Another trend that seems obvious is that most successful social media programs are not operated by these fabled “gurus”, but by industry veterans who have worked incredibly hard and somewhat tirelessly garnering the knowledge and connections that they now have at their disposal.  Gregg is in this category as well – orchestrating countless bloggers and travel industry experts / agents from all over the world, all from an office in Canada.

FLIGHT CENTRE

First, before we jump into the interview, let’s give a background to those unfamiliar with Flight Centre.  Andre Sammartino said it most concise:

“Flight Centre revolutionised the retailing of international air-travel in Australia by shifting to a model where profitability was driven by volume rather than margins. Initially they built a price advantage by bypassing ticketing wholesalers, seeking out less well-known airlines, and also by arbitraging price differentials across markets.”

A complex and somewhat topsy turvy history, Flight Centre has had multiple periods of growth and contraction since its 1981 inception.  It is now focusing on globalization of the brand, something you can safely suggest they will be successful with – they are already the #1 travel agency in Australia, as well as the largest Australian brand on Twitter.  All is not simple in travel, the online world, and brand evaluation, however – and disintermediation is effecting Flight Centre’s entire model of business.  There has even been a tumbling stock price since it’s 2002 peak; but rumors of their demise have been greatly exaggerated – they have scored quite well in recent months, however, showing profits that have been (forgive my pun) soaring.

MR. TILSTON

Some of these efforts and successes can be attributed to Gregg Tilston, who has a targeted, thoughtful plan to help with the further globalization of Flight Centre.  Gregg is the implementation & standardization gent for the overall social strategy for Flight Centre, and then loosely organizes and controls real world travel agents and gives them the ability to market themselves on different internet channels.

“We direct front line staff with the education that ‘once its online, it’s there forever’ – but we really want them to have the tools to promote themselves. These agents have their own business, and speak on behalf of their personal brand and physical storefront, but don’t speak on behalf of the corporation.”

It’s a very interesting model – Flight Centre can source viable content at their leisure, while still having endless entities providing meaningful content that can be used whenever they want, as well as allowing linking opportunities, and more.  It ends up being very powerful, because they are a content publisher, on some levels.

“We have multiple forms of distribution – Corporate, Brick and Mortar storefronts, as well as home based associates that work from within their communities, in their areas of travel expertise.  This has been the model in Canada, and now we are really opening it up worldwide.  What’s most exciting to me is that we are in that “cloud”, and that it is decentralized.  Taking from recent events, if a volcano blows up, the show still goes on.  Even in a worst case scenario, we will still exist in the real world, and because we are decentralized, we will also exist online.  At Flight Centre, we do not have one server room.”

By mandating that the worldwide network of travel consultants affiliated with Flight Centre use their personal voices to blog, engage, and expound the virtues of the company, it’s people, and simplicity of booking – they garner endless content, attention, and availability to get the upper hand in this rapidly altering field.  By being everywhere at once (be it Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and the peripheral “voices” worldwide), they create an accessibility heretofore unknown in the travel world, and garner an almost “hyperlocality” when it comes to being able to find experts for any region or vacation destination.  Going global means rooting yourself locally, a powerful lesson to carry with you into the future of your company.

Gregg started his professional career in Sales & Marketing IT solutions, but overtime felt detached from the field.  After reading about crowdsourcing, he stepped outside of his comfort zone to engage himself in something very fresh, cutting edge, and exciting – and took a job with a start up, where he learned about online content and messaging.

“I was tried in the fire”, admits Gregg.  ”But it ultimately prepared me to deal with the fluid and changing world of social media.”

“I really owe a lot to Sean – we all do.  He is an amazing man,” meaning Sean Sutherland, Global E-Commerce Leader for Flight Centre [Twitter].  I had a conversation with him about Flight Centre; about the way they were moving the company forward, and about these very specific challenges that a brick and mortar company faced when trying to become this ubiquitous social company.  Every one from Flight Centre had worked in the front lines of travel, so it is a smart, experienced group of professionals.”

Gregg was brought on in March of 2009, where he rapidly developed [read that: sank or swim] and implemented an intriguing, efficient model for their social media program.

“We use a ‘hub-and-spoke’ strategy.  There are the hubs, like the Flightcentre.ca website, or our blog.  The spokes are about all the content hosting sites all around the world.  It is incredibly helpful with linking, and getting more eyeballs on Flight Centre – without any cost for server space.  My mandate, because we were originally a brick and mortar business model, is to show the value and presence of the front line staff.  It’s obvious that we need to demonstrate precisely *why* someone should use a brick and mortar business –  we are a group of front line travel agents that really exist, and we are building a base that doesn’t always understand that benefit.”

By utilizing Flight Centre’s legions of travel agents throughout the world, the sheer volume of generated content greatly helps to bolster their online presence.  Some businesses are still incredibly concerned about allowing employees to represent the brand in an online space, while Flight Centre mandates that all agents must blog about their vacations.   By utilizing the powerful techniques of blogging, or social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, and video services like Youtube, Flight Centre anchors itself firmly into an online space, while still representing what makes the brick and mortar brand so powerful – it’s travel specialists.

“When this new user base comes to us from a blog, youtube videos, etc., they start to realize that this real world business has real people that really care and are really *available*.   Our competitors are OTA’s, but we’re real and human.  There is also Carlson’s and Amex, but they don’t “get it”.  I am surprised they haven’t put more of an effort in this. It’s really surprising.  But our people work hard to “get found” on Google, and we have really smart ways of engaging our audience. The blog is split into many parts, which shows relevance, both online and how we exist locally offline, which garners solid SEO and content that generates interest and accessibility to Flight Centre. We have been proving the validity of this model all over Canada.  Now as the global social media manager we take stalk of other channels and see how to leverage these regions and begin our implementation.”

This model is very exciting, because it has been built, tested, and proven.  As they expand globally, Flight Centre will have a relatively simple implementation, especially in that it’s flexible enough to enter the complexity of working with multiple languages and cultures.

“We can lay a framework down, but there are so many nuances and idiosyncrasies it becomes important to engage the micro level because you have cultural and linguistic differences that can create a big disconnect when people are implementing top level strategy without understanding these issues.  Sometimes the “z” is “zed”, just to point out an obvious example.  You need to make sure to connect with your potential clients in a way that’s familiar to them, that’s obvious.  It also is an issue for SEO, when you have words that are used or understood differently.”

One key to Gregg’s success has been the dynamic between him and the executive team above him.  We see this in social media, quite often.  Part of social media is opening yourself up, becoming transparent, and letting go of control.  It’s not for everyone.  Conversely, the more you try to manage social media like it’s traditional marketing, the less genuine and earnest the brand appears.  Social Media is not a print ad.  The most successful businesses have been ones that allow a relative amount of freedom and fluidity in managing the “social hemisphere”, so to speak.

“The day to day at Flight Centre is a lot about improvisation, as well as being trusted. Without Sean, this couldn’t work. He trusted me enough to give up control – and it’s important to know I haven’t taken some controlled voice or impersonal brand persona.  In fact, I am cheeky and really having fun with it, while just being myself.   It seems to work very well. It’s fairly simple; don’t overpost, annoy, or frustrate people.  Simply engage them and act like a professional.”

THE BEST TRAVEL JOB EVER

In developing this job and contest for their social media channels, Gregg found endless lessons to pass on to other businesses, and he is currently working on wrangling a case study out of their findings.  For those that don’t know, The 
Best Travel Job Ever was a contest to engage social networkers into competing for a job as a travel blogger.  Some of the content that came out of it was AMAZING, as you will see with their contest homepage.

“We had a number of surprises.  The original concept for the contest was “The Faces of Flight Centre”, and simply trying to find people to create Flight Centre branded content with their blogs, etc.  I was in web development when I started – again this was all Sean; it wasn’t marketing, it wasn’t sales – it was just an idea.  It came together really quick – from brainstorming in December to our launch on the first of March this year.  We were looking at different contesting platforms – and nothing had what we needed, so we built what we needed on our own.  It was actually quite funny, because the contesting platform CEO’s would try to sell their product, and instead of being upset that we didn’t buy from them, they were curious and engaged because of what we did.  They were like, ‘oh wow that’s a great idea, and so’s that’, etc.  It was fun to watch happen.  Right after our launch, we were credited with doing a great job, and got a lot of positive feedback.  But we went up “against” a Doritos contest that was launched at about the same time.  Their contest was to upload a video to youtube in which they “named a chip” — and it was the bane of my existence.  Doritos knocked it out of the park, and I was left —  waiting  – asking ‘when are my people going to upload?’. I was incredibly nervous. But all the people I work with were saying, ’Doritos is looking for people to submit a video to name a chip, we are looking for travel bloggers, people that wanted to travel and video blog their adventures’. It was different.”

Of course, this powerful new tool of social, and engaging your branded audience, isn’t apart from, or polar to, traditional marketing tactics.  In fact, it’s vital to create parity between the two.  They might be two entirely different things, but as we have seen time and time again, they buttress one another, and enhance each respective goal.  Not only that, even social media can be “made” by traditional media – there are many ways to get something to go viral.  In this case, a print ad led to a TV spot:

“In the end, it was the traditional 6 pm and 11pm news.  We got the spot from the news guys at global because, on what I assume was a slow news day, they saw a print ad with a “blurb” about the Best Job in the World.  They contacted Henry’s Camera, who suggested they contact me at Flight Centre.  That became the tipping point, and catalyst, to jump start our campaign. We got a TV spot that gave us endless press that we didn’t expect, then we spread the news content and shared it with everyone. Our goal was 100 contestants, and we thought we would get around 35 who would opt-in.  Well, we had 110 contestants, there were 178,000 google searches, and we ended up with a page rank of four out of ten on a net new zero site.  Contestant’s friends and networks were promoting their friends content that was also *us*. We obviously did our best to offer viral components – when people saw uploaded travel videos, the egotistic element of ‘I can do that so much better‘ came into play.”

But again, it comes down to the community pushing the content, and that viral component of a meme – the idea that a good idea simply spreads organically because it is a good idea – took off.  It’s often that social media “gurus” take credit for what is simply the network effect – but there’s a certain aspect of the momentum completely out of your control. It’s vital to understand it’s not your plan, your interactions, or your implementation that is responsible for your success…. it’s the network.

“I give the community, the community contestants, the followers, and the friends all of the credit — they did it. It wasn’t [Flight Centre] at all.  Our demographic – we knew it was going to be 18-25 year olds – that was our target.  When we went to look at the database, 50 % of opt-ins in the database were 30 year old and plus, meaning that we actually got the aunts and uncles and families – the actual, “viable” consumers – per the more “traditional market thinking”.  For us, all these groups are vital!  Our initial thought was that we would brand these 18-25 year old contestants for life –  and then we ended up with this HUGE database of REALLY important consumers.  The overall contest has some fantastic hard numbers – we have the ROI for the skeptics and it was of obvious benefit.  But it was more about the ‘magic’ for lack of a better word. The ‘je ne sais quoi’ – about why these new communication tools are so powerful. The tools aren’t always perfect, but it’s huge.”

One of the exciting aspects in experimenting with social media’s online channels is that sheer immensity and overwhelming, awesome humbling that happens as it takes off.  For Flight Centre, everyone in the organization felt it – you realize you are part of something much, much bigger than your brand, or your idea.  The other curious bi-product of social media campaigns, and all of social media, is that people utilize it in ways that are never to be expected, and connections happen in the least probable of ways.  It’s the nature, and strength, of weak ties.

“We actually got three new hires for Flight Centre – because of the engagement these people identified with us more than the contest, and actually connected with us, our culture, and our ideas.  They got excited to be part of our company, and they came to us.  ’Backchannel’ connections and conversations among contestants and the public were happening, and ‘connecting’ happened, not because of their entries or the contest, but because everyone was excited about the common interest of travel.  Even though she didn’t make our final selections, one of the entrants, Alicia Taggio, became a brand advocate and hosted a tweet up in Ontario, and we skyped our official selection of the winners.  The community was way, way bigger than we ever could have hoped, and they all had endless depth.  It was humbling, and it denoted that we were doing things right. It’s really moving, and very exciting to think about. It’s the cheapest tool we never realized we had.”

