How Social is Your DMO?-US Tourism Office Edition, Q4 2012 Edition

Posted: December 13th, 2012

How Social is Your State DMO?

As the  year is coming to a close, we will take a look at the final US State DMO Social Media Rankings for 2012. The How Social is Your DMO? – United States Tourism Office Edition, Q4 2012 rankings have been released and the data is now available for you to see how your state’s DMO measured up at the end of 2012.

Since social media is ever changing, we have again made a few adjustments to the algorithm. Both Pinterest and Instagram were included due to their increasing popularity and online influence.

This quarter, congratulations are in order for Michigan as they grabbed the number one spot and pushed the reigning Florida to number two with Colorado, Hawaii and California rounding out the top five.

The digital marketing efforts of many DMOs improved this past quarter, as there were plenty of “movers” in the Top 25. California moved up seven spots to number five from 12. Illinois also jumped seven spots to number 19 from 26. Indiana raised eight spots to number 23 from 31. Massachusetts soared ten spots to number nine from 19, and Georgia climbed ten spots to number 11 from 21.

Here are some other honorable mentions from the Q4, 2012 results:

  • California flourished in online photography taking first in the Flickr category and tying for first with Michigan in the Instagram category
  • New York led the way in the Twitter category
  • Hawaii ranked number one among DMOs for their Facebook efforts
  • California also took first place in the blog category
  • Michigan held strong with the highest ranked Google+ page

To view the full rankings for November 2012 please visit this link. Keep the comments and feedback coming, as we will continue to consider them in future measurements.

For more info on social media and tourism, be sure to follow Think! Social Media on Twitter at: @ThinkSM or visit us on Facebook: www.Facebook.com/ThinkSocialMedia.

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Posted in By Dave Serino, Facebook, Social Media | No Comments »

Facebook Best Practices Part l

Posted: September 21st, 2012

Over the next few weeks I will be posting my 15 Facebook best practices, if you have any best practices you like to follow let me know what they are.

1. Embrace Images

Use imagery to catch users attention and get them interested in what you have to say, you can also show fans what goes on behind the scenes with simple smartphone pictures.

 

2. Keep it Short

Posts that are 80 characters in length, or less get 27% higher engagement rate. So keep it short and to the point.

 

3. Make the most of your cover photo

A recent eye-tracking study noted that consumers pay far more attention to the cover photo than any other content on the wall, so put thought into your photo.

Did you know: Covers may not include:

  • Contact information such as a website address, email, mailing address.
  • References to Facebook features or actions, such as “Like” or “Share” or an arrow pointing from the cover photo to any of these features.
  • Calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends.”

4. Pay Attention to your Insights

Facebook breaks down your new fans by gender and location to help you get a sense of who you’re talking to on Facebook. It also gives you a great snapshot of what content you put out is getting good feedback and what content is falling through the cracks.

 

 

5. Highlight your Best Posts

Take advantage of the “Highlight” option, this works especially well if you share lots of content each week, or you want users to be drawn into certain posts. I like to use landscape style photos with my content so I can easily highlight it.

Posted in By Phil Moad, Facebook, Social Media | No Comments »

Fan Page Naming Policy

Posted: August 27th, 2012

Facebook has recently put a new policy in place which will stop geographic locations from being used as Fan Page names.

The new policy can be found here

If your Facebook page does infringe this new policy, you will more than likely be asked to change the name in the near future, so it’s a good idea to make the change ahead of time, or at least be prepared to do so.

Having trouble distinguishing whether or not your page infringes the new policy? Send me a tweet or email.

How to change your Facebook Page name.

Posted in By Phil Moad, Facebook, Social Media | No Comments »

US State DMO Facebook Engagement Numbers for May 2012

Posted: May 2nd, 2012

Since Timeline went public on fan pages in March, a few page metrics other than “Likes” are now available for public view.  Along with the number of “Likes”, we can also view the number of “People Talking About This” on each individual fan page. You can also view the most popular week of activity on the page, along with the city source and age group of the “Likes”.

A few weeks ago, we decided to add those metrics into the formula for our “How Social is Your DMO?” ranking scale.  As we were preparing the USA Q2-2012 rankings, we decided to spend a few extra minutes and compile a list of the 50 US states in order of Facebook engagement and release those this week. Click here for the list of the 50 US states official tourism fan page engagement percentage ranking, which was determined on Tuesday, May 1, 2012.

The Engagement percentage is measured by the total number of “People Talking About This” divided by the total number of “Likes.”  There were only three states that had an engagement percentage larger than 10% in the top 5. They were: 1) Texas at 28%; 2) South Dakota at 13% and 3) Maryland at 10%.   California, Connecticut and Kentucky rounded out the top 5 – all tied at 7% each.

