1st in line to ask for Exit Row Seating on my 1st trip to South Africa in 2007

Hey Adventurers,

I’m on assignment again in South Africa! It’s the culmination of a project I’ve been working on for 2 years, so I have a great sense of satisfaction to see it come to a conclusion. I”ll be here for a few weeks wrapping it up. I leave today!

I have no idea what adventures I’m going to have – with the exception of a trip to Victoria Falls in Zambia in June. So if you want to follow me – click here.

South Africa is my absolute favorite destination on the planet. The first time I landed in the country in 2007 the flight attendant said,

“Welcome To South Africa. Whether you’re here to visit family, connect with friends or see the animals, know that you have just arrived to the most beautiful place on the planet.”

And she was absolutely right. I can’t think of a more beautiful, breathtaking and perfect place to be than in an open air jeep watching animals nurture their young, explore the African bush and search for food. Start saving your pennies. A trip to South Africa is worth every cent.

While I’m away my Internet Access will be touch and go. When I have the opportunity, I’ll be sure to post updates on where I’ve been and what I’ve seen. You’ll be able to find them by clicking the links below the Recent Posts header in the left-hand column. The post you are now reading is “sticky” and will stay at the top of the homepage for a bit.

My posting schedule will be on Africa Time – which means whenever I can find the chance. In between my Africa updates I’ll be posting blogs from the Ultimate Thailand Explorers Pattaya Blog Archive. “What’s that?” You may be asking. Click here to get caught up to speed.

Until I return…

I’ll see you out there…!

Have you ever been to South Africa? What’s your favorite thing to see, do or eat? I’d love to know. Share it by commenting below.

If you want to follow my adventures in South Africa, become a fan of adventureswithben.com on Facebook here.

Life has moved on since the Ultimate Thailand Explorers Competition. There are new countries to explore, places to visit and things to do. When the announcement was made in January that we won “Best Sponsor Promotion”, a prize packet was sent to the house. It was loaded with great prizes. So I thought I would quickly share with what we took home…

Bangkok

• 2 Tickets to the Siam Niramit Cultural Show
• 2 Tickets to Siam Ocean World
• Free teeth cleaning and scaling at the Bangkok Smile Dental Clinic

Phuket

• 2 nights at the Centara Karon Resort
• 2 nights at the Sukko Cultural Spa & Wellness
• 2 VIP Seats for the Phuket Simon Cabaret Show
• 2 Tickets to the Phuket Aquarium
• Spa service at The Access Pool Resort & Villas Spa

The original plan was to tag on a trip to Thailand after Australia. I’m not sure that’s going to happen. Given that I’ll be in Africa for a while, the Australia trip planning has been placed on hold in lieu of other exciting adventures. So I’m not sure if I’ll be able to use many of these prizes as they expire at the end of the year. And the fine print: non-transferable

But it was never about the prizes, it was about the learning experience – which I’ve said all along. Winning is a nice feeling though.

What’s the biggest prize you’ve ever won. Share your experience by commenting below. When you’re done, become a fan on facebook of adventureswithben.com. Click here to make it happen!

I’ll see you out there…!

Today’s post is all about where to go next. What’s in store for adventureswithben.com based on what I learned?

2010 Priorities

There’s a lot on my “to do” list here at adventureswithben.com. Read my post on New Year’s Resolutions for some detail. In no particular order here’s what I need to do…

Twitter – Build my twitter network. The hashtags were incredibly powerful in building a fan base quickly. I also need to tweet more often and throughout the day to build credibility. Look for more retweets about travel stories that interest me.

Facebook - My facebook fan page is up and running. You should become a fan by clicking here. For now I’ve got this site’s RSS feed going to my personal account. That will change once I have a bigger following on facebook. Facebook will soon become the portal to contain all my photos and videos as I reached the limits of a free Flickr account. Facebook also enables people to network and that’s where I need to continue building.

Content - It’s always about content. In the past topics and destinations jumped around day-to-day. Moving forward I’d like to write a series of posts on one location and heavily promote them. My goal is to connect with a network of readers and capture their attention for a few days, and then move on to a new topic and new network with the hopes that everyone else will follow me along. The opportunities to have readers contribute to the post through comments and polls was popular. So you’ll see more of that. In fact, if you look on the right-hand column you’ll see a current poll for a new tagline for this site. Why not vote now?

Promotion – Giving up may be the wrong word, but I have no intentions on partnering with traditional media in the short-term. It’s too tough. Maybe I’ll revisit this in the future. Where I will focus my efforts will be on partnering with other bloggers, getting listed on travel blog sites and contributing to the travel and tourism conversations on the net. I’m looking at what I can do locally as well as far away.

