How to Integrate Social Media into Travel PR Campaigns

How to integrate social media into Travel PR campaigns

Agenda Tactics & tools Social media outreach (blogs, Twitter, social networks, forums, podcasts) Video Widgets SEO PR Online PR strategy Creative campaigns Amplification Reputation management Online press office SEO PR Measurement & evaluation to demonstrate ROI

Overview Matured - blogging has now matured as a phenomenon to cross all consumer interest areas Extensive - vibrant communities can be found collecting around vast ranges of topics Culture - blogger outreach carries with it different expectancies in regards to form of communications than traditional media

Opportunity ‘Link etiquette’ of the blogging world encourages quick viral dissemination of well-targeted stories and engaging content SEO - this ‘link etiquette’ is also responsible for blogs faring extremely well in search returns – ranking highly in Google As a result, blog posts can be extremely visible and influential Impacting consumer opinion Driving mainstream coverage Brand advocates - the highly focused nature of blogs – with bloggers becoming passionate opinion formers on very specific topics – offers distinct opportunity to encourage strong advocates of a product or service

Reading the site’s about page

Reading the last week or so of posts or news stories

If possible, finding a specific, concrete example and URL that proves why the editor would be interested in writing about the campaign?

If not a URL, the site should be very specific to your client/campaign ,[object Object],[object Object]

Your client or the client’s product

Client competitors,[object Object]

Honesty of Identity: You never obscure your identitySpecifics ,[object Object]

Commitment to represent blogger and client

No anonymous posting or commenting

Step One: The Pre-pitch Includes: Short introduction of who you are and what you do Opt-in clause of participation A hint of what might be in store Chance to be placed on a ‘Do Not Pitch’ list Does not include: Press releases Hard sells Attachments Unsolicited advice or information

Step Two: Relationship Establishment What it does: Ensures that the blogger understands your objectives and that you understand theirs Why it’s important: Each blogger is different - some want to review products, some want Google juice, some want advertising, some don’t know what they want… This gives us all a chance to start off on the same page.

Step Three: The Pitch & Maintenance What it does: Keeps an ongoing conversation with the blogger Why it’s important: The blogger will be much more likely to take your other pitches if they know you

Step Three: The Pitch & Maintenance What it includes: Knowing what’s going on in the blogger’s life Thinking before you pitch Short, to the point, correspondence Follow-up Personality

Case study - Best Job in the World

Case study - Beck’s Canvas Key Outputs Over 120 pieces of online coverage achieved 40,148,733 unique users £257,000 equivalent online media value ROI – 9:1

Overview Blogger events can be run in a very similar way to media events These can either be run in tandem with mainstream media events or independently Successful blogger events tend to adopt very tailored methods of syncing specific elements of an event to bloggers’ personal tastes

Opportunity With bloggers currently not invited to a large number of events, they offer a powerful means by which to build strong relationships and brand advocates Face-to-face time allows impact to be made far beyond that possible during normal email communications Following blogger events, bloggers frequently post detailed and well-branded reviews and posts

Case study - Smirnoff Popular London ‘Blogger Meet-up’ event sponsored by Smirnoff Two Smirnoff ‘mixologists’ placed at bar Profile book designed with detailed background information on all of the blogger invitees Special cocktail design for each blogger: for example Fake Plastic Noodles received a cocktail infused with twisted lemon skins for noodles

Case study - V-Jam ‘V-Jam’ social media day created, with 60 frequent flyers, airline staffand bloggers participating Focus set of come up with concepts on how social media can improve the flying experience Virgin Atlantic’s Vtravelled.com, was developed as an output – an online travel community where people can organise and share travel plans with friends and family

Overview UK lead - over the past year Twitter has grown hugely in the UK to overtake the US in terms of take-up Extensive - the similarity to texts and the brief, quick nature of posts have resonated strongly with UK consumers, now spanning many demographic groups and interest areas Complements blogging - Twitter now has found a place alongside blogging, where it is used to share quick views and opinions. Blogging instead is used for more detailed descriptions and analysis

Opportunity Influential hubs - the culture of people on Twitter ‘following’ others that they find interesting has created a number of very influential hubs ‘Twitter Elite’ now hold considerable sway, with their posts being seen by thousands of people instantly Viral - the medium, like blogging, also lends itself extremely well to quick dissemination of news. If a person following a Twitter user likes a post, they can ‘ReTweet’ further increasing the audience base that the message reaches

Twitter – Why? Build relationships Humanise/Catharsis Share information Gather information Showcase expertise Job hunting

