What if you could remove the time lapse of email and answer questions for website visitors immediately, while they’re interested? What if you could provide directions for a time-saving shortcut, recommend the perfect waffle house for a family on a budget or suggest the best hotel package in seconds rather than hours or days. What if your CVB or DMO embraced the role of real time Regional Concierge?

“I can do that on Facebook and Twitter already,” you say? True, if you’re monitoring the way you should be, but what if people learned to come to your website, to the sand you own, for those answers?

Moving your CVB or DMO toward becoming more social means just that: making it easy for travelers to talk with you at their point of need. That playing field shouldn’t be confined to 3rd-party-owned platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Everlater or TripAdvisor.

It’s time to socialize your website with live chat. You can set chat hours in line with office hours so you’re in control of when conversations happen and many live chat tools have mobile apps that let you take the conversation with you. If you have people who work remotely, several tools allow for multi-user sign in. This is a no brainer.

In a world full of silent websites, it’s entirely possible to gain an edge on your destination competition, here. Using your voice to chat with website visitors directly, in real time, establishes a relationship that can build trust, and people buy most often from people they know and trust. You could become those people.

If you’re ready to put your social where you sand is, check SocialCompare for a comprehensive comparison of eleven live chat tools that will help you choose the right one for your organization. Let me know how it goes.

The post Put Your Social Where Your Sand Is appeared first on Lisa D. Jenkins Communications for Destinations.

While individual users are vocalizing frustration over the loss of Page posts in their personal Newsfeeds, brands and businesses are posting “Anti Promoted Posts” messages that walk their Fans through the steps of adding the Page to their Interests list. Stop Trying to Game Facebook’s Edgerank by Ken Mueller at Inkling Media is a great post on this. Ken is right on – I’m a  huge proponent of organic strategies.

When Facebook launched Promoted Posts and adjusted their algorithm, they were ready to deal with the outcry of “unfair” from brands and businesses who have used Facebook as a free promotion channel for years. I’m not certain they anticipated the backlash from individual users who viewed the Facebook-side editing of their individual Newsfeed content as heavy handed in the extreme. Facebook can afford to lose the businesses and brands who use the platform for free but they can’t afford to lose the individual users that advertisers pay to reach.

Pages Managers are frustrated and users are frustrated. And that’s where the new feed comes in.

Half way through the day, I noticed something in the PAGES section of my Profile. Just above the Like Pages link, there was a brand new Pages Feed link and when I clicked on it, there were status updates from every Page I’ve Liked. Every. One.

This new Pages Feed feature holds “Recent updates from Pages you’re connected to”. As an individual user, I’m happy with it. I can see, in one place, what my favorite coffee place is baking for breakfast and who’s playing live at my favorite pub this weekend. For individual users, this seems to be a huge win; Newsfeeds will be populated with Posts from Friends and a few Promoted Posts from brands or businesses while the Posts from the rest of their favorite businesses and brands will be easily accessible by dipping into the Pages Feed.

I checked with a number of colleagues, throughout the United States and Canada (you know who you are, thank you for your time) and I am the only one seeing the Pages Feed feature at the moment.

If launched, the new feed will present its own learning curve for Page Managers. Brands or businesses with no budget for spend on Promoted Posts will have visibility but will also have to deal with their Posts being side by side with other business Posts. While users viewing the Pages Feed will be in a receptive state of mind for conversion, the value of good content and strong strategy can’t help but be underscored here  – they’ll need to stand out from the crowd.

Have you seen it? Do you like the idea?

UPDATE: All Facebook has found a related feature that isn’t yet available to all Pages. By opting in to the “Get Notifications” feature, users will “receive notifications whenever a page posts something, users can then see every post — answering a major problem for users and pages alike. Fans will receive a desktop notification on the top left corner of the screen, as well as a mobile notification that the page has something new to see”. Read more about this feature on All Facebook.

The post What Facebook’s New Pages Feed Could Mean For Businesses and Brands appeared first on Lisa D. Jenkins Communications for Destinations.

Still, reviews, much like any other source we use to inform buying decisions these days, are being manipulated. Reports of vendors paying for reviews, creating false profiles to publish fictitious reviews, even hiring reviewers to slander competitors continue to rise. Although consumer interest in reviews continues to be a part of the decision making process for many, confidence in the veracity of reviews has begun to wane. In a report released last month, Gartner predicts that by 2014, 10-15% of Social Media Reviews will be fake or paid for by companies.

Every business wants a good reputation. It’s natural to want to increase the instances of flattering mentions. The gut reaction of many business owners is to try and bury or delete an unflattering review. There’s a better way.

