Social Media Interview Rough Transcript

Memphis Peggy Callahan Social Media Interview – rough transcript June 21, 2016

Peggy Thank you for agreeing to spend a little time with me to discuss Social Media and the relevance it plays in the Tourism/Hospitality Industry. My goal is to explore how visitor organizations can use social media to increase the tourism traffic and make a better experience for visitors to the Memphis market. Peggy I would like for each of you to introduce yourself – with your position and about how many years have you been in the hospitality/tourism industry. Mary Schmitz Exec Director – Welcome to Memphis a subsidiary of the Memphis Convention Visitors Bureau. Customer Service training Malvin Gipson Exec Director of Memphis Sports Council which is a subsidiary of the MCVB. – Our objective is to create economic impact – working with youth and sporting events. Peggy Who is your customer and how do you attract more followers? Mary My customers are the employers of people working with visitors. While we train employees are customer is really the employer. Primarily reach through the MCVB network – through mainly email and social media or personal presentations or one on one networking. Peggy What social media outlets do you use? Mary Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Peggy How many followers do you have? Mary On the Facebook page – I have about 240 likes, not followers. Boosted just recently. Peggy Malvin - How do you use social media to promote the events in Memphis? Malvin Several different ways, some examples of engagement - never a deadline – everything is instantaneous and running 24 hours a day. We use it to help promote events and keeping participants and family members updated regarding results of the events around the region. When we are promoting – agencies like the SEC/NCAA are looking at media and FanFest the locations, they look at this information part of the offer when these sporting agencies go out to book locations – it is a big part of the offer. We hosted the CUSA and we had a Fanfest event on Beale Street which drew about 18,000. The conference was extremely happy and extremely successful. That is one of the major ways we use social media. Peggy In the travel/hospitality industry how has social media helped attract visitors and how does it help you stay connected with the visitors? Malvin What we do is promote and follow the events in different cities on the sports arena side. If there is an event in Nashville we have follow the social media during the event and we start promoting our attractions, Beale Street, museums, etc. in anticipation for the visitors coming to Memphis. Mary The way we use is different since our organization is not focused on national but instead local micro level reaching out instead to hospitality workers who interact with visitors. Much smaller reach. Interesting that we use the accomplishments of individuals to push out announcements and keep content going out every day to bring interest to the individuals involved in this. Reaching out to those in our training program. Encourage them to shot photos of each other and post on social media – so they are active with this. At the UofM we worked with a Hospitality Sales & Marketing group – as part of a class project to send students out to view great employees. Created a competition to recognize through 901Smile on Twitter – we had people take pictures – very one on one marketing – with waiters, valet parkers, ticket takers – a big swatch of the 35,000 hospitality workers. Peggy Do you think social media effects the restaurant industry – in promoting and attracting visitors. Memphis Restaurant Association is very active in this? Mary Without a doubt. Restaurants – more direct contact with customers – what the specials are, post often, Can tweet about what their great dishes are; specials of the day. Helps restaurants to not have to answer questions on the phone – the customer can get that info from Facebook, website or twitter. Work very hard to get yelp reviews. Restaurants very active on social media. Peggy How do you use social media to promote sporting events in Memphis or attract sporting events to come to Memphis? Malvin Working extremely well for them. While the tournaments are going on we get the restaurants and attractions to send out information to those attending. Those social media blasts go out to the parents as well as the participants and players so they know what the various restaurants and attractions are within the area. A role we play is in getting the event info out – dates, attendance, etc. – to the area restaurants/attractions. This also helps them with staffing. Mary So many of our visitors – the contacts are all with the cellphone – not email. 80% of the social media experience is on their smart phone. For the younger customers the communications is much different than mine. But the parents are on social media to keep up with the kids - not on social media as much Peggy Do either of you have specific goals in mind when you are thinking about social media? Malvin We have a system we put in place to gather information during the event– by using surveys. Our goal is to get live feedback from the parents and the players. We want to make sure we are doing our part. Make sure they are having a good time. Make the tournament is yielding the results they are trying to accomplish throughout the tournament. So what we do is setup quick surveys throughout the tournament so they can answer live their thoughts. It keeps us on task to actually achieve our objectives Mary Don’t track during the train the training. Use Survey Monkey to try and keep up with the response to the training as well as demographic profile. We don’t the staff – being a Non-profit. Working to build a demographic profile using the survey monkey approach. The feedback surveys are really important because I want to know how well we are doing. If I had a goal it would be for me to be less reliant on email to reach those employers – it would save a lot if we can use social media to keep our momentum going for people who want to access information. I have to relay a lot on one on one contact – so that would be a huge time saver. You are talking about a non-profit staffed by one person. Peggy Do either one of you have a horror story or social media campaign that didn’t work out Mary When we started we wanted to use social media -- Instagram, Facebook, and twitter. But in starting a non-profit I was searching for data, meeting with economic development people ….. etc. We set up Facebook, I had about 67 likes on the page. But now, I have help – so the messages are consistent and they are daily and they will be daily for a while. The nightmare is starting up something that if you can’t sustain it almost an embarrassment and it does not work for you. It was a near miss – it didn’t collapse on me but it didn’t grow the way it should have. Malvin The challenge – is maintaining the info – because 24/7 - how to use – figure out how to manage that information. Trying to figure out how to use the information because new information is coming in all the time. You try to take that great information and figure out how you are going to relay it to what you’re hoping is in your region. That was probably the most challenging thing that I had to deal with. Trying to figure out how I am going to use those sources – don’t want to add too much – just can’t keep up with it. We started out with Facebook and Twitter – they were the easiest and slowest as opposed to Instagram and some of the others – so we could stay on top of the information. Peggy What do you think the future is – it seems like things change so fast – for me anyway I just get on Facebook and figure it out and now I am trying to figure out Twitter – Is Twitter going to be around for a while or are we going to have to learn something new? Mary I think Twitter will be around for a while. Facebook is moms & dads and grandparents – Kids are Snapchat, Tumbler, etc. I think one of the things that will keep happening – is that as soon as a social media platform takes hold and the parents get involved then they move on – they share lots of video and pictures – the numbers of videos and pictures on cell phones is amazing. I don’t think there is any plateau in sight regarding how much time people spend on their phones. Peggy But we also have to balance it because we don’t want to forget about the older people too – because those are a lot of travelers. Mary We are reaching out to people in the service industry – and I have found a lot of people who do not have email. They use cell phone and text but have no desire to be that connected. I am in a place where I am reaching out to all of these segment. When at the MCVB in membership – had about 2,000 contacts and found that emails are something everyone hopes to quickly delete. So I found that important info needed to go out US Mail. Malvin My attitude is Instagram is the current wave – the Millennials are on Instagram. You see it all the time – Instagram. As I said earlier it is instant. They are so used to having that instant info – 24/7 – so up to date = so that is what they are looking at now. There is still a learning curve – but with millennials you need to be connected. But there is always something new coming out – but at the moment Instagram is the hot item. Mary Connecting the twitter and Instagram accounts can save time – but the formats are slightly different – one would show up as a link on twitter – so that is a little difficult. But we are now posting messages like you would in an email learning how to schedule bullet point items to be released at certain times – so you can get Facebook and Instagram to post – just need to make sure photos are showing up the right format in each medium. Works because I have planned messages – unlike Malvin in the sports world it is not always a planned message. There is no one formula. Malvin Any RFP – it requires us to present the social media aspect – as far as how we are going to promote that event. These plans are looked at very closely because it is such a big part and has a big impact on the event. So throughout all the RFPs that is something we look at carefully. Peggy Thank you both very much for you time and insight