A majority of the 50 state DMO’s – 36 of them – all fell within the 1% to 5% range.   And, of the top six states listed above, only Connecticut had more than 100K in total “Likes.”  Connecticut’s page has 100,588 “Likes” while Maryland, who ranked third in engagement, only had 6,458 “Likes”.  This is a great example that bigger is not always better.

We all know and understand that this measurement is a moving target and it can literally change hourly – based on a viral post or a successful ad campaign – but it is another interesting metric to watch and measure over time.  It would be very interesting to track this data on a weekly basis for a year to get a more accurate profile of overall Facebook engagement for a destination fan page.

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Posted in By Dave Serino, Facebook, Social Media | 9 Comments »

The New Insights

Posted: December 21st, 2011

Last week, the old version of Facebook Insights faded into history, replaced by a leaner, more focused version. The new Insights places less of a focus on Likes, as maturing Fan pages switch from Growth to Engagement+Growth. Troy Thompson at Travel 2.0 made this observation earlier this year.

2012 will be all about Engagement.

It’s not enough to have tens or even hundreds of thousands of Fans if they aren’t interacting with your Brand. Engagement is about turning passive observers into passionate contributors. The Holy Grail of Engagement is a Brand who barely posts content because Fans are sharing their own content that reflects the Brand. The example below is the Powder Highway page, which has seen incredible Fan posted content.

The new Facebook Insights makes steps towards creating Intelligence on what content is engaging and highlights 4 important metrics:

  • Weekly Total Reach
    • The unique number of Fans who have seen content posted to your page
  • People Talking About
    • The number of Fans who have shared your pages content to their network by way of Comments, Posting to your Wall, Liking a Post, Answering a Question, etc.
  • Friends of Fans
    • The number of potential Fans you can reach through your pages current Fan network
  • Total Likes
    • The current number of people who Like your page (Fans)

For Tourism Organizations, the primary KPI’s to measure using these metrics are

  1. Reach (Awareness)
  2. Engagement (Organic Conversation)
  3. Industry Leads (Conversions)

Your Reach can be targeted in two ways: targeting to potential Fans, and targeting Friends of Current Fans. In a funnel Structure, this is the top and largest part of your funnel.

Your Engagement percentage is the number of Total Fans divided by People Talking About. The Goal here is to increase the People Talking About number, turning passive observers into passionate contributors.

Depending on the structure of your particular organization, Industry Leads are the Conversions that happen when Engaged Fans take your desired action, such as a click through to your website, sign up for a newsletter, or filling out a form. It’s important to note that Facebook currently does not track Conversions, so a Link Tracker must be used (such as Bit.ly) to see this data.

As part of a Social Media Strategy, filling this funnel and strengthening the levels within it is key to keeping your Fans, while turning them into SuperFans who impact your business.

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Posted in By Joel Marc, Facebook, Social Media | 3 Comments »

How to set up your Facebook Deal

Posted: October 27th, 2011

At the beginning of the year Facebook announced that they were going to be launching deals for fan pages and places, but it seemed like the quickly abandoned the idea. The other day I came across a notification on page that was encouraging me to set up a deal. I decided that I needed to investigate further, and it turns out that deals will be rolling out. Note that it seems it’s only available to businesses in the US, hopefully it will expand to Canada and the world soon.

Check out the deals video.

You start setting up your deal by choosing one of the four types of deals:

Define your offer:

Add details and restrictions:

Reap the rewards:

Check out the guide Facebook has put together and let us know what you think.

 

Posted in By Phil Moad, Facebook, Social Media | No Comments »

FACEBOOK evolves! Critical changes and what they mean to you.

Posted: August 23rd, 2011

It was only a matter of time. Facebook unveiled plans to overhaul some of its key features which will roll out over the next week. We’ve detailed the ones that will have the most impact on Tourism businesses and users alike.

The main Publisher bar “aka. Status Update Field” has three new changes entitled: Tags, Location (places), and Control (privacy).

Tagging/Untagging

“[Just] because I share an experience with them doesn’t mean I want to be Facebook friends with them.” – Facebook Product Manager, Kate O’Neill

You can now tag any Facebook member, whether they are your friend or not. This enables photos of groups to be tagged in their entirety. Concerned that you’ll be tagged without your knowing? If you’re not a friend of the person who tags you, you’ll still have to formally approve their request before it displays. On a related note, if you are friends with someone who has tagged you, you can now turn off the “require approval” feature of tagging.

Three new features have been rolled our regarding Untagging including: untagging yourself from a photo, asking the photo uploader to remove the photo, and blocking that person on Facebook.