The Grasberg mine in Papua, Indonesia, is primarily a copper mine and over its lifetime the mine has produced 610,800 tons of copper. A byproduct of the copper mining has been 58,474,392 grams gold. Today’s copper is priced at $3.72/lb and gold is priced at $1721.57/oz. Do the math and it’s easy to see that the byproduct (gold) is more valuable. Poor reviews can be your gold.

As a consumer, I most appreciate review sites that allow me to filter results from people that I know and trust. If I’m considering a vendor that is unknown to people I trust, good reviews play a part in my decision making process but I am more interested in the response poor reviews receive from the vendor. I find I can trust these interactions as a barometer more than I can trust a five-star review from a one-time customer who may or may not have been compensated. If a poor review is acknowledged by the vendor and a meaningful change in the way the vendor approaches the issue that caused the sub-par experience is communicated on the review space, I am much more likely to visit that establishment over an establishment with several five-star reviews from people I don’t know.

What’s the take away for business owners struggling to navigate consumer reviews? There are a number of places your business might be receiving notice. Travel, tourism, hospitality and recreation business owners should regularly check in with UrbanSpoon, TripAdvisor, Yelp, Facebook, blogs, Twitter, Google+ and other platforms to see what’s being said about your service. Enjoy the great reviews if you’ve earned them – but embrace the bad reviews, they hold all the golden opportunity in the world.

~image property of Geotripper from DeviantArt

The post Customer Reviews: Mining The Good In The Bad appeared first on Lisa D. Jenkins Communications for Destinations.

Social Strategy & Execution Case Study
Client: North Central Idaho Travel Association
Duration: October 2011 – September 2012

Challenge

• To provide sustained online visibility and increased reach for events, activities and destinations of North Central Idaho to prospective visitors located within a six-hour drive market defined geographically as ID, WA, OR & MT.

Complications

• A limited marketing budget.
• Community Management needs to be outsourced.
• Idaho’s Region II comprises a number of rural and remote destination sites, largely within recognized wilderness areas; many NCITA member-vendors have a limited or non-existent connection to web-based resources.
• NCITA member-vendors publish online supply fragmented event, activity and destination listings that are incomplete and do not include basics such as time, cost and location.
• No measurable goals or over-riding strategy has been identified or implemented.

Solution

• Strategy was established that clarified specific, measurable goals.
• NCITA Calendar of Events Listings were standardized with complete information and ShareThis widgets to promote extended reach.
• A system of alerts was used to identify events and activities within North Central Idaho as they were published online; followup with principal member-vendors collected complete information for use in standardized NCITA Calendar of Events listings.
• Social search was used to identify prospective visitors located in the six-hour drive market and proactively engage them.
• Delivery of content and posts were shifted to drive primary traffic to the NCITA website with focus on links to individual Calendar of Events listings which drove secondary traffic to the member-vendors.

Results

• Overall website visits increased by 29.5%; visits made from within the six-hour drive market increased by 40.8%.
• Calendar of Events views increased by 216%; entrances via Calendar of Events increased by 343%.
• Facebook audience increased by 47% with a corresponding 398% increase in click-throughs to the NCITA website; audience within the six-hour drive market increased by 117.2%.
• Twitter audience increased by 51% with a corresponding 689% increase in click-throughs to the NCITA website.

~Image property of Camereon, found on DeviantArt

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The post Social Strategy and Execution Case Study appeared first on Lisa D. Jenkins Communications for Destinations.

Facebook is asking, “Is this your friend’s real name?”  Here’s more on Facebook’s Name Policy.

Some are concerned that this is an attempt to identify individuals who are using nicknames instead of legal names on the platform. While that may be true, I also see it as a prompt that will allow individual users to anonymously report Profiles that are run by businesses. Once a Profile is revealed or designated as fake (meaning it’s not the Profile of a human being), it runs the risk of being closed and removed from Facebook’s servers. That’s all your work and connections … gone with the push of a button.

“Who might do such thing”, you ask? Perhaps people who are tired of being spammed with too many Event Invitations and Private Messages; Pages don’t have this capability for invasive activity. Possibly your competition who is playing by Facebook’s rules and is tired of your flagrant disregard for the Terms of Service; a leveling of the playing field. Maybe a very upset customer; revenge served cold.

Regardless of who reports you, if you have a business engaging on Facebook through a Profile instead of a Page, it’s high time you started doing things properly. Before you wake up on a random Tuesday and find your entire Facebook presence gone.

Ready to move from making Friends to seeing who Likes you? Download a copy of your Facebook data and roll your Facebook Profile over to a Page here. If you need help, I can provide it.

The post The End of Friend-ly Business on Facebook? appeared first on Lisa D. Jenkins Communications for Destinations.

68% of Twitter users are immediately irritated when a link from Twitter leads them to Facebook.  

