Taking Engagement from Ordinary to Wow

Mo SherifdeenInteractive Marketing | Travel Oregon

@mosherifdeen

Travel Oregon. Official agency charged with promoting travel to/within Oregon

Mission: 1) Inspire travel to & within Oregon; 2) help travelers have a great time.

How: $2 million ad budget: TV, Online (70%), print (20%)

CTA: Digital (TravelOregon.com, blogs, social, email etc.)

About

State of Social- 3 billion photos uploaded/month- 2.5+ million sites integrated w/ FB

- 325,000 yrs of video watched each month- 2nd largest search engine

- 100m active users; 250 m daily tweets

-10m users; over a billion check-ins- “Radar” features has lots of potential

Pre-Social “Trip Echo”

Pre-social: office water cooler + kitchen table

Social “Trip Echo”

Social Age: The “water cooler” is Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, Foursquare etc….

Travel Is Social

Inspiration & Discovery

Shopping/Planning

Booking

Customer Service

Post Trip

Where does the DMO fit in?

The Travel Oregon Strategy

Listen/Talkto the community

BoostSharing + Advocacy

Story-BuildingOurs + theirs

• Monitor perceptions/buzz

• Interact with fans

• Help travelers plan

•Provide platforms for fans to share their stories

•Find/amplify advocates

• Content distribution

• Soliciting fan stories

Blog (2006)

• Basics:– Initially campaign based– Grew into “story telling”

platform– 25 writers– 5 regular contributors– Liberal linking/feature

policy– Staff resource: 1.5; but

shared responsibility

Writer Recruitment….

• Passionate bloggers (cost $0, link love)• New graduates (portfolio builder)• Staff

Writer Recruitment….(Cont.)

• Passionate Oregonians (cost $0, freebies, gear!)

Writer Recruitment….(Cont.)

• PR -destinations/businesses (but stories, not explicit pitches!)

• Cost: $0 (staff editing time)

Writer Recruitment….(Cont.)

• Leverage existing programs….– Visitor guide “back

stories”– Extend TV

partnerships….• Media Highlights:

– Highlight good OR travel stories from blogs/media

Twitter (May 2008)• Sharing timely/immediate

content & deals (events, travel updates etc.)

• Provide Customer Service to followers

• Examples:– Where can I find a Gluten

Free Restaurant in Cannon Beach?

– I’m visiting Crater Lake, is the Rim Drive open to vehicles?

Twitter Best Practices• Sharing articles, with a very brief description of what

the article is about. Give users a reason to click. Using just the title of the article/blog post isn’t enough

• Open ended questions, “The sun is out and we can’t stop thinking of playing in the water! Where should we go?”

• It’s against Twitter’s TOS to repeatedly tweet the same message – so if you’re going to share the same content, you’ll need to rephrase it.

• No more than 1 update every hour or so.

Twitter Helpful Tools• TweetDeck/HootSuite management

• Tweroid – measures best time for you to tweet

• TweetReach (for measuring hashtags)

• Klout – can help w/ determining influence – but not totally perfect

Facebook (Jan. 2009)

• Engaging with travelers, passionate Oregonians (ex-Oregonians)

• Sharing inspirational content (ours + others)

• Answering questions

Facebook Best Practices• Updates with photos

• Ask questions (fill in the blank etc.)

• Open ended questions (i.e. “It’s sunny outside, what are you doing?”)

• Links to articles with a question related to the article.

• 2-3 updates per day (but will vary)

Other Considerations• Posting schedule**

– Primetimes: 8 am, 11 am, 3pm, & 8 pm EST– New: 20 posts across 5 fan pages that had 2 million+

fans, and calculated an average post lifetime of 22 hours, 51 minutes

• Peak conversation day**: Weds., 3pm• Mornings are slightly better• International strategy: one page/account v

market pages/accounts?• Terms of Use!

(** Source: Vitrue. “Managing your Facebook Community”)

Integration Beyond Icons

Ask Oregon (2011)[customer support by local experts]

A strategy to deliver visitor information by connecting passionate Oregonians to

travelers….using multiple touch points (Web, Call Center, Twitter, Trip Advisor,

Visitor Centers etc.)

