This month’s ranking of US and Canadian destinations on Twitter brings a major improvement - the list is now embedded as a Google doc, making a lot nicer to look at (you just have to scroll now to see all destination on the list).

We found over 100 new destinations on Twitter bringing the total to over 300. Thanks to @nathankam and his list of DMOs on Twitter - lots of destinations we had not been tracking.

Putting the list together is becoming a bigger and bigger project every month, with now over 300 accounts that have to be run through Twitter Grader it takes more than a day just to get the data (thanks to @allisonkpark for helping with this).

The month of April saw @BaltimoreMD returning to the top of the ranking again (no tattoo needed this time), @VisitChicago held it’s second spot. Both destinations have a high number of updates, besides followers an important factor in the Twitter grader algorithm.

(Disclosure as usual: we manage @TravelPortland and @OnlyinSF Twitter accounts and work with many other organizations on the list on social media projects).

Other major developments: @ExpCols launched a Twisitor Center using the hashtag #expcols. As you might know we are huge fans of using Twitter hashtags for visitor information and we hope more destinations will start using them. @iknowdenver just started on Twitter and is using not only one but four different hashtags to identify different information. You have to look at the Denver Twitter page on a web-browser to understand the concept as the information about it is embedded into the background of the page.

If you are still not convinced that using Twitter for visitor information is a good thing, consider this: the Twisitor Center we developed and operate for Travel Portland has generated media impressions worth over one million dollars. And that is just print, not counting social media like Twitter itself. @guykawasaki twittered about it and that tweet itself was re-tweeted multiple times reaching through this process almost half a million Twitter users.

So who else is in, who will be the next destination to use Twitter to identify and answer questions from visitors?

Putting our monthly ranking of destinations on Twitter was slightly challenging this month as our trusted tool Twitter Grader was uncooperative and had significant down time. Usually we pull the data all on one day (the last day of the month) but because of the problems it took 3 days to get all data.

So, how many destinations in the US and Canada had a Twitter presence at the end of March 2009? We 24 new ones bringing the total we are tracking to 236 (new DMOs are marked in yellow).
We are probably missing some - let us know which ones.

24 tourism organizations now have more than 1,000 followers. Travel Portland added over 1,600 new followers as the buzz for the “Twisitor Center” continued.

And as usual we want to disclose that we work with several of the listed DMOs on various social media and social travel initiatives. Those DMOs are marked with a “*” behind their name.

As we do every month we list all destinations that are using Twitter and rank them using Twitter Grader.

February brought many changes to our ranking including a new Nr. 1: @BaltimoreMD put - literally - a lot of skin in the game, became the first destination with more than 3,000 followers and moved up to the top spot.

Congratulations to Tom and everybody else in Baltimore!

If you have not followed the “fail whale” tattoo story, you can read up on it here and also see a video of the “fail whale” finding it’s home on a nicely shaved leg. A must read for anybody who wants to see another great example of how to create a buzz with social media.

@VisitChicago and @TravelPortland (disclosure: we manage that account) also broke through 3,000 followers. @TravelPortland gained a lot more followers through the PR and attention created for the Portland Twisitor Center and @VisitChicago is just lucky to have somebody managing the account who really gets social media.

We will have a separate blog post later this week to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of trying to get as many followers as possible (a topic that has cause good debate in the past).

Overall we are now tracking more than 208 destinations in the US and Canada.

Here is the ranking for destinations as of February 28th. For some destinations grader did not return results so we estimated the grade (those grades are in italics).

As usual please let us know who we are missing, @anneh632 already found 5 new destinations on Twitter. Please keep them coming.

Also, if you destination is not yet listed on TwisitorCenter.com please follow the account so we can follow back and your destinations will show up on the map with destinations that twitter.

More tourism organizations found their way to Twitter in the first month of 2009. We now track over 160 in the US and Canada. (If we are missing some, please let us now - add as a comment or D @coldinpdx on Twitter).

