During a March 7 session at the 2019 Pure Michigan Governor’s Conference on Tourism, Courtney Sheffer of West Michigan Tourist Association (WMTA) shared details from the experience of her organization in its effort to attract attention for her constituent destinations. [1,2]
In her position as marketing director for WMTA, she faced the same challenges that destinations such as Saline, as well as their venue advocates including the A2Y Regional Chamber are facing in the wake of COVID-19. [3-8]
How to attract new enterprises, visitors, and residents — standing out against uprecidented message competition, persuasively? [7]
Her answer utilized user-generated content to create a foundation for a variety of desired content that WMTA could neither initially afford nor justify as an additional budget line item. So she created a photo contest, with entries tied to clearly set hashtags, leveraging immediate impact on the primary social media platform of Instagram. [8,9]
Presently, #salinemi and #salinemich, while arguably most tempting, are actually utilized less than half as much (combined) as is #salinemichigan, with over twelve thousand references as of this writing.
Washtenaw County Parks has just completed the third week of its “Preserve Challenge,” tied to the #explorewashtenaw hashtag on Instagram. [10]
Rather than needing to start from a blank sheet of paper, venues might consider building on established structures set by local photographer resource Procam. Following is their current “31 Day October 2020 Photo Challenge!” for possible inspiration and direction for content creators. [11,12]
- Day 1: Orchard
- Day 2: Plaid
- Day 3: Flash
- Day 4: Leaves
- Day 5: Your Camera
- Day 6: Bonfire
- Day 7: Maze
- Day 8: Fall Drink
- Day 9: Pumpkin Patch
- Day 10: Wrinkled
- Day 11: Cabin
- Day 12: From Where I Stand
- Day 13: Fall Decor
- Day 14: Stormy
- Day 15: New “Normal” of 2020
- Day 16: Angle
- Day 17: On the Table … Macro
- Day 18: Breakfast
- Day 19: Details
- Day 20: Spooky
- Day 21: Make-Up
- Day 22: Smokey
- Day 23: Forest
- Day 24: Darkness
- Day 25: Haunted
- Day 26: Your Choice
- Day 27: Mask … The Fun Kind
- Day 28: Pumpkin
- Day 29: Trick / Treat
- Day 30: Moon
- Day 31: Halloween
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer frequently emphasizes that we’re all in this together. Now in hopes of taking active community steps toward recovery, activities such as this could well be a good way of showing that. [13]
References
- Pure Michigan: Governor’s Conference on Tourism (home page).
- West Michigan Tourist Association (home page).
- A2Y: Ann Arbor / Ypsilanti Regional Chamber (home page).
- Coronavirus (COVID-19) (home page).
- “Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)” CDC: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
- “Novel Coronavirus Reports” CDC.
- “The Positioning Principle” Ries.
- “Say it quick, say it well – the attention span of a modern internet consumer” Rob Weatherhead (February 28, 2014) The Guardian.
- Instagram (Saline Journal feed).
- Instagram (Washtenaw County Parks feed).
- ProCam Photo & Video Gear (home page).
- Instagram (ProCam Photo & Video Gear feed).
- “Michigan Gov Whitmer adjusts coronavirus safety policies on nursing homes, communal meals, acti…” Click On Detroit | Local 4 | WDIV (October 1, 2020) YouTube.