Video Creation - As if I don’t have enough to focus on already, I might experiment with creating video casts on iTunes. I’m not sure yet. I have all the equipment, but I’m not sure on if I have the time to make it all come together. Running your own business is tough stuff.

When it’s all said and done, participating in the Ultimate Thailand Explorers Competition was the best thing that could have happened last year. It turned out to be everything I hoped it would be and more.

******

Unrelated to what I learned in Thailand – but you might be interested in knowing – here are some other action items I have in mind…

• Refresh my Twitter Profile Background
• Figure out how to use Google Wave and how it can help me here
• Build my LinkedIn network
• Take a Photoshop Tutorial
• Add more header photos
• Chart out the editorial calendar for the year
• Secure some advertisers
• Update some of my pages on the site
• Book and plan my trip to Australia!

The Voting and Assignment Periods for Finalists

From December 1st, 2009 until January 8th, 2009 Internet Users from around the world could vote for 1 team out of the 5 finalists (Phuket, Chiang Mai, Pattaya, Koh Samui and Bangkok). Voters could vote once every 24 hours. The team with the most votes would receive the grand prize, $10,000.

What I Learned

The Voting and Assignment periods for finalists truly combined the skills, talents and network strategies from the application and semi-finalists periods. Sometime around mid-November we were given our blog passwords and could start writing. Our strategy was to simply write the best blog. We wanted to be creative, set the standard and most importantly of all, be engaging and informative. Our thought was, by writing the best blog we’d amass the most votes.

Content – I was so proud of our blog. We received so many comments about how engaging, fun and informative it was. We really wanted to connect with readers. We knew that many of them wanted to be in our shoes, so we felt that it was our responsibility to work hard, and show them Thailand.

In the weeks leading up to our departure, we reached out to readers by hosting polls on our blog. We allowed them to select which optional activities we would visit in Pattaya. We filmed a YouTube video where we had them guess some of the locations on our itinerary (see below). And we also set up a Skype and AIM Account to chat real-time.

In many of our posts we encouraged them to leave their feedback by commenting on the day’s topic. And once we arrived in Thailand, we continued those polls and opportunities to contribute to the conversation. It was the most and the best I’ve ever written.

Virtually every post included a YouTube video and/or a Flickr photo set. They each took about 2 hours to write. Half of that time was editing the video. All the work was worth it when the Tourism Authority of Thailand voted us with the Best Sponsor Promotion Award.

But despite the work, the votes didn’t come. It was clear after the first few days of voting that people weren’t voting based on the quality of the blogs. Two of the teams that were ahead of us had nothing on their blog for at least a week – and had amassed hundreds more votes than us. Then even into the competition, when we were blogging every night with the goings-on for the day, our competition advanced by thousands of votes – without writing a word. It was frustrating.

It was clear that those voting for the other teams were not necessarily voting based on quality of the blog, but because they were friends of the team. And that was something we made a conscious decision not to focus on. Now before you think I’m nuts for what appears to be giving up on 10K, let me explain.

Rallying people to vote for you and writing great blog posts require, what I believe, to be two very different strategies. We entered this competition not to be better vote getters, but to learn how to be better bloggers. Could we beg, plead and promote ourselves to others so that they would vote. Certainly. But what would we learn? And even if we did. Vote-getting is tiring and time consuming. It was selfish in a way to ask our friends for more favors to vote repeatedly everyday. We won the trip to Thailand, wasn’t that enough? When Brian and I decided to just blog, the competition became less stressful and more fun. And that’s what it was all about. I don’t regret the decision one bit. adventureswithben.com is going to be much better for it. I can promise you that.

Traditional Media – We continued our efforts to promote the competition to our local papers and television stations. Like before we sent out press releases. My hometown paper, the Fall River Herald, did a nice article on us. Read it here. We also were published in the Pattaya Mail here and a follow-up here.

New Media – We also reached out to many, many bloggers with some success. We didn’t get the broad coverage that we had hoped, but we got some. We continued with twitter, but really focused our efforts on Facebook. Our posts were sent immediately to our wall and we posted on multiple groups and fan pages. That really helped spread the word.

Speaking of facebook. Why not become a fan of adventureswithben by clicking here.

******

On January 8th the results came in and we finished in 5th place. Considering I didn’t expect to make it to the semi-finals, this was fantastic. We won an award for our blog and a weekend in Phuket too. It was the closest thing to living a dream.

Next week we’ll finish the series with the last installment. What did I learn that can help this site. Where does adventureswithben go from here?

The Semi-Finalists Voting Period

In mid-October, 2009 the Tourism Authority of Thailand selected 5 teams from each of 5 cities (Pattaya, Bangkok, Koh Samui, Phuket and Chiang Mai) to be voted on by Internet users worldwide. We were selected as 1 of these 25 teams from over 356 applicants in 59 countries. Internet users had roughly 3 weeks to vote on who they wanted to send to Thailand. They could vote for 1 team, from each city every 24 hours.

