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Ten Essential Tools for Social Media Content Creation for Resorts and Destinations
Cameras
We tell our clients to take photos (and lots of them) and post them everywhere. This may sound like a simple proposition around the conference table, but then you have to decide what camera to get, who to give it to, and then how to get the images from the camera to the computer to the web. Our three camera pics come from our friend John Shafer, Snowcialite and the man behind PhotographyReview.com.Waterproof Point and Shoot
“I shoot a lot of skiing, so I usually carry a waterproof, pocket digital camera and my digital SLR when I’m in the snow. I love waterproof pocket cameras because you don’t have to worry about getting them covered with snow, and if you carry them in a pouch on the shoulder strap of your backpack they’re always accessible. This year they almost all have 720p video as well as still shooting, making them even more versatile. My favorite waterproof camera at the moment is the Sony Cybershot TX5. It’s tiny, has good image quality, great video and it appears to be nearly indestructible. For more general information and a list of current outdoor-friendly waterproof cameras, check out my Outdoor & Waterproof Camera Guide.”
Superzoom
“If you want more power and features than a waterproof camera has to offer, I think superzooms are the way to go. Most of the big camera companies now make pocket superzooms with 10x zoom lenses and HD video. You’ll have to be careful about keeping a non-waterproof camera dry in the snow, but a 10x zoom lens offers a lot more shooting flexibility and reach on the ski slopes. Right now the pocket superzooms I like are the Panasonic Lumix ZS7, the Sony Cybershot HX5V and the brand new Canon PowerShot SD4500 IS.”Digital SLR
“For best quality you’ll have to carry a digital SLR and a big lens. If you’re really serious about your photos it’s just what you need to do. But for most purposes – especially if everything you shoot is just getting posted on the Web, a compact, pocket-sized camera will more than do the job.”Eye Fi
So now lets say you’ve got a camera full of images in the hands of a liftie on the back side of the mountain on a Saturday evening. How do you get those images up on the web as quickly and painlessly as possible?
The Eye-Fi replaces the SD card in your camera and saves all your images like a normal SD card. We recommend the Eye Fi Pro X2 SD Card. The big difference is when you get back to an on-mountain WIFI hotspot the Eye-Fi card will log in and upload all the new photos to a predetermined list of web photo sharing sites like Facebook, Flickr, Picasa and more. You can then log in, add titles, captions and tags and post them to your website or blog and you’ve taken a huge step out of the process.
HootSuite
Managing Twitter for a brand can get overwhelming. Hootsuite is a web and smartphone app that simplifies managing your incoming and outgoing Twitter content quite a bit. Here are the key features that make or break a twitter app for business use.
* Scheduling: Key up tweets to launch throughout the day at strategic times.
* Monitoring: monitor keywords, or profiles in real time
* Follower management: Through the app you can add, remove, search for and manage lists for your followers.
* Collaboration and assignments
* Multiple account management
* Stats and analytics
iPhone/Android
Your employees are your social media presence. Make the most of them and their ability to capture content on the mountain by distributing company owned smartphones to key personnel. A good social media strategy should include provisions for using this team of employees to create content, so go the distance and put the tools into their hands that make it as easy as possible to fulfill that part of their job. We recommend iPhones if you’re on AT&T or one of the great Android powered devices if you’re not.WordPress Application
Having the smartphone is just a start. The next step is to connect that devise to what should be your primary marketing venue, the blog. Most blogs out there are running the WordPress software and the WordPress App for Android, Blackberry and iPhone. This is a great content creation tool for creating blog posts from the chairlift (or mid mountain bar). You can also moderate and respond to comments on your blog from the app. Even if all you do is use that functionality, it can save you some time and let you be on top of the conversation.
Drop Box / Sugarsync
Sharing files with a marketing team is a nightmare when it comes to social media content. You end up trading emails with document revisions, images, videos, etc. Online file synchronization and sharing tools are becoming an indispensable part of social media content creation for teams because they let you manage files on your computer’s hard drive that are available offline, while effortlessly sharing them with your team.
Drop Box is a great tool for sharing a lot of separate folders with a lot of different people. If you’re managing a content team, this will save you a lot of grief.
Sugarsync is better suited for managing your own files across multiple machines. It can back up whole directories to a web archive as well as sync a “magic briefcase” across all your devices, including android and iPhone. The Sugarsync Android app will even let you sync all your cameraphone pics to your magic briefcase so they’re there when you’re ready use them in a blog post.