The Importance of
Social Media
22nd October 2009
#LBTB

Boston
•! Economic and cultural capital of New England
•! It has one of the highest costs of living in the USA
•! The city population doubles on working days to
1.2 million
•! Greater Boston has a population of 4.5 million
•! The Boston Globe is the city’s largest newspaper

The Boston Globe
•! Founded 127 years ago
•! Has won 20 Pulitzer prizes since 1966
•! The New York Times bought the Globe in 1993
for $1.1 billion
•! It now loses $1m a week
•! On April 9th it was threatened with closure
•! Time Magazine predicts that it and 9 others will
close within 12 months

21st September 2009

20th October 2009

The Future for PR?

Search: PR Agency 2004-2009

Search: Social Media PR 2004-2009

Social media & PR
Monitoring

Social media & PR
Monitoring
Media relations

Social media & PR
Monitoring
Media relations
News direct to consumers

17th April 2009
Ashton Kutcher & CNN - 1 million twitter followers
Six months on they have 6 million between
them
There are 157 one million+ accounts

Hosted content

Optimised for Search
PR & SEO

Social media & PR
Monitoring
Media relations
News direct to consumers
Customer relations

Social media & PR
Monitoring
Media relations
News direct to consumers
Customer relations
eValuation

Where conversations are happening

Attitude to the brand

Emotional response

Some of the best

The challenge
•! To grow the business from coffee table book to
online boutique travel specialist
•! Position itself as a trusted and reliable source of
advice and high quality products
•! Stimulate online transactions
•! And expand its customer data base

The solution
•! Smithhotels Twitter feed
•! Mr & Mrs Smith Facebook fan page
•! Partnerships with online travel magazines and
communities, eg. tripshake.com
•! Vigorous constant evaluation

The results
–! Established online brand presence
–! No.1 Google ranking (from almost 4m results)
–! Visitor traffic to website increased ten fold
–! Over 3,500 followers on Twitter
–! Expanding brand offer

The Challenge
•! Declining traffic to traditional travel websites
•! Need to engage with target audience, the youth
market
•! Identify where they are gathering
•! And communicate with them in their space and
their language

The Solution
•! A comprehensive social media campaign
•! Designed to engage with people in as many channels as
possible
–! Blogs, Facebook, Widgets, Twitter, podcasts, mobile
•! STAtravelbuzz micro site central to activity
–! A central hub in which to congregate
•! Effective outreach campaign
–! Identifying new ‘voices’ active in social media travel
•! STA Travel brand ambassador campaign
–! Influential social media travel ‘voices’
•! STA Travel YouTube intern promotion
•! Complementary offline meets and events

The results
•! Positive direct engagement with target audience
•! Over 350,000 views on STA Travel YouTube
video submissions
•! 25,000+ Facebook fans
•! A further 2,800 Twitter followers
•! Recognised as a leading organisation within
social media
•! Award winning
–! Best Use of Social Media, Travolution Awards 2009

Thank you

Questions?

The Importance of
Social Media
22nd October 2009
#LBTB