I recently got not one, but three emails, in the same day, all nearly identical.  Their contents, summarized:

Andy, I have seen some of the larger hotels and airlines making bookings available via their Facebook page.  Should we setup something to allow customers to book their trip via Facebook?  If so, how!?

This is a good question.  Let’s tackle it in the two parts – if you should offer bookings, and how to do so.

So, Should You Take Travel Bookings via Facebook?

My answer: it depends.    (How unsatisfactory, eh?)

Honestly, I can’t tell you yes or no without knowing more about your biz.  But here are the questions you should be asking yourself:

• Do we have an engaged Facebook presence, or are we stronger on other platforms?
• Are we checking Facebook regularly to provide adequate customer support?
• How many bookings per month would it take to recoup costs? (See below on costs.)
• Are customers asking for that?  If not, have we asked them what they think?
• How could we test it to determine the best approach?

If you haven’t got an answer to those, then I suggest that’s where you need to start.

If Yes, How Do I Take Travel Bookings on Facebook?

If you’ve decided yes, then you’ve got a little homework to do to move forward.  Some recommendations/links…

CONTACT FORM (IFRAME)

Why overengineer things when a simple contact form is an easy starting point to work from?  Make it easy, seamless, and see how it works. If you have a contact form on your own website also, make sure you know which submissions come through via FB.

Travel agents, you don’t NEED anything else fancier, please don’t overengineer this or try to deluge them with a tangle of affiliate links.

You’ll be creating a custom tab to create the contact form.  I recommend the Static HTML app to do this but there are many other options out there.

You can also embed whole web pages in an iFrame, which is like a window onto your website.  But you’ll need to code these so they’re just the right size for Facebook – best to involve a developer when setting anything fancy up!

HOTELS: THE BOOKING BUTTON

Hoteliers, I’m loving the features and reasonable prices with “the booking button,” a Facebook solution for hotels provided by the nice folks at Siteminder.  You don’t have to use any of their other products to use this feature, and it’s a flat monthly fee, which for most of you will work out to needing just 1 sale per month to pay for itself.  There is a 2 week trial, so if you have an interest, take advantage of that.

TOUR GUIDES: TOURCMS & REZGO

For the tour guides out there, if you are using either TourCMS or Rezgo, both offer Facebook features that you can easily implement.  I actually know the owners of both, and they both offer great support if you’re looking to switch over to a booking tool as well as get yourself up and running on Facebook.  Tell them I said hello.

Let us Help

Need more Facebook help, whether that’s engagement, building momentum, or taking bookings?  Take our free business assessment and let’s talk about how to make Facebook work better for you.

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20k haters of the new Facebook might be a drop in the bucket compared to their billions of users, but you should still be paying attention.

It seems everyone is in a huge kerfuffle about the recent drastic changes announced to Facebook, and for good reason – the new changes haven’t been well received, and it seems Facebook is gearing up for another battle on the data privacy front.

It’s all frustrating, to say the least, for tourism professionals who have been tending and growing a Facebook audience.  Why?  Here are three important things you should be aware of.

Engagement has Dropped for Many

The biggest change to Facebook, already implemented, isn’t the new “timeline” layout of profiles, but the weird-whackyness of the Facebook wall.  Everyone I’ve spoken too has seen Facebook engagement plummeting.  In some cases, fan activity has dropped more than half.

It’s all a real worry, and the only advice I have for you is hang on, we’re all in it together.  Personally I think it’s a dip -once people get used to it, and start to adjust their settings, engagement will perk back up, though maybe not as high as before.

It’s an important reminder that you need to be active and maintaining a variety of marketing channels, don’t rely on one platform – especially one you don’t own and one that can be changed on a whim.

Number of Likes is Now Almost Irrelevant

Nah, you don't have to like it if you don't want to.

This is the most impactful Facebook change I’ve seen in a long time. You no longer have to “Like” a page to mention it in a feed, or comment on the wall.

You still need to Like a page to see its updates in your feed, so you’ll still want to encourage likes with custom welcome tabs and the like, but now consumers can mention you or interact with you WITHOUT the like.

Important takeaways:

• This means you need to be more vigilant about monitoring your Facebook mentions, since anybody can mention you.  Make sure to take care of customer service issues swiftly and quickly.
• The above applies to your wall too – be checking what’s on your wall daily, if not multiple times a day. (I’ve always had that advice, but it’s quite important now.)
• You need to add even more encouragement for folks to give you the “Like.” Special coupons, deals, VIP access – consider some add-ons to make that Like a must-have!

