Report No. 8: The Social Breakup

The eighth report in the Subscribers, Fans and Followers series focuses on the “social breakup” – how and why consumers “break up” with brands and stop following them via Facebook, Twitter and email. You might be surprised at how much similarity there is across all channels. Here are some of the highlights:

• Email
  • 67% of subscribers hit the unsubscribe button to end the email relationship rather than just deleting (17%), reporting as spam (8%), ignoring (6%) or setting up a filter to auto-archive the message(2%)
  • Top 3 reasons people unsubscribed from emails:
    • Too many emails from the company
    • Repetitive or boring content over time
    • Email overload – too many emails in general, cleaning out the clutter
• Facebook
  • When fans no longer want information from a brand they previously “liked”, 43% of them go to the brand’s page and click “unlike, 38% click the “X” in their newsfeed to remove them from the wall and 19% just ignore the posts.
  • Top 3 reasons people “unliked” a brand on Facebook:
    • Too many posts – too much frequency can overwhelm users walls
    • Repetitive or boring content over time
    • They only “liked” the brand because of a promotion, discount or deal offered to fans, and “unliked” once they got what they wanted.

• Twitter
  • Nearly half of consumers who created a Twitter account no longer use it with 52% saying they found Twitter to be pointless, 38% saying it became boring and 23% thinking that Twitter was too chaotic.
  • Top 3 reasons people stopped following a brand on Twitter:
    • Repetitive or boring content over time
    • Tweet stream became overloaded with marketing posts, wanted to clean up
    • Too many posts – too much frequency can overwhelm users tweet streams

Notice the striking similarity between why people unsubscribe, unlike and unfollow brands? While there are different strategies to employ for brand to get the most out of email, Facebook and Twitter, online consumers – across the board – seem to all be saying the same thing when it comes to ending their relationship with a brand’s digital initiatives: don’t talk too much and keep the content interesting.

Report No. 9: Mobile Dependence Day

The ninth report in the Subscribers, Fans and Followers series really focuses on our increasing dependence on our smartphones and other mobile devices. Even within the past year, the share of US consumers with smartphones (as opposed to feature phones) has grown dramatically. Here are some of the high points about what it means for interactive marketers:

• 89% of US consumers 15+ own a cell phone. 41% of those have smartphones
  • Android: 33%
  • iPhone: 25%
  • Blackberry: 19%
  • Other: 23%
• Smartphone’s Big 5 (the five most frequently used functions on today’s smartphones):
  • Phone Calls
  • Texting
  • Email
  • Internet
  • Facebook
• How important is the smartphone to people who own and use one? Here is the percentage of people who would (if forced to choose) rather keep their smartphone than the following items:
  • Game Console: 72%
  • Dishwasher: 46%
  • Laptop: 40%
  • Microwave: 34%
  • Refrigerator: 13%
  • Car: 8%

The rest of the report gives recommendations of ways you can integrate your marketing efforts across all three communications channels and is definitely worth a read.

Have you looked through ExactTarget’s Subscribers, Fans and Followers series? What do you think about their findings?

Looks like Facebook has decided to jump head-first into offering group buying discounts a la Groupon, Living Social, and a host of other local and national ‘group discount buying’ programs. I checked my email about 10 minutes ago and had my very first Facebook Deal staring me in the face. There were rumors that Facebook Deals would launch in five US cities this week and it appears they official have launched in Atlanta, Dallas, Austin, San Diego and San Francisco.

Just like Groupon, Living Social and other group buying programs, I received the Facebook Deal in my email instead of through Facebook. They must have realized the power and personal nature of email marketing to have launched a program that is so dependent upon email as opposed to their own platform.

The most interesting part of the email is that I now live in Indianapolis, but the Deal (see screenshot below) is for horseback riding in Acworth, GA (a suburb of Atlanta). I did live in Atlanta for a couple years, but I’ve been in Indy for the past 5 years, so Facebook needs to do a bit of work with their Deal targeting.

