Presentation at the Brisbane Interactive Minds session, includes content on Tourism Queensland\'s social marketing of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef

1. Social Media In Practice
Tourism Queensland Case Study
Rob Bell Chris Chambers
&
Founder and Director Director of Digital Marketing
XCOM Media Tourism Queensland

2. Overview
Introduction
Social Media Background
Why it made sense for us
Our approach
What we are using it for
Risks from our experience
What we have done

3. Social Media Background

4. What is it?
Social Media “describes the online tools that
people use to share content, profiles, opinions,
insights, experiences, perspectives and media
itself, thus facilitating conversations,
collaboration and interaction online between
groups of people.”
SOURCE - SOCIAL COMPUTING MAGAZINE

5. Why it made sense for us?

6. Things We Couldn’t Ignore
Millions are using it It’s a vehicle for users to
shout about what they are
Growing quickly passionate about (and
what they are not)
It’s fast
It provided another
Cost efficient engaging medium for the
delivery of content
It is quickly becoming a
part mainstream media

8. We Looked At Who Is Using It
Facebook
More than 175 million active users
Just under 1.2 billion page visits monthly
More than half of Facebook users outside of college
Fastest growing demographic is those 30 years old and older
More than 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States
Twitter
No official figures ~ up to 8 million users globally
More than 54 million monthly visits
FACEBOOK.COM STATISTICS, 2009

9. Australian Facebook Demographics (as at Feb 21st 2009)
2,000,000
1,500,000
Active Users
1,000,000
500,000
0
13-17 18-25 26-34 34-44 45-54 55-59
Age Group
ALLFACEBOOK.COM

10. And what they are using it for
Connecting
Sharing
Engaging
Communicating
Building groups

11. We couldn’t ignore where marketing
budgets were being spent
Reducing Adding
-20 48
Web 2.0
-14 48
Emailing To House lists
-33 27
Paid Search
-22 18
Telemarketing
-43 16
Online Display Advertising
-20 13
Mobile Marketing
-52 12
Direct Mail
-57 8
Event Marketing
-83 6
Radio/TV Ads
-43 6
Emailing To Rented Lists
-60 7
Printed Advertising
(90) (68) (45) (23) 0 23 45 68
Percent
MARKETINGSHERPA, MARKETING AND THE ECONOMY SURVEY, SEPTEMBER 2008

12. Green Light - Social Media
Consumers benefits
Existing consumers
Reach a new audience
Provide a platform for identification with the brand
Listen
User-generated content
Share content

13. Our approach

14. Our Approach
Focus - keep it simple
Research key brands who are active in this space
Understand the model that they have adopted - what
was appropriate
Developing a rating system - measure effectiveness of
their use of Social Media
Understand by listening to consumers - brand perception
Strategy Development - competitive landscape, business
objectives, resources required and implementation plan

15. Then made some decisions
Activity to support TQ’s global marketing effort
Embrace - integrated into communications mix
Start small and be cautious
Facebook and Twitter was best fit for TQ at launch
Subtle encouragement - soft launch
Track and measure engagement and effectiveness

16. Commitment to Best Practice
Commercial purpose - not just the use of the tool
To integrate as part of the digital strategy
Show personality and have fun
Be active and engaging within the community
Add value to the discussion
Listen, learn and understand before acting
Provide service - respond where appropriate

17. What we are using it for

18. Our Use
Support digital marketing effort
Content
Listen Learn & Understand
Engage
Community development - self fulfilling prophecy
Brand Advocation
Viral

19. Acquisition
Provide a clear source of ‘value’ to the user
Understand it is a long-term investment
Develop long-term relationships for brand
advocation
Giving users a reason to seek and commit to
mutual beneficial relationship

20. Acquisition

21. Retention
Give consumers the option to change where they
engage with content:
What they want
When they want it
How they want it
Through the medium they want to receive it

22. Retention

23. Retain Unsubscribers?

24. Risks from our experience

25. Risks - In Social Media
Negative feedback Anything and
everything can be
Fast paced taken and used
against you
No stopping the
conversation Everything is public
No controlling the What you don’t know
discussion can hurt you

26. What we have done

27. Facebook
Major uses
Content syndication
Promotion of major activity
Learnings
Launch Competition
Power of the community
Measurement Tools
Facebook Analytics
Link Tracking

28. Twitter
How does Tourism
Queensland use Twitter
Other Tourism
organisations
Learnings from our use
Measurement Tools

29. User Generated
Content
Initiates:
Eye On Q
Islands of the Great Barrier Reef
Learnings
UGC is important in travel &
tourism
UGC increase access to other
content
Submission volumes vs.
visitation vs. usable content

30. Key Learnings
Social Media is an effective
communication medium
Group moderation of
discussion
Offers different mediums to
match consumer preference
Social Media does not require a
large financial contribution - can
be resource intensive
Be sincere in your
communications

31. Thank you...

32. Contact Us....
Rob Bell Chris Chambers
Founder and Director Director of Digital Marketing
XCOM Media Tourism Queensland
Email: rob.bell@xcommedia.com.au Email: chris.chambers@tq.com.au
Twitter: @robbiebell Twitter: @ckjchambers
@xcommedia @queensland
Phone: +61 7 3666 0544 Phone: +61 7 3535 5476