What did I learn covering the Toronto International Film Festival

I love Film. When I was younger I wanted to be a filmmaker (maybe I still do). I went to film school and worked in TV commercial production for a while. I also worked on television production. There's something about a movie set and about telling stories with film (or video) that really appeals to me. So covering the Toronto International Film Festival (photo with Georgina Reilly star of Bruce McDonald's Pontypool) for my Spanish blog (http://www.blogdecanada.com/) is a real pleasure. I get to see very interesting films and then write about them for an international Hispanic audience. This year I not only wrote on the blog, but I started mini-blogging as well. I used Twitter.com/jaimehorwitz to post mini-reviews right after I saw a film. Twitter is a relatively new Web service that's spreading like wild fire. Marketers are still trying to figure it out, but many are jumping in to use it as an addition to their Web 2.0 arsenal. Although Twitter's numbers are exploding, at the individual twitter the numbers are still low. The trick with twitter is to have as many followers as possible. Followers are subscribers to your Twitter. Your twitter is a webpage on Twitter.com where you can post your mini-posts either online or via a mobile device. It is the mobile device that makes twitter so interesting and compelling. Followers can check out updates online on your Twitter page or better yet they can subscribe to get updates sent to thei rmobile devices vis SMS. For something like the Toronto Film Festival it's perfect since you can SMS your mini-review right away after watching a film and your followers would receive it instantly. This can apply to any festival or sporting event as well. For example, during the Olympics in Vancouver in 2010 you could be watching a Hockey game between Team Canada and Russia and twitter a play by play for your followers. A destination or tourism business can twitter about various topics and include url's to special offers for your followers. There are many marketing possibilities here.
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Who is Twittering? In Canada Travel Alberta has begun twittering - check them out at http://twitter.com/TravelAlberta. Heather Dolan, Manager, U.S. Media Relations CTC US, is also twittering. See her page at http://twitter.com/hadola. Other tourism twitterers I have come across are Arizona Tourism, http://twitter.com/ArizonaTourism, and Philadelphia, http://twitter.com/visitphilly and SpainTube, http://twitter.com/spaintube.

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While still an emerging trend, Twitter is posed to become really big. Consider that we all carry mobile devices everywhere. We can twitter about anything and can also subscribe to those Twitters we may want to follow. While not all tourism organizations may benefit from Twittering many will. It's just a matter of figuring out how Twitter can fit into your communications strategy.

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Speaking of Strategy, Twitter and many other topics will be addressed at the second Canada-e-Connect eTourism Strategy Conference in Toronto, January 21 - 23, 2009.

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Cheers,

Jaime Horwitz