BLOOM Social Media for Travel

Social Media for Travel

A four-step guide

www.bloomworldwide.com

Key takeouts !  The way consumers buy travel has changed for

good. Travel brands need to respond by changing the way they market and engage with consumers.

!  Traditional marketing practices will yield limited results in this new world. To beat the competition you need to embrace influence & advocacy programmes and content marketing.

!  Social media can deliver sales and reach new previously untapped audiences if done right.

Contents !  Step 1: INSIGHT – 10 useful social media

statistics for travel companies

!  Step 2: PLANNING – 5 ways social media influences purchase decisions for travel products

!  Step 3: ENGAGEMENT – 5 innovative examples of travel companies using social media

!  Step 4: EVALUATION – The 5 best metrics for travel companies to use to understand the ROI of social media

Step 1: INSIGHT

10 useful social media statistics for travel

companies

Jetblue has the biggest account, with over 2.1M followers

American Airlines has the biggest Klout score (95) and is the most active – 435,000 tweets

KLM is the most liked on Facebook with almost 4M likes

There are over 200 airlines active on Twitter.

Source: ski,.com

Wynn Las Vegas has the biggest twitter account, with a half-million followers The Cosmopolitan is most active with over 36K tweets Hotel Urbano in Miami has more than 7.6M likes on Facebook MGM Grand Hotel has the biggest Klout score - 87

Most active hotels in social media

Source: ski,.com

Airlines in social media by numbers Source: mediamosaic.com

Hotels in social media by numbers Source: mediamosaic.com

Hotels in social media by numbers

Source: mediamosaic.com

Cruisers in social media by numbers

65% of leisure travellers begin researching online

before they have decided where or how to travel

Source: Google/ Ipsos MediaCT

92% of UK travellers say reviews are influential

when choosing where to book

Source: TripAdvisor Insights 2014

Compared to total travellers, Hotel buyers are 2x more likely to

search for travel images in the week before purchase

Image searchers are 62% more likely to visit Destination sites,

93% more likely to search for travel information

44% of travellers use their smartphone to research

travel while they’re travelling

Source: Jwire Report

72% of travellers say the ability to book via mobile

devices is useful

25% of travel businesses are engaging with their

guests via mobile devices

!  Trail-blazing travel companies are leveraging social media at scale to meet sales and marketing objectives.

!  This isn’t just about soft objectives like reach and word of mouth. Social media can deliver on hard objectives like sales and revenue which is why travel companies are investing heavily.

Scale social media to deliver revenue

!   It isn’t just about social media anymore. Travel companies should be embedding and using social technology in all their digital spaces to engage and target customers including rating and reviewing technology.

Social is everywhere

!  Travel companies should be using image-related social media as a key strategic tool for engaging likely buyers.

! Pinterest and instagram should now form a core part of your social media activation plan.

Use Pinterest & Instagram

!  Mobile, and in particular social mobile, should be a major focus.

!   If you’re not using social mobile as part of your digital strategy, you will be missing out on sales.

If you’re not mobile enabled you will miss out on sales

Step 2: PLANNING

5 ways social media influences purchase

decisions for travel products

The consumer decision journey has changed

Social media has transformed the way we purchase travel products. Our purchasing habits can no longer be depicted as a funnel. Instead it is a dynamic journey where our ‘real life’ experiences, when shared online, significantly impact the purchasing habits of others at EVERY stage of the journey.

Evaluate

Experience

Consider

The new ‘moment of truth’ for travel businesses

People are most likely to share their experiences (good or bad) on social media while directly experiencing their purchase i.e. on holiday.

In turn, these publically shared experiences significantly influence those who are at consideration, evaluation or buy phases.

Shared Experience

Consider Evaluate Buy

Sharing has the power to dramatically influence purchase decisions

Travellers themselves have become the key influencers in the purchase decision cycle as social tools have enabled them to share their experiences creatively at scale to a high number of people. The evolution of social technology now means social is everywhere with ratings and reviews infiltrating almost every consumer evaluation process.

Shared Experiences

Consider

Evaluate

An image is worth 1000 words

Social technology has meant we’ve all become citizen journalists able to tell our stories and convey experiences in highly emotive ways.

Images are proving increasingly important in influencing people at the consideration and evaluation stages. Image-based social media should now form a key part of your strategy.

Mobile is critical

Mobile is now a key touch point for people at the evaluation and sharing stage. They use mobile to explore and search for products on the go. They then use mobile as they are experiencing to share those experiences to their networks which will impact the evaluators.

Consider Evaluate Buy Experience Share

Step 3: ENGAGEMENT

5 innovative examples of travel companies using social

Four Seasons: Pin. Pack. Go. !   September 2013 saw Four Seasons

launch a Pinterest based service connecting consumers with local experts from the luxury hotel group.

!   To participate, Pinterest users created a Pin. Pack. Go. Board, tagged with the Four Seasons property they’re visiting.

!   A local Four Seasons expert will then take a look at their mood board, and create personalised recommendations for their visit, or generate a customised travel itinerary.

1888 Hotel: The worlds first Instagram Hotel

!   Sydney’s 1888 Hotel caters to smartphone photographers via a range of instagram-related facilities.

!   The hotel welcomes instagram users with extras including a walking map with recommended photo opportunities; a room designed to help guests take interesting ‘selfies’; and a reception area that displays images from local social media feeds.