How does it work? 1. I update 3. I can check the updates that are directed at me (@) 2. It shows up in my news feed and my followers’ news feed 4. As I update, the more my name shows up and I can expand my followers

The Twitter Dashboard Following Followers Updates Twitter Tip @Replies Direct Messages Favourites Search Trends

Twitter, PR and Journalism Sense of community Secret club mentality Way to connect Inside information

Etiquette Do not: Follow indiscriminately Pitch out in the open Use only for self-promotion Do: Keep engaged daily Move outside your circle Follow people at a steady pace

Twitter Tools – things to know Hashtags A way to track and distinguish conversations by inserting # in front of a pre-determined term RT (Retweet) Pass along a Tweet of someone else’s and give credit “RT @mseasons Check out this site!” DM (Direct message) A private message to another Twitter user. Can only be sent if the user is following you Long URLs Can be shortened using services like Tiny.cc to help avoid going over the 140 character limit. Pictures Use TwitPic.com to share photos easily on Twitter Username Can be changed at any time without losing your followers, replies or account

Twitter Tools - Digsby Updates stream to your desktop You don’t ever have to miss an @ reply You can update your status, return direct messages and reply to other users You never have to visit Twitter.com It’s also possible to incorporate your email, Facebook and IM clients

Case study - First Capital Connect Rail travellers invited to follow FCC on Twitter (@FirstCC) Travellers provide information about their regular commute, stations they travel between, and times of the day System then updates travellers when problems occur that will affect their commute

Case study - Manchester Airport Value Added Discount vouchers on offer as incentive for Twitter users to follow Manchester Airport on Twitter (@manairport) Further chance of winning £500 for those that ‘retweet’, referring a friend to the airport’s Twitter page Twitter feed used to communicate flight updates to passengers

Targeted ads – displays ads solely on users meeting the demographic profile requested Partner campaigns - special pages are designed to hold communities around specific topics Traditional PR activity - Facebook is a notoriously hard environment to engage directly with consumer as a result of its closed nature (you have to be friends with someone to see their full details) Facebook groups - the most accessible way to engage with communities of people on Facebook– either by setting one up or through engagement in groups already existing

Drop in users - MySpace’s user base in recent years has dropped significantly as a result of the rise of Facebook and Bebo Music - the profile now of MySpace users is now very music-focused Targeted ads - much like on Facebook, targeted ads can be run on MySpace, set to appear only on profile pages of users that fit within a certain demographic profile Open - MySpace is based on a far more open environment than Facebook, and therefore enables far more extensive engagement

What is it? Photo storage and photo sharing community How does it work? Users upload photos, tag them and/or submit them to groups Importance of tagging Allows search functionality SEO visibility through Google and Google Image

DIY - an open social network platform that allows you to easily create your own social network Flexibility - this can be designed to focus upon any topic imaginable Numbers - currently over 1 million individual networks have been created on Ning – by companies and individuals alike Functionality - Ning easily incorporates all of the features commonly available today on social networks – including multimedia content, and easy sharing of opinion and views

Opportunity Control- Ning offers complete control over who can join a social network and what they can do when they are part of it Moderation - constraints can thus be placed on the age of participants Targeted - opportunity to create niche networks that are designed to complement other marketing initiatives

Social bookmarking Distribution - A powerful way for stories to disseminate online Tags - Users ‘tag’ stories they find interesting Easy access - The URL for the story is saved on the web, for easy future finding (online bookmarking)

Social bookmarking Online influence - Very popular with news hungry web geeks Community - People follow friends ‘feeds’, and are kept up-to-date with stories they find interesting Comments – People comment and share views on stories Traffic – can be a major source of traffic to websites online

Social bookmarking User-generated news website No editor Ranking of stories decided by community A central group of a 1000 or so users command great influence Major traffic driver online SEO boost

Overview Well-established - forum communities were the first form of social media to take-off on the web Community - completely driven by community posts ‘Forum Master’ - oversees content moderation Threads - are either initiated by the Forum Master or by the user community Consumer research – very popular with consumers when researching complex topics or making purchasing decisions Opinion-formers –most forums provide information on the activity of its users: Number of posts Number of threads

Opportunity & constraints Seeding – in the not too distant past, forums were a popular medium for viral marketers Legal constrictions – changes in European law two years ago, however, severely curtailed this activity, making it illegal to act under false pretence when marketing online Forum thread sponsorship – The main opportunity for active forum engagement is by contacting a Forum Webmaster to organise a sponsored thread

