There are different ways that you can talk with your existing and potential customers online.

1. There are social sites where you can own a presence. On Facebook and LinkedIn an organization can create a Page to interact with individuals. A business or destination can have a similar presence on TripAdvisor.

2. There are social sites where you can manage your presence. Many sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp let businesses create an account to respond to customer reviews.

3. You can participate in online communities relevant to your business. The forums in travel communities like TripAdvisor, Frommers, Fodors and Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree are a good place to start if you market a destination. If you sell horse riding tours, find a horse-riding community. If you run a restaurant, find a food-blogger who is passionate about your style of cuisine.

So, where is the best place to start?

The quickest rewards will come from engaging people who are already talking about your business or passionate about what you offer.  Fish where the fish are.  If you don’t already have a vibrant Facebook Page, you can assume that people are talking somewhere else.  Twitter is a great way to find out where the conversation is. From there, you can build your own community of people who love what you do. A Facebook Page is a platform that lets you do that easily but you have to tell people its there.

How do you allocate your efforts in social media?

A destination’s online community should be representative off its offline community.  The online platforms that your community use are just tools that allow them to connect more easily.

Your community is already connecting online.  They’re already talking about you and supporting each other.

They’re involved in travel communities like TripAdvisor and Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree.  They’re active on Facebook and Twitter.  Many of them are blogging about their experiences in your destination.  More still are sharing photos and videos with their friends and family on Flickr and Youtube.

You can engage the people who are passionate about your destination.  You can have them influence your community to build a following among their own networks.

There’s no point competing for attention with people who are doing your job for you.

Competing on price is a zero-sum game.  There is rarely a winner when you enter into price wars – just ask the big US Airlines.  Offers like Groupon encourage price-based competition.  Over time, they are not a short cut to filling inventory. If you need proof, read this business owner’s account of their hellish experience: Groupon in Retrospect.

Social media is not a magic wand to cure your sales woes.  Setting up a Facebook Fan Page or Twitter account is not going to do anything without a strategy.

At Think! we have identified ways that anyone can use social media to efficiently and cost-effectively build an amazing business.

1. Before you embark on a business venture you should talk to your intended customers.  Listen to their problems and learn how to solve them.  Here is how a restaurant might research opportunities before investing in a set path.

2. Create something unique using the feedback from your intended audience.  William Bakker would tell you to create something remarkable.  Word of mouth can’t spread about your business if there isn’t something noteworthy to pass on.  This is why hotels and airlines often have trouble – many are still trying to be everything to everyone.

3. You then need to create awareness. If you built relationships during stage 1 when you were listening to customers you can tell people that their problems are solved. You can do this offline or online. Its quicker and cheaper to do it through social media.

4. When customers come rushing through your door, you need to meet or exceed their expectations.  If you don’t, the poor experience will become the talking point.  Give people something good to talk about.  Under promise and over deliver.

5. When you have happy customers the goal is to keep them coming back and tell their friends.  This is easy if you can stay in touch with your customers.  Keeping in touch with people use to be hard.  Consumer email marketing was the best chance you had to keep your customers informed.  Now, there are free tools that let you build a community of people who love you.

6. If you can manage your online community well, you can help your customers make their networks aware of your product.  You can also learn from their feedback to find ways to improve your offerings.  Then your customers will feel a sense of ownership over your business.

My good friend Bray got married at the end of August in an amazing little place called Sun Valley, Idaho where we both used to live.  I caught an early flight from Vancouver connecting through Seattle.  I was half asleep when I got off the first plane after a late night and a big week at work.  I grabbed some breakfast at the airport and scrambled for my next flight.  Somewhere above Eastern Washington I had one of those heart stopping moments where you know you’ve forgotten something.  My Suit and my favourite purple shirt!

When we landed at Sun Valley airport, I checked my overhead bin.  Nothing.  I checked everyone elses too.  Still nothing.  I knew it was either on my earlier flight, in the breakfast place or near gate C14.  I spoke to the air hostess and she directed me to the ticket counter.  Its a small airport and as much as she wanted to help, the only lady around quite literally had her hands full.  With her nose, she pointed to a baggage  information pamphlet.  I went and found a bench and made the call.  While I was on hold, I submitted a lost baggage report on Seatac Airport’s website.

I was on hold long enough that I also decided to test out this whole social media thing.  I guess the baggage line is busy, I’m probably not the only person who’s lost something important on a trip.  Its easy to do when you’re tired.

I found Horizon Air’s Facebook Fan Page and although I felt like I was clutching at straws, I penned them a message.

Within minutes, I had a response from Horizon. Amazing!

Horizon Air’s marketing team even sent me a personal message detailing everything they’d done:

The wedding was great and the bride and groom were so happy that I didn’t have to go naked that they let me play the drums for a while.

Most airlines are in the business of getting people from A to B on time. There are a few airlines that are differentiating themselves by offering an amazing service. Clearly Horizon Air is one of them. The challenge will be whether or not this amazing service can scale if more people try to circumvent the traditional baggage channels. In the meantime, I’ll be telling this story left right and center. It turns out that I’m not the only person that Horizon impressed either.