At the upcoming edition of OTM forum, we are bringing you a round-up of exciting panel discussions and workshops. In addition, we will also witness the first ever Workshop on Digital Marketing for Travel Companies brought to you by Facebook. The workshop will be presented by Saurav Chakraborty Industry Manager (Travel), Facebook India and Surabhi Mishra, Client Solution Manager – Travel, Facebook India.

Whether you’re looking to expand your digital marketing skills, grow your business, or boost your career, Facebook’s Digital Marketing Workshop for Travel Companies at OTM will help you get there.

To register for the workshop, visit http://otm.co.in/facebook/. Pre-registered participants will get a free Certificate of Completion issued by OTM.

The post Free Digital Marketing Workshop for Travel Companies appeared first on TravHQ.

Kerala Tourism’s Facebook page has trumped other state tourism boards by climbing on to the top slot. The Kerala Tourism Facebook page attained first place in a ranking done by Facebook based on total engagement with tourists that included reactions, shares and comments on the page between the January 1 and December 31, 2017 time frame.

The Kerala Tourism page pushed the Jammu and Kashmir Tourism Department’s Facebook page to the second place. The page had garnered 1.5 million likes to emerge as the top page. The Gujarat Tourism Facebook page was ranked third.

Facebook recently released the data on the top-ranked Facebook pages of government bodies, ministries and political parties in India.

Speaking on the achievement, Rani George, Secretary, Department of Tourism, Kerala, said, “Kerala Tourism has been able to successfully convey the reasons as to why Kerala is a destination that should be on every traveller’s itinerary. The department’s presence on social media has taken this message across to millions across the world, and the new laurel from Facebook is indeed heartening.”

Kerala Tourism’s activity on Facebook and other social media space has been focussed and proactive, said P Bala Kiran, Director, Kerala Tourism. “The page has been able to keep travellers from India and abroad engaged with interesting and innovative posts on the various projects and activities undertaken by the department. The ranking comes at a time when Kerala Tourism has upped the Digital marketing budget to 15% and been communicating to the people across the globe in exciting ways.”

P Bala Kiran, Director, Kerala Tourism, with the award. Image source: Kerala Tourism Board Facebook page

The state has been at the forefront of actively promoting tourism through different campaigns. From launching the ‘GoKerala’ campaign to woo family travellers, to leveraging Instagram to transform the art of storytelling, Kerala Tourism has been an active destination marketer for a while now.

Tourism policies in Kerala have also evolved, with the introduction of more technology-oriented initiatives focused on the exclusivity of each destination. The tourism board has also consistently swept awards that recognize its innovative use of information technology, including social media and interactive mobile apps.

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In its campaign to woo social influencers and become a single social media platform for everything, Facebook recently launched its new app Facebook Creator to create and promote videos on the platform.

This stand-alone app logs into Facebook and offers a dashboard showing engagement stats and even follower activity. With a variety of editing tools, wacky face filters and effects, it might just be one of the quickest way to go live with anything you’re interested in broadcasting from your Facebook account, complete with metrics and a message inbox.

This app could usher in a new era of travel influencing. Today, it’s hard to find a single social media stream that’s not filled with enticing pictures and videos about travel destinations, and often, it’s the popular individuals we follow on Snapchat, Instagram, or Facebook, who are behind the production of the content.

With the advent of the Creator app, bloggers and social media celebrities will now have a single platform to capture their target audience, instead of streaming videos on one and showing pictures on the other. According to statistics by Facebook, as of September 2017, close to 1.5 billion people on average log onto the platform daily and are considered daily active users. This gives the tourism boards a mammoth audience base to promote their destinations and services.

The app’s enhanced communication features are also expected to attract more influencers, with its incorporated inbox for all messages and comments posted on Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram. Having a unified inbox also means that the user doesn’t have to move through different apps just to reply.

Image source: The Verge

As more travel influencers move to the Creator platform, travel companies and tourism boards around the world can tap into their influence to promote exotic destinations or unique finds. The platform will also lend a certain authenticity to the find, thus luring potential travellers to book flights and getaways based on an influencers’ recommendations.

Moreover, the app ensures that data and analytics about the video is always made accessible to users, allowing them to regularly check any algorithm changes to their output. Knowing these key details about their follower demographics can help influencers focus on the type of video content they should post and reach out to travel brands who might be willing to promote their destinations in a particular way.