CHALLENGES IN SOCIAL MEDIA

Even now, Gregg is dealing with the complexity of the power of social media.  In a recent PR opportunity / experience, social media demonstrated it’s dark side (also proving most internet users are panicky and reactive without needing any real information).  In this case, complaints about the treatment of elephants in Thailand created collateral damage to Flight Centre when it was mistakingly attributed that they had something to do with the treatment of the elephants (marketing collateral depicted some people riding Elephants on vacation, which is apparently a “no no” in that elephants are not treated very well by those business owners). You can read more about that situation here: Flight Centre fends off social media attacks.  It was exceptionally well handled, to the extent that the petition that was started became moot within a couple days of Flight Centre’s response to the concerns, even getting the Executive GM to add a response on their Facebook Page. It gave Gregg an opportunity to show how Flight Centre is listening, and was a fantastic moment of brand management and perception.  They were able to recover from that problem with grace, accountability (even if it’s not supposed to be yours to take), and interactivity.  By being engaged, it changes your corporate culture, but it also, humbly, carries you into the future of business.  A little less heavy is this quaint example from our interview,

“Recently, a popular “mommy blogger” in Australia, commented on our logo “Captain”, and his hat.  She said something like, ‘I don’t know if he really is the captain, but I think he’s drunk, and the passengers are screwed’.  The cap on his head was at some ‘jaunty’ angle, and it was a harmless comment that did negatively associate our brand with drunkenness and lack of safety.  Harmless, but serious. So we photoshopped a jaunty cap on top of her avatar on Twitter, and sent the picture to her, saying ‘We promise we’re not drunk, but the hat is fun at that angle.. see?’.  She thought it was adorable, made it her profile picture, and did a whole blog post on the engagement we had.  Her blog is “Not drowning, Mothering“, so through our legitimate, interested, earnest – and a bit cheeky – engagement, she’s a life long fan.  One of my favorite things, earlier in my career, was cold calling, because you take this potentially annoying, negative relationship or expectation, and change it – and own it – and control it.  That Mommy Blogger is an honest evangelist, and it’s created new relationships; what started as a somewhat harmless, humorous knock on the brand is now a friendly, positive relationship.  Again, this is Sean giving up control, and giving up control is not easy. One thing I love about it  - first in Canada, now in this global role – there are endless opportunities to take something and really run with it. It’s Sean, but it’s also baked into the culture of Flight Centre.”

GOING GLOBAL

“We spent last year building and testing this model, and now it’s mature enough that we are evangelizing about what we are doing, and how it can work for other people.  We are starting to put case studies together, with Hootsuite, and I am getting ready for my world tour! [laughs]  We are getting ready to deploy what we built in Canada and implement with every region across the world, looking to get the support from, and connect with, the staff – it obviously benefits them as well. Scaling is vital, and it will be interesting to see this template layered into place after having practiced it and standardized it from Canada.  The regions need someone in place that supports it, and I am getting a great response so far.  The challenge of building a global strategy is about the speed of the internet, to some extent; we can be incredibly nimble as soon as something begins to trend, but a big part of “nimble” is having this global team in place – which means we can be online 24 hours, you have to be online 24 hours.  Now we have Australia that gets 8 hours, U.S. 8 hours, Canada, etc, so we can cover the entire net, engage people, and never lose a beat without losing our sanity.  Brand Nirvana is 24 hours by 7 days around the clock monitoring so that we can pick up on these trends and manage them the best we can.  Right now, we are monitoring twitter out of Canada, and that gives us a lag time; it’s sort of funny being the Top Australian brand on twitter – in Canada – and 12 hours out.  Next on our plate is our “2nd honeymoon” contest; we are reaching out to an older demographic this time.  It’s been a challenge to reverse engineer the best travel job. Part of it came together in the last few months, end of May. I was looking at “Zoomer” mag on my parents table, a baby-boomer magazine.  The idea is engaging, and creates a small partnership between families – kids and extended family vie for their own family – it’s a natural network to tap into.  The challenge is still, ‘How am I going to help these ‘zoomers’ go out and crowdsource the 18-30 olds’, but it may happen naturally.  The biggest challenge is that I have had to build a lot of the strategy on a shoestring budget. I haven’t done *one ad*, at all.”

Gregg Tilston will be a speaker at the the Eye For Travel North American Travel Distribution Summit in Chicago, the 13^th& 14^th of October (next month), 2010.  You can look at the agenda here, and a list of all the speakers here.  It includes 4 separate focuses within one conference:  Online Sales & Distribution, Revenue Management, Mobile Travel & Tech, and Social Media Strategies. Register here, or contactrosie@eyefortravel.com for more information.

In ending these interviews, I am always intrigued why people take the time to connect, network, and share the information that ends up at these conferences.  As busy as Gregg is, I am sure there are other ways he could efficiently use his time…. so I asked him about the draw of Eye for Travel’s conference:

“What I like about Eye for Travel? It’s a great mix. I have nothing but love for these other conferences, but a lot are consultants simply pitching their wares. But this event is a mix of panelists that are really implementing and DOING IT and working in it. It’s very legitimate, and it’s a lot of do-ers.”

Well said – See you there!

As some of you were made aware in my interview of Shana from Tourism Queensland, I am chatting with some of the EyeForTravel speakers for the upcoming Travel Distribution Summit North America in Chicago this October 2010. The interviews are not only meant to be insight into the world of social media, mobile, and modern technology’s impact on the ever-changing landscape of the hospitality and travel business – but a dialog to help one another answer questions, as well as help get new ones asked.  These interviews aren’t necessarily light reading – these are the people at the top of our profession taking the rare chance to go in depth into some very heady and complex issues.

EyeForTravel has long been the go to source for travel news, events, and analysis, and are experts at bringing some of the most intelligent and thoughtful minds, as well as conversation, into the overall discussion of hospitality & travel. Hopefully, this conversation between Susan and I will add to that pool of information.  In fact, I don’t see how it cannot because if there is one true, legitimate and *bona-fide* professional who can use the word “guru” without sounding like a spammy internet marketer…. it’s going to be Susan Black.

Of course, many of you know Susan, of Black & Wright.  She is tireless, relevant, and, if you have been following the world of travel news and discussion, a name that is, and should be, hard to miss.  Her twitter account, @SusanTravels aggregates some of the best information in the industry, all the while working with clients on long and short term projects, planning and attending conferences, keeping up to date on current events, managing a hectic but rewarding professional and personal life…. as well as even taking time out for the likes of me.

That’s unbelievable, and it’s quite the honor to have her time and bend her ear. Our interview was incredibly casual, friendly, and meandering, while still focused on the issue at hand – What in the heck is going on with travel, tech, social media, and our industry! Susan had a lot to say… now it’s up to all of you to listen!  If you aren’t sure who she is, the picture, after the jump, should remind you!

Susan Travels

Robert Cole called you “The Ubiquitous Susan Black”, in that you are, literally, in as many places as your name is.  You are a rare gem in our world – in that you have a solid professional history in travel, so within social media, you aren’t just some newcomer with no perspective (all too common nowadays).  It’s refreshing to have learned, long time industry pros using social media instead of just another “guru” spouting noise. Tell us a little about your history in travel, prior to being engaged in this new world communication.

“I have been in the industry for a very long time – and I always hesitate when I give how long long because people immediately begin to think I am Methusleah.  But I have been in travel, starting in travel publishing, since back in the early 80s. So it’s been a really long time, almost 30 years; I didn’t spring from this ‘full blown and fully grown’.  I went through the more traditional travel route of working as a publisher for travel trade publications for many years, and getting to know the travel industry and their issues and their challenges, particularly with distribution, both on b2b [business to business] and b2c [business to consumer] side, from a number of different clients’ perspective.  First it was the corporate travel arena, I worked in news  magazine and corporate travel magazine.”

That is about when you entered into the online world?

“I switched over in the early 90′s to the leisure side, that was going through tremendous changes at that time, mainly the shift over from travel agents and more traditional types of distribution to the very, very early days of online. As a matter of fact, my first website was launched in 1994, which was called VacationPackager.com, right after the floppy discs and all that stuff. I was like, ‘WOW the internet, that’s kind of cool’.”

“Vacation packager took the database from the official tour directory that I was publishing, and took this relational database, and if you wanted to know about vacation packages like golf tours in Scotland or fishing tours in Costa Rica, it would tell you about the company, and give you all sorts of background info on the company – it was early, early search, pre-everything.  We sat on the homepage of  Travelocity – we actually preceded that site – but we sat on their homepage as a vacation package button for about 2 years, and did about 6 or 7 iterations of vacationpackager because we finished one we would say ‘No NO!.. what they really want to know is the itinerary.  No NO! They want they really want to know is comparisons, pricing, can you book it?’  We would do partnerships with a lot of tour operators and things, so it was quite a learning experience in a very short period of time.  From coming up with my first flying GIF thing ‘ooh look at that, the plane flies! How cool is that?’, to user, early days of usability and we started off as an advertising vehicle. There was no such thing as performance based, there was no such thing as search, there was no such thing as CPC, there was no such thing as anything.  I know I sound like the dark ages.”

Why did you get online so quickly, so early in the game?  Why were you so ahead of the curve?

“I loved it. I saw so much promise there. Remember, I worked for a relational database, a directory. You can’t get really sexy with a directory, but their really useful. And then to have all that information and sorted online, it was exciting. But yes… it was the day of the dialups, and it was the day of.. we had bandwidth issues.  I remember we had conversation about disabling the “back button” [We both laugh]

Sounds like you were a voracious “sponge”?

“I learned about it early on, and I learned it from someone who knew quite a bit in travel [professional friend of Susan's to remain anonymous].  I went to every single early show at the time; there weren’t many –  Jupiter had something, and Forrester had something. Whatever was around, I went to, I read *EVERYTHING*.  I kind of ran in circles like Rich Barton and Terry Jones, and all the early pioneers – it was a small circle…. A tiny little cirle.  We all kind of banded together – mainly the OTAs; the hotels weren’t really on board at this point.  PCTravel, BizTravel; just a lot of people that aren’t around anymore.  But it was a really interesting and exciting period.  Now, I was interested, not so much in the e-commerce point of view, but the power of an advertising point of view – that it was very targeted, that there was a lot of intent.  Again this was pre google, pre search, pre everything.”

“So that is kind of my background on all of this.  At the same time Eye For Travel started, back in 1999, I started my consulting practice, and started “E-Travel World” as part of a larger vision of intersecting industry and the internet, part of adtech, e-healthcare world, e-auto world, e-b2b – you kind of get the picture. That is when I first started with Forrester Research – first with Mari Moto, then with Henry Harteveldt and it’s when I first got to know the significant players and all the new applications in online travel in an intimate way because I needed to program them, and really needed to understand the differentiators and understand what they did.”

Hotels have always gotten beat up with tech. We are always 10 years behind: from updating property management or telecom systems (remember installing wifi, everyone?), to the early online days where most of us missed the boat with SEO; and now in our current state where we  struggle with branding and messaging in a climate that has the consumer model flipped.  Even some Travel Agent Publications are still trying to figure out how they missed that boat that sailed so long ago.  It seems more and more that knowing about the tech isn’t enough, and how to handle and integrate the tech is just as important as understanding the technology’s importance or existence.  Did you find that immersing yourself in this world of new contacts and applications, as well as being able to immediately practically apply them, sped up your understanding of their impact?

“Because I had a consulting practice at the same time, I was able to integrate and apply the new fangled applications to the needs of my clients.  It really was a terrific platform, and a way to learn about all these new things, crazy things like “search”.  I mean, as I said I read everything, went to a tremendous amount of conferences – I drank the Kool Aid. I mean – this will really date me – I remember when I saw the first business fax that came through. I was like “Oh my God it’s Star Trek, it’s Buck Rogers, it’s everything’.  So I always believed in what was next – that there will be a next, and that there were applications out there that would be exciting – even if it wasn’t adapted completely at the time, but that this is such a powerful tool – especially as bandwidth grew and it became easier.  At first, I saw that people were going on online chat rooms, and AOL chat. I was like ‘damn, everyone is going to these places’.  People were spending hours and hours abandoning TV and bars to sit online and participate in this interactive content.  That interactive content got me excited… I couldn’t believe I could chat with someone about a topic that was interesting to me with someone around the world.”

“Now, with the transition and movement to more transparent social media – I know now who these people are, I have met them person to person, face to face, or met them through someone trustworthy, it takes on a whole new dimension. I know who I am getting my information from, and I won’t end up quoting some oddball.”

And you don’t always need to know them, because some of these sites hold these transparent profiles that provide a little veracity and relevancy. Not as scary as the old anonymous days of the web…

“This comes with more of a linkedin, and more of a contextual conversation.  If within LinkedIn there is a conversation about distribution, or revenue management, that is relevent.  They may be people I don’t know, but when we belong to the same group and talk about contextually relevant information – I don’t necessarily need to know them, but if they belong to the same group or membership but we’re talking the same contextually relevant information.”

