Nice insights. We always encourage travel companies to focus their social media efforts on what is at the very core of travel – great hospitality.

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Yeah, Darren, I’m pretty bored with most social media campaigns in travel. I think the UGC (user generated content) model has a lot to do with it — after all, the campaigns are driven by free submissions with the promise of MAYBE getting something great. Worse, they’re driven by popularity schemes which encourage us to pester pester pester our “friends” to vote for us, again and again and oh, unfollow, unsubscribe, delete, goodbye! I don’t blame the Queensland campaign — it was novel at the time — I blame the dozens, maybe hundreds of knock off campaigns.

UGC is CHEAP, that’s for sure. I actually like the Gran Tourismo blog when I check it, I like to read Lara, she writes well. HomeAway hired pros, rather than running some popularity contest to get their voice. Most travel companies don’t want to invest that kind of bank. I don’t know the background, but I’d guess that Rolf Potts was hand picked too, but again, he’s pro, the guy can tell a story. He’s nowhere near as dull as poor Ben in Queensland.

i’m not sure what the fix is, but if companies are going to distribute free content as their soc/med campaigns, we’re getting what they pay for, right?

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Darren

Your right, what works for one Marketing people sell to the next 5000 and by campaign 100 people are bored. The worse thing is big marketing departments or company’s who can not come up with the next big thing.

Did the Queensland viral fail? Depends on your point of view.. you just mentioned that your bored with it, but you DID mention it, so have loads of others. As Ryanair says no PR is bad PR (unless it safety).

To work out if something is a success is simple if hard to prove… take what it costs you and then the number of people it hit. In Queensland case they got more coverage on just one countries TV than there whole years worldwide marketing budget would have brought. Times that by there top 50 target markets, add radio and press and you’re looking at a hundred million plus (est.) return on investment. (Due to a comment from Queensland marketing that just in the USA they got an estimated $45 million dollar worth of air and press time). And all this by the time Ben got the job.

Customer service is something you pay for and for a lot of customers they just wish the cheapest. So limited customer service, you get what you pay for.. or you do not get what you do not pay for. There is choice out there, great companies with wonderful customer service both large and small or cheap company’s whose customer service is so bad I call it anti-service.

And to quote you Darren “I would struggle to come up with something myself”. Tourist boards do what they supposed to with very little money, for example Kent has increased German group visits by 500% for an investment of a few thousand pounds.

A recent comment was made that the UK’s tourists boards marketing budget for the whole world would not last Tesco a month in just england. Not sure if it true but sounds right.

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You are very much on the money. I work for Dohop.com (yes, a flight-comparison site with a goofy name) and have been doing the social media thing. I ran a competition the other day that got less-than-hoped-for attention or participation.
The problem with “the next big thing” is that we don’t know what it is until it comes around so we have to stick with boring everyday stuff, for now.
I just sent you an email asking you to promote my site (you must not have read it).
Perhaps if we airlift a donkey onto a beach somewhere…

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I was trying to be funny. I never sent you an email asking you to promote Dohop.com.

I was referring to your own: “I have lost count the amount of companies who have emailed, asking me to write about their competition or help promote their social media campaign.”

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Yes, very valid. There was a very interesting insight in the Sunday Times last week about Ocado – who, it was claimed, were spending too much on customer service and “getting it right”. A “City Analyst” said that “…providing a friendly service, flawless deliveries …adding too much to company costs” he (or she) goes on “The key is to provide customer service at an economic level” (or erm… as little as you can get away with). What you mention here is in the same vein – social media is cheap so hammer away at bloggers and anyone else and get free, hopefully viral, publicity – and it is not restricted to travel.

Thing is, you cannot “manufacture” spontanaity – and it is only a spontaneous event that will truly become viral and or noticed. The other side, of course, is that very often, an advertising agency has really no idea when it has done a good job – think about truly memorable adverts – Lorraine Chase (“whisked here from Paradise”)or “Labour’s not working” or even that Meerkat. Where these “inspirational” or just happened to get lucky?

So, companies will keep trying on the grounds that if you shake the tree long enough and hard enough, some fruit is bound to fall off, sooner or later….. And it’s a lot cheaper, sorry, economic than “improving customer service” (and certainly more economic than dealing with such mundane matters as, say, bonding)

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A timely post, Darren! I think that we’re going to see more cookie-cutter social media campaigns getting less and less interest, and even a bit of a backlash.

It seems that people who hold marketing budgets in travel, and lots of other sectors too, are suffering from the GMOOT – (“Get Me One Of Those”) mentality, and understandably so. If the digital guru is telling you that Facebook has got a bigger population than India, Twitter is on its X billionth Tweet, then it’s not hard to understand the eagerness to get on there PDQ.

