Beijing Discovery Tours

I’ve recently started using some of the available social networking options such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter as well as this and an earlier attempt at blogging to try to expand Beijing Discovery Tours‘ presence on the Internet. At first I absolutely hated doing it - to me it used to seem like a person that writes a blog is just “showing off” and trying to get attention, but it has actually been kind of fun to see how these different applications can (and cannot) work together. Also, over the past year or so I have really changed my mind about blogs, especially living in a foreign country so far away from home. My sister-in-law, a couple of her sisters, and their mother all have blogs, and they do a great job of updating them and posting photos of the family that are great for helping me to keep up with what is going on back home. I have 4 nephews now between 10 months and 5 years old, and they are all growing up so fast - that is the worst thing about living abroad - not being able to see my family on a regular basis. But with my sister-in-law’s family blogs, 3 or 4 weekly emails from my own mother and a phone call every other week or so (Yahoo Messenger’s voice service is outstanding - $.01 per minute for me to call the USA from China!), I am able to at least keep up with what is going on back home. Hopefully in the not-too-distant future, Beijing Discovery Tours will have grown to also include trips for Chinese tourists to visit the United States, particularly Oklahoma, although I don’t know how well that will go over with most Chinese people who seem to think that the USA consists of New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. It will be a challenge to attract Chinese tourists to Oklahoma but that’s what business is all about, building up markets that do not currently exist and finding a unique niche where your business can excel. It will be interesting to see if we can build a successful business by targeting Oklahoma as a tourist destination for people from China.