on 26 January 2010Tour operator First Choice has taken the offbeat step of laying open its lack of a social media strategy and saying it will now have one thanks to a tie-in with a specialist agency.
The TUI-owned operator has appointed Brighton, UK-based NixonMcInnes to develop and run its social media “as the company looks to increase customer engagement and brand consideration”.
To some extent First Choice has mirrored sister brand Thomson until now, throwing videos into a YouTube channel and having internal buzz monitoring systems in place to track mentions, comments, posts et al on the web.
Head of TUI Travel online marketing, Nathan Timmins, says its previous efforts with social media have been experimental.
The operator also has a low-key presence on Facebook with a page attracting around 25 fans and has run competitions on the Mumsnet social network.
But while Thomson has been active (in terms of trying to engage) with users on Twitter through its @thomsonholidays account, First Choice has so far shied away.
NB: @firstchoice belongs to a non-travel individual user.
First Choice is NixonMcInnes second travel client, having previously worked with Thomas Cook brand Neilsen Holidays for a web design project.
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Don’t know if this is the first rule but starting to get serious about the topic of brand monitoring, social web measurement and reputation management is becoming a key element of corporate strategy going forward. Even the travel industry, usually lagging in embracing innovative tools of any kind, will start to catch up and get on with it.
I certainly think that social media is the new lexicon in the travel industry and most companies are considering an integrated marketing and PR approach for 2010.
That said, I question how many people really understand what the term means or how to use it effectively! I suppose it’s about not using social media as an overt sales tool and instead simply joining in some of the conversations that are happening in the industry rather than interrupting them.
I think the advent of social media certainly creates a new platform for communication but businesses need to make sure they weigh up the return on investment as it can be a time consuming task!
It is certainly a sign of the times that any PR proposal I submit will have a mandatory section dedicated to the social media – the reality is only an integrated strategy will work and the campaigns you are working on offline are easily transferable.
Online marketing for many is a bold step in to the unknown and often companies forget to consider who they are trying to talk to, what they are looking to achieve and how they are going to measure it.
I’ll be really interested to see where we are at toward the end of 2010 and specifically whether any of the travel businesses are able to equate a contribution of their bookings to their activities online.
Yep, at least until an organisation announcing they’re going to implement a social media strategy stops being news.
Pretty much all our clients have integrated elements of social media in their marketing strategies, because it’s become an integral part of marketing.
It’s fair enough here as First Choice is so huge, and has been moving so slowly on this front, but I often get annoyed when I see a news item about a company starting an SM strategy. To me it’s like announcing they have a marketing strategy. ‘News: company plans to communicate with it’s customers’… so they weren’t doing that before?
Kevin, I just saw this, but full credit to you for getting it out earlier. I was thinking along similar lines – is intention really news?