Have you received a Facebook Deal yet? Do you think you’d be likely to buy a deal via Facebook or will you stick with Groupon, Living Social or another similar daily deal program?

For the next few days, you can optionally switch to the new Pages format or stick with the old one, but as of mid-March, all pages will be automatically transitioned to the new Pages format, so it’s worth making the switch today.

Photo Ribbon:

One of the most visible changes is the addition of the photo ribbon to the top of the page. Just like user accounts, pages can now feature a random assortment of their recently posted photos. A couple of details:

• Unlike on your Personal Profile, you can’t specify the order of the photos – it just selects the 5 most recently uploaded photos to display at random.
• You can remove photos from showing up in the ribbon – simply click on the ‘x’ in the upper right-hand corner of each individual photo.
  • Note: This won’t delete the photo from your gallery, it just makes it so it won’t show up in the photo ribbon at the top of your page.

Tabs Moved to Left:

This was another big change from the way that Pages used to function; but again, it helps Pages mirror the Personal Profiles display and shouldn’t take too much getting used to. Now, instead of seeing your tabs at the top of your page, they cascade down the left-hand side. This also allows for longer custom tab names (see the image at right) and Facebook allows you have more visible tabs.

If you already had a custom landing page, everything should still work fine and users can still be defaulted to whichever page you’d like.

Use Facebook as Your Page:

This is one of the most significant upgrades to the new Facebook Pages. We actually saw a glimpse of this when Facebook accidentally rolled out the feature to all users for about an hour back in December. When you click on the link that allows you to use Facebook as your page, it literally allows you to use Facebook as your page.

This means several things:

• Your notifications area () now shows new fans added and lets you know when someone leaves a comment on your wall, or likes or comments on one of your posts.
• You can post on other Pages as your page – very helpful if you’re want to post as your official presence on other pages – just don’t go overboard. This is the feature that has the biggest opportunity for abuse.
• You can now “share” items from other pages onto your page. You’ve been able to do this as an individual for a long time, but now this functionality extends to Pages and is extremely helpful.
• You now have your very own News Feed. Go around and Like different pages and they’ll all show up in your custom news feed. Just click on the Facebook logo when logged in as your Page to get to your Page’s News Feed.
• You can also set up email notifications to be sent to you when a user likes or comments on a post on your wall.
  • This is a great feature for any Page managers who have been looking for real-time notification when their Facebook Wall gets some responses.
  • However, if you manage a Page with a large following, you could very easily become inundated by a flood of email notifications, so it’s probably only really useful as you’re beginning to grow your page.

Featured Likes:

You can now feature up to 5 other pages in the Featured Likes section on the left-hand side of your page. Click on Edit Page, then go to the Featured Tab to select anywhere from 1 to 5 pages that you want to always display under the Featured Likes section. The other pages featured will randomly generate from all the pages your brand has liked.

This is a great way to feature timely pages, to highlight members of your organization or to give someone an added-value push on your Facebook page.

Move to iFrames Instead of FBML:

This is probably the most important and most technical upgrade that Facebook made with their recent Pages upgrade. I’ll go into more details about how to set up a Facebook Landing Page without using FBML in an upcoming post, but here’s the short of this change.

Several years ago Facebook developed their own simplified version of HTML called FBML (Facebook Markup Language). FBML was developed with the intention of making coding easier for people who didn’t know the first thing about coding. It enabled users to utilize a very simple block of code (see below) to do many things, including specifying which content could only be seen by fans as opposed to anyone who visited the Page.

<fb:visible-to-connection>
Fans will see this content.
<fb:else>Non-fans will see this content.</fb:else>
</fb:visible-to-connection>

Back in the fall, Facebook announced that they’d be getting rid of FBML in favor of a standard HTML control called iFrames. Essentially, an iFrame allows you, as the programmer, to call in an entire page – created and hosted elsewhere – to display within the iFrame. This actually allows for much more flexibility when creating customized Facebook landing pages, but it is a big departure from Facebook’s old standard of FBML.

