The CleanPix Blog

Back from a conference in San Francisco dedicated to Social Media where, I must say, I learned a few things, or perhaps, I learned new questions? Here was a group of 200 or so participants that for the most part remained wired to their laptops as they followed the guest speakers. Many were blogging or twittering (tweeting) live at the conference proceedings. Twittering during a presentation is a good thing.

…an audience twittering or typing away as you talk is generally a good thing. It means you’re saying something that people want to share.
- Matt Eliot Sorry but I might just twitter during your presentation

Between sessions, you guessed it, many were networking, not with present peers but, rather, with those “elsewhere”, via their Berrys or smart-phones. The question that comes to mind is: Since the networking seems to operate mostly online, is there a reason why such a conference is not simply set up as a webinar? Funny enough, participants did set online meetings with one another, and during coffee breaks exchange a few words person to person…cool! So there was a reason the event took place in San Francisco and many of us flew a 1000+ miles to “see and to be seen”.

And yes, as an exhibitor at the event, we did speak to participants and also to travel writers, who took a minute to register themselves on pressuite.com. One blogger journalist said: “Wow you mean that I can go there and find news ideas and a lot of photos to match, and it’s free? Can I repurpose it on my web post?” The answer is yes, this is what it is all about.

The Role of Traditional Media

This brings us to the the big question. Are journalists, traditional media journalists, active in Social Media? Squeezing a second of attention between 2 twitter lines, I put the question to a few panelists and attendees. Here are the two types answers I got: A) “Journalist are looking for leads. Many stories we see in main stream publications like Times, CNN, etc., originate from there.” B) “We do not have the time or money to interact with conventional media journalists, they are too slow on the uptake.” Of course this was a Social Media conference, what was I to expect! Reality is that many players in traditional media are also operating on the web and already for quite some time. That said, being present on web should not be construed as a measure of their Social Media engagement. Engaging in these terms requires a cultural shift that perhaps translates as anarchy to the conventional corporate wisdom of ROI. There is, too, the fear of loss of control in communication protocols resulting from the speed of engagement inherent to Social Media.

Monetizing Social Media

One of the fundamental aspects of monetizing Social Media appears to find its appeal in bypassing altogether the traditional broadcasting stream of paid advertising or, for that matter, the need to be noticed at all by traditional media (TV or print). Publicizing might as well operate totally online and bank on free (for now) Social Media applications and their users. Conscientious feedback from the conference spells out the rules: Get bloggers to talk about you, forget the press! (Don’t dare say that!) Get posts started by your own clients, publish them at no cost, get your fans to publicize you and credit them for it, start your own virtual fan club. The buzzwords are “aggregate” and “engage”. These apply equally well to online tools and tactics as to your own virtual fan club.

In brief, go directly to your clients, and make them not customers but, rather, treat them as guests of your enterprise (a “vocabulary” tip from WestJet’s Catherine Dyer on corporate culture). Here are some travel/tourism enterprises working the space: Trip Advisor, Lonely Planet, Uptake, Yelp, Mobissimo, etc., and, yes, the traditional ink-on-paper media are also going Social, but a step behind.

Experiment or not, but familiarize yourself first

Should you be experimenting or not in Social Media? Is it true that the first to move in will have more of the pie? Let’s ask the experts? But according to Jeff Hanson (Regional Director of Marketing & eCommerce – Western Region, Marriott International), “…there is no expert!“. That said, everyone in the panels agreed that, before taking the plunge, it is best to learn the about the waters first.

Here’s a start:

Social Media Introduction for the Travel & Tourism Industry by Evo Terra. Evo goes over some of the basic questions many people have about how to get started with Social Media (flash presentation).