Interesting post from Jeremiah Owyang today about his research findings that Social Media Boutiques are Winning Deals Over Traditional Digital Agencies. And although I think the line between traditional, digital and social media agencies is a lot more blurred than the post suggests, it’s an interesting read.
Jeremiah’s research concludes that especially the clients who are more advanced in social media leave traditional agencies for boutique agencies for the following reasons:
I would add to that list that ‘traditional’ agencies often lack the culture necessary to really make social media (or digital for that matter) work.
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And at Think! Social Media we can add a specialized focus on the travel, tourism and hospitality industry as well. This industry isn’t easy to figure out and you need to understand the specifics in order to deliver real value to your clients.
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Jeremiah also identifies some weaknesses boutique agencies can have:
At Think! we’re already rapidly expanding to offer full digital services with integrated social media. We’re achieving this though great partnerships (including ‘traditional’ agencies) and by acquiring new talent, here in Vancouver, but also around the world.
It’s safe to say that 2011 will be very exciting.
My passion is to bring innovative marketing to the tourism industry so that travelers are happy and operators benefit.
The world has changed. Social media, online marketing and technology continues to disrupt traditional marketing methods and success will be defined by understanding new emerging principles, creating sound strategies with a nimble execution of tactics.
We need to bring 21st century marketing to the tourism industry. From the smallest operator to the largest DMO. I love sharing what I know and also learn from others. I want to do more of it.
So after 11 great years at Tourism British Columbia I’ve decided it is time for a change. Effective November 12, I will be joining the team at Think! Social Media. Rodney and Ben have built an impressive team of brilliant people who bring smart marketing to an exciting and growing list of clients in the travel and tourism industry.
Think! has a different approach. We live the principles of social media. The result is some impressive work and strong client relationships. Clients are now asking to build out the services beyond social media. We will do this while staying true to our values.
I’m sad to leave the organization who have given me so many great opportunities and especially the incredibly talented people I work with every day, around the world. People at Tourism BC, but also at our partners. I’m going to miss them a lot. But in a networked world, we’re only one tweet or status update away.
I still get questions from tourism businesses who aren’t sure if and how they should engage in social media. The answer is that you already are part of social media.
So the question is “to ignore” or “to engage”. Answer these questions:
How is social media any different?
Today Facebook launched Facebook Questions, “a beta product that lets you pose questions like these to the Facebook community. With this new feature, you can get a broader set of answers and learn valuable information from people knowledgeable on a range of topics.”
The new feature is slowly being rolled out. It’s extremely buggy for me at the moment. Searching for questions about specific topics or keywords doesn’t work at all for example.
But the concept is becoming clear.
Facebook is making clever use of the social graph (friend networks) and user profiles. Questions asked by my friends and topics I’ve have listed as interests where listed first for me. You can also send a question to a friend. Inside Facebook as more details about the product and how the social graph is used.
What’s great for fanpage owners is that you ask and answer questions as the fanpage.
For DMO’s and travel operators, monitoring questions and answering them can be a powerful way to built relationships with potential customers. Besides it’s incredible userbase, its use of the social graph and ability for fanpages to participate makes it a great tool for engagement.
The best meal I ever had wasn’t at a fancy restaurant, made by a celebrity chef, with an award winning wine. It was at a small B&B in Chame, Nepal. Because it was freezing cold we huddled around the kitchen fire where dinner was being made.
The whole family helped out. Kids were preparing veggies, the husband was making the dough for bread and mom was in charge of everything and everybody. Friends and family came and went.
That Dal Bhat was the best meal I’ve ever had. Because it was an authentic experience.
The word authentic keeps popping up lately. Tourists increasingly want authentic experiences. In social media, you need to be authentic to be successful. To be authentic is to be real and genuine.
Simon Sinek, who writes fantastic stuff about leadership by the way, talks about imperfection and authenticity in this blog post.
That’s why so much marketing is junk. People try to make it too perfect and as a result, the message isn’t authentic anymore. It’s like most marketing comes from the same assembly line. Killed by process, approvals and egos.
Imperfection is not always a bad thing, when it creates authenticity. Keep this in mind for your business. Don’t mold it like everybody else’s (but don’t use your bathroom as a place for imperfection). Give staff some room to be themselves so they don’t sound like robots and give them the ability to think on their feet and give customers personalized attention.