Those are some of the biggest changes involved in the Facebook Pages redesign. How will you start using the redesigned Pages for your organization’s benefit?

I’ve recently noticed that while lots of Facebook Fan Pages have created a custom username for their URL (facebook.com/VisitIndiana, for example), there are still plenty of Fan Pages out there that still use their long, cumbersome URL instead of a shortened username (facebook.com/pages/Visit-Indiana-Indiana-State-Tourism/42785429080).

With so many URL Shorteners being used today (Bit.ly, Goo.gl, etc.), it might seem like it doesn’t matter what your Facebook Page URL is,

Luckily, Facebook makes it easy to create a custom username for your personal Facebook account and your business’ Fan Page.

The only caveat is that you have to have at least 25 fans of your page before you can create a username for it. This is Facebook’s way of ensuring that people aren’t creating pages just to squat on popular names.

The video below gives you a quick walk-through to help you create your custom Facebook Username. If you can’t view the video, just click through to the full post and you’ll see text directions to create your username.

Here’s a simple 4 step guide to creating a Facebook Username:

• Log into Facebook and go to Facebook.com/username
• Select whether you want to create a username for your personal profile (recommended) and/or your Fan Page
• Enter the username you want and click on Check Availability
  • VERY IMPORTANT: Facebook doesn’t allow you to change your username, so double-check the spelling to make sure you get it right!
• Read the terms and click on Confirm

There you go, you’ve created your username on Facebook. Now you can promote your new shortened Facebook URL!

1: Facebook Introduces One-Time Passwords Via Text | PC Magazine

Social Mediarology thinks: For as much flak as Facebook has received lately for their lack concern for users’ privacy, this is yet another step in the right direction. Facebook also recently released the ability to log out of other locations remotely and this One-Time Password feature is just another way Facebook really is looking out for their members. If you’ve ever felt nervous about logging into Facebook on a public computer, this is a great way to check in on Facebook without the worry.

2: Klout Now Measures Your Influence on Facebook | Mashable

Social Mediarology thinks: Klout’s influence score has become one of few widely-recognized and respected Twitter influence scores on the web today. You’ll find Klout’s scores baked into Twitter clients like HootSuite. Klout’s foray into Facebook is interesting because while finding a definitive influence score for Twitter or Facebook is nearly impossible, it seems much more difficult to do so for Facebook, where there are many more variables to take into account that for Twitter.

3: Skype 5.0 Busts Out of Beta, Integrates Facebook Friends | Engadget

Social Mediarology thinks: There have been rumors for a few weeks about the integration of Skype and Facebook and half of the equation is now solved. With the 5.0 release of Skype, Windows users can log into Skype and bring all their Facebook friends with them. Then next step will be Facebook pulling Skype into their own chat application to create Skype-enabled text, audio and video chatting. While many businesses are starting to use Skype more and more, their integration with Facebook will bring more users to Skype.

4: URL Shortener Bit.ly Now Generates QR Codes | Mashable

Social Mediarology thinks: QR codes are gaining popularity with the advent of mobile apps that can easily scan this new style of barcode. Foursquare even allows users to scan a QR code that will check them in to a location. While QR codes are still in their infancy, they are becoming more common and Bit.ly has done themselves a great service by making QR code creation so simple (just append .qr to the end of a Bit.ly URL and they’ll display your QR code. Take a picture of the one above using a QR code scanning app on your mobile phone and it’ll redirect you to SocialMediarology.com.

1: Facebook Ads Become Dramatically More Transparent | AllFacebook

Social Mediarology thinks: This is a simple but beneficial change for Facebook users and for advertisers. The ad’s URL only displays if it’s taking you off Facebook.com. So you still won’t know exactly where the on-site ads will take you, but this is a great step forward in transparency for all Facebook users.