“With Twitter, again, the last word there is contextual and relevant. You look for the relevancy – I use it as an uber editing force.  Here’s a whole bunch of people who are interested in the same thing, in this case online travel, as I am, and they have the time to edit things so to say, ‘You may be interested in reading this, or you may want to see this you may have missed’,  and it may be someone you may not know personally, but it’s someone big in the industry.  So I find it as one big ole whopping editing opportunity for me, and that’s the value I see there.  And the value of conversation, but again I use it more in terms of ‘I would have missed that, thank you for bringing it to my attention.”

“Let’s say I have a subject like the recent acquisition of ITA by Google.   I can read what’s in the press, everyone can.  But there are some industry leaders who’s point of view I might specifically like.   I have a choice – I can call them up, that will take about 16 years if i could ever get them.  I could send an email; equally — they are busy, so am I.  I can maybe google them and maybe they have written something, or not.  And how many am I going to do for that.. 10, 20 30? Well that’s going to take all day, or year, or forever?  Or maybe I can join a conversation by putting in “ITA Software”, see what pundits have put something there, links to their blog and pick and choose what to look at, all in about 3 1/2 minutes.  I find it useful to get relevant, contextual information from sources I may or may not now that I do trust that have things to say that I may have missed.”

“Really, the strongest application to my world with Twitter is in relation to conferences.”

I have been blown away by twitter and conference usage.  You have people live reporting, you have other people commenting, contrarians yammering (like myself), even light hearted banter as people get slap happy near the end of the day.  It adds so many dimensions to conferences.

“It forges new relationships and contextual relationships.  How many times have you been at conferences and … sitting next to someone at lunch you *may* talk to someone, or sitting next to someone you *may* chat, or find the badge of a company you really want to engage with – but what are the chances that you could really form a deeper understanding of someone’s views?  Things you very probably would have missed from people you probably didn’t know you needed to know.  It helps connect people that I need to know.  This is how I morphed into it – it’s not linear. It’s a whole amalgam of different experiences of the travel industry, past present and future.”

How do you think the traditional travel background has faciliated your understanding of the online channel?

“What’s unique about where I am in the industry and with my development, is that – and there aren’t many of us, and I’m not bragging, but it’s just kind of an observation – there aren’t that many that came from a traditional travel background. There are almost no more suppliers, or in my case publishers, who dealt B2B in travel that knew *that* world pre-internet – pre-1995 – as intimately and played in that area *and* as actively as the “post beginning of internet” group. They *may* have just been in a different place early on – online advertising, etc. Not specifically tied to travel, just in a different place. There are few people who have come from traditional travel backgrounds who have immersed themselves as I have in this “online space”.  I am in this very bizarre position where I know people, and I maintain my contacts very actively with people from.. you know.. the 80′s, the 90′s; then I have this whole new group of folks I have known from the late 1990′s to today.  The first 15 and the last 15!”

It’s old world versus new world.  There is an obvious crisis of experience with modern travel professionals.  There are so many people saying they have experience in travel and the industry, marketing or hospitality, when they don’t really have a frame of reference to the industry, how it works, etc.  Sitting on twitter doesn’t necessarily make someone an expert.  So we need people like you to stand out. I hope I help.

I had the social media bug in me before the tools were around.  It was something called a rolodex.

Hey, I remember those.  I remember management hiring people they didn’t like just because of their Rolodex.  It’s still fairly powerful.

“Yeah I had a pretty powerful Rolodex – I even remember using the early Plaxo tech, and tools so you could scan business cards in, and leverage as much as you could off of those cards.  But yes, I have been a big, BIG believer of true, I will call it applied, networking. It isn’t enough to have a Rolodex, but it’s what you do with those connections – how you monetize it, how you use it, how do you partner with it, and understand and leverage those relationships.  It’s ‘who I know and what can those networks do.’”

Which is absolutely what the travel business *is*, or *should* be.  Those real world business connections are the strongest and most reliable, because you trust one another’s accountability and have experienced one another’s  professionalism, rather than something more passive like “liking” a tweeted story from Facebook.  I assume most of that rolodex was earned in tried and true professional relationships rather than the looser connections of social media?

“It’s a kind of an interesting background where I was a publisher primarily dealing with marketing distribution challenges from traditional travel companies.  It was mainly leisure, but again, before that, with hotels through meetings and corporate travel magazines, then through consulting and putting together conferences.  I was learning about a lot of new applications and applied intelligence – ‘how this works for everyone else’ – up to becoming a practitioner and seeing the fundamentals and day to day and how it really works and translates to the bottom line, and how people actually make money from it (or not) – back to running conferences and being a consultant.”

“That’s what I like to do; I like the diversity, I like to be out there, and cutting edge and seeing the next big thing.  You know, when you are in operations or operating within a company, it’s very hard, especially if you have 17 direct reports, everything falls on you, and life gets in the way.  I am in, out, back and forth – but have been consulting the last 6 years. Most clients are short term, but a few are long enough term where I am able to see something from beginning, middle, to the end.. and through execution.  So it’s been sort of a wild ride in this field – starting in the early days when you would place a print ad and hope for the best.”

I am an operator, and so I have always been skeptical of marketing.  It’s weird because of the way the social media sort of laid waste to the traditional marketing model. I get that “new world” model – and, of course, it’s not going to replace the old world of marketing – but I was always like “Impressions??!?! I know a guy who had a paper route – 200 houses or one dumpster.” [Ed note: joke attributed to Mitch Hedberg].  But now, the kind of data you get with analytics and the reports you can pry out, you can gauge your success in a much more concrete way.

“We have always talked about CRM, segmentation, performance – for years we have been talking about that.  It gets easier and easier with these new additions to the marketing arsenal.  I agree – it doesn’t replace things; it works better in an integrated way, in tandem *with*.  Social media doesn’t replace traditional online advertising, it works better *with*. If you are combining it with an email program, you will have better outcomes.  We have been talking integration since the 1980′s, as long as I have been in this.  Now we have the tools and we now really have the opportunity through our tracking and performance base to see how everything works together.  The intelligence and reporting is getting so much better and easier, we can really optimize different areas of our program based on what effects we see.  I think that’s the future.. it’s not social media over mobile over traditional over *this*, the answer is ‘YES’ – it’s everything.  But it is everything that is measurable and optimized working in tandem with one another.

“Seeing how these companies are segmented, the real challenge is to help them work with the tools so that it is optimized so everything becomes integrated. It isn’t marketing vs distribution vs operations; it really becomes part and parcel to each departments.  Those are, kind of, the issues today – sorting out the internal structure and breaking down the walls; it’s where the challenge and opportunity is today.”

“We’ve got all these tools, but who uses social – is it marketing, is it operations, is it customer service? Who is it?  And the answer should be ‘Yes’, but also ‘How?’, and ‘who’s in charge, and what happens’? And that’s just one teeny tiny aspect. And you can put that to *everything* – to email, to mobile, etc.  But figuring that out is the challenge, or ‘opportunity’.”

“When I first started putting conferences together, we always separated tracks by marketing and distribution.  I would argue, today, that it so archaic and irrelevant, it’s ridiculous… They are one in the same.  Marketing is distribution, distribution is marketing. Yes.  Is “search” distribution or marketing? YES! Of course it’s distribution.  Is “Google” media or commerce? YES! Is “Expedia” media, or commerce? Yes!  So all of these distinctions of what’s marketing, what’s advertising, and even branding has morphed with performance based distribution.  That also translates to offline distribution.  A lot of traditional distribution folks or marketers, it’s a very confusing or challenging world. The lines were very clear… ‘this is my world, this is your world.’  Now the lines are blurring, and it creates opportunity of course, as well as deep, deep challenges.  30 years in the same industry, it is remarkable to be active in the transformation of this arena.

Like these challenges with Social Media and Marketing.

“When travel companies are disappointed in social media, they have taken it on its own, and kind of left it in left field. They haven’t integrated it with everything else, and haven’t taken a look at their distribution and marketing goals, and are left trying to figure out how to measure it or understand the true value of these initiatives. The same thing happens with mobile.”

I see that with hotels – quite desperate to be part of the “shiny new toy” and use the hep buzz words. “Oh we need to get social media going – let’s do it!”, but overall, most really don’t get it.  It’s frustrating to the new entries into this new world.  You can get something up and running cheap and easy, but traditional marketers don’t understand it or can’t get parity between normal campaigns and the social realm.  It’s obviously effecting traditional campaigns, but it’s still a challenge to measure.  What should these old world marketing people be asking as they try to comprehend this very new world of social marketing?

“I think it’s based on marketers saying, “How does this fit in with my overall goals”. Here are my goals – it’s being clear with everything else they do with marketing and distribution.  ’Now that I have taken the time to say what our brand is, what our differentiator is, what our goals are, how I am measuring them, what I am doing – where does everything fit in with this ecosystem that I can measure and know what’s supporting it.’”

You wouldn’t randomly start to use Marketing or PR.

“No one would say, ‘I am not going to do PR because it doesn’t fit in,’, you ask ‘How do I do PR to support this?’.  You wouldn’t just do PR for the sake of it and see what happens.  Unfortunately, social and mobile and others are not yet reviewed this way, which is really unfortunate.  They are often measured at a totally inappropriate, and abstract, type of measurement.  You wouldn’t do that with anything else – why would you do it with social media?  You need it to be inline with goals.”

How do you think this will evolve? What is the future for us?

“I think the future is that we will finally learn to integrate all these things once we feel more comfortable with social, or mobile, or online marketing.  We will see new impacts and aspects with the Google / ITA merger, more new transitions and mergers, and new big players will enter the market like Facebook / Tripadvisor and Apple with Itravel.”

“Once we learn more about the power of that, I think the big opportunity will be integrating all of these lessons and tools, and creating them to be workable strategies that anyone – from the smallest hotel to global companies – will be able to utilize and leverage for their best use.  First we need to understand them, play with them, try them out, and have early successes and failures – then integrate them into what we understand in terms of both distribution and marketing.”

“In that, it doesn’t really matter what the next new big thing is, because we have a process in place to help it exist in the current ecosystem.  The greatest opportunities will be if marketers keep their minds open, and know that there will be blips on the way.  The whole integration helps with obtaining the goals.”

Since you mentioned them, who do you think will be the big players in the next five years.

“I think the big players are going to be different from the big players of “before”.  I don’t think it will be the traditional OTA’s, because they haven’t changed all that much.  Especially if you listen to Phocuswright and Forrester, it’s still ‘when you wanna go, where you wanna go’? –  It all looks the same.  I think it’s going to be, truly, a more intimate look at how people want to get their travel, and I think it’s going to be Google, Facebook, Apple that will now come onto the scene in a really focused way, with the resources and power behind them to find out a different way of distribution.”

Facebook partnering with Tripadvisor is interesting. Tripadvisor seems to be giving up on “native content” vs allowing Facebook users to contribute.  I think it hurt Yelp, and I have seen a huge jump in restaurant reviews on TA – but it’s all really fluid at this point.

“With the like button, with Tripadvisor, and different applications… they will find their way.  You can’t just dismiss the powerhouses of today just because they don’t have the right applications. That would be like dismissing Google in the past because the algorithm was a little off.  You have got to understand that these companies have the bandwidth, the smarts, and the money – and travel is one of the largest if not *THE* largest online opportunity, vertical, and once they have their sights set on it, they will figure it out.”

In working with EyeForTravel, you always seem so enthusiastic and geared up for the events.  Why does it energize you the way it does?

“I think these conferences take you out of your everyday thoughts, and opens up a window to what other companies are doing.  It allows you to see case studies, it allows you to see what’s real versus what’s vaporware, or what’s not. It really allows you to have a dialog.  What we are doing on the phone right now is a dialogue.  It enables marketers and distributors to see what is working now, and what will work 6 months down the line.  It separates the ‘hype’ from the ‘happening’, particularly the newer things like mobile, social media.”

“It saves a lot of time, energy, and effort if you are going down the wrong path, like not taking advantages of current opportunities or believing in hype that isn’t actually working.  Especially with the changing landscape and how quickly this stuff morphs, and the importance of the players today… it helps you see what you should be looking at, and what you should ignore.  I mean, two days at a conference to get all of that –  to save hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, of investment time, of executive time, to really have this immersion & dialogue – I cannot imagine how people could afford *not* to come.”

