend time with so many seasoned pros. These are people who saw a career for themselves in an agency and loved the energy, learning and ever changing environment so much that, like me, they’ve never left. Will your career trajectory be as fast or offer as many title options? Perhaps not, but you will be part of a community where people treat each other like family. A community that values creativity, learning and creating a place that is great fun to come to every day. Agencies are filled with people who love the fact that every day is different, who get to shape their culture, where clients change and offer new opportunities and the learning never stops.

Have you had a long term career in an agency? What made you choose that over an in-house job? If you’re just getting started, what do you think? What makes one choice more appealing than another?

Yesterday, on our esteemed colleague Jay Baer’s site Convince & Convert, I read about the free e-book just released by Julien Smith, co-author of Trust Agents, entitled The Flinch. The book is being released for free with the support of Seth Godin’s Domino Project. Now, I have always thought of Smith as a social media and marketing pro, who helped point the way for a lot of people, including me, about connectors and influencers. So, a marketing guy, really. The Flinch isn’t about marketing, it’s about pushing yourself beyond what makes you flinch in order to be that better person. Cool, we can all use a good push every now and then.

Then I started thinking about Peter Shankman’s keynote at Blogworld. Again, a marketing guy who spent his hour giving us tidbits like Eat Your Fear and  Don’t Give Up and Have Fun. It was all good, I enjoyed his presentation but there was a lot of self help mixed into the marketing tips.

This was followed later in the day by Amber Naslund’s keynote about how we social media folk are wayfarers. She espoused that this is the era of inquisitors, the era of the curious. Amber, who co-write The Now Revolution with Jay Baer, a book I consider visionary in many ways, believes that we must not be afraid of blame, we can’t always be sure and have proof before we execute. We have to take risks and lead people into the future of what marketing will become.

I don’t disagree with any of this. But I do wonder how much of it has to do with our jobs and how much of it is has to do with where these folks are in their personal and professionals lives. Bored? Tapped out on the whole social media thing? Looking for the next important thing to talk about? Ready to make a career change? I don’t know for sure, but it is definitely a trend that makes me go hmmmm….

Dozens of good posts coming out of last week’s Blogworld & New Media Expo in LA. There are always lots of takeaways at Blogworld and the amount of content generated post-conference is usually prolific. This year is no exception. Here are a few posts that summarize key learnings and the buzz well.

I met Arik Hanson at last year’s Blogworld in Las Vegas. He was a kindred PR soul, though going it solo, so perhaps a bit smarter than me. I wish I had attended Tom Webster’s session, but Arik gives us the soul of it with brevity. And he includes Peter Shankman’s hilarious IronMan video. Watch it on arikhanson.com.

Peter Shankman did such a good job that Tom Treanor did a whole post outlining the 19 lessons learned from his keynote. Shankman was terrific and this post on rightmixmarketing.com shows you why.

Our colleague, Jean Walcher,  finally made it to Blogworld and she took very good notes! Item number 7 on her blog post really floored me. Brands still have a lot of work to do to get it right with bloggers. Can we help? jwalcher.com

I have heard Darren Rowse speak a couple of times at Blogworld and each time he inspires me to be a better blogger. His advice is simple and usually it’s the simple advice that’s the hardest to do. The Most Important Take-Home Advice from Blogworld Expo on problogger.

I hadn’t heard of Brian Vellmure until reading his wrap up post on Social Enterprise Today, but he shares a lot of great points from the conference. I strongly agree with his summary about the ongoing gap between social media supporters and brand executives. Social media is still in its infancy with lots of learning and proving still to be done. Social Enterprise Today.

Or if you’ve got lots of time this weekend, go visit Blogworld’s 70 + Brilliant Bloggers post. Tons of content and critique. It’s almost as good as being there.

