Have you noticed the rain? And seen the impact on tourism in the UK? Easy to think the weather is out of our hands and there's nothing we can do about it. But it's not all doom and gloom.

Last week I saw many "had loads of cancellations because of the rain" "isn't the rain awful" comments from tourism businesses on twitter. They  needed a moan but those messages were also seen by visitors. One of my projects is to run the Dales Tourism Business Network, working with around 250 businesses. It bothered me that we weren't really helping ourselves and the negative tweets were probably deterring others from booking their last minute break in the Yorkshire Dales (where I live). 

On Friday I thought I'd try something more positive and tweeted four suggestions of things to do despite the rain. I received some great responses & retweets. So I created a special "rain page" on one of the websites I run - the Dales Tourism Business Network website & tweeted about it: "For Dales tourism businesses: Rain won't stop play... there IS something we can do about it - www.dalestourism.com/rain.html". 

I emailed businesses in the network and asked others to tweet about the idea of putting together a simple list of all the good things visitors can still enjoy in the Yorkshire Dales in the rain. On Sunday I wrote down my own ideas and collated those I'd received into one long list, put it on www.dalesdiscoveries.com/rain.html, and tweeted about it. 

The idea was simple: to show visitors that there's plenty to do in the Yorkshire Dales, despite the rain. Our list is now 6 pages long, with over 70 suggestions on it and it's still growing. It cost nothing to put together, gave tourism businesses something more positive to do and they've really rallied round. I've now lost count of the RTs and number of tourism businesses who have forwarded to guests, printed off the list for use in their holiday cottages, provided links to the list or put it on their own website. 

All it needed was the initial suggestion and the positivity which has resulted from this idea has been enormous. Every other email I've received in the last day or so has been a heartfelt "we were really suffering and needed to do something - thank you for this idea" from a tourism business. 

Sometimes we think problems are too big to resolve and sometimes we think we need £000s of public sector funding to solve problems. Sometimes we just need to do something, and stop moaning...

What do you do when your funding is limited, you have few staff and want to do more marketing? Get visitors to do your work for you! Not as crazy as it sounds - this is  about using social media in a very effective way.

Most businesses know social media is important but feel daunted by how much they have to do to benefit from its power. But it doesn't have to be like that. 

One of the best things about social media tools such as twitter and facebook is that if you're clever you can start campaigns but then move out of the way and encourage others to keep them going. VisitBritain is leading the way in using social media.  It's one of only a handful of organisations, (alongside multinationals and big brands such as Adidas) to be highlighted as great examples in facebook’s guide to marketing good practice, with its LoveUK campaign.

On twitter @VisitBritain is seen as the most (we’re talking worldwide) influential tourist board on Twitter. In the latest international league of companies under the “Influencers in Travels” category, @VisitBritain came out ahead of @GoogleTravel, @VirginBlue, and @LATimesTravel. It's one of just two public sector organisations in the travel table.

My favourite aspect of VisitBritain’s social media activity is its superblog. When you consider how many people write about various aspects of Britain on a daily basis, it makes perfect sense to round up some of them and create a superblog with an at-a-glance overview launched an innovative UK travel blog VisitBritainSuperBlog.comharnessing the social-media power of 20 of the most influential travel bloggers in the world.

Using the free blogging platform WordPress, VisitBritain has brought together the leading travel bloggers from across the globe with the aim to create the UK’s most influential travel blog. Among the 20 bloggers who are providing inspirational world-class UK travel content for free, there are 11 bloggers from the Top 50 Online Travel Influencers including those in positions 1, 2 and 3, bloggers for the New York Times and the Huffington Post, Britain’s Best Travel Blogger 2011 and the third highest graded person in the UK on Twitter- second only to BBC and Guardian News. This “dream team” of bloggers are based in 14 countries around the world and provide VisitBritainSuperBlog.com with an instant, targeted Twitter following of over 400,000 and rising.

But perhaps the best news in this story is the fact that anyone can follow their example. All these channels are available for anyone to use - they're free, easy to set up and if you've got good content and stories to pass on about your destination or business, there's nothing stopping you from telling the world. Or better still, encouraging others to do so because it's the third party endorsements from visitors that are most powerful, not the tweets and "please like us" pleas from attractions and accom