DANIEL EDWARD CRAIG - BTO 2014 - Social Media & Storytelling

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Hello everyone, my name is Daniel Craig, and I’m from Vancouver, Canada. I’m thrilled to be back at BTO for the third time, and would like to thank Giancarlo Carniani and Roberta Milano and Robert Piattelli and everyone at BTO for inviting me back and to Fondazione Sistema Toscana for helping to make this possible. Today I’d like to talk to you about social media and storytelling.

Now there’s nothing new about storytelling. Human beings have been telling stories since the days of cave-dwellers. And, as you can see in this image, we’ve been exaggerating in our stories ever since then.

What is new today is social media, which has created unprecedented platforms and virtually unlimited audiences for sharing stories.

Here in Italy, you have an “embarrassment of riches”, blessed with art, culture, history, architecture, nature and food and wine that there is virtually no limit to the stories that can be told. I say this as a Canadian who has worked with some cold, northern regions – you think you have problems attracting visitors! The challenge is, how to shape stories within the social media environment?

I learned about the power of social media and storytelling early on, back in 2006, when as general manager of Opus Hotel in Vancouver, I launched the first-ever hotel blog. Rather than use the blog as an advertising platform, I used it to tell stories. I talked about a lot of things your typical hotel manager wouldn’t talk about – like why we overbooked and relocated guests, how we dealt with difficult guests and celebrity guests, and what it felt like to get a bad review. As a result, the blog attracted a worldwide following and really helped to put the hotel on the map.

I left Opus to focus on my writing career, and have since published three mystery novels set in hotels, so I got to combine my love of hotels with storytelling. How many hotel managers are there here? In my first novel, Murder at the Universe, the manager of a hotel in New York is found murdered. And a lot of hotel employees have bought my book just based on that premise.

Today I run a consulting business, Reknown, and we provide strategy and training in social media and online reputation management. A key part of that is storytelling: helping businesses to shape their brand story and, equally importantly, to get travelers to share stories about them too. Today I want to share with you some of the principles of storytelling that I’ve learned as a hotel manager, author and consultant.

But first, why is storytelling important? Think about the last time you read a good book, saw a great movie or a friend told you a funny story. What made it good? A good story captures attention, so it makes you sit up and listen. It also resonates with you, so much so that you want to share it with other people. You remember it and maybe find yourself thinking about it later, perhaps because it stirred up emotions in you like hope or desire. Good stories are important in social media because they’re so much noise out there; they help us to be heard, to be shared and to remembered.

People often freak out when I talk about storytelling. They say, I don’t have time to write stories, I have a business to run. But stories don’t have to be long to be effective. As a young newspaperman in 1920s, American writer Ernest Hemingway bet his colleagues $10 that he could write a complete story in just six words. And he won that bet, with this story: “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.” Or, in Italian, “Vendesi scarpe da bambino. Mai indossate.” Now hopefully your stories will be more uplifting, but the point is here that this story is only 33 characters in English, 41 characters in Italian. Hemingway was a minimalist, and he was a bit of a grumpy guy, but I think he would have loved Twitter! He could fit three or four of these stories in one tweet.

Today is an era of minimalism, because people have no time, very short attention spans, especially when on the go, when they’re using little phones with small windows to decide where to stay, where to eat, to shop, what to see and where to explore.

So the first rule of social storytelling is to be short and sweet. A traveler story can be as simple as “I was here”, “I like this place” or “I recommend it”. Social stories are also interactive, meaning that unlike books and movies, the audience participates and can interrupt and make comments. They must also be helpful because typically your audience is planning a trip and they are looking for specific information. So we also want our stories to compel action; we want people to click to find out more, to share the information or to make a booking.

In travel, stories can be divided into the two main types: stories told by businesses, or brand stories, and stories told by travelers. Problem is, there is sometimes a disconnect between the stories businesses tell and the stories travelers tell. This leads to distrust and compels travelers to bypass marketers and go to social media to consult the source they trust most for trip information and advice: other travelers.

Moreover, sites like Facebook allow travelers to tap into the trustworthiness of our friends, to “friend-source” information and advice. Last year when I came to this conference I decided to go to Venice. I had never been and had no idea where to stay, so rather than try to make sense of all the information online, I simply posted this on Facebook. And within hours I had dozens of recommendations from people I trust, and through that process I found the perfect hotel.

Today, to be successful and to regain travelers’ trust, the stories we tell as businesses must match the experiences we provide because that’s what drives traveler stories. This ties in nicely with the BTO conference theme, because we must “Mind the Gap” between the expectations we set for travelers and the experiences we deliver. That means no more of the fairytale descriptions and fantasy photos, hoping travelers won’t notice the much grimmer reality when they arrive. The trend is reality marketing: being so honest and authentic about what to expect that you leave ample opportunities to exceed expectations, thereby creating advocates who will help spread the word.

Social storytelling starts with your brand story – your positioning statement that describes your business. We think the brand story is about us, but actually it’s about the traveler. It should answer the questions travelers have when planning trips: Who are you? Where are you? Why should I go? What will I do? How will I feel?

Let me show you an example. When you search “tours in vancouver” on Google, Vancouver Foodie Tours is one of the first to come up. It’s a little company in Vancouver that knows a lot about online marketing. Right on the results page you’ll find the brand story: “If you are looking for fun things to do in Downtown Vancouver, our food tours and educational day trips are a favorite tourism attraction to remember.” This story targets the two key audiences in online marketing: the traveler, by answering those key questions, and algorithms, by including keywords that travelers enter when searching for activities. When you click on the website, you’ll find a page called “Our Story”, which tells you more information who they are. And there are links to the various social channels the company is active on, where you’ll find the brand story consistent in each profile, tweaked a bit to fit the format, as you see here on Twitter.