2: Windows Live Outsources Blogging, Migrating 30 Million Users To WordPress.com | TechCrunch

Social Mediarology thinks: Four years ago, Microsoft launched Windows Live Spaces, a blogging platform for Live.com users (the successor to MSN and what preceded Bing). Over the past four years, WLS has racked up 30 million users and starting now, those users are being migrated over to WordPress.com – the world’s largest blogging site. This is a great move for Microsoft, because it will give their users more robust features through the WordPress interface and it allows Microsoft to focus their efforts where they’re more urgently needed (Windows 7 phone?)

3: Get at Clue: What do People Remember About Your Site? | ReadWriteWeb

Social Mediarology thinks: Clue is a great free web design usability tool that can help you as you’re in the process of redesigning your website. Enter the URL you want to test into Clue and they’ll spit out another URL for you to share for feedback. Users are given five seconds to view your page then they’re asked what they recall from the page. Each Clue ‘test’ is live for 48 hours and results are easy to view – just add a + to the end of the test URL and you can see the results.

4: Don’t Let the Intern Run Your Social Strategy | Travel 2.0

Social Mediarology thinks: Troy does it again with another great post about managing your company’s social strategy. While interns may have a greater degree of technical knowledge, they shouldn’t necessarily be the front-lines of your social strategy. The first step toward a successful social strategy is buy-in from the top of your organization.

Mythbusting with Jeff and Morgan:

Throughout the Subscriber, Fans & Followers research, Jeff and Morgan were able to identify some really interesting information. Some of that information was picked up by local and national news outlets, but like with most research, you can make it say whatever you want it to say. Some news outlets ran tiny portions of the research, skewing some of the data. That’s where Myth #1 comes into play.

Myth #1: Email Usage is Dropping:

In the video below, Jeff and Morgan talk about how Nielsen just came out with data saying that email usage has dropped significantly in recent years. In short, the Nielsen study, only includes email accessed via the web – Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc – but it doesn’t include email accessed via mobile platforms or even Outlook!

Myth #2: Facebook Fans are worth 136.38 dollars:

Some recent research said each Fan a brand has on Facebook is worth roughly $136. While that may be hard to prove one way or another, during the SFF research, participants were asked: Are you more likely to purchase from a brand after becoming a Subscriber, Fan or Follower? The results were different than you might think.

Only 17% of Facebook Fans said yes, while 27% of email Subscribers gave the same answer. The real kicker is that a full 37% of Twitter Followers said they’d be more likely to purchase from a brand after following them on Twitter. Obviously, this question only asks about intent and there aren’t any hard dollar figures behind it, but the fact that more than a third of Twitter Followers would be more likely to purchase from your brand after following should encourage you to start using Twitter.

Myth #3: Twitter is Dying:

2009 was a great year for Twitter and it became the fastest growing social media channel ever. At some point, the rate of growth was going to have to slow down a bit. Even though we’ve seen some higher profile users quitting Twitter recently (John Mayer, Demi Lovato), Twitter is far from dying. Jeff and Morgan remind us that Twitter users create six times more content online than non-Twitter users. So, while a few celebrities may come and go, the real influencers on the web still use Twitter heavily.

Did you attend the Connections 2010 Conference? What was the biggest takeaway you got from the conference?

Twitter Users as Content Creators:

Through their SFF research, Jeff and Morgan discovered that Twitter users end up creating six times as much content online as the typical online consumer. This is extremely powerful news and should be a wake-up call to marketers – just because only 5% of online consumers follow a brand through Twitter, those consumers are some of the most influential people online today.

In the video below, Jeff and Morgan talk about the tremendous reach and influence of Twitter users.

3 Follow-up Points to SFF Research:

The final report in the SFF study was released just before the Connections 2010 conference and Jeff and Morgan talked about three follow-up points to the research. First, SFF’s are long-term assets, not short term sales opportunities. If you only look at the short term, you’re overlooking the true value of your SFFs. Second, SFFs must be integrated and optimized. Once you’re involved in email, Facebook and Twitter, you must continually work to integrate and optimize the content across all three channels. Finally, leadership must unify email and social marketing – don’t look at email, Facebook and Twitter as channels in separate silos.

