Importance of blogosphere and social media in tourism, by John Horsley, Client Services Director, Econsultancy

1. Travel 2.0 & The New
Connected Economy
19th Feb 2008
John Horsley
Client Services Director
Econsultancy

2. Fragmentation of media
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3. Media consumption
Source: Metrica Nov 2008
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4. Increase in ‘social’ activities
Source: Synovate
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5. The Social Media Landscape
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6. Blogosphere
Blogosphere is a collective term encompassing all blogs and their
interconnections. It is the perception that blogs exist together as a
connected community (or as a collection of connected communities)
or as a social network.
The term resembles the older word logosphere (from Greek logos
meaning word, and sphere, interpreted as world), the "the world of
words”. Reference Wikipedia
By June of 2008 blog aggregator Technorati had indexed 133,000,000
blog records. Reference Technorati

7. What is a Blog? The Lines Continue To Blur
Wikipedia defines blogs as:
* A Blog (a contraction of the term "Web log") is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual
with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.
Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order.
* The Blogosphere is the collective community of all blogs. Since all blogs are on the Internet by
definition, they may be seen as interconnected and socially networked. Discussions "in the Blogosphere”
have been used by the media as a gauge of public opinion on various issues.
95% of the top 100 US newspapers have reporter blogs

8. The size of the blogosphere

9. Growth of the Blogosphere

10. What do people blog about?
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11. ‘Cyprus’ specific blog posts

12. ‘Cyprus Limassol’ specific blog posts

13. How do you compare?
Tags: cyprus vs. Sicily vs. tenerife vs. Tunisia

14. Microblogging
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15. Microblogging
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16. Wikis
invoices
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17. Travel Review Sites
Travel-focused social media allows consumers to “get the scoop” ab
facilities and service of hotels they don’t know, from other trave
in real time.
4 million reviews, covering 200,000+ hotels and attractions
TripAdvisor reports an estimated 80% of all comments are positive.

18. The power of a review
78% believe that consumer recommendations are the most credible form of advertising.
(Nielsen, “word of mouth the Most Powerful Selling Tool, 2007).
Online social network users were three times more likely to trust their peers' opinions over advertising
when making purchase decisions.
("Social Networking Sites: Defining Advertising Opportunities in a Competitive Landscape," JupiterResearch, March 2007)

19. JupiterResearch, found that Online social network users
were three times more likely to trust their peers' opinions over
advertising when making purchase decisions.
comScore found consumers were willing to pay between 20 to 99%
more for a 5-star rated product than for a 4-star rated product,
depending on the product category. (comScore/Kelsey, October 2007)
Nielson concluded that 81% of online holiday shoppers
read online customer reviews..

20. Travel Search Engines

21. Travel Communities

22. ‘Cyprus’ Search Results
Flickr 158,085 results = Cyprus
Flickr 7,046 results = Cyprus + Beach
Flickr 2,646 results = Cyprus Hotel
Flickr 3,687 results Cyprus Larnaca
Flickr 13,076 results Limassol
Youtube 27,000 results = Cyprus
Youtube 1,370 results = Cyprus Beach
Youtube 2,790 results = Cyprus Hotel
Youtube 1,260 results = Cyprus Larnaca

23. So now you know a bit more about
social media, what do you do next?

24. Media sharing
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25. Video, Images & Maps on-site
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26. Google Alerts
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27. Social Search Tools

30. Buzz Monitoring

35. Engagement Strategy
Plan how you will
Monitor the online communicate
- What are your objectives
environment - How you will achieve coverage/
- Set up tools to research blogs, engagement
UGC, social media, other online media - How to monitor it effectively
- ID key commentators and - How to measure it effectively
influencers and their Connections - What will success look like?
Evaluate - Review as a part of an
- What metrics integrated strategy
will you use?
-Measure
analytics / ‘Buzz’
monitoring
Engage -What worked,
- Supply content to influential bloggers what didn’t
- Supply content to journalists - Evolve Tactics
- Engage in leaving comments and tools
- Linking strategy - Review tools and consider tactics
- Form influential connections on social sites to suit your objectives
- Build groups around content - What is your social currency
- Post articles - Who are your conversationalists
- Post optimised press releases - Integrate with marketing/PR
- Post video and image content plans
- Adopt social features to sites
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36. Measurement
• Some examples of online measurements:
• Influence – mentions, links etc from high authority sources
• Engagement – friends, video/podcast downloads, webchat participants, whitepaper
subscriptions, RSS subscribes, tweets, diggs
• Sentiment analysis – positive/negative/neutral article, blog comments, bookmarking
meta data
• Increase in referral URL links, visits to site from media, blogs, forums, social networks
– track impact on sales/quotes/acquisitional behaviour
• Increase in site visits, page impressions, times on site
• Effect on organic search ranking – in-links, positioning against campaign keywords etc
• Effect on Google Page Rank
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37. Some ideas to leave you with
• Use blog content to your improve web sites
performance
• Leave comments on key travel sites and influential
blogs
• Add comments to your site
• Have guest make comments on review sites
• Build connections on social media sites
• Join or create groups on social sites
• Post videos to sites like YouTube and to your own
• Post Images to photo sharing site
• Measure buzz and reach out to influencers
• Create & Distribute Content