Expect More Advertising Tools

Facebook is rolling out a lot of features that have the data privacy folks up in arms – but it’s the same data that advertisers want, and guess who’s paying Facebook’s electric bills?

From what music you’re listening to, to what you’re reading, what TV/movies you’re watching, Facebook’s “social graphic” is pulling more and more and more data in about what a user likes and what a user doesn’t like.

What does that mean for you?  Targeting users based on VERY clear and specific interests is going to become easier than ever.  Perhaps scarily so.

Some examples:

• For users who have just read “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” might be interested in learning more about Savannah and maybe book a trip.
• Someone who just watched a TV show about skydiving might be interested in your skydive attraction that’s near them.

Simple examples, but there is going to be a lot of creative options available to those who will take the time to muck around Facebook’s advertising tool. (And I do mean it when I say muck – parts of it are easy, others not so much.)

There is of course the worry that now the Facebook feed is clogged up with all that data – which has led the current drop in engagement – but I’m sure Facebook will want to keep users happy and advertisers happier, so it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Facebook continues to be an ever-changing marketplace for tourism professionals.  Keep your eyes peeled, it could go either very well or very poorly.  Only time will tell.  Oh, and if you want to talk more about it or just need a check-in on your strategy, don’t miss our free small business assessment!

What are you doing differently with regards to the recent Facebook changes?

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Despite all the buzz about Google+, Facebook is still the world’s dominant social network. Yeah yeah we could babble on about stats and figures, etc. Instead, here’s my opinion:  just get on Facebook already, k?

Once you’ve got your Facebook fan page setup, if you do nothing else to customize your Facebook presence, please take some time to setup a custom Facebook Fan Page Welcome Tab. This is one of those nifty pages that appears when you visit a page that you aren’t a fan of.  They’re terrific for increasing likes and getting folk to take an action.

Wait! How Do You Setup Facebook Fan Page Welcome Tab?

Ok, so for the beginners who haven’t done this, setting up a Facebook fan page welcome tab is not difficult, but you need to know how to do HTML.  So you might want to share this tip with your design or developer if you aren’t comfortable.

The easiest way to make a welcome tab is to add the Static HTML iFrame tab application to your page.  It is very easy and guides you through all the setups you need to configure the HTML page for non-fans and then an alternative version for fans.  All you then have to do is to set the “default landing tab” in your Admin settings to be the new tab, as shown below:

What Makes a good Facebook Fan Page Welcome Tab?

A good welcome page does the following:

• It offers a brief introduction of who you are to someone who might not know. A tagline would suffice (if yours is good).
• It gives them a call to action. Your first call to action should be to LIKE your page.
• It gives them a little something to entice them to stick around.  Like a contest, or a coupon, or free something.

I’m totally biased, but I think our Facebook fan page pretty much kicks ass.  If you’re not a fan, go ahead and like us – I’ll wait til you come back.  We kept it clean and simple, a clear call to action, and we also included a customer testimonial and a special offer – a 30 minute Facebook audio!  (Like I said, if you aren’t a fan – go ahead.  And listen to the free call if you want – just get back over here when you’re done!)

Notice that we 1) say who we are, 2) give you a call to action, 3) give you a reason why you should, and 4) give proof that we're awesome.

Examples of Totally Awesome Facebook Welcome Pages – Other Than Ours

Avoiding any sense of hubris, I’d like to share some other very very snazzy Facebook Fan page welcome tabs.  They’re all tourism related, and they are all good acts to follow.

Arrows Lead the Way

Why not just be REALLY OBVIOUS as to what you want people to do.  There’s nothing wrong with that, and Nashville does it with style.

Amish Country Inns also has a bit of fun with their arrow.

And how can you not “like” (sorry, pun unintended) Tourism Vancouver’s arrow?

(Kudos for the “I Like Love Vancouver” line!)

Embracing Your Personality – And Give ‘em an Offer!

Hotel Max in Seattle is very good to their social media followers, with discounts and freebies on any social network.  I love their Facebook Fan page because it’s just SO them.  Very classy, chic, sexy, and very cheeky.  If your brand has a personality (HINT: it should), then flaunt it.

(PS – How’d they get that doggie to sit still?)

Ogungquit Resort Motel has a sweet special offer too – plus TONS of photo previews of their property. Let’s go!