Keep an eye out for another post of videos from the SFF talk later in the week. Were you at the Connections 2010 Conference? What was your favorite session?

Also, if you’re attending ExactTarget’s Connections 2010 Conference on September 14-16, drop by the Lead Nurturing and Lead Scoring session on Wedensday (9/15) at 9:45am – I’ll be speaking about how we’ve worked with Right On Interactive to nurture and score leads through the Visit Indiana Foursquare/Leaf Cam promotion.

Report No. 5: Facebook X-Factors

The fifth report in the Subscribers, Fans and Followers series focuses on Facebook. After detailed reports of Email and Twitter users, how do Facebook users stack up? Do they want to interact with companies or do they want to keep Facebook purely personal and clear of marketing speak? Here are some of the highlights:

• The top four things that motivate users to follow a business are:
  • To receive discounts or promotions
  • To show my support of the company to others
  • To get a freebie (free samples, coupon) – very similar to #1
  • To stay informed about the company’s activities
• 70% of consumers who ‘liked’ a brand or company on Facebook didn’t feel they’d given the company permission to market to them (maybe Troy Thompson is on to something with his thoughts about comparing Facebook Likes to bumper stickers).
• Far and away, consumers use Facebook to reconnect with friends and maintain current friendships as opposed to maintaining and cultivating professional relationships.

So Facebook is used primarily for connecting with friends and less so for connecting with businesses. And consumers that do connect with businesses are really looking for a good deal. How can you leverage those opportunities to bring success to your company’s Facebook page?

Report No. 6: The Collaborative Future

The sixth report in the Subscribers, Fans and Followers series really focuses on ingetrating email, Facebook and Twitter – keeping in mind the strengths and weaknesses of each medium. Here are a few insights gleaned from the sixth report:

• Email is more likely to drive increased purchase intent among the largest group of consumers.
• Facebook is the least effective channel to drive increased purchase behavior.
• Twitter is actually the channel that is most likely to drive increased purchases and recommendations after a consumer follows a brand.

The rest of the report gives recommendations of ways you can integrate your marketing efforts across all three communications channels and is definitely worth a read.

Have you looked through ExactTarget’s Subscribers, Fans and Followers series? What do you think about their findings?

Welcome to our series of interviews with local (and sometimes national) leaders in the social media and technology industry that will be featured on Social Mediarology. Today’s interview is with Troy Thompson of Travel 2.0, a Denver-based blog and digital consulting company focused on the travel and tourism industry

Troy Thompson – Travel 2.0

Troy has been involved in interactive marketing for the past 13 years. After starting his career at NASCAR in Florida, he was integral in launching their interactive department in the late ’90s. After nearly a decade with NASCAR, Troy moved to Arizona to become the Advertising Manager for the Arizona Office of Tourism. During his time at AOT, Troy headed up the social media division and recently moved to Denver to manage Visit Denver‘s interactive marketing department, including social media, mobile, SEO and more. Earlier this year he decided to break out on his own and dive into tourism technology consulting.

The Travel 2.0 blog started while Troy worked for Arizona Tourism as regular email updates about interactive marketing to the AOT staff and quickly evolved into a blog that could reach people far beyond the Arizona Office of Tourism. Now, thousands of people throughout the world read the Travel 2.0 blog each week and Troy is considered a thought leader in the interactive travel and tourism community.

The consulting arm of Travel 2.0 launched in June, 2010 and focuses on social media strategy/social media audits, mobile strategy including iPhone applications, statistical analysis, training and tourism marketing plan development.

What are some current and upcoming trends in the travel industry as it relates to technology?

