Over the last 12 months we have talked to a LOT of companies and and organizations about social media. Most feel overwhelmed, some are scared and fewer and fewer are doubting that social media is here to stay and will change how organizations interact with customers, suppliers, partners and employees.

Here is our top 5 list of answers we heard most often when asking organizations about social media in 2008:

1. “We did not have time to look into that”
Under which rock are you living? It is almost the year 2009! Twitter is old news, Facebook even older. If your company or organization does by now not understand that you need to have a presence on sites like Facebook or Twitter than you can probably only hope for some sort of bailout down the road. At a minimum register accounts to ensure nobody is “brand-jacking” your social media identity.

2. “We are monitoring the space”
Or even better: “we are actively monitoring the social media space”.
Clearly you are not “monitoring” closely enough, otherwise you would see that to really understand the power of social media, one has to do it. So get your hands dirty, sign up for a Twitter account and see what happens.

3. “We let our interns handle social media”
Good thinking: let the “young” people handle this. Throw them a bone – after all they are not even getting paid. The only two problems: do you let your interns also handle your brand-campaign and press releases? No? So why do you trust them with your social media efforts? And problem number 2: even if you have an intern who understands your brand, your products, your customers, your competitive situation and your procedures (yes, these are some of the things to keep in mind when starting with social media), that intern will be gone after 6 months. And with him/her he/she takes the relationships and insights gained and so your organization will start all over again.

4. “We are just experimenting with social media”
This is definitely a step in the right direction. But the danger of “experimenting” is that the efforts are not taken seriously. Which makes convincing results less likely.
You need to integrate your social media activities into your overall strategy. That does not mean paralysis by analysis but the willingness to allocate resources (mostly time), to learn and adapt without loosing the overall goal out of sight.

5. “We do not have clear goals yet for our social media efforts”
How will you know whether you are successful or not if you do not set yourself some goals? So after the “experimenting” phase is over, think about what you want to accomplish and write down some numbers. How many followers on Twitter, how many fans on Facebook, how many comments on your blog etc.? And while numbers are definitely not everything (quality beats quantity) it is good help to understand how your social media efforts will help your organization achieve it’s overall goals.

So how should companies and organizations tackle social media?

It just takes four simple steps:
1.    Do it.
2.    Learn from it.
3.    Measure and benchmark it
4.    Repeat first 3 steps.

Did we miss a step? Are you hearing the same answers we are hearing?

GoSeeTell provides technology solutions, thought leadership and support for the social media space. Connect with us on Twitter @coldinpdx or @ariannap .

Thanks to andwat for the photo.

Here is our updated list for the number of conversations US destinations are having on Twitter. 

A conversation on Twitter is not a tweet but a series of replies back and forth between two Twitter users. For destinations on Twitter conversations – together with retweets – can be seen as the best engagement with other users.

The ranking at the end of November by number of total conversations:

And here is the number of conversations taking place in November – Philadelphia, Asheville and VisitChicago were far ahead of everybody else in that category:

When looking at the conversations of destinations keep in mind that a significant number of conversations on Twitter is still taking place between different destinations and not with consumers or travelers.

We plan to track the growth of conversations over the next months to see if the number grows as the travel industry figures out better and better ways to use Twitter as a tool to talk to travelers.

Anybody interested in this?

Do you have maps on your website? Check out this really cool implementation of a Google map.

“Senghor on the Rocks” is a book-as-a-website with an integrated Google map. The book is in German but to see how the map is integrated you do not need to understand German. The setting of the book takes place in Dakar (Senegal) and on each page a Google map shows the area the characters are moving through.

Click on a page to turn it over and go to page 9 to see a really great example: you can follow the characters of the book on their drive through the city. The Google map in the satellite view gives users a really nice feel for the city.

Using the Google maps API it is not complicated to animate maps, why are not more websites making use of this? Animated itineraries come to mind …

And why are not more destination websites showing Google maps in a satellite view instead of a map view? If you are just trying to get a feel for a city or region the satellite view or the terrain option tell a lot more than the street map.

The only tourism website I could find using Google maps this way is the Idaho Tourism website (which I just realized today is a website with some very neat features and design elements). For the map see for example the listing for The Coeur d’Alene Resort.

So who has the best maps out there? Which other travel websites have neat mapping features that really make you want to visit?

Last week the fake Tourism Milwaukee clip on YouTube lead to a whole debate on Twitter about real and fake destination videos.

Time to look deeper into the mysterious world of destination videos. And what timing! Tourism Australia, a national tourism organization with slightly deeper pockets, just launched a new destination video titled – how appropriate – “Australia”. You will not (primarily) find it on YouTube but rather playing in the movie theatre closest to you.

All jokes aside: while Tourism Australia did of course not commission a 130 million dollar movie with Nicole Kidman as a marketing piece, they did align their whole new marketing strategy with the movie. The hope is to have the same benefits New Zealand had with “Lord of the Rings”.

They even went as far as to ask Baz Luhrman – the director of the movie – to shoot several inspirational trailers (which also can be found on YouTube) that use some of the themes of the movie. Cost for the campaign: 26 million dollars. The entire Tourism Australia website also got a makeover to match the new campaign (not all an improvement in my opinion, the site is now very text-heavy).

So a lot is riding for Tourism Australia on the success of “Australia”.

But now comes the fun part: all of Australia is taking the movie very serious. All of Australia? No, a tiny state in the South of Australia is daring to make fun of it!

Have a look at: “Tasmania – Bigger than Australia”.

Great idea, great execution. Have a look at the details on the website like the footer or the clip of the director talking about the stunt scenes. Somebody had fun with this project!

And of course the main video is on YouTube – over 40,000 views in less than 2 weeks is not too shabby.

But wait, it gets even better: over 100 people left comments on the video. Have a look here and be surprised / shocked / embarrassed how passionate/angry people get about this spoof and Tasmania claiming to be “bigger than Australia”. And be warned: some of the comments are NSFW, but I guess that is just how Aussies and Tassies are.

So my questions for you: what do you think of Tourism Australia basing it’s marketing strategy almost entirely on “Australia”? Do you think “Tasmania” is bigger than “Australia”? What about the comments about Tasmania on YouTube? Does this type of engagement help or hurt?

Another month has passed and so it is time again to publish our list of US destinations on Twitter. Did Baltimore manage to get to over 1,000 followers? Did VisitChicago continue it’s drive to the top of the list? Who moves up the list, who drops down? Will any newcomer manage to go straight into the Top 10?

We will publish a more detailed look at the top DMOs in the next days with some very interesting insights into e.g. conversations, followers vs. following, frequency of updates etc.

And then of course we are looking forward to see the results for end of December? Will VisitChicago defend the Nr. 1 spot or will Baltimore take it back? Will Columbus leverage the social media training the staff got or will Philadelphia use the power of it’s more than 700 followers? With the Top 4 so close together this could turn into a friendly competition that will make any football and baseball rivalry look really boring.

Here are the answers for November and some explanations about the table:

We use TwitterGrader to rank all US destinations that we could find on Twitter. We only list Twitter accounts are are (or at least look to be) “official”, e.g. we do not list accounts from individual DMO employees. 

The change in ranking we only show for destinations that we have tracked for at least 2 months.

As always please let us know if we are missing any destinations.