A presentation for ICTT 2013 (International Conference on Travel Technology India) in Kovalam, Kerala. Most of the slides have notes as well.
Conference website: http://icttindia.org/
Related post on my personal blog: http://www.sheilasguide.com/2013/06/11/protect-your-online-reputation-by-listening-and-responding/
My Tourism Currents team and I do online and in-person training in social media for tourism and hospitality - http://www.tourismcurrents.com
2. @SheilaS
@TourismCurrents
What We'll Talk About
● How to listen (monitor) online
● How to answer the social media
"telephone" when it rings!
● Listening & responding = good
customer service
● Act the same way online & offline
7. @SheilaS
@TourismCurrents
To Listen Online, You Need....
● To know when someone is
already talking about you
● Active response to mentions
● To use search engines to find
content about you
● Seek & review, possibly respond
11. @SheilaS
@TourismCurrents
Google Tools for Listening
● Google Alerts
● Brand name, keywords
● Blog & Image search engines
● Search on YouTube
● Google Analytics
● When someone links to you
35. @SheilaS
@TourismCurrents
Takeaways
● Answer the (social media) telephone
● Links, Twitter @ mentions, tags on
Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+
● Use search engines to find content
● Comment & share
● Listen to your customers, & respond!
● Act the same way online & offline
36. @SheilaS
@TourismCurrents
Photo Credits
● Head (courtesy tinou bao Flickr CC)
● Spock ears (courtesy Tom Brogan Flickr CC)
● Dell Social Media Center (courtesy Dell on
Flickr CC)
● Kansas City SocMed Ctr (courtesy VisitKC on
Tumblr)
● Customer service (courtesy US Nat'l Archives
Flickr Commons)
● All other photos & screenshots are my own
How and why to listen to the online conversations that matter to your business, attraction or destination, and how that applies to online reputation management, by Sheila Scarborough of Tourism Currents, for ICTT India 2013 (International Conference on Travel Technology) in Kovalam, Kerala
Summary of the presentation.
You can't protect your reputation and brand if you don't know what people are saying about you.
We all have TWO ears but only ONE mouth. Listen more than you talk.
When you listen first, you will know what to say when it is time to talk. Your customer conversations online are market research that is waiting for you to pay attention.
How to get better at hearing the online conversations that matter.
Start with passive social media monitoring, just to see what is already being said. Collect data. Talk within your organization about how you want to start responding (set up a system for who will do what.) Once you are comfortable with passive, then actively seek out brand mentions via search engines.
Dell is only one of many major brands that have extensive listening stations to monitor mentions of their brand. This is very elaborate, but anyone can have some sort of a dashboard or system.
This is the social media command center for a major sports event in Kansas City; the MLB All-Star Game. It was a joint project with the local tourism organization and Social Media Club volunteers. More info in this blog post from VisitKC - http://blog.visitkc.com/2012/06/21/social-media-takes-command-in-kc-for-2012-mlb-all-star-game/ Consider such a system for one or more of your big events, conferences or festivals.
People discussing you on social media (especially when they link to you, tag you on Facebook/LinkedIn/Google+ or @ you on Twitter) is like a telephone ringing. Answer the social media telephone!
Basic tools in your search toolbox. Google Alerts are free. Note specialized Google search engines just for blogs and images/photos. YouTube is the 2 nd largest search engine in the world, and owned by Google. Know when someone links to you! Analytics will tell you.
Two other tools to monitor online mentions of you, your brand or keywords that are important to you. Google Alerts have been very erratic for me and many others lately, so I've been experimenting with Talkwalker. Good so far. Social Mention is a type of dashboard.
Let's step through some examples of managing your online presence by being responsive and helpful.
What follows is an example of good online listening & responding. Here is a blog post about the Silver Skate [winter] Festival in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Here is a comment/response on the blog post from the Festival Producer. Great example of how to respond online to content about you.
The Festival Twitter account also shared the blog post link with their followers; another great example of how to respond. Sharing is appreciated!
Let's talk about how to monitor discussions on Twitter.
First, always monitor @ mentions of you or your brand, and answer whenever possible. Here is an example of the US Amtrak train system account responding to a tweet about their service on the Heartland Flyer route from Fort Worth, Texas to Oklahoma City.
To catch other conversations, use Twitter's own search engine. Here is the URL.
Here is Twitter's search engine with a search string for Kovalam, Kerala
Here is one of the tweets I found when searching for Kovalam, Kerala Twitter mentions. This person is based in New Delhi. He has 124,000+ followers on Twitter.
Another way to monitor Twitter is through a dashboard service like TweetDeck or Hootsuite.
This is what the TweetDeck dashboard layout looks like. These are columns for: 1) Interactions with my business, the Tourism Currents Twitter account. 2) The #FriFotos hashtag for themed photo sharing on Fridays. 3) A column for any tweets about Alappuzha OR Alleppey, a tourist attraction in Kerala
As with Twitter @ mentions, always monitor and respond to being tagged on Facebook. Here is a coffee company answering a tagged update.
Here is an example of good customer service and interaction on a farm's Facebook Page.
LinkedIn tagging is new. Brands can't tag people or other brands yet, or at least I haven't been able to on the Tourism Currents LinkedIn Company Page.
Active TripAdvisor response by the manager and owner, plus many photographs, convinced me to book the Rodeway Inn in Berkeley, California, even though I was skeptical at first of its quality.
One of the reviews by a Rodeway Inn guest.
The response to it from Rodeway Inn management, saying thank you for the review. Nice work!
Ask for reviews if you want them, and make it easy for people. Show them where to go. Here is an example in a hotel in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania
You would not ignore customers offline/standing in front of you, would you? So, don't ignore them online, either.
If you know how to provide good customer service offline, you know how to do it online. You simply have to learn how to use the tools, like blog post comments, tweets, Facebook, etc.
Reminder: two ears, one mouth. Listen more than you talk! :)
Original photos on Flickr Creative Commons are hyperlinked in the slide