It’s funny… you can study it all you want, but unless you are completely immersed in a culture, you aren’t going to learn the language.

“There’s a reason people have these off sites – in a normal business day there are too many interruptions, there’s too much going on in the day to day.  You need this time to focus, you need it for your business, you need it for yourself – It’s necessary, it’s mandatory!”

Susan Black will be Chairing at the Eye For Travel North American Travel Distribution Summit in Chicago, the 13^th & 14^th of October, 2010.  You can look at the agenda here, and a list of all the speakers here.  It includes 4 separate focuses within one conference:  Online Sales & Distribution, Revenue Management, Mobile Travel & Tech, and Social Media Strategies. Register here, or contact rosie@eyefortravel.com for more information

Currently, the best way to do this is to team up with a leader in news, events, and analysis in our industry - EyeforTravel.  In preparation of their 12^th annual North American Travel Summit in October, I plan to interview a handful of their speakers.  It promises to gear up our understanding of what to expect from the conference, as well as engage the panelists on a deeper level. I am sure you will find these industry leaders to have profound ideas and impacting conversation on your professional life.

The one topic that is certainly on everyone’s mind right now is how to effectively run a social media campaign in the travel & hospitality segment. Figuring out the best person to interview, in this case, came naturally.  The obvious choice was to reach out to Shana Pereira, the Regional Director-Americas for Tourism Queensland.  Tourism Queensland and Shana are responsible for the “Best Job in the World” campaign.  For those that don’t know about it (specifically all 7 of you), the “Best Job in the World” was meant to find a caretaker to live on an island in the Great Barrier Reef, get paid $110,000 to do so, and the only stipulation was the need to write a weekly blog (which you can find here, a site I suggest you visit only if you are prepared to be depressed about being at your desk). The campaign was a smash hit, runaway success, and Shana has some insightful, amazing things to say about it: what they learned, how it changed them, and some ways you can apply these same principles to work for you.  If you want to learn more about what Tourism Queensland does in social media, you might appreciate the enthusiastic interaction on their Facebook or Twitter pages.  If you can’t jump off the article (and frankly why would you), I will include some photos here to give you an idea of where we are talking about.

An Interview with Queensland Tourism’s Shana Pereira

Thank you for taking the time to chat with me today! If you don’t mind giving my readers a chance to know a little bit more about you and your background, I would appreciate it.

“Previous to my Tourism Queensland life, I worked with a wholesale travel company called Stella Travel Services.  Prior to that for the Northern Territory Tourism Commission here in the US, as well. So my experience comes from marketing icons, like Ayers Rock, but also with a commercial aspect – marketing with the specific goal of conversion.  My career here in the US started in 2003, and so social media, whilst it was in existence, wasn’t primarily used for a commercial company to spread it’s word.  So my background was really focused on marketing but with the purpose of driving sales, vs brand marketing or PR marketing.  I was very much focused on tactical conversion.”

And it sounds like you hit the ground running when you started with the “Best Job in the World”Campaign?

“I started with Tourism Queensland in 2007, and early 2008 was the planning for the ‘Best Job in the World’. My experience was not social media marketing or PR campaigns. I didn’t have any experience in that world at all; not in the sense of conversion.  I knew how to use it, but did we use it as a business?… not really.  So it was very interesting the adaptation that I personally had to go through to be able to be ready to launch something like the “Best Job in the World”, which was “ginormous” and had major parts where I didn’t have much experience. [laughs]  It was very overwhelming, and very, very humbling.”

“The biggest key to that campaign is that the consumers are king.  It reiterated that even more than we ever thought; a brand is not something that you launch, it’s your reputation. People already know your brand whether you are owning it or not [laughs]. It’s not something that you create… and social media heightens that whole experience. So for us, focusing on the Great Barrier Reef, and letting consumers know about islands throughout it was really important. There are so many questions about the Great Barrier Reef, and the campaign was engineered to answer those and help the consumer work through the process of being interested, but not knowing how to experience it.”

In this, Shana & Tourism Queensland could reach out to their niche audience that already existed, but couldn’t find the right access to the Reef.  Queensland Tourism understood that you aren’t trying to convince people that aren’t interested in the barrier reef so much as connecting with and reaching out to people that already are aware of, and identify with, it.

“That was our biggest lesson, I think.  That’s what we went into it with… there are billions of consumers out there that could be our target market globally, but only a couple of million that visit the Great Barrier Reef in any given year.  The operators that we have that support touring the Great Barrier Reef – many are eco friendly and conscious of environment.  So there is a very minimal impact on the reef itself.  So we had a model there that was in place to attract tourists, but protect the environment.  So having that infrastructure behind us, I think we were ready to enter this world of marketing with significant cut through, and it helped us spread the word as fast as possible. In social media, that is the key: You can’t shove a message down the throat of the masses who don’t want to know about it; it has to be something they are already interested in. The surprise at the end is your target community can be huge, but still very targeted to a specific interest that is a common thread amongst the consumers.”

“Finding commonality is vital… When you are able to find that, your community will organically grow itself around that message.  The key is in turning niche products into volume without losing the niche; if that is your specific target market, it will always be “niche”, however you have an opportunity to find more people by grabbing the advocates FIRST… who then propel the brand beyond our reach.”

“In regards to the Best Job in the World, the question was ‘Why is this the best job in the world?’.  It is because it is on the wonder of the world: 1,200 miles of Reef and 1000′s of fish, turtles, etc.  It became an incredibly successful campaign because it coupled people who were interested in Jobs, as well as travel in general; then layering that with this natural wonder of the world… it hit our community so positively.  It brought a new attention from job seekers and travelers.  Connecting with an existing niche community helped propel it into a successful campaign.“

What was the underlying strategy for the “Best Job in the World Campaign”?

“The process start to finish had three different angles or strategies. The concept was built underneath how we would distribute the message, target the traditional demographic for visitors, and how we would convert the people in amongst the PR buzz to actually book a trip.”

What ends up being the long term measurement of success of “Best Job in the World”?

“Our creative agency at the time developed the concept, but there were a myriad of elements we needed to talk through: how to launch in multiple countries, how do you control the messaging, the translation?  How do we stay focused in converting this into actual travel numbers, and people buying a trip.  Of course we wanted people to apply for the job, but our major focus and goal was to get more attention and have more people have this experience at the Great Barrier Reef. When we launched we knew it would be more of a PR effort vs. paid media campaign, but from first day we had no idea what was going to happen, to be honest. We can easily say, from day before launch to day after, we were completely different people overnight, personally and professionally.  We had to move quite quickly and nimbly… some goals set for 12 months out happened in 36 hours. [Editor gasps].  Yes!  Goals in regards to visits to website, applications accepted, etc.  Then we asked, ‘what do we do know?’ [laughs].  We went through a phase of 3,000 clicks a minute in first couple days of launch.”

“The long term return on investment was measured by visiting numbers to Queensland from international markets, and visitors spent. That is the best measurement year over year.  It obviously isn’t about giving away one job, but rather letting the eyes of the world focus on us, in middle of their winter, letting everyone know “YOU COULD LITERALLY BE HERE”. It wasn’t about being someone ‘special’ – it was literally that anyone could be there. The job could be had by anybody *and* you didn’t have to wait for the dream job, but could immediately book and have this experience on vacation.”

(In fact, The Best Job turned out to be a real job after all.  A wonderful, brilliant job… but in the 6 months, Ben Southall, the winner, did 200 interviews. Ouch & Wow. I personally rather go on holiday.)

How has the campaign altered and existed over time, and how has it effected your traditional marketing?

“The launch of the ‘best job’ was a PR message that went global, that ran alongside the normal tactical campaigns.  What we saw was that modern social media impacted traditional marketing in positive ways.  Organic interest grew in traditional print media, etc. Each of our tactical campaigns were heightened.  Because of social media, people had heard and seen Queensland in the first 6 month period, and interest organically grew, and we instantly saw results in parity with that marketing.  We also leveraged the “Best” tagline in markets around the world, because people had heard of it:  ‘Best honeymoon, best diving’, etc. Lastly… it grew our social media immensely.  When you Google ‘Best Job In The World’, you will see applicants and others still talk about it. Now we have another channel we can market to regularly.”

The fervor of traditional media “falling” seems premature.  Social Media isn’t going to replace traditional marketing, in fact, this campaign proves they work together incredibly well.

“The way we launched the “Best Job” campaign in the U.S. was through a Reuters news article.  We launched a social media campaign through traditional media, so it’s very, very integrated. You definitely have to be integrated into both of the worlds. How we use social media is basically a new distribution channel. We also work with traditional media who uses social media to research topical and relevant news… In every campaign we look at PR, trade engagements, such as travel agents, airline partners, wholesalers, and social media.  So, yes, it’s literally another distribution channel.”

“I wasn’t aware of activating PR or social media, and I was handed this new campaign, where they said ‘Have a think about it.’ [laughs].  So we are really proud of how it rolled out.  It grew organically after the launch, but was VERY strategic over time – there were 4 phases of media engagement.  In the end, the social media buzz gained enough momentum to have Oprah interview the ‘Best Job’ winner, Ben.  So again, it’s reciprocal and integrated tightly.  In fact, whenever the Oprah episode runs, we measure it to be about $500K in PR value each time – with new people engaged each time, as well.”

So why did the campaign work so well?

“It worked because it’s genuine… it’s real. It isn’t about creating need with a forced message, but connecting with people that have a need, and connection, for your brand.  ‘This is truly a place that is unlike anywhere else in the world’ – a specific message that everyone can relate to.  Everyone has a job, needs a job, and even if they are in a job they are open to learning about new ones.  You sell a dream, sell a connection, sell a relatable experience.  When you can find what’s relatable – ‘what is that void in people’s lives? What is the one thing this product fills in an emotional sense?’ – it takes off.  What’s more is that you are visible to the world – you are open, listening, anyone can contact you.  That is scary, and changes your professional culture. It’s not a process that people are ready to jump into. But I guarantee whatever industry, hotels and airlines to washing machines, if they represent a genuine emotional fulfillment to a person, they will stand out. It doesn’t need to be large companies, anyone can do it. Even though we are 2 years into the ‘Best Job in the World’, I still get goosebumps talking about it because it’s a true statement, and something I am incredibly emotionally connected to. It was really because of the reiteration from millions of consumers saying ‘I WANT THIS’, and ‘YOUR PRODUCT IS UNLIKE ANYTHING IN THE WORLD’. It can be achieved on all different levels, and you don’t need millions of dollars.  The overall cost of the 12-month campaign was 2.1 million Australian dollars, and we reached every corner of the world.  If you get people talking about your product on your behalf, it organically grows.  Success isn’t a numbers game, but real consumer interaction.  We are all on limited resources in this day and age, and you really want to service people that want to hear from you.”

“The timing of the campaign was also important; it was selling a dream. I was literally in an interview where Hillary Clinton was talking about jobs on the decline, and then I go on talking about not only a job, but a dream job.  The reason it got so much coverage is that it was a great opportunity that gave some hope; an affordable, do-able, life experience you shouldn’t have to put aside just because of this global crisis.  Our whole industry was at a standstill, and everyone quickly became aware of us because of these connections, and we were reaching out to these specific and targeted audiences, which happen to be large and vocal.”

Since you have social media figured out…. What’s next?

“So I am all for it now.  I am a renewed person, and love social media networks, but we do use them in a calculated manner.  You need to make sure not to misuse the social media databases…. if you start overly marketing to your consumers, or sending wrong messages, you will lose the interest of the group. You need to treat these databases as human beings that want legitimate connections. If I have opted in to hear about a Ford Focus, I don’t want Ford sending me information about SUV’s, etc.  You will immediately lose my attention in that case.  You need to treat these connections with respect, as humans.”

“For Tourism Queensland, we are now always working on campaigns like this. As with the ‘Best Job’ campaign, it takes a number of months to get a campaign going.  Ben has been touring and talking about his experience, to this day.  The Best Job campaign was never defined as a “campaign”, so much as a message that would run the normal course of its natural organic life. We have also created ambassadors in specific countries who love Queensland.  They are passionate consumers that are thrilled to be given the opportunity to represent and share about Queensland. People want to hear from real people, a peer, or fellow traveler; a genuine, unbiased opinion. I am not too sure the travelers want to hear from me [laughs].  In fact, by the time they get to your site, they have decided.  You can only be there to support the process and reach out to them.  So we will continue to support the organic growth of the message as long as it is ‘alive’.”

