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Social Networking Overview

Prepared for: TravelHouse re: Antarcticabound.com / Arcticbound.com / Villaretreats.com
Prepared by: Nick Thomas

4 August 2011




Jan Klin & Associates   Charnwood, Hollow Lane, Kingsley, Cheshire WA6 8EF T 01928 788 100 E nickthomas247@gmail.com
About Antarctica Bound / Arctic Bound / Villaretreats
Antarcticabound.com, arcticbound.com and villaretreats.com are part of the specialist travel portfolio at TravelHouse.
Antarcticabound.com and arcticbound.com are experienced in the Polar cruise travel market and Villaretreats.com offer the
finest selection of luxury villas to rent.


Current Social Networking Activity
All 3 websites promote active Facebook and Twitter presences, but are underdeveloped in a vibrant social media niche.




This Brief Overview Will...
Summarise the opportunity and reasons to invest and then broadly outline an approach to develop active and useful social
network presences: setting the objectives to desired outcomes, choosing the right channels, designing profiles and content
strategies, building and promoting the presences, generating engagement and measuring success. There is also a brief case
study to demonstrate the potential of a well planned, executed and managed social strategy




Jan Klin & Associates   Charnwood, Hollow Lane, Kingsley, Cheshire WA6 8EF T 01928 788 100 E nickthomas247@gmail.com
1. The Opportunity - Why Invest in Social Networking?
Social networking has revealed a new way of navigating the internet. Businesses can connect to customers virally, and users
can find high quality approved content and recommendations. Ultimately businesses must go where their customers are and
this is increasing where the social networks are but businesses must be clear about their business objectives.

Crucially, social media is already an interwoven part of the online travel industry. According to a recent US study:

      • 7% of traffic to travel sites already come from social media, but more interestingly,
      • for 90% of sites, social media was a top destination site after visiting their site (11% of downstream traffic overall)
      • where sites allow user reviews, there was a 24% increase in traffic


This indicates how people use social media when researching, choosing and booking travel online.

Facebook & Twitter
Facebook  is  by far the  most  popular  social  network  in  the  
UK,  accounting  for  53%  of  all  visits  to   social  networks, 29m
active users averaging 68 visits per month and 30 minutes per
visit.  

Twitter is far smaller but growing much more quickly. It allows the
quick proliferation of content to a network of followers and while
Facebook continues to revolve around real world relationships,
Twitter ties people together in a much more casual way.

YouTube
20% of all social visits. 3rd largest website in the UK (behind
Google UK and Facebook) with a nearly 1/3 of the visits Google
UK receives. Obvious application to showcase destinations.

Tumblr & Flickr
Photo-sharing applications: natural application for travel industry. Helps with SEO and visibility.

Blogs
User-experience and reviews are potentially powerful sources of traffic and new business.

Costs & Risk
Successful application costs in terms of time, resource and training / expertise / education. There are risks from the
transparency and easy proliferation of content which need to be managed through clear usage and engagement policies.

Some Reasons to Invest
Social media, in all its forms, provide a way for users to deliver ‘word of mouth’ marketing, acknowledged as one of the big-
gest influencers when it comes to consumers making travel decisions. Many potential objectives are achievable using social
networking tools, but crucially, these should be aligned with the company’s wider business strategy. TravelHouse are possi-
bly most suited to using social networks to i) reach a new audience; ii) capture potential customer data; iii) create brand loy-
alty; iv) increase brand awareness; v) increase brand advocacy; vi) increase brand engagement; vii) communicate with cus-
tomers.

Jan Klin & Associates   Charnwood, Hollow Lane, Kingsley, Cheshire WA6 8EF T 01928 788 100 E nickthomas247@gmail.com
2. Committing to a Social Media Strategy
• A fully committed and solid strategy is important: light experimentation is highly likely to be ineffective. The mistake many
  businesses make is ‘wanting to be on Facebook’ before deciding on the business goals.


• Start with a social media strategy with an overall plan not a technology or tool. In other words, choose the correct social
  media channel for the desired outcome.


• A roadmap is built by tailoring your objectives to an audience and using specific tactics as part of a wider strategy
  designed to achieve those objectives. The channel / tools / technology can then be appropriately selected and measured.


• Critical mass is important. A tentative and short term approach may deliver a few thousand ‘Likes’, ‘Followers’ or
  ‘Subscribers’ but these are unlikely to produce meaningful business results. Scale is necessary to generate consistent and
  visible engagement and interaction which is then measurable. Growing the required critical mass is an investment.


