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?

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.

You mentioned that you have “seen a handful of DMO’s and CVB’s that have mastered social media”. Would you be willing to share who you think these are so others reviewing this post could learn from them?

I think those who aren’t on top of social media probably weren’t on top of Web 2.0 to begin with…not necessarily a bad thing since they do have the opportunity to completely revamp. I think we’ll see more companies out there offering 3rd party social media services so DMOs and CVBs don’t have to take the long road and learn from their mistakes.

But currently, I think there’s still time. I see a handful of DMOs and CVBs that have “mastered” social media — and there’s still time to jump into the social media sphere without getting left behind.