4. Today We’ll Cover …
• Social media review
• Common social media platforms
• What to say
• Best Practices
• Know your audience
• Who’s Talking About Bastrop?
• Time Saving Tools
• New tools to drive sales
• Small Business Examples
• Q&A
6. Benefits of Social Media
• It’s FREE!
• Builds deeper relationships
• Increases brand awareness
• Broadens your network
• Helps SEO
• Increases website traffic
• Can help reach journalists/media
• Empowers fans to be viral ambassadors
for your brand
Source: Social Media for Tourism Pros
7. Social Media User Statistics
Facebook Twitter Foursquare
# of Total Users > 845 million 225 million > 10 million
# of New Users
Daily
460,000 22,000 (3400%
growth in 2010)
# of Mobile Users 350 million (2x as
active)
55 percent
Daily Use 50% use daily 50 million ~ 14,000-18,000
Geography 70% from outside
the U.S.
60% from outside
the U.S.
40% from outside
the U.S.
Connections Average user has
130 friends & likes
80 pages
26 million users
follow a brand (67%
will buy)
Sources: http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics;
http://thesocialskinny.com/100-more-social-media-statistics-for-2012/
http://www.observer.com/2011/media/foursquare-user-no-6000000-signs;
http://blog.hubspot.com;
http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/infographic-facebook-vs-twitter-demographics-2010-2011/
9. What Is Facebook?
• Social networking service that allows users
to connect to friends and businesses
• Share content, links, photos, and videos
• Comment on others’ activity
• Remember: Personal profiles are for people,
not businesses. Develop a fan page instead.
10. Facebook Stats
• Over 845 million active users
• Fastest growing demographic is women 55
years old and up
• Average user is connected to 80 pages,
groups, or events
• 50% of active users log onto Facebook daily
• 350 million+ users access Facebook from a
mobile device
– This group is 2x as active as those who don’t
Source: http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
12. Facebook Benefits
• Low cost
• Engage with fans of your page
• Fans receive your updates and can upload
comments, photos, and video
• When fans engage you on your page, their
activity shows up in their friends’ streams
– This can prompt others to check out your page
and your organization!
13. Facebook Benefits
• Can incorporate content from other social
media platforms
– Ex: blog posts, updates from Twitter, pictures from
Flickr, videos from YouTube, location-based apps
(FourSquare), etc.
• Targeted advertising opportunities (cheap too!)
14. What Is Twitter?
• Free social networking and micro-blogging
site that allows users to send and read
messages known as “tweets”
• Tweets can have no more than 140
characters & are delivered to the author’s
subscribers, known as “followers”
15. Twitter Stats
• 225+ million users
• 460,000 new users sign up daily
• 55% of active users use their mobile phone to
tweet
• Twitter users are 3x more likely to follow a
brand on Twitter than any other social
networking site
Source: http://blog.hubspot.com
17. Twitter Benefits
• Low cost
• Speed of feedback
• Potential reach of message
• Customer engagement/service
• Track what people are saying about your
organization
• Create buzz around upcoming events
• Promote your organization and other content
you create
19. So What Do I Say?
• Customer FAQs
• Tutorials
• News (sales, new products/services, etc.)
• Events you’re attending
• Your own content
• Content from others
• Attractions and events
• Observations
• What you’re reading or watching
20. Rules of Engagement
• Listen more than you talk
• Remember: It’s about them, not you.
• Provide value far beyond your particular
site or service
Source: Social Media for Tourism Pros
22. Formula for Success
• 70% of content = value-added, audience-
based & not about you at all
• 20% of content = spontaneous interaction
with followers, fans, or friends
• 10% of content = unabashed self-
promotion
70 20 10
Source: Social Media for Tourism Pros
28. Create Group Rules
If you agree to these rules, you can join the group
Only post pictures to this group for which you own the
original copyright or are in the public domain.
All pictures posted to this group may be used by the Colorado
River Trail in its various publications, both print or online
(including social media). We will credit you as the
photographer on any photo that we use.
