January 2010

I’m thinking about what would be a good social media campaign for Greenland.  Consider this:

• 96% of Americans between 18-29 are on a social network
• If Facebook were a country, it would be the 4^th largest  (China’s Qzone social network is bigger than Facebook)
• 25% of search results for the world’s top 20 brands are links to user-generated content
• 78% of Americans trust peer reviews (Only14% trust traditional advertising)

Effective use of social media (by definition: media that is spread by social interaction) is probably the best tool destinations have for raising awareness about their destination: it’s cheap and effective.  But it requires time, planning, good strategy and innovation.  A Facebook page isn’t going to catch anyone’s attention anymore, (unless you get really serious: Pure Michigan recently hired Fluency Media to develop a strategy for their Facebook page! ).

But beyond Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Knols, and Squeedoos (actually I just counted 67 “share” icons on Mashable)– what really gets peoples attention are elaborately planned campaigns.

In 2009, Tourism Queensland executed (in my opinion) a highly successful social media campaign with their Best Job in the World Contest.  For those of you who were living under a rock last year, the tourism board advertised the Best Job in the World – the caretaker of an island in the Great Barrier Reef.  The job was to blog and photograph the wildlife; basically live in paradise for a year, for a salary of $100,000.  To apply, you had to send in a one minute video (my favorite submission was obviously by a Canadian). Anyone, from anywhere could apply.   The winner was chosen by online votes.

The results:

• Global news coverage, from CNN stories to BBC documentaries, and Time magazine articles and everything in between. Estimated media coverage is valued at over AUD$400 million.
• To date, the campaign has reached an audience of approximately 3 billion through media coverage.
• 34,684, one minute video job applications from 197 countries.
• Web stats of 8,465,280 unique visits, 55,002,415 page views with an 8.25 minutes average time spent

(Read the case study here)

It might not have generated a huge or even a notable rise in tourism arrivals to Queensland, but most people had probably never heard of Queensland before they were clicking on its website or applying to live there for a year.

So, what the campaign did was raise awareness.

When I told people I was moving to Greenland, most people either made a comment related to a characteristic of Iceland – the economic collapse, geysers or quoted the line from Mighty Ducks, when the hot Iceland Coach explains the difference between Iceland and Greenland to a confused Emilio Estevez (Gordon Bombay) “Greenland is covered in ice and Iceland is very nice.”  Clearly, people can stand to learn more about this country, because while it is covered in ice, it is also very nice.   So anyway, I’m thinking a good social media campaign could be an interesting solution.

Here are some other notable and recent examples of innovative social media campaigns by tourism destinations (thanks @Shalin for a good article on this)

• Visit Colorado invited people who had never seen snow before to participate in their Snow At First Sight contest.  Three winners get to travel around the state for 90 days and blog like mad about their first experiences with snow.
• Ultimate Thailand Explorers launched by the Thailand Tourism Authority gave teams of two the chance to win six expense paid days exploring Thailand.  To apply you had to submit a video and people around the world voted with clicks.
• Not a campaign but I like Austria’s approach to networking for travelers. Cool Austria is a site for travelers AND locals to find attractions/activities in Austria.
• Philadelphia has done a similar thing with www.uwishunu.com (You wish you knew) – a guide to going local.

So if you have any genius ideas for Greenland, please send them my way!

Oh also – another thing to think about is how to sustain interest – I highly doubt many people actually go back and read these blogs – all it does is remind you how cool it would have been if you’d won.  The social networks manage that to a certain extent…  But, so what’s a good way to keep people interested/invested for longer periods?