2. FOUR MUST DO MOVES BEFORE
WE TALK ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA
Thanks to our partners Tourism Currents for this
great advice!
http://www.tourismcurrents.com/
Sign up for their free newsletter too
3. Step One
Big picture and strategy come first. Define your ideal
customer or guest and describe your market in a few
sentences.
What makes sense for you, your market or your
tourism/hospitality clients?
How are you going to position yourself? In other words, who
is your best market ?
Can you describe your ideal visitor and no, it is not
“everyone”. It is someone very specific who ADORES what
you have to offer.
4. Ideal Customer
Can you picture this visitor (sometimes called a
persona, a composite) in your mind’s eye? Do you
feel that you know them, can anticipate the sort of
places they’d like to see and the things they’d like to
do, and how they might want to connect with you?
Most importantly, does your destination marketing
focus on this person, or does it attempt to be all
things to anyone who’ll walk through the door?
Better to capture the attention and chatter of 50
people who are crazy about some specific aspect of
your location, than doing “spray and pray” outreach
towards 500 who could care less.
5. Where are they online?
Where are those customers right now on
social media (Facebook? LinkedIn? Twitter?
Instagram?)
In general, what sort of information could
you share on social media that might
appeal to their particular market?
Photos - of what? Information - about what?
Video - of what? Customer service - how?
6. Strategy
How are you going to integrate your marketing efforts
across all of the ways that visitors talk about you today,
and in the near future: online, offline, mobile, etc.
What makes sense for you, your market
or your tourism/hospitality clients?
Newspaper
radio
Facebook
Pinterest
Instagram
Website
7. Step Two
How do customers and visitors find you?
More from search?
Do word-of-mouth referrals include online
mentions?
More referrals and mentions from social media,
and if so, from which platforms?
If you don’t know what brings people through the
doors right now, you’ll need to work on being
more knowledgeable about your visitors. That's
who you will be trying to connect with on social, so
you'd better know those folks pretty well.
8. Step Three
Website --- we hear its in the works. Yet ….
There’s not anything planned for the Complex
yet. This is not bad news!
What you need is good basic information like :
• Where you are
• What you have
• Operating hours
• Contact information
• Pictures
• And make it mobile friendly.
9. Step Four
Claim your business on Google Places
Fill out the profile and set up notifications of reviews.
It's the single biggest move that will help you be
found, and listening/responding to reviews is a basic
social skill. If you’re feeling ambitious you can claim
their business listing on Bing and Yahoo as well, but first
take care of the 800 Pound Google Gorilla.
https://www.google.com/business/placesforbusiness/
10. Now for the next step ….
Content
You need content
Remember this: Write once, use six times.
11. Examples of content
Photos – a great way to tell a
story.
Then write about that story!
What are these items? How
were they used? Compare them
to today’s items. It’s easily
possible to get three articles from
this one picture.
12. Video
No video camera? Not a big deal. Grab a kid
with a smart phone and ask them to shoot 30
seconds of something.
That’s right. Ask for help. It could be a friend, a
kid or a professional. But you must ask.
If you are in the museum, they can video you
talking for 30 seconds about one display. They
will share it on facebook, upload it to youtube
and you can grab it from there.
13. Events
What events do you have planned for the
year?
1. Write a press release for each one.
Share it with local media at least 2 weeks
prior.
2. Rewrite the press release to use as
information for an event listing on
facebook.
3. Post it on your website too.
14. Time to Go Online
There are many choices …. I think the two
you should concentrate on now are:
Facebook
And your website
15. Your website …
What you need is good basic information
like :
• Where you are
• What you have
• Operating hours
• Contact information
• Pictures
• And make it mobile friendly.
And update it frequently with all the
content you are creating!
19. Facebook
Listen to the experts. Do your homework.
You WANT to be there.
Following is what HubSpot has shared…..
http://blog.bufferapp.com/7-facebook-stats-you-should-know-for-a-more-
engaging-page
20. Facebook
1. Photo posts get 39% more
interaction
Not only do photo posts get
more engagement than
links, videos or text-based
updates, they actually
account for 93% of the most
engaging posts on
Facebook.
