This blog is written according to the lecture “Succes Factors in Social Media Marketing – state of the art”, given by Christoph Berg and Clemens Koeltringer on the 11th of July 2010 in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. This blog will provide the reader with a summary of this interesting lecture.
Mr. Berg has done research after the involvement of people within social media. According to his research findings, one out of fourteen people is not active on social media. The ones’ active on social media are engaged by different motivations. The main motivations are the direct contact they are able to have online and the information they are able to share. They also perceive social media as a modern image. Other motivators are the interaction, the new channel, the feedback they receive, buzz creation and the traffic. Most used platforms are Facebook, Twitter, Yourtube and Flickr, these platforms are most used by destinations in order to be successful within social media marketing. The average workload destination put in this is ten hours per week. Remarkable is that almost everyone that took part within the research of Mr. Berg is satisfied with his own social media performance.
Most of the people that took park within the research follows a defined social media strategy. However, a lot of them still use it on a experimental basis. Based on this they created three external levels of SoM expertise. The first level is the experimental SoM user, who learns everything by doing. The second levol is the ones the follow a predefined social media strategy, they contract online marketing agencies to cover specific predefined target markets. The third level are the ones that use the SoM strategy in line with the overall strategy. They contact online marketing agencies as well but also implement buzz buildings campaigns.
However, now the question remains, how social media really delivers visitors and revenues for city tourist organizations and convention bureaus. First of all, they should define their success. Then they should define the indicators of the success. This will result in being able to measure and compare the success in order to know when they are actually able to become successful. According to the research. It is thought the one of the most successful factor of social media is the Like on Facebook and the Twitter followers. Even though it may sound interesting, everyone would likes to know how the success really be delivered. Most important is to listen to the customers and make use of Web Analytics such as blogs. However take into consideration that not everyone is the same. Another important aspect is to create a context with visualizations like a Facebook Fan Page. Furthermore, companies should remember they are not alone. There are many other websites that have the same goals. Therefore they should be careful that they do not miss the intent and listen to the voice of the customer by finding out the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of the visitors. Knowing the purpose of the website and what the destinations’ own business objectives are. This all will turn out into a successful beyond control on the factors of the external environment. However, it is beyond the control of the management to directly influence the recommendations the image creation and the development of the competition etc. Still, there are tools such as Benchmarking and Google Trends and European City Tourism Online Monitor. Very interesting are the Hippo Rules, which focuses on the highest paid persons’ opinion in order to implement the different scenarios for each of the three levels.
Internet is becoming part of everyone’s’ lives and the future role of SoM in relation to the internet will be more integrated by people. Therefore DMOs should develop as well by working with travel applications on smart phones and with the new technology; augmented reality which is an additional used experience which enhances the current perception of reality.