What is your goal for this conference?

“Whenever we do these sort of talks, my goal is to have 2 or 3 things that everyone in the room can walk away with; I like to leave the group with at least a couple implementation strategies that we can apply, that don’t cost too much, and that they can actually see some kind of result from.  Too often you sit through these talks and you get to the end and you go ‘That sounded great, but does it apply to me? How do I apply it to me?’.  We want people to understand some of the things we learned through our process, so they don’t have the same learning curve.  Something we learned, especially for hotel properties:  it’s about the experience of your hotel, and how you verbalize that experience.  For example, we have learned it’s VERY difficult to have a large fanbase for a particular brand, unless you have huge dollars.  But how do you relate the story of your hotel, so that people know the underlying experience?”

“You need to layer this message so that it connects with that audience.  Finding a way to relate that message to our everyday lives and instantly put us somewhere else is important; to relate to a customer’s day to day, and find out how it fills a need for that person. We travel & marketing professionals are all very busy, and want to make best use of each other’s time.  The more we can help others, it organically happens that we help ourselves.  This conference is part of that.”

Thank you for your time.  It’s exciting that Eye for Travel has been able to level the playing field by connecting so many intelligent, learned professionals that are sort of starry eyed saying “We don’t get it, it’s amazing, let’s converse and help one another learn from each other”.

“Yes, and it’s a moving learning.  I don’t think we will ever totally get it.  I think we just have to support the process, because it’s just so fluid.  I don’t think it’s something that we’re supposed to wrap our heads around as a marketing professional. It’s more about looking at it from a consumer point of view and what would you want to hear, and what would you click on.  It’s very, very interesting.”

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! =) There is so much more for you and your organization to learn about.  ”The Best Job in the World” has a “BEST EVER CASE STUDY” – a complete and all-encompassing documentation of the entire process, start to finish.  It includes a Video Case Study as well.  The amount of data, results, and solid ROI info you can garner from that site is, to say the least, impressive, and I encourage you to spend time learning from their experiences.

Shana Pereira from Queensland Tourism will be speaking at the Eye For Travel North American Travel Distribution Summit in Chicago, the 13^th & 14^th of October, 2010.  You can look at the agenda here, and a list of all the speakers here.  It includes 4 separate focuses within one conference:  Online Sales & Distribution, Revenue Management, Mobile Travel & Tech, and Social Media Strategies. Register here, or contact rosie@eyefortravel.com for more information.

There is a big discussion going on about the equity of attention in social media, and that curating attention is more important than posting information.  Curation is a fine line, and studies have shown that curation works better through less posting of more pertinent info, than more posting of one-off links, stories, etc.  Social Media is becoming quite good at capturing attention (think contests, PR stunts, promos, or other gimmicks), but maintenance of these relationships is becoming more important, difficult, and confounding.  If you look at Groupon, Homerun, and other coupon services (like San Francisco’s SF Gate deals that just started) – it isn’t hard to build a network so much as keeping that network interacting, which is the real challenge.  These coupon services are ideal examples: People will sign up for a specific offer (relevant to their interests), then react like the rest of the email offers (which they opted-in to) are part of their “daily spam regimen” (delete, delete, delete).

It is important to step out of your world as the business using social media to reach guests, and think how users of social media would like to be reached.

So… Facebook Pages, over-posting, and hiding streams.

We need to address this issue about how people use Facebook, versus how businesses wish people would use Facebook.  There is a fast growing problem that fledgling social media enthusiasts & page administrators are not aware of; although, they are encountering it daily in their happy-go-lucky power posting of relevant information for their hotels.

There are less eyes on your Facebook page than you realize, and you are losing more all the time.

It is a universal gripe…. even though no one truly enjoys Facebook, we need to be there as a business simply because that’s where potential guests are located, and that’s where we can perk up our ears to listen for mentions about our brand, and grow when we encounter advice or commentary.  Firm ROI is secondary to our experimental presences on Facebook profiles and pages.  Some are, in fact, successful in driving incremental revenue to outlets, some achieve positive brand building, some act as help-all concierges, some operate as ombudsmen, and still others have zero idea what they are doing or why they are there.  But businesses know they need to be available to their potential clients, even without a mitigated plan.  I think this is where a slight disconnect occurs for the business (and I have a whole post about this coming up):  People think it is about the business using social media (YAY! We’re HERE!), but it’s more about the availability of the business for the consumer.  More precisely, it’s about being available, but not being intrusive.  The way some people post on their Facebook Hotel Page, it’s tantamount to pounding on your guest’s door all hours of the day with little bits of information.  It’s overwhelming, and it is off-putting.

There is one simple fact, and it’s that the way you want consumers to use Facebook is *not* the way that Facebook users are using it. Yet.

We all know that Facebook is buggy, and for some businesses and neophytes, figuring out all of the settings and controls must be like wading through syrup.  For business’ savvy enough to realize you need to reach your audience where that audience chooses to congregate (chat rooms, groups, Twitter, etc), it isn’t made any easier by Facebook, and their lack of interactivity or ability to create real commerce with people.  Connections happen, and they are wonderful to see develop, but people are still reticent to have any real interaction with “business-as-commerce” versus “business-as-brand”, which is obvious in Facebook’s positioning with the ease of “liking”.   The throwaway simplicity of “liking” a brand at this point is meant to identify user profiles for targeted ad marketing, and not to promote any real deep interaction with the brand page itself.  Meaning, people are quite ready to “wear” a Facebook page brand as they would Gucci sunglasses or Prada bag, but they are not ready to transact with the brands themselves.  A lot of feedback from Facebook users is that business page posts still have the “feel” of being “spammy”.  With that in mind, we are already fighting an uphill battle in seeking out ways to connect with Facebook users that are fans of our specific brands.  This becomes precarious, however, because many businesses over-post pics and info in an eager and noble attempt to share their services/products.  This can actually drive people away.

Of course, the logical way a social network would remedy this is to have the brand advocate user “unfriend” or “defan” a page.  That way, a business page could use data exhaust and user actions to help learn in real time about what they do well, or what they might be doing wrong.  This works quite well on Twitter, and their are even Apps built on the API that allow users to find out precisely what they did that lost, or gained, followers.

But leave it to Facebook, a company obviously more concerned with user-experience less than the monetary value of those previous “likes”, to create the ability to “hide streams”.  It isn’t Facebook’s concern that a page isn’t curating attention, so much that the user enjoys a brand.  To Facebook, liking the brand is more important than telling the brand they are interacting poorly.  Once a Facebook user has chosen to “LIKE” a page, they will do almost anything to maintain that superficial connection for ad-model demographic targeting reasons.

Leave it to Facebook’s closed, corrupted environment to allow disingenuous networks; instead of Facebook creating meaningful networks of truly interactive partners, they have allowed users to hide streams, so you can be part of a network without really interacting with it. For those that are completely unaware, the option exists within Facebook to “hide” a stream, be it a page, an app, or person.  This is wonderful if you are sick of Foursquare check ins or Mafia Wars updates from friends, but it violates a vital aspect of social media’s earnest and transparent attempt at communication, and interactivity.  When a “stream” becomes overactive (constant updates, possibly via RSS or blog feed), or hyperactive (admin posting multiple links rapid fire, attempting to batch process relevant content for the hotel)…. users are hiding your stream.

This is a problem – not just for businesses, but for Facebook, as well.  Facebook is creating vast, HUGE false networks, or at least connections without interaction.  I don’t mean to be glib – but doesn’t it strike you as worrisome that a vast community of people isn’t really that much of a community at all?  I know it’s a vague concept, but how much trust will you stake in a network based off of false pretenses? The network that is supposed to connect everyone in the world is doing more to create a completely “tromp l’oeil” experience in regards to social media – it looks more like a network than it really is.  In the simplest terms, this is going to come back to bite Facebook big time, and they will have to make some decisions about hidden streams in the future.

The entire aspect of being able to be friends with people, or like a page, with the ability to “hide” their stream is disastrous on the effect of real networking, communication, and building potential commerce from within Facebook.  When your stream is hidden, you have no idea that it has happened.  When a Facebook user hides your posts, they still  “like” your brand, and are associated with it….. *WITHOUT EVER SEEING YOUR CONTENT*.  You disappear from their eyes, and you now have “phantom fans” who don’t interact with you.  Of course, Facebook made “liking” something inordinately easy to do, a couple months ago.  But in accomplishing their social graph concept, it further dismantles meaningful communication and interaction in lieu of passive, meaningless brand identity meant for ad-marketing, with zero regard to relevant idea exchange.

So, when users “hide” the stream, they still look like fans, but they don’t receive your posts anymore. Facebook, or the fan, doesn’t alert you, nor are you informed in any way.  The business, as a result,  has no idea they have been “hidden”, while the Page’s fan count will remain constant.  It’s been happening for a lot of business pages, and it’s becoming a problem for people that don’t understand the interaction people expect from a business, versus the interaction a business wants (wishes) to have with their clients.  If a business can’t learn from their mistakes, how will this experience improve for the people involved? If a user can haphazardly “like” at the same time as “hiding” those people or pages, is that really a relevant connection?

Your hotel may have 1000 fans, but what if 100 have hidden you? There has been so little conversation en masse about this “hiding” phenomenon, that I can’t accurately gauge what percentage of “like”-fans end up hiding pages, but in every day conversation about Facebook, in an extensive group of acquaintances, it seems to be a very common, and very popular, activity.  That’s scary.  If it’s a commonly known function in Facebook, you could have 30-70% of your audience not listening anymore.  That’s really scary.

Frankly I find it markedly cynical, and disingenuous.  If I had any clout, I would ask Facebook to stop it right now, and not because I don’t like being able to hide things in my own stream.  I love not seeing any of those apps populating wall, but it does make my decisions to “follow” and “like” pages less meaningful, and less legitimate.  If I couldn’t hide a feed, would I really fan a page, if I knew I were meant to legitimately interact and communicate with that brand?  Would the brands be intelligent enough to know how to court users, or captivate them enough so as not to drive them away?

I have had some success with how I manage interaction on Facebook… I post a link occasionally, but save most of the meat for a blog post which includes events, commentary, relevant google alert posts, comments, info – and then let that blog post feed into Facebook.  It is a whole bunch of posts / links in one single post.  That way people can access and interact with it if they want, at their leisure.  Instead of the links coming across their wall as one post at a time, they all sit in one place for the guest’s convenience.  One post with 20 links seems to be received much more favorably than 20 links posted once at a time.  Remember, this isn’t about you or your business force marketing or pushing your brand onto Facebook users; this is a place for you to be available to potential guests. Don’t get carried away.

If you overpost, you risk becoming irrelevant without having any knowledge or metric from Facebook to see how you are doing, or what you can do to curate the attention necessary to strike a balance.  Attention, in this new “economy”, is equity.  And curating the attention is now your sole job.  That’s interesting – because in our rush to curate attention, a lot of us forgot to ask how, precisely, to do that.  In an eager rush to share exciting news about your hotel, you may be losing eyes without having any say in the matter.  The only real option is to patiently fence sit, and be a skeptic.

My thought is to be patient, and ride out this precarious situation.  For the time being, Facebook users are hesitant to interact with businesses; when it becomes more acceptable, *then* get more interactive with your fans regarding products, selling, etc.  For now, we want to curate, and maintain, this attention.  The best way to do it is by being calculating, and to some extent… quiet.  At least make sure your formula = less posts + better content.

I, unfortunately, don’t have any answers.  It’s simply something that has been on my mind, and it’s not a conversation people are having on the implementation level of social media.  There are the tech bloggers yammering about equity, curation, & attention, but businesses have a way to go before they understand this aspect of Facebook.

This may change…. FB may cement itself and people will eventually get used to it as a vast & interactive portal, or it could fall apart under poor management and lack of acumen in development of the business pages side of the site.  Most Facebook users are still stuck in the concept of a private dialogue between close friends, where Twitter has evolved into a more interactive real world community.  It is sorely obvious that Pages…. are…. yet…. another…. slapped together…. on top of old architecture…. idea…. which Facebook threw together because they were worried about losing brands to Twitter’s opt-in propensity for real commerce.  Pages weren’t thought out in any real detail, and as these problems begin to mount, FB will need to make some serious choices about how to fix their site.

Until then….

This specific issue is why I organize most of our relevant links into a blog that lists all the information, pics, stories, etc.  Other than that, I reply to people’s comments and responses on the page. I post natively whenever possible, for reasons which I will address in a subsequent blog post.

