jonnygoldstein.com

I am about to participate in a new media tour of Pittsburgh with other bloggers and DIY media makers. We have been invited by visitpittsburgh.com and PodCamp Pittsburgh. They invited us to check out some of the cool stuff that the Pittsburgh has to offer. I think inviting bloggers is a wise effort on the part of Pittsburgh tourism boosters. Why? Because search engines are king and bloggers garner royal attention in search engine results. Business goes to people with prominent search engine rankings.

Let’s say the invited bloggers visit the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and blog about the experience in a positive way. Some of blog posts will rank high in search engine results (especially if one of the bloggers is Chris Brogan).

That means if a Warhol fan Googles the artist, then she may well see one of these blog posts, click it, read it and if she is intrigued enough, put Pittsburgh on her vacation list. It isn’t complicated. If you don’t exist prominently in Google, then you are missing a huge slice of potential customers. Inviting bloggers to blog about your product (in this case Pittsburgh) is a surefire way to get noticed. It’s not that Pittsburgh will get noticed in a flashy kind of way. But Pittsburgh, or it’s individual assets, will get noticed in search results. Search leads to results. And those results lead to action. So by sponsoring this press tour, Pittsburgh is going to get more of the kind of action it needs.

(As an aside, Google actually employs a substantial amount of people in Pittsburgh, including a cousin of mine, but she doesn’t blog, so she’s not helping her hometown’s tourism efforts much).

Below are the micromedia moguls who will be touring the town. Stay tuned for some interweb madness as we storm the ‘burgh this week.

Chris Brogan – one of the few people who can legitimately be referred to as a “social media guru”

Franklin McMahon — producer of several top podcasts, including Rumor Girls

Grace Piper — the host of the foodtastic video podcast Fearless Cooking

Jim Russell — blogger, economist and Rust Belt expert

Marc and Fausto from Feast of Fools – hosts of America’s #1 GLBT podcast

Nathan King of blip.tv — representing the web’s emerging TV network

And…artist, entertainer, video producer, and visual facilitator Jonny Goldstein.