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Make a plan before launching
These tips apply to corporate websites and new media channels and are not exclusive to tourism. Every business needs a down-to-earth savvy strategy.
- Dive in – only after understanding the Social Media beast.
- Understand your target audience and give them what they want – simple information and quick insights.
- Incorporate images and videos – people love ‘em and saves writing a thousand words.
- Monitor and don’t fumble – both favorable interaction and negative feedback are to be expected and should be handled quickly.
What content tips and tricks do you need to know?
What will give you the edge over your competitors?
Whether you’re a luxury travel startup or established tourism operator, you probably need a social marketing strategist on your content/marketing teams. Someone to advise and train you on how to maximize your exposure on Facebook, Twitter and You Tube – not to mention creating postings for your blog and website.
We all have heard it before – content is king! Speak to any SEO expert and they will confirm that having the right content on your website is essential to get good rankings. When your website is constantly being updated with new content and images, it helps increase your site’s retention, bookings and enquiries, encourages repeat visits, and increases the browsing time.
But it is important to get the right balance of content as too much will overwhelm your visitors; too little and they will just go elsewhere. Just as it is important to get the right balance of social media pages working together.
Since the birth of social media, the type of content expected by potential customers has dramatically changed. Nowadays, when people visit your website, blog or Facebook they want to see reviews, videos and photos from other people who have used or experienced your service or product as this is believed to be more trustworthy.
Tip for New Media Novices
1. Seek an experienced web content writer/online marketing manager, someone who is a savvy strategist. This will not cost you an arm n a leg.
2. Work with the marketing writer to develop your Social Media Startup kit, something that complements your online and traditional marketing plan and budget. A savvy plan won’t break the bank.
3. Start with Facebook or a Blog, then progress to Twitter and You Tube if your destination/accommodation/tour/service warrants more interaction with your guests/customers. Monitor these daily, and reply with those who make comments.
4. Develop the content. Images (including videos) are as important as words – for the search engines and because users click on them a lot. If your content or marketing team does not have this material for the content writer, create and collect this first.
5. Create a template that suits your style, tone and story. The Blog and Facebook images can be different or close to your website design. A good web graphic designer will help you with colours, images, easy-to-read layout, great navigational buttons and useful widgets that help distribute your content and message.
For more tricks of the trade, ask Peacock Tourism Marketing’s Birds-of-a-Feather team. They’ve been involved in travel themselves, and creating content for other operators for many years.
No doubt about it. Today it’s imperative to extend your story.
How do you do it?
By integrateing the power and reach of social media marketing with traditional online strategies.
Start Here
1. Build a Social Media presence and personality. Have a plan to use available, current tools like Facebook, You Tube.
2. Cross link between Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, Blogs, Linked In and News Feeds to traditional marketing and company website.
3. Use a content manager– Use Word Press or Blogger and add postings and images at least weekly, if not daily.
4. Listen and Answer users – Comment back to your visitors, provide useful links, collect data and build a 1-on-1 customer relationship .
5. Check Statistics and Insights – review weekly and adjust campaign if necessary
The Big Benefits
The Birds of a Feather team at Peacock Tourism Marketing listens first and foremost. We are of the school where one-to-one communication is paramount. You talk, we listen, then together we develop a strategy and implement it with our sleeves rolled up. Peacock Tourism works on one client at a time – onsite at the startup and online afterwards.
What you Get
Get a Savvy Strategy – plain English, no techno babble, creative thinking, and tips you can implement quickly, cheaply, easily.
Get to know the team – The editor is your primary contact for website and blog content and images and how to make your online presence work smarter. The marketing manager is your primary contact for technology and insights on social media channels and Google/Facebook ads.
We’ve been hearing a lot about new editions of not so old books – but then everything in the online world changes rapidly. The title recently recommend by social media strategists is “The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly” by David Scott.
I’m waiting to buy the next edition out soon (because my local library only has one copy of the 2nd edition and I can pre-order the 3rd edition now).
There are so many books out there on related topics – from “The Zen of Social Media Marketing” to “Guerilla Social Media Marketing” by the same authors as “Guerilla Marketing, now in its 4th edition.
Feel overwhlemed? Join the crowd. But press on with your reading and then find a social media savvy strategist to help you with your online marketing and creating and maintaining your brand’s presence on social media channels. There are as many channels as there are books, but Peacock Tourism Marketing likes Linked In, Facebook, Twitter and You Tube, in addition to a good, easy to use content-management system enabeld website.
Proactive online marketing and social media networking are essential to reaching brand-loyal gay and lesbian travellers. Few know that or do it better than Rainbow Tourism, a leader in gay tourism publishing and marketing.
Rainbow Tourism was challenged by operators about advertising and being listed on the global RainbowTourism.com directory and referral site. A graph showing the source of the 25,000 monthly visitors to its web network is helping convince them of the need to be part of a big footprint.
Read about The Footprint.
Marketing travel to gays and lesbians takes “know how” for success.
Without question, the gay and lesbian market offers brand loyalty and a consumer demographic whose value makes this segment too promising to overlook or mishandle. Thanks to JD Anderson for this article. Read more.
