posted by Public Relations
Not too long ago, we outlined some social media trends for 2012 on our blog. One of our predictions included a call for social customer service to improve, and what we’ve seen lately has been less than impressive.
Palm Springs: Visitors bureaus should be cashing in.
I recently tagged along with my husband to Palm Springs, Calif. He had a conference to attend. Me, well, I didn’t have to do much of anything but lie by the pool (I know, I can feel your jealousy from here). Vacation or no vacation, if you truly have a passion for social media, you’re always experimenting and testing.
We arrived on Super Bowl Sunday and because we are not very familiar with the area or its local sports bars, I decided to tweet to the visitors bureau to see if they could provide any recommendations.
Granted, it was on a Sunday hours before the Super Bowl, but I would imagine a lot of visitors arrive on a weekend and may look for information and want to interact. Unfortunately, I never received any type of response from either of those Twitter accounts. I decided to take a look at what they do tweet about.
Missed opportunity. Why didn’t they respond?
The first thing I noticed is it wasn’t just me who
@PalmSpringsUSA (Palm Springs Desert Resort Communities Convention and Visitors Authority) didn’t respond to, they actually don’t interact with anyone on Twitter outside of promoting deals and events in the area. I found much of the same from
@PalmSpringsCA (Palm Springs Bureau of Tourism).
Although it’s great to have all of that information in one spot, it would be more valuable to Palm Springs visitors to have the opportunity to ask questions and have somewhere to turn for specific information. The Palm Springs visitors authority and tourism bureau are missing a huge opportunity to connect with visitors and attract people to the area.
Case in point, a quick Twitter search for #PalmSprings returned tweets such as the below.
This is a great opportunity for the visitors authority and tourism bureau to reach out to Tony and let him know why he should choose Palm Springs over Key West. Also, what about entities looking for a place to host a conference? What about people tweeting about desired vacation amenities like golf or hiking? The Twitter search functionality can find these results and @PalmSpringsUSA can contact those users directly, but social media monitoring tools can help them achieve even more.
Brands NEED to listen.
Twitter is not the only place where conversation can be monitored and brands can interact with users. There is a plethora of platforms out there, but Alterian SM2 is our choice for social media monitoring. After setting up a raw search for “Palm Springs” during the month of January, I came up with the below results:
Search “Palm Springs” Daily Volume January 2012
This quick research returned more than 30,000 results and reflects not only Twitter conversation, but any forum reviews (like Yelp or Trip Advisor), Facebook mentions (only if they’re public, of course), blog posts and more.
Why is this valuable, you ask? The Palm Springs visitors authority and tourism bureau, and any other companies for that matter, can use this to identify and engage with those who are using specified key words, which can help them learn more about their customers and clients. Tools such as Alterian can even determine influencers who can act as brand ambassadors, but that’s a whole other blog post.
Online conversation is valuable and can’t be ignored.
It’s getting increasingly hard for brands to ignore online conversation. Even search results are starting to be impacted by what is said about your company online (check out our post SEO and Social Media: BFFs). Without social media monitoring, my bet is the Palm Springs visitors authority and tourism bureau will probably never even know I wrote this blog post.
Yes, it can affect ROI.
So how, you may ask, does this impact return on investment? That is the big buzz in social media marketing these days, “How can we determine ROI?” Well, the visitors authority and tourism bureau can assign a value to each person, group or company they engage with and convince them to visit the Palm Springs area. In addition, they can increase engagement online to the point where local companies begin seeking them out to buy Web ads or asking to pay to be included in an e-newsletter (I am assuming that they do this).
But this still sounds a little iffy… how can I tell? Well, if you’re tweeting users or participating in forums, don’t forget to include a trackable link to your website. You can see how many people click that link and if it increases Web traffic. Higher Web traffic generally equals more desirable ad space. See what I did there? That’s just one example, and obviously it varies according to business goals and objectives across each industry.
What can we take away from all of this?
To end my rant and have some semblance of a conclusion, the main theme here is the fact that companies need to make themselves more available on social media. It’s time to stop being a spectator and broadcaster. In its simplest form, social media customer service can be achieved by responding to user inquiries when they try to connect with you on Twitter.
All I really wanted was for one of those Palm Springs Twitter accounts to give me a suggestion for a sports bar. Instead, we had to ask the concierge and ended up just going to the closest place. Was it the best Super Bowl experience in Palm Springs? I’ll never know.
About the author::
Melanie Eyerman is manager of social media services at thunder::tech. When not obsessively checking mentions, posting comments or analyzing stats, our Georgia Bulldog loves playing rec. sports, cheering on her favorite football teams and enjoying a good bottle of wine with close friends.
TAGS:
thundertech, monitoring, brands, marketing, social, Twitter, monitor, tool, Palm Springs, interaction, customer service, ROI, online, conversation, social media
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