Travel Influencers are the new brand ambassadors. So, when a tourism board or a travel company works with them, it is not only the product or service that the Creator app will help promote, but it will also put the spotlight firmly on the destination, via breathtaking footage and fantastic visual content.

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Over the years, Facebook Messenger has evolved from a piece of the social network into a standalone commercial platform. This of course is a result of how the company has been pushing Messenger over the past few years (including forcing Facebook users to download the app to read messages). Last year, it was pretty much at the centre of Facebook F8 conference and wasn’t much outside the frame this year as well.

Over the past year or so, the focus has been not only to evolve Messenger as a social tool but also as a tool useful for businesses. Last year FB opened up the Messenger platform to allow chat bots into the app and many travel brands quickly jumped in with their ideas. Along with this, a Bot Engine was also announced to make those chat bots more useful. This year, Facebook is moving up to its Messenger Platform 2.0.

With the new platform, Facebook turns its focus on improving discovery. With the increasing number of chat bots on Messenger, Facebook is looking to put the right kind of bots in front of right kind of people. This will start with a new Discover tab which will list relevant bots. Taking another step in the same direction, Facebook is revising Messenger Codes. They are now easier to use and businesses can place them anywhere so that more users engage with their bot.

Adding a feature that would remind you of Allo, bots can now be accessed in conversations between people. Kayak and Uber are already jumping on this development to explore the feature. They have also introduced Smart Replies, an improved version of auto respond, to offer some useful information instead of a single preset message.

Facebook clearly wants to see Messenger in more places than it is right now. As more businesses and users find value in Messenger, it will also open up a potential advertising channel for Facebook.

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Handling brand accounts or covering live events, we all have been there at some point. Need a high quality live stream but setting up the API, encoder and everything else is too much effort. Even worse is explaining the process to someone who is supposed to broadcast live from another location (worst is setting up YouTube live though). Broadcasting from mobile is an alternative however, not many mobile devices are able to match the quality of proper video equipment and mobile networks often don’t do a very good job of broadcasting even high quality stream.

To deal with this and get more people to use Facebook Live, the social platform is enabling Facebook Pages to go live from web browser. Being able to use a simple stable webcam for live broadcasts will be useful for influencers and in some other scenarios where the mobility isn’t needed. If you are a travel blogger who broadcast vlogs at times, this is something you will like. Another advantage would be the option to add high quality cameras that can be connected as webcam without having to deal with the complicated API process.

With this addition, they have also added the option to add Live Contributors for Pages. Previously, the broadcaster needed to be an admin of the page. Now however, this new role will allow admins to designate specific individuals to go live without giving them full page control. This was certainly a much needed feature and brands who often collaborate with multiple content creators will appreciate it.

Facebook has a strong focus on videos and it is further highlighted by the fact that it has rolled out video insights for live videos. Profiles with 5,000 or more followers will have access to what Facebook termed ‘lightweight insights’. These metrics will include total minutes viewed, total number of views and total engagement. Along with this, users will also be able to see aggregated insights for all videos. Broadcasters can now also pin comments during live videos to highlight them over other comments during the broadcast.

More information about these updates can be found on Facebook blog here.

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There is no dearth of options Facebook has on offer for brands. And the social platform seems to have a special kind of affection for travel brands if we judge by the even higher number of advertising options for them. Naturally a large fraction of all the businesses use Facebook, some to make more business out of it and some to keep a web presence for their brand.

Over the past few months, Facebook made certain changes to how the brand pages work including a redesign. In another update, they have made the number of likes less visible to visitors. This seemingly insignificant change can have major impact on the approach page managers take. The number of likes incorrectly used to be a scale for measurement but suddenly it is insignificant to a visitor.

“Content is the king” is a phrase used very often when we talk about social media marketing. Earlier this year, when were putting together the data for our Facebook marketing report for travel brands, we observed that some brands were leading in terms of engagement but the fan base was not as big. Their content was reaching way beyond their own fan base. On the other side, there were few brands having large fan base but barely any engagement on the posts. Clearly something wasn’t right.

