Sheila's Guide To The Good Stuff

I’m getting cranky about how some folks misuse the acronym ROI (Return on Investment) particularly with regard to the ROI of social media and bloggers.

ROI is a mathematical formula, with results usually expressed as a percentage.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Here it is in its simplest form:

(Return – Investment)
________________
Investment

You cannot determine ROI until you have data for the Return (results) part of the equation, and you must also accurately track the many things that go into your Investment. There’s money, but there’s also time, number of staff members required, etc.

To measure the ROI of, say, a blogger outreach program, you must have:

1) Predetermined goals for your investment of time, money and effort, and….

2) Predetermined metrics (KPIs or Key Performance Indicators) that you’re going to use to measure whether or not you are reaching those goals.

If you do not have all that, then any tossed-off mention of “ROI” is, well, mostly horse manure (see illustrative image above in case there’s any confusion or misunderstanding.)

This is lazy business thinking, and it’s also often a smoke screen for not setting sensible, clear goals ahead of social media efforts, and then digging through the data without twisting it to make it say what you’d like it to say.

ROI = “Really Outrageously Ignorant”

It’s also a way for some who do not understand the social web to sound like they’re making tough, practical business decisions when in fact they don’t know much about this new online and mobile world of ours, but are loathe to let anyone know of their ignorance.

When someone asks me an unfocused question like, “What’s the ROI of one of your travel blog posts?” I immediately know that they do not know what the hell they’re talking about.

If instead, for example, you tell me that you want the content from a blogger fam tour or press trip to your destination to:

—->>  Achieve a goal of increased interest in your destination, measured by….

—->>  KPI #1 of “X” amount of increased traffic (over a previously measured baseline) to a specific website landing page that you’ve set up with analytics beforehand and told the bloggers the URL, and ….

—->>  KPI #2 of “X” amount of conversions from that landing page traffic; conversions defined as, say, downloads of your tourism brochure or signups for your email newsletter….

THEN we can talk sensibly and accurately about the ROI of my blog posts and other online publishing, and whether bloggers are worth your time and effort.

How are you handling the often-thorny ROI issue? Let’s talk in the comments below!

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It’s been a few weeks since the inaugural tourism bloggers conference in Malaysia (MITBCA 2012), but now that I’ve stopped running around the globe for a few days, here are some takeaway thoughts:

**  The Minister of Tourism for Malaysia, YB Dato’ Sri Dr Ng Yen Yen, can rattle off statistics about the social media spend by her neighboring countries, and she’s quite comfortable discussing how Facebook, Twitter and blogs can help tourism in Malaysia. Leadership starts at the top, and she made the conference happen (even hand-selected some speakers, I’ve heard. Glad I made the cut!) A CVB, DMO or Tourist Board should not have to drag the boss along to the future of communications; I loved being someplace where it was quite the opposite.

**  The future of CVB and DMO staffs, in many cases, are the students who are currently taking college courses in tourism, recreation and hospitality. At MITBCA, the Minister herself insisted that local tourism students attend, plus as many of her own staff members as she could spare.  Just because students may use social media for personal communication does not mean that they understand how to use the same tools for destination marketing with a worldwide reach.

**  The opportunity to connect and develop friendships with fellow bloggers from Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Australia and more was simply priceless.  I’m deeply grateful to have had the opportunity.

**  My Day Two keynote talked about “regular folks” who understood the power of social media early on, and have raised the profile of their town/country by using it in a personable way. Folks like Cody Heitschmidt in Hutchinson, Kansas, Liza Pierce in Maui, Hawaii, Doug Anweiler with the Authentic Seacoast Resorts in Nova Scotia, Canada, and the #ScotlandHour chat on Twitter. One of the highlights of that session was when both Cody and Doug jumped into the #MITBCA2012 hashtag during and after my presentation, and responded to the attendees who were tweeting that I was talking about them.  I did not expect such a quick response (Liza chimed in later from Maui because of the time difference) but it made a HUGE impression on the conference that those two guys were paying attention and were happy to converse with everyone.

**  I’m just me, no big deal, but at this event I was an “international expert.” I mean, I know some stuff, but I did feel a little odd when people lined up to speak to me. Finally I decided to quit feeling awkward about the hoopla, answer every question as best I could, and humbly accept that I’d become something of a guide and mentor to a few lovely people.