The two trends we’re in right now that are still progressing are mobile and location based services (LBS). They certainly go hand in hand, but mobile feels a lot like it did in the late ’90s and early 2000s, when everyone realized the web wasn’t going away so they started to shift more budget and create functional websites. I see this a lot within the mobile space. It’s following a very similar pattern where people are saying "I think this mobile thing is going to stick around, I think the iPhone is going to be a solid platform to build on" and they’re shifting some dollars over to address that need. The challenge is that you don’t want to fall into the same trap we all did when we built our first websites – looking for the cheaper option, just doing the basics and not thinking long term. I think a lot of us built a website in 10 years ago and have had to rebuild the site every couple of years, and I think we’re now getting to the point where people are thinking more long term and more strategically about what the site is and what it needs to be. I’m hopeful that we’ll start to take that same approach with mobile – thinking long term rather than short term. While I think there will be a lot of transition within the mobile space in the next decade or so, building a good base at the beginning will help set you up for success in the long run.

As far as location-based services go, Foursquare seems to be the media darling of LBS.

If 2009 was Twitter’s year, it’s fair to say that 2010 is shaping up to be the year of Foursquare. I think with the recent launch of Facebook Places, LBS’s will just become more important, particularly for the travel industry.

The fact that you’ll be able to have geographic information about your visitor while they’re in your area becomes very powerful. Right now, while the tools aren’t there to completely take advantage of that, those tools will surely come about soon. Taking advantage of a one-on-one communication with someone visiting your local Art Museum will be just as easy as setting up an email campaign or a Google Adwords campaign.

The final trend I’m seeing is tracking. It’s been the big demand of everyone, not just within the travel industry, but everyone who’s been involved in the mobile or social media field. How do we track all of these these things and connect the dots between websites, SEO, mobile marketing, social media marketing, and how do we get the accurate tracking to be able to quantify the ROI that we’re putting into these new spaces. I feel like that’s coming along. It depends on how much information the consumer wants to give out about themselves, but I think that’s an area where we’ll see some more big strides over the next two or three years.

Several years ago, the largest line item in most DMO’s budget was a printed travel guide. Do you see printed publications going away in the near future?

I don’t think printed guides will ever go away entirely. I know there are some agencies out there who have totally dropped it in favor of a all digital guide, which I think is a workable solution, but at this point a printed guide is still important for the people who want them. What we’re seeing now, is a case where 5, 10 or 15 years ago, there was just the printed guide, which was the primary way for people to get information from us, and now there are so many different communication channels out there. With technology itself, particularly social as well as the iPad and the iPhone, people have a lot more freedom of choice about how they want to receive information. From the DMO (Destination Marketing Organization) side, we need to look at it more as a project around information and the content we have, rather than it being just a printed guide project.

If we were to have a meeting about our guide, I’d start with all the information first, then, on the side, we;d discuss where all the different places are that people could get this information. There’s your printed guide, your website, potentially email, social, then you have the mobile side of things maybe with an iPhone or iPad application. It’s just trying to figure out the best way to get all the information to the appropriate channels so people can find it. The challenge with that since the technology is still so young, is that it takes a lot of time and resources to try and break out of a printed publication cycle and into more of an information dissemination cycle.

The iPad is pretty exciting in terms of its potential for digital visitors guides and the interaction we can have with the visitor through it. I think it’s the best example so far that non-technical people within the industry have seen that opens their eyes to the possibilities.

The challenge for a lot of us in the DMO space is that the printed guide is a huge KPI (key performance indicator) for us, and a huge indicator of our success throughout the year, so it’s difficult for us to make that transition and all of a sudden, you’re sending a report to your board that while you printed 1,000,000 guides last year, you’ve only printed 200,000 this year, but here are the reasons why. Without really accurate tracking/education about website visits, social hits and mobile/iPad applications it’s difficult to show people that the number went down so significantly and not have them raise questions.

For a lot of us, it’s still an issue of reporting back to our board and to make sure it still looks like we’re doing a good job. I think it will be interesting in the next few years. I think the iPad is a fantastic device and if you walk by any apple store in the mall, it’s absolutely packed – it doesn’t matter what time of day you go. The interaction that all age groups and demographics have, it ‘s just fascinating. Apple has done a great job with their interface design and have made it easy for anyone to use, not just someone who’s technically inclined. That’s why so many people are talking about iPhone apps and iPad apps all the time because it’s such a successful platform for communicating with people. I’m really interested to see which DMO comes out with their travel guide as a fully-designed iPad app first.

