The Importance of Social Media

22nd October 2009

#LBTB

Boston

• ! Economic and cultural capital of New England

• ! It has one of the highest costs of living in the USA

• ! The city population doubles on working days to 1.2 million

• ! Greater Boston has a population of 4.5 million

• ! The Boston Globe is the city’s largest newspaper

The Boston Globe

• ! Founded 127 years ago

• ! Has won 20 Pulitzer prizes since 1966

• ! The New York Times bought the Globe in 1993 for $1.1 billion

• ! It now loses $1m a week

• ! On April 9th it was threatened with closure

• ! Time Magazine predicts that it and 9 others will close within 12 months

21st September 2009

20th October 2009

The Future for PR?

Search: PR Agency 2004-2009

Search: Social Media PR 2004-2009

Social media & PR

Monitoring

Social media & PR

Monitoring

Media relations

Social media & PR

Monitoring

Media relations

News direct to consumers

17th April 2009

Ashton Kutcher & CNN - 1 million twitter followers

Six months on they have 6 million between them

There are 157 one million+ accounts

Hosted content

Optimised for Search

PR & SEO

Social media & PR

Monitoring

Media relations

News direct to consumers

Customer relations

Social media & PR

Monitoring

Media relations

News direct to consumers

Customer relations

eValuation

Where conversations are happening

Attitude to the brand

Emotional response

Some of the best

The challenge

• ! To grow the business from coffee table book to online boutique travel specialist

• ! Position itself as a trusted and reliable source of advice and high quality products

• ! Stimulate online transactions

• ! And expand its customer data base

The solution

• ! Smithhotels Twitter feed

• ! Mr & Mrs Smith Facebook fan page

• ! Partnerships with online travel magazines and communities, eg. tripshake.com

• ! Vigorous constant evaluation

The results

– ! Established online brand presence

– ! No.1 Google ranking (from almost 4m results)

– ! Visitor traffic to website increased ten fold

– ! Over 3,500 followers on Twitter

– ! Expanding brand offer

The Challenge

• ! Declining traffic to traditional travel websites

• ! Need to engage with target audience, the youth market

• ! Identify where they are gathering

• ! And communicate with them in their space and their language

The Solution

• ! A comprehensive social media campaign

• ! Designed to engage with people in as many channels as possible – ! Blogs, Facebook, Widgets, Twitter, podcasts, mobile

• ! STAtravelbuzz micro site central to activity

– ! A central hub in which to congregate

• ! Effective outreach campaign

– ! Identifying new ‘voices’ active in social media travel

• ! STA Travel brand ambassador campaign

– ! Influential social media travel ‘voices’

• ! STA Travel YouTube intern promotion

• ! Complementary offline meets and events

The results

• ! Positive direct engagement with target audience

• ! Over 350,000 views on STA Travel YouTube video submissions

• ! 25,000+ Facebook fans

• ! A further 2,800 Twitter followers

• ! Recognised as a leading organisation within social media

• ! Award winning

– ! Best Use of Social Media, Travolution Awards 2009

Thank you

Questions?

The Importance of Social Media

22nd October 2009

#LBTB