Thoughts from the Social Media Strategies in Travel 2008 conference

Diane Clarkson | March 07, 2008, 06:05 PM

This week I had the opportunity to attend the Eye For Travel “Social Media Strategies in Travel” Conference in San Francisco. There was palpable buzz of energy throughout the crowd of marketers who were eager to talk about social media strategy.

It was interesting how frequently the “F” word was spoken: Facebook. Travel marketers are intrigued, excited and perplexed about the potential to leverage the social network into their marketing mixes.

In January this year, there were 342 travel widgets on Facebook; today, there are 472. That is a 38 percent increase in a matter of weeks.

Certainly next year’s conference may hold much in the way of lessons learned as more travel marketers explore social networking.

There is, however, risk that these lessons learned will be anecdotal for many as there was little conversation around metrics. My colleague John Lovett has recently published a report called “Widgets: Measuring Value and Results” looking at tracking viral distribution and events within widgets. As the number of widgets increase, the subject of aligned objectives and measurements will become even more critical.