Will this be the Social Media Indaba?

This Tourism Week. 14 April 2011
Brought to you by Moja’s Heritage Collection  www.mojaheritage.co.za

Will this be the Social Media Indaba?

Just before I sat down to write today’s article, I received a mailer from Indaba which announced that “Preparations are well underway for Africa’s biggest travel and tourism trade show – which spans 27,000 square metres – with more than 13,000 visitors, 1,300 exhibitors, over 170 international hosted buyers and hundreds of local and international media expected this year.”

Yes, but what about the people who won’t be able to make it?

In the old days – oh, about a week before Twitter and a year before Facebook – these figures would have been impressive. And seeing that many people together in one place is still very exciting (I, for one, would never miss an Indaba. Even if the sky fell on my head.)

But it’s become so cheap, so easy to reach a wider audience, that I wonder: will this be the Indaba that ushers social media into our tourism marketing?

I fear it might not.

The message I received from Indaba – you’ll have seen it if you’re registered for the event – was headlined: “’Playing globally, winning locally’ is central to INDABA 2011.”

And yet there was almost nothing in there about Social Media. And definitely nothing in the context of social media as a method of reaching a wider audience IN THE TRADE.

As a loyal citizen of Facebook, the first thing I did was search ‘Indaba’ on the world’s favourite networking site, and I did find ‘Indaba Daily News’ (for which I’ll be writing again this year). But nothing relevant under ‘Indaba.’ And under ‘Indaba 2011’ I found something to do with the Scouts.

Do yourself a favour. Sign up with a site called www.slideshare.net  and search for a presentation called ‘What the F**ck is Social Media NOW?’ (make sure you read version 3.)

You’ll be amazed. (“If Facebook were a country, it would be the third most populated in the world…”)

If you look around, you’ll probably find that almost every visitor to Indaba this year signed on to Facebook ages ago – so why aren’t we talking to each other on Facebook?

Can we afford to ignore this phenomenon?