American Airlines: Customers with Klout

!   2013 saw Klout partner with American Airlines on a scheme allowing the social media rankings analyst’s users with scores over 55 to access the airline’s Admiral Clubs for one day.

!   US-based users with a score of less than 55 were entered into a draw to win club access for one year.

Tourism Australia: User Generated Content

!   Fans create more than 95% of content on this tourist board’s profiles.

!   By taking advantage of digital media’s 24 hour time loop and dedicated interaction with its followers, Tourism Australia has inspired the contribution of more than 1000 photos every day across its social media networks.

KLM: Social is everywhere !   KLM showed their customers

their dedication to customer service by producing 1 minute customised videos responding to each individual tweet.

!   KLM also ran a campaign that involved monitoring passengers social profiles and discovering if there was something that passenger wanted to do or have on a trip, and surprised them with it when they reached their destination.

Step 4: EVALUATION

The 5 best metrics for travel companies to use to

understand the ROI of social media

Share of Voice

Engagement Rate Reach SenNment Traffic

!   As a travel company, to get an accurate picture of the ROI you are achieving from social media, you are best to track a range of key metrics over time and in comparison to competitors.

!   These are key metrics which are relatively straightforward to track but which will give you a good overview of how you are performing in terms of the number of people you are reaching, the impact you are having on those people and what actions you are eliciting from them.

!   Once you have referral traffic tracked through social media, you should be able to tie this in with your on-site analytics and booking system to evaluate the causual relationship between behaviour in social media and the impact it has on sales.

!   With social media, share of voice refers to the number of conversations about your company versus your competitors/ market. This is a useful comparative metric to benchmark performance.

!   Segment brand mentions by social channel to uncover opportunities for improvement. You may find that your efforts on one particular channel are going unnoticed, but excelling on another channel.

!   The formula for calculating SOV is simple: divide the number of conversations or mentions of your brand by total number of conversations or mentions about other brands in your market.

!   To get your total number of conversations you can use a free tool such as SocialMention or if you have the budget, a more robust tool such as Radian6 has a widget that can calculate this metric for you.

Share of Voice

!   Engagement rate is valuable for telling you how well your fans interact with your content. This, in turn, is an indicator of the traction you are likely to get with specific pieces of content across social channels. Here’s how we calculate engagement rate .

!   The Facebook post Engagement Rate Formula – This formula takes into account Likes, Comments and Shares of the post to the total number of fans at the time it has been posted. Then it gets multiplied by 100 to get the final percentage that expresses how well your brand is doing in engaging your fans!

!   The Tweet Engagement Rate Formula – This formula takes into account the Replies and Retweets of the Tweet to the total number of followers to date. Then it’s multiplied by 100 as well to provide you with the percentage of your Fan base that’s interacting with your tweet.

Share of Voice

!   Reach measures the spread of a social media conversation. On its own, reach can help you understand the context for your content. How far is your content disseminating and how big is the audience for your message? Reach is a measure of potential audience size.

!   And of course, a large audience is good, but reach alone does not tell you everything. Reach becomes very powerful when compared to other engagement metrics. Use reach as the denominator in your social media measurement equations.

!   Pick important action or engagement numbers like clicks, retweets, or replies (more on this in a second) and divide them by reach to calculate an engagement percentage. Of the possible audience for your campaign, how many people participated? Reach helps contextualise other engagement metrics.

Share of Voice

!   Automated sentiment analysis is imperfect at best, often ignoring the human element of sarcasm or simple context. Using a social listening tool, automated sentiment analysis will give you an accuracy level of about 50-70%.

!   To be completely accurate, you need to track this manually.

!   Go through your mentions and tag them as positive, neutral or negative. Add up the totals and measure over time. Are the good mentions growing and the negative mentions decreasing?

!   Social media consumer sentiment metrics can give a snapshot of customer satisfaction without having to administer surveys or polls. Your social consumers are essentially your biggest, most honest focus group, so take advantage of it.

Share of Voice

!   Referral traffic is a good indicator of the actions people are taking as a result of your social media efforts.

!   Google Analytics is a fantastic way to measure how much traffic is being referred to your website from the various social channels.

!   Under the Traffic Sources tab, click on the Referring Sites and then type in your social network of choice to see how much traffic is being referred. Set up goals based on the actions you want your visitors to complete.

!   For Twitter referrals, search both Twitter and t.co, which is the built-in Twitter link shortener.

Share of Voice

Get in touch for more information

Thank you

A Social SlideShare Presentation

@bloomworldwide

+44 (0) 1273 732 626

hello@bloomworldwide.com

BLOOM Social Media for Travel

automated

social media

evaluate buy

social media

social media

social media

travel companies

social channels

Social Media

Social Media Travel Early Adapters

Social Media Solutions for Travel

Media Pack 1.7 million 2.8 million 4.5 million...Media Pack....

TGS Media LLC Travel Article

Verve In Bloom Social Media Basics

Media Kit - Budget Travel

Travel Belles 2012 Media Kit

Travel Media Placements

TRAVel Media media-kit 2016

2018 Fensterabreiber Dekotipp Tischkärtchen TRIC 2018 Vivid...

INRODUCTION I - Global Travel Media

PowerPoint Presentation€¦ · The FIJtUre of Travel Media...

Travel Photography for Social Media

BLOOM Social Media: Navigating the Social Technology...

whet travel overview - Bloom...

Luxury travel en sociale media