Keeping Up with the Ever-changing Social Media Landscape

Texas Forts Trail Tourism & Preservation Round-UpMarch 5, 2012

and now

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GEEK ALE

RT!!

About MeAbout Me

Benefits of Social Media

• It’s FREE!• Builds deeper relationships• Increases brand awareness • Broadens your network• Helps SEO• Increases website traffic• Can help reach journalists/media• Empowers fans to be viral ambassadors

for your brandSource: Social Media for Tourism Pros

What Is Facebook?

• Social networking service that allows users to connect to friends and businesses

• Share content, links, photos, and videos• Comment on others’ activity• Remember: Personal profiles are for

people, not businesses. Develop a fan page instead.

Facebook Stats• Over 800 million active users• Fastest growing demographic is women 55

years old and up • Average user is connected to 80 pages,

groups, or events• 50% of active users log onto Facebook daily• 350 million+ users access Facebook from a

mobile device– This group is 2x as active as those who don’t

Source: http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

Guess what? has changed.

… again.

From This …

… To This!

What Is Twitter?

• Free social networking and micro-blogging site that allows users to send and read messages known as “tweets”

• Tweets can have no more than 140 characters & are delivered to the author’s subscribers, known as “followers”

Twitter Stats

• 200+ million users• 460,000 new users sign up daily• 50% of active users use their mobile phone to

tweet• Twitter users are 3x more likely to follow a

brand on Twitter than any other social networking site

Source: http://blog.hubspot.com

You May Have Seen This

But Have You Seen This?

Pinterest Positives

• Traffic, traffic and more traffic– Pinterest has grown 4000% in the last 6 months

• It has SEO secret sauce– Each photo pinned can be linked back to a specific

product or more information on your website or blog

• Incredible engagement– Average user spends 88.3 minutes on Pinterest

• Cross promote with other social media channels• So easy to use

Pinterest Bookmarklet

Pinteresting Possibilities

• Use Pinterest as a focus group– Look at what your followers are pinning. They

volunteer information on their interest, dreams, and passions.

• Generate leads– Link to landing pages that contain forms for

downloading content you want them to have (visitor guides, calendars, PDF documents, etc.)

• See what’s been pinned from your website or blog http://pinterest.com/source/AddYourURLHere

Photo: andyarthur on Flickr

Pinteresting Pitfalls

• Remember Napster?– Some consider Pinterest to be an enabler of illegal

activity.• Possible copyright infringement– Almost all Pinterest images posted by users were

copied from other websites without permission.– Pinterest just released “NoPin” code that allows

content owners to keep their photos from being pinned.

– Others see it the same way as Xerox, VCRs, or DVRs.• Pinterest shifts accountability to the user

Questions?

Old School:• Phone – 512.473.3513• E-mail – sarah.page@lcra.org

New School:• Twitter - @ColoradoRiverTr (work), @pagetx (personal)• Facebook – facebook.com/ColoradoRiverTrail• Flickr – flickr.com/groups/ColoradoRiverTrail • Foursquare – foursquare.com/coloradorivertr• Delicious – delicious.com/pagetx• Slideshare – slideshare.net/pagetx