Taking social media metrics on the road!

Organization Name: tripcentral.ca

Industry: Travel and Tourism

Web references: tripcentral.ca, FaceBook, YouTube, Twitter

Richard Vanderlubbe: President and Co-Founder

Starting out in 1986 as a single travel agency located in Hamilton, Ontario,  Tripcentral.ca has grown to one of the largest travel companies in the province.  They launched a website in 1996 featuring last minute packages and reduced prices on travel.  They revamped the website in 2000 and in 2001 it was re-launched using proprietary software.  As the business grew and retail locations were added, the stores were re-branded as tripcentral.ca.

What are social media metrics and what are some ways to measure them?

There are two main types of social media measurement.  The first type, and maybe the most popular, is continued Analytics.  This type of measurement tracks the social media metrics continually and uses that data to manage and possibly improve all social media activities.  This will help improve the overall impact.  These metrics are necessary for staying on top of the overall plan.  Blogging is a great example of an ongoing process that needs this type of tracking.  There are many ways to help increase blog engagement.  If this  is your your ultimate goal, there are some important tips that need your attention.

1. Try not to obscure your content.  Having ads and popups may hinder the readers ability to find and take in your content.  An example of a blog that I find hard to read and follow is PerezHilton.  There is also the other side that says “if you don’t use popups…you’re an idiot.”  This is quoted from Derek Halpern.  Derek is a marketer and founder of Social Triggers.  In this YouTube video Derek talks about the benefits of popups.  I think that as long as the popup is something that the reader wants, you may be okay.
2. Write about your customer or target’s main interest. In the travel industry, writing about destinations that may be of interest to your target audience will help increase traffic and engage the customer or future customer. The Trip Sense blog does just that.
3. Try to include things that will separate you from the others. Maybe it is a matter of adding something like a video to show a Punta Cana on site review.

4. Include visual screenshots or photographs to help get comments, social shares and links as targets will be excited about the content.

5. Try to back up your post with pertinent data that people will be likely to share.

6.  Make sure you have a decent comment system and ask your targeted customers for engagement at the end of the post.  Tripcentral.ca has a post a reply portal at the end of every post.  Ask them to share on their favorite social media tool.

7.  Now you have to promote your content by using engaging questions like Derek Halpern of Social Triggers uses to promote his blog post.

source: Kissmetrics

In this Foundr Magazine podcast, Derek discusses how to get more traffic, users, sales and conversions.

How does Tripcentral.ca obtain metrics to continually improve as an organization?

In my video interview with Tripcentral.ca president, Richard Vanderlubbe, I touch on how blogging is the most important aspect they use.  They monitor the new traffic it brings to the site as well as the number of engagements.

The second measurement is focused solely on individual campaign metrics.  These types of metrics usually have a beginning and an end.  Tripcentral and it’s employee are virtually masters at running trip campaigns.  Play your way to the windy city is a perfect example of this type of campaign.

Enter for your chance to WIN trip to #Chicago with @milenorthhotel: https://t.co/19Pzu00254 pic.twitter.com/xXZS0ChVMf

— tripcentral.ca (@tripcentral) November 3, 2015

The main focus for Tripcental is getting the customers engaged.  Richard says “you can get a relationship with people whether they are existing customers or people you are trying to attract as customers.”

When running social media campaigns, there are other factors to consider.  Richard says “the other thing we are doing a lot of is customer reviews.”  He talks about using these reviews for their booking pages to help increase conversions.

There are many tools to use track social media insights.  UberVu via Hootsuite is a great tool to get real time insights about your brand and help with Marketing, communications, market research, product development, sales and most importantly, customer service.

What are some of the failures in social media marketing campaigns?

Perhaps you did not identify a target audience.  There are tools available to help answer the important questions.

1. Who will use my product/service?
2. How do they gather the information needed?

Followerwonk is one tool to help with twitter analytics and help optimize social growth.

Creating the right content that caters to your target audience.  The content should be creative shareable and on a regular basis.

1. Is your content visually appealing and easy to read?
2. if you were reading it, would you share it?

Buzzsumo helps to show you content that was most popular with shares on social media.  It helps find the key influences to promote you content.

Timing is everything and you can’t engage the business world by posting after 5pm when your target audience has left the office.  Your posts should be scheduled and published at the most ideal time.

Buffer is a great tool to help companies schedule times to publish your post.  Buffer will also track twitter analytics.

source: jeffbullas

Lessons

1. Whether your organization is trying to analyze a long term social media campaign or you are analyzing a one-off targeted campaign, you may need tools to help you do so.
2. Outline your targets and your goals (i.e. customer engagement or website traffic)
3. Stay active  with your post and identify your target audience so you can publish them at the most optimum time.
4. Keep your post clean, easy to read, and shareable.
5. Collect and sort your data, use the metrics to manage your social media activities, and use the data to maximize their impact.
6. Social media is still in the learning phases and sometimes you just need to throw some mud on the wall and see what sticks.  Richard discuses how tripcentral’s focus has been customer relationships.

Submitted By: Ken Lupton