What are your recommendations on first steps in social media?

My first recommendation for a DMO in social, is to get started with either Twitter or a blog. Twitter is a very easy interface and program to learn and understand once you get started. It also gives you a good look into the social world and how people communicate and how people engage in that world. Whether or not Twitter works for every destination is still to be determined. Some destinations tend ot be more successful with Twitter than others, but I think a lot of that has to do with content.

I still really like the idea of a blog. It’s probably not as sexy as Twtter, Facebook and others now, but I like the communication channel of blogs. I think it works really well for the destination model. There are a lot of things going on in a destination – a lot of things we don’t typically get to talk about on the homepage of the website. The rodeo may not be large enough to go on to the official state tourism website, but that’s a great topic for a blog post.

My third suggestion would have to be YouTube because of the engagement you can get on YouTube. I wouldn’t recommend it first, only because it can be a challenge for DMOs to come up with the video content. That’s always the challenge – you have to have good video content to put up on youtube.

You didn’t mention Facebook at all, does Facebook have a place in DMO marketing?

I’ve been a slow adopter to Facebook. I wrote several posts a few years ago that outlined why I didn’t think Facebook was right for the destination industry and I’m still not 100% convinced that it’s right for us in the industry.

There are obviously a lot of people on Facebook – 500 million people are sure to garner some attention – but I have yet to see anyone feel that their Facebook campaign has been really successful.

I don’t know if it’s simply because ther isn’t enough research around it, but I feel that a lot of DMOs are on Facebook because they’ve seen other DMOs on there.

I also think a lot of the fans of the individual organizations (like fans of Visit Indiana, or Florida, or Atlanta) are just “bumper-sticker fans”; of the state. it’s like when you see a car full of bumper stickers. They’re aligning themselves with a particular brand or organization, but that doesn’t make they’re going out and giving money to or financially supporting that organization. I think its similar on Facebook – people want to say I’m from Florida, I’m a fan of Florida, I’m just not necessarily going to do anything with the state. I get the feeling there’s a little bit of that. I struggle with whether or not its a good place for marketers to be.

There’s been a lot of conversation about how some marketing teams are pushing a lot of things to Facebook. Facebook has almost replaced the call to action in TV commercials. Like when people’s commercials would say “find us at AOL keyword: travel” or 4-5 years ago when organizations would say “visit our website at myspace.com/OrganizationName“. I still have a issue with putting a majority of my marketing influence on someone else’s website

I’m a huge proponent of protecting your brand on Facebook. I think there should be a Visit whatever page, a Visit Indiana Page on Facebook. I think you should own it and use some service that lets you update Twitter and Facebook at the same time. There are a lot of good things you can do with Facebook, but I’d definitately diversify my campaigns so not everything‘s focused on Facebook. I’d even spend some time on TripAdvisor or WikiTravel, the sites that tend to get left out of the Big Three conversations (Facebook, Twitter and YouTube). I think the forums on Trip Advisor alone, you could build an entire social campaign around those.

How does blogging fit in to a digital strategy?

I think blogging is a great opportunity to give your destination a personality and to give an actual voice to the people who make up your community. A lot of us have made it a bit difficult for consumers to find the people behind the DMOs and attractions – primarily because of spam and email concerns, more than anything else. Blogs allow consumers to see that there are real people behind the organization, people who are passionate about the destination and they’re they local experts.

