Theo and I have been involved in the Ultimate Thailand Explorers contest for almost two months now. I first saw the contest discussed on a Yahoo News story back on Sept. 1; I sent it to Theo that day suggesting that we enter. We started planning our video that evening and completed the shooting the next weekend. Because we've been involved in the contest for so long, we've seen various trends among the contestants come and go, and we'd even be so bold as to claim that we started some of those trends. We are the UTE original innovators.
We knew that if we wanted to have a chance in the contest, we needed to show off our social networking prowess. We decided that it would serve us best to have a blog and a Twitter account devoted strictly to the contest, giving daily updates on our new content, and also on the numerous reasons why we were the perfect choice as the Ultimate Thailand Explorers. So as I finished editing our video footage, Theo was hard at work setting up our blog and connecting it to our new Twitter site. We were among the first teams to have contest exclusive social media accounts that we promoted through our video, and as you all know, we used them extensively. In fact, if you watch the end of our video, we don't just mention "We'll be on Twitter." We actually gave our Twitter address. Other groups simply stated they'd have these accounts, but it wasn't until we popularized it, it came in vogue.
We were also among one of the first groups to set up a Facebook fan page. We learned quickly that the fan page was one of the best ways to send updates to our friends and family. Soon everyone we knew was interested not only in our progress through the contest, but also in Thailand as a travel destination. While others floundered with group pages, our fan page hummed right along updating our friends' walls the second we posted an update.
While we weren't the first team to do a second video, we were the first with original content and not a blooper reel or a lame attempt at humor as moronic robots. We wanted people to learn something from our videos, whether it was about our personalities, our travelogue skills, or even a culinary video people could emulate in their own kitchens.
After we learned we were not selected as semi-finalists in the UTE contest, we continued to be trendsetters. Theo and I discussed our options and decided to keep blogging about our qualifications and the contest itself. We also wanted to publicly express our support to the teams we thought would best promote Thailand as a destination. So we then became the first teams to publicly endorse a full slate of UTE contestants. (And we don't think they're doing so badly so far!) Granted, we didn't sell our votes as some of our imitators did, so I guess they did do something we didn't.
So stay tuned. While Theo and I might not be heading to Thailand this year, we will continue to lead the way in the UTE contest. You don't want to miss it.
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