» Is Social Media a Tourism Thing? This Tourism Week: Newsletter on-line commentary and discussion about tourism in South Africa

Thought it might be appropriate to ask a specialist to write for This Tourism Week about Social Media and Tourism.

Karen Lotter – a.k.a. @ethekwinigirl – is a Durban-based writer and photographer. She teaches web writing (online and live), and describes herself as a workaholic info-junkie, a Joomla & WordPress fan, blogger, aging geek, and toyi-toying optimist. Meet her at www.ethekwiniweb.co.za

Here’s what she had to say by way of introduction:

There is much more to Social Media than applications like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Linked in. Social Media is about communication and about people: the different applications are just the carriers.

For any organisation, business or industry to survive today – let alone thrive – it needs to be able to speak the language of the Web and understand how Social Media works.

I cannot tell you how often I’ve been told that ‘Facebook is for people who want to show each other baby photos,’ or ‘There is no way I would use Twitter, I mean why do I want to know when Kim Kardashian shaves her legs…’

I have stopped trying to explain. I think I just roll my eyes now and try to make a quick getaway because I know that I am not going to win.

If you’ve read this far, though, I’m probably preaching to the converted. But that’s fine. Over the next few of months, we are going to have a conversation about Social Media. Please send me any comments or queries and I will deal with them in this column or on my blog at http://www.thelearningzone.co.za

If Facebook were a Country?

If we know what we’re dealing with, we might take it a bit more seriously.

If Facebook were a country, it would be the third most populous in the world – right after China and India. By the numbers, Facebook is well over 500 million members strong.

As a community, its members spend over 700 billion minutes a month and share over 30 billion pieces of content (per month) in the Facebook environment (via status updates, comments, videos, links, etc.).

Facebook can be Regarded as an Emerging Economy.

Like China and India, Facebook can be regarded as an ‘emerging’ economy that business professionals are trying to understand. It has its own social norms, privacy issues, cultural sensitivities, and community rules that govern how business is done and how its members engage and derive value.

Has that made you sit up a little? Is that a market you can ignore? Can any person in tourism say: “USA, nah – forget it we’re not bothering with them?” Then why ignore Facebook? Its population is bigger than the USA, much more diverse and much more accessible.

Online social communities like Facebook have reached a level of maturity in that their value is more than just about ‘connecting people’ or helping people manage their relationships. The power and impact of communities like Facebook and Twitter (175 million members) have reached impressive milestones over the last 18 months on a number of socioeconomic, business, and political levels.

Becoming more Flexible

It only makes sense that, just as business leaders are actively looking to emerging economies like China and India for opportunities to grow and expand their business; they must also take time understand the opportunities of doing business and managing their corporate presence in any of the growing number of powerful social communities like Facebook.

It is time the business community becomes more flexible and open to new ideas and begins to incorporate these new ideas into its traditional marketing mix.

Because of the level of maturity of communities like Facebook and Twitter, many decision makers rely on social media platforms to support, inform, and shape their decisions and opinions.

Take look at these Top 50 Branded Facebook pages and decide for yourself.

In future newsletters we’ll look at Twitter, and Linked In – and then we can start looking at what works and what doesn’t and how to make the respective social media platforms work for you.

In the meantime, have a look at these links: