A few weeks ago we relaunched GetLostMT.com. Get Lost, a campaign to promote in-state tourism, initially took the form of a site based on user-submitted essays, photographs, and videos detailing how the author "got lost" in Montana.

We received hundreds of submissions from people and some fantastic and inspirational stories and photos. We also found, buried in those stories, a wealth of new places and things to do. In looking at how to evolve the site we decided to capitalize on those places, making them the centerpiece to the submission. This adjustment to the focus allowed us to do a few things to greatly enhance the ability of the site to serve as a travel planning resource.

Places

By orienting the site around places instead of stories we shifted the purpose of the site. Stories are still important, without a story a place is just a name and address. But places can be plotted to an absolute latitude and longitude, they can be categorized and tagged, and they can be collected into lists.

Trips

The ability for places to be collected into lists allowed us to create themed trips which pull together a number of individual places with a common element or location. We also added a tool for individuals to collect places into their own list, a bucket list of the places they want to visit.

Facebook Integration

By integrating with Facebook we were able to greatly reduce the amount of information we asked for in the form. In fact, we were able to skip asking for personal information altogether. The process for signing up for the site is simple and straightforward and takes advantage of a tool that the site's users are already on. People don't have to remember a username or password and are able to get through the submission process quickly. By adding a user layer we were also able to allow people to come back again and again to submit new places or add things to their bucket list.