**  If I’m going to do more speaking at international events (and I’d love to!) I’d better figure out how to get around jet lag a little better. Of my two keynote presentations, I felt that the first one was weaker than the second because I was in a bit of a fog and a couple of times I caught myself not moving very logically from one point to another. Note to self: do extra rehearsals when you know that jet lag will hit. I literally MUST be able to “do the speech in my sleep.”

Here are some of the wrap-up blog posts by my fellow speakers and attendees; I do recommend that you take a look at a few, because they provide some wonderful additional perspective on this special conference:

—>>  From Indian travel blogger and conference speaker Anuradha Goyal, on the event as a Malaysia Marvel

—>>  From TravelBlog founder, adventurer and event sponsor Ali Watters, on his ….first big conference after “10 years of hiding on islands or mountain tops”

—>>  From a local tour guide: MITBCA coverage and impressions by the owner of Alan’s Malaysia Tours & Travel

—>>  From speaker Shane Dallas, “The Travel Camel,” his delightful Confessions of a Briefly Famous Travel Blogger

—>>  From attendee Jessica Tan, “The JessiCat”, full coverage plus photos of the MITBCA Blog Awards and evening gala event

—>>  Attendee Emila Yusof found the conference an eye-opener

—>>  Speaker Nisha Jha from India thoroughly enjoyed her MITBCA experience

—>>  Thoughts from one of the blogging award winners on MITBCA

—>>  I had fun meeting one of the bloggers who had commented on my original announcement post, Zahari Unczee who wrote about the conference on his ….as I travel blog

—>>  (Addition)  Media Monitors/Asia had a Global Connections post about MITBCA

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There’s a lot of buzz about the infographic to the left that shows many of the different social media marketing-related tools and services that have sprung up in the last few years.

Note:  it is missing Pinterest and Foodspotting, and possibly others.

Some say that the image demonstrates how “insane” and “ludicrously complex” it is to be a marketer these days.

I say that it’s not much different from the horrified squawking we heard when Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas created the original big, scary social media Conversation Prism infographic in August 2008.

To see the big picture in all this, stick with the forest and not the trees. That infographic is a bunch of trees.

Focus on the Fundamentals

Yes, there are a lot more moving parts in the communications world today beyond print, TV and radio, but that does not change the fundamental questions and actions for destination marketing or ANY sort of marketing, which are….

“Where is my market spending its time, and how are they making decisions about travel [or whatever is your focus]?” and then making sure you are both present where they are, and visible as an option in their decision-making process.

That is not new, but the speed with which you must flex to emerging communications platforms is new; the rapid growth of Pinterest and social mobile photography sharing like Instagram and Foodspotting are cases in point.

Don’t let new toys distract you from keeping your eye on the ball, however.

I hardly spend any time on Google+, for example, (in fact I think Google+ will fail) because my market is not there. Further, Google has a crummy track record with social, and their corporate DNA hasn’t changed since Buzz, Wave, Sidewiki, Knol, etc. all bombed.

What IS Google good at? Search.

I’ve acknowledged that current reality by thoroughly filling out both personal and business profiles on G+ purely for SEO purposes, and occasionally I post something on G+ just for drill. I will not let myself get sidetracked fiddling with something that is useless to my work.

Social Media Complexity & the ROI Bugaboo

Another response I heard about the graphic: “This shows why ROI is hard to prove.” Hmmm, not really.

The standard ROI mathematical formula has not changed; it is still Investment Gains minus Cost of Investment, divided by Cost of Investment.

Whether you use one of the infographic’s tools or all of them, you cannot measure Gains – your investment bringing positive results – or decide whether those results are worth the cost you must pay unless you first establish goals to achieve, and then choose metrics/KPIs to track to see if you’re achieving those goals.

The need to have goals, and metrics to measure progress toward goals, is not changed by some scary-looking pile of social media tools and platforms.

And no;  raw numbers of Facebook Page or Twitter followers do not prove anything except perhaps the ROI of an elementary school education – we can successfully count!  :)

Sorry, But Suck It Up

It is our J-O-B job to stay up to speed in our profession.  To do that for social media, find scouts and mentors who can alert you to potentially important developments, track of-the-moment info via conference and chat Twitter hashtags and go where the geeks are both online and offline to keep up.

If you looked at the infographic above and hardly recognized any of the services, that means you need a better way to stay plugged in to social communications developments, because there aren’t many surprises up there.

