Online Engagement is not a “bolt on”

Seth’s blog today called “Hammer Time” basically hits the nail (sorry for the pun!) that organisations are failing to adapt to the changes in the market (and marketing) created by the rapid emergence of social media.

Funnily enough, I riffed a little differently on the “Hammer” idea as regards social media in a blog last month.

Anyway, just yesterday I answered a question on  LinkedIn group where a hotelier was asking specific questions on how they can use social media with their marketing. Read on…. Seth and I think alike on this one, though my points were specific to the hotel business, read my blog in conjunction with his and you can see my thoughts on hotels and social media can be applied widely.

LinkedIn post Nov 12th :

Rather than answer the questions specifically, I would rather give a more general response.

I’m a self-avowed early adopter / internet geek, but I’ve also worked with hotels, airlines, tourism organisations in this internet age whose limited budgets have meant that my focus with them has always been on “guerilla” online marketing. Heck, I was the first Tripadvisor “Destination Expert” for the Cayman Islands.. and that was after I told them I represented a hotel ! As such, I’ve always not only been aware of all the new ideas as they’ve come about, but have also tried them all with various real businesses and tourism organisations.

However, at the current time, I am convinced that we are at a truly “game-changing” moment where the technology matters far less than the content, and who generates that content.

All of that is simply to give background to the following thoughts.

Specific answers to all of the questions raised by the hotel are relatively easy to find….but what worries me very much is the tendency of hotels and tourism organisations to think of social media as the “latest and greatest” thing they can “bolt on” to their existing online marketing strategy.

Social media is, in my opinion, an expression of the transformational change we are seeing where control of content has finally moved into the hands of the user (ask Conde Nast and other travel publishers if this is the case, and they will glumly nod their heads).

We are (with the exception of some isolated pockets) in a global tourism downturn, and the recovery will be slow and painful.

All tourism businesses and organisations should therefore take this opportunity to think truly transformationally about their relationship with their customers. The customer is in control now, it is our job as tourism marketers to help them communicate and to guide the conversation.

Henry Ford once said of the Model T “if I asked my customers what they wanted, I’d have built a faster horse”. Bolting on social media to an existing online marketing campaign is like trying to make your horse go faster while a new highway is being built alongside you.

My advice to hotels, destination marketing organisations and others is to take some time at this critical juncture to stop, think, and reassess their whole approach to what I refer to as “Online Engagement” with their customers.

In closing, taking the reference above to Henry Ford, take a look at this blog from September, in which I riffed on this tweet from @zappos “Embarking on a social media strategy to help w/ marketing is like embarking on a facial muscle strategy to help w/ smiling.” Sometime Twitter helps us nail thoughts SO concisely !