That’s almost 7 out of every 10 of your Twitter followers. With 107.7 million users on Twitter in North America, that could be 73.2 million people you irritate.

I’m not talking about the “Come Like my Page on Facebook” tweets, I’m talking about tweets with links to Wall posts, images and video.  It happens most often with businesses who try to use a Facebook Page as their website. When they realize they can sync a business Facebook Page with a Twitter account, it seems like a shortcut to the best of two worlds. Post a link once and hit two audiences – doubling reach without added effort.

Here’s an Ugly Truth Alert. You aren’t doubling your reach. With every link to Facebook content, you’re poking 2/3 of your Twitter followers in the eye and conditioning them to bypass your tweets and links without giving either a second look, let alone a clickthrough.  And that golden “retweet” that shares your tweet with their followers?  Forget about it.

56% of people on Twitter won’t retweet (RT) when a Facebook link is included.

Why? It could be that of the 107.7 million Twitter users in North America, 59.2 million of them access Twitter from a mobile device and, usually, a 3rd party app.  When a link pulls me out of my app (I use Hootsuite and Echofon) and launches Facebook, I’m not happy about it.

It could be that your Twitter followers (gasp!) aren’t on Facebook. Mindboggling, I know, but of the 528.7 million people who live in North America, only 150 million are Facebook users so, it’s entirely possible.  I know people on Twitter who aren’t on Facebook – I bet you do, too.

What can you do?

• Get a website. Post links to your website. It’s 2012 and if you aren’t online, you make it hard for people to find you.  When was the last time you used the phone book?  How about Google?  You get where I’m going.  If you can’t afford a full blown site from a professional designer, platforms like WordPress (with no-cost to low-cost options) make building your own site incredibly easy. It’s time to stop building on Facebook’s sand and stake a claim on some ground of your own.
• Disconnect your Facebook and Twitter accounts from each other. Facebook and Twitter can both be valuable tools in your marketing mix, but that doesn’t mean you should mix the two.  Twitter is about a quick, concise exchange of information and Facebook is about a lingering browse through the day’s stories. The audiences are different and your interaction and content has to acknowledge that.

If you have other suggestions or a difference of opinion, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below – thanks for dropping by!

Data sources

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Semiocast
• Wikipedia
• Survey

The post Survey Shows Facebook Links In Tweets Don’t Get The Love appeared first on Lisa D. Jenkins Communications for Destinations.

Let’s agree that those of you in the Travel and Tourism trade post events online to promote interest in the event with the ultimate goal of attracting visitors to your town or region.

Agreed?  Okay then, for the love of every prospective visitor who comes to your website, clicks on your Facebook Events or reads your blog – stop shooting yourself in the foot by publishing incomplete or unconfirmed event information.

Giving people what they need to visit you isn’t rocket science, but I’ve discovered it’s not-so-common common sense.  Here’s a bare bones list to get you started.

1. EVENT TITLE
   Your event has a name; use it everywhere you talk, publish or print about it. Names make things easier to find … on Google, on Facebook, on your city streets and in your town’s coffee shops.  Introduce your event by name, it’s just good manners and stops me from getting it confused with similar events.
2. DESCRIPTION
   Don’t make me guess what’s going on by telling me your event is a community festival.  Tell me about your three-day event that features a 5K Run, a Dutch Oven Cook-off, a 3 on 3 Basketball Tournament, a parade, a giant $1 a plate BBQ, a beer garden with local microbrews and live bands every night for street dancing.  See the difference?
3. TIME AND DATE
   Sometime in June is not helpful here. I can’t make plans to be there if I don’t know when your shindig kicks off. If you don’t have a date or time set, tell me when I can check back for confirmed time and date information. All I’m asking for is a fighting chance to get there on time and have a little fun … isn’t that the whole idea?
4. LOCATION
   The name of your town is not an acceptable answer. Towns – even small ones – are big to new visitors.  Where in your town is the event?  At City Park? At a building with a physical address?  I shouldn’t have to hunt for your event once I hit town.  If you want me to get there, give me a fighting chance with an address I can use to get directions.  Better yet – give me a link to a Google Map with the location marked!
5. COST
   Money is serious business. It’s often one of the main reasons for hosting an event. If you want me to spend money at your event and in your town, I need to know how much I should bring with me. Let me know what admission to your event will be. Go the extra mile and let me know which forms of payment you accept.

BONUS POINTS
If you include a website, contact information, registration forms or images, I’m that much closer to paying you a visit and contributing to your local economy.

An event listing is an invitation to visit. Make people feel welcome, included, informed and expected and they will come … I promise!

