The title of this post looks negative at first. It’s not. It’s awesome!
Thank you, Sun Country and your Fall Free for All promotion for allowing me to take five straight weekend trips for not a lot of money. This way, I get to visit new destinations, meet people through social media connections, interact with businesses all while being in Minnesota during the work week.
So glad I saw this Twitter message:
When I visit local places, I plan to be social not just in person but online as well. Businesses who treat me well deserve to be mentioned on sites like Google Maps, Citysearch, Yelp, Twitter, Flickr and this blog.
Note – aside from the print yellow pages industry, I almost solely have positive things to say about businesses.
I’ll also be looking for hotels to stay. I’m not too picky. Fancy hotels are great although my needs are basically room Internet access and a bed.
Nonetheless, ten hotel stays in just over a month adds up. I would love it if a hotel chain (or any other business) would help sponsor this experiment in some sort of way. So far, I just followed a few hotels on Twitter, including:
- Hilton and their brands
- DoubleTree Hotels
- Best Western and their 4100 locations
- Marriott and their brands
- InterContinental Hotels Group and their brands
I’ll try to follow a few more, too. Now, most marketing departments in the hospitality field will have some type of online reputation management program, which hopefully means they’ll see this blog post + notice that I follow them on Twitter.
So, wonderful hospitality industry folks. Please consider sponsoring this experiment in some sort of way. We all know that Word-of-Web marketing is like Word-of-Mouth except when online you’re telling everybody. I want to say nice things about you!
I have decided on four weekend places to visit: San Diego, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Boston. The other place or two will be decided later.
The plan will be to arrive at my destinations Friday evenings and find an event/attraction/anything blog worthy that night or Saturday. Then, I’ll make sure to use Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, local review sites and this blog to mention what hopes to be fun experiences. Sundays will mostly be returning to Minnesota.
I’m really looking forward to this and hope to showcase many worthy businesses across the country.
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Posted by Paul Jahn 
LocalMN Blog 