Social networks - some ideas….

If you are anything like me, you are probably getting a little tired of every travel industry website and publication getting excited by social networks. Certainly I am - but perhaps that is because I read about 30 travel and Internet industry blogs daily - and getting the same message multiple times really is a bit draining….. anyway, for those of you who read this number of blogs yourself (and 30 is not a very large number where blog reading is concerned) - apologies, but here is another post all about social networks.

Not only are blogs going on about social networks but every conference I go to as well seems to tell you that you MUST be on the social networks - Facebook, WAYN, MySpace etc. Perhaps I am just too old for social networks - mid thirties…. hopefully not! I do however have a LinkedIn profile - which I find a very useful way to keep up with former colleagues and clients - as people move around in the travel industry. This therefore serves my own personal needs just fine. (However I only link to people I know….)

Can existing social networks be used by small tour operators to increase sales or improve the customer experience? 

Personally I have never felt that existing social networks as they are currently structured are quite the right solution for promoting travel product - because your travellers fall into three categories:

• Pre purchase information - finding out more product information from people who have been there before
• Post purchase, pre travelling - checking last minute changes (errata?)
• Post travel - photo / video uploading, getting back in contact with people you travelled with

Each segment needs specific website functionality - and really you ought to “own” the relationship with your customers - rather than just talking to them in someone else’s space or social network. No one seems to have sorted this out yet in terms of solution provision (but see below) - so to answer the question - no I don’t believe that using an existing primary social network will help that much to increase sales (except for advertising perhaps)…..

What if you want to run your own social network (so people stay on your site)?

This sounds quite a complex (and expensive) idea - isn’t it? Well it is not quite as difficult as it sounds. To put my “money” where my mouth is - I thought, as a relatively inexperienced person where social networks are concerned, that I should give this a go myself. How hard can it be?

As I found out, it is actually quite easy. Total money spent - 30 USD (a month). Total time spent - about 8 hours.

And here is the result - http://community.tourcms.com - a social network, on the TourCMS domain name, for users of the TourCMS system that my company runs. Users can create profiles, start blogs, discuss issues in the forums - all the main functionality that you would expect from a leading social network. Additionally, users can upload videos, photos and RSS feeds - although I have much of this turned off for the moment until I have worked out how that can be applied.

The new social network is powered by a company called Ning, US based, and apparently valued at 200 million USD! They host the system and we just, via a CNAME domain name setting, make it appear that it is on our website.

This community now replaces the previous TourCMS blog (that we hosted using Wordpress software) and our forums (which we hosted using vBulletin). Neither of these two systems will be missed too much. The blog has become a bit stale - and the forums are just full of spam. Not really a combination that was getting much use or interaction from existing customers.

Luckily (actually no luck involved!) we used the RSS self branding functionality from FeedBurner (now owned by Google) to ensure that our RSS feeds always carried the TourCMS.com domain name - so now, even though we have changed all our blogging and forum systems - existing subscribers will still receive their content (if they had subscribed using our RSS feed)

Will it work?

I don’t know. But the only way to find out is to try! Not only will the community be useful to existing TourCMS customers, but hopefully we will also learn more about community management. The one thing that is very clear where communities are involved is that it is generally NOT a technology problem - it is a human one.

You need to attract a group of people who will spend enough time (make an investment) to setup a profile and want to interact with other users. Therefore they need something in common with other users over the longer term.

For travel companies, it is particularly difficult to attract users who will become regulars if your product is an annual purchase and they may buy from a different company the next year. You may get a great deal of “one or two visit” users - but a community is formed when you can get these people to stay - and come back weekly (or at least monthly)

What next to read?

If you are interested in discussion on forming communities and how this can be practically achieved, I suggest you sign up for eMint. This yahoo group is full of leading community professionals and has good insights. Go to http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/e-mint/ for more information.

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