What I Learned

Whereas the application period was all about proving social media knowledge, the semi-finalists voting period was all about rallying votes. Rallying votes is tough work. It’s exhausting. It’s exciting. It’s draining. It’s always on my mind. It’s humbling.

Traditional Media – Our efforts started with sending press releases to local newspapers and television stations. We reached out to the editors of the travel, lifestyle and technology sections. We sent e-mails and tweets to the reporters. We didn’t have much success with this. I don’t know why. Maybe we were a small operation. Maybe we were competing against bigger news stories. Maybe we just weren’t interesting.

We tried every angle possible, our neighborhood paper, local papers, college newspapers and other niches. At the end of the day, we were successful in getting printed in the Somerset Spectator, my hometown paper growing up. We also were published in the Pattaya Today, in an online article. Our competition was able to get some pretty good coverage in Traditional Media. I haven’t asked how yet. I wish I knew.

New Media – Given that this was a social media competition we reached out to bloggers who might be interested in doing a story about us. We were mentioned on several blogs.

Content – To continue reminding people to vote we made a series of videos, blog posts and photo slideshows reminding people to vote for us. We promoted them on Facebook. Our approach was a countdown of the remaining days to vote. It kept us at the top of everyone’s mind. My parents filmed a few videos, as did a friend and my pets. The purpose was to ensure that people wouldn’t forget us, and forget to vote for us.

Twitter – I placed my bets on Twitter and lost. Don’t get me wrong, twitter helped immensely, but it wasn’t the most powerful tool. We used hashtags to participate in conversations about #travel #tourism #socialmedia and more. In just a few short weeks we had over 700 followers, which was incredible.

There were several passionate followers that helped remind people to vote. We thanked them by calling them out. It’s the courteous thing to do on twitter. That helped a lot, but most people don’t connect on twitter. I was hoping for word to spread like wildfire in Orlando, and it didn’t. I think it’s because not enough people use twitter and our message could have been lost among the hundreds of others. For twitter to be successful, you have to tweet all day long.

Facebook – Here’s where every other team excelled but us. We neglected to grow our facebook fan page. Most of the world connects on facebook. Our messages would have shown up live in their news feed, had we built this up. During the voting period we were in 1st, fell to 2nd and then to 3rd. It was around this time that things didn’t look good. Our competition was far ahead.

We changed tactics and started aggressively building a facebook following. We posted our messages and reminders to vote on almost 100 groups/pages. Everything from travel, thailand, pattaya and orlando sites. It was an incredible amount of work, but we saw a surge over the final few days.

Thew top three teams all had surges at one point. We were lucky that ours came towards the end. We had a many friends of friends voting for us. We don’t know where all our votes came from, but the repeated efforts of our friends on twitter and facebook helped propel us.

Facebook is about connecting in networks, and that’s what we tried to do. Find as many relevant networks we belonged to and beg for their votes.

******

What started as an almost impossible dream, became a reality when our team was selected to blog from Pattaya, Thailand. I’ll say it again, we actually won the trip to Thailand. Regular people don’t win competitions like this. This wasn’t winning a T-Shirt or or CD, this was a trip to Thailand. What happened in Pattaya? What did we learn? Find out tomorrow…

I wanted to spend some time capturing my thoughts about participating in the Ultimate Thailand Explorers Competition before they flee from memory; Partly because I want to have a record to refer to in the future, and partly because you might be interested in learning about it. Who knows, maybe this advice will come in handy someday? The whole purpose of entering the competition was to learn about social media and travel in order to better this site. You can be sure that these learnings will make their way into this blog soon – if they haven’t already!

Today’s post is Part 1 of a 4-part series. We’ll start with the application period. Let’s see what I learned…

The Application Period

The application period ran from early September to mid-October. Applicants had to create a 1-minute YouTube video explaining how they would use social media to promote their chosen destination (1 of 5 cities in Thailand: Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Phuket, Koh Samui and Pattaya). Out of the submissions, 5 semi-finalists for each city (25 total), would be selected by the Tourism Authority of Thailand to be voted upon by Internet users. More on that tomorrow… Videos were chosen on several criteria, including knowledge of social media, creativity, energy, etc.

What I Learned

Plan Your Video – If you have any hopes of winning you have to have a decent video. And by decent it needs to be easy to understand. Ideally it should be memorable and have some sort of cleverness to it. I’ll be the first to admit that our video wasn’t special or unique. I don’t have that creative spark. I knew that. What I lacked in creative video skills I was hoping to make up for two-fold with my knowledge of social media and content creation.