This year marks my fourth trek to Blogworld & New Media Expo, billed as the world’s largest social media business summit. I almost didn’t go. But the planets aligned, my son’s class went on an overnight star gazing trip and off I went to LA, Blogworld’s new West Coast home. Here are a few highlights from my notes:

1. Both keynotes on Thursday were terrific and had an overarching theme of taking risks and enjoying the journey. Peter Shankman opened the conference with a mixture of humor, candor and intelligence. He spoke about the importance of relevance (well, actually he spoke about a LOT of things!), something we talk with clients about regularly here at BG. In a social referral, customer review, Google-driven world, it’s more important to reach the 200 people who really care about and will act on information about your brand than reaching 2 million who don’t care at all. I hope CMOs start taking this insight to heart. The pressure on marketing teams to reach big numbers, relevant or not, is such a waste of money and time.
2. I love the way Amber Naslund thinks. I have read and reviewed her book, The NOW Revolution, written with our friend Jay Baer, seen her present several times and read her blog regularly. Her keynote presentation reminded us that we social media explorers are really wayfarers. The road is not clear, there is no map, mistakes will be made. We are paving the way for how business, and particularly marketing, will work in the future. These are early days, we’re still figuring it out and that is both scary and exciting. Don’t be afraid to say “I don’t know”. Be honest and say it, and then go figure it out. It’s what makes this time in social media interesting.
3. Chuck Hemann, from Edelman, confirmed what we’re seeing – clients want rigor when it comes to blogger and influencer relations. Provide quantitative and qualitative information. Substantiate your lists. Figure out what you want. Figure out what the bloggers want. Match each party’s needs for success. There were a number of conversations about blogger relations. I’ll be writing a separate post about that issue. It’s still a big one.
4. Matt Ridings, who presented with Chuck, took an entirely different approach to the influencer issue. He created a bit of a stir with his support of what I call a “listening” model. Basically waiting for the hand-raisers online and influencing them, which is great if you have an active brand or category but not so good if you are a start up or relatively unknown. He made a great point about how we no longer surf the web, we shape it. We follow the recommendations of friends, “like” pages, Digg posts, Tweet links and thus mold what gets viewed in an ever increasing manner. So context is king, because we will visit pages based on the context of how we learned about it.
5. Finally, the session that spoke to my true inner geek, was Tom Martin’s session full of tips for using your iPhone for content creation. Tom created a video blog this year called Talking with Tom done entirely on his iPhone. Wow. Inspiring stuff. I can’t wait to try the iTimeLapse, Photogene and Autostitch apps on my iPhone.

Not every session was great. I walked out of a couple. But the ones that were good, were inspiring, thought provoking and educational. Thank you and congratulations to the entire Blogworld & New Media Expo team for another terrific conference. The amount of work it takes to put something like this on is enormous. It is appreciated by all of us who can’t stay away, year after year.

Last week, while attending the fall meeting of Pinnacle, a worldwide network of independent PR agencies, I visited the Newseum in Washington DC. PR practitioners are notorious news addicts, and a visit to this shrine of the news made sense for our group. The Newseum is jam packed with history, including the first newspaper – a little German publication from the 1600s, a three-story East German guard tower from the Berlin Wall and a retrospective of Pulitzer-prize winning photography that reduces me to tears.

What I couldn’t find anywhere in the museum was one mention of the uneasy alliance between the media and the PR industry. Many reporters complain that those who practice PR are nothing but a pain in their rear, standing in the way between them and a good interview. The view from this side of the aisle is that I don’t believe most reporters/editors could get their jobs done without the help of good PR people. How many story ideas, leaks and photos have been supplied by PR folks over the years? It’s countless. Over the last few years as media organizations have shrunk, their reliance on PR pros to get their job done has only grown.

According to private equity firm Veronhis Suhler Stevenson, US public relations spending in 2010 was expected to reach $5.4 billion. I’ve seen estimates that put the number as high as $8 billion in the US. There isn’t an industry sector that doesn’t have a public relations practice of some sort or another. PR is a lot of things these days, but one of its primary primary purposes has been and continues to be, to communicate to an organization’s publics through the media outlets of print, TV, radio and online. That’s a heckuva lot of money being spent to make sure one’s particular news, point of view or product/service gets media coverage. It must be working or people wouldn’t be spending so much money on it, right?

Did you ever hear of the movie “A Day Without A Mexican”? It’s an indie film about what would happen if every Mexican in California disappeared for a day. What happens is an awful lot of mayhem as business grinds to a halt. I have often wondered what would happen to the news business if every PR pro in America took a week off. Where would all the news come from? The product photos? The intros to sources? The background research? The correct spelling of an interviewee’s name?

