The Social Media Traveler: Who is looking where &
why?
Social
Media is taking control away from the advertisers,
and giving it to the consumers …and
not all consumers are alike!.
Patricia Brusha (
hospitality.net)
says there are 5 distinct types of social users:
the Butterfly, the Selective,
the Connected, the Starter and
the New Norm. This is a good start to
understanding social behavior and creating your
online social media travel marketing strategy.
Variables
Butterfly
Selective
Connected
Starter
NewNorm
age
15-25
30-45
all
professionals
over
45
5-9
Favorite
Media
mySpace,
Facebook, Youtube
tripadvisor,
travelpod,
tripit, Wiki
Linkedin, Plaxo
FastPitch,wiwih
Twitter
late
to start they
will have a wide interest but explore slowly
Webkinz,
Disney, Nickelodeon and Barbie!
Motivation
Sharing experiences. video
and photos
use tools & web2Resources
elite community
processional
associations
intrigued
but not quite sure what to do, how or where
learning,
get points, rewards, games,
Marketing Strategy
Requirements
Go
where they are
niche website,
themes marketing,
use web2 sharing
loyalty/rewards
programs,
RSS feeds or alerts
not interested online newsleters
easy to use instruction
in photos and text
Create a non intimidating place to ask
questions
they
are part of the buying decision. Have a
kids area on your website
Social media applications are not for everyone.
But the technology used is become a standard
across all platforms. Interaction is the norm
on the Internet. See
- The
new order of the web
Micro Blog
Publish headlines linking to your news
website/blog /company to followers. Its
got to be newsworthy, helpful, interesting
or fun or you will get turned off.
Building followers is
not easy. There are marketing service
that can help, such as http://twitproquo.com
(not focused). The best option is to search
Twitter for a travel market or travel
focus group, like golf. Click "Follow"
on all the results. Most will follow you
in return.
Example: We wanted to announce arcRes
travel marketing and travel bookings application
for Facebook. We searched for Hotels and
followed many - over 100 followed us and
we sent out a 140 character announcement:
First
Facebook travel app! makes facebook a
booking channel! easy with http://arcResBookings.com
see http://tr.im/FaceBookDemo. example:
http://tr.im/faceBookings
Video is one of the
most popular forms of information sharing.
Setup a YouTube account
and post the video. Setup your own webpage
and use the YoyTube imbedded code to display
the video on your page: see
BarbadosBoardwalk.com environment-talk
note the video is imbedded from YoyTube.
A successful creative
- see
will it blend
Photo sharing, photography
related networking, worldwide
It is used to share personal
photographs, and is also widely used by
bloggers and journalist as a photo repository.
It allows photos to be tagged and organized
so that others can find what they are
looking for. Putting
hotel, activities and destination photos
on line is easy and is good travel marketing
exposure. Flickr gets top rating on Search
engines, use it to list your travel
keywords and get links to your site(YouTube).
If you care to write
about your destination, travel experiences,
holiday experiences or guest experiences
etc., then a blog is great travel Marketing
tool
There are many blog solutions to choose
from. Wordpress and Googles Blogger are
amongst the best know. Blogger also allows
you to integrated your distribution with
twitter, digg and facebook etc. The Blog
can be very strategic; if you find your
Search Engine ranking is low for certain
keywords write a blog for each keyword
and structure them to get ranked. Neil
Maclean (thetravelprblog.com-travel marketer)
used this technique with great success
- he advises "write conversational,
but targeted and regularly updated content"
with links that are "structured webaddress/category/post".
Delicious
Social bookmarking
Good for storing, organising,
sharing, and discovering web bookmarks.
Sharing links can be helpful in travel
marketing. You add your own links and
share them with others. By adding the
Delicious button
Bookmark this on Delicious to your
webpages, travellers
will be able to add your pages to their
bookmarks.
Digg
News website made
to discover and share content from the Internet.
News Bookmarking
You can add any travel
news including your own but it cant be
a duplicate. The travel news or travel
marketing piece you submit gets voted
by other users who DIGG it (click the
digg button) - If it gets enough votes
it moves to the top and more people see
it. Its hard to create a travel article
or a a travel marketing slot that will
be popular. Example of a popular piece
is http://digg.com/d1r7dv
But the real advantage
for a Travel Website is that a DIGG increases
your chances of getting good Search Engines
rank (SEO). YouTube:
Digg & Tourism SEO!
It
has appeal to professions who want to create
a network of like minded people.
If you have a Linkedin account you can build
a network and send network friends updates
and messages of specials and events that
might interest. Stressed executives need
a holiday! As with all Social sites a good
listing on LinkedIn
can get your Tourism Website on Search results
- SEO (YouTube)
Google
Freinds Connect (GFC)
Googles new Social Media
This
has the potential to be very powerful. It
is Googles answer to sites like Facebook.