Places

The GPS restriction of Checking-In to Places has been removed in the latest smartphone application update. This enables users to check-in to places retroactively and is now accomplished from the Status Update field (instead of the old ‘places’ menu). This also MAY enable businesses to setup Places without being at their physical location, but we are still waiting on this confirmation.

Control

No doubt following the Google+ launch of Circles, Facebook has reorganized how and with who you can share content with (for the record, we think Circles is much sexier). In the Publisher Bar, the former Padlock icon will change with the type of sharing. A posts visibility may also be retroactively updated. New sharing categories are:

  • Public
  • Friends
  • Custom (for Lists or Groups)

Additionally, the Privacy Settings have been given their own button on every screen (simplifying the process in navigating to the bulky privacy menu). A handy “View Profile As” button has been added as well, to see exactly what your different permission levels look like.

Advertisements

While the Facebook’s Privacy updates have stolen the show, Facebook Ads have rolled out a new feature in the targeting of ads. Last month, Facebook Ads added a new target set called “Precise Interests” in which advertisers could target specific Likes and Interests that users have posted to their profile. For example, I’ve Liked the W Hotels fan page, and low-and-behold, I now see ads for W Hotels!

The new feature launched today is within Precise Interests and is called ‘Topic Targeting.’ It allow advertisers to target Topics relating to that specific interest, in order to pick up a relating audience. Displayed with a ‘#’ symbol, Topics cover both the Precise Interest AND relating Interest. For example, if I were to add the topic #Ritz-Carlton, it would include interests such as Ritz Hotels, Ritz Carlton Hotels, and the Ritz Carlton Hotel Group. Optional category Interests are also displayed that may be applicable to my target market. Using the Ritz Carlton example, optional category interests would include the #Starwood Hotels and #Hilton Worldwide topics.

Instead of only targeting the 20,00 fans living in the US who Like the official Ritz Carlton Fan page, my reach using the #Ritz-Carlton Topic has increased to 73,000. Longer reach = better target exposure.

 

What’s your opinion? Good improvements or not?

Posted in By Joel Marc, Facebook | No Comments »

A Simple Facebook Page Engagement Metric

Posted: June 10th, 2011

The success of your Facebook Page is dependend on the engagement (likes, comments & fan posts) of your fans. Facebook measures the relevancy of pages with it’s Edgerank algorithm (more info here). Simple put, if fans don’t like, comment or post on your page, Facebook will deem it irrelevant and hide it your fans’ newsfeeds.

Keeping fans engaged also generates organic growth. Fans that like, comment and post on your Page generate newsfeeds in their personal networks, exposing new potential fans to your content.

Facebook’s insights reports how many impressions each of your post generates. At Think! we have a simple target metric for posts on the Fanpages we manage:

[impressions]/[fans]>1

When posts generate more impressions than the number of fans, it strongly suggests that the overall engagement of the Page is strong. After all, posts are potentially presented to non-fans. Impressions are not ‘unique’ and one fan could generate multiple impressions.

The formula is not perfect, but we like the simplicity.

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Posted in By William Bakker, Facebook | No Comments »

What is the Facebook send button?

Posted: April 27th, 2011

The Send button will become Facebook’s next Like button — which celebrated its first birthday last week and is installed on more than 10,000 websites every week.

In facebook’s words “The Send button is a social plugin that websites can use to let people send a link to a friend through Facebook Messages, post it to a Group, or email it to an individual. For example, if you see a Mother’s Day gift idea on 1-800-Flowers.com, you can now send a message or email to your family members to discuss. Or say you’re training for a marathon and you come across a great article about running shoes on The Huffington Post. Now you can share it with your entire running group in just one click.”

In laymens terms, it allows you to send a link to one of your friends via direct message.

The “Send” button is a promising addition to the sharing functionalities of your brand website as visitors will now be able to target their sharing activity to specific people, instead of worrying about blasting their entire Facebook friends list whenever they like something on your page.

Another important detail: Send counts toward the total number of Likes a page has. The Like total is now calculated by adding the number of Likes, shares, comments and inbox messages containing a URL.

Posted in By Phil Moad, Facebook | No Comments »

Facebook Event Check-ins

Posted: April 21st, 2011

Facebook has just rolled out event check in, where users can now check in to Facebook Events they’re currently attending through the touch.facebook.com site and soon through the Facebook for iPhone app.

This gives us yet another way to increase awareness of events such as store openings and special sales. Anyone invited to an event who responds as “Attending” or “Maybe Attending” will be able to check in three hours before the event starts and until it ends. When they check in, the action creates a story in their friends’ News Feeds, spreading awareness of your business and your event in an organic way.

When users are in geographic proximity to the address of an Event during its run-time, they’ll see a “Check In” button that publishes a news feed story to their friends

 

 

Posted in By Phil Moad, Facebook | No Comments »