Social Media and Marketing

A social media agency has set out a five-point plan to help the travel industry navigate the world of Facebook and Twitter and avoid the mistakes that saw United Airlines swamped by a media frenzy caused by the band Sons of Maxwell’s YouTube video.

Published: 20 Aug 2009

A social media agency has set out a five-point plan to help the travel industry navigate the world of Facebook and Twitter and avoid the mistakes that saw United Airlines swamped by a media frenzy caused by the band Sons of Maxwell’s YouTube video.

Yomego says it possible to harness the power of online communities.

Yomego’s research and insight manager Joe Hughes, says doing nothing is not an option. He said the case of United Airlines shows that it is easy to become a victim of social media.

Case of United Airlines: A small Canadian country music band, Sons of Maxwell travelled to Nebraska last year, on tour. During their scheduled United Airlines flight, the lead singer’s $3,500 guitar was damaged. The singer spent the next nine months talking to United Airlines trying to get compensation, but to no avail. So, he wrote a song and recorded a video about his experience. The video was added to YouTube, and within two weeks it had been watch over 3.8 million times and the story was taken up by the traditional media. The song was released on iTunes becoming the number one country track and a quick Google search reveals in excess of six million other websites, blogs, comments and links to the Youtube video. During the same period, United’s share price dropped by 11%. And whilst it may never be possible to quantify exactly how much revenue United has lost because of this event, it has had a considerable effect and this will undoubtedly continue for some time.

“To ensure this doesn’t happen to you means being brave and courageous about seizing the social media opportunity. Using social media to build brand awareness and revenue is an increasingly essential part of any travel business and being proactive is vital,” said Hughes.

The Yomego social media survival guide for travel companies has five major recommendations:

1. Listen closely.

Your customers are talking about your services online, whether you’re involved or not. But, the first step to engagement is: take the time to listen. Find out where people are congregating, tune in to what they’re saying, and monitor the conversation closely. This information, if properly interpreted should form the basis of tactical intervention (which would have helped United Airlines) and should inform future social media marketing initiatives.

2. Who goes where?

Who is talking about your brand, on what social media channels?
You’ve followed the discussion; now you should be looking at segmenting your social media audience. Who is using what site?
Once you know, you’ll see patterns emerging, you’ll know how to respond, and appeal to the various groups. Divide this audience into passive and active members of your community, both are important.

3. Make friends.

You’ve sat back long enough, now get involved. And based on what you’ve learned so far, set up some short term aims.
Jumping straight in can look like blatant advertising, which doesn’t hold much ground in social media circles. Instead, start making friends with key bloggers, or relevant twitter users with large number s of followers, or launch some basic social media apps. Make sure it’s relevant, interesting, useful and genuine.

4. Be involved.

Now you have a basic presence in place and you’re active in the social media space, engage with and start growing your audience.
There are various approaches to this like, content seeding, more in-depth social media apps, the growth of fan pages on social networks and increased activity through blog channels. This is the time to start running social media specific campaigns targeting different groups and demographics.

5. No place like home.

Now you’re a legitimate and active member of social media, you can start providing spaces your audience can populate.
Brands can now consider creating their own social network, blog, community site - giving their audience (who hang out in multiple locations across the web) a place to come together, get involved and make a difference.

With the rapid decrease, over the last 2 years, in the costs of building and running a social network this is now a viable option that has massive benefits for customer acquisition and most importantly, retention.

Social Media Strategies in Travel Conference 2009

Social Media Strategies in Travel Conference will be held as a part of EyeforTravel’s Sales and Marketing in Travel Summit Europe in Prague (October 13-14) this year.

Confirmed line-up includes following speakers:

Steven Taylor, Senior Director Digital, Loyalty, Partner Marketing, Starwood Hotels & Resorts

Sandra Leonhard, Director of Web Strategy & Business Development, TUI

Martin Verdon-Roe, Director of Sales, Europe, TripAdvisor

Geraldine Calpin, VP e-Commerce, Hilton Hotels

Niki van Wijk, VP e-Commerce, transavia

Iain Pringle, Head of Customer & Loyalty Insight, The Mileage Company, British Airways

For more information, click here:
http://events.eyefortravel.com/sales-and-marketing/conference/agenda.asp

or contact:

Gina Baillie
Regional Director, Europe
+44 (0)207 375 7197
gina@eyefortravel.com