ReviewPro

This week in San Francisco, we would like to have productive brainstorming at EyeForTravel’s Social Media Strategies for Travel conference. To encourage that, I wanted to suggest a few discussion topics.

1 - How do consumers want to interact with hotel and travel brands in social media?

Are they just using social media to socialize? Are they making decisions based on blog articles, tweets and Facebook posts? Or do they view social networks as exclusively a customer service channel for companies?

2 - How does the social customer of today make buying decisions?

And to follow up with that: how do we provide the right information at the right time to assist them with that decision? The goal is to reach people at the right point in the buying cycle with the right message.

3 - How do we avoid chaos and data overwhelm?

People are living their lives online, and increased cross-posting and integration is making the volume of social data explode right now. How can we find the nuggets of gold in this social data without becoming overwhelmed? How do we separate signal from noise?

4 - How can we leverage technology to gain insights from customer feedback?

What tools and products do we need? Which ones will make us more efficient, and which ones will just add one more thing to our routines with no meaningful benefits? Do we know what criteria to use?

5 - How do we get buy-in and participation from the whole team?

Not just for investment decisions from management, but for commitment company-wide for using social technology in day-to-day jobs.

How do we demonstrate the value of new media, and then create systems and processes that make participation easy?

6 - How do we manage all this with limited time?

Few organizations have a dedicated team for social media. And even those that do often find it more powerful to spread social participation throughout the organization. So the big question is how do we balance all the priorities that compete for our time?

7 - Which activities will yield the highest results?

Given our objectives, which social media initiatives should be pursued? How do we leverage the 80/20 rule to maximize results for time spent?

8 - How can we start thinking on a global scale, and capitalize on new opportunities internationally?

It’s not just a domestic game anymore. International travel continues to increase, and how can we prepare our companies for that?

9 - What is going to give me the competitive edge?

What skills and technologies do our hotels have to acquire to build customer loyalty and increase revenue?

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[Photo credits: Darwin Bell]