Visit Florida also has tons of deals on their site. It’s like a mini Facebook travel Groupon, without all the fuss:

Use an Incredibly Striking Image

Just one really amazing image can take your Facebook Fan Page welcome tab from zero to hero. My favorite one when it comes to a single image has to be Visit Sedona:

But I also like the Cool Capitals page too (and their content is superb to boot, I should say):

Just make it a Travel Guide

In some cases, just making your welcome tab a travel guide works well. This is tricky because there is not a lot of space to use, so be careful not to overdo it. This is NOT a place to replicate your entire website!

A couple of excellent examples that I love include Tourism Fiji’s “Fiji Me!” links:

Illinois Route 66 Scenic Byway’s page is also fabulous – information rich while staying organized and easy on the eyes. (I heard they’re also going to add a map – very cool for trip planners!)

Make it Multimedia

If you’ve got mad skillz, you can take things up a notch with multimedia. As BikeHike Adventures shows us, a simple video is all it takes:

Visit York did a rotating slider, which is very nice and attention getting I think.

But top marks go to my good pals in Austin, who put a jukebox on their Facebook page. Awesome! *fistpump*

Be a tease and make ‘em LIKE IT for more!

You don’t have to give it all away – and in fact, being a bit of a tease can go over really well with the Facebook crowd. Matador Network (disclosure: they are a client) has a bit of fun with theirs:

Sheila Scarborough tipped me off to this FABULOUS fan page welcome tab by the Forty Putney Road Bed and Breakfast in Vermont. I just love it.

Tswal Kallahari, a game reserve in South Africa, also isn’t giving away any secrets without a like. The pastel wall makes me feel like there is a secret hiding inside of a tent or something.

And one more – Carnival Cruises has a very nicely done “teaser” graphic. Check it out:

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Flying Malaysia Airlines anytime soon?  Well you might want to check in on Facebook, because with the airline’s new tool, MH Buddy, you can reserve seats, see if your friends are on your flight, and sit next to them (or, if it’s your cranky cousin, not sit next to them.)

Regardless of whether you think it sounds ridiculous (Gads!  Who would want to buy an airline ticket on Facebook?) or just an invasion of data privacy (I don’t someone to know what seat I’m in on the plane!), the fact is that they’ve went and built it, and other airlines have too.  The fact is that the crowd that is quickly becoming known as the “Facebook generation” don’t want to leave Facebook.  They don’t want to go to your little website  to decide if your tours are cool.  They don’t want to go to your website to decide if your hotel is clean.  They don’t want to go to your website to figure out your travel agent rates.  Tell them right here (on Facebook), right now, or they’re moving on.

That doesn’t mean than you can skip working hard at having a website that markets and sells well, but you need to consider how you can also service your dream customers who come in via Facebook.

Malaysia Airline’s bookings page is a sign of the times, and a sign of things to come. Yes, I know you already have a job to do, but make some room for this one.  Get on board sooner rather than later, or else those consumers will take their cash elsewhere.

What Could You Do?

Ok, so I hear you.  Can’t afford the development costs (which aren’t insignificant) to ramp up a sexy Facebook Page?  No problem.  Here are some quite reasonable and interesting alternatives:

• Hotels: If you only have a few beds, having a raft of FB features might be overkill.  But can I check out testimonials and Tripadvisor ratings from your Fan Page?  (What – your ratings aren’t that good?  Oh, that’s a different problem.)  If your booking platform won’t work in FB, why not setup a nice, clean, simple booking request form.  If you get a handful of bookings, awesome – deal with the manual hassle.  If you get overwhelmed with requests, hooray: you just got the cash to upgrade your FB page.
• Tour Guides:  If there is anyone who needs their fan page to be killer multimedia, it is you.  Get your graphics person on it and roll out videos, photos, images of the whole operation.  Make it so that a fan can’t help but click on that “Share with Friends” button.  Oh, and like your hotelier friends, where’s the contact form to book from right here in Facebook?
• Travel Agents: Your page has to explain to me in no uncertain terms what your areas of expertise are and why I should care – right here on FB.  How about a page with your latest special deals and offers, with 1 click to get in touch.  Contact forms - make it easy, make it simple, let me do it right here.

Oops.

Back to our friends at Malaysia, they may have blazed a trail, but they forgot that social media marketing is like a garden – it needs tending on a regular basis or it grows weeds.  This new feature of the airline is less than 2 months old, and yet the page is littered with graffiti.  Oops.

