How destinations engage – Conversations on Twitter
At the end of each month we look at the destinations in the US that are using Twitter to engage consumers and publish a ranking of these destinations using Twitter Grader.
And important element Grader does not take into account when calculating it’s score is the number of conversations that is taking place on Twitter. A “conversation” on Twitter can be defined as an exchange of (public) messages between users using the “@” syntax.
So here is the ranking of the top 20 destinations by conversations (this ranking does not include direct messages):
| Destinations | Number of conversations as of 4/11 |
| visitphilly | 132 |
| BaltimoreMD | 111 |
| VisitChicago | 48 |
| ArizonaTourism | 35 |
| ExpCols | 29 |
| Hillsborough | 28 |
| VisitIndiana | 26 |
| TravelOregon | 23 |
| ColumbiaSC | 13 |
| travelnevada | 13 |
| discover_la | 13 |
| UtahStateParks | 12 |
| enjoyillinois | 12 |
| VisitNH | 12 |
| renotahoe | 10 |
| MeetMinneapolis | 9 |
| ScottsdaleAZ | 5 |
| VisitVirginia | 5 |
| PensacolaCVB | 2 |
| ashevilletravel | 1 |
Clearly Philadelphia and Baltimore and far, far ahead of everybody else.
The number of conversations is cumulative, so obviously those destinations that started earlier have an advantage.
I think it will be interesting to see how the number of conversations changes over time as Twitter enters the mainstream more and more. Are you interested in that as well?
November 19th, 2008 at 7:51 am
Great post. I’m thinking engagement is the name of the game on Twitter and a more important factor than the actual number of followers you have. I’d rather have 10 qualified followers (i.e. people seriously planning a trip to Los Angeles or an LA local) and engage them in conversation than 100 followers who aren’t directly related to our target audience.
Tough part is time commitment and finding the right followers. I’d be interested to see how other DMOs are handling this and whether or not they are allocating a set amount of hours to this. Conversations can take quite a bit of energy, especially when they’re specific to a certain question like, “I’m planning a trip in March, looking for this type of hotel in Hollywood.”
These are questions you’d typically find on TripAdvisor’s great forums. Interestingly, they have “Destination Experts” — local volunteers who know an exorbitant amount of information about the city and are very detailed in their responses. I have no idea how they have that much time to answer these questions, but it’s definitely a valuable resource. I’m thinking Twitter can eventually turn into this for destination marketers: you have a local following as well, and the locals will begin chiming in to help out visitors who are planning a trip. Pros to this — faster, quicker responses. Cons to this — I think Twitter doesn’t quite have the ability to track a large number of Q&A type conversations.
November 19th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Interesting response from Keith, particularly about TripAdvisor’s “destination experts” who are volunteers engaged with their cities. In some ways that sounds like a DMO dream come true, and certainly valuable to a visitor…to have a corps of people ready and eager to tell the local story.
Martin, also enjoy your posts about DMO engagement on Twitter, but I can’t help but think this is only telling part of the story. A DMO close to my heart (hint, hint) approaches the use of Twitter quite differently, by giving a voice to several staff members who tweet from their own individual accounts (which are identified and branded as the DMO). This is done in addition to the engagement with the single account that’s used to represent the destination and DMO as a whole.
So, the question in my mind: When measuring DMO engagement on Twitter, is it valid to measure all of the conversations that are happening with the DMO (to include the engagement occurring with all the DMO’s Twitter accounts), or only the conversations that happen with the single/main DMO account?
November 21st, 2008 at 10:55 am
I post for Hillsborough, NC, and am glad to see that we are up there with the bigger locations. We are a town of about 6,000, and I think this is a good example of how Twitter is able to give us a leg up.
We are still figuring out what type a voice to have. Our best conversations have been with people that already live here, and we had the biggest response from locals when we asked local trivia questions.
Day-trippers are a huge market for us, and we are located within 20 minutes of Research Triangle Park, so Twitter allows us to engage those wired-in folks in the day trip range.
November 24th, 2008 at 9:01 am
Irene, I think those conversations happening within the DMO should be counted, particularly because I think those conversations are still serving to engage the community.
I also think that you all are doing a great job utilizing Twitter in this way. It represents the destination in a very real way and is definitely shaping my impression of the destination itself from (Where is that? to Hey I know some folks there and they seem pretty cool).