3. Executing a Social Media Plan
Choosing and defining the appropriate strategy is only the first stage. It is then important to design, build and use the
channels in the appropriate way before you can expect meaningful results.

This should involve the following stages:

     A.   Design & Content
          Social networks each have their own specific means of configuration allowing the tool to be used in the most
          effective way. Similarly, the way community users digest and absorb content differs from channel to channel, so the
          right content strategy is also important. The right channels need to be chosen for the business objectives and then
          best practices need to be adopted and set up appropriately with this and the business objectives in mind.

     B.   Building and Promoting
          Building a community that matters relies on an understanding of how to use the various tools that each social
          network makes available. Interaction / participation is key to raise visibility and begin attracting the right network.

     C. Generating Engagement
          A network is only meaningful if it interacts / engages with your content. Each social network offers different
          methods to communicate with your networks and applying appropriate techniques will help generate the types of
          engagement that matter

     D. Measuring Success
          It is impossible to predict accurately how any particular social network will react to these initiatives. A critical part to
          developing a solid strategy is a feedback loop that applies learned lessons from using the network. It is key to
          determine measurement of the desired outcomes, monitor progress and continually improve the configuration and
          content strategies




Jan Klin & Associates   Charnwood, Hollow Lane, Kingsley, Cheshire WA6 8EF T 01928 788 100 E nickthomas247@gmail.com
4. How it’s done
STA Travel UK are a great example of how to exploit social media in the travel industry. They have over 80,000 Facebook
‘Likes’ and over 4,000 Followers on Twitter. Most ingeniously though, they have developed a travel blogging application on
their website which allows anyone to blog their travel exploits as they go, allowing photo, video and message-sharing within




Jan Klin & Associates   Charnwood, Hollow Lane, Kingsley, Cheshire WA6 8EF T 01928 788 100 E nickthomas247@gmail.com
the suite. This is not only an invaluable tool for the traveller to keep in touch with loved-ones, it’s an awesome advocacy
device as it creates endless fresh, targeted content which ultimately promotes the company’s products. This social
application has been so successful that 15-20% of all traffic to the STA Travel website now arrives via a customer’s travel
blog: http://blogs.statravel.co.uk/sarahfrodsham/blog/thailand/ban-haygo

Notice how STA do not lose sight of the need to make the application commercial. Neatly injected into the user’s blog is a
targeted product promotion which does not feel aggressive or in any way detract from the usefulness of the wider initiative.




This tool is also integrated with Facebook meaning that all users’ blog posts are automatically posted to their Facebook feed
for all their Facebook Friends to see and share. On average Facebook users are connected to 140 friends, so the 80,000
strong network potentially reaches over 11m like-minded users.




Jan Klin & Associates   Charnwood, Hollow Lane, Kingsley, Cheshire WA6 8EF T 01928 788 100 E nickthomas247@gmail.com
The Facebook presence itself is well designed and executed. The default landing page has a strong promotion and call to
action to incentivise a connection with the brand via the social utility:

Jan Klin & Associates   Charnwood, Hollow Lane, Kingsley, Cheshire WA6 8EF T 01928 788 100 E nickthomas247@gmail.com
There is an active discussion board and the
                                                           photos application is very well used. Both act
                                                           to create and proliferate free marketing
                                                           material to targeted customers and their
                                                           connections.




Jan Klin & Associates   Charnwood, Hollow Lane, Kingsley, Cheshire WA6 8EF T 01928 788 100 E nickthomas247@gmail.com
Again, STA do not lose sight
                                                                                                         of the need for its social
                                                                                                         media efforts to be
                                                                                                         commercial in nature. There
                                                                                                         are specific landing pages for
                                                                                                         finding a ‘quote’ and
                                                                                                         promoting the best deals:




Jan Klin & Associates   Charnwood, Hollow Lane, Kingsley, Cheshire WA6 8EF T 01928 788 100 E nickthomas247@gmail.com
STA’s Twitter presence is equally well executed. Background and profile pic are well chosen and they have reached a decent
sized follower base of 4,000 and these followers are engaged enough to produce a meaningful and active conversation that

Jan Klin & Associates   Charnwood, Hollow Lane, Kingsley, Cheshire WA6 8EF T 01928 788 100 E nickthomas247@gmail.com
is regularly updated. The stream of tweets is varied and commercial promotions with links are neatly interspersed with brand
testimonials and positive feedback and real customer correspondence:




Jan Klin & Associates   Charnwood, Hollow Lane, Kingsley, Cheshire WA6 8EF T 01928 788 100 E nickthomas247@gmail.com

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Travel sites sm review 040811

  • 1. Social Networking Overview Prepared for: TravelHouse re: Antarcticabound.com / Arcticbound.com / Villaretreats.com Prepared by: Nick Thomas 4 August 2011 Jan Klin & Associates Charnwood, Hollow Lane, Kingsley, Cheshire WA6 8EF T 01928 788 100 E nickthomas247@gmail.com
  • 2. About Antarctica Bound / Arctic Bound / Villaretreats Antarcticabound.com, arcticbound.com and villaretreats.com are part of the specialist travel portfolio at TravelHouse. Antarcticabound.com and arcticbound.com are experienced in the Polar cruise travel market and Villaretreats.com offer the finest selection of luxury villas to rent. Current Social Networking Activity All 3 websites promote active Facebook and Twitter presences, but are underdeveloped in a vibrant social media niche. This Brief Overview Will... Summarise the opportunity and reasons to invest and then broadly outline an approach to develop active and useful social network presences: setting the objectives to desired outcomes, choosing the right channels, designing profiles and content strategies, building and promoting the presences, generating engagement and measuring success. There is also a brief case study to demonstrate the potential of a well planned, executed and managed social strategy Jan Klin & Associates Charnwood, Hollow Lane, Kingsley, Cheshire WA6 8EF T 01928 788 100 E nickthomas247@gmail.com
  • 3. 1. The Opportunity - Why Invest in Social Networking? Social networking has revealed a new way of navigating the internet. Businesses can connect to customers virally, and users can find high quality approved content and recommendations. Ultimately businesses must go where their customers are and this is increasing where the social networks are but businesses must be clear about their business objectives. Crucially, social media is already an interwoven part of the online travel industry. According to a recent US study: • 7% of traffic to travel sites already come from social media, but more interestingly, • for 90% of sites, social media was a top destination site after visiting their site (11% of downstream traffic overall) • where sites allow user reviews, there was a 24% increase in traffic This indicates how people use social media when researching, choosing and booking travel online. Facebook & Twitter Facebook  is  by far the  most  popular  social  network  in  the   UK,  accounting  for  53%  of  all  visits  to   social  networks, 29m active users averaging 68 visits per month and 30 minutes per visit.   Twitter is far smaller but growing much more quickly. It allows the quick proliferation of content to a network of followers and while Facebook continues to revolve around real world relationships, Twitter ties people together in a much more casual way. YouTube 20% of all social visits. 3rd largest website in the UK (behind Google UK and Facebook) with a nearly 1/3 of the visits Google UK receives. Obvious application to showcase destinations. Tumblr & Flickr Photo-sharing applications: natural application for travel industry. Helps with SEO and visibility. Blogs User-experience and reviews are potentially powerful sources of traffic and new business. Costs & Risk Successful application costs in terms of time, resource and training / expertise / education. There are risks from the transparency and easy proliferation of content which need to be managed through clear usage and engagement policies. Some Reasons to Invest Social media, in all its forms, provide a way for users to deliver ‘word of mouth’ marketing, acknowledged as one of the big- gest influencers when it comes to consumers making travel decisions. Many potential objectives are achievable using social networking tools, but crucially, these should be aligned with the company’s wider business strategy. TravelHouse are possi- bly most suited to using social networks to i) reach a new audience; ii) capture potential customer data; iii) create brand loy- alty; iv) increase brand awareness; v) increase brand advocacy; vi) increase brand engagement; vii) communicate with cus- tomers. Jan Klin & Associates Charnwood, Hollow Lane, Kingsley, Cheshire WA6 8EF T 01928 788 100 E nickthomas247@gmail.com
  • 4. 2. Committing to a Social Media Strategy • A fully committed and solid strategy is important: light experimentation is highly likely to be ineffective. The mistake many businesses make is ‘wanting to be on Facebook’ before deciding on the business goals. • Start with a social media strategy with an overall plan not a technology or tool. In other words, choose the correct social media channel for the desired outcome. • A roadmap is built by tailoring your objectives to an audience and using specific tactics as part of a wider strategy designed to achieve those objectives. The channel / tools / technology can then be appropriately selected and measured. • Critical mass is important. A tentative and short term approach may deliver a few thousand ‘Likes’, ‘Followers’ or ‘Subscribers’ but these are unlikely to produce meaningful business results. Scale is necessary to generate consistent and visible engagement and interaction which is then measurable. Growing the required critical mass is an investment. 