According to Kissmetrics, photos get 53% more likes, 104% more
comments and 84% more click-throughs on links than text-
based posts. Self-explanatory photos seem to perform best.
21. Shorter Posts
Shorter posts get 23% more interaction
Writing shorter posts isn’t just handy on Twitter. Keeping
your posts below 250 characters can get you 60% more
engagement than you might otherwise see. You can
even get up to 66% more engagement if you cut it
down to less than 80 characters.
22. Engagement Rates
Engagement rates
on Thursday and
Friday are 18%
higher.
As they put it, “the
less people want to
be at work, the
more they are on
Facebook!”
23. Questions
What I found really interesting
about this stat is that HubSpot’s
data also shows which question
words attract more comments,
with the most popular being
‘should,’ ‘would,’ ‘which,’ and
‘who.’ This makes me think that
closed questions which have a
very limited answer option are the
highest attractors of comments.
Open question words like ‘why’
and ‘how’ which make the user
think more to articulate their
answer sit at the bottom of this
chart.
24. Contests
35% of Facebook Fans like a page
so they can participate in contests.
If you’re chasing down new fans, a
contest seems like a fairly good way
to encourage likes.
Contests obviously solicit interaction
by asking for people to enter. It turns
out this can work, as ‘caption this
photo’-style contests actually bring
in 5.5 times more comments than
regular posts.
In Buddymedia’s report, contest-
related words like winner, win, entry,
contest, enter and promotion were
all more likely to engage users.
25. Why Fans Like Pages
42% of Fans like a page to
get a coupon or discount
A study by Wildfire
Interactive showed that
coupon-based
campaigns received the
highest engagement
rates.
Giveaways and
sweepstakes came in just
behind coupons as highly
engaging post types.
26. Make It Interesting
Facts and figures and
handouts are boring.
Whether you are
online or in real life.
Make it Interesting!
This summer the Depot
Ladies participated in
Summer Nights. They
brought interesting
things.
27. Are you ready to be human?
The truth is, most businesses think of social
media as the newest necessary evil. They
can’t get out of their own way enough to
see the potential in it or that they need to
approach it with humanity for it to work.
Drew McLellan, a marketing friend in Des
Moines shares the answers to that.
http://www.drewsmarketingminute.com/
28. Real Interactions
When someone talks to you, it’s polite to reply in
a reasonable amount of time. If you can’t monitor
and react to a social media stream – don’t be
there. Every social media tool out there has a way
for you to be notified if you’ve actually started or
were mentioned in a conversation.
29. Conversation, not monologue
No one enjoys being talked at. Your goal
should be to spark conversation, not spit out
rhetoric. Conversations are started when we
care about the other person and ask
questions, offer helpful information and listen
to what they need from us.
30. Consistency
Just like all of our other relationships – we
grow connections partially because of
frequent exposures. You can’t get to know
someone very well if you only communicate
once or twice a year. It’s better to be fewer
places but be in the places you’ve chosen
more often. Don’t spread yourself too thin.
31. Having a Heart
If you don’t actually care – then don’t be there.
If you genuinely care about your customers and
what’s going on with them, then show that by
asking questions, reaching out and being very
human.
You can create an amazing referral source and
client base with your online presence or you can
alienate those who already have you on their
radar screen. All it takes is a little humanity to
make it work.
32. Some other places to
consider…
Tripadvisor – at least get your site listed
Pinterest – once you have more pictures on your
website, you can utilize Pinterest, or feel free to
share on our page
http://pinterest.com/webstercityia/
Twitter – appeals to a younger audience
Google Plus – at least set up a social profile here
33. Recap: Start with a plan
1. Who is your visitor?
2. Where are they online?
3. Create information.
4. Choose 2-3 places to put this information.
5. Make it interesting!
6. Be Human.
34. It takes a village
…. Everyone must be involved. Not just a
precious few. This is true for events on the
ground and for social media online.
Everyone must participate in some way. It
starts by showing up.
35. Don’t wait forever ….
A plan in action is better than any perfect
plan on paper …….
Just get started.