As we know, it’s a bit more complicated than that. Or is it, actually?

People forget that social media isn’t a marketing channel, it’s a way of reaching other human beings. If you hear a great story, you want to tell other human beings. (And going back to the Queensland one, the “great story” bit is that someone was going to win the best job – literally – in the world, and like you say, that can only really be done once).

So my advice to marketing managers working in the travel industry is to go back to that brief and figure out what their story might be, who they want to tell it to, and where can they reach them. So often, people confuse “reach” with “influence”, and end up achieving neither, so I love the story about the Germans and Kent, @Nick!

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I think that everyone is desperate for social media attention, right? not just travel companies? Having said that, your post seems to be very well informed and it is very thorough. Some interesting points were made early on in the post about ROI. Anyone trying to make a profit through social media is sadly onto a losing streak. It isn’t really what it is built for. It’s built to be social right? he he!

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This is a very interesting conversation. From my point of view yes, there’s no imagination and loads of replication but i also think @Johann is right when he says we don’t know what is going to be the next big thing until it comes around.

In Social Media we are all learning (from each other) everyday, it’s almost impossible to predict the conversion of one specific action. Sometimes you are planning an action for weeks and it doesn’t work and sometimes the most unexpectable action works great.

If you have the money, you can put lots of it on promoting your action but with a low marketing budgets the only thing we can do is launch the action and try our best to make them work out (and cross fingers )

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I think the Queensland campaign did work – and extremely well by whatever measurement. But the point is that it had done 95% of its work before Ben even set foot in Australia. The fact that we all know his name, and all cite the Queensland campaign as an example long after it finishes, shows that it had great impact.

In terms of new, exciting campaigns that think outside the box (and other cliches), I think most companies would happily swap innovative for successful. And I’d argue that the most successful media campaigns aren’t likely to be the ones that the travel media and bloggers are aware. They aren’t even the ones that go viral. They’re the ones that are targeted at a defined audience of consumers, and increase traffic/ bookings amongst them.

For example, I spoke to the chap at the company who I’ve been blogging for (I’ll not mention names – I know how much you love blatant plugs). He’s had a solid increase in web traffic, people are staying on the site longer, and bookings are up considerably since they started investing in content and using Twitter/ Facebook to reach out to customers. It’s not anything new, it’s not anything flashy, and it’ll have largely bypassed everyone – but it has worked in terms of inspiring the right people to part with their money.

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The best social marketing is to make your customers happy and listen to them. Responding to the @ on twitter for example. Some company’s do it well (and faster than picking up the phone) others do not do it at all and just throw out offers. It Social so means you engage.

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You know them fairly well – Roundtheworldflights.com. There’s certainly more to it than my wafflings and I don’t know precisely how much traffic/ bookings/ length of time on site have gone up. I just know they’re quietly pleased, and have linked the ‘inspiration’ content in throughout the site (which is almost the opposite of the way most companies do it – they surround the content with booking stuff rather than the booking stuff with content).

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We have no data to say if a campaign is a success or not if we don’t know their business goals.

I guess the main goal of the Queensland campaign was branding, if that is correct, the campaign was a success.

Sometimes we forget that we don’t know what are the business goals behind a marketing action or campaign.

The success depends on the goals you have. If the campaign reaches them, then it’s a success.

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Queensland didn’t work for me. I didn’t follow any of it. It was too ‘in yer face’. SM is about holding conversations and building relationships. Queensland was too shouty. As Nick says above, the best SM campaigns are about listening.

As an aside, @sarahleetravels has just posted a video interview ( http://ht.ly/2u3Xw ) about SM travel marketing with @joantxo who organised the recent Valencia blogtrip campaigns. I think both will be attending #travblogcamp in Nov.

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I believe that travel companies/brands could get much better exposure for their brands by working directly with high profile travel blogs and/or bloggers (yes I know I’m biased), than all the money they are spending with PR agencies to create hype, much of which goes largely unnoticed. I think that experienced bloggers can create online content which is more interesting, useful and relevant to potential and existing customers, than wacky campaigns and also give this original/unique content exposure through their own social media networks.

However this content has to be based on a unique experience for each blogger, not something like a trip for 12 bloggers who all do the same things which means no original content for each participants blog and a deluge of similar posts for readers, who just switch off.

PR companies working through a list of bloggers trying to get them all to publicise the latest campaign/competition leads to the same reader fatigue.

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I think Karen has a good idea, and it is something we are actually about to do, in a way.

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Thanks for sharing this post with us. This is really very nice blog. Company having his own brand value. Many company try to connect to the people through social media. They try to increase their brand value using the social media. I think, today is social media is best way to communicate to the people and sharing the thoughts. Thanks

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I don’t have any companies emailing me. boo hoo!