In the end, this is less about Facebook, and more about you and your business page.  We are a captive audience to Facebook’s shortcomings, and it is a necessary evil for the time being.  In thinking about how you use Facebook Pages for business, you may want to consider the above; especially if you are one of the Pages that continues with a rapid-fire, staccato-like posting of brand mentions, deals, articles, press releases, etc….

It’s time to rethink your eagerness versus effectiveness on Facebook Pages.  Of course, as I write this… all I can do is wonder about Facebook’s effectiveness, overall.

The below words are basically a mashup of every single tweet (processed & filtered) from the #smtravel conference (blended with my commentary in the parentheses).  I arranged the information best I could, however *completely* subjective said arrangement is. I hope it makes some form of sense – or at least you can potentially peer into the chasm that is my logic.  At the least I hope I didn’t misquote or misrepresent anyone.  Speaking of transparency – I left some fairly meaty and helpful implementation/action ideas at the end that were not necessarily even part of the conference… I figure if you can find them and actually read that far down, well.. you deserve them.

I will go out on a limb saying that 100% of the data is accurate, because I basically copy and pasted from the tweet stream. I am sad to say the nature of making the “tweety casserole” of our conference helped it to lose much in the reference & citations arena, but if you need to see the authority and professionalism of those involved, please refer to list of speakers at the conference. For those that don’t know me – I am a big skeptic, and vigilant about data and non skewed statistics, as well as generally skeptical about enthusiastic marketing. If anyone would like to challenge any of the information or data below, please do! I am always up for conversation and learning…. and if incorrect data was given out at this conference I assume we would all like to know (this is highly unlikely)! So let’s have at it – Eye For Travel’s Social Media Conference #smtravel 2010!  (Boy I hope this makes sense)

My attempt at organizing the concepts throughout the conference:

1. Social Media (general)
2. Facebook
3. Twitter
4. Geolocation / Mobile / Augmented Reality
   
5. ROI
6. User Generated Reviews / Content
7. Takeaway / Important Thoughts
   
8. Action / Implementation

You will note a lot of information on Geolocation/Mobile & User Generated Reviews/Content.  I think that’s because there is real data, opportunity, and engagement in those areas.  The other areas are more guesswork and hoping.  Twitter provides ROI, to be sure… but I think we should focus on what provides results, vs. what we like to think *may* work.  In that, I personally suggest you alot some of your Facebook time to understanding and interacting with Geolocation, as well as becoming more involved in the review sites.

I) Social Media

Stats:

• 83% of adults use social media
• 70% of participants in Social Media are spectators (lurkers – we know you are out there eating our posts)
• 18% of US online leisure travelers do not have a destination in mind when they start their trip planning
• For every 1/2 sec improvement in landing page download speed, you can increase page views 1-3% (I know.. this is SEOweb design. Sue me)
• 58% of travelers use Facebook monthly, 40% use YouTube, 32% to Wikipedia, but 1 in 4 don’t visit any social media sites (this is in tune with understanding traditional marketing vital, still important, and should be integrated and aware of SM plan)
• Email marketing still important but not as effective as it used to be. (I don’t think I need a stat for that, but 1) it still seems to be effective for some people & 2) it’s amazing how others simply won’t let it go when it is no longer effective. It used to be a cure all salve to some marketers)
• Consumers follow and fan brands on FB and Twitter to learn about discounts (32%). Learn about new products (19%)
• 35 Million LinkedIn updates/week, 600 tweets per second, 5 billion pieces of facebook content a week
• An angry customer can lose you more customers than a happy customer can bring you new ones
• Social networking is the new “morning coffee” – 4 in 10 people wake up to their social circles
• 4 in 10 people recommend products on social media
• eMarketer reports 81% of marketers say social media significantly extends their e-mail to new markets

Commentary/Conversation:

• You can choose not to participate in social media conversation but….. that is *probably* not a good thing.
• Most social media /generated content is crap. (This reminded me of a very relevant talk by Google CEO Schmidt, and the resulting piece The Cesspool We Call The Internet)
• Social media is about relinquishing control
• Social media/user generated content is the new brochure, and you have no say in how that brochure is made or what it looks like (I like the sentiment but mildly disagree… I think you be accountable of everything in your control and offer a worthwhile product and the brochure will be to your liking).
• Transparency is not for the faint of heart, and it may not work for everyone. When people get an update, they want more on a regular basis. (IMHO, It doesn’t just happen, you have to fight culture of secrecy that most business cultivates).
• Top 5 trends in Web 2.0 – 1) Semantic Web 2) SMO (social media optimization) 3) SGO (social graph optimization) 4) Affinity Graph (feel free to elaborate on this one) 5) HyperLocal
• It is about the quality, not quantity, of followers. 500 committed followers is worth 10,000 non brand interested ones (what sort of followers do contests breed?)
  
• Soc Media is a communication TOOL – not a PLATFORM – “do you ask for ROI on your telephone?”
• Social Media is not a campaign, it’s a commitment.
• How do you measure the value of a relationship? Lifetime value = more than the sum of transactions.
• It’s amplified word of mouth, right? It’s been happening for years. It’s about creating community again – SM just a new channel for old-fashioned business sense.
• Social Media let’s your customers do the talking for you.
• Social media shares elements w/journalism: Who, what, where, why, how. Formula for getting the full story on a subject.
• World has moved form 6 degrees of separation to 2 thanks to social media
• Conversation about your brand will happen without you being aware or taking part…. you might as well listen.
• Whoever earns trust, wins

Best Practices:

• SOCIAL MEDIA DOES NOT EQUAL DIGITAL MARKETING – Social Media is 2 way communication (interactivity, conversation, dynamic growth), marketing is one way communication (forced/push marketing, print, billboards)
• Good social media is about the 4 E’s: Educate, Excite, Engage and Evangelize.
• Monitor, Engage, Respond.
• Have a clear plan – where do you fit and how can you add value to your guests and social media. But you have to be prepared to manage the conversation. It’s not a campaign, it’s a commitment.
• Bake social media DNA into everyone in the organization
• You wouldn’t put someone behind the front desk without training. Don’t put someone in social media without training
• Guest services should respond to social media just like email or phone calls.
• Real time recovery is vital to hospitality’s use of & engagement w/social media – the internet is fast and speed is key.
• It’s not about you the brand, it’s about them – about being available & listening
• Non participation is akin to ignoring customers – a lost opportunity to engage, learn and make amends.
• Social should live across departments like PR, cust svc, marketing, etc. It becomes “something everyone does” like email.
• You can become pen pals with some of your customers thru social media. good way to build relationships, brand ambassadors (time consuming)
• Using persona’s to identify your average customers is useful – but be real, be earnest, be transparent, and have fun.
• Utilize effective management to maintain productivity, instead of limiting massively effective tools for business (social media being banned in the workplace)
• Social media can be a very powerful recruiting tool
• Use analytics & monitoring tools: Omniture, Cision, ReviewAnalyst, eBuzz, Revinate, Radian6
• Social Media should be fun with the appropriate tone of conversation.
• Manage Social Media both from corporate and property level – “Speak in the tone of the medium”
• Blogs bring value to SEO efforts
• Best ideas are often driven from the bottom up. Always listen to your front line people!
• Experimentation is the key to social media success. Fail cheap, fail fast.
• Social media is not free. Someone has to own, monitor, track, analyze etc.
• The Return is on customer engagement, and ROI may take some time.

II. Facebook

Stats:

• 100 million people now using Facebook mobile app at least once a month (how many are exploring brand pages?).
• 56% users check Facebook each day
• 48% of people talk about products on Facebook
• 5 billion posts of content from Facebook per week

Commentary/Conversation:

• “Facebook will remain relevant because of its privacy controls” (- My rant: I wholeheartedly disagree – twitter inherently allows the user to opt out of privacy, so the user is quite aware of what they are entering into.  Buzz is similar in this respect.  Conversely, Flickr VIGOROUSLY champions the right of privacy & ownership, so does Tribe.net.  Facebook is constantly altering their architecture so as to potentially generate constant cash flow.  These attempts at creation of revenue wholly disregard the individual users’ privacy & bungles the process constantly, while adding layers to a flawed structure/network that is based off of non-meaningful geo-connections.  Connections, of course, should include *immediate* social circles, but the strongest connections are based off interest, not educational institution – which pits classmates across broad socioeconomic and political backgrounds into similar social circles.  The preceding line is precisely why Facebook *could* eventually fail. The sky is not falling, and the landscape is changing constantly… but until Facebook figures this out, their dominance is tenuous.  You cannot create a solid network based off of “loose interests”.  Topics/Subject matter drive content creation, and content creation drives social networks.  There can be no meaningful brand interaction in “loose interest” networks – there is limited opportunity to get the network effect started around brands if one user who likes you suggests your brand to a user completely foreign to it’s necessity or disinterested in it’s existence).
  
• I voice constant concern about Facebook – is the conversation meaningful? Do they book?
• Facebook pages for brands as a “fad” was brought up, many disagreed with the concept.

Best practices:

• Instead of attempting to create a new social network, connect with an existing one: FB connect picks up that slack – interactivity is at leisure of user. Facebook connect allows published content and comments on both your website and Facebook. Helps build engagement in both places. Travelmuse received a 30% increase in membership from using Facebook Connect. One of the best ideas was this – “It’s easier to buy access to someone else’s audience than to try to build up your own in order to market to them”
• Add a booking widget, customize the tabs and cross-integrate your Social Media channels (connect but do not auto-post – remain native)
• Tag FB pages w/Omniture(Analytic) tags to help measure ROI
• “5 Essential Apps for Your Business’s Facebook Page”
• Competitors’  followers should be at the top of your list of who to find & target
• The Facebook ads that work best to grow a fan base show the user their “friends” that are fans, and has a “Become A Fan button” on it.
• FB doesn’t always grab people not coming to your hotel, so it is often better used locally. FB pages work GREAT for F&B, spa (incremental revenue).
• FB apps can best be seen as complimenting a good FB marketing campaign instead of the center of it
• (I just started realizing the mapped network of facebook pages creates a tighter community online if you connect – try to get as many local businesses to highlight your page, and vice versa. Creates a stronger local presence overall.)
• Create “status questions” (what are you doing today?) so you can check engagement and how often guests interact/check-in with you.
  

III) Twitter

Stats:

• Michael Perhaes with MGM Grand said Twitter is 5x more effective than email for us, & GM Grand’s Twitter customers have higher ADR than email customers (someone suggested this as savvy, but honestly I would imagine a savvy consumer to find a lower price?)
• 600 tweets per second

Commentary/Conversation:

• If you’re going to make money, Twitter must become a transactional platform at some point
• Twitter is the new flight attendant call button
• Twitter drives revenue, no doubt about it.  Twitter = ROI, Facebook = idle brand chit chat.
  
• Young kids don’t trust it, and think it’s for old people or fame seekers

Best practices:

• Twitter is not a direct marketing platform
• Twitter can be used as an R&D tool
• Uses “extended” shelf space by having multiple twitter accounts to represent brand :chef pages, nightclubs, hotel, spa, etc. Multiple Twitter accounts for multiple audiences
• Consider integration with API to expose what is tweeted about your brand (like highlighting reviews, it does suggest letting go of message)
• Even if you do have a group of people working on social media, don’t forget to tweet (fb/blog) with personality – be a real human voice & be real – but be transparent, be consistent,
• Separate conversation – promotions, customer service, etc should be separate Twitter accounts so as not to confuse (this is debatable depending on your brand)
• competitors’  followers should be at the top of your list

IV) Geolocation / Mobile

Stats:

• Google estimates 50% of web traffic to come thru mobile devices w/in 5 years (if that doesn’t blow your mind, re-read it slowly, twice).
• 240 million people mobile browsers in 2010, surpassing PCs for first time
• 100 million people now using Facebook mobile app at least once a month
• According to a recent comScore report, 30.8% of smartphone users accessed social networking sites via their mobile browser in January 2010, up 8.3 points from 22.5% one year ago.
• Access to Facebook via mobile browser grew 112% in the past year, while Twitter experienced a 347% jump.
• 1 in 3 mobile search queries have local intent
• Mobile Shopping to balloon to $119 Billion by 2015

Commentary:

• Morgans Hotels tagged NYC airport codes on Foursquare during recent blizzards, ran ads, & generated some sales.
  
