Last week, I was part of a panel discussion on how travel and tourism organizations can move beyond the typical Facebook and Twitter accounts to take their social media efforts to the next level.
Part of the annual Arizona Governor’s Conference on Tourism, I was joined on the panel by the excellent Angela Berardino from Turner Public Relations in Denver (she’s @cotravelgirl on Twitter). Excellent moderation by Kristen Jarnagin from the Arizona Hotel and Lodging Association.
Most of these concepts apply to all businesses and organizations, not just travel and tourism.
My presentation was called “5 Ways to Create Cross-Media Synergies with Social Media.” Because my friends (and clients) at Off Madison Ave are in charge of digital marketing for the Arizona Office of Tourism, this presentation was created under their banner.
Ideas and Advice about Social Media Synergies
- You can’t be everywhere. Social media is too broad. You have to do less, but do more with what you commit to – hence the need for cross-media synergies.
- activate your fans, not just collect them like baseball cards.
- The future of the Web is distributed. It’s a push world now, not a pull world. Take the best 2% of your Web site and insert it into the places where your fans and prospects are spending their time.
- The best social media programs, like the Phoenix Suns and Fiskateers, combine offline with online. Three dimensions trumps two dimensions. Always.
- Social media isn’t going to kill email. They are complementary. But, smart marketers are combining the two by using social forwarding tools to grow email distribution and segment lists.
- You should also be thinking about exploring the social graphs of the people in your database, using technology from Unbound Technology or Rapleaf.
- Should companies of all types be varying their offers based on the social connectivity of their fans? Should a customer with 300 Facebook friends get a better coupon than a customer with 100 friends? The technology to make that identification, and automatically change the offer accordingly is available today. Is it right or wrong?