Removing the page like count (making it less visible) means that for many, the measuring scale changed from how many likes the page has to how much interaction the posts are getting. Anyone visiting the page would now look at the posts directly. Marketers often complain how their advertising costs are driven up because some brands aren’t targeting the right audience. This would deter these brands from targeting wider audience irrelevant to their business just to gain page likes. If they need better engagement, they will have to build well targeted audience for their page. This would also improve the returns for the ones who have been doing it right. Younger brands would also appreciate the change as this would save them from being passed on because they appear too new to the online space.

This should also give Facebook a bump in advertising revenues as brands target their pages better and also spend on giving their powerful content an initial push to drive engagement with promoted posts. Overall it looks like a small yet smart change from Facebook. Would love to hear what the experts in this space have to say on this. Do share in comments or join the conversation here.

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We spend a lot of time on Facebook, whether to catch up with our friends or to engage with the brands we follow. With over a billion people logging into their Facebook accounts everyday, it makes complete sense for brands to look for their potential customers here. However, with more brands fighting for visibility and an array of paid advertising options, the efforts on the platform aren’t translating into the kind of returns they used to get earlier. As more and more travel content is generated and shared over social media platforms, the challenge scales up even further. While we aren’t suggesting that you should stop putting in efforts on Facebook, we are certainly advising that you should look at marketing channels beyond Facebook, Twitter and Instagram if you aren’t already. Here is a list of platforms you can consider to start off:

Pinterest

Travel marketing is all about selling the experience to the potential customer. That is why it relies heavily on high quality visuals. Pinterest is a visual platform with around 100 million active users. It doesn’t focus on the content being shared and reshared by your followers but instead allows them to collect the ideas in a noticeboard sort of manner. A significant fraction of the users are female which could be an advantage if you are targeting people travelling with their families. As you would have guessed, the content should be visually appealing and your Facebook post shared over here won’t cut it.

Snapchat

This one is a bit tough to get the hang of if you are not a teenager but a powerful platform nevertheless. From an obscure app, it has become quite mainstream with over 100 million daily active users. An average of 9,000 snaps are shared every second. You can use Snapchat to broadcast major events and activities. Travel brands like Conde Nast Traveler, Matador Network and Marriott are using the platform to lure young travellers. Icelandic low cost carrier WOW Air recently hosted a Snapchat contest to give away free trips clearly indicating that it is a platform you should experiment with. If you need help starting on this platform, here is your guide.

Medium

Not exactly a social media platform but a very good platform for creating and sharing collections around your business. It is more of a personal publishing platform but an excellent way to tell your story. Quality takes a much higher priority than quantity so you don’t need to have thousands of followers or an active blog. In fact it is a great alternative to your brand’s own blog and would put you in front of right audience. Just remember that it is a place for telling good stories, not blowing your trumpet and you are sorted.

Tumblr

Another blogging platform with love for visual content. All those listicles you have been making about places to visit and dishes to try for your brand blog can fit very well here. Good posts with visual content can go reblogged hundreds of times and could give your brand instant visibility. Instead of making it more about your brand, you should make it around your focus areas. This is really the platform to show your creative side and should be used like that.

Vine

With the ever increasing number of video content creators, nobody has time to watch long videos if they are boring. Expert marketers say, you have got the first few seconds to get the attention of the user. Vine is about just the few seconds. It is made up of short quirky videos that loop. Create videos that make people laugh, tell them about something in few seconds, show them a small timelapse of an amazing destination. These things work very well on Vine and could go very well in giving your brand a boost on Vine.

What other platforms do you think travel marketers can use to promote their brand? Join the discussions on travel marketing and get inputs from the topic experts here.

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The monotony to watch 360 videos on the VR Gear has seen its end day. Oculus rolled out the ability for users to see and leave Facebook’s emoji reactions on 360 videos with Gear VR’s video app. So using Samsung’s virtual reality goggles, they can now see reactions from others as well float on the screen.

The company had originally advised this feature back in March when it first collaborated personalised news feed to be delivered letting Gear VR users sign into their Facebook accounts on their VR headsets. Oculus would make this feature available for 360 photos in coming weeks.

So now the whole experience of watching 360 videos is more social. The user can convey emotions over the entire experience without breaking the entire flow. This is where videos about destinations and travel experiences gain deeper roots. The social media feels more capable of responding to users’ sentiments by integrating this feature as it has a more humanly feel to it.