Only photos depicting the Colorado River Trail region will be
accepted. We reserve the right to reject submissions to our
Flickr group displaying content we deem to be inappropriate
or offensive without prior warning. The Colorado River Trail
reserves the right to update the Group Rules.
74. Why Use QR Codes?
• Consumers don’t have to type or text
• Engage consumers on the go, on THEIR terms
• Drive them to mobile commerce sites, and
digital experiences
• Provide quick access to useful (RELEVANT)
information
• Costs nothing to produce a QR Code
Source: Tim Hayden (http://www.44doors.com)
75. DO
• Educate your audience on “why” and “how”
• Develop a custom micro-site that truly captures
your audience “in the moment” to take your
desired action
• Provide an AWESOME experience: immediate
conversion is key
– Incorporate audio and video that can’t be duplicated
on paper
– Ask for email or a Facebook “like” in exchange for a
coupon or exclusive information
Source: Tim Hayden (http://www.44doors.com)
76. DO NOT
• Drive the audience to your standard website
homepage
• Translate web pages 1:1 from desktop to
mobile: brevity rules the moment
• Repeat information that is printed or
published on the same real estate as a QR
Code
• Extend the moment for longer than 90
seconds
Source: Tim Hayden (http://www.44doors.com)
86. United Linen
• Family owned and operated company in
Bartlesville, OK
–Founded in 1936 as a personal laundry and
dry cleaning business
• Sells linens, uniforms, and restaurant
supplies to other businesses
• Focus on customer service and empower
all employees to deliver it
92. Promise Pizza
• Founded in early 2009 in Round
Rock, TX
• Locally-owned small restaurant
• Key Goals:
–Social responsibility
–Better product
–Tasty pizza
–Community-minded
I’m Sarah Page and I work for the Lower Colorado River Authority providing tourism and economic development assistance to the communities and organizations in our service area. And what XX didn’t tell you is ….
I’m Sarah Page and I work for the Lower Colorado River Authority providing tourism and economic development assistance to the communities and organizations in our service area. And what XX didn’t tell you is ….
We have a lot of ground to cover today. There will be plenty of time for Q&A at the end, but I’m also happy to field questions during the presentation if you’ve got something that just can’t wait.
Can help reach a different demographic – one that doesn’t respond to traditional advertising (no newspapers – can get news on your phone)
SEO = getting found online
Viral = now people will tell friends in a more public way
Why should you be using social media? Well, this is why. Your audience is there.
Handout:
Ways to Use Twitter
Handout:
Ways to Use Twitter
There are some unwritten rules of the road in social media.
Sure you want to promote your event. But you want to do it in a way that’s helpful to your attendees.
Provide value >>> that way, you’re not always marketing TO them, you’re being helpful.
How do you do that? If you’re someone who likes formulas, you follow the 70-20-10 Rule. This is a great rule of thumb to use at first. After a while it will become second nature to you.
70% = whatever news or information your followers/customers most want to hear about. It can be links to articles or blog posts, tips, info on national trends, etc. It’s sharing information that benefits them, not you.
20% = is the back and forth conversation: answering questions, asking questions, or just chatting about topics of mutual interest. This is the part where you show you’re listening and can respond as a human being, not as “big company”. For a good example of this, look at how well Southwest Airlines (@SouthwestAir) does this on Twitter.
10% = After all the great interaction and sharing of information, you deserve to toot your own horn a little bit. Go ahead, you’ve earned it! Plus, you won’t come across as being spammy or entirely self-promotional. Talk about your business, recent accolades, links to articles about you, promote an event or a blog post, etc.
Tell potential fans and followers something about yourself. Make it clear who you are and what they can expect. Many people – me included – don’t follow anyone that doesn’t have a bio.
Let people know what social networks you’re using. Make it easy for them to connect with you. Put it on websites, e-newsletters, on a sign in your store/office …
… in your email signature. Make sure the icons are hyperlinked to the sites they represent so that when people click on the icons, they are taken to that specific social network.
