Jerm's Lessons Learned for the Week of 06.01.09

This week is more of an observation than an actual lesson learned, but an experience nonetheless and that is what this series of blog posts is about.

I was at a work conference this week and many of the sessions that I was in on were regarding "Social Media" and its effective use in our industry (Tourism & Destination Marketing). Allot of the participants were unsure as to how to go about having a presence on these sites, in particular Twitter and Facebook. Now I am by no means an industry expert, and the remainder of what you will read in this post are my opinions purely based off of the success that Tampa Bay & Company have seen in our use of the two sites. Consider that your disclaimer i guess.

For the most part I oversee the content on our social media outlets, but our PR department contributes a great deal as well. I had started with Facebook, as I was more familiar with the tools and interface and it just seemed like the easiest thing to do. With regards to Twitter, I was like allot of other people out there in that I was just trying to figure out why the hell to even bother. Then a good friend started harping at me about how I needed to get onto Twitter and as much as I tried to ignore him, he kept at it. Then one day I was like, you know what...what the hell lets give it a shot and see where it takes us. So there you have it people, we owe it all to the Great Paul Brand for waking me up!

With regards to both Facebook and Twitter, there is one central theme that goes along with what you will always hear me say...Content is King. I started both our Facebook and Twitter accounts for the first time around November, and just because I was more familiar with it, made more updates on the Facebook end than I did Twitter, and then eventually tailed off of both as I wasn't sure that it was worth my time to contribute to either of them. As a result, we had very few followers in the beginning, which means very little interaction with the audiences on both sites. For us, the answer was to just start doing more with it and contributing content on a daily basis...yes I did say daily, and in some cases every few hours or so. Once we started doing that in early March, when we only had 160 or so followers, we started to see the number of followers plus interactions and questions increase, and as a result we have well over 1100 followers. Not as much as many CVB's out there, but progress nonetheless.

Rather than give more long detailed. boring paragraphs on my tips to succeed on these sites, here are my key ones. Again, please remember that I am no expert, just someone who tried a few things and saw some good results. Here goes:

• Content - You knew this one was coming. Why have the account if you are not going to have any content on it. Remember that these social media sites are search engine friendly and are being found in searches across the Internet. So if you have one, then post content often. If you have a blog, or issue any sort of content that has an RSS feed, then you can have those feeds automatically publish to your Twitter or Facebook accounts using sites like Twitterfeed, and Hootsuite, to name a few.
  

• Who's Publishes the Content - This one was discussed allot. Our case is rare in that we have a PR department that contributes, as well as myself who is a complete dork about these things and spends all his time doing them. My best advice is to find someone that is passionate about it and sees the value. Don't just assume you can bring in a bunch of interns and that will solve the problem. Yes, college students may be more in tune with this audience, but there maybe someone in your organization just as capable of doing a better job on a more consistence basis, because unless you hire the inter, they won't always be there to contribute.
  

• Control - This one can be tricky. For the most part, I oversee the actual content along with the PR team to make sure that we contribute a message that is consistent with our corporate message. That doesn't mean that we just simply regurgitate a corporate message though. We make the interaction very personal and make the effort to make it conversational in tone. We also don't send every message through a channel for approval as that would take forever and be counterproductive. Even when we have interns or other staff posting, we have faith in them to always post good content, and nothing controversial. If you ever find yourself in a position where you are unsure if they are doing that, then maybe you need to refine the process of choosing who in your organization is charged with this responsibility.
• Why? - Here is a question asked often, and while there are many points to make, I will only make a few. First off, the reach for these sites is enormous. They have audiences worldwide, so its a tremendous opportunity to get your message out the to a mass audience of people. For brands, just because you are not on there talking about you, doesn't mean that someone else isn't. You don't want to have to learn a hard lesson like the people over at Domino's Pizza did. Another big misconception is that Twitter and Facebook are jest places to tell people when you went to the bathroom and and how long you were in there. If you think like that, then you are already a step behind. As I said earlier, these sites, in addition to others are amazing communication tools, not to mention the fact that they are free to use!

Well that is it for now, but if you are an organization or individual and are looking for tips to get your social media sites up and running, these are just my opinions on how to do so. I only mentioned Twitter and Facebook, but its a pretty consistent theme across all of them.