Online marketing and social media in particular have changed how the travel decision-making process takes place, forcing travel brands to adapt their marketing accordingly. Yet, not everyone adapts at the same rate, and there are still many who question the worthiness of efforts in this sphere.

1. 8 FAQ about
social media in
travel
Frederic Gonzalo

2. Online marketing and social media in
particular have changed how the
travel decision-making process takes
place, forcing travel brands to adapt
their marketing accordingly.

3. Yet, not everyone adapts at the
same rate, and there are still many
who question the worthiness of
efforts in this sphere. Among
frequently asked questions (FAQ) I
often get on my blog or during and
after conferences or workshops I
give, I thought I would share a few of
my favorites ones. In no particular
order, here we go!

4. 1. Which social media
should I prioritize?
The answer to this question, and
pretty much to all other questions in
this post, varies according to size of
organizations, resources (both
financial and human), marketing
priorities and, more importantly,
level of maturity with social media
accounts.

5. Having said that, some
social media are a better
fit with the travel vertical,
in particular those which
emphasize visual
components and tell a
story. Here’s a snapshot of
key social media and why
travel brands use them in
general:

6. Facebook
great for building a thriving
community, engage conversation
with present and past customers,
seek feedback (R&D), answer
questions and create buzz around
given stories, promotions or
contests.

7. Twitter
useful for customer service, in
particular with airlines and leading
hotel chains, but also to reach out
to influencers, media relations and
bloggers. Great listening tool as
well, to get the pulse of the market
and understand sentiment towards
your brand.

8. Instagram
 Since acquired by Facebook, it’s become
a necessary tool of the marketing mix to
share photos and videos from travelers,
destination, hotels and attractions. Also
great for contests and content curation,
as part of a content strategy together
with Twitter, Facebook, blog posts and
newsletters.

9. Pinterest
 a key player at the aspirational stage of
the travel decision-making process,
Pinterest recently launched its Place Pins
feature, realizing how many boards and
pictures stem from travel-related boards.
An important source of traffic towards
travel brand websites. Read also: Pinterest
and Travel: A Match Made in Social
Media Heaven

10. YouTube
the video platform, owned by
Google, is the second most
important search engine on the
web. With tourism-related searches
in the 18-34 year-old
demographic, it is actually number
one. Need I say more?

11. Linkedin
 the professional network is pertinent for
lead acquisition and identifying key
people in companies, specially from a B2B
perspective, i.e. reaching out to meeting
planners, tour operators or the right
person in sales, HR, or marketing in a given
organization. Discussion groups are also a
key feature, with over 1.5 million of them,
many of which involve the travel industry.

12. TripAdvisor
with over 100 million comments
and 260 million monthly visitors,
travel brands need to manage
their presence and online
reputation by responding to
comments (see question #2 for
more on this).

13. Different travel brands will
have different priorities. For
example, a hotel brand ought
to focus on TripAdvisor and
Facebook, then perhaps on
Twitter and other social
media, depending where the
bulk of their audience is
active and wants to engage
with the brand. A summer
festival, on the other hand, will
focus more on Facebook and
YouTube (perhaps also
Instagram and Vine), since
video comes in handy to
highlight bands or artists that
are part of their program.

14. 2. Should I respond to every
comment posted on
TripAdvisor?
Yes.
Any other question?

15. OK, fine, if you insist… Truth be
told, you really should try to
respond to as many comments as
possible on TripAdvisor, Yelp and
other review sites. Doing so, you
not only answer to the review
itself and the person who wrote it,
but more importantly to all other
folks viewing the comment and
answer.

16. With millions of monthly
visitors – Yelp for example
has 40 million unique visitors
per month, mostly focused
on restaurant reviews – it is
therefore crucial to respond
to show you care, and that
you are addressing the
facts exposed, whether
they are positive or
negative.

18. But, knowing many small and medium
organizations have very limited time and
resources to handle marketing and sales,
the important thing is to ensure you respond
with a given frequency or rule of thumb. For
example, some hotels decide to respond to
all negative comments, and respond to one
out of every three positive comments.
There’s no right or wrong here:
the important thing is to have a
system in place, stick to it, and
respond. Regularly.

19. 3. Is there a best time to post?
Yes, and it’s on Tuesday afternoon, at
4:01pm. (Heck, I remember reading a
study that seriously claimed that was the
best moment to get a retweet.
Whatever).
Seriously,
only you can figure this one out.

