It’s a tricky marketing channel because we want the right people to endorse your brand to their friends.

Social media can amplify brand awareness, is a great way to source ideas and constructive feedback from your consumers, and can be cheap to produce and maintenance especially for more personalized messaging.

Clients get it, but they need answers to common questions about social media.

Check out the Tnooz article

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/02/03/future.travel.space.aircruise/index.html?hpt=C2

Evan Williams is a real person that has a lot of Twitter followers, like over 1 Million. Little moments like sharing frustrations about poor baggage handling by an airline have real consequences.

Something to consider, how to leverage the voice of such influencers in a positive direction for your brand. A group called 140 Proof is building an advertising platform that will focus on targeted ads on the Twitter platform using influencers like Evan.

This launch shows a couple strategic moves by Carnvial’s marketing strategy for social media integration online. Overall the Funville section is embedded in the main site and is easy to navigate within integrating many sub-sections such as a forum/blog, game area, video library and more. It’s good to see a clean UI and an approchable navigation system that includes share features such as following the blog, Carnival tagged photos in Flickr and a twitter opt-in button.

This is a great first step towards consolidating user driven content around the brand and within the main brand site. Really looking forward to see how the Funville section will evolve as more content is added. For example, the forum is more attractive to look at but it still does not really provide “Web 2.0″ best practices on threaded conversations such as Digg interface. Also, I strongly believe roll calling is a big thing as the forums on CruiseCritic show. The view traffic is most popular on people looking at roll call posts by itinerary. Why not? People are excited about their cruise and want to start talking about it. This is the opportunity a brand like Carnival should try to own.

Thoughts?

In travel marketing, there a distinct phases in the vacation planning cycle that are always mentioned: research, consideration, purchase, anticipation, the actual cruise experience and retention. The article on Dell points out branded twitter channels for customer service and deals which are great examples to sort against a cruise planning cycle.

Let’s use Celebrity Cruises as an example and brand a couple feeds within each phase:

• Research phase: @New2CelebrityCruise Talks about value proposition of Celebrity cruising and how it is different than Princess and Holland America.
• Purchase phase: @CelebrityButler A great customer service channel for frequently asked questions, boarding tips and even help on what shore excursions to choose from and how to purchase packages with your existing reservation.
• Anticipation phase: @CelebrityRollCalls Allows booked users excited to share their itinerary news with other booked guests. Encourage participation by voting on events onboard by itinerary dates.
• Actual cruise phase: @CelebritySolstice Follow the ship even if you are not on it and get tweets and pics from guests live onboard. Have the captain broadcast messages and hotel directors share event and port information.
• Retention phase: @CelebrityAlumni Cruisecritic power users love to live blog and archive their cruise experience. This channel is great for loyalty members to stay connected and share their photos after the cruise.

These examples are pretty detailed and some may even apply across phases, the point is conversations can be framed. Focusing these conversations about your brand may work in some cases and may not, but it does not hurt to try and see how your users adopt the channel and use it.

Carnival Cruise Lines, as an industry leader is making some interesting moves for 2010:

• Carnival’s Policy Prohibits Travel Agents From Using Its Trademark on Any Social Networking Website or Blog.
• Travel Agents May Share Publicly Available Carnival Specials, But Should Seek Written Permission to Share Carnival Videos & Photos
• Carnival Cruise lines to restrict third-party bidding on search terms, which includes travel agents from bidding on paid search terms like Google Ad Words.

It makes sense that Carnvial Cruises prohibits the bidding of certain branded keywords by third parties, but limiting the use of branded video and related content from being embedded on third parties, why?

Working with cruise management, the key business topic is how to maximize bookings online. Travel agents continue to own a large footprint of booking sales with their clients, why limit their ability to sell online?

Rich media content is a proven vehicle to feature the cruise experience. After Celebrity Cruises launched a branded content campaign in Fall ‘08 with video on the home page more premium and luxury cruise lines followed suit such as Holland America and Princess Cruise lines (which are Carnival owned). It makes sense to empower your travel agents and travel geeks to embed this content on their pages to maintain consistent branded look and feel when selling the cruise experience.

More info:
Hubspot: http://bit.ly/5E3ls3
Travel Weekly: http://bit.ly/8Hick5

What kind of content would a cruise company publicize in real-time?
Rather than have deals, travel tips from a blog expert, or new ship/itinerary info — elevate the cruise experience form the perspective of your cruise fans and share it with fellow cruise followers. Cruise ships are always sailing with cruisers that want to share their travel experience in real-time. Even if it’s as simple as a roll call soap box platform, at least you capture the enthusiasm of individuals that want to celebrate with peers about your brand.

Sept 2009 survey: Brand monitoring was an important aspect of Twitter usage as well, among the companies surveyed, though publicizing new content was the top activity. About one-quarter of companies were using the microblogging site for customer service or gathering customer feedback.

Putting price aside which is a big consideration factor when choosing a cruise from a set of variations such as number of nights, stateroom type and port types in a particular destination, how do you sell an experience? With storytelling of course.

The best travel agents understand what the customer needs and can pitch a cruise experience according to what is most relevant to that prospect. It takes time to get to know what the consumer wants and some travel agents have the skill to maintain long business relationships because of their tacit knowledge of the consumers’ priorities and preferences. This process to build trust with your client can take time. With social media becoming an online standard, the ability to share experiences and enable friends to tell their stories to other friends is a new dimension in marketing travel that cruise companies need to maximize.

There are a couple perspectives that make the leap of faith into social media a big challenge. From the corporate point of view, enabling part of your brand in the hands of the consumer requires new marketing tools that won’t be cost-efficient at first (although they are not that expensive) and the return on investment is a trial and error model that should be managed internally optimistically rather than risk-averse. In most cases, to do social media properly there are big budget related questions to clarify with corporate marketing executives such as:

• Upgrading site: How do I integrate social media into our current web booking flow?
• Inbound scenarios: Where is my target audience online and how do I maximize my online spend?
• Content moderation: What do we do with consumers that talk poorly about our brand?
• Coordinated marketing: When do you launch your PR tactics to build organic buzz with influencers and their social networks?

From a consumer standpoint, making it easy and fun to tell your cruise story is where post-cruise marketing becomes part of the guests’ total travel experience. It also is the hero that helps to build trust and confidence with peers that seek relevant touch points that match their research and planning needs when it comes to considering another cruise with your brand.

“Social media and travel are a perfect fit, because they both are built around this idea of sharing experiences and storytelling,” said Mary Madden, a senior researcher at the Pew Internet and American Life Project in Washington, D.C. “Content, whether that’s a blog post about your favorite restaurant or the story from your latest trip to Greece and photos of that trip, is a form of social currency that you share with other people who frequent your social media space.”
Social Networking Changing The Way We Travel

Both travel agents and friends you trust will help cruise marketing online grow, it is up to cruise companies to build the right web applications that enable both target groups to promote the brand in relevant ways. More importantly, social media solutions need to be created internally with all marketing channels in mind that include PR, print and web subject matter experts.

The online travel category has evolved significantly in the last five years allowing consumers better ways to research, find deals, and choose the best travel options that meet their needs. These online travel shopping habits become expectations as well for the cruise industry to follow. This blog is about sharing insights and recommendations on how to evolve the online cruise shopping experience with digital media to cruise marketing professionals, travel agents and other like-minded peers.