Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) and Convention Visitor Bureaus (CVBs) are embracing “social media” (notably Facebook fan pages and Twitter accounts ) at a noticeably faster pace than their adoption of the internet in the 1990s. That’s the good news.
The bad news – for those that haven’t entered the brave new world of microblogging – is that “time waits for no one”. The twitter, social media tide continues to flow fast. Twitter’s new home page, announced yesterday and illustrated below, is designed to make Twitter less confusing to newbies. More importantly, it contains a search engine that can be accessed by any browser (having a twitter account is no longer a pre-requisite of search).
As ably addressed by Colin Schaal in his blog post today, this “changes everything” yet again. If search is the primary source of traffic to travel sites and browsers can now get real time information and offers directly from the source, we can expect Google’s domination of search to feel some pressure and the stakes to be raised for DMOs
As I write this, the Destination Marketing Association International (#DMAI) is having its annual conference in Atlanta and a handful of delegates are tweeting – there’d be more than a handful but the poor wifi reception is apparently hindering some efforts?!? Twittering is bound to be a subject of conversation...
- Nathan Kam (@nathankam) has kindly assembled and updated a list of over 350 DMOs and CVBs that operate Twitter accounts – his current list here appears to cover mostly North American destinations..
- GoSeeTell here has compiled a list and applied a ranking that's published in their June blog
- DCI, a place consulting firm, has recently published a report, The Twitter Elite. Congratulations Baltimore, Greater Fort Lauderdale. New Orleans, San Francisco, and Tampa Bay.
Unfortunately, there’s no easy way of tracking, comparing and evaluating the success of these efforts or, indeed, of ensuring that the lists are complete. So we must express our gratitude to these tracking pioneers and their willingness to share.
Destinations like Denver (@iknowdenver) that have invested significantly in a twitter strategy are not included in Nathan’s list; Greater Philidelphia (@uwishnu) was excluded even though this DMO has pioneered social media in the USA; and Travel Portland (@indpx), while listed in Nathan Kam’s inventory, does not rank in the top 5 of DCI’s elite despite pioneering the innovative Twisitor Centre that both GoSeeTell and Travel Portland developed.
But it’s early days, the pace of change is breathtakingly fast, and twitter account names are sometimes ambiguous. Have you secured yours?
It’s an English summer, pouring with rain and cold (!), so I thought I’d add a little research of my own. I took a quick look at four national destinations – all of whom have positive marketing reputations to maintain. They just happen to be Britain and three of “her” former colonies!
VisitBritain is active on Twitter having safeguarded the brand name (@visitbritain) and has attracted 3,866 followers. The national DMO has emulated an earlier New Zealand initiative and encouraged browsers to follow an individual travelling around the "Edge of Britain". But their twitter page laments - twice in one day, no less, that no one is following "Scott".
It took a while to find out who Scott was (@scottyramsay) - his twitter address is buried deep within the Visit Britain site as part of a campaign called the Edge of Britain. Please follow him asap - the weather's lousy and he must wish he were in New Zealand, Australia or even Western Canada where the temperatures are soaring.
Australia has lead the way with Facebook – its fan page attracts some 246,000 fans and its Twitter account (@seeaustralia) has posted over 398 tweets that have attracted 3,436 followers. Impressive considering that the main Australia site does not announce either its Twitter or Facebook presence on its customer facing site.
New Zealand appears to be playing catch up as far as Facebook is concerned with the 100%PureNew Zealand Facebook presence attracting only 4000 fans but their Twitter account is older, richer in content (632 tweets) and its name has greater brand integrity (@purenewzealand), attracting over 5000 followers. The Kiwis also seem reluctant to promote the twitter account on their home page.
Canada is lagging slightly compared to its southern competitors with no Facebook presence. The national marketing organization does have a Tweet account but its name, @ctccct, is unlikely to grab popular attention. Despite the official and mysterious name, some 1623 followers have signed on. What is also surprising given the hold that policy has on decision-making is the fact that a French only version wasn't deemed mandatory (significant if you work for the federal government, that is). There’s no reference to any interactive social media on the CTC home page but there is a direct link from the separate media centre site to the twitter account which appears to be both a responsibility and initiative of the media centre.
So given the rapid rise in the number of Twitter accounts - as well as the number of dormant accounts (some 20% have no tweets at all), we can also expect growing confusion in the marketplace as to which Twitter accounts and Facebook fan pages are being run by “official” DMOs – or does this matter? If, on the other hand, if place brand integrity and quality assurance are important, then DMO’s will need not just to be tracking mentions and tweets but keeping an eye on responses too. All point to more labour intensive work at a time when most DMO and CVB budgets are under real financial pressure.
It's an exciting time in tourism marketing history to be involved and I defy anyone to predict with certainty how this explosion in twitter chatter will evolve. But like any good party, best not to be a wallflower...isn't it time to dance with the customer or, in my case, go "singing in the rain"?!
In subsequent posts I hope we can start a rigorous discussion about the more complex and strategic issues associated with the implications of social media. In the meantime, I'd welcome your comments.
If you have, as I hope you you do, detailed, practical questions of practitioners, as to what works, what doesn't or why when it comes to implementation, then I suggest you contact the bloggers in my blogroll or the authors of the sites listed in this post. If you want help convincing your boss or Board that this is an area you can't ignore or starve of resources, then I'd be pleased to help!