Sorry to sound harsh, but there it is.

None of us know everything….it’s the ones who know what they don’t know, and then hustle to intelligently keep filling those knowledge gaps, who will succeed in our complex world.

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Hey, you.

You there, at the CVB or DMO or Tourist Board.

You know all about your town, right?

Awesome, ’cause I’m new here and don’t have much time to see your coolest stuff.

A tailored itinerary list with all kinds of ideas including local, non-chain places to stay, cuisine I can’t get anywhere else, insider tips and a variety of things to do would be super-helpful.

Please give me links and maps, too. I don’t know where things are located, but YOU do.

That PDF itinerary with only a few details, a scanned-in and mostly unreadable map, no links and with “2008″ at the top….plus cheesy stock photos of plastic people?

Not real helpful, thanks.

Love, Your Visitor.

(See more Lolcats and funny pictures)

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Does your organization have a plan in place for content creation and social media monitoring during holidays and weekends?

You know….that time when people travel to your destination, stay in your hotel, look for things to do, places to eat, etc.?

Is someone “answering the social media phone” during those times?

Customer Service

The social web is a place to put content, sure, but it is also becoming a place where you must be ready to provide customer service.

Visitors and guests expect that someone will answer their questions and respond to them even when it’s your “day off.” It’s not much fun for the destination marketer or hotelier but it is what it is; you’ve got to plan for it.

Working one person to death on social media because everyone else waves their hands helplessly and says, “Oh, but I’m not a techie!” is horse manure.

I’d say, cross-train your staff in social media for tourism to build a deeper bench.

Answer The Social Media Phone

Holidays and weekends are a massive opportunity to:

1)  Make solid connections with new visitors.

2)  Reconnect with and welcome those former locals who are returning home for a visit.

3)  Reconnect with and welcome repeat visitors who are not new to your destination/hotel, but ARE new to your Facebook Page, Twitter account or blog.

4)  Chat online with those “expats” who aren’t physically in town but are talking on social media about their memories of you; they would love it if you’d say hello in response.

You can build a whole army of supporters who will go back home and sing your praises, online and off.

Or, you could “not answer the phone.”

Your call.

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In today’s world of free, easy-to-use networking tools with worldwide reach, associations and other fee-based groups (like a member-based DMO) must prove their value over and over to those who pay membership dues.

I was acutely conscious of this when I joined the AWC (Association for Women in Communications) National Board of Directors in the fall of 2011;  I asked the Board to let me see how we could use social media tools to foster a better, more valued sense of AWC community at the national level.

One of the things I really wanted to do was to start an #awcchat on Twitter.

Those of you who know me, know that I’m a big fan of Twitter, where I’ve been @SheilaS  since September 2007.

It’s one of the most powerful professional development tools I’ve ever encountered, particularly because of the regularly scheduled Twitter chats on many different topics. For my own business, #tourismchat is invaluable. The US National Trust for Historic Preservation runs #builtheritage. For farmers, ranchers and rural people, it’s #agchat. For bloggers it’s #blogchat. And so on….

I wanted a place to discuss general communications issues, and I wanted it to involve not only AWC chapters and members, but anyone who wanted to participate. By making it an open chat, it could not only nurture the current AWC community, but might also draw new members and make people more aware of us.

The Board agreed, so I canvassed the people I know who run chats, got some advice and set up an @AWCchat Twitter account as a first step.

[For the rest of this post, please see The Best Hour of Your Week: #awcchat on Twitter on the AWC Austin blog, and thanks for your interest!]

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After a thoroughly enjoyable day speaking and participating in Dell’s pre-SXSW Unconference for Small Business, I was asked at the after party why we at Tourism Currents feel so strongly that technology and social media can be helpful for tourism and hospitality.

Here’s my answer (despite bronchitis!) in less than 2 minutes:

(Direct link to the video on Dell’s Vimeo channel if you can’t see the embed box below)

Thanks, Dell, for bringing us into your “house” to talk business and make new friends.

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Yes, Facebook is bringing its new Timeline feature over to business and brand Pages. This was expected to happen sometime after Timeline came to personal Facebook profiles.

Yes, the explanatory posts are already hot-n-heavy for how to prepare for Page changes.

One change that everyone notes is that Page Admins won’t have a choice of landing tabs (for Welcome landing pages or marketing campaigns of various sorts.) Like-ers will go straight to your Wall.