Overview Podcasts are very much a social media equivalent to radio Blogs:journalism Podcasts:radio RSS technology utilised to download straight to your iPod Lead to podcasts being consumer on the go at times convenient to the listener Podcasts can now be found covering all interest areas and industry sectors

Opportunity Opportunity exists to pitch in stories and content just as with radio Interviews Guest speaker slots As it is still a relatively new medium, podcast producers do not receive as many approaches from PRs – leading to increased opportunity

Overview Engagement - video offers tremendous opportunity to engage audience groups online Media thirst – traditional media sites are constantly trying to compete with the BBC’s extensive libraries of content PR opportunity – creates opportunity for high-profile story placement Creative extension – opportunity to add further depth to a story

Video-sharing Large and varied – more than just YouTube. Sites such as Dailymotion, Videojug, Metacafe, Blinkx and many others also have large communities Easy sharing – ‘embedded players’ are now offered by all video-sharing sites making it easy to pass content to journalists Viral spread – it is also very easy for consumers to share video content – meaning videos can spread very quickly online (e.g. recent London fire)

Communities Social networks – more than just video posting Shared interests – people connect to other users who like similar content, or post videos they like Channels – YouTube channels create audience bases that are informed when new content is uploaded Comments – people post comments and views on videos. Star ratings are a powerful determination of ranking in YouTube and whether it achieves the all-important feature on the front-page

Video production Affordable quality – the explosion of video consumption online has brought with it a reduction in the expectancy of video quality and resolution Script writer – finding a good script writer is a very valuable exercise. Substantially reduces expensive to and fro Production – hiring a video producers is extremely important – more often that not they will manage the whole project, including editing Budget – costs can be in the hundreds, depending on the scope of work Length – it is best if videos do not shoot past 1 minute in length online – further reducing production costs

Video seeding Audience reach – do use other video-sharing sites in addition to YouTube. You can easily find extensive lists of them online Relevance – particularly ensure your video is posted on sites with relevant focus and audience bases Web tools – there are a number of tools that can be used to post a video simultaneously to many video-sharing sites at once – massively reducing admin time (e.g. http://heyspread.com/) Monitoring – such sites also enable easy reporting of total views and comment activity across the video-sharing sites used

SEO SEO – when posting videos on video-sharing sites, you have complete control over the copy and content that runs alongside the video Keywords – by researching appropriate keywords, it is possible to ensure the video ranks well in relevant search engine returns URL links – use of relevant URLs and ‘anchor text’ ensures that popular videos provide an SEO boost to your website Traffic – Popular sites such as YouTube can be key drivers of traffic online

Moderation Hugely active sites such as YouTube so attract a large number of ‘spammers’ – people posting inappropriate links and content in comments to capture people’s attention Popular videos can also attract abusive comment as a means to scandalise and shock When it is your own video post, it is possible to control the following: Removal of inappropriate comments Complete removal of ability to comment

Case study – Ramada Encore Key Outputs 12 pieces of national online coverage 78 actively generated pieces of coverage across influential blog titles Stimulated over 20 million impressions

Case study – Virgin Mobile Key Outputs 105 pieces of online coverage Over 20 million impressions Over 95% of placements mentioned Virgin Mobile Over 89% of placements linked to or embedded the 30 Peas video Over 87% linked to virginmobilepeople.com/30p

Overview Interactive web tools that can be ‘embedded’ on websites and downloaded to desktops Engagement – great means by which to actively engage consumers Rich information – powerful way to display rich and varied information Content – work for all means of different content, from video to games Stand-out – as this is still a a largely unexplored area by the PR industry generally, substantial opportunity exists to catch online influencers’ attention

Queensland Tourism 10-day campaign to promote Etihad Airways'’ service into Brisbane, together with experiences Queensland Tourism have to offer Viral game where players compete for a high score by catapulting Koalas across different terrains Players invited to share with family and friends online by posting on blogs and social network profiles More than 1.1 million koalas were catapulted

Creative development At the core of social media strategy is traditional PR Must be new Must be sufficiently interesting for someone to want to take their own personal time to talk about it Relevance is highly important Simplicity is vital Online influencers are extremely time poor Key messaging must come through instantly Attention-grabbing works Humour Innovation Risqué (great example is Diesel 30 year anniversary campaign)

Story development Get to the core of the story Describe it in one sentence Build associations from this base Relevance is key Focus first on this before considering appropriate social media platforms Platforms should fall naturally from creative concept Think BIG Creative implementation online is far, far cheaper that offline There are some very competitively priced development suppliers out there

Use the full palette Never before have so many tools been available, so easily, to PRs Bring the story to life as much as possible The further you go the stronger the message, the reach, the impact Video is enormously powerful

Two-way The key feature that differentiates social media from traditional media is its facility for two-way dialogue This brings with it a number of important advantages: More powerful engagement Improved recall Active involvement Participative for both parties Make this principle core to a social media campaign

Competition mechanics Incentivise people to participate Make prizes relevant to resonate Competitions have long been a core strand of consumer PR campaigns Social media offers far more flexible, creative mechanics You have to think why would some get involved?

