Dave Serino Blogs

"How Social is Your State DMO?" - September 2009 Rankings

The September rankings of “How Social is Your State DMO?” have been completed and they are published here.  We continue to receive excellent feedback and increasing interest in the rankings. And, we have seen several DMO’s enhance and improve their social position since the initial rankings- which is very encouraging.  Please keep the comments and feedback coming, as we will continue to consider them in future measurements.

Regarding the process, our statement saying that “social media is continually changing and evolving” was validated again this month.  So, in response to that evolution, we made the following adaptations:

-Panoramio changed the way that they count photos and display search results. In response to that, we incorporated Google Maps image display following a state keyword search into our formula on this report–replacing the original Panoramio scoring.  

-There were also some difficulties with the Hubspot Facebook Grader tool and we could not get consistent results.  Because we didn’t have an alternative, we eliminated it from the formula–hopefully for this month only.

In line with last month, the evaluations and measurements were done over a 4-day period 

A few updates on the rankings:

-For the second consecutive month, Michigan is number one followed by Pennsylvania and Oregon – both deadlocked at number two.

- Movers include Nevada vaulting from number 10 to a new spot at 4; Illinois moving into 7th place from 16; and a big leap from Utah, jumping from 30 all the way to number 12.

To view the full rankings for September 2009, link to http://budurl.com/HowSocialStateDMO3

And, another item to note. When we did our first rankings in July, only 19 DMOs had links to their official social media outlets from their home page. In the September rankings, we found 31 DMOs with links or icons to their specific social media outlets – an increase of 63% in a three month period. Only 19 DMOs are left who haven’t recognized their organization’s official social media presence on the front page of the web site.  This is one simple enhancement that can make a world of difference for online consumers.

We will be posting the next ranking in early November – prior to DMAI’s Destination Management and Marketing Institute, November 11-13. The conference will feature a special e-Marketing/Social Media education track for the second consecutive year.  More on the conference can be found here.  You can still register to attend or follow the event on Twitter by using the hashtag - #DMMI09

"How Social is Your State DMO?" - August 2009 Rankings

The August rankings of “How Social is Your State DMO?” have been completed and they are published here.  We have had some great feedback on the initial rankings and we would like to thank everyone for their interest. Please keep the comments coming, as they will continue to be factors in future measurements.

Initial updates:

-The ranking formula weight was adjusted to recognize the continued growth of Facebook and Flickr. 

-In-links to the site were added as a measurement into the formula and we utilized the Yahoo search engine to measure them.

-All of the evaluations and measurements were done over a 4-day period 

A few updates on the rankings:

-Michigan is the new number one. The in-links measurement, growth in their Facebook Fan page and the addition of a blog all helped them vault from #7 to #1.

-Michigan lead with way with in-links back to its michigan.org domain with more than 250,000.

-Michigan has a large lead in Facebook, followed by Tennessee and Nevada.

-Arizona leads the way in Twitter, followed by Oregon and Indiana.

-Several states were tied for the number one spot in Flickr with a score of 18. We will continue to evaluate and adjust the scoring weight on Flickr as it is the largest in pure volume of content.

-Florida and Michigan were tied for the top spot on YouTube presence.

For the full rankings, link to - http://budurl.com/HowSocialStateDMO2   

Now, on to a few disclaimers:

-Gammet Interactive is a Michigan based organization, but does not directly consult on or work on any of the social media programs conducted by the state of Michigan or any of the other 49 states.

-If we missed a state’s presence on a specific social media site, the measurement may have come before the organization had a presence on that site or we could not locate the specific page or link. Please forward us the link and we will happy to include it in the next ranking.

This is also called social media for a reason. Your thoughts and comments are important as we tweak the process.  Looking forward to hearing from you! 

How Social is Your Michigan DMO?

Based on our “How Social is Your State DMO?” platform, we have compiled the first rankings for the state of Michigan.  

All 48 Convention and Visitors Bureaus in the state were evaluated and ranked.  One key item to conducting an accurate measurement is the window of time window which the evaluation takes place. We are working hard to improve efficiencies and have ranked this group in a 10-day period, compared to the 21-day period of the first state DMO study.  The future goal will be to complete the measurement in 3-days or less to be sure it is as accurate as possible.