~image property of !bourrinlepoulpe

The post 5 Things Your Event Listing Must Have OR Stop With The Guessing Games Already appeared first on Lisa D. Jenkins Communications for Destinations.

It all starts very innocently. Joe or JoAnne (I’m an equal opportunity offender) down the hall wants to bring The Business into the 21st century by putting it online.

First stop, Facebook. Why? “Well, because EVERYONE is on Facebook! We have to be there, too.”

Excellent. By the way, EVERYONE just called and they want to know when you’re meeting them to shave your head and jump off the bridge. I digress.

With no discussion of the stuff that matters – regulation, strategy, or execution –  someone is named Supreme Ruler of Our Online Marketing Universe, a title endowed with absolute authority to claim or create profiles and publish across the internet on behalf of The Business.

The Supreme Ruler owns the access information, creates the content, represents The Business, carries the conversation. The Business is suddenly popping up in online directories, consumer review sites, and social networks.

Communities are built and there’s a big group of people following everything. It’s all sunshine and lollipops. Until that employee is dismissed or resigns and is, subsequently, disgruntled … and a rogue is born.

“It’s like the worst Groundhog Day scenario ever.” That’s how a new client initially described waking up every morning to see his Facebook page hijacked and pointing his audience to a new, local competitor every day. There’s a button to Press In Dire Situations just like this. Go ahead, I’ll wait …

Okay, moving on …

I spent weeks searching out profiles across the Internet trying to establish ownership and control so correct and accurate information could be repopulated. I was successful with every listing excepting the Facebook presence, which was set up as a page under the profile of the ex-employee, using the business name in the custom URL.

I know – don’t get me started on how adhering to the Terms of Service could have saved a lot of bother. I was able to have the relevant business contact information removed and have the offending page changed to a profile but, ultimately, my client had to kiss that community goodbye and start again. It was a hard lesson but one they learned well.

Three Ways To Help Your Business Avoid Rogue Behaviors

• Have a clear online marketing policy and guidelines in place that are signed by all your employees.
• Create a dedicated email address, shared by the owner, and the Supreme Ruler of Our Online Marketing Universe, which is used to administer all online profiles.
• Develop a log of all existing online profiles, including access credentials. Keep it updated; an audit report must be produced upon request.  Make it clear that if the report provides outdated information, loss of employment is a possibility.

It’s easy to say “hire smarter” but sometimes things (and unethical people) happen. It’s not pretty and, although the public may be understanding, reputations suffer and valuable ground is lost.

What is the worst rogue attack you’ve ever seen? What other safeguards do you recommend to protect businesses from the threat of angry ex-employees pirating online profiles?  Who else gets a migraine every time they see a business using a Profile instead of a Page on Facebook?  These and other questions await your response in the Comments below.

The gentlelady from the Pacific Northwest yields the floor.

The post How To Protect Your Business From Employees Going Rogue Online appeared first on Lisa D. Jenkins Communications for Destinations.

If you think the surge in smartphone adoption among U.S. consumers removes the need for a mobile-friendly version of your website, please reconsider.  Especially if your current site uses Flash, is image heavy, or if you sell online.

According to an April 2011 report by ComScore, there were 234 million mobile consumers in the U.S. at the end of February 2011.  Of those consumers, only 69.5 million (just under 30%) were using smartphone devices.

While that number is below the projected adoption rate of 40% forecast in a March 2010 NeilsenWire report, it is plausible that the market will see a 50/50 split between feature and smartphone users by the end of 2011.

Age demographics and international traffic aside, by not integrating a mobile-friendly version of your website today, you’re making it very difficult for 164.5 million potential customers with feature phones to see you.  True, by the end of 2011, that number will have shrunk – but only to 117 million potential customers.

If you’d rather engage these millions of potential customers than ignore them, Mashable has a great list of resources to get you started.

The post Smartphones Don’t Make Mobile Sites Obsolete appeared first on Lisa D. Jenkins Communications for Destinations.

Now, if you see me out today, you’ll notice that I’m barefoot and some of you will ask me why.

I will educate you on Podoconiosis – a soil-transmitted disease caused by walking in silica-rich soil – and how easily the painful and debilitating disease can be combatted with the simplest of measures.  Shoes.

I will explain about the massive numbers of children who must walk, barefoot, through silica-rich soil every day because there is a luxury they cannot afford.  Shoes.

I will share that I’m a huge fan of Toms Shoes because “for every pair purchased, Toms gives a new pair of shoes to a child in need.  One for One.”

I tell people about Toms all year long (and Warby-Parker eyeglasses).  One Day Without Shoes is a barefoot global awareness event.  Join us?

The post One Day Without Shoes: Not An Industry Related Post appeared first on Lisa D. Jenkins Communications for Destinations.