Highlights:

• We found 164 official Twitter accounts for destinations in the US & CA
• @VisitChicago is still the most followed DMO
• 10 organizations have over 1,000 followers
• Of the top 20, 3 accounts average more than 10 tweets per day (@ExpCols, @lehighvalleypa, @paadventure)
• All counts combined have over 36,000 followers and have posted over 22,000 updates.
• Combined the accounts we were tracking already in Dec 08 added more than 11,000 followers in January 09

As usual we used Twitter Grader to create the ranking. Changes in rank are for accounts we were already tracking in December 08, change is Jan 09 vs. Dec 08.

Three destinations appear to have stopped using Twitter: @TriValleyCVB, @SaultCVB and @WMTA1917.
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(Full disclosure: we work with Travel Portland on their social media strategy and are currently managing the Twitter account for @TravelPortland).

Apparently, “that which does not kill us only makes us stronger”, so in a time when budgets are tightening and consumer confidence is declining an unprecedented emphasis is placed on creativity and differentiation.

And a few brands are raising to the occasion and using their, shall we say assets, to gain attention in new, authentic and honest ways.  Whether or not you would deem these strategies effective or complete flops they are at the very least unexpected.

25 years and still red hot

The story and brand attributes of Virgin Atlantic are widely known, and that is precisely why this ad, celebrating what at times seemed like an impossible milestone, is so effective.  See for yourself:

Anniversary commercial

However, you do not have to take my word for it, Richard Branson, explains his airline’s success:

Who’d have thought 25 years ago that Virgin Atlantic would be the leading airline player it is today?

Now, we use 38 aircraft to fly six million people a year to 30 destinations around the world.

Our 9,000 staff have built an airline that, after 25 years, is still red hot; an airline that focuses on being the best, not the biggest, and injects customer service and innovation into its daily philosophy.

By emphasizing the same brand attributes that have engaged and intrigued audiences for 25 years, Virgin Atlantic created a spot that is both authentic and entertaining to consumers.

Philadelphia: a good sport with a sense of humor

All things considered it could have / should have been a really tough week for the great people of Philadelphia.

First of all their beloved Eagles lost to the Arizona Cardinals, which is rough enough, but to make matters worse their twitter account (@visitphilly) was forced to use a Cardinals logo as their avatar for the week.

This costume change was part of a friendly wager they engaged in with our friends at the Arizona Office of Tourism (@ArizonaTourism) prior to the game.  While this could have been a convenient time to take a Twitter time-out the account has been active all week, dressed as the Arizona mascot.

Then while minding their own business the City of Brotherly Love was the butt of some of political humorist, Jon Stewart’s jokes.

The original blog post is witty and well written; so there is no need for me to rewrite it for you, find all the details here.

Once again the city responded in stride, willing to let it go, but not before they got a couple of their own good-hearted digs out against Stewart. “Well, Jon, we’re used to this kind of thing and we know how to respond: Philadelphia, the city that bleeps you back.”

Proving that having a sense of humor and sharing your personality especially in the world of social media can only serve to boost your brand and inspire your enthusiasts to rally behind you.

No visitors, no problem

Ontario Tourism has created a contest that Algoma hopes will put it on the map.

The Great Ontario Outdoors Adventure of a Lifetime contest will hand out a week-long adventure for four through Algoma’s wilderness and along Lake Superior’s northeast shore.

And the big winner will be the area’s tourism industry, says the executive director of Ontario’s Algoma Country.

It is the lack of visitors, serene surroundings and available excursions that make Algoma the perfect location for this adventure seeker’s dream vacation. While it is yet to been seen if this promotion will be enough to put Algoma on the map, as they hope, the honesty regarding their tourism is refreshing.

Additionally, Ontario has turned what most deem as a negative, a lack of visitors, into the centerpiece of their promotion.  In the current economic climate there is no better time than the present to position negatives as positives.

Rather than try to recreate the wheel with your marketing efforts try using attributes, situations or even perceived weaknesses that your brand currently possesses and repackage them in new ways in order to gain attention and build authenticity.

