What would I do…

…if I won a blogging trip to Australia? What? A blogging trip? Yes! A few weeks ago, I read a post on Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger blog. He shared…

A year ago I was in Queensland for a conference and, sitting at the airport, I had the crazy idea that we should run a ProBlogger Down Under competition. The idea was simple—we run a competition to bring a group of bloggers to Australia to see the Great Barrier Reef and also do a little blogging training. I tweeted the idea and was inundated by people wanting to enter. I also received tweets from some tourism organisations.

To cut a long story short, today I’m ecstatic to announce a competition to bring ten highly creative bloggers from all corners of the globe to Queensland to become Queensland Blogger Correspondents. Lucky winners will not only experience the destination first hand, they will get to blog about it plus become a guest blogger for Tourism Queensland’s own blog later this year.

Source: Win 1 of 10 Trips to The Great Barrier Reef in Queensland Australia #QldBlog : @ProBlogger

Sounds great, I said what do I have to do to win? Darren said…

For your chance to win a spot on this exciting trip we want you to tell us why you would make the ideal Queensland Blogger Correspondent.We will choose ten winners based on how you would cover the experience. How you would get the word out about what you’re doing. What kind of exposure you could bring to the destination. What creative methods you would use to share your story.

via Win 1 of 10 Trips to The Great Barrier Reef in Queensland Australia #QldBlog : @ProBlogger.

The form they gave me doesn’t give me near enough space to tell the story so I thought why not post about it and show by example a little of what I’d actually do?! When I told my wife about the possibility, it was the first time she actually got excited about my blogging – that is until she found out it was not a trip for two!

I’m a guy from a town of 3,500 in rural Wisconsin – I have never been to Australia and as a father of six a trip like this would likely be my only hope! My impressions of Australia – like many Americans of my generation – come from movies like these:

I have been blessed in the past, however, to make 7 international trips to 15 countries – one of them was as a social media correspondent for AGCO covering the 2009 Agritechnica trade show in Hannover, Germany. The Agritechnica content is not available on their site, but while traveling as a social media ‘journalist’, I shot and posted videos like this…

In Hannover, I interviewed company representatives and show attendees using business blogging, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to extend the trade show experience to people around the globe using what became my ‘e1evation workflow’ – a toolkit with a repeatable process of finding and sharing great content to drive traffic. The work our team did won the first NAMA award in the social media category…

The work we did at Agritechnica seems pretty ‘run of the mill’ today, but it was quite ground breaking back then. We mastered the logistics of international social media ‘trip coverage’ and set a new standard. As I did in Hannover, I would use each and every tool in my workflow to ferret out stories and capture and produce great content that would drive interest in the trip. I would also benefit from the opportunity to work directly with Darren Rowse — a person whose blogging has directly and indirectly given me many insights over the course of my blogging career. If you doubt just search this blog…

I think my ignorance of Australia would actually be an asset in this case – I would use it to fuel my curiosity and share what I learn. As a management consultant, I have lots of experience getting up to speed quickly on a subject matter and I’d take on Australia in the same way I did agriculture for AGCO. Among other things I’d…

• Study for weeks in advance to get a good background on the places I’d be visiting
• Take pictures and video at every step along the way that would be posted on a timely basis to Flickr and a YouTube channel [rural Wisconsin blogger from the shores of Lake Michigan goes to Great Barrier reef would be an interesting juxtaposition]
• Share my thoughts via audio and text for my blog daily [which I know from experience is NOT an easy task!]
• I’d learn from Darren Rowse in the special sessions to be an even better blogger [and photographer] and put my new skills to immediate use…

The end result would be some great content for Tourism Queensland targeted at Americans like me that would drive traffic and interest for years to come. The skills I would gain would benefit my business and my customers as well. I may not be the first choice for a trip like this, but I think I could be the 10th…

Please comment below for the folks at Tourism Queensland and ProBlogger if you think I’d do a good job of getting them the coverage and content they want! Thanks in advance…