Tourism board approves video funding

GONZALES — The Gonzales Convention and Visitor Bureau met Oct. 18 to discuss a handful of items including funding for another tourism video, an election of officers and discussion of goals for 2019.

Before any action items, Tourism Director Clint Hille touted Texas Travel Talk’s reach during the staff reports portion of the meeting.

“I started getting a little bit of feedback,” Hille said at the meeting. “Just on Instagram and Twitter they’ve logged over 209 posts for 6,000,610 [impressions] so far. We’ll start getting more statistics and things next week.”

After the meeting, Hille clarified with the Inquirer that the information shared at the meeting was “just some preliminary topline results from Twitter and a few from Instagram.”

“[Kami Huyse at Texas Travel Talk] indicated she would be getting me a list of all the stats and upcoming articles in the coming week,” Hill stated.

In general, an impression is a term that refers to a point which an ad or a post is displayed on a web page. No engagement is necessary for an impression to be counted. Instagram and Twitter define impressions as total number of times your posts have been “seen.” However, the term “seen” can be loosely interpreted. For example, if a user scrolls through their Twitter feed without actually reading the posts, that is considered being “seen” or counting as an impression, hence why stats showing impressions tend to be quite larger than actual engagement numbers.

During action items, there was discussion on possible funding for Expedition Texas to film a Christmas special featuring Gonzales that would cost $1,500 to produce. The board would provide up to $750 while the other $750 will be paid by businesses interested in being highlighted in the 24-minute video at a cost of $150 per business.

“My understanding is [Expedition Texas] will film a lot of content and we will have some discretion as to what goes in it and there will be a lot of film that won’t necessarily be used that we will have access to,” Hille explained to the board.

Expedition Texas doesn’t hit the San Antonio market, one that surrounds all of Gonzales and neighboring counties, but it does reach channels such as The CW in Austin, TX47 in Dallas/Fort Worth, KTXS 12, an ABC affiliate in Abilene/Sweetwater, Fox 44 in Waco/Temple/Killeen, CBS 19 in East Texas and Roku TV, a standalone streaming device that allows users to watch content over the internet from various services such as Netflix or YouTube. Currently, Expedition Texas’ most popular video on their YouTube channel is a piece on Tiger Creek from nearly five years ago that’s reached 3,791 views.

Hille’s argument for the video focuses more on access to footage, rather than mainly on what markets it’ll hit.

“The way I kind of look at this, this is the cost of one magazine ad in one issue somewhere or one month’s billboard and we’ve talked about producing a video in Gonzales, I don’t think we’re going to come anywhere near producing a video for $1,500,” he said. “It’s something we’ll be able to show at trade shows and link to our websites and everything. It seems like a pretty minor investment to what we will be receiving.”

Members of the board agreed and voted to approve the $750 amount while Barbara Crozier, who owns Laurel Ridge Inn & Antiques, abstained from voting.

In other business:

• Dawn O’Donnell was elected president of the board while Barbara Crozier was elected as vice president. A secretary wasn’t elected, though the board looks to address it in the next meeting.

• Suggestions were made to update the board’s goals for 2019, such as possibly adding an event in March to commemorate Texas Independence Day, though nothing was decided at the meeting.