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?

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.