This is another way to let people know what they can expect to find on your page … and what you’ll tolerate. It may not hold up in court, but it gives you political cover to delete posts that are inappropriate in any way.
You can do the same thing with your Flickr group. Tell potential new members the rules of the road and how you’ll use their photos.
It’s pretty difficult to connect on a personal level with a business or organization. Unless the person doing their social media sounds like a real person. Have a personality. Pick a “voice” for your social media efforts and stick with it. If your community has certain expressions or slang, use them!
Here’s an example of REALLY using personality! How about a ghost? Humor is always effective if done well.
In Bubba the Ghost’s own words …
Keep fans and followers coming back on a regular basis. One way to do that is to use dynamic content like weekly features. Here’s an example from my Colorado River Trail Facebook page. We have two weekly features. On Wednesdays we have a photo trivia contest called “Tripod Trivia” where fans have to guess the location the photo was taken. This also allows us to cross promote our Flickr group.
On Fridays, we highlight a city or attraction in our region with the “True-Blue Destination of the Week”. I always pick a location that has a Facebook presence so I can tag them (more on that in a minute).
Highlight your members on Facebook by adding them to your Favorite Pages. This lets your fans know other great organizations they can be affiliated with in your community.
Welcome pages can be an effective tool in drawing in potential Facebook fans.
Welcome pages can be an effective tool in drawing in potential Facebook fans.
Welcome pages can be an effective tool in drawing in potential Facebook fans.
Facebook now lets you “tag” other Facebook pages and people in your status updates. When you tag another page, your status update/post shows up on your page AND on the page you tagged. Fans of that page can see your message too! It’s an easy way to grow your fan base.
Finally we’re ready to discuss Flickr. Flickr is a great, free way to collect photos people have taken in your destination. Create a Flickr group for your organization to keep these photos all in one place (like the Abilene CVB has here). I have a Flickr group for my region, and I use the photos from it as content for Facebook, Twitter, and in my blog posts. I have mainly amateur photographers, but I also have some pros who contribute photos too! As long as you credit the photographer, they are usually happy to let you use their work.
One of the questions I get asked most frequently is “how much time will all this take?!” The truth is, that it does take some time. But there are some tools out there to help you cut down on the time you spend posting content and monitoring your social media channels.
One of the questions I get asked most frequently is “how much time will all this take?!” The truth is, that it does take some time. But there are some tools out there to help you cut down on the time you spend posting content and monitoring your social media channels.
Twitter Feed is a great little tool that can automate sharing of your blog posts to either Facebook or Twitter, or both. Just create a free account,
Twitter Feed makes it very easy to create an RSS feed. Just name it and copy the feed address into the second blank from your feedburner account.
Then just choose where you want your new blog posts to be published.
You can then get stats on how many times people click on your link from Facebook and from Twitter.
Using HootSuite to manage your Twitter feeds and Facebook pages makes life a lot easier. HootSuite allows you to schedule tweets and Facebook posts in advance. You can do many of your tweets for the week all at once to free up time for other things while you’re at work. Just type your text in the box and click the calendar button.
In the calendar dialogue window that pops up, select the date and time of day you want the tweet to go out.
Any tweets you’ve scheduled will show up in the “Scheduled” area of the Publisher menu where you can check on its progress and even edit it.
HootSuite is also great for helping you monitor your brand or keywords that are relevant to your event. Here I’m pointing at several keywords I’m tracking. These are for presentations I had coming up to help me find good content to share. I’ve circled the “Searches” tab I set up. There, I track mentions of various LCRA properties, LCRA-related topics and more.
This is another cool (and free) service that allows you to post your content at one time and in one place, and have it sent to multiple social media channels.
Just type in your content and select which channels you want the message sent to.
