Your travelers are already using social media — and your program can benefit, if you understand the basics
How much time did you spend on Facebook this week? How about LinkedIn? Twitter? Pinterest? Well, your travelers spent hours on these sites, probably more time than they spent on your online booking or expense reimbursement tool. I know I did.
Past columns discussed the complexities involved with technology, securing funding, and big data, but social media is something that doesn’t necessarily take a lot of time or money to leverage. The hard work has been done already by the social media sites themselves.
There are many ways to break down the evolving social media environment, but we are going to discuss it from three angles: (1) communicating through existing social media sites, (2) leveraging an internal social media site, and (3) educating your travelers on leveraging external social media vehicles.
If You Can’t Beat ‘em, Join ’em
I’m going to assume that most of your organization’s employees already use social media. Depending on the type of company and the demographics of your employees, they probably spend a fair amount of time on Facebook, keep their LinkedIn profiles up to date, and may use Twitter or other applications. So you already have handy social media tools in place that your employees love, that are great for communications, and that cost virtually nothing.
Facebook
Personally – and I’m semi-embarrassed to say it – I spend the most time on Facebook. Especially when I’m busy working long hours or traveling a lot, it’s a nice way to feel like I’m keeping up with my friends. I take solace in the fact that hundreds of millions of people “waste” their time on Facebook as well.
It would be so easy for you to set up a Facebook page for your travel program, start spreading the word for people to “like” your page, and start publishing information, updates, useful links and answers to your travelers’ questions. However, unless you are part of a small, generation-Y company, I’m not a big fan. First, most people think of Facebook as a “personal” network. Although liking the page doesn’t connect me directly to anyone, it makes me more accessible, opens me up to more connections, and affects my online privacy in who knows how many ways. Many people simply don’t want to mix business and pleasure and the thought of their professional life intruding on their personal life scares them.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn solves the personal-versus-business problem. I will connect to almost anyone I know on LinkedIn, and I’m assuming anything I share, post or do on the site is public domain. LinkedIn is used for business-type activities, it has simpler yet more powerful security options, and it’s a good place for business colleagues to connect. It’s easy to start a LinkedIn group where you could publish updates and information as well as encourage and view discussion topics amongst your travelers. You can also control the membership of your group. This would be my first choice for most corporate travel departments.
Twitter
Twitter has its advantages as well. Again, the security is fairly straightforward and posts can be restricted. It’s good for quick info and reaching people with links attached for detailed information. Another advantage is that people can set up multiple Twitter accounts, thereby separating their personas. However, the functionality is more limited and less engaging than other applications.
OthersThere are many social media platforms on which I could see interesting ways of engaging travelers. Pinterest could be used to share travel information, ideas, and links. Travelers could use Instagram to share photographs of experiences, both positive and negative. But these are less used, less formal and less obvious for the beginning stages of a social media strategy.
Strategy Warnings
When moving forward with a social media strategy for your travelers, you should keep the following in mind:
• Focus on one outlet to start. Build a critical mass and then consider other platforms. The more applications you use, the more your message and effort can get diluted.
• Remember that this is not a replacement alternative for the communications strategy you already have in place – it is a supplement. Not everyone is on social media and generally you cannot force people to join. Be careful not to put employees not using social media at a disadvantage.
• Coordinate with other internal groups. Social media strategy can be led by various groups within an organization: marketing, administration, business technology, etc. Perhaps you can coordinate efforts and be a great pilot for internal communications.
• Before doing anything, remember security! You are sharing internal information on a site, you are sharing who works for your organization, and you are opening yourself and your company up to potential publicity, employee, legal, or duty of care issues. Check with the appropriate groups (i.e., legal) in your organization before moving forward.
• Be prepared for a lot of feedback, much of it negative unfortunately. Have an effective strategy to best address any inappropriate, difficult, or controversial comments which can threaten brand goodwill.
Internal Options
Moving to social media comes with its share of problems: many competing choices, adoption, coordination and security. These are all potentially mitigated by a company-wide solution. Imagine having your own Facebook, but only people in the company can access it. And imagine this simple proprietary solution replacing the myriad of currently necessary materials and Web sites. Those solutions exist and are becoming more and more mainstream.
We have a similar solution at our company. It’s the open-source wiki software. Ironically, you can find the definition of a wiki here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki. We can share information, restrict who can see certain pages, allow others to share information, and send out a message to all or some users. Adoption is not a problem because people are on it every day to access other critical information (i.e., where the next happy hour is). We frequently push information to users through the wiki portal.
Yes it costs some money, but not a lot. It doesn’t take much work, although I’d recommend leveraging something your company is already using or making it part of the rollout of a new tool. I wouldn’t want to see you take on the wiki strategy for the entire company (unless that’s something you really want to do).
Once that solution gets running, it really does “feed itself.” If the tool is set up right, people can populate information on their own, and you (or your team) can focus on monitoring, answering questions and providing helpful tips.
If your company already has a tool in place, I’d recommend this approach over an “external” approach.
Climb The Social Ladder
The other thing you should consider, even if you don’t have a social media presence for your travelers, is how you can leverage existing social media to benefit your travelers. In prior months we discussed using applications for your travelers and the advantages of big data to obtain more meaningful information. Much of this involves social media.
For example, you probably know about sites like Yelp, and your travelers are probably already using them, but it might be a good idea to direct travelers to similar useful sites where they can receive and provide direct vendor feedback. Providing a centralized place to consolidate this information and to link easily to these helpful apps/sites can be good for your program.
Something even more powerful, but less utilized, is leveraging social media to reach customer service and getting a quick response. Twitter is the best example of travelers being able to reach out directly to customer service, especially when in a difficult situation (i.e., a canceled flight). I’ve seen cases of this being much quicker than making a call or seeing a gate agent at the airport. Many suppliers have people dedicated to responding to social media comments – in some organizations these are a higher priority because bad press on social media can damage the company’s brand.
Informing your travelers about key vendors and how to find them via social media can be extremely valuable. You should be careful to encourage your travelers not to complain to your preferred vendors in a public way, but give them another vehicle (what the diplomats call a “backchannel”) to aid with their travels. This may help prevent some travel disasters that you would hear about otherwise.
You may even want to speak to your preferred vendors and get their opinions and tips on utilizing these avenues. Potentially, you could share success (or failure) stories on your own internal or external social media platform and even utilize that feedback during vendor negotiations for favorable outcomes.
Social media is more than a trend; it’s a powerful tool for businesses large and small. With power comes risk – security, employee issues and negative publicity. But if you are careful to avoid those risks, social media can facilitate your role, empower your travelers, and help you become a leader in your organization. If you don’t believe me, ask one of your LinkedIn connections.
David Kaufman is co-founder, managing partner, and CFO of Acquis Consulting Group. He is a CPA, a Certified Purchasing Card Professional, and holds a Global Travel Professional certification from GBTA. With more than 20 years’ experience in both hands-on and advisory roles, David is a global leader and subject-matter expert in strategy, procurement, compliance, systems implementation, and business intelligence.