Social Media / Social Travel

Travel is social, we travel not only to visit new places but often to reconnect with our friends and family. Social Media is a natural for travel marketers as long as it's done in a way that is respectful of the community you're trying to engage.

Rohit Bhargava of Ogilvy Public Relations coined the phrase social media optimization and summed it up as:

"The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs."

Rohit started an online conversation titled the 5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO) which quickly grew into 17 rules with contributions from Jeremiah Owyang, Cameron Olthuis, Loren Baker and Lee Odden.

Here are the 17 rules:

  • Increase your linkability
  • Make tagging and bookmarking easy
  • Reward inbound links
  • Help your content travel
  • Encourage the mashup
  • Be a User Resource, even if it doesn't help you
  • Reward helpful and valuable users
  • Participate
  • Know how to target your audience
  • Create content
  • Be real
  • Don?t forget your roots, be humble
  • Don?t be afraid to try new things, stay fresh
  • Develop a SMO strategy
  • Choose your SMO tactics wisely
  • Make SMO part of your process and best practices
  • Don't be afraid to let go of a message or idea and let others own it.

Social Media Optimization can drive a huge number of people to a website through new channels because the search engines aren't the only place that can drive large amounts of traffic. SMO hasn't overtaken SEO yet, but it could someday.

If you haven't yet developed your corporate blog or made social media part of your business plans, 2008 is the year to start. According to BusinessWeek who wrote in 2005 that "Blogs Will Change Your Business," "Social Media Will Change Your Business Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up?or catch you later."

Travel review sites, online travel planning and collaboration sites have blossomed.

Don't get left behind. Contact us today.