By Jacki Kelley, Yahoo! Category Development Officer, TravelUnderstanding, engaging and motivating consumers has always been at the heart of marketing initiatives.

Published: 02 Aug 2006

By Jacki Kelley, Yahoo! Category Development Officer, Travel

Understanding, engaging and motivating consumers has always been at the heart of marketing initiatives.

Today, the consumer is in the driver’s seat like never before and technology can help facilitate the conversation. As BusinessWeek recently reported in its story entitled, It’s A Whole New Web, “It's no longer all about idly surfing and passively reading, listening, or watching. It's about doing: sharing, socializing, collaborating, and, most of all, creating.” Our industry has much to gain with this new phenomenon - dubbed Web 2.0 - because at the heart of travel is the desire to experience and share.

Social media is at the center of Web 2.0, where people around the world create, share and discuss their experiences, opinions and content. It is an exciting part of the Internet that is here to stay. From creating blogs about their personal interests, which are available for the world to see, to sharing travel photo albums with just close family and friends, consumers are creating social communities.

Clearly, consumers with this much power can cause marketers some trepidation, but engaging consumers is not about completely ceding control of your brand; it’s about creating a meaningful conversation. And as brands search for the “holy grail” in de-commoditizing the industry, what better way then to showcase experience versus discounting.

Rather than think about ways to react to user-generated content, marketers should consider how to instigate it. Brands have an opportunity to integrate trusted and credible user-generated content into their efforts to increase relevancy and reach their audiences.

There are many ways to adapt your marketing strategy with social media applications. Here are a few suggestions to help get you started:

1. Be a consumer. Familiarize yourself with the sites that are indicative of social networking:

- Myspace.com: Kids are a great way to see what the future holds. Join the more than 75 million teens who are hooked on this public virtual community site which allows them to meet people, browse profiles and make new friends around the world.

- Flickr.com: Share your photos with friends or the public by tagging your pictures and uploading them to a site. Users determine whether viewing is public or private.

- Wikipedia: Write an entry to gain the experience of sharing your expertise and editing the web.

- Ning.com: Create your own mash-up by blending content from multiple sites to customize your content.

2. Visit travel related sites that have invested in social media. Two examples:

Kayak.com: use mash-ups to blend fares with Google Maps to provide perspective.

Yahoo Travel: visit Yahoo’s recently-launched Trip Planner (www.travel/yahoo.com/trip) where users can plan their trip, create their own customized travel guide, and share their travel experiences with family, friends, and, if desired, other Yahoo! Travel users who can rate and vote on the best plans. See how your brand ranks. It is interesting to note that the launch of the Trip Planner was sponsored by MasterCard, which is not new to using user-generated-content as a brand-builder; consumers helped create their very successful “priceless” campaign.

3. Consider the ways in which you can engage consumers. How can you integrate social media tools into your marketing strategy? In what ways can you use social media to help personalize a customer experience? How can these tools help in your effort to be unique v. ubiquitous?

The thing to remember is consumers trust other consumers. Social media enables marketers to leverage engaged and knowledgeable consumers as effective partners in influencing other consumers. And that ultimately is good business.