20. This past summer Facebook
improved its page analytics,
allowing to see when your fans
are most active per time of day,
and per day of the week. Same
goes with sending out newsletters,
tweeting news or publishing a new
blog post: brands who achieve
best results are those who test,
segment and tweak according to
results.

21.  Gap between brand postings and when people
are active online. Source: Buddy Media, Fall 2012.

22. One thing is for sure: you can’t stick with
cookie-cutter approaches, such as
posting from Monday to Friday,
between regular working hours (9am to
5pm). Affluent travelers may consume
your content at work, but many do so
from their mobile devices, including
tablets at home during evening time.
Thus many travel brands find that
posting during the evening or early in
the morning on weekend yields better
results than during regular weekly hours.

23. 4. How often should we post?
That’s a tougher nut to crack, as
the answer will vary depending
on the social media being used.
On Facebook, per example, the
average life expectancy of a
post is 2.5 hours while a tweet
without hashtag will last a
couple of minutes, at most.

24. So posting 1-3 times per
day on Facebook will do
the trick, while you can
tweet 15 times a day and
won’t offend anyone…

25. At the end of the day, it all boils
down to what you have to say
and more importantly, what
customers want to hear. Travel
brands savvy on social media
tend to vary the types of
content, i.e. text, photos, videos,
contests, questions, etc. in order
to keep content always fresh
and relevant.

26. In fact, whether you post once per day
or thrice per day, the key thing is to
be consistent. Nothing worse than
brands who stay silent for a couple of
days or weeks, and then wake-up with a
string of drive-by tweeting or posting like
there’s no tomorrow…

27. 5. Which is more important:
email or social media?
This one is easy:
you should use both,
since they are equally
important.

28. Sending newsletters via email may not
be as sexy as new shiny toys like social
media, but it serves a different purpose
and remains what is considered ‘owned
media’ while social media is ‘shared
media’. Instead of choosing between
the two, travel marketers ought to
combine the strengths of both.

29. Not to mention that often enough, it won’t
be the same people following you on either
channel and even when some folks subscribe
to your newsletter AND like your Facebook
page, they may not see the same
information twice simply because of the
noise level out there (or because EdgeRank
may have blocked the post on Facebook,
anyway… see question #8 for that one).
For more on this, read Email is Dead… NOT!

30. 6. Should we bother with Google+?
Google+ is certainly talked about a lot, and
marketers seem to understand the advantages
of sharing content on this platform for search
engine optimization purposes. It is said that
Google+ is now the second biggest social
media after Facebook in terms of active users,
with over 600 million users, yet whenever I ask
audiences “who uses Google+”, it seems like a
minority of people actively engage on this
platform.

31. But since Google+ is at the heart of
Google’s new search paradigm, where
every ‘+1′ signal is taken into consideration,
brands should secure a minimal presence
there, assuming they have their priorities
straight (see question #1).
 Read also: Is Google+ really the 2nd most
popular social network?

32. 7. Can we calculate the ROI of
social media initiatives?
There’s been countless research
and articles on this topic, and I
even gave it a shot back in 2011
with What is the ROI of Social
Media in Travel, and Does it
Matter? The biggest
misconception here is that ROI is
often used for sales-driven tactics
while social media encompasses
a lot more than sales.

33. In fact, social media in travel is most
effective at the inspiration stage and during
the travel experience itself, as people share
their stories with their network. That’s not to
say that social media can not and should
not be measured. It simply means brands
need to clearly outline what it is they want
to measure, define what success looks like,
and track accordingly.
 Read also: The 7 Business Drivers of a
Social Media Strategy

34. 8. How can we get better
Facebook engagement?
By blending organic content
and paid content with
occasional contests and offers.
In fact, these are considered the
4 key elements of your
Facebook marketing.

35. That’s right, long gone are the
days when a brand page could
strive on organic content alone,
with dynamic community
managers asking questions,
posting pictures or crafting
contests to increase fan
engagement. These tactics still
work, but unfortunately less, as this
recent AdAge article clearly
stated.

37. Understanding Facebook’s
EdgeRank certainly helps to gain
better knowledge in using the
platform, even with recent
enhancement such as Story
Bump and Last Actor, or recent
tweaks favoring links to quality
articles instead of visuals and
memes that are perceived as
more ‘flaky’ content.

38. But at the end of the day, it is
now a given that in order to
have a highly engaged
community on Facebook, you
will need to boost some posts,
sponsored stories or have some
paid content make its way into
users’ newsfeed to maintain a
high level of efficiency on
Facebook.

39. Any other questions you wish
had been answered in this
post? Please let me know in
the comment section below
and hey, who knows, I may
come around with a
sequel…

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