The lack of acknowledgement at the Newseum of the role of the professional public relations practitioner in the reporting of the news is a true affirmation to me of how uncomfortable the media are in owning up to their reliance on our industry.

A few months ago, my colleague Gini Dietrich asked if I would participate in an ebook she wanted to publish for C-suite execs offering advice on their 2011 marketing plans. Tossed the idea around with a couple of the smart eggs here at BG and we decided this was the year top companies would get their blog act together. With so many testing the waters in social media, the time has come to step it up a notch. Well, that’s what we think. If you want to see all the terrific advice from many of my PR/Social Media colleagues across the continent, visit Spin Sucks for a download of Dear CEO.

Below is a copy of my letter to CMO’s everywhere. After another read, a quarter of the way through 2011, I think the thing I didn’t include was the importance of useful and/or entertaining content. That is kind of key to a successful blog, isn’t it? Anything else I forgot, let me know in the comments.

Dear Chief Marketing Officer:

According to Hubspot, organizations that blog regularly attract 55% more website visitors. No wonder it is estimated that over the next two years the number of businesses blogging is expected to rise from 34% to 46%.

If you are blogging, congratulations! How well do you think it’s going? Are you ranking better on Google for the keywords that matter to you? Do you get consistent commenting on or sharing of your content? Is your team consistent in posting? Do you have a strategy?

If you answered good, yes, yes, yes and yes. Good for you! Stop reading now and move on to another valuable letter. If not, keep on reading.

Does your company plan on blogging in 2011? If not, perhaps you should consider the many benefits other companies are enjoying from their blogging efforts. These include:

•    Better ranking in Search Engines (i.e. Google, the real center of the universe)
•    Thought Leadership
•    Direct Communications
•    Brand Building
•    Relational Marketing
While everyone thinks it’s easy to have a blog, we all know there are those who do it better than others. What separates the great ones from all the rest?

Great blogs have measurable goals and a strategy. They are not just random thoughts. There are usually two or three primary goals behind the blog and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) should always be one. The number of posts per week has been determined based on desired traffic, amount of content and staff to write/edit.

Smart blogs are focused on the organization’s keywords. They are researched to determine what words you want to be found for and what the level of competition is for those words. The people who write for these blogs have been trained so they know what the blog’s tone is, how to link the posts for SEO, how to promote in social media and respond appropriately to comments.

Enjoyable blogs have great design and functionality. Not only do they look good, they have an easy to use interface. They take the reader and the brand into consideration.

Manageable blogs have editorial calendars so that the blog manager (you do have a blog manager, right?) isn’t wandering from office to office asking who wants to write Wednesday’s blog (knowing full well that if John or Mary say yes, it won’t happen by Wednesday). Blogs are deadline driven just like any other media outlet. Someone has to manage that process.

Successful blogs look at their analytics regularly to see how they are doing against their original goals. The person looking at the analytics knows how to interpret the information and deliver it to management in a useable manner.

If any of this resonates for you, consider hiring an agency or consultant to help you achieve your blog’s goals in 2011. It will be a modest investment for some potentially big results.

I have a confession to make. I generally read one third of a non-fiction, business book. By that point, I believe I’ve gotten the gist of the author’s point and am hungry to move on to all the incredible fiction in the world. I fear there is not enough time on this planet to read all the truly great fiction that is available to us, so I am loathe to give much time to books about business. So it was with some measure of trepidation that I volunteered to read and review Jay Baer & Amber Naslund’s new book, The Now Revolution. What if I didn’t want to finish it?

Here’s the irony of it all. In my opinion, the most important part of the book is the last chapter – Shift 7, entitled Make a Calculator. I think this chapter should have been the first chapter! But I read the whole thing to get there and it was worth it. The entire book, as is typical of Jay and Amber, is dense with information. In the introduction it states that this is not a how-to book but rather a “how to engineer your business for and in response to the Web” book. That’s not entirely true. It does indeed point a new path for companies that are ready to join the social revolution, but it is also full of how-to info. There are lists, QR codes, and step-by-step recommendations for making that shift and that makes the book a treasure of information. On the other hand I believe it may be a bit overwhelming for the social media novice. Each chapter could be its own book. Shift 1 – Engineer a New Bedrock, basically states that your company needs an entirely new culture to effectively blend social media into a communication strategy. I agree. But that is a huge proposition to relay in one chapter. Yet, Jay and Amber are so generous in their desire to teach that they pack an entire book’s worth of info into each chapter.