Since this feature is an essential integration to Facebook’s product line, this points out that the company wants the VR to embed itself into Facebook’s network.  Back in February, Facebook announced the formation of a social VR team dedicated to how people can connect and share using today’s VR technology. Although a stand-alone feature that resembles Metaverse is away, this step is a step closer to it.

Source: The Verge

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With over 1 Billion daily users on the platform, Facebook is the go-to platform for many travel brands and the social platform has now decided to improve its ad offerings for them. The dynamic ad retargeting option has been around for a while for products but Facebook has now launched Dynamic Ads for travel. This would allow brands to target individuals who have expressed interest in travelling to specific destinations and thus would have higher chances of successful conversion.

The new ad option would enable for brands to show hotel options right after the travellers have booked flights or offer deals to users who have browsed for hotels or flights. Facebook will use its data and the user behaviour to target the ads better. It would also use the travel location and date data for the same. Facebook says that it has been testing the new ad option with some of the leading travel brands including Trivago and Marriott.

It was very clear that Facebook will turn up the advertising on Instagram up to eleven and has now taken the next logical step in the direction. It has expanded the Dynamic Ads feature to Instagram. This would allow the ads to be displayed to people who have expressed interest in certain products. According to Facebook, this should help marketers reach more audience, especially the young audience that use mobile phones as the primary device for internet access. Users tend to discover products on Instagram and more than half of them talk about or look up the products after that. Better targeting could only give it a significant boost.

That isn’t all. Facebook has also made a development in ‘lookalike’ which came out long back but didn’t receive many updates since then. With Custom Audience, Facebook adds more prioritization into the equation as not all customers are equal for a brand and some are more valuable to a business than others. This could open up different targeting options and could feature differentiators like frequent visitors vs occasional ones or heavy spenders vs one time buyers. Advertisers can set up campaigns to reach visitors or use the list of visitors to run a lookalike campaign.

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Lee McCabe, Global Head of Travel at Facebook recently took the stage at Phocuswright India and talked about how smartphones are driving the digital revolution. The focal point of his keynote was how media consumption is changing and what businesses need to keep in mind to cater to mobile first consumers. Here are some key highlights:

Lee McCabe, Global Head of Travel, Facebook at Phocuswright India

Social isn’t just about the numbers

He highlighted the fact that some companies are still caught up in the race for likes and comments. It is time they accept that Facebook is a media platform with a huge audience that they can leverage to grow their brand. It is no longer about fan count and likes and it could be a game changer once these companies get that.

Mobile is a consumer behaviour

Smartphone have been adopted so widely that they have become a part of the consumer behaviour. People are spending their time across multiple devices and around 40 percent of the users use more than 3 devices. 60 percent of the users use their mobile devices as their primary source of internet access which means that brands strongly need to tailor the experience for mobile first users if they haven’t already.

New formats will grow rapidly

We have moved from text to images to videos and going forward, new formats like 360 videos and VR will gain traction. Each one of them offers a better experience than the one it follows. As consumers choose these new formats, brands should also adopt the new formats to connect with their audience.

Media consumption is stacking

Media consumption isn’t exactly shifting from one device to other but is stacking up between multiple devices. People often consume media from multiple screens at the same time. However there is a steep decline in the use of conventional media consumption channels like TV among the millennials.

Messaging platforms have huge potential

He shared that Facebook is bullish on Messenger because such platforms will be the game changer in travel industry. Messenger was very effective in connecting people to people and they observed that it can be just as effective in connecting businesses to people. Young people are ditching email and are prioritising messaging apps which makes them more promising.

Brands still need to ramp up mobile

Even after so much buzz about mobile, a large number of travel brands aren’t focussing their efforts on mobile. Going by the data shared during the keynote, last year out of the total $44 billion spent by travel brands in marketing, $8.2 billion was on digital out of which only $2.4 billion went towards mobile. This indicates that digital marketing and specially mobile is still untapped and offers plenty of headroom for growth.

The number of apps in use isn’t increasing

This usage pattern has been highlighted many time by various experts. Almost every other brand is trying to push an app into the mobile phone of consumer. However, even when the number of installed apps is increasing on the device of consumer, the average number of apps that are used continues to be almost the same. People are spending longer on apps but not on higher number of apps. According to the data Lee shared, the average time spent by users per month on apps increased significantly from around 23 hours to 37 hours but the average number of apps used continued to be similar.

We will be sharing more stories from Phocuswright India in the coming week. You can check them here.

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