DESTINATIONS

 Social Network and Web 2.0 Marketing for DESTINATIONS Marketing to the GLBT Community 8205 Santa Monica Blvd. #1‐167 West Hollywood, CA 90046 www.PinkBananaMedia.com PHONE ‐ (323) 908 3653 FAX ‐ (253) 295‐0517 [email protected] Destination Marketing
Gay Business Report - Oct/Nov 2009
Spotlight on Destination Marketing
Ut ilizing Facebook, Twit t er, Blogs, Phot os and Video t o Market a Dest inat ion t o
bot h Gay & Lesbian Travelers and Locals as well
Traditionally, destination marketing
has been divided into two distinct
market groups - travelers coming INTO
a destination and locals (or natives)
already LIVING IN a destination. With
the continued shift of online marketing to social media and Web 2.0, the
distinction between these two groups
is becoming blurred.
updates, blog postings, related article postings and more, all designed
to keep the destination active in the
Facebook “Wall” and thus the live
feed viewed often by your target
audience using Facebook.
How well your postings are doing, as
well as how interactive they are, can
all be measured and viewed by
Facebook as well (see screen shot on
accompanying page). It’s a recent
feature Facebook has launched
called Insights, and it provides a
detailed report on both the performance of your fan page as well as
some detailed demographic information on its members.
Traditionally, when targeting a consumer using banner ads or direct email, a destination worked with specific media either targeting the inbound
gay traveler or the person living in
that city or region. The two media
were very different, and yet crossover
existed even then in the form of local
event listings, restaurant specials and
bar & club updates, all of interest to
both locals and travelers alike.
Running a Facebook
Ad for your fan page is
incredibly easy to do
as well. The business
model for a Facebook
ad is very similar to a
Google text ad, in that
you control who sees
the ad and how much you’re willing
to pay per click. Most companies
can get away with a starting monthly
budget of approximately $150 ($5
per day) and a cost per click to start
with of $0.50. You’ll receive full
reporting details on this ad so that
you can customize and fine-tune the
ad based on how well it’s actually
doing for you. The ad can be targeted to specific age groups and
regions, as well as key words a user
may have in their profile, in this case,
“travel”.
Today, when promoting a destination
on Facebook, a blog, Twitter, Flickr
and YouTube, that crossover works to
a destination marketer's advantage,
as a more single and unified message
can be delivered that appeals to both
markets. This advantage makes it
even easier to work with a wider variety of local and travel media from
which to share content with and partner with for an even more comprehensive and stronger destination marketing campaign targeting the GLBT
community.
The formula commonly in use today
incorporates a Facebook fan page, a
blog, a Twitter account, a Flickr
account, and occassionally a YouTube
channel... all dedicated exclusively to
featuring the best of a local destination.
The case for doing a blog is easiest
to justify for a destination. The key
to a good blog is having something
meaningful to say... what we define
as the “story to tell.” For a destination, the variety of topics one can
blog about range from hotel, bar and
restaurant reviews, key event highlights, local attractions and their current updates... again, a wide variety
of topics that can be focused on any
one of a variety of key, niche markets, GLBT included.
Beginning with the Facebook fan
page, the four example screen shots
displayed here show in detail how a
destination can develop a presence in
social media that both allows that
destination to put its best foot forward when communicating TO its target audience, and allow that destination to begin speaking WITH its target
audience in the form of status
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Gay Business Report - Oct/Nov 2009
Destination Marketing
the newer search programs that are focusing on “trends”, including Google Trends,
TweetMeme.com and OneRiot.com.
The beauty of a blog, when using software
provided by Google, Wordpress or other free
blogging software , is that it outputs an RSS
feed (Real Simple Syndication). This feed,
plus the fact that a blog is very searchengine friendly, makes your content very
viral online. Whenever a user clicks
through to read one of your myriad of blog
postings, they will have direct links to your
Facebook fan page and your website. If
photos or video are included in the blog
posting, the links to additional photos or the
video can take the user to your Flickr photo
albums or your YouTube channel as well,
where you are keeping that user both better
informed about your destination as well as
entertained.