As far as the Michigan rankings go, here are a few highlights:

- Grand Rapids – www.visitgrandrapids.org – has secured the number one spot, edging Detroit – www.visitdetroit.com - by 9 points.

- The Upper Pennisula – www.uptravel.com – has significant traction in terms of Facebook presence, soaring above all other state destinations.

- Grand Rapids - www.visitgrandrapids.org – and Lansing – www.lansing.org – lead the way on Twitter.

- Grand Rapids – www.vsitgrandrapids.org – and the Upper Pennisula – www.uptravel.com - both scored well on Flickr.

- Detroit – www.visitdetroit.com – has a commanding lead in YouTube videos.

- Sault Ste. Marie – www.saultstemarie.com – and Grand Rapids – www.visitgrandrapids.org - scored the highest in terms of blog presence.

To view the entire “How Social is Your Michigan DMO?” study and rankings, visit this link - http://budurl.com/HowSocialMIDMO .

UPDATE-8/19: The rankings for the Ann Arbor CVB were modified to recognize their blog presence through their news feed and updates section. We have acknowledged this information as adequate content with other organizations and want to remain consistent in this set of rankings.

How Social is Your State DMO?

Over the past year, I’ve received countless questions about “Which tourism organization does the best social media marketing?”  After reviewing the social media presence of many state, local and regional destination marketing organizations, I could never reach a conclusion on who does it best.  What I found was, many organizations do some things really well, but there were very few organizations that do everything well.

In response to that continual query, I worked out a 12-point algorithm with more than 28 different categories to measure.  The primary points were chosen and weighted due to the social media outlet popularity and its impact on tourism.  

We then attempted to apply the algorithm to all of the official destination marketing organizations in the country. What we found was, without specific urls, page links on sites like YouTube, or user names on Twitter, the scale of that project was not realistic.  We were spending too much unproductive search time without accurate results.

We then chose a clear subset of data, the 50 official state tourism offices. Hence the title, “How Social is Your State DMO?”  Even though we had a clear target, many organizations still either did not have an official social media presence recognized on their web sites or did not have a presence on the social media outlets we measured.  In an effort to confirm the organization’s social media presence, we  set up a consistent, four-step search process with relative keywords in an attempt to find the “the official YouTube page of the destination”.  

After a measurement period of 21-days and a few weeks of checks and re-checks, we came up with our rankings.  If you follow this link- http://budurl.com/HowSocialStateDMO -you will be able to see the rankings we developed for the top 50 state tourism offices and see the scores recorded for each individual state in our “How Social is Your State DMO?” project.

Now, on to a few quick disclaimers.  If we missed a state’s presence on a specific social media site, the measurement may have come before the organization had a presence on that site or we could not locate the specific page or link.  It would be nice if we could begin developing a comprehensive list of all social media outlet pages that can be shared with colleagues and peers.  

We don’t claim that this is the one and only “report” or “ranking”.  We think it may be the first published comprehensive measurement for destinations’ presence on social media sites, but it is just the beginning.  Each time we do this, the algorithm will need to be adjusted based on growth and I am sure we will add or change some of the measurement criteria.  We have a lot of ideas on how this can be done with convention and visitors bureaus, hotels and resorts; but it can’t be done without your feedback and input.   It is called social media for a reason and your thoughts and comments are important as we tweak the process.  Looking forward to hearing from you!

Panoramio: Better Reach for Travelers than Flickr?

We all know about Flickr and the amount of traffic that the site receives from image posters and photo seekers.  There is another site that carries as much or more influence in the travel space - Panoramio – which is part of the Google family. 

Here is why.   First, we’re seeing a rise in traffic to mapping sites such as Google Earth and Google Maps. The summer issue of the State of the American Traveler Report states that more than 19% of all online travel planners have used an online 3-D mapping such as Google Earth.  Recent traffic reports have shown that Google Maps have generated 71.5 million visits per month and is currently the 22nd most popular web site in the country.