• Are iPhone apps a “flavor of the month”? Or should you just develop a good mobile-optimized Web site?
• Geolocation tools like Foursquare mark a significant shift in social-real time interaction – it’s valid, useful information
  
• hyper local = search + social graph + mobile + your location
• Impressive: Morgans Hotel leverages themed twitter hashtags, 4Sq hotel checkins, Artist Generated Content and analytics tools
• Location-based marketing will be a trend. “It’s clearly good.”
• Adding hotel rates to Google search results enhances relevancy of listing – mobile access & booking to skyrocket. One thing, however, is that rates in Google maps is customer friendly, but maybe not so great for suppliers (link to maps blog post here: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/03/experiment-to-show-hotel-prices-on.html)

Best Practices:

• You got me. I think, again, I defer to Del Ross from ICH – “Experimentation is the key to social media success. Fail cheap, fail fast.” But frankly, FOCUS ON IT. I would be willing to bet my name that it’s worth limiting some Facebook time to interacting with Foursquare.

V) ROI:

Stats:

• What we are after (and trying to define)! *or* “No clear, easy way to track back social media ROI” says panel, “An attribution model has yet to be developed.”
• Forrester Research says it is a way to enhance relationships with customers, build brand, help hiring & recruitment, engage in customer service, and helps to build employee morale.

Conversation:

• If social media goals are not clearly communicated, how do u know what “good” looks like?
• If you aren’t paying attention to conversation about your brand, who is? A different ROI – Return on Ignorance
• Interesting perspective on generating demand vs conversion in social media. Examples: FB = demand, Yelp = conversion
• Will virtual cash become taxable? (It apparently already is, in some places.)

Best Practices:

• Social media is not free. Someone has to own, monitor, track, analyze etc. It is ROCS – a return on customer satisfaction in early stages
• Measurement involves many different goals, not just sales. Overall revenue, room nights (Hilton’s ROI measurement) are just two of them.
• Southwest measures SM ROI by: employee satisfaction; ratio of cust compliments to complaints; new signups; conversions.

VI) User Generated Reviews / Content

Stats:

• Their data shows that people believe online strangers to friends and family in regards to reviews, user generated content. Expedia
• Travelers search 20 different sites when planning a trip
• 44% of online travelers trust other travelers before commercial advertising
• 32% of Yelp reviews are 5-stars. Only 15% are 1- or 2-stars
• TripAdvisor has 32 million reviews and gets 16 new contributions every minute.
• TripAdvisor gives less weight to older reviews than newer in terms of ranking
• Content submitted to TripAdvisor at its start 10 years ago is still on the site. There are no plans to remove those.
• Management response to critical reviews more important than review content according to Tripadvisor research
• TripAdvisor says an average traveler reads about 30 reviews
• Only 4% of hotels respond to tripadvisor reviews

Commentary:

• By being confident, taking ownership, & being enthusiastic, authors have altered or taken bad reviews.
• Immediacy of customer feedback on mobile posed to change how companies use social media
• Online Reviews allow satisfied customers play “ambassadors” of your business
• Negative reviews play an important role too, you can’t please 100% of the people 100% of the time
• it’s better to join the conversation than not. Reviews can go from 3 to 5 stars because of this

Best Practices

• Be humble, be swift, be specific – How a hotel property responds to criticism says more about them than the criticism itself
• By replying to reviews, you humanize the brand – it’s less of a place to complain & more about commerce
• Every negative comment is an opportunity to turn around the relationship, and create a long term brand centric consumer.
• Bad reviews are exciting to highlight, celebrate, and learn from. Great marketing opportunity. Your reaction is vital.
• responding is never a knee jerk reaction #smtravel they take a LOT of thought, editing attention. Good impulse control – required quality for persons chosen to respond to customer comments on social media

VII) Takeaway & Important Thoughts

Stats/”Subjective Facts” :

• Social media is about relinquishing control
• Google estimates 50% of web traffic to come through mobile devices w/in 5 years
• Investing money in search visibility reduces need to spend money elsewhere.
• If anyone says they are a social media expert, they are lying to you. We are all learning and failing constantly.
• For every 1/2 sec improvement in landing page download speed, you can increase page views 1-3% (content heavy, uber-marketed sites are going bye bye)
• User Generated Content (UGC) is the 21st century’s word of mouth, and your new brochure – and you’re not the one writing it. your customers are your new copywriters (Jennifer Davies, Expedia)
• Virgin will soon have 3 FTE people handling SM. Hilton has 1. Southwest has 6.
• The new big three in travel = Brazil, China, and India. New travel up 50% in recent years.
  
• People under 30 use email only to talk to you if you are over 30, or to talk to brands/companies (suggests the data… there are exceptions to these facts)
  
• Social media matters, but does not replace traditional channels. One in four travelers are not on social networks
• People want to connect, people want to share: this is what drives social media growth

Commentary:

• Ignoring social media today is like ignoring Google in 1999.
• Customers no longer search for news & deals — they want the deals to find them
• It’s a conversation, not a broadcast. Be authentic, honest, transparent.
  
• Think about shaping conversation, not controlling it
• When social media relationships become “real” they become private & go offline
• Social Media is most powerful when integrated directly with the product
• Work with your competitors to create a “trend” for media coverage
• Social media is not a “nice to have” anymore. It now must be a part of an integrated marketing strategy (but it isn’t just marketing, and it isn’t just a strategy)
• It’s easier to buy access to someone else’s audience than to try to build up your own in order to market to them
• Consumers want you to engage with them in social media, but only when and where they want to hear from you.
• Not sure contests are meaningful so much as getting endless non brand centric people following you for free “stuff”. Free stuff followers are not as useful as brand followers.
  
• “Social Media builds employee morale” was a concept that came up a couple times during the conference.
• You don’t market what you want to say. You market what your customers want to hear.

Best practices:

• Social operates on a shoestring at most brands – requires empowerment, education and training to succeed
• Not all social media programs are the same.
• It’s important not to isolate social media for the organization; you need to immerse your business in it. It’s everyone’s job…. it shouldn’t be just one person.
  
• Make conscious choice for structure – do not do the easy thing and lump it with PR or Marketing
• Use everything as an opportunity for learning – Don’t overreact to customer comments
• Flickr, YouTube good social media for hotels to use for customer engagement. Visual content very importnat for hotels (and has SEO value too)
  
• Leverage existing social networks and influencers – go to existing communities instead of wasting time and money building one (Facebook Connect, for example, expanding between brand site and “vibrant” community).
• Consider a dedicated page on your website for social media – Hard Rock Hotel has one full page dedicated to all social media & review sites. To shatter industry benchmarks, it’s essential to bake your SM strategy into your site. Consider your market – go to where they are and engage them. Morgans Hotels has whole website section dedicated to music
• Employees can take brand message, localize it, and put their personality behind it. – participation FUN for employees! Don’t just throw a bunch of rules at them.
• The days of content heavy & marketed website are changing – they go to review sites and then go to the hotel site for booking. Consumers don’t trust pretty, over the top, content laden sites.
• By utilizing closed loop promotions you maintain parity with OTA’s.

VIII) HHOTELCONSULT’S Action / Implementation

For FB:

• Add booking widget, customize the tabs and cross-integrate your social media channels.
• Add analytics tracking wherever you can to gauge success in raw data form
• virtual gifts/money (First 10 to post get a comp glass of wine, and then after posts say the deal is the free glass has to be for a close friend… be tricky, have fun, get creative)
• Leverage Facebook Connect when possible.
• allow management to post changes, updates, pics
• Birthday related offer?

For Twitter

• compartmentalize social media campaign by having smaller departments reach out – multiple twitter accounts across all hotels for different reasons – chef, F&B, sales/banquets, spa (whichever works or would be viable)
• add analytics tracking
• integrate/allow management to post changes, updates, pics
• Reached out to influencers at smaller groups – 500-700% ROI from inviting “influentials” to a tasting
• Twestival?
• Birthday related offers?

For Geolocation:

• Research about Gowalla, Twhrrl, others we can possibly interact with?
• Create Foursquare Mayoral Advisory Board
• Foursquare deals/offers
• Flash mob or Swarm Badge opportunity?
  

Website

• local tweet map on site mashing up tweets with brand mentions, associated conversations
  
• have one dedicated social media page per hotel
• If you offer discounts, info, events, etc online, make them “Facebookable” and “Twitterable”

Misc:

• Be creative – Morgan’s printed QR codes on cocktail napkins
• showing OK Go on YouTube $100,000 spend to sponsor video – less than 3 weeks 10 million views on YouTube. Press exposure
• Fairmont launched dedicated Presidents Club forum on FlyerTalk in July ’09. Now has 412 threads; page views >200,000

Follow Up Questions (endless, frankly – and I WANT TO HEAR YOURS! What didn’t we talk about that you wanted to talk about?):

• I would like to chat more about HOW, & not WHAT: how to integrate API’s, how to interact w/mobile-geolocation, how to implement facebook connect, etc. Check out mobile hotel app – Smart Stay
  
• Contact morgans about themed hashtags – Morgans Hotels tagged NYC airport codes on Foursquare during recent blizzards, ran ads, & generated some sales.
  
• Live streaming video & webcam opportunities?
  
• Is creating a list of your hotel’s followers on twitter necessary?
• How do you use FB connect for one small hotel?

The question she asked was “How do you decide who to friend when someone finds your profile off of the page you administer?”

This is the million dollar question.  The online world is slowly revealing itself to be a simulacrum of the real world…. whereas MySpace’s vague and anonymous profiles caused confusion and apprehension, FB verification process through jobs and schools creates a more acceptable legitimacy in regards to the “realness” of a person.  If the person tried to build a “fake” profile, it would sort of become irrelevant because there were no real world connections to make.  That poses a problem for the more diverse of us.  I note Twitter facilitates the need to compartmentalize interests, hobbies, characters, etc…. I have multiple twitter accounts – one for my music and DJ’ing, one for art and science, one for biz, and so on.  The nature of communication is that we compartmentalize these interests, so we aren’t talking about the new museum to a hotel person, or the renovation of a hotel to someone who like to listen to music.  It’s vital – it’s who we are, and how we do biz.  At the very least, there needs to be a separation of professional life and work life.

This is where FB really lets me down.  Originally I had two profiles… my main normal one professionally (networking and managing pages), and a goofy one for all my closer friends, music/art/SF scene friends.  I soon realized it is literally impossible to juggle between the two accounts, let my alt-profile go dormant, and now I am simply an open book on my main profile.  I use it however I wish, post whatever I wish… all the while accepting professional peers as friends.  If they like my personal stream, that is fine – if not, they will unfriend.  But I note, for my own mental sanity, that I couldn’t possibly keep up to speed with trying to maintain two FB profiles, all the FB pages… and figuring out what interaction happened where.

So I ditched that alternate profile, and it has been incredibly freeing.  1) FB is not like twitter… it is a closed social network.  What is odd about that is that people don’t seem to want a closed social network in regards to their friends… because they will simply call and chat with them, see them at work or dinner, etc.  People want an open network like twitter, for sharing funny stuff, professional networking, etc.  So I note a lot of people on FB have just become friend junkies and will say yes to whoever might want to be their friend, simply to expand the network and ability for meaningful interaction.

I doubt you insulted anyone… most likely it is another Oregon local just trying to expand their network.

Whatever the case… this is a widely spoken about… you are not alone.  I think Twitter “gets it”, and Linked In sort of gets it.  There isn’t that much interaction there, but it is a valuable tool in conjunction with FB, at this point.

However, I think someone is going to soon create a tool/medium that allows you to truly compartmentalize these personna…. and create alternate profiles, conversations, etc within one network.  The person that figures out how I can post some inappropriately irreverent and sardonic nonsense on one part of my profile, and professional news and tidbits on another, while posting a video or new mix on my other “side” – that person is going to make a lot of money.

Google Wave could be a start to this.  I just realized something… Facebook would be able to adapt to this, but I am not innovative enough to figure out how Twitter to handle this sort of shift in friend management.  Whatever the case, pardon my afternoon verbosity.  The sun is hitting the office window and for some reason I just caught fire. =)

Newsweek’s Budget Travel has a great article about TripAdvisor trying to deal with the long coming revelation that many of their users and reviews are not legitimate.  This is, frankly, a huge blow to the site, and should pose a happy problem in it’s early adolescence as they deal with all the changes that come along with growing into adulthood.  Frankly, I am thrilled that this may provoke User Generated Content sites to seek the same verification model other sites have.

At any rate, this is vital to all of us, and it recalls some of my previous post (which I seem to mention once or twice):

You know I am skeptical of social media, whether speaking of Facebook’s lack of meaningful interaction, or Flickr’s nebulous TOS.  In general, I have had major concerns since my yelp research project, and resulting thoughts on ethics in social media. I had even mentioned in January that Yelp should consider verification processes.