I was proud of our video. We scripted it ahead of time. It wasn’t put together at the last minute. We were smiling, peppy and thorough in our sharing of social media in the allotted time.

The video, for many, would be their only exposure to Brian and I. So we had to make it decent. It did the job.

Apply Early – Since the strategy was to demonstrate our social media skills, we applied early to give us enough time experiment, build our networks and prove our worth. Many teams mentioned social media in their video, but never did anything about it.

We chose Pattaya for a number of reasons. Should we ever visit Thailand on our own, we’d most likely visit the well-known cities – Bangkok and Phuket. We literally had never heard of Pattaya. This would be a great opportunity to go somewhere we wouldn’t have considered in the past. Pattaya also had the fewest applicants at the time. And while I’m not going to critique the quality of our competitors, I felt we had a pretty strong video for our category. It also didn’t hurt that Pattaya had the least amount of applicants. At the very least, this could have helped our odds at being selected for the semi-finals.

Register Your Names – If you’re going to enter the social media world you have to register your name across all platforms: flickr, twitter, facebook, YouTube, google, etc. It’s a pain in the butt doing all those logins, but consider this the protection of your brand. You don’t want someone to usurp your name and confuse your voters do you?

Whether intentional or not, I don’t know, but in our video we referenced a twitter hash tag, #ultimatethai we created for people to add to our conversation. What we didn’t do was register that twitter username (we chose benandbrianthai instead). Another team, who’s video appeared just a short while after ours used our hashtag as their username. We didn’t end up using the hashtag all that much for other reasons, but lesson learned.

Content, Content, Content – Every blogger will tell you that content drives everything. And they are absolutely right. I still think, after the application, semi-finals and finals periods we were the only team with the most comprehensive blog. Maybe it’s boasting a bit too much, but we directed users to view our photos on Flickr on a routine basis, watch our videos on YouTube and contribute to our conversations on Twitter. We also had a small, but growing Facebook Page.

We had never been to Thailand before so we were challenged with creating content that was relevant. We went out to Thai Restaurants, created videos sharing why we should go to Thailand and getting to know you videos. We posted them on this blog, on the facebook pages of the competition site and on twitter.

I don’t know since I was never told, but I think that this played a major role in our selection as semi-finalists.

I was surprised early on that some of our posts appeared at the top of Google searches.

Opportunity Favors the Prepared – Our content enabled us to build a following that, should we be selected as semi-finalists, would hopefully vote for us. We had also become savvy with leveraging the technology so that when we really needed to use it, we weren’t learning it.

Since I was in South Africa on business when the announcement would be made for the teams that were selected as semi-finalists, a lot of our promotional content was created ahead of time. We had press releases, e-mail drafts, photos, media pages and videos that were ready to go live at the touch of a button. And once the announcement was made it was sent out immediately.

Were we being too sure of ourselves? Absolutely not. Any organization will tell you that they have all their communication content produced ahead of time and that they are just waiting for the “go for launch”. The reality was, I wasn’t going to have time to produce in Africa, so I did it ahead of time. Call it…insurance.

******

As luck would have it, we were selected as semi-finalists for Pattaya. Our city had the least amount of applicants and the least amount of video views. An observation that, I think, would become critical later on. Now that we were officially on the ballot, the real work could begin. What happened? Find out tomorrow…

In addition to trying to rally the most votes as part of my assignment in the Ultimate Thailand Explorers Competition, the five finalist teams were also competing for several awards/ titles:

• Best Promotional Blog
• Best Amazing Thailand, Amazing Value Video
• Best Sponsor Promotion

Announced on Friday, Brian and I were honored with “Best Sponsor Promotion”.

The whole purpose of the competition was to promote travel to Thailand. My whole focus throughout the competition was to create engaging content that promoted each location we visited in Pattaya. Being recognized for this hard work is perhaps my proudest accomplishment.

If you visit the blog here, you’ll see a consistent focus on telling the story of each attraction, hotel and restaurant we visited through videos, photos and words. At the end of each post, we included a “Know Before You Go” section with a high-level synopsis and ways to connect with each location through social media. In addition to posting our blog on the official site, we shared links on twitter, facebook groups and fan pages and with prominent travel bloggers. Since December 16th, when page hits were tracked on the blog, we amassed over 2,700 page views. That’s incredibly high for less than a month of writing.

In addition to the title, we received a 2 night’s stay in Phuket – a resort city in the south of Thailand. We’re going to try to combine that stay with our 2010 International Adventure. Where will that be? You’ll have to check back later this week to find out. But here’s a hint…it’s somewhere in the Pacific Region.

Here’s hoping that 2010 will bring even more exciting news…