FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Meet Minneapolis wins Travel + Leisure 2013 Social Media in Travel + Tourism (SMITTY) Award for Best Blog

(MINNEAPOLIS) June 3, 2013 Meet Minneapolis, Convention & Visitor Associations blog on Minneapolis.org has been honored with a Travel + Leisure Social Media in Travel + Tourism (SMITTY) Award for Best Blog. The awards showcase the most innovative uses of social media in the travel industry.

Started in 2012, the Meet Minneapolis blog ranges in style, format and writers. The City VIP section features posts from Meet Minneapolis as well as the minds of Minneapolis celebrities. Below, the Insider Post area spotlights random members of the Minneapolis community to allow a platform for their unique perspective on the city.

Its vital to our site that we create unique content that cant be matched by anyone, said Amy Alegi, senior vice president, Destination Branding and Strategy, Meet Minneapolis. The blog enhances the online experience for visitors and residents of Minneapolis. We want our site to be the go-to resource for anyone who visits the city.

The Meet Minneapolis blog has been host to a range of important celebrity guests including Guy Fieri recommending his favorite places to eat, Nick Cordelione (actor who played Timon in The Lion King at the Orpheum Theatre) discussing theater in Minneapolis and style guru Mark Brunetz giving renovation tips. The most successful blog post came from former Minnesota Viking Chris Kluwe about the life of an NFL punter. In the first three days, the post had 60,000 visitors and 250 sites link to the post, including Sports Illustrated Online, calling it the best thing youll read on the Internet all day.

Social media has become essential to travel planning, whether youre looking for inspiration, booking a hotel or sharing the memories. Travel + Leisure sets out to identify the travel industrys true innovators in the digital age. Entries were judged by an independent panel of social media experts including Lee McCabe, head of travel at Facebook; Kim Mance, founder of TBEX (Travel Blog Exchange), TV host and writer; and Brian Cooley, editor at large for CNET, among others.

Also on the digital media front, Meet Minneapoliss mobile site was recently recognized by the American Marketing Association Spectrum awards in Phoenix, Ariz. On May 15, mobiManage was awarded Best Mobile Site for their work with the Meet Minneapolis mobile web project. Tasked with taking Meet Minneapolis to the mobile marketplace, mobiManage created an effective medium for interaction between Meet Minneapolis and visitors before, during and after their trip, allowing them to easily navigate the large amount of resources and data that Meet Minneapolis provides online.

This years SMITTY Award winners will be featured in the Travel + Leisure July 2013 issue, available on newsstands June 21^st, and on travelandleisure.com now.

ABOUT MEET MINNEAPOLIS

Meet Minneapolis is a private, not-for-profit, member-based association. It actively promotes and sells the Minneapolis area as a destination for conventions and meetings, works to maximize the visitor experience and markets the city as a desirable tourist destination to maximize the economic benefit of the greater Minneapolis area.

Online: www.minneapolis.org and http://go.minneapolis.org

On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/meetminneapolis?ref=ts

On Twitter: http://twitter.com/meetminneapolis

On Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/meetminneapolis/

MEDIA CONTACT

Kristen Montag, media & communication manager, 612.767.8038, kristenm@minneapolis.org, Minneapolis_PR on Twitter.

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