Takeaway Lesson 1: in social media, if you start something, you have to finish it.  And by finish it, I mean taking care of it.  Forever.

Takeaway Lesson 2: all social media channels are customer service outlets.  Would you let someone standing at your front desk be left hanging like that or talk to one of your employees like that without a response?  Irresponsible.

To Learn More

Need help crafting your kick-ass Facebook strategy?  There’s a consulting package for that.

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So it seems Facebook has been taking the limelight in Internet circles at the moment for a litany of updates, some good, some bad, and some.. well, indifferent. Let’s talk about what you need to know and what you can forget.

New Facebook Privacy Options

UGH.  MORE privacy problems coming out of Facebook – and again, the problem isn’t that Facebook is changing the rules, it is that you’re automatically opted-in to the data exposure, instead of being opted-out by default.  (Translation: you’re in the new program unless you say no.)

The new feature is the “Instant Personalization Pilot” project.  What happens is that when you go to any of one of Facebook’s partner websites (currently Yelp, Pandoa, and Microsoftdocs.com but more coming), Facebook will share your name, personal interests, picture, gender and names of your friends with that website.  It means for highly targeted advertising, of course, but also means your Facebook data is finding its way winging across the world wide web.

To turn this off, simple:

• Click on Account, then Privacy Setting
• Click Applications and Websites
• Click on “Edit Settings” next to Instant Personalization
• Untick the box as shown:

It might be worth mentioning this to your Facebook Fans.

Facebook Social Plugins

In better social news, Facebook is coming to a website near you – literally!  The site has released a number of “social plugins”, which can help integrate Facebook into your website presence.  The official page to download the plugins:

http://developers.facebook.com/plugins

So, what are these plugins? Here’s a run down of the most interesting:

Like Button:  You can incorporate a ‘like’ button on your website pages, so users can instantly share their page with their Facebook friends.   By choosing ‘Like’, the page would appear in the user’s Facebook newsfeed.  Here’s an example of what a page looks like with the like button:

This could be an interesting addition to your blog articles and news pieces if you feel you have a lot of customers who are Facebook users.  However, do not add this button to your sales pages.  It’s just one more distraction when you want people focused on the purchasing decision.  (And who would “like” a page with your rate card or services anyway?).  It’s a shame you can’t customise the look of the widget much – it’s kind of ugly, if your font/colors aren’t like Facebooks.

Like Box:  This is what the “Fan Page” box used to be.  The title of the button has changed from “Fan” to “Like” but otherwise it hasn’t changed.  Thankfully it doesn’t say a ‘like box’ – not the best branding choice!

Recommendations:  This little widget shows users suggestions on other pages on the site based on Facebook user activity.  Unless you have a LOT of Facebook traffic, I would not implement this – there are far better ‘recommended’ page widgets, such as LinkWithin or Outbrain.

Comments Box:  If you’ve got comments enabled on your blog, then you replace that with a Facebook comments widget.  I don’t recommend this widget either, because if a visitor isn’t a Facebook user, it looks awful.  Here’s the standard view though:

To summarise…  Feel free to check out the plugins, but I would advise a cautious approach.

Facebook Profile Changes

One last note about Facebook profile changes.  Facebook is making user’s interests and pages much more visible on your profile, so at some point when you log into Facebook it will ask you to link your profile with your interests.  You can read more about this on the official Facebook blog, but the bottom line is you can’t refuse – this is the new profile functionality.  What I think this means:

• This is great for advertisers; I suspect the ultra-fine targeting features of Facebook will only get more refined.
• This is bad for fan pages counts; I suspect that users who were only “being nice” will flee when it means your logo will be emblazoned on their profile.

My oh my, how the world of Facebook continues to evolve.  I still think this is a viable outlet for small businesses to connect with their community, but be sure you’re hanging out here in the TOP community for the latest changes.

To Learn More

Still trying to master Facebook?  Haven’t even dipped your toes in the water?  Then be sure to check out our Facebook resources, which include our one hour “why Facebook” podcast, Facebook Fan page tips and tricks, and other resources.  Check it out!

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Regardless whether you’ve got a Facebook presence already or just starting out, we’ve just released a new free TOP Secrets guide you might be interested in: Facebook for Travel and Tourism.

What’s In It?

Well, this TOP Secrets guide is a one hour free audio call (with transcript) that myself, Andy Hayes, and social media maven Mari Smith recorded a few weeks ago.  Second only to the search engine stuff, Facebook is an area where we get a lot of questions, so I wanted to put something together to help people address those.