And then when you go to sites like TripAdvisor, you find that travelers are telling a similar story. This consistency has helped the company climb the popularity rankings to rank #3 of almost 200 activities in Vancouver, which generates huge demand for her little company.

Now we can’t tell the whole brand story in every post, so an effective type of social storytelling is featuring slices of life from the daily lives of our guests so that people can picture themselves there. Like this Facebook post from a hotel, “Check out this cute couple enjoying champagne breakfast at the pool after getting engaged here last night.” Here you’ll find the use of subtext - the part of a story that is unsaid but implied. Subtext is important in social media because we need to be brief and not overly promotional. Here the subtext is, “Come to our hotel for romance, life-changing events and a taste of luxury.”

Slices of life help keep you from using the cliches that are so common in travel marketing. These types of cliches are boring, all are the same, and they tell travelers nothing about the hotel.

It’s also important to know who your audience is - your target markets. This party-girl package here is going to appeal to a certain type of travelers, whereas this bible studying package will appeal to a much different types. As a hotel, you probably wouldn’t want these two groups staying down the hall from each other.

As a writer, one of the first rules I learned was to “Show, don’t tell”. In marketing this means that rather than give a boring list of features and benefits we dramatize description by converting them into a story. This is done to good effect here, where Visit Tuscany tweets, “Giacomo waits for the autumn to come back to #Tuscany, in the Monte Amiata. Read why hear.” This creates mystery and intrigue, makes people more like to click to find out more, and uses subtext to say, “Hey come to Tuscany in the autumn, it’s beautiful!”

Good stories are shared more, and when they’re shared they move from advertising to user-generated content, so they have more influence. Instead of being over here, where no one looks, it appears right in the news feed. And not as a sponsored post, but as a story a friend shares with other friends.

The most powerful stories are those told by your guests. We can learn a lot about storytelling from online reviews, which contain all the elements of good storytelling: a gripping lead, the traveler’s point of view, tips, helpful information and often humor.

Help to shape traveler stories by identifying the kind of stories you want your guests to share after they leave. Train and empower to fulfill their role in making these stories happen and to be “remarkable” – to provide service so special, unexpected and memorable your guests feel compelled to share with others. Then share great reviews with staff, explain why they’re important, and recognize them for their achievements.

And there are many tools to help you, from tools like ReviewPro for social listening, to Flip.to to encourage social sharing, to Hoxell for personalizing the guest experience.

Sites like Instagram and Pinterest have experienced explosive growth because they combine the two most powerful aspects of social media: images and sharing. And unlike text, imagery does not require translation – it’s a universal language. In visual storytelling, we want to integrate three types of visuals: Professional – those shot by a professional photographer that we use for our website, brochures and advertising; Social, which is the imagery we shoot ourselves for sharing in everyday posts; and Traveler or user-generated, which is taken by our guests. When we upload imagery, we need to remember to optimize it by tagging with name of business, location and activity so that they are searchable and so they help answer traveler questions.

Selfies are a phenomenon because they allow users to insert themselves into the visual story, feeding into our narcissistic tendencies. Here the woman is so concerned with how good she looks in her friend’s camera that she isn’t paying attention to her own camera, and of course everyone is ignoring the beautiful view behind them. I think this photo captures everything that is wonderful and terribly wrong about society today.

Here’s a woman who has rushed the field during a football match, and while she’s being tackled by security she still has time to take a selfie and smile for it.

Businesses can capitalize on this trend by encouraging guests to take selfies onsite. The Hotel Grand Bretagne in Athens has designated a selfie spot on its roof as the perfect place to take a selfie with the Parthenon in the background. If you don’t have a view, consider the Hotel 1888 l in Sydney, Australia, that designates a selfie spot with a picture frame. And the Melia Sol Wave House in Mallorca has a selfie mirror complete with moustache. All encourage you to tag the hotel. This inserts the hotel your business into the story too, and right into the user’s newsfeed.

Museums, which have always been a bit snooty when it comes to taking photos, are even getting into the action. Earlier this year was the official “Museum Selfie Day.” Apparently people who take selfies in front of art feel more connected to it and the experience is richer. It seems that even some of the subjects of masterpieces are getting into the selfie craze too.

Videos can be particularly effective because they’re hard to fake; they tell the real story. And they’re getting shorter and shorter. Check out this Vine video which tells you all you need to know about a hotel in six seconds. And the guest has managed to make it a video selfie too. Stay tuned for the next big trend: video selfies.

Lastly, I want to show you this example of video storytelling from Sta Travel in Australia. It went viral and has had millions of views. Now doesn’t that make you want to travel? And be young again? It’s amazing what you can do with a big budget.

But no matter how large or small your budget is, you can be more effective in social media by following these storytelling principles. Start with your brand story, answering the questions who, where, what, why & how? Make it about the traveler. Be brief and visual. Influence and encourage traveler stories by being authentic and remarkable.

And the better you are at doing this, the more traveler stories you’ll see like this, “Italy and especially Tuscany is full of beautiful architecture, interesting people and amazing food. Loved it here!”

And that is the end of my story. Q&A.

DANIEL EDWARD CRAIG - BTO 2014 - Social Media & Storytelling

BTO Educational

DANIEL EDWARD CRAIG - BTO 2014 - Social Media & Storytelling