Images on Google Earth Maps are furnished by Panoramio.  In addition, Google Maps has added an option to view photos on the screens of their mapping program.  Those photos are also provided by Panoramio.

On the Google Maps screen you will see a “More” button in the top right navigation.  Click on the more button and you will have two options: Photos, Videos and Wikipedia.   When you choose the photo option, you will see images populated from Panoramio site.  If you choose the Wiki option, you will see several “W”’s all representing entries from Wikipedia in those specific locations and video shows popular videos loaded to YouTube.

Panoramio images have also been recently integrated in to the new Yahoo Glue application - see this Glue page from the city of Philadelphia.  And, early test searches have shown that the Panoramio photos were getting better placement on the results pages than Flickr images (owned by Yahoo).

A few tips when uploading your images to Panoramio:

• Be sure they are geo tagged on the map, so they appear in the proper location.
• Add a description to the photo so visitors can identify where it is or what is happening.
• Add tags so it can be searched or found via keywords.

eMarketing Insight Conference, DayTwo - Martin Stoll, Social Networking and UGC

Martin Stoll of the GoSeeTravel Network gave us an excellent overview of Social Media.  Here are a few bullets:

- Social media is huge - 175,000 new blogs; 50,000 YouTube  uploads; 400,000 Flickr photos; and 100,000 new profiles on Facebook – each day.

- Online and social networking is all about choice.

- Don’t be brand jacked, register your profile and brand on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, etc.

- Learn Twitter now.  Principle for social media go beyond each outlet.  Twitter is a good application to enter the social media marketplace.

- Check out a “Tweet Up” – it’s a meeting of Twitter users in your local area.

- Be confident in your destination.  Provide the venue for your consumers to discuss their travel experiences and use that to help you market through social media.

- Use Tweetburner to track links on Twitter and TwitPics to upload images via Twitter.

The afternoon will be a scramble, as I will be delivering two presentations.  Check out Bill Geist's blog for more updates from today.

e-Marketing Conference - Session Two, Online Advertising

Session Two – Online Advertising with Tania Leichliter, Principal at AdGenuity Marketing Solutions Inc. located in Boston. Here are some tidbits:

- Your online advertising has to reflect how you want the consumer to engage.   Online advertising needs a strong call to action.    Good engagement, proper placement and strong call to action can generate click thrus up to 5.5% in online display advertising. 

- Brickfish.com – is doing some very interesting applications for San Diego and pushing consumers to the Travelocity landing page.  Interesting partnership between two organizations – especially an OTA. 

- Mobile travel deals - create engagement from your audience.   Use opt-in, then communicate deals and information when people travel around town.   Tania uses www.hipcricket.com. 

- e-Mail marketing is an excellent way to develop strong relationships with your customers.  Don’t feel pressured to always send an offer.  Send a thank you after they visit.

- Ad networks – geo targeting based on geographic and behavioral information.   If you are not targeting today, you are missing the boat.  Remember that not all ad networks are alike.  Be sure to discuss their process and consumer modeling when working with them. 

- Print ads don’t translate into online ads.  Online advertising success depends on the redesign of the creative.

Some more photos from Flickr.  Also, be sure to check out Bill Geist's Blog for more.

Session One – Online Travel Planning Trends and Consumer Usability

Erin Francis-Cummings goes over the State of the American Traveler Report.  See Twitter for a few take aways.

Then David Bratton provides a few tips for destination web sites:

-          - There is no substitute for impactful photography.  Suggestion: Check out Flickr and use some images from others, get permission and publish.

-          - Video is cool…if it is cool. Suggestion: Browse YouTube for authentic content if you can’t generate it. 

Ma- Maps are key. Suggestion: Google Earth is real cool and popular, but the Google mapping API is a great tool for destination sites.   A must add.

-       - Users are not Tech Geeks. Suggestion: Usability tests are important to learn what the consumer knows, then remember to keep it simple.

-        - Online RFP’s Suck.  Suggestion: Give meeting planners the option to send you information the way they want it.