If you manage Facebook pages, this tool allows you to post your content on Facebook and have it automatically sent to Twitter. Login to Facebook and open a new tab. Then go to facebook.com/twitter. Since you’re logged in, Facebook will know what pages you manage. You’ll see a list like this, and you simply click “Link to Twitter” for the ones you’d like to link. Couldn’t be easier.
This is a relatively new one I just stumbled upon a few months ago. HyperAlerts is a free service that will tell you when you’ve had any fan activity on your Facebook page. This feature now exists in Facebook with the new pages redesign. However, the Facebook alerts come to your email as they happen. With HyperAlerts, you can choose to receive a summary email once per day or other frequency settings.
After you create your account or sign in, you can add new alerts for other pages or edit the types of alerts you’re receiving for the pages you already monitor. I set up alerts on 3 of my pages. You’ll notice that I don’t want alerts for my own content on two of them. That’s because I’m the only one who posts content there – I know when I’ve done that.
They’ll send you an email as often as you choose to let you know what’s been happening on your page when you weren’t looking.
Nutshell Mail is another relatively recent find. This is a free monitoring tool from Constant Contact – the email newsletter people. This also notifies you when there’s been fan activity on your Facebook and Twitter pages, as well as activity from your friends on your personal profile.
You’ll receive an email with all the notifications from the previous time period.
You’ll see all your notifications and show you some recent posts from friends it thinks you might like. The cool thing about NutshellMail is that it allows you to RESPOND directly from the email without having to go to Facebook. Very cool.
URL shorteners come in very handy with Twitter, where you only have 140 characters to get your point across. But you can use them on Facebook too. The cool thing about them is that you can track how many times the link you shared gets clicked, and whether the click-through came from Twitter or Facebook. So this is one way to actually account for your social media efforts.
There are several other URL shorteners. HootSuite has its own called owl.ly. There’s bud.url which allows you to assign each tweet or post to a category (like food, arts, history, etc.) so that you know what category performs best. Bud.url is not free, however, and also takes a fair amount of work for each link.
Just type in (or copy in) your long link, and bit.ly automatically generates a shortened link for you. Down below it shows the number of clicks I was responsible for out of the total number of times that link was clicked.
QR stands for “quick response”. A QR Code is a 2 dimensional bar code that can be read with a special app on a smart phone. They are linked to a URL (preferably a mobile site) to get more information on something. There are lots of uses for them in the festivals and events world.
Creating a QR Code couldn’t be easier. If you Google “QR Code generator”, probably the first 10 or so listings will work just fine. This one – QRStuff.com not only generates the code, it connects you to other sites where you can make things with your code (like t-shirts).
It’s always challenging trying to integrate a downtown into a festival experience. This group may have figured out how. The Geneva Chamber of Commerce worked with downtown businesses and the Swedish Days Festival on a promotion that will help market the downtown merchants to festival attendees. Visitors with smartphones will get immediate access to featured specials and discounts exclusively during the event. When you scan the code, you go to the mobile friendly Swedish Days 2011 Hot Deals page that includes all the specials. Some are offering a % off, others are offering BOGOs.
Okay, hold on to your hats. If your mind hasn’t been blown by now, this section will definitely do it! Has anyone heard of Gowalla or FourSquare? Used them?
These are applications you can download onto your smart phone. The apps “know” where you are based on your phone’s GPS. When you open the app, you’ll see a list of business or places nearby. You can “check in” to that place via the app.
Why would you do this? For the geekiest of the geeks, it’s the game. You can earn virtual pins and badges that laud your check-in prowess. For regular geeks, it’s probably the real (not virtual) perks. On Foursquare, businesses have the ability to reward people for checking in multiple times. Think of it as a virtual “frequent flyer” program. On Gowalla, you can create virtual themed trips for your destination. Each trip has its own URL so you can link to them and promote them on your other social media channels.
Here’s an example of what a check-in looks like on Foursquare, and how you’ll know if there’s a special being offered.
And another example of an “old school” way to promote a “new school” tool. This is just a chalkboard outside a coffee house that lets people know they offer Foursquare deals.