With your blog now working automatically
for you, keeping your social networking
world updated every step of the way, there
may be some opportunities to further
enhance and expand your reach. First, having an account on Plaxo and being a part of
the GLBT Travel Group will allow you to integrate all of your social media accounts
(blog, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, etc.) and
redistribute your postings to this targeted
audience as well. The same holds true for
the GLBT Travel Forum found in LinkedIn,
but in this case your blog postings will need
to be inserted manually.
There are a wide variety of GLBT travel networks online today, and not every one is
right for you. Ning.com has a variety of
GLBT travel networks you can repost your
photos, videos and blogs onto, but again,
much of this will be done manually and
thus only when you’ve successfully mastered the more automated tasks described
above for Twitter and Facebook.
Lastly, this blog integrates smoothly into
your Facebook fan page and your Twitter
profile (to be discussed later in this article).
Under the “Notes” section of your Facebook
fan page, your blog can automatically
update your fan page, thus automating the
distribution of your content and the effort of
keeping your fan page updated.
When it comes to Twitter, we’ve written
some extensive analysis and case studies
on the business use of Twitter (see previous
Gay Business Reports from past few
months). With Twitter becoming such a
strong player when it comes to getting information about your destination out there to
the general GLBT public, the key is to both
ensure you have current Twitter updates as
well as informative Twitter updates that
have the key words you need in order for
someone searching online to find you.
The travel world has some unique social
networks including TripWolf.com and more
importantly, for reviews, TripAdvisor.com
and Yelp.com. As a destination, working
with these and other travel social networks,
for your own organiation and on behalf of
your partner hotels and restaurants, can
become an integral part of your social network marketing as well. In the GLBT world,
several online travel review sites have
emerged, with the largest being
GayCities.com. OutAdvisor.com and
PinkChoice.com are more recent contenders, with all three focusing on user
reviews of destination highlights, including
hotels, bars and restaurants that are gay or
gay-friendly.
Again, this process can be automated in
sevaral ways. One, you can synchronize
your destination’s Twitter account to your
destination’s Facebook fan page (www.facebook.com/twitter) so that you only need to
post something once, in Facebook, and
have it automatically appear in Twitter. You
can also utilize such 3rd party tools as
HootSuite.com or TwitterFeed.com to automatically “Tweet” your blog postings.
You can also use such programs as
TweetDeck.com or Seesmic.com to also do
searches of key terms related to your destination, in this case “gay Stockholm” and
then RETWEET those key conversations
going on out there that you’d like to be
associated with. This will incrementally drive more traffic to your Twitter
page and thus your website, and it will conversely encourage others to
ReTweet your postings that they may find of value. The more ReTweets
your postings receive, the higher your chances of being found in some of
Utilizing these techniques for your destination is probably the most efficient online
marketing your organization can do as we
enter 2010. This strategy keeps your destination at the forefront of the GLBT community on Facebook, Twitter and subsequently
search (Google, Bing, etc.). In fact, search
engine optimization (SEO) companies utilize
very similar techniques when helping their
clients enhance their search engine positioning. Take this strategy outline, modify to
best suit your destination’s unique needs, and adopt social network
marketing as one of your top growth areas for marketing in the next
decade. You’ll be pleasantly surprised with the results!
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Destination Marketing
Gay Business Report - Oct/Nov 2009
What Are Other Destinations Doing in Social Media
Approaches t aken by Mont real, London and Amst erdam help lead t he way in t rying new
met hods in reaching gays & lesbians online
“Everyone’s Gay in Amsterdam” campaign,
in this case teaming up with the folks at Out
Traveler to create a microsite on their page
featuring various aspects of gay life in
Amsterdam. Featuring a high-quality video
commercial of gay Amsterdam as their primary lead-in, this microsite also incorporates
a fun, interactive quiz entitled “How gay are
you in Amsterdam.”
Utilizing some of the techniques above
include some very unique work done by
Montreal, London and Amsterdam when
reaching gays & lesbians online.
Montreal has put the most weight behind
using social media in their onilne marketing
campaign, hiring five different “bloggers”
(the term blogger is used loosely here, as
they not only write, they shoot photos and
video and integrate with Twitter and
Facebook, providing that complete, 360degree social media marketing experience).