-        -   Do “cute” for your photos, not your naming associations. Suggestion:  Be sure you are speaking the language of the consumer

The session then goes online with Erin for live usability testing.   Live look at the Knoxville, TN CVB site.  The consumer tester was looking for maps on the site.  Also, on an event, the tester wanted to see pictures of the event, especially the last few times it was held.

On to Lake County, Il.  Consumer was unsure of where it was located – time to start thinking about the re-branding of county named DMOs.   Tester finds the blog and assumes a past visitor, not the DMO, created it.

A few photos on Flickr.

e-Marketing Insight Conference: Interview - David Bratton on Research

I had the chance to catch up with David Bratton of Destination Analysts prior to his session today, here is a recap of our conversation:

DS: How has web 2.0 changed research?

DB: We’ve put a lot of work into our online web usability testing product.  It is all done online and the advantage for customers is it is about half the price of standard lab research.  It takes less time and users are more comfortable in their own environment which leads to better data.   We record all the testing segments and then break them into clips for presentations for the DMO and their stakeholders.

We just did one in Juno, Alaska. It was an interesting project.  Their target market was an older segment and we needed to find older individuals and see how they accesses the web for travel information.   It was very enlightening.

DS: What sort of changes have you seen in the market?

DB: Research is very valuable and people haven’t  had access to all of this data in the past.  Many have not even used online surveys before.  But now, people are realizing that the web site is their most important marketing tool and consumer feedback is very important to make it more marketable.  Today, you can’t just throw something up there and hope it will work.

Through all this work, we have found commonalities that consumers want in all DMO web sites. We will share some of those with the group today.

DS: How about one example?

DB: A lot of DMO’s have many audiences to serve with multi points of information on the site.   Destinations use their own terminology, for example, "expert opinions".   To the DMO, that means people who are familiar with the destination providing feedback and information to the visitor. But the consumer may not really understand what that means and they don’t engage.  We make too many assumptions that consumers are tech savvy and know our world, but many don’t.  When we make things too cute, we lose some potential visitors.

DS: How about one recommendation on building a better consumer friendly web site?

DB: You need to understand what your consumer wants.  Consistently survey your consumer through online surveys and usability testing to find out what works and what doesn’t.

More to come throughout the day....

 

E-Marketing Insight Program - Day One Preview

We’re in Providence and getting ready to kick-off the 5th Annual e-Marketing Insight Conference at the Renaissance Hotel – kind of a cool property, an old Masonic Temple converted to a hotel.

     

I had the great pleasure to work with about 20 destination marketers yesterday afternoon during a segment on Strategic Internet Marketing at the Certified Destination Management Executive program. We tackled a number of issues, but the underlying theme was to understand what is available to you in terms of online marketing and social media, and then, determine what fits into the profile of your visitor.    One thing was very clear - due to the multiple mediums, segmentations are shrinking and marketers have to work very hard to meet the consumer’s needs.  The vast majority of the group acknowledges the direction we discussed is very accurate, but there are struggles with execution, proper budget allocations and internal staffing limitations.   I came across an article this morning that complements our discussion.

The e-Marketing Insight program officially begins at 1:00 pm on Wednesday.  David Bratton and Erin Francis Cummings, of Destination Analysts will lead-off the conference.  They  are making the cross-country journey from San Francisco to talk about online travel trends and explain the process of consumer web site usability studies.   David will provide some additional insight on the semi-annual State of the American Traveler Report and discuss other trends influencing online travel planning.   Erin will provide attendees with a live version of a consumer usability study – which may be an tourism educational conference first .  Attendees will have the opportunity to see consumers work through a destination web site in real-time. 

The second session will be conducted by Tania Leichliter, of AdGenuity Marketing Solutions, Inc. which is located in nearby Boston, MA.    Based on her experience at Travelocity and current knowledge built in her own consulting practice, Tania will teach attendees how to effectively deliver their destination’s online marketing message through advertising and partnerships – along with some key advice on working with networks and online agencies.

Blog updates will becoming live from the conference tomorrow afternoon , along with some "tweets".   We will list some of the other Twitter user names tomorrow so you can follow us from where ever you are.  Looking forward to Day 1!