It is a popular question from our social media strategy clients:
So, what tourism/destination/DMO social media campaigns do you like?
Typically, very few...aside from the often cited Tourism Queensland example (still a brilliant campaign from Chris and the TQ team).
This is not to say that our DMO peers produce poor social campaigns, but unfortunately many use the proverbial copy and paste button a bit too often.
But, there are several standouts.
Those executions, integrations and campaigns that warrant a tweet, like or post. For your reading enjoyment, we have four of our favorite tourism / destination marketing social media campaigns.
4 Brilliant Tourism / Destination Social Media Strategies
Visit Norway Facebook Integration
Aside from being one of our favorite DMO sites from a design perspective, the team at Visit Norway (@visitnorway) has done a remarkable job integrating social media tools back into the primary site.
Social links, a Facebook Like button, videos and Facebook Comments (shown above) create a true sense of connectivity between the site and Visit Norway's social media presence.
Sure, it sounds easy, but take a look at your site and let me know how many of these social features are present.
Plus, Visit Norway goes one better with fantastic share and even an embed tool...that let's your friendly influencer embed content from the visitnorway.com to their blog, wall or geocities page...sorry, scratch that last one.
For social integration, Visit Norway is one of our favorite.
Visit Britain Top 50 Places
Don't reinvent the wheel. A common warning when discussing social media. However few within our little niche actually heed that advice. Unless you are Visit Britain.
Take Facebook Places, add in a some geosocial stats around your members, remove the temptation to rebuild your own DMO-version of Facebook and you get the Visit Britain Top 50 UK Places campaign.
What makes this campaign brilliant is the perspective from Visit Britain.
At first glance, and we would suspect to the average Joe Facebook, the Top 50 tab appears to be a unique and exclusive product of Love UK (the official Facebook brand for Visit Britain), but really it is a clever mashup of Facebook API data.
Rather than trying to build a new community with new check-in data, Visit Britain is simply leveraging 'like' and 'check-in' data and presenting it as their own.
Aggregate rather than recreate.
Brilliant.
Toronto Pearson International Airport Facebook Places Campaign
Toronto Pearson is a great airport for the average traveler...free wifi, free space and during the start of February, free lounge access.
To boost friends and check-ins on the Toronto Pearson Facebook page, the airport recently ran a geosocial promotion for travelers who check-in at the airport.
The reward...free access to the Plaza Premium Lounge (again, shown above).
Yeah, Toronto Pearson not only has free wifi, but also premium lounges without airline affiliations. Meaning you can pay $30 for 2 hours of peaceful and productive 'me' time while waiting for your flight.
Or, if you check-in via Facebook Places, discounted or even free access.
We like free.
Keep it up Toronto Pearson.
The Woody Goomsba of Leavenworth
For the record, I have been to Leavenworth. Twice.
Great town, beautiful spot, interesting architecture...but never a place I would label as hip.
I assume Woody Goomsba would disagree. See his new video above.
The understated 'Best Tourism Ad Ever' video does possess the trifecta of viral video assets...comedy, lederhosen and beer. It is certainly conversational and provides an introduction to a town that most people outside of the Pacific Northwest have probably never heard of.
Plus, we like the social debut of the new Leavenworth mascot.
That said, the video is too long. And a bit too...daring... risqué...sexist...for the average CVB.
But, with nearly 200,000 YouTube views in just under 2 months, one cannot argue the impact of the video.
After all, any PR is good PR, right?
Does that still hold true for social conversation?
Woody would say yes.
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