The gay market has more disposable income, and has a propensity for travel. There is a trend toward more diversified travel experiences, and this combined with discretionary income and a greater variety of options, puts the “gay market” in a league of its own.
In Australia and elsewhere, increased competition among companies for this market has turned individual marketing into savvy and joint partnering opportunities. Hotels, tour operators and restaurants and bars in Australia’s Gold Coast have come together to partner with Gold Coast Tourism and with Rainbow Tourism and Pink Choice to reach this market, for instance.
As the article points out, with global examples, this is the wave of the future. Go to the experts if you need help getting on the surf board to ride the wave.
Peacock Tourism Marketing. Helping you strut your stuff.
Social Media Help is Available for Tourism Operators and Niche Marketers
Study Shows Time Pays With Social Media Marketing
<2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, authored by Michael Stelzner.>
Does your own experience match up with the results of this study? Make no mistake about it: a true investment of time and resources is necessary to see significant social media marketing success.
* 12.5% of marketers spend more than 20 hours each week on social media.
* The time spent on social sites is not as important as the actual results. What we really should be looking at is what kind of results are you getting for that 1 hour, 4 hours, even 12 hours per week.
* Increased traffic, lead generation and happy, connected customers all are factors in deciding which social media strategies are working best for your business.
* Where we’re seeing the outsourcing trend is in the larger organizations. According to the report, “the larger the organization, the more likely outsourcing is taking place. For example, 25.7% of large businesses and 25% of mid-sized businesses are currently outsourcing, compared to only 10.6% of sole proprietors.” Like many marketing trends, what starts with the “big guys” tends to make its way to the smaller businesses—therefore, we may be seeing more outsourcing overall in the coming year.
I thought I was well-round when I graduated as a Journalist and Business Communicator, (Point Park College and Temple University) with skills in the Big 3 of that era – newspapers, TV and radio.
Today, as a tourism marketing writer and coach, I have to use the new Big 3: Facebook, Twitter, You Tube. Not to mention blogging and keeping myriad websites up to date with content and images.
How are you adapting? I can relate to trying to keep up and being “Still Crazy” like the author of this timely article.
Chain Communications
Retweeted by Peacock Tourism Marketing, Dee Farrell
What’s the scarcest resource of the 21st century?
Human attention. That was the opening salvo at the alumni weekend of the Columbia Journalism School this spring. The theme of the weekend was, “The Future of Text.” I earned a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia in the 60s. I’d never gone to an alumni weekend, but with newspapers, magazines and books expected to became extinct in our lifetimes, the choice is clear: adapt or die. Columbia is determined to reinvent journalism. They’ve set up a new dual degree master’s program in journalism and computer engineering. (I’ve never met a journalist who could be an engineer, but I guess a new breed is mutating) Columbia also created a department of Internet journalism, and they’re running boot camps in social media skills for their students and alumni. It’s not enough to do great writing, they say. ”You have to build, curate and enhance your online brand.” The school’s tech guru, Sree Sreenivasan, says “We still teach reporting, writing and storytelling, but your work has to be seen and your readers have to evangelize for it.” Sree — Twitterista
I sign up for Sree’s two-hour workshop in social media. He says the Big Three are: facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I’m already on two of them, so I think: I can do this. He says the N.Y. Times just appointed its first social media editor, “to listen to social media and evangelize for it in the newsroom.” Social media, he says, is where “radio was in 1912. TV was in 1950. The Internet was in 1996.” Facebook has 400 million users. ”It’s one of the biggest time sinks in history,” Sree says, and “it will continue to grow and consume people’s time.” But here’s the problem. They’re constantly changing how facebook works and they don’t tell you when they make changes! ”Facebook is not helpful, transparent or easy,” Sree says. SO WHY DOES FACEBOOK RULE? Why doesn’t someone build a friendlier mousetrap? Sree says you need a facebook strategy, or you’ll get overwhelmed. I’m already there. You confirm a dozen friends and overnight, you have 100 requests for friends and your wall is so full you can’t read what’s on it. If you write a book, Sree says, you need a special facebook page for it and video for YouTube. ”So start taking videos while you interview people and write,” he says. ”YouTube is the second most popular search engine in the world, so you must have your work on it.” He moves on to LinkedIn, whose primary purpose is networking for jobs. ”You should have a presence on it before you need it,” Sree says. Okay, I’m on LinkedIn and YouTube (not well), but the site I fear and loathe and so far refuse to join is Twitter. He says the maximum post on twitter is 140 characters. ”Every newspaper headline is 80 to 90 characters and it’s able to tell you what the story is,” he says. ”So 140 is plenty.” He keeps his own tweets to 120 characters, so they can be re-tweeted in a chain. Re-tweet? That’s one of a barrage of foreign terms he spits out: Hash Tag, Tweet Deck, bit.ly, Hoot Suite, Mashable. I take notes faster and faster until it feels like I’m going under. After two hours, I need resuscitation. Sree says, “Don’t feel overwhelmed and don’t feel pressured. Social media is still in its infancy. Just take one step at a time. But do take a step.” Heeding his advice, I’m going to remodel my blog and will be posting daily on all things about Life after 50. I’m calling it Stilly Crazy, unless one of you can suggest a better title.