BrightOnTravel: Social log-ins provide data, so why not exploit it?

Increased use of social log-ins shows how customers are willing to share their data, but are travel firms good at exploiting this?

Increased use of social log-ins shows how customers are willing to share their data, but are travel firms good at exploiting this?

That was the question raised by founder of social media agency Ginger Juice founder Bruce Martin at last week’s second annual BrightOnTravel conference.

Martin urged delegates to embrace social media to manage their brand and to provide customers with a more personal human-to-human experience.

Social log-ins by which people use networks like Facebook as a conduit to log in various favoured sites rather than having to go through multiple log-ins.

“By asking customers to sign up through Facebook you are effectively saying can we use all the data we can find to give you a more personal experience.

“It’s really a trade-off, it’s a classic privacy versus convenience trade-off. It’s much easier to log in through Facebook, or Twitter or Google but you wonder what’s going on in the background.

“But do we care? I’d have adverts that are relevant to me, but there is that worry about the Big Brother kind of thing.”

Martin said in the general retail sector where Facebook log-in is available consumers are choosing to use it 60% of the time. No travel specific data was available.

“So what this shows is people are prepared to give up their data but are we as marketeers using that data as best we can?”

Martin said Facebook is offering a more effective and targeted suite of advertising opportunities to customers on its network than rival Twitter, but these strategies are worth exploiting.

Martin said: “Social media creates desire at the beginning of the customer journey and removes doubt later on.

“The quality of social media will support your commercial objective because people will look at it and if you have a credible persona it can only help.”
Martin offered a series of best practice tips:

• Concentrate on context marketing rather than content marketing – Put resources into engaging directly with consumers on a one to one basis rather than one-way broadcasting;

• Think human to human rather than business to business or business to consumer. Deal with customer personally;

• Be funny, be helfpful, be experts, and be a bit brave. Do something differently;

• Get your timing right. Produce content when the customers are expecting it or ready to receive it;

• Be great on a few channels not weak on many. Choosing two or three is better than looking rubbish on any;

• Create scroll stoppers by using imagery, graphics or video to attract people’s attention;

• Create posts with specific devices in mind. No one wants long scrolling text on mobile. Keep it brief.