And in social media, authenticity is a must. Don’t always try to craft the perfect message. Be yourself and try to have meaningful relationships with your network. Just don’t be stupid. And when you make a mistake, apologize.
I’ll finish by quoting Simon one more time.
Science fiction writer William Gibson once said “The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.” You can see what some of the future will look like with Tripadvisor’s ‘Trip Friends’.
About 7 years ago we ran some focus groups in San Francisco to learn more about the trip planning process. I remember that involving real people was a very important part of the process. I concluded that people prefer to talk to people in this order:
Tripadvisor is serving up information from group #4 very well; with it’s reviews and message boards. With their ‘destination experts’ on their message boards they also started using group #3.
Now Tripadvisor has also figured out a way to include groups #1 and #2, the most credible sources of information to a trip planner.
A few years ago, Tripadvisor bought the Facebook app “Where I’ve been” for a reported $3M. At the time it was a gimmicky app where you could plot pins on a map for places you’ve visited anywhere in the world. The app was successful because it taps into one key motivator for travel; making my friends and family jealous of the places I’ve been. Tripadvisor also bought it’s 2.3M users. Tripadvisor rebranded it “Cities I’ve visited” and incorporated it into it’s website and has done a decent job of improving it.
Users can add cities they’ve visited, where they want to go, their favourite cities and what cities they can give advise for. The app has an active userbase of 4.8M when I checked today. And I’m sure there are many more users on the Tripadvisor website. As a result, Tripadvisor has an incredible amount of intelligence about their member’s travel history and desires.
Tripadvisor has mashed up with own intelligence with Facebook’s through Facebook Connect and the Open Graph. When you log into Tripadvisor with Facebook connect, and you visit a city page, you’ll now see a list of your friends who:
Tripadvisor allows you to use Facebooks social networking tools to send a message to one or more of your friends to ask for advise about your upcoming trip based on this information.
Even though it’s a small step, it’s very useful and also a significant indicator of future possibilities for combining your own consumer data (like Tripadvisors data about where people have been) with Facebook’s social graph and social networking power.
“The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.”
Note: I intended to write this post much sooner. But the future is also unevenly distributed by individual and my attempts to login to Tripadvisor with Facebook connect has resulted in error messages for a month now. I’ve reported the error at least a dozen times but I had to resort to using my wife’s Facebook credentials to have a look at this feature.
A few weeks ago I spoke about our online marketing activities during the 2010 Olympics in Seattle. I stayed in the Sheraton; great hotel. They left a really nice note in my room, including this card to encourage me to share my experience on Tripadvisor. Simple and effective.
In the age of social media; passion wins. Because passion and caring about your customer cannot be faked anymore.
People who are passionate about their customers will deliver better products and experiences. Better products and experiences generates positive word-of-mouth. And in the age of social networks, word-of-mouth is the new branding.
People who are passionate about their profession have the opportunity to create a network of fans in social media. And in the age of social networks, your network of fans is the new resume.
What do travellers talk about after they’ve experienced your tourism business or destination?
In Vancouver, we have many hot-dog vendors. They’re all the same. Some have more condiments than others. That’s pretty much the only difference.
Then this new hot-dog vendor called Japadog popped up. Right in front of our office. Every day, when I leave for lunch, there’s a line-up. The vendor across the street has nobody waiting.
Why? What’s the difference?
Japadog does hot-dogs different. Their menu includes hot-dogs with seaweed, soy, edamame, bonito flakes, fried cabbage and other Japanese goodness.
Everybody’s talking about Japadog. People take pictures and post them on Flickr and Facebook. People talk about it on Twitter. Brag about it on blogs.
What will people talk about when they’ve experienced your business of destination? When an experience is mediocre, there’s nothing to talk about. But with a little creativity, you can give people a reason to talk, tweet and post, giving others a reason to visit.
I was watching a keynote from Gary Vaynerchuk the other day and in his special style he basically said that people shouldn’t jump to fast to conversion in social media but work on building relationships first and business will follow.
My conclusion:
Building trust is about integrity, telling the truth, being transparent, helpful, reliable, unselfish and fair. Whether you’re a big brand or a small operator, if you and your staff behave in the ways above, you’ll be one step closer to social media happiness.