Language & tone ‘PR speak’ just does not work Avoid exaggeration – people can spot it, and do not need to put up with it Is it really ‘the world’s leading’? Be human Chatty, simple language works best Avoid jargon at all costs Be friendly Relationships can be formed very quickly online Be open People are largely very understanding. If issues arise be up-front and open and maintain dialogue Transparency Always state your intention Always state who you are representing

Mechanicals Make it easy to share URL links Social media ‘share’ buttons Be mindful of people’s inboxes Make full use of online tools and sharing sites to distribute content YouSendIt

Overview Extend – online PR can work very well as a means to ‘amplify’ or add further depth to a planned PR/marketing/advertising campaign Advertising – ‘amplification’ is very much a buzz term in the ad world. Represents a means by which to take the core ad message out to a wider audience base Media fragmentation – the fragmentation of consumer media has made it impossible for advertising to reach as large groups of people as before Word-of-mouth – at its core lies the ability to stimulate word-of-mouth and viral spread of key marketing messages Social media – the two-way, personal nature of the medium perfectly complements the prime objective of any advertising initiative

Implementation Core messaging – creative scope is focused upon taking campaign messaging and applying them to the online medium Interaction & depth – tools such as video and widgets enable softer elements to be added to a campaign – increasing levels of engagement Assets – content produced to-date as part of the campaign can prove extremely valuable

Implementation - timeline Anticipation – one core focus for amplification strategy is building momentum ahead of a campaign launch Early glimpses of assets Smaller campaigns to support major push Extension – an additional focus commonly is then extending interest and intrigue past the main launch dates Interactive elements Competitions

Opportunity Extend current client PR campaigns – opportunity to pitch in amplification projects onto current client campaigns Extend other client marketing initiatives – opportunity to begin further supporting other agency initiatives Slot in aside current retained PR agencies – opportunity to get to the client table without a full re-pitch. A foot in the door Partnerships – scope to partner with advertising and media agencies

Case study – Tourism New Zealand Dedicated YouTube channel featuring video content of the destination Promotion of the channel has led to New Zealand’s ‘Youngest Country’ advert being viewed online over a million times YouTube clips are also embedded directly on the newzealand.com site Visitors on newzealand.com invited to share experiences through a ‘submit a memory’ tool – whereby travellers submit short accounts of their trip

Online monitoring Many options – there are now a large number of monitoring services on offer Consultancy – value for clients is in the consultancy offered in addition to raw stats: Flagging crises before flaring Prioritisation of articles for reaction Insight to inform PR planning and campaign creative

Managing comments Commenting is a necessary element of the two-way nature of social media Once you start the dialogue, it is important to remain involved Reply to comments Engage in conversation However, the more impersonal nature of online communications can cause people to sometimes be more offensive Keep a watchful eye for inappropriate comment or spam If this occurs on your uploaded content or site, this can be mitigated with removal as necessary Ensure this is an appropriate action YouTube allows comments to be disabled

Managing comments - prioritisation The proliferation of sites and commentators can be mind boggling and very difficult to manage Priority is key Not all sites similar sway Some comment at best will only require a watchful eye to check if it spreads further In such circumstances, engaging is a waste of resources and may only fuel the fire

Social media press office Portal for reporting news and deals Hosts photography, videos and widgets Readers can comment and share views Links closely with Lastminute’s Twitter page, featuring recent Tweets

SEO PR Google is very much the window through which people access everything online Online PR and social media outreach directly impact: Brand website rankings Journalist and consumer endorsement rankings Online PR and social media outreach can also be utilised to minimise the impact of damaging articles ranking highly Hotel Chocolat example

Implementation - keywords Keywords – keyword phrases are selected that are most important to the client for driving relevant traffic to their website Input – first check if client has list of priority keywords. Their online marketing department will definitely have focus areas Keyword generation – otherwise, there are numerous free, or paid-for, keyword generator tools Focus – build focused list of up to five keywords to focus upon

How to Integrate Social Media into Travel PR Campaigns

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How to Integrate Social Media into Travel PR Campaigns