In essence, the call answers two key questions:

• Do you need a Facebook fan page?
• What do you do with it once you’ve got one?

Mari also gives out a ton of great tips, tricks, and resources from her Facebook experience that are really, really useful. This is a TOP Secrets guide that you can’t miss.

Listen Now

Sounds good?  Head on over to the Facebook for Travel and Tourism page to listen to the call.  After all – it’s free.  Then tell a friend or colleague who might be interested in hearing what we discussed.

Special Thanks

A special thanks to Mari Smith for joining us for the discussion.  You can’t help but feel positive and inspired after hearing Mari’s view of social media and online business.

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It seems there is always something to talk about with regards to Facebook!  This week it is a quick overview on two ways to better target your Facebook Fan page updates. (If you are still unsure whether to have a fan page or a group, check out our difference between a Facebook Fan Page and a Facebook Group.)

A Brief Side Note of Caution:  In case you missed it, Facebook has changed their rules on contests and promotions.  If you run promotions on Facebook, then please stop and take a minute to read the revised guidelines; you could be subject to financial penalties (fees!) if you run contests on Facebook.

Friends of Connections Advertising

If  you are using Facebook advertising to promote your Facebook fan page, then you’ll love the new ad targeting feature called Friends of Connections.  If you choose to use it, Facebook will show the friends of your connections advertisements that look something like this:

Joe’s Carribean Trout Fishing Tours. [page image] Andy Hayes is a fan of this page.

It is a very direct way to expand your network with “social proof,” namely that the person’s friend is already a fan of your page.  You’ll find the new option under inside the ad targeting page:

For more information about advertising on Facebook, visit Facebook’s official advertising page.

Location-Based Targeting of Wall Updates

You can now target your wall updates to users in specific locations (even down to provides/states or cities!).  On your Fan Page wall, each time you send out updates you can customize the target.  Start by clicking on the mysterious-looking icon next to the Share button:

Then you can choose who should be targeted with this update:

Pirate English?  Well, if that’s your target audience…

You can choose multiple locations and multiple languages, but don’t go overboard – if there isn’t a need to target, then don’t worry about it.

It’s not clear whether this will help overcome updates being lost in the recent Facebook Feed changes but it is worth trying.  Also, the settings can’t be saved, so you need to do this everytime.  (Though I suspect this is a ‘known feature’ and they’ll fix it later on.)

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Facebook recently changed their algorithm to alter the way users view updates and status changes from their friends and fan pages they follow.  (If you are still unsure whether to have a fan page or a group, check out our difference between a Facebook Fan Page and a Facebook Group.)

Here’s what the new screen looks like:

Your updates now default into the ‘news feed’ option.’

News Feed vs. Live Feed

The new news feed uses a Facebook algorithm to show you the updates you’re “most likely” to be interested in.  This is judged by number of likes, the number of times you’ve interacted with the person/fan page, and other factors.

The live feed is essentially what the updates feed used to look like.

What does this mean for your fan page?

If you have fans that aren’t interacting with your fan page, or if fans are not ‘liking’ your updates, then there is a good chance users will not see your updates – even if it’s someone who is interested in listening but just hasn’t engaged recently.  People are lazy so many will not bother to check their live feed.

It’s more important than ever now to encourage interaction with your Facebook fans.

Start active discussions, streamline and spruce up those page tabs, and really turn things up a notch.  You shouldn’t have needed an excuse to do that, but there’s no better time than now.

To Learn More…

Need some help with the nuts and bolts of Facebook? Why not work one-on-one with us to build your online community? Whether it’s just Facebook or Flickr too, we’ve got the resources and knowledge to help you build a bigger, better online community.

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We get this question a lot so it’s worth getting things cleared up straight away.  What exactly is the difference between a Facebook Fan Page (also known as a Business Page) versus a Facebook Group?

I’ve put together the following table that hopefully makes it crystal clear what you get (or don’t) in each option.

In almost all cases, my vote goes for fan pages, if for no other reason than they’re indexed by the search engines (e.g. Google reads them).  Groups give you more control but at higher admin costs – and if the features in a Facebook Group is what you want, you’d be well placed to look elsewhere, like Ning, to be honest.

Learn More

Need some help with the nuts and bolts of Facebook? Why not work one-on-one with us to build your online community? Whether it’s just Facebook or Flickr too, we’ve got the resources and knowledge to help you build a bigger, better online community.

Photo by jaycameron

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