Coupled with * Google Profile * Gmail *
Google Reader * Google Reader Shared Items
* Google Blogs * Googles Search and more
to come - It will be the largest integrated
social network platform in the world. Google
is also rumored to be building connections
to all other major network (like the add
it button below). Now it just needs friends.
Start a GFC now and learn about it - it
will be big. YouTube:
Travel Friends Connect
RSS
* Really Simple Syndication (ie: easy publishing
- a social service)
RSS
is a way to publish your holiday news, travel
specials, packages and destination events.
For the tourist looking for deals and other
news - it offers them a way to get news
delivered to them by email or to a site
like their Google page. You need to subscribe
to a RSS like arcRes RSS that will distribute
your information to hundreds of these sites
Video
RSS in 2 easy steps
Example: Barbados.org Holiday Specials -
RSS
GoogleWave
* powerful communications and collaboration
platform
New
technology that does not fit any category,
but many are saying its going to replace
email. Its best described as combination
of wikis, email, IM, VCS, blogs, collaboration
& doc managers ina single interface. Its
going to change everything. For latest links
see our blog
on wave and the future. This technology
has great promise but its slower than expect
to catch on. Looks like it may be lead by
application developers - some travel companies
are already using it as the platform for
their collaborative social sytems
Google
Buzz Google answer to twiiter etc.
Still in beta in early
2010. Off to shaky start with gamil integration
with that included mailing that might
be considered violation of pricacy. Mails
list are recomended now rather than automatic.
Like twitter you can send out news buzzes.
You can also add
a buzz button to your blog and website
pages (see comment), so that others can
buzz your news for you!
There are a lot more - for an up-to-date list
see wikipedia
social media
To add all social media links to your website,
use addthis socialmedia linking services
Get it from
addthis.com
Good Social Media Resources for Travel &
Tourism Marketing:
http://tr.im/harvards10tools | http://tr.im/ISMListening
| http://tr.im/2009traveltrends |
Check
the comments below for latest updates and news
Building
a Social Media Travel & Tourism Strategy
Its not a case of which
one to use, if you want to excel use them all.
You need Social Marketing in conjunction
with all your Web presence. The Social Media
is a new market, with a new approach,
but it overlaps with the traditional.
More importaly it feeds into and supports your
web marketing, enhancing your SEO and web
exposure in a dramatic way.
Each Social network and channel has its own
following and focus. You can do a lot of it
yourself - But as a Hotel Manager or tourism
operator - don't make this a full time job.
Most likely you don't have the knowledge, time
or the tools (applications) to make it sing!.
Your best option is to work with a travel marketing
company, such as AXSES. Together decide what
parts you can and want to do. Get the training
you need and work with a your tourism partners
to market your travel business and brand in
conjunction with your entire sales, marketing,
distribution, promotion and reservation processing.
Everything that you do magnifies all of the
parts - Do it all right and your travel brand
and marketing will be a success.
5 Keys to success with Social
Media for tourism
1. SEO, SEO, SEO - all these site are
authorities, listing on them helps your Search
ranking
2. New marketing channels -more potential
clients and bookings/reservations. 3. Effective communications medium
- broadcasting message - and one-to-one dialogue
4. New way to engage
-
By consent marketing - as powerful as word of
mouth 5. Fun and Easy to use technology - photo
albums, videos, newswire - events - discussions
- groups
About
AXSES Travel Marketing
AXSES is a tourism development and destination marketing company, recognised
as a leader in travel marketing technology, branding and travel shopping,
see tourism meets technology.
AXSES travel shopping experience
offers the relevance and clarity of 'Google-like search', 'DoubleClick like
advertising, tracking and reporting', 'RealHolidays like expert systems & dynamic
packaging' and 'Expedia like travel pricing'.
This Next generation Travel Shopping Experience is a First of a Kind. http://TourismPlatform.com. It moves
travel sites from primarily a display vehicle to a strategic branding, direct
marketing, shopping and booking platform for hotels, car rental companies and
travel providers. It provides integrated and targeted messaging opportunities,
as well as the ability to deliver dynamic graphical ads (bookable-ads) and interactive
shopping.
AXSES builds marketing and
management tools for travel suppliers. Axses owns over 30 travel portals promoting
direct sales to its hotel and tourism clients. AXSES supplier tools
include Internet marketing portals, website tools like calendars, blogs, content
management, guest tracking and travel planning, dynamic packaging, comparison
shopping, reservations, bookings systems and social media applications.
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