One scotch fueled evening my jocular side protruded a wee bit and I became a prankster. To be honest it wasn’t to learn the lesson I did, rather just good fun.  I speak of the Ryan Air Twitter spoof of mine, which got considerable attention in traditional media (namely because Ryan Air claimed @ryanaironline was their account).  It  helped me realize that there is a grave concern for brands and trademarks, and both the businesses & social media sites should have a vested interest in a verification process of brands.  There is a serious risk of hijacking and damaging people and businesses, with inauthentic people (or dim ones not realizing pranks and social media can go viral) damaging a brands reputation.

Social Media is young. FB beat out myspace because it is better at replicating and verifying the real world (although it can’t actually do anything more meaningful than provide a wonderful marketing data gathering opportunity for FB, coupled with a nice phonebook)… but it was verifying that the person was the *reality* based person, which quickly attracted people to it. If you aren’t relevant to any networks, or aren’t genuine… you quickly become invisible.

As user generated review sites follow a similar path, these things will stabilize. It is very young, and still in the myspace period of fake profiles and people… but as twitter adds verification services & FB starts considering verification due to trademark infringement issues with it’s new URL program: , it will be obvious for User Generated Content Sites to authenticate, across the board. I am not sure if open ID and attaching accounts to mobile phones is the simplest way, but if something doesn’t happen quick the sites will implode through sacrificing the only thing that makes their business model feasible.  I am sure Tripadvisor has seen the start of accounts closing due to the breach in ethics.

We will wait until services like Yelp and TripAdvisor grow into the awareness of what they have created.  People sardonically jest “the internet is serious business” when it comes to this sort of stuff.  But it is.  It isn’t just 2.0.  It’s a massively powerful tool that completely reorients the consumer model, putting control into the hands of the people, and out of marketing and PR companies, possibly for the first time in capitalism’s history. The message can no longer be managed, and PR doesn’t work the same way anymore. You are only as strong as the advocates and endorsers that believe in your brand. Ethics is paramount.

The only way for these sites to continue their validity is by echoing the sentiment of their own taglines: Tripadvisor’s “get the truth… and go”, or Yelp’s “real reviews, real people”.  If they commit to intelligently policing their own site by being completely transparent, authentic, accountable, and earnest, they should be able to emerge better than before.. They might need to take a huge dip in registered users, as well as delete a lot of existing content. This open and honest method of dealing with this situation will undoubtedly sacrifice trust in the short term, but it is the only way for a social media site to maintain the trust that they leverage for business.

It will hurt… but this is an opportunity for them to re-organize into a leaner and more valid site than ever before. Most people saw this coming. Let’s hope it isn’t something they try to spin away or ignore… instead of doing what is right and being honest, while doing everything they can to curb the problem.

I admit concern about the idea of having to hire non-revenue generating staff to handle the massive clean up project, and the fact the money simply might not be there to handle it.  However, it is obvious they are quickly responding, like April Robb from Tripadvisor commenting to Christopher Elliott. I do like the warnings they put on some hotels, but it could be markedly arbitrary?

We’ll have to see.

Not sure what age social media is at right now, but it is certainly hitting a painful growth spurt.

….now they are annoying, interruptive, and totally dysfunctional.  The new layout for Facebook has turned personal conversations into nothing more than reality TV with advertisements at random intervals. Brands and Pages used to be benign, and it was obvious there weren’t *doing* much of anything.  But now people look at these pages as malicious marketing that is getting in the way of their social network.  The furor I have seen is remarkable, but I hadn’t experienced it until  today.

I have three Facebook accounts… two for work, one for personal.  Because I sorta “work” I don’t get “personal” too much… but I was on there this morning jibber jabbering, catching up, being a voyuer… and all of a sudden one of my *FAVOURITE BRANDS EVER* pops up with a blurb about an art showing.

I won’t say what it is; but it is sassy, salacious, lurid, and compelling.  So a little blurb pops up into my stream.  Remember…. I love this brand and what they do.. sort of punk chic stuff.  Maybe I do get personal, and will let you know I don’t mind salaciousness.  But, we are talking about something that should be compelling to my core.. a brand I have followed for years, enjoyed, interacted with, and whole heartedly endorsed.

I found it annoying… but brushed it off like a harmless spider on the table.. ignoring it but knowing it may come back.  Then another popped up… and another.  So what did I do with my favourite brand’s page?  I immediately unfanned it.  Immediately.  I don’t want that information in my personal, closed network of friends.  If I want information on the brand, I will search it out… go to the site… peruse the conversation.  But I don’t want it in my feed.  It was just total dissonance, and totally irrelevant.

Facebook…. you just made a terrible mistake.

I know I know… all these bloggers like to shoot from the hip and say, “critical fault”, “nail in the coffin” nonsense…. but just like most emotive reporting (if you want to call it that), it really is just a storm of hot air brewing in an empty tea kettle. Okay I know it doesn’t totally make sense, but you get the idea.

Video didn’t kill the radio star, and the earlier, initial report of radio being crushed by TV was premature. They found a symbiotic relationship, and their niche.  FB is an a/v laden TV, while Twitter is more like visual radio.  The analogy is flawed, but they are two things similar that are fundamentally very different…

Facebook made an error thinking they were like twitter.  And albeit all of *us* (the eyes that hit this are undoubtedly thoughtful – industry eyes well versed in social media) know that twitter and FB are different…. FB didn’t realize that.  I am not sure why, but in wanting an open stream for brands to interact with users, they neglected to see the difference between a closed and open network.  All this immediately before their CFO leaves?  Maybe they finally realized that the ad model won’t help them reach profitability?  Maybe because the ad model is failing, as Mr. Khan from JP Morgan suggested?

They want a page’s wall to post to user profiles, effectively allowing marketing and more “business” to happen on facebook…. they want a brand’s wall posts sitting in the middle of a private stream of communication within a closed network?  I hadn’t really thought about it during the initial changes, but it just seemed odd.

Twitter is an open stream of networking and collaboration. People ask strangers questions about how-to, products, and more.  FB has a closed network of friends interacting about personal things. This difference is obvious, but let’s talk about FB’s myopia in attempting to capture all of social networking, the “there can be only one!” mentality.  This has caused FB to move into territory that is unfamiliar, and it is seemingly eroding the base of trust and interactivity that made FB so popular to begin with.

Why did Myspace (maybe this is premature) fail?  The answer is that there was no accountability, no verifiability, and no real trust… which is where FB swooped in and confirmed status based off real world markers. Is this person real? Where do they work? Where did they go to school? When?  What’s their birthdate?  Facebook found a way to solve that accountability problem, which gained them quite a bit of trust with users. This trust has been challenged multiple times with things like Beacon, etc. The public outcry is because FB was famous for having built a trustworthy social network and then started eroding that trust by attempting to inject business and marketing. Apparently, people didn’t want that on FB.

What’s funny is that the Beacon outcry was a huge disaster, but I am thinking it was a gain for FB because they were able to immediately rectify a big problem noting canceled accounts and the media buzz.  In light of this new issue, I think the erosion of the users trust will be just as severe, if not more so… but in a long term, sustained migration away to new networks (that are inevitably on the horizon).

The new problem might take far longer to discover… instead of a large group of people complaining, closing accounts, causing a stir immediately…. you are going to have one or two people at a time slowly get frustrated with “advertisements” and walk away, or unfan pages making any business commerce obsolete.  I still would love to know what that commerce is supposed to be anyway, but I guess that is a different post.

Now, I am using one of my largest, most popular brands to run an experiment for our fans:

“Cheers to all our fans! I would love to know your honest opinion. Facebook changed without asking all of you what *YOU* want. Do you find it an imposition or annoying to see pages interacting with your closed network of friends? I won’t post on the wall if it is dissonance. Please let me know!”

I will update you as I find out more information, but the test will be successful. Either I find out what they think, or they don’t say a word and I further note that no *real* or *meaningful* interaction happens on Facebook in regards to business or brands.

It *might* be fine for posting events, but I really didn’t think anything more than long term brand building.

Now I am thinking it is not only *not* that… I think their new layout might actually kill any ability to market or further a brand.  Enough wall postings and people will be unfanning pages immediately.  “Why did I fan Tabasco hot sauce anyway?”, “He’s a great musician but I don’t need to know everything he is thinking!”, or “I love that hotel, but who cares about events I can never go to?”, ad naseoum.

Whatever the case, these are my ramblings.  I am one of the most patient, accepting, and brand aware people out there… and I was annoyed to the extent that I immediately acted, an unfanned a page.  If you have a guy like me doing that, no telling what people less tolerant of marketing will do, and how quickly they will react.

I don’t think this is anything Facebook can fix… I just think it is something we will have to ride out and watch.  Any comments on this would be appreciated!  I am not going to shoot from the hip and suggest this is doom for Facebook, but I will suggest that this will rapidly become a problem.  Pages were totally benign before; now they are, frankly, annoying.  I know I am not the only one that thinks so… what about you?

I am a hotelier that is attempting to simplify our lives as SMO, CRM, etc.

With all these accounts and things to keep up with, I want the simplest method of updating and keeping my fans up to date with our news, events, offerings, and great pics, etc.  I was boggled as to how to best manage this, considering we are constantly posting one article to multiple pages and sites.

So… for now… this is the best practice for syndicating and streamlining your SMO work.

1st – use yahoo pipes to grab any aggregate content you need… meaning flickr photos, etc.  There are a lot of things to build and use here, and I am still learning, but it is simple to – at least – create automatic feeds for photo uploads and other information.

2nd – take all possible feeds and mayhem you have created with yahoo pipes and parse those feeds into twitterfeed, so that all content you are interested in (external corporate blog, tags of flickr pics, etc) is fed into your twitter account.

3rd – Siphon the single twitter RSS feed into your FB page by importing it through the “Notes” settings.  Notes posted through the RSS are, SEEMINGLY, posted to the wall so that all our fans and followers are able to see them.

therefore… any tagged photos, blog posts, newsfeeds, press releases, etc can be fed from pipes into twitter, therefore creating one RSS feed that will distribute *all* aggregate data through the RSS for your twitter page.  Taking that and embedding/importing it into your Facebook Page means that you only need to post on twitter, publish your blog articles, and make sure all these connection are up and working.

NOW.. correct me.  Is this the simplest and most elegant way to manage content, push content, and create less work through simplicity?  Let me know!

But as a manager, my ears became bionic.  I think they would *actually* curve towards the direction of the whispers or furtive eyes having a private conversation.  You know those moments…. when you walk in and *KNOW* line employees were talking about you.

It makes you think, what the hell are they saying when I am not in the room?

I knew I was an awesome manager, and even if they were speaking kindly (**”oh he’s cute”**, no doubt) I would be suspicious as all get out.  I am an insecure type, so it would eat me up.  I think it was good in the end, because I became an even more hands on manager, and really worked in the trenches with my staff.

So part of my philosophy was always being available, present and accessible.  Being visible, and letting others know I was there for them prevented a lot of unfortunate situations.  I was able to resolve situations immediately upon noticing them, reinforce the quality of the brand, improve morale, root us in the community (long chats with locals about this and that), and probably prevented some bad talk about me, and more…. just by being an active, present manager.

What’s more, if you leave the room and don’t come back, people start speaking pretty freely when they know no one can hear them.  This, of course, is not good.  This is that guest or employee unleashing tirades with impunity.  You need to be there for them.

Well think of a twitter account like that.  Think of all your social media accounts like that.  It’s your online concierge department, and you are the manager.  A good manager is present, and available.  When you are, people know they can go to you, interact with you, utilize and trust you.  If you aren’t available (hiding in the back office reading the paper), you are missing opportunities and not doing your job… employees and guests alike are feeling ignored.

This is why you need to establish your social media presence.  This is why you need to reply to reviews… so reviewers know you are there and will review you more professionally.  This is why you need to search social networking sites, so you can assist in people’s conversations about you, or questions in regards to your offerings.  This is why RSS feeds become important, piping updates from Blogs to Facebook and more.

Otherwise, all your employees and guests that are online will know you aren’t in the room.  They will say whatever they please, and possibly consider you irrelevant. What’s worse, they might not consider you at all. You don’t want people knocking on your lobby door, asking questions and choosing their next stay when you aren’t listening. It isn’t just about missing out on an opportunity, it’s that ignoring it could be a real disaster.