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29B5d_AOsQc

14 passionate Oregonians on Twitter + Facebook…

…dishing out travel advice.

Ambassadors are creating

ongoing discussions with Travel

Oregon fans regarding

their questions.

Ask Oregon on Facebook

Ask Oregon Ambassadors

are:

Continuing to answer follower

questions

Filtering questions for

other ambassadors

Tweeting helpful info

with #askOR

Ask Oregon on Twitter

Social Media Co-Op –Adventurecation (2011)

Social Media Co-Op

Micro Ad Targeting• Who live in U.S.• Who live in OR, WA or CA• Exactly between 30-50

inclusive• Female• Who like adventure,

adventures, bouldering, caving, disc golf, mountaineering, rock climbing, or white water rafting

• Not connected w/ COVA• Suggested bid: $0.49-$0.81

Results!

• 181,650,822 Ad Impressions (Travel Oregon+Partners)• 169,012 Ad Clicks (Travel Oregon+Partners)• Average CPC $0.36 (Facebook says this costs $2-3!)• 75,000 page views were generated for the

"Adventurecation" tab across all partners• Fan base increase ranged from 114% (Portland) to 2,637%

(Medford)– Total Partner Likes Gained: 113,745

• Facebook Insights also indicated that on average, each of the partners saw a 320% increase in engagement!

• 1,987 Contest Entries

Learnings

• What Worked?– High Engagement, Low CPC/CPA– Ability to see results immediately

• What Didn’t Work?– Some FB users were reluctant to allow access to a third

party app to enter the contest– Some non-FB users would have liked a non-FB entry

option– Very quick turnaround on creative/prizes– Many participating partners were not familiar with

Facebook marketing techniques

FB Ad Best Practices

• Great images• Relevant• Call to action within ad• Relevant content to

convert• 1 ad per $100 spend• Timing

Full-On-Oregon(Blogger Fam Trips)

• 25 unique food writers/bloggers

• Immersion weekend –crabbing, fishing, ice cream making etc.

• Twitter hashtag: #fullonOR

Full-On-Oregon

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feIYsoCknKw

Location, Location, Location.

(Source: PhoCusWright. “Loco Over Local: Four Trends That Are Reshaping Tourism”)

Foursquare (2010)

• Sharing unique tips about places from Oregonians (chefs, skiers etc.)

• Re-using blog/FB /PR content (e.g. readers of “OregonLive.com recommend the chowder here”)

Foursquare (2010)

• Lists (content strategy: re-use itineraries from DMO’s, e-newsletter content etc.)

• New: “Save” & “Radar”

Others Ideas: Foursquare and SCVNGR Partnerships

• Foursquare• 55,000+ followers• 3 badges• 366 locations• 3 Foursquare Lists (and counting)

• SCVNGR• 8 Chicago badges and treks• 116 challenges

Foursquare• 20,582 check-ins

SCVNGR• 1,431 completed

challenges

100+ media placements • National Geographic Traveler, Mashable,

TechCrunch, Chicago Tribune, Crain’s Chicago Business

Explore Chicago Results

Foodspotting (Austin, Philly)

Gowalla

Analytics/Measurement• Measurement

is an iterative process

• Focus on engagement (i.e. what they’re doing vs. growing numbers)

Facebook – Key Metrics

1. Engagement:a) Engaged fans: Monthly Active Users/Total Fansb) Content relevance:

Post feedback (Insights) =(comments + likes/Total Exposure)

Facebook – Fan Engagement

0

10,000

20,000

30,000

40,000

50,000

60,000

Fans

Monthly Active Users

Facebook – Key Metrics

Facebook – Key Metrics

Twitter – Key Metrics

1. Growth of fans2. Engagement:

a) Engaged fans: - @ responses- RTs

b) Content relevance: - Clicks (Bit.ly)

What’s Next?

Niche Social Travel Real Time & Experts

Inspiration/Reading List

• Tnooz - tnooz.com

• Travel2dot0 - travel2dot0.com

• About Tourism – abouttourism.wordpress.com

• Sparkloft Media – sparkloftmedia.com/blog

• Mashable – mashable.com

• MilesMedia Insight – milesmedia.com/insight

Thanks

Mo Sherifdeen@mosherifdeen

mo@traveloregon.com503-378-8859