Visit Baltimore

Visit My Baltimore is it takes a groundbreaking new look at social media. In all the hype, it seems most are focused on pushing info out, stalking clients, blogging about every hour of their day, etc., on any choice of social media platforms. Visit My Baltimore (VMB) sits back and focuses its energy on gathering all the good stuff—the content and media being published about Baltimore or by Baltimoreans—and presenting it in a lively and engaging way.

The real beauty is that users can continue going about their normal habits of frenetically posting to Twitter, uploading to Flickr and posting videos to YouTube—once they give BACVA the green light, Visit My Baltimore pulls the content in to its site, as well. Users have different options to moderate what makes its way to VMB, including setting tags or selecting specific accounts. Additionally, BACVA has the necessary tools—just in case something pushes the decency bar too low—to remove accounts or media if they truly need to.

However, most users are happy to be able to share their enthusiasm for Baltimore and to be part of a site that shows off not only all the great places to go and see in Baltimore, but the people that make the city so unique and charming. From a potential visitor's point of view it's a way to get a real feeling for the people, places and things that make Baltimore a desirable destination.

As social media expands and content is being published across broad avenues, the real key is going to be finding ways to tap into groups user-generated content as they relate to a specific topic.

We guess you could say Visit My Baltimore is the YouTube + Flickr + Twitter + Yelp + Wiki of Baltimore.

The previous iteration of Visit My Baltimore was a branded YouTube knock off, requiring users to come to the site and upload videos in hopes of creating a YouTube-esque Website all about Baltimore.

BACVA realized users were not as active in the video-making process as they had originally hoped and also realized that plenty of other users were being ignored: those who were taking photos, posting to Twitter, and otherwise promoting the city in non-video ways. Additionally, these users were sticking to the sites they had grown accustomed to for managing their media—Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo and Twitter.

While most clients are still figuring out how to create their first Facebook page or hoping that by signing up for a Twitter account people will be crashing down their doors, Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association took the complete opposite and much more effective approach. They let the fans of Baltimore do all the work and, in doing so, have created a first-of-its-kind aggregation site which is available for public viewing and contribution.