I’m not convinced that much of any of this really matters (yes, I’m an Admin for many Pages) and here is why :

1)  Most activity and interaction with your community takes place on the News Feed, and hardly ever on your Wall once your new supporter presses that Like button.  Your presence on the News Feed is driven by the EdgeRank of each of your updates, which is a bit of a crapshoot similar to SEO for search engines.  Basically, the Wall is really not that important except for initial impressions.

2)  Most failures I see on Facebook Pages have everything to do with lack of interaction, no strategic planning and abandoned Pages with no updates for months, and little to do with how your Page is tricked out. Brands and businesses get on Facebook without a plan, can’t figure out how or why to build or sustain community, and then they flame out. There isn’t a Page tweak in the world that can save them.

3)  I fundamentally do not care about Facebook.  Any significant effort expended there benefits founder Mark Zuckerberg’s newly-IPO’d pockets, not mine. All of the 1,000+ lovely Like-ers on our Tourism Currents Page could go “poof!” tomorrow and we’d have no say in it. The only data and community that we have any control over are our Tourism Currents clients and our email list.  We are VERY careful to only allow double opt-in subscribers to our list, and we are super-picky about what we send to them. The fact that they’ve shared their email address means a lot to us. Growing that list – plus improving and enriching our website, online course offerings and monthly newsletter – are what we do care about, because we have complete control over all of it.

Never let your interaction with customers, visitors or guests be controlled by someone or something that is out of your hands. The day Mr. Zuckerberg’s machinations drive the success or failure of my business is the day my business partner Becky McCray should shoot me over a cliff, Thelma and Louise style.

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This is a guest post by Chris Fancher, educator and speaker. He’s also my husband, and I thought his recent experience at a destination was worth sharing, so I pestered asked him to give me a writeup.

Sometimes you just need a little help from a local.

Earlier this month I attended EduCon 2012 held at the Science Leadership Academy (SLA) in Philadelphia. The last time I was in the city for any length of time was in the early 90′s, and I have never been there for more than 4 or 5 hours.  I knew that when I arrived at the airport, I would need to figure out how to get to my hotel and then to the conference venue.

My first thought was that the hotel would have information about getting around town and, at a minimum, would have straightforward directions on their website for traveling from the airport to the hotel. But, I was sadly mistaken – I couldn’t find anything labeled “how to get here” or “directions.”

Another option and a great resource is the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation;  Caroline from the GPTMC tweets at @VisitPhilly.  I did the “Hi, I’m looking forward to coming to your town” tweet and she quickly said Hi back, and said I should ask for anything I needed and she’d be available to help.

The last option I looked at was the EduConcierge from the EduCon web page. Since the conference is being held at a high school, they use students for their concierge staff….and they are amazing.

They had already created directions to the subway from each of the four main conference hotels. They had directions posted for driving into the city, getting in from the airport and even arriving via the Amtrak station.

The student running the @EduConcierge account tweeted that they had upgraded their EduConcierge Central website and those following the account should look it over. I did, loved what I saw and I thanked them in a tweet. They immediately said, “No problem!” and told me they were there for us any time, so I asked about the walk from my hotel to the Science Leadership Academy. They said it was a short walk of 6 blocks and that they walk it all the time. They also suggested that if it is cold or there is bad weather, I could take the Trolley.

The next thing I knew, they had sent a Twitpic of the Trolley line map from the station with arrow annotations explaining that I could walk above ground to the station, or I could go below the street through another route to get to the station.

That simple Twitpic, as they say, was worth a thousand words.

I now had an idea of not only the direction to the conference from my hotel, but I also knew how to get to the Trolley station above or below ground.

Why can’t hotels and CVBs also provide this simple assistance to their guests?

It took only a few minutes to take the picture and annotate it with arrows, but it saved me hours of frustration from trying to figure these things out on my own.

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A good pitch is timely, short, punchy and answers the question WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?) for the recipient.

If this sounds familiar, it should. A good pitch to bloggers is very much like a good pitch to any media person.

At BlogWorld and New Media Expo West in Los Angeles, I talked to Jared Degnan from Brandware Public Relations about pitching bloggers….the video is about a minute long, and here’s the direct link to it on YouTube in case you can’t see the embed box below.

Did I get it right, or was I too simplistic?  Leave a reply down in the comments….thanks!

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