I think that in the next 5-10 years, that’s how DMOs will remain relevant. by highlighting and focusing in on that local knowledge. By saying, “here’s Jeremy. He lives in Indianapolis, he goes to these restaurants and attractions, he knows all about them.” Who better to ask when you’re looking to travel than someone who actually lives in the area and talks about these things for a living? The blog is an excellent way to show personality and to show off some of the charm of the destination. a website homepage tends to do very few things – promoting a big event coming up or specific hotels – but if you have space on your homepage carved out for a blog, it helps bring out the smaller things, more of the niche things that are going on. More of the local info and local knowledge that people really want to find out about. It can be a real differentiator between your destination and another destination.

I think going back to your last question about where to get started with social media, and for a lot of small marketing teams, with one or two people, that’s what makes Twitter such a good place to get started. Twitter is, after all, microblogging. I think that gives you a nice intro into what you’ll see and the impact you might have. That gives you the confidences to see that it’s actually worth your time to spend a couple hours a week writing a good blog post and then posting it on the blog. That’s a great way to intro from Twitter, to Blogs then to YouTube and Facebook.

What are some DMOs that come to mind who are doing a great job with social media and digital strategy?

There are a few of them out there. I love what Portland, Oregon is doing a great job communicating with their actual visitor. Not specifically the technical things they’re doing, but they do a great job actually listening and communicating with the visitor – forming the relationship that is the basis of social media.

I like what Columbus, Ohio does – their team does a great job on their blog and Twitter streams. From a state level, not to stroke your ego too much, but I think Indiana does a great job. You guys do a good job with your social presence and the way you go about it. I like what Oregon is doing as well. As much trouble as Florida has had, I really like the way they’ve tackled the oil spill via social media. They’ve really confronted it head-on an haven’t tried to say “don’t tell people there’s oil on this beach”. They’ve actually posted maps that show people where the oil is and I think that’s important to be open and transparent in the social space.

I think that how organizations respond in a time of crisis shows a lot more about their organizational strength than how they do when things are fine.

The oil spill is a great example of that. The volcano from Iceland earlier this year is another example. When we have natural disasters like that, it’s fascinating to look at the Air France Facebook page, which they weren’t really updating at the time – that gives consumers the message of: “Hey, we’re not updating this – go away!” That was their message to people. You can’t really start communicating with people when you want to, then shut things down when a disaster (natural or a PR disaster) occurs. I think a lot of people have overlooked crisis communications as part of their social media strategy. Hopefully, with the example of Florida and the volcano in Iceland people will start to incorporate crisis communications.

Another example is the recent incident with JetBlue where an employee yelled a plane full of passengers, pulled the emergency slide and ran away – JetBlue received a lot of criticism for their slow response to that.

JetBlue (along with Southwest Air) are the two stars of social media in the airline industry. They respond to everything and it was very strange to see something happen to them and they didn’t immediately acknowledge it. Two hours is the maximum amount of time you have to respond to something that has happened. You no longer have a couple days to craft your message. People expect you to respond immediately.

I think a lot of business are struggling with that. For so long you had a corporate communications department and everything went through there, and now you have different communication channels and the public is okay with the transparency. When something bad happens, most consumers realize that people are working at the company and they just want to know what’s going on. For the JetBlue incident, they could have said: “hey, we know there was an incident, our team in New York is investigating it”. That’s okay to say at this point because it’s part of open communication back and forth with consumers.

Any final thoughts?

It’s a very exciting time to be in the tourism industry in general. We’ve always been very passionate about the tourism industry, but it’s even more exciting now with the technology that’s coming into it an they ability for consumers to communicate with us while they’re actually in the destination. It’s really interesting to see how people are using social tools to connect with like minded travelers while they’re on vacation. They’ll take recommendations from a stranger or a local about what restaurant to eat at. The more adoption we see in social, mobile, geolocation and the like, it really becomes a benefit to our travel, and not a detriment.

Troy Thompson, a self-described technopologist, is a respected blogger, consultant and thought-leader in the Tourism / Travel industry. Owner and consultant at Travel 2.0 Consulting, Troy has been providing unique interactive and marketing solutions to a variety of clients for more than a decade. Be sure to check out Travel 2.0. You can even follow Troy on Twitter (@Travel2dot0).