Another month has ended – time to see which new destination have started using Twitter and time to again rank all destinations we could find on Twitter.

Queen Anne of Chicagoland was able to defend the Nr. 1 position, picking up over 300 new followers in December alone. VisitChicago and BaltimoreMD both have now more than 1,000 followers. But other are catching up, @paadventure is closing the gap very fast.

We added 21 new destinations to our Twitter list. VisitMesa made a very impressive entry capturing the Nr. 20 spot on the list. More detailed analysis of the data in the next days.

As usual please let us know which destination we are missing. Leave a comment on the blog or D us on Twitter @coldinpdx or @ariannap.

And please do not forget to participate in the survey about tourism organizations and social media. 10 minutes is all it takes, results will be shared with all participants. Click here for the survey.

Last week the fake Tourism Milwaukee clip on YouTube lead to a whole debate on Twitter about real and fake destination videos.

Time to look deeper into the mysterious world of destination videos. And what timing! Tourism Australia, a national tourism organization with slightly deeper pockets, just launched a new destination video titled – how appropriate – “Australia”. You will not (primarily) find it on YouTube but rather playing in the movie theatre closest to you.

All jokes aside: while Tourism Australia did of course not commission a 130 million dollar movie with Nicole Kidman as a marketing piece, they did align their whole new marketing strategy with the movie. The hope is to have the same benefits New Zealand had with “Lord of the Rings”.

They even went as far as to ask Baz Luhrman – the director of the movie – to shoot several inspirational trailers (which also can be found on YouTube) that use some of the themes of the movie. Cost for the campaign: 26 million dollars. The entire Tourism Australia website also got a makeover to match the new campaign (not all an improvement in my opinion, the site is now very text-heavy).

So a lot is riding for Tourism Australia on the success of “Australia”.

But now comes the fun part: all of Australia is taking the movie very serious. All of Australia? No, a tiny state in the South of Australia is daring to make fun of it!

Have a look at: “Tasmania – Bigger than Australia”.

Great idea, great execution. Have a look at the details on the website like the footer or the clip of the director talking about the stunt scenes. Somebody had fun with this project!

And of course the main video is on YouTube – over 40,000 views in less than 2 weeks is not too shabby.

But wait, it gets even better: over 100 people left comments on the video. Have a look here and be surprised / shocked / embarrassed how passionate/angry people get about this spoof and Tasmania claiming to be “bigger than Australia”. And be warned: some of the comments are NSFW, but I guess that is just how Aussies and Tassies are.

So my questions for you: what do you think of Tourism Australia basing it’s marketing strategy almost entirely on “Australia”? Do you think “Tasmania” is bigger than “Australia”? What about the comments about Tasmania on YouTube? Does this type of engagement help or hurt?

Another month has passed and so it is time again to publish our list of US destinations on Twitter. Did Baltimore manage to get to over 1,000 followers? Did VisitChicago continue it’s drive to the top of the list? Who moves up the list, who drops down? Will any newcomer manage to go straight into the Top 10?

We will publish a more detailed look at the top DMOs in the next days with some very interesting insights into e.g. conversations, followers vs. following, frequency of updates etc.

And then of course we are looking forward to see the results for end of December? Will VisitChicago defend the Nr. 1 spot or will Baltimore take it back? Will Columbus leverage the social media training the staff got or will Philadelphia use the power of it’s more than 700 followers? With the Top 4 so close together this could turn into a friendly competition that will make any football and baseball rivalry look really boring.

Here are the answers for November and some explanations about the table:

We use TwitterGrader to rank all US destinations that we could find on Twitter. We only list Twitter accounts are are (or at least look to be) “official”, e.g. we do not list accounts from individual DMO employees. 

The change in ranking we only show for destinations that we have tracked for at least 2 months.

As always please let us know if we are missing any destinations.

When we talk to tourism organizations about social media we point out the usual advantages social media provides. The key ones are obviously the opportunity to listen to, talk with and engage visitors – before, while and after they are in a city or region.

This sometimes creates an interesting reaction, usually from the convention side of the business. They phrase it nicer but it comes down to this: “We do not care that much about visitors once they have made the decision to come to our city”. Really? Did I just hear you say that?

Well, not so fast.

Have you had a more detailed look at your budget lately, Mr. VP of Convention Sales? Chances are a good chunk of money is spent on something called a “Visitors Center”. It is a place where visitors can go to get information during their trip – way after they have made their decision to come to your beautiful town.

Probably you will now say that that money is well spent. After all the visitors will have a much better time because they get guided to the right places. And then they can write in one of the books that are lying around at the visitors center and share with everybody how much fun they had. Everybody who reads the book that is.

You see, you do not need a “Visitors Center” – you need a “Twisitors Center”. A way for visitors to get the advice and recommendations they are looking for – no matter where they are. A place to share stories, photos and experiences with millions of people all over the world – before, during and after the trip. Tools like Twitter are cheap, offer great ways to measure success and are what more and more visitors are using to get – and share – their travel information.

So, what are you doing for your Twisitors?

Two destination blogs (re)launched last week that both integrate social media elements in a very nice way:

Travel Oregon Blog

Travel Oregon (full disclosure: we work with them and provide content to them) relaunched their blog last week.

The blog was already considered by many one of the nicest and most successful destinations blog around before the redesign. The new blog is – in my opinion – even more interesting.

Travel Oregon now integrates not only videos (from YouTube, Vimeo etc.) but also Flickr photos into the blog. The “Oregon Snapshots” come from the Travel Oregon Flickr group. The blog footer invites readers to follow Travel Oregon on Twitter, the sidebar now includes a polling module. All great social elements for a blog and best of all – they do not cost a lot. 

If you want to see best practices in action do not miss the RSS feeds offered for the blog – not only are different feeds for the different categories available, the feed page also explains how feeds work and offers good resources. We need more examples like this to drive RSS adoption to where it should be!

Experience Columbus

Experience Columbus launched their blog last week and while they are a little bit later to the party they for sure come in a nice dress. The blog includes several interesting social media elements.

In the sidebar all staff members (18!) who are on Twitter are shown with their Twitter icons.

Also listed are links to the Experience Columbus Facebook page, myspace page and Flickr group. Unique is the integrated delicious feed for websites bookmarked by staff on the social bookmarking site. This can turn into an interesting resource e.g. for journalists who are looking for background info on the city. The only thing I would like to see improved is an easier navigation back to the main ExperienceColumbus page, maybe in the top level navigation. 

While playing around with the main Experience Columbus site I found some great elements other destinations should have a look at. 

The individual listings for hotels, attractions etc. include nicely integrated Google maps. But other destinations offer that as well. What I have not seen anywhere else are events listings that are tied to the individual member listing and therefore tied to the map location. So if I look at the Motorcycle Hall of Fame I can see all events taking place at the Hall of Fame in an extra tab. 

The infrastructure should allow Experience Columbus to very easily do even more as the events data is tied now to geo-data. Example: A Google map that shows all events taking place during a certain time within a certain radius around a specific place: “Let’s see what events are taking place within a mile radius from our hotel for the weekend we will be in Columbus”. Events are also available via a different RSS feeds.

Oh, the possibilities …