3. Executing a Social Media Plan Choosing and defining the appropriate strategy is only the first stage. It is then important to design, build and use the channels in the appropriate way before you can expect meaningful results. This should involve the following stages: A. Design & Content Social networks each have their own specific means of configuration allowing the tool to be used in the most effective way. Similarly, the way community users digest and absorb content differs from channel to channel, so the right content strategy is also important. The right channels need to be chosen for the business objectives and then best practices need to be adopted and set up appropriately with this and the business objectives in mind. B. Building and Promoting Building a community that matters relies on an understanding of how to use the various tools that each social network makes available. Interaction / participation is key to raise visibility and begin attracting the right network. C. Generating Engagement A network is only meaningful if it interacts / engages with your content. Each social network offers different methods to communicate with your networks and applying appropriate techniques will help generate the types of engagement that matter D. Measuring Success It is impossible to predict accurately how any particular social network will react to these initiatives. A critical part to developing a solid strategy is a feedback loop that applies learned lessons from using the network. It is key to determine measurement of the desired outcomes, monitor progress and continually improve the configuration and content strategies Jan Klin & Associates Charnwood, Hollow Lane, Kingsley, Cheshire WA6 8EF T 01928 788 100 E nickthomas247@gmail.com
  • 5. 4. How it’s done STA Travel UK are a great example of how to exploit social media in the travel industry. They have over 80,000 Facebook ‘Likes’ and over 4,000 Followers on Twitter. Most ingeniously though, they have developed a travel blogging application on their website which allows anyone to blog their travel exploits as they go, allowing photo, video and message-sharing within Jan Klin & Associates Charnwood, Hollow Lane, Kingsley, Cheshire WA6 8EF T 01928 788 100 E nickthomas247@gmail.com
  • 6. the suite. This is not only an invaluable tool for the traveller to keep in touch with loved-ones, it’s an awesome advocacy device as it creates endless fresh, targeted content which ultimately promotes the company’s products. This social application has been so successful that 15-20% of all traffic to the STA Travel website now arrives via a customer’s travel blog: http://blogs.statravel.co.uk/sarahfrodsham/blog/thailand/ban-haygo Notice how STA do not lose sight of the need to make the application commercial. Neatly injected into the user’s blog is a targeted product promotion which does not feel aggressive or in any way detract from the usefulness of the wider initiative. This tool is also integrated with Facebook meaning that all users’ blog posts are automatically posted to their Facebook feed for all their Facebook Friends to see and share. On average Facebook users are connected to 140 friends, so the 80,000 strong network potentially reaches over 11m like-minded users. Jan Klin & Associates Charnwood, Hollow Lane, Kingsley, Cheshire WA6 8EF T 01928 788 100 E nickthomas247@gmail.com
  • 7. The Facebook presence itself is well designed and executed. The default landing page has a strong promotion and call to action to incentivise a connection with the brand via the social utility: Jan Klin & Associates Charnwood, Hollow Lane, Kingsley, Cheshire WA6 8EF T 01928 788 100 E nickthomas247@gmail.com
  • 8. There is an active discussion board and the photos application is very well used. Both act to create and proliferate free marketing material to targeted customers and their connections. Jan Klin & Associates Charnwood, Hollow Lane, Kingsley, Cheshire WA6 8EF T 01928 788 100 E nickthomas247@gmail.com
  • 9. Again, STA do not lose sight of the need for its social media efforts to be commercial in nature. There are specific landing pages for finding a ‘quote’ and promoting the best deals: Jan Klin & Associates Charnwood, Hollow Lane, Kingsley, Cheshire WA6 8EF T 01928 788 100 E nickthomas247@gmail.com
  • 10. STA’s Twitter presence is equally well executed. Background and profile pic are well chosen and they have reached a decent sized follower base of 4,000 and these followers are engaged enough to produce a meaningful and active conversation that Jan Klin & Associates Charnwood, Hollow Lane, Kingsley, Cheshire WA6 8EF T 01928 788 100 E nickthomas247@gmail.com
  • 11. is regularly updated. The stream of tweets is varied and commercial promotions with links are neatly interspersed with brand testimonials and positive feedback and real customer correspondence: Jan Klin & Associates Charnwood, Hollow Lane, Kingsley, Cheshire WA6 8EF T 01928 788 100 E nickthomas247@gmail.com