Social media and video markets tourism

Reason why the video podcasts & Social Media can market tourism  successfully:

1. Size of  global online market

2. Social media can add value to companies through increased sales
e.g The local marketing and sales potential of Twitter
In a test run April 23 2009, an exclusive to social media application Twitter promotion  called Tweete Pie brought in 15% of the day’s business for Naked Pizza : source Adage.com. 

3 Twitter beta testing applications for small businesses :source TechCrunch

4.Podcasting  can increase sales by boosting  Google search ranking using  Google video sitemaps (see benefits below)

5. Price: Professional video podcasts can be produced at an affordable price

6  Accessibility and ease of use : dramatic increase in the past 2 years in internet use. Far more likely for users to view on line video content rather than view  a hard copy DVD

7 Expectation: Internet users now expect to be able to veiw video content on internet sites

8.Shift of marketing spend from old media to digital media

9 Global Mapping: A recent initiative by Tourism bodies in Caherciveen in Kerry was to print maps of tourist accommodation and attractions. Google maps is now available in Ireland and can be added to video podcast content allowing internet visitors to pin point exact tourist locations.

The benefits  of video for SEO ranking purposes:

A. Video on independent websites are quickly and heavily indexed and ranked by the major search engines.
B. Advertising: The growth of online video advertising eg hulu.com

Online video after years of being a small player on the web is set to transform the way business and consumers interact in the viral environment. 
Companies are turning to video: 
To keep their employees, clients and shareholders informed 
To provide consumers with real “how to” videos 
To decrease their cost of customer service
To deliver original videos promoting their brands and products 
To form dedicated networks where users  can communicate through video. source itvx.net

Online video has the potential to create a positive brand experience for the customer and develop trust in a product /service
Including videos adds additional ways to optimize  a business’s keywords and phrases. By adding content relevant to  keywords and phrases, combined with the related videos, weight is added  to a business’s site and its content.

C. The video content can be duplicated on 3rd party website such as Youtube without any duplicate content penalties.

D. Allows for more text and pages to optimise  keywords and phrases 

E. Embedding videos in  site pages increases the “stickiness factor” of pages, which can increase both traffic and search rankings for a specific page. Google and most search engines use a variety of factors to determine the ranking importance a specific page online, one of which is average visitor session length on a page. Visitor length on a page can be increased by embedding a video. These longer site visits may be interpreted by Google that the page has increased value and in turn may be given a bump that translates into higher search engine rankings.

F. Choosing a video that is  both themed to a businesses content and informative can help with the “stickiness factor”  as search engines  need something to crawl.

G. As videos  can help in adding new, fresh and dynamic content to the site it is important get  video content found by the search engines. Google has introduced Video Sitemaps that will index the video content. If video files are named correctly this is valuable to the search engines. 

H Videos are now listed in the search engine results pages adding valuable links and alternative sources to brand names and web site.

I. Size of market
The growth of professional online video:
Demand for professionally produced and distributed online video continued unabated in 2008, with cumulative volume advancing 24.3% to 41.6 billion views. Over the past ten years, audiences have accessed 142.7 billion pieces of professionally produced, brand-hosted and distributed video.
Source : AccuStream iMedia Research.

J. Consumers conducting travel research online continue to outnumber those booking online,” says Lynn Franco, Director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center, citing data from a 2007 survey of 10,000 households nationwide. Online travel-related research outpaces actual online buying by two-to-one, Franco says. Which means it is increasingly important for industry websites to grab and keep visitors, and video is one way to accomplish that. source : hotelmarketing.com

K. Video provides that extra level of experience on a website that helps build an emotional connection to the visitor by delivering the full impact of a hotel’s, resort’s or destination’s unique blend of sights and sounds that conveys the feel that is a brands hallmark.
And web videos are now supported by Online Travel Agency websites as well as the websites of hotel, resort, destination or transportation properties. Add that to the increasing amount of consumer-to-consumer and social media in the industry with customers sharing peer-to-peer reviews, assessments, images and stories about their travel experiences and you have a situation tailor-made for the full array of media.
I do think the whole video experience is going to be more and more of a requirement online because people are willing to buy more and more online, but they want to understand, get a better feel of exactly what it is they are buying, said Susan Kidwell of online ad agency AvenueA/Razorfish which handles the Carnival Cruise Line Account, as quoted in iMedia Connection’s Sept. 21, 2007 publication.

L. A significant percentage of traffic now comes to keyworded internal pages, audio and video files through search engines, rather than through the web site’s] front door, says Russell Johnson, President of California-based TravelMedia, which hosts a trade site at travelmedia and a consumer site at connectedtraveler. In August of 2006 he told TravelDailyNews.com, The Web is becoming a collaborative mesh of activity rather than linear portals. Creating video for tourism industry websites and online tourism brochures is even more cost-effective if its part of a broader media plan. source hotelmarketing.com

M. is for social media revolution : http://www.blog4business.com/2009/08/20/social-media-revolution/

N. Twitter is now a search engine: You can find out what customers are talking about you product or service and refine your search geographically to target customers in particular locations

c Mike Kelly www.blog4business.com 2009

Social Media Revolution

Still not convinced of the marketing potential of social media and on line video?
Watch this then and you will be