But I digress. Let’s get back to Shift 7, you know, the one I think should have been Shift 1. Here’s why….my team and I spend a lot of time talking with companies large and small about social media and how it might fit into their marketing and invariably people want to know how you measure the ROI of social media. The Now Revolution nails the ludicrous expectations that people have about social media as compared to every other form of marketing. In the book they list various search phrases and the number of Google web pages served for those searches. For “email ROI” you will be served 12,200 pages. For a search of “radio ROI” you will be served 8,170 pages, yet for a search of “social media ROI” you will be served 208,000 pages. That’s ridiculous. And so is the expectation.

Chapter 7 clearly spells out why you must first figure out what you are trying to achieve with your social media effort — awareness, sales or loyalty, and then demonstrates the various ways you can measure the success of that effort. I believe this comes first. If you can figure out what you want to achieve, what signifies success, and how it ties into your other marketing efforts, you have a realistic approach toward social media. Now you’re ready to go read the rest of this terrific book and figure out how to do it. Just know in advance that it isn’t a perfect science, that it takes experience and that everyone’s experience is very new as we are all still figuring this crazy thing out.

Now that you are all excited about reading the book, we’ve got good news for you. We have a couple of free copies and we’ve come up with a fun way to give them away. Want to play along? In the comments, fill out the Now Revolution Mad Libs by giving us your choices for the missing words listed below. You have until EOB Thursday and then we’ll be posting the Mad Libs on our Facebook page. Based on the number of “likes” (along with our judge’s discretion) we’ll award the two books on Friday. Couple of rules – no foul language and no genitalia. Those are old Mad Libs cheats and won’t work here. Good luck!

Here are the words we need from you

• Noun
• Noun
• Verb
• Plural Noun
• Verb
• Noun
• Noun
• Adjective
• Adjective
• Adjective
• Adjective
• Plural Noun
• Adjective

To me, the 2011 Edelman Trust Barometer is a wake up call for PR pros about what we should be focusing on in order to enhance client reputation and relevancy. The Trust Barometer is an annual report from PR firm Edelman that surveys attitudes around trust and influence in business, government, non-governmental agencies and media, internationally.

First off, the perception of US business around the world and here at home stinks. Only 46% of the survey’s responders trust US business to do what is right. The miserable behavior of certain industries (cough – banking – cough – financial services – cough cough) over the last few years have created a negative ripple effect over the entire country. Building trust for your clients remains a priority over the next few years.

However, don’t rely strictly on great press placement to affect that change. The media is at the bottom of the trust barrel right now with a lousy 27% of responders trusting US media to do what is right. British media is even worse at 22%. Of course, with those inane headlines that’s no surprise. Better amp up your social media game so you can get your message out on other platforms and engage with your customer directly. Your terrific story in Time magazine may not have as much influence on their loyalty as an honest interaction on Twitter. And if you represent media clients, think carefully about how they are going to grow trust through social media and face to face engagement. Clearly their own outlets aren’t going to get the job fully done.

As I wrote in last week’s post about business trends as noted by the Harvard Business Review, the public is looking for companies to focus on what is right for the social good, before profits. As the Edelman report writes – expectations are high for business to invest in society. Can you help your client figure out the best path for that and how that will be communicated effectively?

Speaking of communicating effectively, your CEO may no longer be your best spokesperson. Trust in CEOs rose from 31% to 50%, an improvement but still not great. Perhaps it would be better to find experts within the company to speak directly on their areas of expertise. Experts within a company had a 64% credibility as compared to the CEO’s 50%.

Hopefully you have a fully engaged SEO program for your client’s social media and web efforts since, not surprisingly, online search engines ranked number 1 as people’s “go to” source for news. Determining keywords, developing a strategy for how those will get implemented in all online communications and then executing that plan is the best way to grow search results organically. This is a PR function since it is all tied into online messaging and content and is less about linking strategy.

Many thanks to the folks at Edelman for this annual report. I read it every year and take its findings seriously.