Social Media Strategy at VIA Rail

About VIA Rail
An independent Crown Corporation established in 1977, VIA Rail Canada operates the national passenger rail service on behalf of the Government of Canada.
Operates up to 497 trains weekly on 12,500 kilometres of track, and serves 450 communities across the country, from coast to coast and north to Hudson Bay.
VIA carried over 4 million passengers in 2010.
Infrastructure includes:
396 passenger cars;
78 active locomotives;
159 railway stations;
4 modern maintenance facilities,
VIA employs some 3,000 people.
2010 operating deficit of over 260 million dollars.
Since 2007, VIA has received $923 million – the biggest capital investment in VIA Rail ’ s history.
Changes to trains, tracks and stations – the renaissance of passenger rail service in Canada.

Social Media Strategy at VIA Rail
How to setup your social media strategy:
Design a governance structure
Train employees
Engage
Measure

The Early Days
Twitter used to push sales, travel info and company news.
Facebook presence through a personal profile (before corporate pages).
No engagement, monitoring or response.

The Start of Something Special

Learning the Basics http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SuNx0UrnEo

Training Regimen
Editorial Committee
Refresh existing content
Create an editorial calendar
Champions Committee
Tone and manner
Response evaluation workflow
Social Media Monitoring
and Response tool

The Nitty Gritty
Monitoring and Responding
Community Manager engages on a day-to-day basis
If needed, agency can provide support outside of business hours
Manage your customers ’ expectations
OR

The New Policy on the Block
The Social Media Policy
Manage personal and professional social media activity
Encourage the use of social media by setting rules and guidelines
Restrict access to corporate accounts

How Do You Measure Success?
Basic Measurement
How many mentions per day?
Are they positive, negative, or neutral?
What are the trends?
Campaign Measurement
Decide on the purpose
Establish benchmarks
Compare results

A Case Study in Campaign Measurement
Social Media Week (SMW) is an international conference that takes place across 12 cities worldwide between September 19th and September 23rd, 2011.
SMW allows anyone (businesses or individuals) to organize and host an event related to social media and provides assistance with planning and promoting.
VIA wanted to:
share our social media strategy;
engage with the new generation of industry thought leaders, and;
create a business case for the value of social media, including benchmarks to measure future campaigns against.

What ’s the R.O.I.?
What ’s the R.O.I. on Blogging?
VIA used unique hashtags on Twitter to track the English blogger (#VIAyvr) and the French blogger (#VIAvcr). Combined, the two hashtags generated:
241 messages (171 broadcast tweets, 44 @ replies, 26 retweets);
1,285,221 impressions;
38,401 people reached.
Additionally, the bloggers produced over 140 photos, 4 videos (including 2 videos > 2 minutes each, with 200 views combined to date) and 3 blog posts.
Traditional media value of 1.3M impressions: $10,000-$20,000
Traditional production value for print, radio and TV: $5,000-$200,000
Out of pocket cost to VIA: $2,500

What ’s the R.O.I.?
What ’s the R.O.I. on Event Tweeting?
Prior to the event, the registration page generated 79 Facebook Likes, 382 Google +1 ’s, and 36 tweets.
A unique hashtag (#SMWbaiu) was used for the event and it generated the following results (according to TweetReach):
268 messages (182 broadcast tweets, 36 @ replies and 50 retweets);
398,889 impressions;
86,687 people reached.
Traditional media value of 400K impressions: $3,300-$6,600.
Traditional production value for 400K impressions: $5,000-$200,000
Event cost to VIA: $18,000
Incremental event tweeting cost to VIA: $0
The hashtag made the trending topics of Vancouver. This means that, across the whole city, #SMWbaiu was one of the most talked about topics.

The Framework
Create a governance structure
Consider a consultant or agency for additional assistance
Evaluate your internal resources
Create the necessary working committees
Train for social media basics and implementation
Develop a set of internal rules or policies
Measure and analyze your activity

What ’s Next? Becoming a “Social Organization”
Internalize informal feedback – Using social data collected from our fans and followers to create an internal “feedback loop”, executing product and service changes.
Procure an advanced social media management tool – Increasing our ability to monitor, measure and report.
Establish our crisis management policies and procedures.
Create an executive blog – VIA executives share their views on the company, our products and services, and the travel and tourism industry.
Employee engagement and empowerment – Basic social media training to advance the knowledge of all employees, demonstrating how they can use social media personally and professionally.
Crowdsourcing – Asking for suggestions from our community members, using open-ended questions.
Trendspotting – Looking for opportunities and threats using the social data VIA collects daily.
Network expansions – Strategies for and increased use of Foursquare, YouTube and Google Plus.
Create an external wiki and internal social network.
Tweetups – Organized meetups with our online communities.

Thank You
Questions? In 140 characters or less, please.

Social Media Strategy at VIA Rail

by Richard Marginson

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