What do you think, are there other great examples that we missed?  Please let us know.

Thank you to MPR529, Rubenstein and mike_miley for photos.

Using our monthly statistic about destinations on Twitter we thought it would be interesting to analyze the number of followers and number of posts in more detail.
One school of thought on Twitter is that if you write tweets are people find interesting and helpful, your number of followers will grow. So lots of time should be spend on creating good content.
But reality is different. Try to build a following this way and unless something else happens (e.g. media talking about your Twitter efforts) it will take a long, long time to get to a larger number of followers.

Quite a few destinations therefore conduct follow-unfollow campaigns to grow the number of their friends.

But this is also time-consuming and has to be done right as Twitter will shut down accounts that have a big imbalance between followers and being-followed.

We use the followers/updates rating as a metric that we track each month for the accounts we manage. It tells us how successful we are in creating good content and in growing our following. We only looked at destinations that were on our list on Dec. 31st and had posted more than 10 updates.

Comparing these ratios between different accounts is not as meaningful when you look at them only as a snapshot and not as development over time.

Here is how to read this: WilliamsportPA twittered 10 times and got 219 followers. GoRockford on the other hand twittered 264 times and had on 12/31 only 71 followers. The ExpCol account that is fed by an RSS sent 1863 updates and had 705 followers. Paadventure has more followers and got there with only 221 updates.
(Full disclosure: we are working with TravelPortland - Nr. 34 on the list - on developing and implementing their social media strategy which includes Twitter activities)

So the learning form this? You need to spend time on tweets and on growing your number of followers. And you need to develop metrics to measure the efficiency of your twitter efforts over time.

What are your thoughts on this?

If you have any interest how other destinations are having success with Twitter make sure to read a very insightful comment from @paadventure on yesterday’s blog post. Thanks for sharing!

Based on your feedback we have added more destinations to our growing list of tourism organizations on Twitter. 
@travelynnmo pointed out a very good point: many destinations have several Twitter accounts “powered” by different staff members. While this is a very valid strategy we are tracking (at the moment) just the main Twitter accounts as otherwise this exercise would get out of hands. But please share with us all accounts your organization is using, then we can start a separate list.

So, are more and more tourism organization starting to chirp?

See for yourself:

The two phases for growth were certainly influenced by a hands-on social media workshop we did for DMOs in Michigan at the end of September and a workshop ChicagoPlus did for it’s member DMOs in December.

And for sure we are still missing many other tourism organizations that are using Twitter. To make it easier for you to tell us which ones we are not tracking we have prepared an overview per state (US & CA).

We have added new destinations over the last days to the list, however we do not have data for them for number of followers and updates, even if they joined before Dec. 31 of 2008. 

While the number of followers in itself can be a misleading indicator (quality vs. quantity) I find it nevertheless impressive that of the DMOs we are tracking @VisitChicago or @BaltimoreMD have more followers than all DMOs from Florida and California combined.
 

But these can’t be all! Who else are we missing?

We want to know, even if this growing list is becoming more and more work …

Yesterday we published our monthly ranking of US tourism organizations on Twitter. Over the next days we will analyze the data some more and see if Twitter is really having an impact on tourism or if it just a fad. 

In this post we rank the 50 destinations that picked up the most followers in December of 08.

Pennylvania picked up almost 500 new followers, followed by Cleveland and Chicagoland.

Soon several DMOs will have more than 1,000 followers and if you look at the average number of daily updates this means that it will be possible to make several thousand contacts with consumes every day.

And here is a quick look at the growth rates for the three most followed and three fastest growing destinations over the last 3 months.

Most followed:

Fastest growing:

Of course now we all want to know what @paadventure did on December 2nd when they picked up 200 new users in just one day. 

And don’t forget: if you work for a tourism organization and have not participated in the “Social Media in Tourism” survey then please click here and give us your thoughts. The survey will close at the end of this week.

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.