How many of us wish we could have a social media do over? 
Remember when we first started out, oh so long ago? At the time, it seemed like we were artists, painting each piece of the social media puzzle individually, hoping that some sort of cohesive marketing design would appear. How many times have you looked back and said “If I had it to do over again, I would have done it differently?”
Social Media “Coulda Woulda”
For those who were traditional marketers that embraced social media early on, there wasn’t time for the “coulda woulda” mentality. We were all in the same boat – trying to keep our heads above water and stay one step ahead of the social media curve. We didn’t have a choice, we needed to incorporate social media with the traditional marketing we already had in place.
As luck would have it, I get to have a social media do over. The city of San Jacinto, CA has contracted with me to build a tourism marketing program from scratch. We will be starting from nothing and building something brand new. The tourism community is very excited, as am I.
Flip your social media mentality
What would you do if you had the chance to start over with a clean canvas, if you could have a social media do over? I posed this question to a tourism group on Facebook and William Bakker of Think! Social Media provided a great insight. He wrote:
“Put social at the core. Instead of building marketing programs and digital channels and use social to support them, start with social and build digital and other channels to support social.”
Perfect advice! Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and bloggers will be the first line of marketing in this particular tourism marketing program as opposed to brochures, direct mail and other traditional marketing tactics. Now don’t get me wrong, I do think we need to have a balanced marketing effort, and will still use some traditional methods, but social will be the focus and we’ll build out from there.
If you had an opportunity for a social media do over, what would you do? What have you done?