Perhaps the most frequent yet the most noticeable lapse we have heard is attitude that offline approach has not anything to do with web marketing initiatives.
Perhaps the most crucial approach when developing social marketing and advertising plan in travel and tourism industry is quality not quantity. The main focus should be reaching key influencers and establish a open social network, because social media is about generating a dialogue, not feeding the audience. These essentials are often lost while organizations execute a social media operation because they get excessively excited by what seems like an easy & mindless technique to achieve a enormous audience. This is counter-productive and completely misses the point of creating a credible and viral approach to set of contacts.
You need Social marketing communications in conjunction with all your Web occurrence. The Social Media is a modern marketplace, with a novel approach, but it overlaps with the traditional. Rather notably it supports your internet marketing communications, enhancing your Website positioning and internet exposure in a dramatic way.
Every one Social system and channel has its own following and focus. You can do a lot of it yourself - However as a Hotel Executive or tourism operator - do not turn into this a full time job.
There are numerous kinds of social media that often overlap. It is significant firstly clear categorize social media in order to pick up the correct set of social media that suit to our travel and tourism industry strategic targets. Please hold in mind that you do not have to handle all social media websites to go well in tourism industry. Every website is somewhat diverse, that means a distinctive strategy may be vital.
Let us first of all to sort out websites that could be used in your social media approach:
Directories / portals for online marketing communications in tourism
These are services that collect lists & high level information concerning other web sites or organizations, even merely their connection information if they do not have a internet site. These are the on-line equivalent of the phone book or else "yellow pages."
All organizations should be listed there.
Samples: Google, Yahoo, DMOZ
Blogging for Tourism Industry Marketing.
Attached or built-in into your own web site, a weblog is a way to deliver articles (labeled as "posts") on a usual basis. Blogs are well capable for news and announcements as well as frequent updates connected to your specific offering, niche, or yet place. A destination can use a blog to boost their visibility on search engines like Google or Yahoo, as well as to foster engagement with their audience as well as to set up weight on a issue.
Microblogging for Social Media Marketing.
The ruler of the microblogging world is Twitter however further similar sites continue living. Lots of liken the service to an open, shared chat network. Twitter has a limit of 140 characters per memo, but lovers on these services in addition operate hyper links to imagery, blog posts, as well as supplementary information of activity
Sample: Twitter
Platforms for content sharing for online travel and tourism marketing and advertising
These web sites usually concentrate in a special kind of media and are a way to add and share out content. For example, you could let a video uploaded on YouTube to be used by any web page, just like you could make available your photos to be re-used on other web sites from Flickr.
Samples: YouTube, Flickr, Scribd
Social Bookmarking for Marketing in Tourism Industry
Social bookmarking web sites allow you to store your favorite website pages or internet bookmarks conveniently in one location and distribute them with other folks. For each you could provide comments and/or recommendations. The more your web site is bookmarked by other, the more advantageous content it has.
Samples: Stumbleupon, Digg, Propeller, Delicious
Social Networking in tourism industry
Social networking web-sites offer the most diverse set of functionality, and in numerous of these web-sites you see flavors of the other types of social media, such as picture sharing or discussion forums. Websites could orientate themselves to certain groups; for example, Facebook has a quite personal, informal audience, whereas LinkedIn is where you desire acquire the specialized communities.
Samples: Facebook, Linkedin