My blog is new but would I endorse a travel companies social media campaign? Yes, I think i would to be honest. If a travel company offered me a free trip to promote them of course!

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Darren – As far as possible my hotel reviews are honest and objective, backed up with photos and videos. Some hosts are willing to take constructive criticism on board. I stayed a hotel where I wrote some negative things about the breakfast buffet and I had an email a couple of weeks later saying that changes, based on my review, had been made to the buffet selection.

If bloggers only write in glowingly positive terms after sponsored trips, then readers are going to rumble that it’s too good to be true and that I am a patsy. At least if I write that a hotel is really good, then readers will probably believe me.

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Interested to know what you mean by ‘as far as possible’, Karen. Also, surely a hotel review by its very nature is subjective?

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I realise that it’s impossible to be totally objective in a hotel review but having photos and videos to back up what you say helps, as the reader can make their own judgement.. If I go on about lack of and/or expensive wifi, I appreciate that this issue may not be important to some guests. If I say the decor is not to my taste, some readers may like it.

However I assert that my reviews are not influenced by the fact I’ve received a complimentary stay.

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I’ve had a fair number of those PR e-mails asking me to promote these campaigns – some I might give a quick tweet but most I don’t promote although I do take a close look at what they have to offer (just in case I fancied entering them myself). I agree with you that reader fatigue is setting in and if I can’t get excited about them it’s unlikely I’ll get my readers excited.

I agree with Karen that good quality content that will be picked up time and again by the search engines is a better investment than a big hype – but I guess media creatives have to justify their existance to their clients.

I do also wonder if the PR folk are in a bit of a dream world as I sometime notice that the barriers for entry for so high, requiring you to spend a lot of time entering their competitions or spending time on their site. Most people got time for a 5 min browse and to leave a comment – I favour campaigns that have low entry levels in terms of time and spread the prizes around widely. I’m more likely to enter a campaign where there’s a good chance that I’ll get a £100 voucher to spend on a hotel anywhere in the world than one where I’ll get a year off to travel the world (unlikely with job & family)

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Nice opinion. Social Media is popular but yes not all companies will gain fame from it for some reasons. Social Media roots from research thereby knowing who to target and where your target are. There is no point in bringing social media to unrelated market.

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Many Tourist boards have little money and long process to decide(administrativ RFP)
With my experience about the WeBlogTravels contest, I think it’s more a opportunity with dynamic people in DMO’s and Tourism Board. Some are aware and willing to help. Some don’t understand the Web and you lose your time.
Best
Claude

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Some confessions from a blogger who has occasionally whored themselves out to these PR rapscallions…

Last year, I did a challenge-type event for my regional tourist agency, with Twitter followers voting on regional activities I had to take up on a daily basis. I *imagine* that compared to many of their campaigns, the cost was a drop in the ocean, but I was reasonably paid, delivered original content and it didn’t do my name or my Twitter following any harm. The social media aspect was integral to the campaign, and I came away with my own content and experiences which I’ve used since. Everyone’s a winner.

At the opposite end of the scale, a global brand offered me an awful lot of money to essentially travel the world but sell my editorial voice – on my blog and Twitter – to them. I turned it down, because not only would it would have destroyed any credibility I had as a writer. I suggested a different way, a more engaging way for them to use social media to achieve better results, and never heard back. The money would have meant been able to make some real short-term changes in life, but nobody would have trusted another word I published. They wanted to buy their way into social media, without understanding what it was they were buying into.

This week, I’ve been approached by a budget airline to do some work with them on a competition / challenge, to generate content for their social media activity.

It’s small scale, it’s not hugely original, but I’ve said I’d like to do it simply because it sounds like fun. I get to visit a part of Europe I haven’t seen, get a modest amount of spending money and explore a city – they film it, and give me lots of exposure online and in their in-flight magazine. And again, I gain some knowledge and experience that I’ll use further down the line for my own content.

The point that there aren’t many original ideas left is absolutely true, but then the audience as a whole doesn’t necessarily know that. Social media is in fashion now, but 10 or 15 years ago, it was radio – on how many radio competitions did you hear listeners have to guess which amount of currency is higher or lower than the other to win a holiday? Or Work Your Way To The USA? Or Your Vacation Station? Dozens of stations across the country did these contests (some of them still do them) because a local audience isn’t necessarily aware that a) the concept is probably older than they are, and b) another station up the road is doing the same thing.

I think the issue is more that social media isn’t treated seriously, and the focus is still on the platform rather than the message. Activity doesn’t have to be perfect or original to get noticed or even achieve results, it just has to be engaging and, most importantly of all, honest.

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