IN-DEPTH: Most travel businesses now understand that they need to judiciously plan what they want to achieve from their social media activities. These goals should be a combination of traditional business KPIs together with some social media related KPIs.

By Ritesh Gupta

Travel marketers are increasingly getting comfortable with selecting the relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) for their social media marketing initiatives. These indicators are tracked to measure success.

This also does not necessarily mean that it is only about revenue and that for example your Twitter main KPI should be to generate x amount in sales every month. One should take into account the revenue opportunities as well as the potential savings. For example, a KPI could be to generate a certain amount of quality media mentions which would equate in certain amount of PR value, or to achieve x amount of links with brand related anchor text, which again could easily be monetised in terms of SEO savings. The KPI selection might require some creative thinking, but this is an essential part of the planning process each company should go through before they even create their Twitter/Facebook page.

“KPIs need to be set first and then determine what activities/spend will achieve the KPIs,” says Gregg Tilston, Global Social Media Leader, Flight Centre, who is scheduled to speak at the forthcoming Travel Distribution Summit Europe 2012, to be held in London (April 17-18) this year.

As far as the planning is concerned, the essence of social media is to be social, and by being so, create and encourage more real, authentic, transparent communication streams – with customers and also between customers themselves. A brand will be better served to create a plan to share and amplify what’s going right for the brand via social media. Also, companies should be prepared to take corrective steps where required to fix problems.

EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta spoke to Tilston about the significance of KPIs and how should travel companies approach social media marketing internally. Excerpts:

What do you think have been the major developments in the social media space that travel brands should focus on?

I think 2012 is the year companies put solid KPIs against social activities. For a company dabbling or new to Social Media, perhaps the KPIs are growth of community and engagement while a company with a more mature Social Media strategy is probably going look at referral traffic and conversion.

In the end engaging content will facilitate sharing and organic growth of community which when supported with strong calls to action will drive referral traffic.

Planning and budgeting will come down to what efforts and spends will help achieve the targeted KPIs.

It is being indicated that businesses are wasting time and money trying to reach people online without realising many resent big brands invading their social networks. How do you assess the situation from efficiency perspective?

I firmly believe that Social Media gives a brand and opportunity to have a personality; humanise the brand if you will. When that personality is aligned with the needs/wants of the community I don’t see a real challenge with regards to community engagement/involvement. Obviously a company cannot fill the communities feeds nor spam them but funny enough special offers will often drive the most referral traffic. What is also interesting is that one social channel may work for company, while different channel may perform better for another.

One of the most potentially damaging risks from social media can be to an organisation’s reputation. Employees, customers and vendors can be an organisation’s greatest ambassadors or can seriously undermine its brand and image. What do you recommend when it comes to working on a social media defensive strategy?

First and foremost is ensuring an organisation has a solid Social Media Code of Conduct (internally and externally) that is agreed upon by internal stakeholders. It’s important to note that this is a big challenge but once established it serves as roadmap for employees who partake in social engagement and becomes a publicly stated policy an organisation can point to should conversations on the company’s social channels go awry. Some companies state that they have the right to remove anything at will but I prefer to take the road to play nice in the sandbox and anything defamatory, racist, religious, etc will be removed. It’s a fine line and again needs to be agreed upon by key internal stakeholders.

Making social media intrinsic to marketing and a brand’s business operations, and providing guidance and encouragement for employees to ‘go social’ is crucial to creating success. How can companies nurture internal champion(s) who monitor social media and make it a priority?

Ensuring someone who understands, participates in, and is passionate about Social Media is key here. The last thing an organisation needs is someone heading up social who ‘drew the last straw’.  We are keen to encourage our staff to leverage Social Media to build their book of business while recognising the Social Media Code of Conduct that guides what they can talk about (actually, states more what they cannot talk about). In terms of speaking on behalf of the brand we have a team of Social Media Specialists who work closely with the brands to ensure the messaging is on target.

The best social media outreach usually engages multiple departments within an organisation, ranging from marketing to product to engineering to editorial. How do you assess this approach towards nurturing a team and a culture?

Our Social Media Specialists work very closely with our brands and this includes not only marketing but also customer service, sales, legal, Web development, and product. A Social Media team should be aligned with the goals of the organisation at large.

How do you think travel companies have been successful in gaining an “information advantage” by closely monitoring the preferences of their guests, as well as the way they communicate about these preferences on the Internet?

When it comes to social monitoring the quick answer is there are free tools out there (like Hootsuite) that companies can leverage to listen for brand mentions across social channels (like Twitter). There are more robust analysis solutions (like Radian 6) for organisations that are looking to dig deeper into the analysis of information and data. It really comes down what does an organisation want to do with this information and what resources do they have in place for analysis. Some companies leverage monitoring to listen solely for brand mentions to engage while others are primarily listening for brand/industry/product mentions so they can analyse marketing trends.

To what extent travel marketers are now adept at making the use of Facebook and overall social media strategy?

It is important to recognise that different channels may have different purposes/engagement types; what works well on Twitter might not perform as well on Facebook never mind different types of content. This is not to say that one piece of content cannot be served up to each channel driving different types/more engagement and thus traffic. 

What do you recommend when it comes to planning and budgeting for social media strategy in 2012?

KPIs need to be set first and then determine what activities/spend will achieve the KPIs. A focused approach to a specific number of performing channels will achieve way more than a shotgun approach.