These bloggers each have their own unique
focus - Daniel Bayliss reports on GLBT life in
Montreal, Brendan on “Nightlife”, Tamy on
“Girl’s Getaways”, Daviel on “Arts & Culture”
and Katerine on “Epicurean Life.”
The video used in the Amsterdam campaign
has viral components built into it for linking
and embedding on other websites.
Montreal uses YouTube technology, which
integrates nicely everywhere. London, however, uses their own video player which
keeps the video specifically on just their
website. They do, however, post these same
videos separately in YouTube and Facebook.
The unique part about Montreal is that they
are utilizing all of the social media tools
available to them today, and have done a
custom integration directly into the Tourism
Montreal website. Thus, their blog postings,
their Twitter updates, and their photo & video
uploads are all integrated using RSS and
XML technology into their own website format. The result is a seamless integration
which allows the user to see what social
media elements their website editors find
most relevant each week.
Other tips and tricks we’ve learned from
other destinations trying new approaches to
social media marketing include a scavenger
hunt in the destination’s home town.
Participants learn of each day’s clue by
going to the Facebook fan page daily, with
the final clue appearing on a Friday. This
approach seems to work quite well and
melds online interactive with real world marketing.
Another trick involves photos... we did a
recent promotion for a client where we shot
a variety of photos of gays & lesbians in
DisneyWorld for Gay Days this year. The
trick was we gave them each a small, promotional business card that highlighted how
they could go onto the client’s Facebook fan
page to TAG themselves in the photo. About
25% of the people photographed followed up
and tagged themselves, allowing those photos to go truly viral in the world of online
social media. The photos were also included
on Flickr and thus a few broadcast using
Twitter, increasing their overall reach even
more.
London has done something a bit different,
creating a completely separate website
found at www.gaylondontravel.com and
focusing their GLBT marketing efforts into
driving traffic directly to this site. Utilizing
online video as their primary social media,
they feature a variety of video clips such as
“Shopping in Soho” and “Gay Beach with
Speedos”, all linking to a specially-embedded
video player directly on their site. In addition,
this site integrates their Gay London blog and
direct links into the VisitLondon.com website
for items such as “Gay & Lesbian Friendly
Hotels,” etc. In addition, they have tied all of
this into their Gay Visit London Facebook
page and Twitter profile, providing yet another
complete, 360-degree social media presence
online targeting the GLBT community.
These are just a few ideas being done by destinations around the globe as they try to be
both unique and stand out amongst the other
competing destinations in order to attract
more gays & lesbians to their fine cities!
Amsterdam has recently launched their
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Destination Marketing
Invite Us On Your Next Destination Fam Trip
Let us show you first - hand how t his can work for your dest inat ion
Seeing is believing, and there’s no better way to witness this style of
marketing in action than to see your own destination highlighted through
social network marketing. If your destination is conducting a group fam
trip in the coming months, or if you would like for us to come in and
experience a customized fam you’ve put together for our team, we’ll
work with you to send one of our staff out. He/she will blog, take photos
and shoot video clips, promoting your destination online using some of
the strategy and formula described above.
Specifically, we will do a series of blog postings during and within 30
days after tha fam trip about GLBT life in your destination. We will then
integrate some of the photos into that blog, as well as upload the photos
onto Facebook and Flickr, where they will be tagged as well as Twittered.
The Twittered photos on Flickr will have fully descriptive information
about both the photo and the destination (see example here and more
at www.PinkBananaMedia.com/photos/).
The video will be shot in a series of 5-10 second clips and put together
in a video montage similar to what can be seen at
www.PinkBananaMedia.com/video (this is video we’ve shot for personal
use and for clients, showing one unique technique we’ve employed for
creating a fun and informative video that is quickly and easily spread
online). The videos will be uploaded to both Facebook and YouTube, as
well as promoted from the blog.
Utilizing Twitterfeed, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Ning and other GLBT social networks, this coverage of your destination will be spread even further, and
will thus allow you to see exactly how this style of marketing can work for
you!
Call or e-mail us today - [email protected] / (323) 908-3653
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