Social Media and Marketing

by Josiah Mackenzie The last few days have been full of good conversations and presentations about using social media in the travel industry.

Published: 10 Mar 2011

by Josiah Mackenzie

The last few days have been full of good conversations and presentations about using social media in the travel industry.

Gina from EyeForTravel was able to assemble an interesting group of people (at EyeforTravel’s Social Strategies Conference in San Francisco) to discuss what’s changing in this area.

Some of the concepts:

1. Biggest opportunity in social media is bringing the story back into travel – Doug Miller

2. When scarcity is removed, the value of (social) filtering increases – Leonard Brody

3. Impulse buy trend will be short lived – Cree Lawson (not everyone can hop on a plane and fly halfway around the world)

4. “I don’t use Quora. I have work to do.” – Yen Lee

5. If you have 50,000 Facebook fans, so what? – Yen Lee

6. We pass up opportunities to ask about customer intent all the time. Do you know what your guests want from your experience?

7. CRM is something software does. Engaging is something people do. – Leonard Brody

8. If relevance is the engine of the search era, then relationship is the engine of the social era. (via Andy Ellwood)

9. “Why do hotels charge me for WiFi? MacDonald’s gives it to me for free!” – Shashank Nigam

10. Is it okay to use your blackberry now? Is it okay to whip out your crossword puzzle now? – Del Ross

11. People under 30 only use email to talk to people over 30 – Del Ross

12. My personal social media profiles work better for my business than my business social media profiles. – Sylvie Laitre

13. What is Gowalla? A social network that inspires people to share the places they go and discover the extraordinary in the world. (A good definition for location-based services in general)

14. People checking in via location-based services are giving their endorsement on the place. It becomes part of their story. – Andy Ellwood

15. If you want to act on social media insights, you must invest in infrastructure now. – Geoff Lewis

16. People are willing to share personal data if you show the value for them when you ask for it – Geoff Lewis

17. Consumers are going to use whatever social network they want. Your job isn’t to promote a platform, but go where they are.

18. Location based services are a near-perfect convergence of customer intent and marketing opportunity – Susan Black

19. If [Groupon buyers] can’t afford rack rate experience-post discount they won’t return. As dealseekers, they seek new deals. – Michael Hraba

20. Stop marketing to people. Start loving them.

21. “Our goal is to create fans – not just guests, but also turning employees and communities into fans.” – JDV Hotels

22. Allow your community to show off and show their personality in social media. – Lonely Planet

23. Paid search and sponsored social content can be helpful in gaining traction when launching campaigns – Tim Burger

24. Build social media marketing toolkits for local teams to use. This ensures brand consistency, eliminates need for agencies.

25. Use dedicated phone numbers to track social media promotions.

26. Cool, interesting social media is done by cool, interesting people. – Dwight Sholes

27. Treat every customer like a VIP – KLM Airlines